Struggling With Coming To Terms With How Stupid I've Been

[williamsburg000]

Hi everyone

I'm new to the boards, but not new to Celiac Disease.

I've only recently been diagnosed with the condition after 13 years of ill health, going from one doctor to another and either being told that there's nothing wrong with me or that sometimes 'in life we have to endure bad health...'

On one hand I can say to myself that I haven't given up and finally have a chance to try to get my life back, but over the last few months all I keep thinking, is why was I so stupid not to work it out for myself?

I feel responsible and guilty for what I've put my family through and the impact it's had on my life.

I can live with the effects it's had on my life if it were caused solely by the illness, but I'm really struggling with the knowledge that I'm also to blame for not working it out earlier.

What I thought began as an ear infection caused by a virus, was in fact lactose intolerance and glue ear, made worse by being given antibiotics (I think that that's made the celiac worse).

A few years ago I was diagnosed with a fatty liver (never drink) and assumed that that was the cause of all my problems, only to hit problems with Grave's Disease.

With the NAFLD diagnosis I thought that was the end of it all and once that had been healed I'd be OK, but you guessed it, I ate gluten every so often and kicked off the thyroid problem..

I've never had gas, bloating or abdominal pain, only variable constipation - but even so what was wrong with me not to join all the dots and find the elephant in the room.

What makes it worse is that I had an idea it could be celiac and decided to give up all bread anyway, but didn't feel any better or watch every tiny detail of my diet Maybe by that time the liver problem was masking the celiac, I really just don't know.

I'm trying to keep going, stay focused and remain positive, but at the same time I'm becoming more and more depressed that just a simple adjustment to my diet would have made such a huge difference to my life and my family's.

I'm sorry for sounding so negative, maybe it's all part of the healing process and coming to terms with everything not just physically but also emotionally.

I'm just so tired of it all and if I'm honest I'm not sure I can undo the damage that's been done.

[MagpieWrites]

At the risk of coming across as a bossy stranger... in the words of my gran "Oh, Hush child!"

On average it takes DOCTORS ELEVEN YEARS to figure it out here in the states, so stop fussing yourself with coulda/shoulda/woulda beens! You know, and that is wonderful. Yes. You can heal the damage. No. It isn't your fault. Not one single jot of it. (Don't make me pull out the Magpie eyebrow of doomy doom doom!)

As hard as it is (and not only have I been there - I'm sure more than a few other souls on this board are nodding along) you have to stop blaming yourself. The only responsibility you have is to use the knowledge you DO have NOW... and slowly go about learning how to live a healthy life. And that takes time. And beating yourself up over the past just takes energy that could go into building yourself back up. You CAN fix the damage... and while it will take time, in a few months you'll be shocked at how far you have come.

Have some gluten-free icecream, rant a bit at someone who will listen about idiot doctors not tracking this down for you sooner, get a good night's sleep... and tomorrow start walking towards getting better. You know NOW, so NOW is the time you're responsible for!

climbs nervously down off her soapbox and wonders if it's possible to shove some rather tasty gluten-free pumpkin ribbon bread she made through a computer wire to comfort a new celiac soul.

[mushroom]

Ah, Magpie Writes a lot of sense . Stop beating yourself up because you don't have a medical degree and are not one of the few doctors who knows about celiac disease You have found out sooner than a lot of us did, which is GREAT news. Now you know what you have to do and can get on with it. Yes, we go through anger, denial, grieving for our beloved gluten, but it won't be long before you start thinking of it as rat poison, like most of us do . And as for those lost years, get even by living the rest of your years to the fullest in every way YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME for failing to diagnose yourself. I always think it is a miracle the number of us who were able to do so and then only after suffering as long as or longer than you. So get off the guilt trip and start tripping down the recovery trail

[skigirlchar]

couldn't have said it any better than Magpie

we all have "i should have known" moments

we all have dealt w/ ineffective doctors

we all feel like our health issue have become the big elephant in our family lives

but we are also, all in this together

*looking around for my own slice of pumpkin ribbon bread*

[jackay]

It is our medical system that is stupid!!! It would be so helpful if our country came to realize that gluten intolerance is a BIGissue and a cause of over 300 symptoms (last I heard it was 350). How is the average person suppose to figure this out when our ?educatored? doctors don't believe in it?

I believe I have suffered from this for over 16 years with the past four years being extreme hell. Am I bitter, maybe a little. I don't dwell on the years I have lost or the pain it has caused me or my family. I thought only death would take me out of my misery. I now feel so much better that I want to live the the rest of my life to the max. This experience to hell and back has made me appreciate just how good life can be.

Give it some time. Allow yourself to grieve. Hopefully soon your attitude will change and you will think positive thoughts. You can't redo the past but can do something with your future.

[DownWithGluten]

You're not stupid. And while it sucks for your family, it probably sucks more for you to have been suffering so much.

And you said 13 years? 13 years ago, nobody cared/knew about gluten. At least not like they do now...it seems to be growing in public awareness (which is convenient for me, since I've been doing it the past 3 years).

And no digestive symptoms, you say...how the heck would you have guessed? Even with the digestive problems in me, it took about 6 years of increasing suffering for me to throw in the towel and self-diagnosis myself. I was even tested for celiac (blood). I tried eating ginger roots, removing soda, taking Zelenorm (for "IBS")...this other stuff....yeah. So I had the big ol' glaring sign over my head even more than you, with the digestive symptoms...the doctors even told me I didn't have it...until I really was just desperate and threw in the towel and tried the no gluten diet and all the digestive problems instantly went away.

So don't feel stupid. I wouldn't connect ear infection antibiotics and liver problems with celiac either. Plus like everyone's said...you're not the one with a medical degree! And even if you did try the no-bread thing...again you probably weren't totally convinced it was gluten and that diet is a big undertaking, so don't beat yourself up.

Also I had autoimmune hypothyroid since I was 10 and never connected that dot either.

[DownWithGluten]

I believe I have suffered from this for over 16 years with the past four years being extreme hell. Am I bitter, maybe a little. I don't dwell on the years I have lost or the pain it has caused me or my family. I thought only death would take me out of my misery.

That kinda sounds like me. I can think of many times as a kid that I was having some digestive angst...I'd feel the need to 'lie flat' to stop some bloating pain. Or would walk doubled over after eating certain foods...then began throwing up every few months or so (on the pasta bread dinner nights in my house...lol.) But the "gluten attacks" didn't start until about 6 years ago. It was one. Then, another...some six months later. Than another. Then another...and within the 2-3 years before going gluten free, it was getting to be about once a month. And even when not a full blown attack, there'd just be that pain lurking, waiting to strike at any unknown time...maybe if I turned my body at too sharp an angle, or was a little bit stressed, or if I woke up a little earlier than usual. I'd be in pain. I felt so helpless, and with every 'attack' I was feeling more and more hopeless. I knew I was at the end of the rope when I had a similar thought to what you said -- in the throes of pain once I thought to myself...not 'woe is me' but just practical..."How am I supposed to want/look forward to continuing living if I know I'm going to have to go through this all the time?" Just, matter of fact. I did not want to think about enduring living, if I was having to go through this regularly for another 60 years. It was a few months after that that I decided to give the gluten-free diet a chance, and it all stopped. Thank God.

So, I hear ya. Glad you're seeing the light now!

[gf-soph]

Go easy on yourself. You are not a doctor, and gluten problems can manifest in so many ways it can be extremely hard to pin down. Psychological effects like depression are common too, so if you are feeling really down on yourself the gluten may also be influencing your emotions.

It is possible to take the energy you are using being hard on yourself and use it to move in a positive direction. I'm sure plenty of people here have felt guilty about not being able to be happy and healthy, and the impact this has on others. But try this - flip the situation. If your partner/sibling/best friend had been sick for years and actively seeking answers, and just found out what the problem was, would you blame them for not diagnosing themself quicker? Somehow I doubt it. It's often easier to be harder on ourselves then we are on others.

The great thing is that you have come across a great place to find out how to get properly gluten free, and to support you through the process.

And fyi, my 85 year old grandmother gave up gluten recently after noticing that she felt worse after eating lots of extra wheat products. She never would have thought of it if not for me going gluten-free, and now she has never felt better. If she had known when she was young she may have avoided bowel cancer, years of anxiety and poor health. But there was no way of her knowing. Don't worry about whether it is too late, just do what you can and keep working on feeling better. You may be suprised at how you feel when you are completely free of the evil gluten!

[MartialArtist]

I gotta chime in with the rest here. There is NO reason you should have made the leap to celiac on your own -- especially w/minimal digestive symptoms. You really need to cut yourself a break. Even if you suspected it at times, it's a hard diet to follow when you don't have a diagnosis to support the need and you aren't experiencing noticeably better health (since you had few GI symptoms).

I'm kinda sad that so many doctors seem not to know to think about this. It was only a fluke that they figured it out in me. I had anemia that wouldn't go away on a year's worth of iron pills, so my regular doc sent me to a hematologist. He gave me an iron infusion and just to be sure, he checked my GI tract for bleed (didn't expect to see one). When they saw blood in the stool (which surprised them), they sent me to a GI doc for an endoscopy and colonoscopy -- to look for blood sources, not Celiac. Because the GI doc knew anemia could connect with celiac, he did a biopsy during the endoscopy. My pathology report says "severe villous atrophy" and "absence of villous architecture" so this was not a newly-developing thing. They never did find any source of blood, but without that trigger, I wouldn't have ever had the endoscopy to learn of this at all!

Like you, I had minimal digestive symptoms. But I've battled varying degrees of depression/anxiety over the last 9 years, I've had mouth ulcers (regularly) throughout most of my teen and adult life, and my history of anemia goes as far back as age 18 when I was turned away from my first attempt to donate blood due to low iron. No one put all this together or ever WOULD have if there hadn't been blood in the stool.

[Black Sheep]

I was sick for almost 18 years before my current N.D. told me to try going off gluten for a month to see how I felt. In fact, about 7 years ago, a different N.D. who I had just started seeing (1st app't.) had me go off gluten for a month. I did but I didn't feel any better, so with great relief, I started eating the crud again. Great relief because I so didn't want it to be that, anything but that....in fact I pretty much refused to believe that gluten could be a huge part of my problem, as the thought of living a lifetime without it was all just too hard, too complicated, too alien. So didn't do any research on it after I got home from my app't.; I had met with the clinic's nutritionist but hey, there's only so much info they can give you in an hour or whatever it was. So either she didn't tell me (or if she did it went in one ear and out the other, which wouldn't surprise me) about the dangers of being glutened in restaurants, and wooden utensils and cross-contamination. Or certified g.f. oats. So looking back, I think well, it's no wonder I didn't feel any better! So you talk about not connecting the dots--hell, I was being downright irresponsible by not doing what I did this time around---get myself on the computer pronto, and start researching and learning.

But that smart doc also wanted to check lots of other things, too, and found that I had a bad case of pernicious anemia (which took months to correct, so no wonder I didn't feel "better" 1 month after more or less cutting out gluten); which in turn was caused by a horribly severe case of hypochloridia (low stomach acid). Never mind the fact that I sometimes had some acid reflux, that can happen even with low stomach acid. They tested it and we could all see the lines showing that my stomach was producing almost no acid. Hence, no nutrition.

But this "Aha!" moment didn't come until after nearly 12 years of being sick, developing hypothyroidism and a host of other junk.

So although I kind of do this when I think back on how I didn't do such a great job of going g.f., I don't beat myself up for it. At that point, even if I'd have gone 100% g.f. and done it perfectly, I don't think I'd have felt much better at that point because of the awful anemia. And I have those "If I had it to do over again" thoughts re. the time, years before that, when my sub-clinical hypothyroidism actually showed up positive on a test (I knew I had it--had almost every classic symptom in the book) and the silly Nurse Prac. who was about to (finally!) prescribe some thyroid meds got talked out of it by another one, who told her it only showed up like that because I was taking the Pill. I definitely should have insisted on meds, or on them giving me a copy and going elsewhere, instead of meekly saying "o.k." and going away. But, that's the way I was raised--with the silly notion that the med. people are always right,and we have no business arguing with them. It's only been in the last few years I've been able to start getting past that!

But you know, the great thing about the past is...it's history. Most people never learn from history, unfortunately, but we can, and we can use what we've learned to help others who are finding themselves in much the same boat we were in! We need to take the part that can be helpful to others, and chuck the rest....I would use the old saying that, we should "Chew up the wheat, and spit out the chaff," but..... Now is what's really important, and now you can begin healing. It's only been two months for me, and although some things have improved, I'm still having issues, and I'm far from "healed". But that's o.k., one of the many things I've learned here is that healing can take a long time, but it does happen.

So hang in there and keep coming here, it will really help! Everything the others have said thus far is so true!

And Magpie's bread sounds soooo delish......

[Mack the Knife]

In Italy, where celiac disease is common, all children are screened by age 6 so that even asymptomatic disease is caught early. In addition, Italians of any age are tested for the disease as soon as they show symptoms. As a result of this vigilance, the time between when symptoms begin and the disease is diagnosed is usually only 2 to 3 weeks. In the United States, the time between the first symptoms and diagnosis averages about 10 years. Unquote

I know here is Australia the awareness is getting better, but still the doctors tend to treat the symptoms rather than asking why!!

Yeah. Awareness is pretty good in Australia. When I told my doctor my symptoms, the first thing he said was, "We'd better run some blood tests and check for Coeliac disease". Luckily my gastro-intestinal woes were "classic" Coeliac symptoms. Then, before I knew it, I was seeing a specialist, getting biopsied and referred to a dietician.

Of course, it had taken me over a year to actually decide that I needed to see a doctor. I thought that my gradually worsening problems were normal for me and I just waited for them to get better. Then I though that maybe I had a bit of a food intolerance. It never occurred to me that gluten might be the problem. As far as a I knew, Coeliacs were people who got really sick if they ate gluten and I didn't put myself in that category.

So don't be too hard on yourself.

[ciavyn]

I'm going to echo everyone else here: do not blame yourself! Moreover, you finally have the answer -- you should be dancing across the rooftops! Not getting more depressed! How do you the woman feels who finally leaves the abuser after 20 years? She can't get those years back! But she is finally free. So are you. This is NOT the time to get depressed when I'm sure those around you are also thrilled that you have an answer.

We cannot change the past -- there is no time machine. And blame yourself? Please. You are not a doctor. And this is an insidious disease. We get mad at doctors for not knowing, but we have to remember something: there are SO many diseases out there. They cannot be experts on them all. As we understand and learn more, we will hopefully have more influence on the medical world. But it is a slow process. But sites like these and people becoming more and more aware this could be an issue...we'll get there.

Go make something really yummy gluten free, and have a party to celebrate -- go out to a gluten free restaurant or invite some friends over and live it up! You finally have an answer and you can feel better. Embrace that.

[Heather's Mom]

I hope you feel better after getting all these supportive posts. I do not have celiac disease but my poor daughter suffered for (luckily only) about 2 years before we figured it out. I beat myself up, maybe worse, because it was my child who was hurting. Once I took her to the pediactric gastroenterologist he immediately (took about 1 month) diagnosed her with celiac and after a short 5 days of gluten free she was like a different kid. 2 years of food diaries, poop charts, pediatricians, "oh, she's just a nervous stomach kind of kid" ...easily solved by just getting to the right doctor. And, I read the online description of Celiac Disease and dismissed it because she did not have severe or typical symptoms. Boy do I know better now. Let's just say, hindsight is 20/20. Now that I know that is what it was, it is so obvious. Why did I let my child suffer for 2 years when it was so obvious - and quite frankly an easy fix.

I occasionally go back to beating myself up, but really we just move forward knowinig that things will always be better for her now. As I said, and I can't stress enough hindsight is 20/20! ((hugs))

[kayo]

Heck, even if you were a doctor the last thing you'd suspect is celiac disease!

Edited to add: shame on our incompetent medical professionals who have managed to make us feel like the responsible ones for their lack of understanding and thoroughness in finding out what ails us. Phooey on them!

[Bobbijo6681]

It took time also to diagnois me, and I get aggrivated sometimes when I think about it. I didn't always push hard enough, when I was diagnosed with a B12 defiency, I asked "why" but when they doc said "who knows...it just happens to some people" I left it at that. If I would have pushed harder then, I may have saved myself quite a bit of problems. But as others have said hindsight is 20/20 so I try not to dwell on it. I guess I am more angry with my dr, than I am with myself. I didn't go to school to help people, but he did. When I asked questions he could have been more helpful, but wasn't. ( I have since changed dr's because of this reason.)

I take this as a learning experience. I am still experiencing some issues and so far no one can give me an answer as to what is going on. I know there is something going on- I just don't know what, and I WON'T let them push me off again. I will keep pushing until I have an answer! I learned that lesson and will make sure that I continue to push when needed.

Please stop beating yourself up over something that you can't change, and focus on looking at a bright and healthy future. You have lots to look forward to now, run with it!

[MagpieWrites]

Heck, even if you were a doctor the last thing you'd suspect is celiac disease!

Ain't THAT the truth!

My mom had an odd encounter a few months ago when she ran into her current and my old doctor while out at the store. Mom mentioned that I was doing really well... and had been diagnosed with celiac earlier in the year.

The doctor burst into tears and actually ended up begging mom's forgiveness for missing it. Turns out SHE had just been diagnosed herself in the last few weeks... and was wondering how many people she had failed to diagnose over the years. (What makes it a little more disconcerting, is she happens to be not just a GP, but a gastro as well. You would have thought she would have picked up on it, at least in herself!)

Even doctors miss this.

[Skylark]

You are grieving. It's a normal process and will pass. There is no use beating yourself up. Awareness of gluten intolerance and celiac is very new, and is changing people's lives for the better. Doctors were not picking up all but the classic cases of childhood celiac until recently, so why would you figure it out?

As for losing years of your life, I know that feeling. You just have to look forward and not back. You can't change the past, but you can make amends and change the future.

[williamsburg000]

What a great bunch of people use these boards I really can't thank-you you all enough for taking the time and effort to help me get some perspective on all this.

Deep down I know that there's no logic wasting more time thinking about what could have been, by going down that road I'm effectively giving more of the present to the condition

I'm going to print off all your replies and when the 'what if' and 'if only' thoughts pop up - knock myself back into reality with your words of wisdom.

[bluebonnet]

ditto everyone else ... it took me 13 years as well to get this figured out! doctor after doctor ... day after day plagued with symptoms that a lot of times interfered with daily life. like my husband told me when i went through the "if only i knew sooner" ... worrying and being upset won't rewind the years. just move forward with the knowledge you have now and each day you will become healthier. you can heal! without drugs or chemo or constant medical care! that is a blessing. you will heal with time. just keep focusing on the bright side, find the support you need to work through the tough days and enjoy life! best wishes!

[skigirlchar]

i just got copies of all of my medical records because i'm moving. there are so many signs in there pointing to Celiac and none of the other crackpot diagnosis

SO ANNOYING

[zergcoffeebean]

As far as I know, I've been sick with something since I was 12. Because that's really when my ibs, migraines, and general issues all sort of started. I'm 27 now. It takes a long time for us to figure out what is happening to us, and even longer for the people who are just listening to us.

One thing that really helpped me was mindfulness training. I am certain it would have taken me even longer to figure some of this out had I not had that therapy.

Please don't think of yourself as stupid or foolish. Going gluten free, seems simple, but in reality, it really is complex. Our world has such a massive reliance on wheat and related products, it's difficult to disconnect from.

[Takala]

How we were supposed to figure this out before the internet made research possible without living next to a university or medical library, I have no idea.

Even the otherwise good osteopath who correctly diagnosed me with seronegative auto immune type arthritis at a "too young" age, and treated all my continued kidney infections, missed the cause other than it was idiopathic, or unknown. When we moved to a different state it was as bad as going to a different planet as far as medical knowledge was concerned, because I didn't do the heavy duty medications, was female instead of male, and had instead worked really hard to keep my range of motion, the idjiots kept insisting I was making it all up until they saw the scans, and I still have had idjiots who were alleged to be "rheumatologists" at a name brand HMO (which is latin for "will kill you with anti inflammatories" ) insist that there was "nothing" there. The fruitbat neuro I saw after getting out of the clutches of the HMO, (which ignored my bizarre symptoms indicating something was really going wrong, including visual, as I was losing my color vision, had limb numbness, muscle spasms, twitching, etc) took an entire year to finally do a brain scan which showed frigging brain lesions, aka "bright spots" which any competent doctor will think, hmm, northern european x NA, 3rd generation history of certain related auto immune diseases, could be caused by "xxxx," oh, no, not this bat, she insisted I was lying to her because it could only be causing migraines and if I didn't have migraines I must be faking the other stuff, like dragging one leg and having no reflexes in it, inspite of the fact that I told her I had done a careful elimination diet, had a lifelong adult history of c spine problems, had been told to and had always taken vitamin and calcium supplements to combat it, and the grain free DIET was lessening the symptoms.

"Diet" she says, "has nothing to do with this." This after I get rid of the ***** ***** headaches by NOT EATING grain products.

I clicked over to realizing it was diet related, when I saw that all the ethnic groups that were vulnerable to MS like symptoms (that turn out not to be MS, or MS that seems to respond to a cave, paleo, or SCD diet) and who have adult sero negative arthritis, come from tribes that used to live closer to the Arctic circles, and this stuff runs rampant when they are crossed in with the native populations in the new world. But what started the entire line of research was somebody making a casual discussion on an unrelated chat board about how their sibling's arthritis really flared when they didn't stick to their diet. Now the arthritis boards have been over run by the pharma companies pushing the ATNF biological infusions ( a multiple billion dollar a year industry) and they have moderators who will insist that diet has nothing to do with health.

As tenacious as I am about exploring, learning, taking notes, and testing diet on myself, plus spreading the info on other parts of the internet besides here, I wonder how many more there are like that out there who merely exist, over medded to the gills (with all the bad side effects) and who are convinced that they only have brain fog, maybe indigestion, and "fibro" which is doctor for "head case."

I would not bother to feel stupid about this. There isn't much motivation for certain aspects of our medical system to be able to actually lessen symptoms, let alone "cure" anything merely by having the patient eat what they were evolved to eat in the first place, and the social communications framework of the internet has become a phenom only in the last decade.

It took several years, but most of the numbness/tremors stuff went away. I regained my color and night vision, which is weird. I'm not in a wheelchair yet, and I don't use a cane. I am merely more prone to injury, and have a lousy spine and hips. I'm getting old anyway. So much for the predictions I was getting previously that it was a lost cause. The one good thing was that because I didn't have as much strength, I learned to compensate doing many things, and that changed my equine handling strategy, and that made it a lot better as I learned more horse language.

[DownWithGluten]

Hm Takala. If I'm getting what you're implying correctly...or, even if not...your post made me think of something I hadn't before.

The fact that diagnosing someone with celiac does not yield in the prescribing of any medicine, since the only way to manage the disease is by diet.

Meaning no pharmaceutical companies benefit from this, and don't doctors/practices benefit from partnerships with pharmaceutical companies?

Thus...doctors may be reluctant to diagnose celiac, and chose something like IBS instead (like with me...b/c then he prescribed zelenorm)...because then you can prescribe something which may result in compensation.

If that's true, that's terrible. Let's hope it's not. I never thought of it that way before, though.

[eva-girl]

don't beat yourself up - it will only make you feel worse. and remember, everyone, the average med student only has about about 8 hours of nutrition education. no wonder doctors don't know much about celiac, but it isn't really their fault; that's not how the western medical community is trained. it is what it is - no need to harbor alot of anger at them for not being trained differently or at ourselves for not knowing there are alternatives. but now that you know, just move forward and take control of your health.

as for my celiac, i got nowhere with the medical doctors and had to go to a nutritionist who suspected gluten intolerance, which put me on the path to healing. to sum up: if i break a bone i go to my doctor. for everything else i go to my naturopath and my acupuncturist. my body responds better to eastern medicine anyway, i think.

[Skylark]

Hm Takala. If I'm getting what you're implying correctly...or, even if not...your post made me think of something I hadn't before.

The fact that diagnosing someone with celiac does not yield in the prescribing of any medicine, since the only way to manage the disease is by diet.

Meaning no pharmaceutical companies benefit from this, and don't doctors/practices benefit from partnerships with pharmaceutical companies?

Thus...doctors may be reluctant to diagnose celiac, and chose something like IBS instead (like with me...b/c then he prescribed zelenorm)...because then you can prescribe something which may result in compensation.

If that's true, that's terrible. Let's hope it's not. I never thought of it that way before, though.

Three things.

1. Outright bribery. This is becoming less common and leading to criminal cases. Some doctors' offices also fight back. I was in the hospital once and there was a box of fancy cookies out in the waiting room. Turns out a drug company rep had dropped it by and the staff wasn't allowed to accept them (and really didn't want them).

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2. Marketing to remind doctors of medicines. There are usually lots of branded pens, prescription pads, office supplies, calendars, and other reminders around doctors offices.

3. Patients who insist on pills. If they didn't get a medicine to try, the doctor is bad and doesn't care. It drives my naturopathic psychiatrist friend crazy. This ties into the samples. It's really easy for a doctor to toss a sample at a patient who insists on a drug, and if it works the patient will come back for a prescription.

Think how many board members come here freaked out about the lifestyle changes from their celiac diagnosis. It's some people's worst nightmare - a disease with no pill! Celiac drugs will be VERY popular and profitable, even though the disease is treated so simply and easily by diet.