Ouch, I hope your intestine has recovered since your diagnosis.
To be clear, when I say sensitivity I mean “how reactive is your immune system to gluten” rather than “do you feel gastrointestinal symptoms when you eat gluten”. The correlation between the severity of symtoms (both obvious and non-obvious symptoms) is weaker than you would expect but it seem to me there still is one.
In your comment you describe 3 scenarios: (1) Risk of cross contamination (Chipotle) (2) Known cross contamination (fryer and pizza prep) (3) Accidental medium dose of gluten
You are happy to accept (1), but you say celiacs “should not take” (2). I agree the risk is higher in (2), but the heart of my conclusion is that for some people (like myself), the additional risk is negligible and the benefit is significant. With the caveat that I need to check reality on “the additional risk is negligible” by measuring my immune system response.
If my lifestyle includes (1), (2), and unavoidably (3), but if my blood tests show normal antibodies (plus possibly another intestine inflammation check to be doubly sure), I think that (2) is a risk that’s ok for me to keep taking.
Of course, it can be true at the same time that (2) is not worth it for you.
On the last point, I agree that avoiding long-term inflammation is important. But I don’t think it necessarily follows that infrequent (3) causes less inflammation than a lot of (2). Maybe a low dose slips under the radar and doesn’t trigger a reaction. Maybe a moderate dose reaches a threshold and makes your immune system hit the button and keeps the antibodies pumping for a while.
This seems to be the main issue in this discussion. Especially if one does not experience strong symptoms, its hard to determine what effect different levels and duration of exposure have on ones body.
IgA and IgG seem to be good indicators, but their correlation to cancer and other risk factors is poorly understood. Also, I personally am getting tested once a year for those metrics, but that would be not nearly enough to check my response to specific restaurant visits I am doing.
Ouch, I hope your intestine has recovered since your diagnosis.
To be clear, when I say sensitivity I mean “how reactive is your immune system to gluten” rather than “do you feel gastrointestinal symptoms when you eat gluten”. The correlation between the severity of symtoms (both obvious and non-obvious symptoms) is weaker than you would expect but it seem to me there still is one.
In your comment you describe 3 scenarios:
(1) Risk of cross contamination (Chipotle)
(2) Known cross contamination (fryer and pizza prep)
(3) Accidental medium dose of gluten
You are happy to accept (1), but you say celiacs “should not take” (2). I agree the risk is higher in (2), but the heart of my conclusion is that for some people (like myself), the additional risk is negligible and the benefit is significant. With the caveat that I need to check reality on “the additional risk is negligible” by measuring my immune system response.
If my lifestyle includes (1), (2), and unavoidably (3), but if my blood tests show normal antibodies (plus possibly another intestine inflammation check to be doubly sure), I think that (2) is a risk that’s ok for me to keep taking.
Of course, it can be true at the same time that (2) is not worth it for you.
On the last point, I agree that avoiding long-term inflammation is important. But I don’t think it necessarily follows that infrequent (3) causes less inflammation than a lot of (2). Maybe a low dose slips under the radar and doesn’t trigger a reaction. Maybe a moderate dose reaches a threshold and makes your immune system hit the button and keeps the antibodies pumping for a while.
This seems to be the main issue in this discussion. Especially if one does not experience strong symptoms, its hard to determine what effect different levels and duration of exposure have on ones body.
IgA and IgG seem to be good indicators, but their correlation to cancer and other risk factors is poorly understood. Also, I personally am getting tested once a year for those metrics, but that would be not nearly enough to check my response to specific restaurant visits I am doing.