could gluten intolerance cause other reactions to occur??

[rhesp1212]

So, since birth my son has been reactive to all sorts of foods.....he basically reacts to everything! If he's able to eat it for a while, he'll suddently become sensative to it. We are prepping him for an endoscopy and sygmoidoscopy to do biopsies to try and figure out what is causing all of this. The dr. wants him reacting for the test so they can get a good picture of what's going on inside.

He had previously been eating spelt on a daily basis and was at baseline. But, anytime we tried to add a food in, he would react to it. So, last week, I stopped feeding him spelt and his other safe foods to start feeding him things he reacts to.....oddly enough he's hardly reacting to anything!! Which is great, except they want him reacting for his test tomorrow!!

So, I'm wondering if even though he didn't have any outward symptoms of a gluten intolerance, if all the gluten he was eating actually was causing all of his other sensativities. Is that possible???

[deditus]

Yes - that is exactly the theory of leaky gut. Gluten can spur zonulin production. Zonulin is a hormone that loosens the tight junctions between cells in the intestines, allowing food particles to leak.

[rhesp1212]

It's so weird....because he was always at what I considered baseline while eating huge amounts of spelt. His usual symptoms are rash on his face, reflux and loose stools. While eating spelt and a few other foods he had none of that. But, as soon as I try a new food he reacts horribly to that new food. Since I stopped the spelt and started him on everything else, his stools are fully formed (I thought it was from all the meat he's been eating). He's been eating small amounts of gluten since I changed everything, but not anywhere near the amount he usually eats.

Wow, I am seriously wondering if all of this is from gluten and his other sensativities weren't real! That would be a miracle and a god send for sure since we were down to hardly anything to eat! Going to talk to the GI about it tomorrow and see what he says. After the test, I'm going to try completely gluten free with him and see what happens.

It's just weird that he was seemingly symptom free eating large amounts of gluten. Could his only symptom of gluten intolerance be the other reactions showing up??? OR would he have had other symptoms?

[tanyalynn]

I've read of kids who don't have any of the usual gluten symptoms except stuff like not growing (which is really slow to see) or other, really subtle stuff. I was going to mention the zonulin thing, but deditus already did. Gluten is just so insidious, it seems to cause such wide-ranging problems.

Let us know what you decide with the doc, and how things keep going!

[mamafish9]

Your doc might find it hard to believe, so I'd stress that he's not reacting right now - I don't know how long of him not reacting would make the scope not as informative, but you don't want go ahead with it if it isn't going to get you the information you want.

I think your idea is entirely possible - it seems like there are so few (none in this forum) kids with multiple food reactions who can tolerate gluten. I personally might skip the scope for now, unless it's still going to give you conclusive evidence (e.g. celiac), go entirely gluten free, and see what happens.

[rhesp1212]

We went ahead with the scope today because he was also going to test for enzyme deficiencies. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it. He did say there wasn't any obvious looking damage to his esophageous, stomach or colon. So that's good. We'll see what the biopsies show.

I did ask him about leaky gut syndrome and he sort of shrugged me off saying "it's a theory" and didn't really believe in it. Which, I wasn't surprised to hear from him. I brought up the thing about gluten or food combinations, etc. that trigger him and he just looked perplexed and said he was a very complicated case.

My son obviously has problems with other foods other than gluten because even when we were on a TED and only eating potatoes, turkey, lamb, zucchini and pears he became sensative to those things over time. I retried some of them a couple months ago and he still reacted to them. So while I guess it's possible that he is finally starting to outgrow some of them, I'm really wondering about the gluten connection in his more recent reactions.

[babygirlie]

Yes and I think your doctor... did not choose correctly in his career choice.

You could have done a blood test or a fecal and seen every food he was allergic to.

Why can't he have multiple allergies? potato and gluten? I have discovered my dd is allergic to potatoes via huge red rough patches all over her face previously thought to be excema (to some extent. She still has excema)

[babygirlie]

At my worse... I would react to WATER. At some point your body is so damaged everything hurts. When things were awful I would always go back to boiled plain chicken and plain white rice. Then add.

I have IC. WHich means I'm also allergic to everything that hurts my bladder like spicey, fruits, anything acidic. If I can heal my bladder up enough I can abuse it and eat an orange with no reaction. If I keep on eating that orange every single day though I will one day just go into intense pain and again have zero tolerance.

[rhesp1212]

babygirl-he wasn't saying that he didn't have multiple allergies. We KNOW that he has multiple sensativities. The hard thing is that none of them are IgE mediated. His spt and RAST tests last year were all completely negative. We are going to retest again in 2 weeks for allergies, as I know he also has environmental allergies on top of everything else.

They've been calling it a protein intolerance, but he reacts to almost all foods until recently. That is why it's complicated....and his reactions seem to be inconsistant. One day he can eat something and have a horrible reaction. We pull it from his diet, retry it another day and he's fine with it. His reactions do seem to be somewhat dosage related sometimes.

[flightgoddess]

You are on the right track...don't rely heavily on your dr, because he has admitted he's not familiar with any of that....whitch is true, he was trained years ago and none of that was on any curricula, and nowadays it perhaps gets a bit more attention, but nowhere near enough. Look for a naturopath/natural dietician, or a really good GI who's experiences cross those more alternative issues. Or you can keep going on your own! After I went GF, I no longer had issues with dairy I once had. I got an ALCAT test, to pinpoint my sensitivities, and there were a fair number. After an elimination diet w/o those foods, and eliminating gluten of course, I was able to tolerate most everything again. I also took probiotics and L glutamine, to help gut turnover and healing.

[rhesp1212]

Well, we are on day 2 of completely gluten free, and he has been eating all sorts of stuff that he used to react to, with no reaction so far!! I'm amazed!! I am scheduling an appointment with a naturopath today actually. I hope the progress continues as his allergy dr. was talking about putting him on low dose steroids so that he could eat some other foods and get proper nutrition.

He's drinking about 8 oz. of water kefir a day and has been doing so for about a year now. We couldn't find any probiotic that he could tolerate before. Now, he might do okay with some store bought as I'm sure it would be more powerful than water kefir.

I'm starting to get excited, but am also being cautious and trying to introduce foods gradually instead of going all gung ho on it.