Hypothetical question
 

Here's something dh and I have been wondering as I get the house slowly (oh, so slowly!) more gluten free.

If the kids currently have no signs of celiac (labs clear etc) and yet are genetically prone to developing it at some distant point in the future; but are taken "off" of gluten anyways for a long period of time (say, their childhood) would the later reintroduction of gluten be a stressor that could set off celiacs?

I'm sure it doesn't really matter...without correlating symptoms, I figure they can have gluten at Grandmas etc anyways, but I am curious if I'm "setting them up". Or would it actually build their system and make them less likely to develop celiacs later?

That is a very interesting question--I of course, do not know the answer, but I will be watching this thread to see what others think. This last weekend I asked my sister something similiar. My father is gluten free and my mother eats gluten free along with him. I asked my sister if gluten would make our mom ill when she eats it like it does us.

Here's my opinion.

We know that celiac or gluten intolerance does something nasty, whether or not you've got actual celiac disease. It opens the tight junctions in the intestines and lets stuff out where it can wreak autoimmune problems. Dr. Fine and Fasano report about 30% of all people have this happening to them in the presence of gluten in their diet. The longer it goes on, the more likely you are to develop some sort of autoimmune disease, like diabetes, thyroiditis, or rheumatoid arthritis. So whether or not you end up with classic celiac, you may very well end up with something else.

The message I take away from this is that gluten is really not something anyone should eat until we can figure out how to tell if it is opening those TJ's in an individual. It probably isn't going to kill most of us, at least not directly, but it can sure make your life miserable.

Now lets say after your kids leave the home they decide to eat gluten. At least they'll not have had the prior X years of gluten exposure. Every decade you're exposed to it increases your chances of getting an autoimmune disease by some percentage. So you'll have at least given them a reprieve from the ticking clock at least for awhile.

But the fact that you have celiacs in your family means that they're probably part of the population that reacts to gluten.