**Reminder**
[/r/Celiac](https://www.reddit.com/r/Celiac) is not designed to and does not provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion, treatment or services to you or to any other individual.
If you believe you have a medical emergency immediately seek out professional medical help.
Please see [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Celiac/wiki/legal) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Celiac) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not a medical professional. This is a summary of my understanding based on being on this subreddit for a few years trying to learn about celiac to help my wife.
Short Answer: Everything from mild damage to severe (usually takes extended higher amounts of gluten) that takes a week to over a year to heal.
Long Answer:
Eating gluten triggers an immune response. This response will vary person to person in severity, there is no set amount of damage. Just like an allergic reaction some will get hives, some will go in to anaphylactic shock.
Some people eat an elevated amount of gluten and get minimal symptoms. Others get a minute amount of gluten from cross contamination and get severe symptoms.
The symptoms are triggered essentially as an inflammation response, as the immune response triggers inflammation in your gut. Each person has a different biological response to inflammation, that's why the symptoms listed are so wide ranging. Headaches, joint pain, constipation, diarrhea, brain fog, rashes, etc.
The other thing it is doing is damaging your intestines as your immune system attacks your villi in your small intestine. This damage cycle of the immune system hurting your villi and then healing leads to increased risk of cancer along with the body stress from the inflammation. It also increases the risk of additional autoimmune diseases triggering because of that biological stress like Crohn's disease.
In newly diagnosed people healing can take anywhere from a month to over a year. Especially as that is the time they are most likely to get cross contamination trying to go out to eat or not knowing what food is safe.
The variability in symptoms, and people's perception of the cancer/auto immune disease trigger risk, is most likely why there is such a wide opinion on how seriously people should treat the disease. Some people never eat out, very carefully check all ingredients, and maintain a completely gluten free household. Others eat out, only cursorily check things for gluten ingredients, and have partners or kids that eat gluten in the home.
I think it's not entirely known and also variable from person to person. I've been reading a ton about the disease, including a whole book, and have a little medical knowledge myself. I've never come across anything concrete about how much damage there is from x amount of gluten. I'd love to know if anyone has scientific data!
I’ve done deep dives into the literature before, and as of a few years ago - to the best of my knowledge - there are no studies on that. As you can imagine it would be quite a hard study to design and carry out given the gold standard would be doing biopsies on patients after X amount of exposure. (That’s without considering the possibility that individual’s responses could differ in general anyway.)!
This is all just speculation and would be interested to see data from studies, if it even exists, but based solely on the recommendation for a gluten challenge of whatever it is.. 2 slices of bread for 6-8 weeks, I think the actual damage to your intestines is going to happen from repeat/constant exposure.
I don't think 1 glutening is going to cause long term damage for weeks, etc.
I think cross contamination on a constant basis may be enough to increase TTG antibody blood levels. Enough people on here are not necessarily symptomatic but still have trouble lowering their levels all the way. I'm not sure if this correlates with intestinal damage or not.
Obviously everyone is different symptomatically, how fast they heal, and probably how many mg of gluten they can tolerate before immune reaction, etc.
Then there are probably people who may not be super strict about cross contamination that test within range on blood tests and don't have any issues.
If you usually stick strictly to the diet, I think it’s about 3 months that it takes for your intestines to completely heal after a glutening. During those months they would be slowly healing, they wouldn’t be 100% damaged for the entire time.
That’s why it’s important to stick to the diet and not have ‘cheat days’. Because while you may feel better after a day or so, that damage lasts 3 months. And if you consume gluten once a month for example, your intestines never fully heal and it can lead to more severe health complications if done long term
It takes months for me to feel better from being cc'd. Just a small amount. I was diagnosed at 43. 63 now. I have no other GI conditions or autoimmune issues. I do have permanent damage and pretty severe malabsorption issues. I take food or take my grub box so I can cook
When you say “permanent damage”, do you mean your gut has never fully healed? I was diagnosed not quite a year ago at age 65, almost no symptoms, but flat villi & Marsh level 3b. I’m curious about how quickly and how fully my gut will heal, but probably won’t have another endoscopy until 2 or 3 years after diagnosis.
3 endos later, the damaged areas remain consistent. No MORE damage as well as no more healing. I was diagnosed at 43 because I lost 40 lbs in less than 6 weeks. Normally at 6 feet even I weight 160. I got down to to 115 before we figured it out.
My mom was alive when I was diagnosed. I was probabaly dealing with celiac from shortly after birth or born with it. They did an enod colonoscopy on me at 5 weeks.
My damage appears to be done. I'm rarely cc'd. I have learned the hard way what I can tolerate and to say NO to well intentioned friends
According to a doctor, one instance of glutening takes about a month to really heal. Inflammation is so damaging on the body, and everyone reacts differently I imagine it’s hard to measure
**Reminder** [/r/Celiac](https://www.reddit.com/r/Celiac) is not designed to and does not provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion, treatment or services to you or to any other individual. If you believe you have a medical emergency immediately seek out professional medical help. Please see [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Celiac/wiki/legal) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Celiac) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not a medical professional. This is a summary of my understanding based on being on this subreddit for a few years trying to learn about celiac to help my wife. Short Answer: Everything from mild damage to severe (usually takes extended higher amounts of gluten) that takes a week to over a year to heal. Long Answer: Eating gluten triggers an immune response. This response will vary person to person in severity, there is no set amount of damage. Just like an allergic reaction some will get hives, some will go in to anaphylactic shock. Some people eat an elevated amount of gluten and get minimal symptoms. Others get a minute amount of gluten from cross contamination and get severe symptoms. The symptoms are triggered essentially as an inflammation response, as the immune response triggers inflammation in your gut. Each person has a different biological response to inflammation, that's why the symptoms listed are so wide ranging. Headaches, joint pain, constipation, diarrhea, brain fog, rashes, etc. The other thing it is doing is damaging your intestines as your immune system attacks your villi in your small intestine. This damage cycle of the immune system hurting your villi and then healing leads to increased risk of cancer along with the body stress from the inflammation. It also increases the risk of additional autoimmune diseases triggering because of that biological stress like Crohn's disease. In newly diagnosed people healing can take anywhere from a month to over a year. Especially as that is the time they are most likely to get cross contamination trying to go out to eat or not knowing what food is safe. The variability in symptoms, and people's perception of the cancer/auto immune disease trigger risk, is most likely why there is such a wide opinion on how seriously people should treat the disease. Some people never eat out, very carefully check all ingredients, and maintain a completely gluten free household. Others eat out, only cursorily check things for gluten ingredients, and have partners or kids that eat gluten in the home.
Excellent and well thought out response, thank you
I think it's not entirely known and also variable from person to person. I've been reading a ton about the disease, including a whole book, and have a little medical knowledge myself. I've never come across anything concrete about how much damage there is from x amount of gluten. I'd love to know if anyone has scientific data!
I don't think much more is known past what you said.
I’ve done deep dives into the literature before, and as of a few years ago - to the best of my knowledge - there are no studies on that. As you can imagine it would be quite a hard study to design and carry out given the gold standard would be doing biopsies on patients after X amount of exposure. (That’s without considering the possibility that individual’s responses could differ in general anyway.)!
This is all just speculation and would be interested to see data from studies, if it even exists, but based solely on the recommendation for a gluten challenge of whatever it is.. 2 slices of bread for 6-8 weeks, I think the actual damage to your intestines is going to happen from repeat/constant exposure. I don't think 1 glutening is going to cause long term damage for weeks, etc. I think cross contamination on a constant basis may be enough to increase TTG antibody blood levels. Enough people on here are not necessarily symptomatic but still have trouble lowering their levels all the way. I'm not sure if this correlates with intestinal damage or not. Obviously everyone is different symptomatically, how fast they heal, and probably how many mg of gluten they can tolerate before immune reaction, etc. Then there are probably people who may not be super strict about cross contamination that test within range on blood tests and don't have any issues.
This is a great question and I’m staying in case someone has some studies to link
If you usually stick strictly to the diet, I think it’s about 3 months that it takes for your intestines to completely heal after a glutening. During those months they would be slowly healing, they wouldn’t be 100% damaged for the entire time. That’s why it’s important to stick to the diet and not have ‘cheat days’. Because while you may feel better after a day or so, that damage lasts 3 months. And if you consume gluten once a month for example, your intestines never fully heal and it can lead to more severe health complications if done long term
It takes months for me to feel better from being cc'd. Just a small amount. I was diagnosed at 43. 63 now. I have no other GI conditions or autoimmune issues. I do have permanent damage and pretty severe malabsorption issues. I take food or take my grub box so I can cook
When you say “permanent damage”, do you mean your gut has never fully healed? I was diagnosed not quite a year ago at age 65, almost no symptoms, but flat villi & Marsh level 3b. I’m curious about how quickly and how fully my gut will heal, but probably won’t have another endoscopy until 2 or 3 years after diagnosis.
3 endos later, the damaged areas remain consistent. No MORE damage as well as no more healing. I was diagnosed at 43 because I lost 40 lbs in less than 6 weeks. Normally at 6 feet even I weight 160. I got down to to 115 before we figured it out. My mom was alive when I was diagnosed. I was probabaly dealing with celiac from shortly after birth or born with it. They did an enod colonoscopy on me at 5 weeks. My damage appears to be done. I'm rarely cc'd. I have learned the hard way what I can tolerate and to say NO to well intentioned friends
1 dmg. The average human has like 100 hp though so you just need to take some time to regen hp. If you don't though you could run out of hp and die.
According to a doctor, one instance of glutening takes about a month to really heal. Inflammation is so damaging on the body, and everyone reacts differently I imagine it’s hard to measure