Several members of my family are celiacs, so I've done quite a bit of
reading.  One thing I found was that breastfeeding stimulates the
proliferation of intestinal villi in both mother and baby.  The other is
that even if a person has all the genetic markers for celiac, it still has
to be "turned on" to become a problem.

So I wonder a couple of things---do breastfed babies do better because they
replace their villi quicker than their immune system kills them off?  In
which case bf is indeed protective, but only by lessening the effects, not
preventing them, which would delay a diagnosis of full-blown celiac.  Bf
might sort of mask the problem.  This is a large part of the reason I
encouraged my children to nurse as long as they wanted to, because I knew
they couldn't reasonably avoid every trace of gluten for the rest of their
lives, so I wanted them to have as many villi as they could going into it.

Also, I wonder what role breastfeeding plays in the eventual expression or
non-expression of the celiac genes.  My kids nursed exclusively for nearly
a year and continued for several years after that.  I, on the other hand,
have at least one bad gene (because my daughter has two).  I was
exclusively formula fed, and am currently doing a gf trial because of some
health issues, and so far gluten doesn't seem to be causing any trouble at
all.  One wonders.

Lynn Carter OFS LLLL IBCLC
Missouri, USA

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