Cross Reactors to Gluten

[Gabes-Apg]

Are You Not Healing Because Your Body Thinks Coffee, Chocolate & Cheese Are Gluten?

morning afternoon all
in my wellness journey I am working two very knowledgeable practitioners (husband and wife, both very proactive about cell health, gut health, methylation, etc. We are getting into the nitty gritty of inflammation triggers in my body. I think I have sort of come across this before, but today was huge lightbulb moment. We looked at 'cross reactors' for Gluten. non gluten food items that when eaten the immune system is triggered as if you are having gluten.

for me - mine came up as Eggs and Sweet Potato.
this is very interesting as in recent weeks I had been having mild reactions to eggs and thought that maybe the chooks had been fed different food.

keeping in mind that I have never done the enterolab testing (distance and cost has always been a barrier) so this is where for those doing the A and C panels and identifying the common foods that you may be reacting to may well be providing this information.

I share this info for those that are struggling to get good management of symptoms even though they are having what we think are low inflammation food ingredients

here is a good article
https://www.thepaleomom.com/gluten-cros ... ing-it-up/

Rye
Barley
Spelt
Polish Wheat
Oats (2 different cultivars)
Buckwheat
Sorghum
Millet
Amaranth
Quinoa
Corn
Rice
Potato
Hemp
Teff
Soy
Milk (Alpha-Casein, Beta-Casein, Casomorphin, Butyrophilin, Whey Protein and whole milk)
Chocolate
Yeast
Coffee (instant, latte, espresso, imported)
Sesame
Tapioca (a.k.a. cassava or yucca)
Eggs

Of interest info from my practitioner - is that it is very very common for patients that casein will cause gluten reaction in the body. and if consuming casein while you first go gluten free will impact effectiveness of going gluten free.

How do you deal with this? - first step I am avoiding my cross reactors totally for 3 weeks to break the cycle
any miniscule amount of sweet potato and/or eggs and I have to start the 3 week period again. and we will see how things go from there.

this is maybe something of interest when people first go gluten free, that completely avoiding dairy for at least 3 weeks is more likely to provide optimised benefit.

another good article
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7875/ar ... glute.html

[dfpowell]

I found following her "Autoimmune Protocol" to be very helpful in my healing process. I hope you find benefit from your diet changes.

[Gabes-Apg]

from what I learnt this morning, the meals where I had egg and sweet potato at the same time were causing bigger reactions.

yes some fine tuning of my eating plan could bring some improvements wellness wise..

[kbb]

Hey Gabes:

Not following the sweet potato thing. That's not on the list, how did you decide you have an issue with it again?

I'm practically living off sweet potatoes right now...

[Gabes-Apg]

Kelly
until now I thought sweet potato was one of my safe veges!

working with the practitioners (they use applied kinesiology) we identified that there were items causing ongoing leaky gut issues. Keeping in mind that this is sort of 'alongside' MC direct triggers. Given that I have been gluten free for so long, we delved into 'gluten cross contaminators', As per the articles and list I provided above, there are items that when consumed the immune system treat as gluten. from the list we started with the items that I have frequently and it turns out, I react to sweet potato and eggs.
the reaction to sweet potato and eggs, is not major MC type reaction - more so over time the inflammation has been building.
although my gut is reasonably healthy due to my MC eating plan etc, the inflammation is causing issues with other organs linked to auto immune issues (thymus, pancreas, kidney)

hope this makes sense.
Given how many people here still have issues on a bland restrictive low amount of ingredients eating plan / or that relapse within a short period of attaining remission, I thought I would share what I had learnt. and for those having ongoing issues they may wish to consider the info in the articles above and avoid the ingredients in the list of items identified as 'gluten cross contaminators'

[Erica P-G]

I can see where some of those ingredients could be a problem child for me at times. I don't over indulge in any one of them, nor do I do any dairy or eggs or soy.

My mainstay is white rice, corn and yellow potato rotated, and honestly eating is not fun anymore. It seems just when I think I'm normal and living like the rest of my family my body decides that I am different and I don't get to be like everyone else. It's kinda annoying that we have to worry about 'gluten cross contaminators' at all...our bodies are so complex, what the heck have we been doing to it!

I have much better days when I don't over indulge in sugar so that must be my most reactive ingredient...but I don't see that on the list

I am loving life again though, my bouts with the bathroom aren't crazy races anymore (unless I over indulge in one of those cross reactors mentioned above).

So glad you are narrowing your diet down even more Gabes
Hugs
Erica

[Marcia K]

I eat a sweet potato every day, I hope they're not cross reactors for me!

[Gabes-Apg]

I was having it most days! same with eggs I was having them 3-4 times a week.

learning about this, explains why even after healing some MC'ers can not do eggs.
I have just cleaned out my freezer of items that were pre cooked with sweet potato!

the dogs just got the defrosted meals that were to be my meals today. So now I am doing new cook up.

cie la vie... it is what it is. another reminder of impermanence... (pema chodron lesson in mindfulness) not to have attachment to things.

[HockeyMom]

Geez, if I take sweet potatoes out of my TOTALLY GRAIN FREE LIFE...I wont have any food to eat!! I've added eggs back and thought they were ok, initially they were a 6 on the Enterolab test way back when. Oh, I have added my tapioca bagels back in and thought they were ok also. I only really eat the white sweet potatoes anyway, they really aren't sweet, more like regular potatoes.

I've been pretty good lately (wierd today, but that might be menopausal stuff). I am feeling better but since I react to everything on that Enterolab panel at 2+ with rice at 3+, life is challenging. Have added an occasional piece of dark chocolate with no offending ingredients.. Oh, ya, I react to white potatoes so there goes all nightshades... And I've been GF, DF, SF for 6 years...

I'm like you Erica. Food sucks anymore. Eating sucks anymore. I eat just so I don't die. I eat to put on weight but that doesn't really seem to be happening...or if it is it's so slow that I'm not noticing it. Don't get me wrong people!!! I'm feeling much better than I was a few months ago. But the way this is going, I'm gonna be seriously underweight and fighting to find food to keep weight on me for the rest of my life!!! I basically force myself to have snacks at work am/pm to add extra calories...

Sorry, didn't mean to be Debbie Downer as things are going pretty well....it just seems like it's such a struggle to eat and keep/put weight on with such limited choices!!

Laine

[kbb]

Gabes:

Thanks for sharing the information. Let us know how it goes with taking eggs and sweet potatoes out. I'm curious to see how it goes for you.

-K

[kbb]

One more thing on those lists...

I researched coffee a while back because it's something I love and am always wondering if I should give up... Never seems to make a difference when I do, so then I wonder if I didn't give it up long enough, circle repeats, etc.

So the study they seem to get the coffee thing from basically says instant coffee is contaminated with gluten. At least that's what I was able to find. You find articles where folks say that it is cross reactive for gluten and they site the same study which says that they only found the problem with instant coffee and the researchers suspected it was contaminated in processing.

Then the lists also say rye and barley are cross reactive. We'll no, rye and barley just straight out have gluten in them right?

So some of these sites kind of drive me nuts. I'm having a hard enough time feeling like I'm safe when I'm eating and keeping up with a grocery budget that makes since without reading some article that says I can't eat something that I can, or saying something inaccurate. Love/hate relationship with the internet I guess. Yeah we have all this information at our fingertips, boo we have all this information at our fingertips.

Anyway end pointless rant.

[Gabes-Apg]

Kelly,
I have always been ok with coffee (I brew freshly ground organic beans, so it is low chemical, and definitely no risk of gluten etc)

some people do struggle with caffine /coffee. and as per the list above, we checked the items that are in my current eating plan so that included rice, coffee. the sweet potato and eggs were the only ones that came up as an issue for me.

the information about ingredients and impact on inflammation is only starting to come into mainstream. Also the information and how to help patients is slow to filter out to practitioners so they can help patients.
5 years ago you never heard the term methylation, now with information, training and acceptance, loads of practitioners are embracing it.
slowly but surely the world is 'waking up' and we are getting better quality information

so far as what to do re eating plan/lifestyle - listen to your body. and mentally and emotionally we have to find the sweet spot of balance - proactive enough to prevent issues, but not be obsessive that we are overthinking and stressing..
remove/avoid as many triggers as we can, and for those triggers that we cant avoid, minimise the impact on our bodies..
be at peace that we are doing the best we can.

with my ongoing sclerosis issues we knew that something was triggering immune reactions, and we have been trying to figure out what. as I was not having major reactions I couldn't pinpoint what.
it is intense for all MC'ers to shop and prepare safe eating plan. and then I see someone like Rebecca reliant on feeding tube / IV and what it contains (and the issues she is having) and that there is no easy fix for life in MC world... all any of us can do is the best we can...

[kbb]

so far as what to do re eating plan/lifestyle - listen to your body. and mentally and emotionally we have to find the sweet spot of balance - proactive enough to prevent issues, but not be obsessive that we are overthinking and stressing..
remove/avoid as many triggers as we can, and for those triggers that we cant avoid, minimise the impact on our bodies..
be at peace that we are doing the best we can.

Yeah, I'm in a spot that I need t remind myself of this. Just feel like I should be further along than I am, but I need to remind myself I'm a lot better off than a lot of other people. I'm not actually trying to fix my MC, I'm more concerned about other AI issues that are coming. I want to control the future, and I just need to remind myself that only so much is in my control.

Thanks for always being there and sharing what you're learning, Gabes and everybody!

The support means so much.

[Gabes-Apg]

Kelly
it took me about 2 years to 'learn' this approach (former perfectionist, wiz bang planner aka borderline control freak here..)
listening to audiobooks by Ekhert Tolle and Pema Chodron helped me adjust thinking processes.

I have key phrases like this written out on post it notes, some are near the computer, some are on my fridge, some I place through my paper diary every couple of months.. I have to keep reminding myself...

[Tor]

Hi,

I think a lot of web-sites takes their info about gluten cross-reactivity from this studio by Vojdani and Tagash: http://file.scirp.org/pdf/FNS_2013011516575568.pdf

I found it very interesting myself, and thought maybe I'd found some theoretic explanation for my strong immune reaction against coffee. But I react the same to almost every kind of coffee, not just instant coffee. The article is an interesting read anyway.

Tor