Can You Really Get Glutened By Your Hand Lotion?
Can someone have a celiac level response to gluten by using a hand lotion that contains gluten?
Yes - if you touch your mouth or food with hands that the lotion is on without washing away the product.
There are a literally 100s of ingredients that could be in any health and beauty product. To actually have a Celiac response to gluten, it has to be ingested. The response is trigged in the small intestine. A lot of dialog is had on a lot of different discussion forums on this. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t potentially have a topical reaction of a rash to a product that contained gluten. But that isn’t celiac. The fact is that the gluten protein is to large to pass through healthy skin, so it technically isn’t even being absorbed into the body through the skin.
There is a rarer form of celiac that presents topically as a blistering, itchy rash, dermatitis herpetiformis. This too, is caused by ingesting gluten and not by applying to the skin.
Caution should be used though, if a gluten containing lotion type product is applied with the hands, and then you touch your mouth or food with those hands, small amounts of gluten may be ingested. This is why it is so important to watch for lip balm and lipsticks that contain gluten. (Although I don’t think we really eat 9 lb of lipstick in our life time, is it really worth it?)
For that reason, this is one area that unless there is something more going on, I tend not to get too worked up about topical body products containing gluten, unless it is on the lips or in your hand sanitizer or lotion that you would not have the opportunity to remove before touching your food.
So just like everything for this year, WASH YOUR HANDS!
Want to find a better balance with your Celiac lifestyle? Contact me at hello@justjamiesmith.com to learn how we can work together!