What Do You Think...

[btenasker]

it appears i dont have celiac- perhaps something else. thanks for the information

[nettiebeads]

Could very well be celiac. I was dx'd 9 yrs ago just by diet challenge - stopped eating gluten and then the D stopped. No bloodwork and no biopsy. The fact that you have cut out gluten in the past and felt better leads to two things - positive diet challenge (it IS a viable diagnostic tool) and it may skew the results of any testing. Oh, and the diary thingy. What happens when you develop celiac is that the villi get attacked by your own body (hence the autoimmune part of the disease) and are flattened. It is the tip of the villi that produce the lactaid needed to digest diary products and damaged villi cannot produce it, hence the diary intolerance. But the good news is that as soon as gluten is taken out of the diet, the body starts healing, the villi come back, and after about 3 to 6 months you can have dairy again, but maybe not in the amounts you used to eat. (that's how it was for me, anyhow)

What's your family history? The disease is genetic - lots of posters have had family members die of what could have very well been complications of untreated celiac. I strongly suspect that it was my mother that passed on the celiac gene(s) to me. I haven't had the genetic testing done yet, but plan on it when I have a little extra money.

Hope this helps some. At least you know we won't accuse you of making this stuff up.

Keep us posted.

Annette