Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or frustrated on your gluten-free journey? I felt that way and you’ve come to the right place to feel supported, understood and to find gluten free to be easier.
Hi, I’m Carrie Saunders, host of The Gluten Free Engineer. As someone with celiac disease (or coeliac, depending on where you’re from!), I understand the confusion and overwhelm that come with it. With a husband and three kids also navigating this lifestyle, I’ve learned the hard way how to make gluten-free living easier, safer, and more enjoyable.
Whether you’re new to gluten-free living or a seasoned foodie looking for fresh ideas, this podcast is for you. Each week, we’ll dive into topics like:
Avoiding cross-contamination and staying safe
Mouthwatering recipes and recipe conversion tips
Honest gluten-free product reviews
Travel hacks and dining-out strategies
Insights from expert guest speakers
Join me every week as we tackle the challenges of celiac disease, gluten intolerance, and gluten-free living head-on—making it simpler, more delicious, and even fun! Don’t miss an episode—subscribe now and start thriving on your gluten-free journey.
You wake up with diarrhea, a migraine starts later that afternoon, and by the next day your joints hurt and your brain feels like it's moving through molasses.
So naturally, you start thinking:
"What did I just eat?"
But what if you're looking at the wrong meal?
One of the trickiest things about figuring out a gluten exposure is that the symptoms don't necessarily all happen at once.
Some can happen almost immediately.
Others may not show up until 12, 24, or even 48 hours later.
And some can hang around for days.
Today we're talking about why gluten reactions can be delayed, how differently they can look from person to person—even within the same family—and how to become a better detective when you're trying to figure out what glutened you.
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Quick reminder before we get started on this episode. This podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. You wake up with diarrhea, migraine starts that later that afternoon, and by the next day your joints hurt and your brain feels like it's moving through molasses. So naturally you're thinking, what did I just eat? But what if you're looking at the wrong meal? One of the trickiest things about figuring out a gluten exposure is that symptoms don't necessarily all happen at once. Some can happen immediately, others may not show up for 12, 24, or 48 hours or more, and some symptoms can hang around for days. Today we're talking about why gluten reactions can be delayed, how differently they can look from person to person, even within the same family. I'm going to give you examples in our own family and how to become a better detective when you're trying to figure out what glutened you. Let's dive
in. Welcome to the Gluten Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Kiri Saunders. In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, a moment that changed everything. But I was determined not to let it hold me back. With my two engineering degrees, I set out to reverse engineer the gluten-free lifestyle, breaking down recipes, safety tips, travel hacks, and everything in between to rebuild a life I love. Whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance, or simply choose to live gluten-free, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we simplify the gluten-free lifestyle, make it fun, and prove that you don't have to miss out on anything. Welcome back to the video about why gluten reactions can be delayed and what that variety can look like across different people. And I'm even going to talk about, you know, the different people in my family. We all have celiac disease and we all react differently. So I want this to be kind of an eye-opener to help you be a better detective and help you figure out where you might have accidentally got glutened. So, first thing I want to make sure that it's clear that eating gluten, you don't always necessarily get immediately sick. A lot of people think when you eat it, you get sick. This is why it's also easy to misdiagnose and not diagnose celiac disease or gluten intolerances, because sometimes the reaction is delayed. You could be having a reaction from gluten a few days later, hours later. You know, it's not necessarily right away. And for some people, I'll go on that tangent for just a little bit, don't realize, including me, that gluten even bothered them whenever they're continually eating the gluten because we're continually damaging our body. So what we are feeling feels normal and it can creep up on us slowly. The only way I figured that out was by removing gluten. I had no idea the gluten was bothering my body. If you know my story, I'll tell it really briefly. You may not have listened to all the episodes and heard it, but I accidentally removed gluten trying to figure out how to lose weight. And then I realized on the one cheap meal that I was allowed to have for the week, I felt like I was hit by a truck and had the flu all weekend. And I noticed this pattern over and over. And I realized it's probably this one unique meal I'm eating at lunch on a Friday. That's why I started down the journey of figuring out that I had celiac and then later got confirmed by doctors. So I want you to realize that gluten reactions and gluten uh issues may come a lot later than you're going to expect.
With celiac disease, you're dealing with an immune reaction, not simply an immediate food intolerance or allergy. And people's symptoms vary enormously. And research backs this up. In the study with celiac people, the median time until symptoms started was about an hour, but the range stretched all the way out to 48 hours. And symptoms could also continue for days. So there really isn't one universal celiac reaction time. I want that to be clear and I want you to understand that so you can understand your body a bit better. Even within one person, different symptoms arrive at different times. This is how it is for me and how it is for the rest of my family.
So let's talk about how do I react. Just to give you a good concrete example. For me, pretty quickly, I'm going to have probably a bit of stomach pain. I'm gonna wonder, did I get gluten? And I I kind of, now that I've been see, you know, gluten-free and known I've been celiac for since, oh, I don't know, I've lost track how many years, about 15 years almost now. Actually, probably about 15. I notice it pretty quickly. I notice that there's something different, something wrong in my body. Now, it's usually about 12 hours later before I get the diarrhea, unless I've had an extreme exposure. And then potentially another somewhere around 24 to 48 hours later, I might get a migraine. I might start having joint pain. I might have really bad brain fog. I'm probably gonna generally just feel unwell, kind of feel like you're getting better from the flu, and you kind of feel like crap, but you you're still functional, if that makes sense. So these symptoms are days later, and I have other symptoms too, but these are my main core ones. And so my digestive systems actually resolve pretty quickly. That 12 hours later, when it hits me, I'm usually done within a few hours not to be too DMI. But my digestive system's like, let's get this stuff out of here. You can put a beep word in there if you want, and then that part's done. But the rest of my immune system still reacting to this invader, basically, since my body hates it. That has gotten into my body and it lights off all these other symptoms of me, like the migraines, the joint pain, brain fog, etc. So for me, getting gluten doesn't feel like one reaction, it feels like a chain reaction. It's it's kind of a really bad chain reaction, honestly. So, I what I want this example to help you realize is I want you to imagine, you know, you you have diarrhea, say on a Tuesday morning. Your instinct might be, did I eat gluten Monday night? Why did I eat gluten Monday night? But your gluten exposure could have been Monday morning, it could have been Monday at lunch, it could have been Sunday night, it could have been restaurant you had that previous day, it could be cross contact you didn't notice. So I want you to be a bit more of a detective here and really go back a little bit farther than your instinct might tell you to help you figure out how you might have gotten gluten to help prevent this in the future. Because our our you know purpose here is not to judge what happened, it's to learn from it so we can avoid it in the future and feel better and not get that accidental gluten exposure. So ask yourself, what have I eaten over the last day or two? It could some people it could even be up to three days. So, you know, really be that detective and look backwards in time to what you ate the previous few days.
So I also want you to think about, and we talk about this some on the podcast, you know, I have other food sensitivities too. So I used to, when I was early on, and realizing I had celiac can be gluten-free, go to our Chinese restaurant. They were great about having tamari sauce so that we didn't have wheat in the soy sauce. And sometimes I would react like I have gotten gluten. I thought, oh, maybe they cross-contaminated me that time, um, is what I would usually think. But actually, what it was, it was soy. I also have digestive distress with soy, and I didn't realize that I had that problem too. So I thought there was maybe hidden gluten, but it really wasn't. I mean, maybe there was sometimes. I'm not saying some of the times there wasn't, but soy was definitely the bigger culprit here. So even with tamari, which can be gluten-free, it didn't solve that problem for me. So I want you to realize that not every reaction you have after eating gluten-free is necessarily gluten. Your body might be, like mine, damaged enough that you're intolerant to other foods as well. So use your detective work to see if you can figure that out. And it's not really to deprive yourself, it's so that you can feel better. I am completely fine not eating soy anymore. I use coconut aminos, for example. And I learned to love using coconut aminos instead because I feel so much better. That's what we got to focus on the feeling better.
So let's go through the reactions my family has when they get gluten exposure because we're all five different people. We all have been diagnosed with celiac disease. Um, and my husband's in the process of getting an official diagnosis, but he has the gene for it, and we all react differently. So for me, like we talked about earlier, I get some stomach pain first, diarrhea later, then I'm probably going to get a migraine, brain fog, and joint pain. That's my order of events, usually when I get glutened. My oldest, he usually gets stomach problems first, plus severe exhaustion, so much that there was one time he got enough gluten. He was asleep for 36 hours and we couldn't wake him up. It was super scary. So that's his main issue is stomach problems and then this severe, uncontrollable exhaustion. For my middle child, one of his first clues is getting clammy hands. His hands will feel like they're kind of sweating, and then the digestive issues arise, and it that clammy hand, this is a little bit odd. It's one that I've not heard before, but it's very, very consistent for him. So, but it kind of makes sense because it affects your neural system and it affects your whole immune system. Now, for the youngest, stomach systems start first and then extreme gump grumpiness. I mean, it's like the Tasmanian devil when they were a child. It really was their mood changes and they're not who they are. So then for my husband, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my observation because we haven't talked about his symptoms quite as much, but it's like he's getting the flu. He generally feels unwell, followed by digestive problems the next day. He his pain it will increase. You know, he's not gonna feel good. He's he kind of is like he's walking through mud. He doesn't his brain's not working quite as well. So it's five different people, same disease, same household, but completely different clues. Research has also found a wide range of symptoms after suspected gluten exposure. And these are all of them that are included in it, but there's so many, many more that research has shown. Some people get numbing in their hands and feet. I used to actually get that before I figured out I had Celac disease. It was part of my long-term symptoms of Celiac. So some people will even get that right away. So there's no C Lac symptom stopwatch or timer or you know, no set rule as to when these things might occur to you and which symptoms you might get. So use this as a guide to helping you figure out the clues.
So one of the most important lessons I want you to get from today's episode is that, well, I feel fine, so I guess it was gluten-free. That's not what we want to say. Just because if you ate and two hours later you feel fine, don't guess or assume that it was gluten-free because symptoms can be delayed. We've showed you in this episode with our examples that certain symptoms are delayed for us. Some people don't have stomach issues, some people's stomachs don't react right away. Some people don't have digestive issues when they have celiac disease. So symptoms aren't necessarily a reliable measurement, but they can be a good clue as to whether you got gluten or not. Just know that they can be delayed. So how you feel after eating something is not a gluten detector, especially right away. So I want to encourage you to look for your pattern. So rather than trying to learn the normal gluten reaction, I want you to learn your normal. I gave you five examples of us in our household, and our reactions are different and in different orders, and we don't all get the same things. So I want you to consider what's usually your first symptoms? How quickly does that happen? What tends to show up the next day? Do you get headaches later? Does fatigue hit you? Do you have mood changes? How many days does your reaction typically last? And each of the different reactions, you know, each of the different symptoms, how long do those typically
react? So one thing you can do is use a simple note app on your phone. Start logging what I ate, where I ate, when your symptoms started, what symptoms appeared, and how long they lasted. So not, you know, don't obsess over this, but I want you to do some detective work if you're having these problems and having a puzzle as to when you get gluten. It can really help you start identifying patterns. So those of you who are listening who have non-celiac gluten and wheat
sensitivity, they also report in studies gastrointestinal and extraintestinal symptoms. And that might develop within hours or days after consuming gluten or wheat containing foods. However, science around the non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a lot less clear, so it's hard for me to find good research on this. And they are still investigating whether gluten itself or the other components of wheat or combination of factors are responsible for the symptoms in different people. So if you're non-celiac and you're having similar symptoms like this, always discuss them with your doctor just to make sure that you aren't celiac too, and to also just help you figure out how to deal with your non-gluten, non-celiac sensitivity.
So, in recap, one thing I want you to remember is the thing you last just ate isn't necessarily the thing that glutened you, and your reaction may unfold over hours and maybe even days. So I want you to keep that in mind when you're doing your detective work. Take those notes on your phone app so you can really work to help figure out where you might be accidentally getting gluten so that you can solve that and help yourself feel much better. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gluten Free Engineer. If you found value in this story, please share it with someone who might need encouragement on their own gluten-free journey. For more tips, recipes, resources, and even links to my YouTube channel, head on over to theglutenfreeengineer.com. It's your one-stop hub to make gluten-free living simple, fun, and full of flavor. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss out on an episode. And we will see you next week. The Gluten Free Engineer Podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I share my personal experiences and stories about living with celiac disease and navigating a gluten free lifestyle. This podcast does not provide medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional for medical questions, concerns, or advice specific to your health.
