I'm wondering if anyone else has had my experience. I've been a pretty faithful low carber since 2001, meaning I'd have occasional cheats and then get back into lc eating.

Last summer, I cheated BIG TIME for about 3 months and began to experience the lower GI problems associated with ciliac sprue and gluten intolerance. I've now determined, after months of dietary fine-tuning and doctors visits/tests, that I cannot tolerate glutens. Before I began low carbing, this was not the case. Glutens and other carbs just made me fat, lol.

So my question is, could my years of low carbing have made me overly sensitive to glutens? Has this happened to anyone else?

Actually I believe I came to realize that gluten was one of my major health problems through doing LC! Never even thought about it until after I went on LC and saw my health improve in so many ways.

Same for me. If I eat bread now I get a bad stomach ache trying to digest it. Especially fresh white bread. I have always had this problem but didn't realize it until I started low carbing.

A lot of people who are gluten intolerant find that they become much more sensitive to it after giving it up for a while. I believe that part of it is that you feel so much better that the "dips" caused by gluten are more noticeable. Also, things have healed up while away from the gluten, so the fresh damage is more apparent. More than likely, you were asymptomatic (it's common) or had symptoms you didn't recognize as gluten intolerance beforehand. The symptoms aren't always GI and can change over time.

I do not think LC diets can increase gluten sensitivity. That sensitivity is an allergic reaction which takes years to build. And respite from it should decrease your sensitivity. It would require time to rebuild the allergic effect in my opinion.

What actually caused your reaction would just be a guess at this point.

But who knows, really. There really isn't any research pointing one way or the other regarding people who leave carbohydrates for a long period of time & then return. Maybe it was an immune reaction, and the body's B-memory cells respond to gluten as a threatening foreign invader. Maybe this heightened immune response could develop after refraining from ingesting gluten for a long period of time. Anything is possible.

As ARC said, you probably were always gluten intolerant & didn't know it. After an elimination diet or fast (or not eating a particular food for 3-5 days), people typically have a strong reaction to anything they are allergic to or intolerant of when they first re-introduce it. Actually, that is the best way to tell which foods affect you. If you keep eating it, your body doesn't react as strongly. It doesn't mean you tolerate gluten, just that your adrenals get tired of pumping out cortisol to deal with the constant barrage.

Actually, people who are gluten intolerant and have been off gluten often have worse reactions when they resume it. I hang out on a lot of celiac boards so I'm familiar with the response.

LC made my gluten intolerance more apparent because I was consuming loads of gluten on the diet and when I cut it out, I felt vastly better.

My data appears to be much the same as yours, with a different explanation. I simply think I was so overwhelmed with various carb effects that I couldn't pin any parts of them to gluten. It was clearing the carb fog that allowed me to identify the specific elements of discomfort that derive from gluten. For me, at least, gluten was such a constant presence in my diet that it took a goodly amount of "clean time" before I could link symptoms to trigger.

I have records of being in my doctor's office complaining about reflux. I have huge bottles of TUMS, leftover. I don't have that anymore, except when I allow myself to eat bread (which is rare). And to make the link a bit trickier, there's about a 24-hour time lag between ingestion and symptoms.

What I believe for myself is that the intolerance is progressive, and like many intolerances, it progresses regardless of whether I eat the trigger or not. (Some people believe these things "heal;" I don't find that line of reasoning either useful or apt in my case.) So yes, it may have "gotten worse" during LC but it didn't originate with LC. It was there all along and LC allowed me to identify it, and points out the easiest way to treat it--avoid the trigger.

Good luck.

Maybe the body has built up an allergic reaction and "remembers" it. One theory I've read fits with that, that "leaky gut syndrome" allows some foods to get into the blood. This causes autoimmune problems, as the antibodies build against molecules that shouldn't be in the blood. And maybe those antibodies are remembered, and come back in force with a new intrusion.

Thank you everyone for responding to this post. It makes sense to me that I had the sensitivity before, but did not have the symptoms I experience now (ghastly diarrhea). Especially as I DID have reflux quite frequently and my Mom has IBS. Luckily I LOVE the lc way of eating and now have an even greater incentive to stick with it.

I agree...I'm much more sensitive now when I eat grains.

I think of it kinda' like alcohol...if you stop drinking you lose your tolerance and it takes less to make an effect.

Enterolab.com has a stool test (and gene test) that can tell you if you have antibodies to gluten/milk (and a few other common things) in your poop.

Its much more sensitive than the blood tests/biopsies they have for celiac disease.

I think you have them mixed up. When you eat bad foods - you have problems. When you eat LC - the problems go away. I would bet that you had the problems before and either did not recognize them at the time (because you had so many other problems) -- or your body is so cleaned out (pure) now -- you can notice small problems.

For example. Before LC -- I use to be able to eat huge plates of fried foods. After being pure LC for several weeks - and then I eat just like 10 chicken wings -- I feel it.

Are you saying that Celiac is actually some type of allergy to gluten?