Is Gluten Intolance The Same As Celiac Disease

[lacy]

I have not had any test to prove I have Celiac Disease, but after reading all this information about it I am begiining to wonder if this is what I have. I am 47, can not handle milk, msg and have now had Dirreha for about a month and half. Have $10,000 deductible, so avoid Doctors. But did go and get Lonoz, slowed it but didn't stop it, then went back and got metronidazole which does not to seem to be helping either. I have had dirreha for well over a month. I seems to come in waves. I will get very weak, light headed sick, to my stomach, craps and have to use the restroom quickly. After about 20 to 30 minutes of feeling like I am going to almost die, it goes away and I am fine again. My energy level goes up and I feel fine. I have tried to stay away from wheat products, but am new to this and am still learning. My question is this: How long does the gluten effects take to hit you? How long would a mistaken intake of gluten last? Could the waves be caused by intake of wheat? Lately it happens in the morning before I even eat anything? My husband and I won a trip to Maui and we leave in 2 weeks and I am scared that the trip of life time may turn into a trip from hell. Any and all advice would be taken to heart

Lacy

[PINKYPAL]

Hi Lacy,

It is never advisable to remove gluten from your diet before being propoerly diagnosed with celiac because removing the gluten may then produce a negative result, and you wouldn't know for sure if you are indeed a celiac. If I am understanding you correctly, you are not in the position to have the testing done so have decided to remove the gluten from your diet, without testing, to see if you feel better.

Therefore, assumning you may be a celiac or gluten intolerant, for the most part, removing the gluten should bring you fairly rapid improvement in your overall condition. From the reading I have done, and from my own experience, if you are not getting even trace amounts of gluten, within days (possibly longer), the diarrhea will eventually stop and your bowel function returns to something more normal. I also believe that most celiacs do not require medication for the condition because the gluten free diet will do the trick.

If you have removed the gluten from your diet and are still experiencing symtpoms I would think that you are either not a celiac or gluten intolerant or, if you are, you are getting gluten from hidden sources. Removing gluten from the diet is initially, a daunting task. You need to find a list of gluten sources (I am sure this web site has one), and print it out. Then you would need to go through your cupboards and check the labels on everything that you are consuming. Gluten is hidden in all sort of things, especially in prepared foods, sauces, dressings, etc. You must also be aware of cross contamination issues. If others in your household are eating a regular diet, you would not be able to share the same items such as margarine, peanut butter, etc. because if they are putting their knives or spoons into these containers, the item would then be contaiminated and you would not be able to use it. Remember, all it takes is trace amounts of gluten to be toxic to a celiac. This amount is what can sit on the head of a pin, so you can appreciate how careful you have to be. I removed all foods from my cupboards that contained gluten, bought a new toaster, and I do not allow any foods containing gluten to come near my kitchen. This is not possible for most people, but I want to highlight how little it takes to still be ingesting gluten. You must also not lick envelopes, and if you are unsure of something you are going to eat, simply don't eat it. You'll find it easy if you stick to fresh vegetables, whole muscle meats, fish, ect. A lot of processed meats do contain gluten so any processed meat you do buy would have to be checked.

You were wondering about how long it takes for someone to react to ingesting gluten by mistake. I would think that every single celiac or gluten intolerant person would be different. I have had a reaction in as little as a few hours of ingesting gluten, and I have also realized I had ingested gluten (when dining out), and have had no reaction at all. A few times, when travelling, I would have dinner and the next morning I knew that gluten had been ingested. So in a nutshell, the length of time of a reaction, and the severity of the reaction, probably could not be used as an indicator as to whether your problem is indeed the gluten. If you are dealing with some other type of bowel disorder such as colitis or IBS for example, you most likely would suffer from much the same symptoms after ingesting food as a celiac would, only it wouldn't be gluten related at all.

I really wish you luck Lacy. I do think that you may indeed need to be properly assessed in order the sort out what the actual problem is. I can relate to your misery, as I was first diagnosed with lymphocytic colitis before the confirmation by biopsy of the celiac.

I think that if you are going to go gluten free, then you should be as informed as possible about the hidden sources of gluten, then see if you improve once you have re-evaluated your diet. If you are just avoiding wheat, this would not be nearly enough to remove the gluten from your diet and produce favourable results.

I hope this helps you and I wish you the best of luck on your quest for an answer. Take good care of yourself,

Pinkypal

[PINKYPAL]

Hi Lacy,

After sending you the long note, I looked at the header and chuckled because I didn't even get around to answering your question regarding the difference between being a celiac and being gluten intolerant.

It is my understanding that if you are gluten intolerant, ingesting gluten will make you ill, but will not destroy the villi in the small intestine. I would think though, that constant diarrhea from intolerance would not be good for your overall general health and you would have to look into whether there is the potential for other health complications related to gluten intolerance. I'm not sure about this, but there must be information out there on the subject.

With a celiac, the ingestion of gluten destroys the villi in the small intestine. This can lead to all sorts of other diseases such as cancer and osteoporosis, to name a few.

Hope this helps,

Pinkypal

[Nancym]

If you want to self-diagnose then a dietary trial or testing through Enterolab should be fine. I'm not a fanatic about "gold standard" Celiac testing because we've run into a lot of folks on these forums that have tested negative but had amazing health turn-arounds from removing gluten from their diet.

So, IMHO Celiac disease is just one form of gluten intolerance. In any case if gluten makes you sick it could happen in a number of ways (Read the Gluten File) and it simply must be removed from the diet. Celiac is merely the only form of gluten intolerance recognized (poorly) by the medical community.

Good luck! I hope you can get to the bottom of your problem, so to speak.

BTW: I've discovered I'm sensitive to a number of foods,I'm still trying to figure out which ones. But I'll end up with diarrhea if I eat certain things even other than gluten.

[Tim-n-VA]

Since most of the recognized medical testing is looking for your body's response to gluten, it is important that you get the level of medical certainty that you are comfortable with before starting any gluten removal. For some people that is just a self-test if they feel better without gluten. For others they want the fully recognized biopsy-based diagnosis.

It is pretty clear that whatever level of gluten reactions a person has, they will have worse reactions if they go off gluten for a while and then go back. That is why you need to get the level of certainty you want.

Regarding intolerance versus celiac, I see a lot of people use intolerance as an umbrella term that covers celiac and other things such as a true allergy.

[Fiddle-Faddle]

There is a grey area between celiac and gluten intolerance, and the doctors just haven't figure out everything yet, though they rarely admit it.

For many people, gluten intolerance can simply be early-stage celiac. Some people (for example, those with DH, or dermatitis herpetiformis) HAVE celiac--but not necessarily damaged villi. So, even though doctors use damaged villi as the definition and gold standard for diagnosing celiac, obviously, that's just not accurate!

In the end, if you can't eat gluten, you can't eat gluten. It doesn't really matter what you call it, unless there is a concrete and cureable reason why you can't eat gluten, such as a bacterial infection. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, poops like a duck....

[darlindeb25]

Yeah, in my opinion, gluten intolerance is the beginning stages and celiac disease is when the villi has become flatten and the doctors can definitely tell you are very very sick. I personally feel it's all celiac disease, doctors just can't tell until the villi is flattened. One day they will know the difference, just like we do! You know, the difference being, there is no difference--we all must be gluten free, flatten villi or not!!!

[Tim-n-VA]

Just for balance, I'll give the opposite opinion.

Celiac disease is an auto-immune reaction to gluten. It is true that many doctors won't diagnosis Celiac until the auto-immune reaction has damaged villi in the intestines. That means that there are some early stage Celiac patients who won't get a formal diagnosis. While it is easy to dismissed this as doctors not being informed, that is only part of the issue. Celiac shares symptoms with other diseases which is why a good doctor will not jump to a diagnosis.

The point that I think a lot of people on this site and many doctors miss is that there is a difference between having a disease and meeting a set of criteria to definitively distinguish the disease from other conditions.

There are other reactions to gluten that are not via the auto-immune system. A true allergy is one example.

While the bottom line for your diet is the same: don't ever eat gluten again. The distinctions can be important because of the reality of disease clusters. If you have celiac you are more likely to have other auto-immune diseases. If you have an allergy to wheat you will could have the same symptoms as celiac but are more at risk for other allergies versus auto-immune.

Gluten intolerance doesn't mean anything other than "an adverse reaction to gluten" in any context that will be widely accepted. I've seen at least one website that distinguishes intolerances in general as a digestive system response which clearly wouldn't include celiac.