Could I Have It?

[Guest Moose]

Hey everyone! I'm Moose. I'm a 15-year-old girl and my parents were talking about celiac disease today- they think I might have it.

For a very long time, I would get random "stomach aches" with intense, sharp pains in my lower abdomen accompanied by diarrhea and occasionally vomiting. I thought it was simply lactose-intolerance, but even when I try not to eat any dairy and I take Lactaid whenever I do, I still get the occasional stomach ache and frequently feel kind of gassy.

I'm anemic, usually very tired and weak, and almost always have dark circles under my eyes. In the winter I suffer from mild depression, and for a while I thought I might have seasonal-affective-disorder. My periods are always irregular and very, very frequent.

I'm 5'1, I have been for the past year or two, and my weight seems to shift around from 97-108 pounds.

Anyway, I guess my question is, do you think it could be celiac disease? Should I try eliminating gluten from my diet and see what happens or just go straight to getting tested?

[AndreaB]

Welcome Moose!

I would ask your parents to take you in to have a celiac blood panel done. That is very important. It is up to you and your parents whether you would want to go through with the biopsy. Another way to go would be enterolab. They do stool tests....check them out Open Original Shared Link.

You sound like you could have celiac/gluten intolerance. You could also just go gluten free if you or your parents don't need anything on paper with numbers and what your genes are. Enterolab would tell you all that.

Do not go gluten free if you plan on getting tested, with the exception of enterolab.

You would need to check personal care products also.

[Matilda]

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[Guest Moose]

Thanks Andrea!

Stool tests, what fun!

My mom said she was going to call my doctor. It's possible, though I haven't mentioned the thought to my mom yet, that I was already tested for celiac, but I don't know. I had a blood test done and my doctor just described it as tests for more severe problems that could be causing my stomach ache, other than IBS or lactose intolerance. Sooo, I should make sure I wasn't already tested. XD

If not, I'll probably get the blood test done.

[mouse]

I would not worry about whether you had a prior blood test. You can have a false negative on the test, but never a false positive. I do know that if Celiac is in a family and the blood tests come back negative, that they say you should still be retested every two years. So, just go for the test and do not worry about any prior testing. Just make sure that they do the full Celiac panel which consists of 5 tests. Also keep consuming gluten until then. If you just quit for a short time, you can scew the results.