Pottery Chatroom Board

Shelly - Gluten Intolerance can be from being Celiac which is a genetic inability to digest gluten or it can be acquired due to an immune system issue where your body begins to treat gluten as a foreign invader.
People can have different reactions. Some with Celiac may have no physical indication they have a problem but if left undetected Celiacs tend have a higher incident of colon cancer, due to the damage in the gut. Some Celiacs are sick for years and doctors do not know why. The US is far behind other places in IDing Celiac and Gluten Intolerance. The only "treatment" is to avoid ALL gluten.
Gluten is hidden in a lot of things. Lots of reading labels and learning what is safe. More things are being made with out gluten which is good. Many things are naturally gluten free but if they are carried in the same truck that carried gluten product then you get cross contamination. Example - Oatmeal is usually OK but if the oats for the oatmeal were hauled in a truck that hauled wheat then you have cross contamination and those oats are no longer safely edible for one with gluten intolerance
Mine is intolerance due to stress from accident which stressed my adrenal system which then messed up my immune system which messed up my gut and led to the gluten intolerance.
To put it as delicately as possible. A very mild reaction would be like eating too many prunes. Worse reaction is like too many prunes and then some, plus feeling like a cement mixer is running around in your whole gut with knives poking you from inside out. That along with rumbley gas which escapes both top and bottom exits of your whole stomach / gut system, pressure through out the body caused by internal inflammation (also caused by the gluten reaction) and then throw a few exploding grenades in for good measure and that should give a general idea of a bad reaction. The reaction can last from several days to a week or so. It depends on how much and how long the exposure is to the gluten.
I have read that some people are so sensitive that they can not even walk past a bakery where flour particles may be floating in the air. For them just breathing them in can cause a reaction.