Back To Gluten Or Not?

[loomis]

Hi

I posted a while about my 12 month old whose growth has gradually tapered off. Anyway we've been gluten free for about three weeks. Just a couple days after both my son and i went gluten free his stools became more solid (just 1 soft stool per day instead of 3 or 4 loose stools) athough they were still very frequent (4-6 times a day.) Then i accidently gave him nori containing soy sauce with wheat and it seems like at that time his stools became more liquidy and larger. Anyway now we are back to gluten free and his stools are mostly solid, smaller and are even slightly less frequent (3-4 times per day.)

Anyway because his diet has changed in other ways since going gluten free i am confused about whether or not the gluten is really the culprit though it certainly seems to as if it is. I am thinking it would be helpful to have some bloodwork ordered at his next appointment in two months to confirm it. I'm worried though about how adding gluten back into his diet might harm him and two months seems like a long time. What do you all think?? Does it sound to you guys like the gluten free diet has been helpful?

Thanks so much in advance.

[Ursa Major]

The blood tests in children under six are highly unreliable and produce many false negatives. Your son didn't have such awful, life threatening symptoms yet, that would indicate such terrible bowel damage that his bloodwork would definitely be positive, even if he has celiac disease.

It really sounds to me as if your son responds well to being gluten-free, and had a definite reaction to being glutened. I don't see any good reason for making him sick again just for a questionable test. The gluten-free diet is very healthy, and he doesn't need any gluten foods (really, nobody does). And if you keep him gluten-free, he won't remember having gluten products, and won't miss them.

If you really want to know and can afford it, testing with Open Original Shared Link is far superior and more reliable than conventional testing, and will be accurate up to a year of starting the gluten-free diet.

[Guest cassidy]

You said that his diet changed in other ways so you are not sure of what is making him better. Could you add some of those other things back in and see if that makes a difference? I don't know what else you changed, or why, but gluten is the last thing I would recommend trying again.