Gluten Free - Various Questions

[chantaspell]

Hi, It is my first post here and I hope I am not covering too much old ground...I've had a search and can't find the answer to my question...

I recently took a celiac test (one of the do-it-yourself ones you can buy in a pharmacy) which showed that I didn't have celiac. The thing is though, I have many of the symptoms and am fairly convinced I react badly to wheat and other gluten containing products...

Therefore I am going to try and eliminate those foods and see if it makes a difference. But first I have a few questions:

1. How long should I eliminate the foods for? Assuming that I do have some kind of gluten intolerance how long will it be before i notice a difference? One of my main presenting symptoms anxiety/breathlessness after gluten meals and low mood/depression.

2. Do I need to cut out all gluten, including oats? or is a radical reduction enough at this experimental stage.

Many Thanks in advance for your help, this forum is great and with so much good advice from friendly people!

T

[MySuicidalTurtle]

I have never heard of an over the counter test. What did it involve?

If you want to try being gluten-free, then you need to be 100% gluten-free. No cheating, no regular oats, etc. To see results, it depends. It may be over night or a few weeks or even two months, You just have to stick with it. Plus, there will be slip ups. It took my family and me months to figure our new diets out.

Good luck!!

[chantaspell]

I have never heard of an over the counter test. What did it involve?

Hi, and thanks for the info.

The over the counter test I took was the Biocard Test which is available in paharmacies like Boots here in the uk: Open Original Shared Link

It is supposed to be very accurate, returning false negatives only 2 % of the time, although I can't quite remember where I heard that statisitic!

So, looks like I ned to try 2 months with not even a gram of gluten!

[MySuicidalTurtle]

Ah, thanks for the link! Maybe it is just a UK thing, then!

[OptimisticMom42]

It won't be - 60 days no gluten and then a doughnut.

You'll get sick when you were sure there was no gluten in your diet, you'll look back, read the label, look it up on the internet and find that others have had reations to the same item.

After this happens several times and you can't blame it on the flu or your Aunts potato salad, you'll realize you won't be needing that doughnut test.