Is It Celiac?

[curious]

I was wondering if the symptoms of celiac come on gradually or all at once? Approximately 1 year ago I started to notice a connection between eating pasta and the discomfort and reaction to the food (similar to the stomach-flu) within 20-30 minutes of eating pasta.

I have also noticed that occasionally after eating some bread products (wheat bread, homemade pizza, etc.), I have the same symptoms. Does this make sense? Did anyone else experience these symptoms? Did the intolerace for gluten come at once or gradually?

Also, when I mentioned the food concerns to my family doctor, he said that I should be losing weight if I really had celiac and told me to look at the WebMD website. Do people lose or gain weight with celiac? Or both?

One more question...What type of doctor would possibly specialize in celiac? (Should I go to my family doctor or would seeing a gastroenterologist be more beneficial?)

Thanks for answering all of my questions. I really appreciate it!

P.S. Any advice is helpful--I am searching for answers.

[AndreaB]

Hi Curious and welcome to the board!

I don't have many answers as I got tested by Enterolab.

I do know that you don't have to be losing weight to have celiac. That's an old belief.

If you have stomach distress after eating stuff with gluten in it then it would seem you are gluten intolerant at least. That pretty much means the same thing without the damage yet.

You should be able to go in and ask you doctor to run the celiac panel. There are five tests in all, so you'd want to make sure your doctor knows to run all of them.

Even if the blood tests come back negative you could still have gluten sensitivity/intolerance. You may be in the beginning of this and have numbers that wouldn't register on a blood test.

You could forego the blood test and go through enterolab (who does a stool sample test). They are self referral (Open Original Shared Link).

You could also just go gluten free on your own and see if you notice an improvement. There are other things you'd need to learn as far as products and kitchen stuff that would need to be replaced. Gluten is in a lot of things.

[GFBetsy]

Welcome, curious!

Celiac can have sudden onset. It is occasionally triggered by times of severe stress (emotional, physical, whatever). My sister knows of a girl (a friend's sister-in-law . . . doesn't this start to sound like an Urban Legend? "I swear it happened to a relative of a close neighbor of mine! Or was it a neighbor of a close relative? "). Anyway . . . my sister knows of a girl whose celiac suddenly appeared in the middle of her second pregnancy. Why not her first? Who knows? But the answer to your question is: "Yes, celiac symptoms can come on very suddenly." I'd go to the NIH website, print a bunch of stuff for your GP, and take it in for him to read when you ask for the tests, highlighting anything that pertains specifically to your situation.

Good luck!