Gluten Challenge Questions

[hazelbrown10]

Hi again everyone,

Thanks so much for your replies to my last post. I am learning so much on this forum!

Right now I'm 10 days into a 6 week gluten challenge. Since my symptoms weren't too horrible while I was eating gluten, I didn't think it would be too bad - but it IS! The day I started gluten again I got a headache which lasted off and on for a solid week. I'm in Boulder which is having a big wildfire right now, and I thought it could possibly be that but I was indoors most of the time. Now I have terrible gas (ouch! and also embarrassing!), and a dull background stomach ache which comes and goes. I'm also in a really bad mood! My boyfriend said, "are you going to be mad at me for SIX WEEKS?!" Oops. I'm stressed out about little things, and I hate that. For a long time I thought my personality had just changed for the worse somehow, but now I realize it's the gluten.

Oh, and the tinea versicolor is BACK after going away within days off gluten! And my skin is all itchy and there are red splotches that come and go. Argh!!!

So my new question is, I was only off gluten for about a month... do I still have to do six weeks of this for testing? I'm guessing the answer is yes, but... just thought I'd see if it's no My symptoms seem to get worse every time I go off gluten/back on, so I want this to be the very last time I ever do it.

Thank you!!

p,s, starting today, also starting to feel nauseous...

[GFinDC]

You could call your doc and tell them about your symptoms on the challenge so far. The doc may take a positive dietary response as a validation. Testing that makes you sick is pretty pointless unless you have some real reason for needing it. Just be aware the tests are not 100% accurate and have a percentage of false negatives, so you may be wasting your effort anyway. If you can't sick it out tha t pretty much tells you all you need to know about eating gluten right?

[hazelbrown10]

You could call your doc and tell them about your symptoms on the challenge so far. The doc may take a positive dietary response as a validation. Testing that makes you sick is pretty pointless unless you have some real reason for needing it. Just be aware the tests are not 100% accurate and have a percentage of false negatives, so you may be wasting your effort anyway. If you can't sick it out tha t pretty much tells you all you need to know about eating gluten right?

Thanks - I will probably do that. I got my gene test results back and they are:

HLA-DQB1 Molecular analysis, Allele 1 0201

HLA-DQB1 Molecular analysis, Allele 2 0202

Serologic equivalent: HLA-DQ 2,2 (Subtype 2,2)

So at least that has somewhat calmed my fears that it's all in my head... even though of course I could still have gluten problems without a "celiac" gene. Thanks again!