Can a breastfeeding mother who has celiac disease eat gluten-containing food items?

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

Thank you for your query.

I have reviewed your history and would like to see your tTg-IgA (tissue transglutaminase) levels. Celiac disease has a vast clinical spectrum, from loose stools, weight loss, and bloating to low blood levels. Even we have diagnosed patients with celiac who are clinically asymptomatic. So your symptoms cannot tell you whether you have celiac or not or whether you are nutritionally all good. As you are done with your pregnancy, I would like to go for an endoscopy and take duodenal biopsies to confirm celiac disease. If your tTg-IgA levels are high these days, your food is contaminated with gluten somehow, and if your tTg-IgA levels are standard these days. During endoscopy, you should be on a gluten diet for four to six weeks so that it causes changes in the duodenum which is expected to see while doing an endoscopy.

Kindly share all your reports.

I hope this has helped you. Thank you.

Hello,

Welcome back to icliniq.com.

If you are asymptomatic and your hemoglobin levels are good (Hb more than 13 grams/dl on your complete blood profile), your body weight is stable, and no loose stools. So that means the damage is not that severe so far. But the celiac disease cannot be diagnosed only based on blood tests; you should go for an endoscopy and will need duodenal biopsies for confirmation because if you are not celiac, this will be not right to keep you off wheat for the rest of your life. But as I mentioned in a previous reply, considering your clinical state and two months old baby is only on the mother's feed, I can delay that procedure for a few months. Meanwhile, it would be best if you were off a gluten diet. If you take care of your diet, you will love normal life because your intestine's internal lining will return to normal with a strict gluten-free diet.

I hope this has helped you. Thank you.