Why Some People Feel Better Faster Than Others After Going Gluten-Free

Have you ever wondered why one person goes gluten-free and feels amazing within a few weeks while someone else is still struggling months later? 

Maybe you've heard stories like: 

"I gave up gluten and all my symptoms disappeared!" 

And meanwhile you're thinking: 

"That's great... but why am I still dealing with fatigue, digestive issues, or brain fog?" 

If you've ever compared your healing journey to someone else's, this episode is for you. 

Today we're talking about why healing isn't one-size-fits-all, what factors influence how quickly people improve, and why comparing your progress to someone else's often creates more frustration than clarity. 

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Transcript

Healing Timelines And Comparison Traps

Carrie Saunders 0:00

Quick reminder before we get started on this episode. This podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. You may have noticed somebody going gluten-free and they feel amazing within weeks, while others might struggle for months later. And maybe you've heard stories like, I gave up gluten and all my symptoms disappeared. Meanwhile, you might be thinking, that's great, but why am I still dealing with fatigue, digestive issues, and brain fog? If you've ever compared your healing journey to someone else, this episode's for you. Today we're talking about why healing isn't a one size fits all, what factors influence how quickly people improve, and why comparing your progress to someone else's often creates more frustration than clarity. Because by the end of this episode, I want you to feel encouraged, not discouraged, about where you are on your own journey. Let's dive in.

My Celiac Story And Early Wins

Carrie Saunders 0:50

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 show. Today we're talking about why some people feel great only weeks after going gluten-free, while others it takes months and months and months. Many times people assume removing gluten equals instantly feeling better. But really, healing is a much more complicated than that. Some people improve quickly, some improve gradually, most people experience a mix. But the key is that going gluten-free is just the beginning of healing. It's not necessarily the end of the story. For me, gluten wasn't the only thing causing me digestive distress, for example, and it took me about 10 years to figure out there was another culprit in there as well. For me, there were some symptoms that improved really quickly. I would say within a few weeks. My energy got better, brain fog got better, my mood got better, but my digestive symptoms took longer. I had been damaged for probably over 30 years. We believe that I probably had it all the way into infancy and childhood. And nobody realized that I had celiac already being expressed. And so for me, the digestive symptoms took a lot longer. Plus, like I hinted early on in the episode, I had some other food sensitivities that were also causing digestive distress that I had no idea. Now, one thing that would that took that I'm still struggling with today is my vitamin D levels. Those one where I live, I live in Ohio. And so that can, you know, you can have trouble with vitamin D levels in Ohio because we don't get a whole lot of sun in the winter. It's gray, it's cloudy, it's, you know, you just don't want to go outside. It's I actually, my friend, um, she lived in Alaska for a long time, and she said that Ohio winters are in some ways worse than Alaska winters because they're dry in Alaska, whereas here it's a humid cold. And she says it just chills her to the bone, way worse than anything that she experienced in Alaska. So we just don't go outside in Ohio. And so our vitamin D levels, well, I mean some people too. I'm not saying nobody does, but you know, it you don't really, it's not pleasant to go outside in Ohio in the winter unless it's snowing and beautiful and the air is actually drier, and we just don't get a whole lot of vitamin D. So being celiac and not having foods that are fortified with vitamin D, and then also being in an area where it's difficult to have lower vitamin D levels, I struggle with keeping my vitamin D levels up. So just because you might have some symptoms that improve, not all symptoms are going to improve all at once. Our bodies are so complex, it's just really hard for everything to heal all at once. You know, celiac or being gluten intolerant can affect many different systems in our body, our neural system, our muscular system, our bones, our you know, gut, our brain, all those things because it causes vitamin deficiencies. So it can affect pretty much every system in our body, depending upon what vitamins we it makes us deficient in, depending upon our body. So even within our same family, you know, I talk about this. My myself and my three kids have celiac. We suspect my my husband probably has it too. We know he has the gene for it, and he's, you know, now he has trouble when he eats gluten, now that he's been off of it long enough. We all have healed in different timelines in different ways. You know, my kids, I feel like they healed digestive-wise so much faster because the oldest was, I think, about fourth grade, fourth or fifth grade when we figured it out with him. And I feel like since that was younger, it helped him heal faster. And then the youngest, I think we took him off gluten even younger than that because we were realizing he was having issues too, and he bounced back even more quickly. And my husband and I were we were much slower healing journey, but we did see improvements, but it did take a lot more time. So don't be discouraged if you're one of those people where it's taking a lot longer. You may also want to double check that you're not getting accidental gluten exposure somehow or some way, or that you might not have a, you know, maybe you have another food sensitivity, or maybe you have a vitamin deficiency that's getting interfering with your healing. So working with a doctor to make sure that you are getting the nutrients that you need to, a doctor and a dietitian who is, you know, experienced in celiac or experienced in you know having gluten intolerance and needing to eat gluten-free, we want to make sure that we are eating properly so that we can heal. That's one of the reasons why I discourage you from eating too much processed gluten-free foods. They're not as fortified with vitamins and minerals like the counterparts that have full of gluten in them. And that's why we want to make sure we're eating whole foods, fruits and vegetables, and just generally whole foods and less processed foods, so that we can get those essential vitamins and minerals in our diet and in our bodies.

The Biggest Reasons Healing Varies

Carrie Saunders 6:26

So then, why does the healing timelines vary? Many of the factors that a lot of people talk about out there, and when you do research on this, it's it can depend upon how long you're undiagnosed. You know, how long did you have years of damage without knowing? And not everybody has the same intestinal damage from it. So it, you know, the intestinal damage happens when we're celiac. So if you're celiac, your body may not have damaged your intestine as much as a different celiac. Everybody's different here. And we also find that kids often heal faster and adults have a lot more accumulated years of damage. And you know, we may not fully heal in our small intestine if you're on the celiac spectrum of being gluten-free. Also, those we talked hinted about this, those nutrient deficiencies, iron is a very common, vitamin D is very common, uh, B vitamins are also very common to be nutrient deficient when you are celiac or when you're eating lots of processed gluten-free foods because you're gluten intolerant. And those can affect energy, mood, recovery. So we want to make sure that we are getting all those essential vitamins to help us heal better and faster. And if you have other health conditions, other autoimmune conditions, um, hormonal issues, or other sensitivities, that can also delay the healing. For me, I cannot tolerate soy either. It causes me digestive distress too, causes me brain fog. Now that I've been off of it long enough, I now experience brain fog when I've eaten um soy. I can actually tell when I'm in the process of eating soy in a restaurant and I've forgotten to ask what they use in like what oil they use in the fryer or on the grill. I can actually tell as I'm eating it that I'm eating it, and then we further verify it later because my husband gets a bit more delayed reaction to soy. We both have soy issues, and so it's just weird that I can I can tell as I'm eating it, my throat kind of starts getting tight, and things just don't feel right in my body when I've eaten it. And so your symptoms that kind of brings me to a good point that your symptoms, your gluten reaction symptoms may change over time. Say you've been gluten-free for say five years, ten years, something like that, and then you accidentally get glutened again. You may have a different symptom at that point after have healed for a while than you would have when you first went gluten-free and accidentally got glutened. So keep that in mind too. You're not crazy, you may have different symptoms after your body's healed some, because it's not affecting us in the same way if let's say your celiac and your small intestine has healed, or let's say you're gluten intolerant and your digestive system is just not used to that grain anymore. You're just gonna feel different, very likely, when you get cross-contamination or accidental gluten

Hidden Gluten And Shifting Symptoms

Carrie Saunders 9:23

exposure. And that's where it's really important. We're gonna talk about that accidental gluten exposure. We don't want to be paranoid, but we want to be very diligent of you know minimizing the accidental gluten exposure because hidden gluten, cross-contamination, getting glutened accidentally in restaurants, shared kittens, kitchens, small exposures can slow your healing, even when you're trying your best. So I do want to make sure that you're aware of that and that we need to be diligent. But we also talk about having fun and having joy on this podcast and making sure that we are still living our lives to the fullest and have a good outlook on the fact that we need to be gluten-free. So I want you to work to find the way that you can be, you know, diligent and careful, but at the same time, it's not like a huge burden. We want to make sure that we're still being happy and healthy mentally too while we're on this gluten-free journey.

Food And Nutrients That Support Recovery

Carrie Saunders 10:22

So there's some things that help me feel better and help me heal faster. And I felt like for me, you know, time. We just do need some time. We also need less processed foods, more whole foods. It's going to be so much gentler on your body. Um, exercise. I've actually the past, as of this recording, been strength training for seven months now. And it has, I just can't believe it, has so much helped my digestive system. It is so much more stable now, and I feel so much better having doing that strength training. And I plan to continue the strength training for the rest of my life. I mean, I don't know how long I'll be using my um business coach. I'm, you know, I might get to a point where I can just, you know, do the routines on my own. But right now, we're still building all these skills with my strength training and working on different muscles, and it's really supporting my overall health and supporting my digestive tract and supporting my digestive system. I feel so much better. And I encourage you, if you're still waffling in there and you feel like, you know, some days you feel great, some days you don't, you know, you might need something like a fitness coach or some sort of exercise routine that's going to help your body be able to move your food. You know, we talk about that with my fitness coach. You know, it helps your the food mobility in your body and it helps your systems work better because we unfortunately live in a day and age where we sit, most of us sit all the time for our jobs, and that can wreak havoc on our digestive system as well as the rest of our body, obviously, but we don't really think about it wreaking havoc on our digestive system. So I highly encourage you to consider that if you aren't regularly exercising already, because it really helps support that recovery.

Nonlinear Healing Through Stress And Illness

Carrie Saunders 12:10

And then I also want to talk about healing's not always linear. I want to I want to talk about this because you might think that once you start healing, you're great, but you know, there can be times where you have a good week, where you have a bad week, where you're feeling better and then worse and then better again. It's just not necessarily a straight line. And what can happen too is you might actually get an accidental exposure, and that's going to set you back maybe a week or two where you're not feeling great for a while. Um, that's where we need to be really diligent and making sure that we are being very strict on our, you know, being gluten-free and not getting cross-contaminated. You might have just a general flare-up in your intestinal system because it's mad from all these years of eating gluten when your body didn't tolerate that. Well, stress can cause you to go backwards, illness can cause you to go backwards and make it hard for your digestive system. I know before we even figure out I had celiac, if I had some sort of illness that caused me, you know, lots of, let's just say it, vomiting and diarrhea, and my body would empty itself of food basically. I really had a hard time kick-starting the fuel back. It's kind of like when a fire goes out, you know, getting it kick-started back again. It was really hard to get my body to accept food again after I got really sick like that. So you you might experience something like that. You might have very sensitive digestive system. So just note that sometimes, you know, we're not going to be walking this in a straight line. You sometimes you're gonna feel terrible, sometimes you're gonna feel great. Just learn from where you what happened, you know, maybe it's something you couldn't help, you got sick. Um, just know that you if you're diligent, you'll get back to feeling great again. So I want to encourage you and make sure that you know that healing is very individual. It can be messy, it can be definitely imperfect, and there can be more progress that is happening than you realize. Our bodies are so complex. There might be some part of your body that's healing and recovering that's a silent part of your body that you don't even realize that it's happening. Maybe it's less brain fog. Sometimes it's harder to tell. You have less brain fog as it gradually goes away. It's more obvious when you get accidentally exposed and then boom, the brain fog hits like a truck. You may have fewer headaches and not really quite realize you have fewer headaches until one day you're like, oh wait, I don't have that many headaches anymore. You might get better sleep, you might have more energy. Um, I know for me, uh gluten and I've also found out that soy more migraine triggers for me. Now I get, you know, them very rarely, thank goodness. Rather than I would be getting them like once a week in the spring, the fall, and I would probably have a headache about five or the seven days per week, but some, you know, about once a week, they were migraine level. And I don't have that anymore. And it took me looking back to realize, hey, wait, my headaches, I have so much fewer. And it just over the years, I was getting fewer and fewer headaches. So just know that healing is very individual, it's very imperfect. You might not know that you're healing when you truly are. And so I want to encourage you that at the end of the day, the goal isn't to heal on someone else's timeline. Please don't compare yourself to others. But you, if you are concerned, obviously go to talk to your doctor if you feel like you aren't making progress. That's definitely for sure. But don't compare yourself to somebody else's healing. We want to keep moving you forward on your own timeline. And we all are starting at a different place and everybody heals differently. And every bit of progress matters, even if it's slower than you hoped. But again, if you're ever in question, speak with your doctor, make sure you are on the right path. But I do want you to know that it is normal for you to heal at a different rate than somebody else that you

Encouragement And Next Steps

Carrie Saunders 16:06

know. 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 theglutenfreengineer.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.