More General Celiac Questions

[kaiess]

I'm still trying to learn as much as possible about Celiac pre-diagnosis and have a few questions. I see a lot of people talking about pain and other conditions due to Celiac. If my son is diagnosed and he eats gluten free for the rest of his life, will he have a normal life span? Does Celiac disease cause pain at all if you are gluten-free? Will it cause any other damage to his body, organs, etc, if he sticks with the gluten free diet? I have read a few scary stories of people with Celiac, who have battled the disease for many years and they die fairly young.....thus the questions. I thought if you diagnosed Celiac early on and have not suffered any growth issues that you will live a long healthy life if you stick to the diet.

Kathy

[Takala]

1. Normal life span/ Yes

2. Cause pain if gluten free/No

3. Damage if sticks to diet/No

We're actually very lucky. This is one of the very, very few diseases that just avoiding the one class of grains can actually stop the auto immune reaction.

There might be other food intolerances, or allergies, or other diseases that an individual develops that complicates things. I know somebody (on the internet) who was terribly sick until he was diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease, which he had on top of his already diagnosed celiac, which he was adhering to the diet for already- fortunately he did not give up and eventually after much angst and misdiagnosis he was given antibiotics for it and got his life back. One of the neurologists he dealt with treated him as a "head case"- gross incompetence.

The same thing happened to me years ago when I was running a chronic kidney infection- finally got out of the HMO, could see a different medical group- and was tested, my samples cultured, and I was given a different, effective course of antibiotics- I haven't been the same since, and I mean that in a good way.

I'm in my 50's, btw. I've already outlived one parent by 8 years, so I consider this a successful lifespan and anything else is gravy. I have some siblings and half siblings and step siblings that drink and smoke and don't eat as well as they could, and it shows- there are other factors affecting overall health status.