GUEST BLOG: Kissing and Lipsticks with Coeliac Disease
Are you risking your health kissing your partner with coeliac disease? Kim Faulkner Hogg explores this very common question
I am often asked about the effects of cross contact with trace or tiny tiny amounts of gluten, by people who have coeliac disease. We live in a world full of gluten and living the ideal zero gluten diet is challenging from many angles.
Therefore the obvious first step is to define trace or tiny amounts of gluten, as this is crucial to what we are discussing. The International food standard has been built around the concept that 10mg of gluten a day will do no harm to the villi or cause symptoms in MOST people with coeliac disease. 20ppm (parts per million) is a measure of the density of gluten in a food.
If people eat a number of products that contain up to 20ppm in a day, this food standard helps them to not go over the 10mg of gluten that is the estimated daily limit in coeliac disease. Therefore, gluten exposures of less than 20ppm are generally safe for the majority of people with coeliac disease.
Social media can sometimes express very scary messages, but these messages don’t always apply to everyone and not all of them align with emerging evidence of what the effects of trace gluten may be in different situations.
Therefore what I am describing here will suit MOST people, but this is NOT individualised information. If you are not comfortable with this, you need to follow your own instincts.
KISSING
There are instructions that you can find on websites that suggest you need to have a ‘First Date Kit’ handy with toothbrushes, toothpaste and even combs to brush out beards, which you then pass to your prospective partner to ‘tidy’ up their mouth, and remove lipstick, before the partner is ‘safe’ to kiss someone with coeliac disease.
I try never to tell people what to do. If these suggestions make you uncomfortable, or you know you could react to tiny amounts of gluten, then that may be what suits you best.
I like to explain what research can tell us about cross contact scenarios and then let each person make their own decision about what makes them comfortable in each situation.
Here is what we know about kissing and gluten cross contact to date. Some one with coeliac disease will NEVER DIE on the spot from kissing someone who just ate gluten. This is a potential risk for someone with a nut allergy, so if you have heard of this, be assured this will not happen with coeliac disease.
The risks or concerns for those with coeliac disease are always two-fold.
1. Will you develop symptoms from this kissing exposure and,
2. Will that small amount of gluten you might be exposed to, possibly damage your villi in the short term, or the longer term if this happens frequently.
At the International Society for the Study of Celiac Disease conference in 2024, Anne Lee, a dietitian at Columbia University in America, reported on a kissing study their research group conducted.
They recruited couples for this study where they wanted to measure the amount of gluten left in their partners saliva after sharing a long kiss with someone who just ate gluten.
Columbia University study reveals some interesting insights into kissing and cross-contamination risks
Scenario #1
One person from each couple was instructed to eat a number of wheat crackers. 2-5 minutes after this, they were directed to give their partner a long kiss. It was reported that less than 10ppm of gluten was detected in the saliva of the person who did NOT eat the wheat. By international standards, this quantity is considered gluten free and safe for most with coeliac disease.
Scenario #2
The person who ate the wheat, was then asked to drink about 120ml of water after eating the same number of wheat crackers. A kiss following on from that combination showed no detectable gluten in the saliva of their partner, who did not eat the wheat.
Keeping in mind that the majority of people with coeliac disease will not develop symptoms to, or villi damage from, foods that have less than 20 parts per million of gluten, then this indicates that it is safe to kiss someone not long after they have ingested gluten. It appears to even be safer, if they followed their food with a drink.
I think everyone will run from the situation of someone coming in for a long kiss when they are still chomping down a mouthful of food - a situation where crumbs of gluten could be transferred…..YUK!
LIPSTICKS
I am aware of two studies on lipsticks. Tricia Thompson from the Gluten Free Watchdog was involved in one where 1 lip gloss, 1 lipstick and 2 lip balms that contained gluten-derived ingredients were analysed. There was no detectable gluten (<5ppm) in these 4 products.
An Italian study purchased 12 lipsticks and 10 lip balms based on their popularity, not their ingredients. None contained wheat or gluten-derived ingredients. Only 1 lipstick was found to have cross contact gluten that measured 27ppm.
This means in theory IF a lipstick had 20ppm of gluten, then you would need to consume about 15 entire tubes of lipstick to reach even 1 milligram of gluten. So one swipe across the lips with a lipstick that had 27ppm of gluten would impart almost no measurable gluten at all.
I know some people do report reacting to lipstick, this is why you need to do what is best for you in these situations. This blog is laying out the current research results. Research suggests the risk of lipsticks and kissing are very low, both in causing symptoms or villi damage for most with coeliac disease.
Whatever you are comfortable with is the best solution for you.
Image: coeliapp.app/blog
