Is There Any Reason To Go To A Gp?

[thegirlsmom]

My husband has been experiencing a lot of gluten related symptoms/reactions lately. He won't even tell me what they all are but he is concerned it could be celiac, crohns, or cancer. The weird thing is he seemed fine until my DX and the change in our diet to Gluten Free. The symptoms seem to subside after he is gluten free for a while so I don't think it's cancer, but he has a difficult time maintaining the diet when he is out of the house and when he eats something with gluten, he starts having symptoms again.

This has been going on for a couple months now and he is ready to go see a DR. Should I make him an appointment for a General Doc, or should I send him straight to a GI Doc. (Ins doesn't require a referral from our GP). And any idea what tests they will want to run? Our ins won't cover any tests so I am trying to figure out the best way to go with this.

Thanks

[Skylark]

Send him to a GP, and one who is smart enough to tell him that if gluten makes him sick he shouldn't be eating it! The GI docs aren't nearly as good about gluten intolerance as the GPs. They'll probably try to celiac test and if your hubs hasn't been eating much gluten it may come back false negative. Your husband just needs to be told to exercise his common sense and stay gluten-free.

[Takala]

Go to a regular doctor with some celiac knowledge and get blood tests run first.

If this bears no fruit, you can also go over the counter to test for genes and intolerances to common foods like gluten, dairy, soy.

Not unusual for people who go gluten free, (and who need to do so, from a medical standpoint, because they are celiac or gluten intolerant) to become more sensitive to gluten after a period of time off of it.

[Lisa]

Have him read this thread:

[Skylark]

Have him read this thread:

I feed terrible for Bonnie because stomach cancer is very serious, particularly if it goes for months undiagnosed, but you can't jump to the conclusion that it had anything to do with her celiac disease. H. pylori infection is a more likely cause. There is an extremely rare leukemia associated with celiac but threatening people with one-in-a-million cancers to make them stick to a diet is bad karma.

[thegirlsmom]

Send him to a GP, and one who is smart enough to tell him that if gluten makes him sick he shouldn't be eating it! The GI docs aren't nearly as good about gluten intolerance as the GPs. They'll probably try to celiac test and if your hubs hasn't been eating much gluten it may come back false negative. Your husband just needs to be told to exercise his common sense and stay gluten-free.

I agree with you completely. How would I go about finding a good GP who would be sympathetic to gluten issues.( The irony here is his brother is a GP but he doesn't want to talk to him about his problem). He has been very low gluten for the last 6 months or so. What tests should he try to get done?

We are in the Nashville TN area.

[Skylark]

You need to gluten him up for at least two months to have a hope of the celiac tests working. Three months is a little better. He needs to eat 4 slices of bread a day worth of gluten. Anything with gluten like bread, pasta, cereal, or cookies is fine. If he starts feeling really ill eating the gluten, he might figure out the intolerance on his own.

For inexpensive home testing, you could order the CeliacSure kit. Open Original Shared Link They ship to the US for personal use. It is a home anti-TTG IgA celiac screening kit for $50 plus shipping.

At the doctor's, the bare minimum would be anti-deamidated gliadin IgA. It's the single most sensitive and specific celiac test available. You also need to ask for total IgA to be sure the test is valid. If deamidated gliadin is not available at the diagnostic lab your Dr. uses you could get the anti-TTG if you don't want to use CeliacSure. There are other tests but if I had to pay out of pocket, that's where I would start.

As far as finding a sympathetic doctor, do you have any sort of local celiac support group? They might know of someone good.