Testing And Diet Questions

[AndreaB]

I went in for allergy testing IgG and IgE because of my son's eczema. I dropped soy and wheat products because of the results and my son's eczema has almost completely disappeared. He seems to be pretty sensitive to both.

Does anyone know if gene testing is adequate for a celiac diagnosis. We are going to use enterolab for the family as we don't have any obvious symptoms. I'm going to homeschool my children so foods at school wouldn't be a problem til much later. I was going to go in for a blood test to see if I am celiac but didn't want to put my son through me going on gluten again. He's six months old this weekend and not on solids yet. I've only been gluten free for a little over a month.

After reading what soy and wheat can do to the intestines we will probably always stay off of those. It's just whether we need to stay off of gluten for ever. We are ready to do whatever is necessary. We are used to being picky eaters, if you will, as we left the vegan diet because of the soy and wheat allergies. I'm also allergic to dairy and assume that's a more permanent allergy as I hadn't had it more than a handful of times in the 3 years we were vegan. I don't have any of my old non vegan cookbooks anymore. I'll need to learn how to covert my vegan ones. I also use www.allrecipes.com and www.epicurious.com (which someone else had recommended).

My older two children 6 and 3 are having a tough time not eating soy anymore. Neither of them really likes meat and my 3 year old won't even try most of it.

Are there many people out there that don't have celiac or caught it early enough to not have major damage to the intestines? I've read some posts that recommend not going on a gluten free diet if your not celiac and others say it's healthy if done right. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My biggest problem is trying to figure out what to eat that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to have meat every day of the week.

[tarnalberry]

No, having the genes for celiac disease does not mean that you have celiac disease. The condition requires the genes (not all of which have been identified) AND requires that the genes be 'activated', which does not happen to everyone. A positive gene test only tells you that you can develop the condition (approximately 30% of the population has the most common celiac disease allele) but does not tell you if you will develop the condition (only 1% of the population appears to develop celiac disease).

[TCA]

We ended up doing the celiac gene test from prometheus on thek ids because other tess were inconclusive. We were trying to rule celiac in or out. It's way expensive. After insurance, we still owe 250 each. The other tests were all inconclusive, so the GI thought this would be the closest we could get to a diagnosis.

Since they had the genes and so many symptoms, it made a good case for celiac.