4 Years hunting for answers and wonder if it could be Celiac??

[Kelly7]

Hi Everyone,

    I'm new here and wondering if I have Celiac. I'm from the US and currently living in India. I have not been well for 4 years and have been given the run around from Doctor's in the US. My symptoms are:

Lower back pain and stiffness

Leg and foot pain/ stiffness

chronic vertigo

mild nystagmus

Anemia

Significant Hair Loss

Dental Problems

Frequent skin rashes

Extreme Vertigo started 7 years ago and I woke up with sudden back and leg pain 4 years ago, that never went away. I can only stand for about 10 min and sit for 30 min. My whole body gets exhausted after very little activity. I was told it was sacroillitis, spinal stenosis, myofascial pain syndrome, Facet Joint arthritis, degenerative disk disease from my first MRI. But in recent MRI none of these showed, it was a normal test! So now I'm looking into Autoimmune. In India the doctors will do tests if you ask, opposed to much opposition with my US doctors. They are willing to try a celiac biopsy, they recommend doing that eve without the pre-blood test. Does anyone with celiac have similar symptoms to mine? Does anyone think it would be worth a try or perhaps it will be another dead end? Oh, I'm a 35 year old female. Thanks!

[GFinDC]

Hi Kelly7,

Welcome to the forum!

It is certainly possible you have celiac disease.  Some people with celiac disease have the characteristic digestive symptoms.  The other people don't have digestive symptoms but have some other non-digestive symptoms or no symptoms at all.

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Here's some fact and figures on celiac disease.

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Testing for celiac disease includes a blood test to check for anti-gliaden antibodies.  The full celiac disease panel includes tests for DGP IgG and DGP IgA, plus several other antibody tests.  You should ask for the full celiac disease panel, not just the screening test (ttg IgA).  We have a forum member with celiac who only tests positive on the IgG test, but not any of the the other tests.

After the blood tests they usually set up an endoscopy to take 4 to 6 small biopsy samples of the tissue lining the small intestine.  These biopsies are checked under a microscope for the villi damage characteristic of celiac disease.