New Here, About To Test, Question Regarding Prior Gluten Avoidance?

[syren4444]

Hi everyone, I'm very happy to have found this forum, I can definitely use your knowledge and advice!

I'm a 24 yr old gal, diagnosed with UC and suffering for about three years with mild symptoms, mostly really bad stomach cramps, gas, bloating, and discomfort. I do not eat much obvious gluten, no wheat, no breads, no convience foods. Now I'm not super strict, so I'm sure I'm ingesting trace gluten in other items. I wasn't intentionally avoiding gluten, I just don't eat bread for health reasons, preferring brown rice, quinoa, etc.

I'm perplexing to doctors, too mild symptoms for my Colitis and no drugs, eating swaps, etc has fixed it. Now after hearing about Celiac and loooots of research, it sounds like it might be the culprit. I match up to a lot of the symptoms (I'm not underweight tho, I've always been normal, I have to work at staying thin). Not one doctor has even mentioned celiac to me.

I'm about to start calling Mon and ask my general, naturopath, and gastro about it.

My biggest question is the 'hot topic' here I see, if I've been not eating much gluten for the last few years, can any test actually tell me if that is what it is?

Has any Celiac's tested positive to any type of test even tho they were avoiding gluten at the time?

I'm going to ask about the blood test, gene test, and biopsy.

Thanks!

[Yenni]

As far as I know you have to eat gluten to get a proper result. But I am not sure about the amounts that needs to be eaten for it.

[ShayFL]

Celiac isnt easy to dx. There are many stages to the disease and if you do not have a lot of damage yet, you could test NEG even if you are eating a lot of gluten. For some a proper dx only comes once they are severely damaged.

You could test POS on gluten-lite diet, but it is less likely.

You could up your gluten eating for 2 or 3 months and then test. Or you can just go 100% gluten-free and see if your symptoms go away.

[Amyleigh0007]

I strongly believe the reason my Celiac bloodtests came back negative was because I was eating gluten "light". When my son was dx in March I got rid of all gluten in our house. The only time I ate gluten was at lunch at work and that was only whatever amount of gluten was in the Lean Cuisine I had that day. All other meals and snacks were gluten free. I did that until I was tested in early June, so about 2 1/2 months. My doctor never told me to keep eating gluten for the test to be accurate. When I explained the situation to my allergist she agreed with me.