Celiac? Food Allergy? IBS?

[Breezy11]

I'm new to the whole idea of Celiac and don't know a ton about it, but I figured I'd ask someone who really knows. I've been to my doctor a few times but I don't want to have to keep paying to visit to ask him a few questions. Last time I was at my doctor, he said I definitely have IBS and that I most likely also have a food allergy or intolerance to lactose, gluten, sugar or... something! I haven't had bad symptoms for a long time, they are pretty recent. But I have always had digestion problems for as long as I can remember.

I'm 22 years old and newly married. I started working at a yogurt shop about 8 months ago and it seemed that the problems started there. I am constantly bloated (I mean 24/7) and always have gas. Constipation and diarrhea are a normal occurrence and intense bloating where I cant stand. I also have noticed that I wake up needing to pee in the middle of the night constantly now and that never used to happen. And it's painful when I wake up, like my bladdar has been full for days! There has been an increased amount of mucus in my movements, seems to get worse and worse. I will have sudden jabs of stomach pain and diarrhea which is extremely inconvenient and embarrassing. My doctor was concerned it might be crohns or some inflammation of my intestines?

Naturally, I thought it was the yogurt. I went on a diet with my husband for about 3 weeks where we didn't eat any sugar, diary or gluten. All of my symptoms went away (minus constipation). When I got off the diet, I figured I'd start trying to figure out what it was that was giving me the symptoms before. I should've done it slowly but instead I added gluten, sugar,diary and yogurt all back into my diet at once and immediately all the symptoms came back. I cut out the yogurt and I'm still having the problems. So now I'm starting to think that it's more than just the yogurt. My dad and brother are both lactose intolerant, so I thought that may be the issue. But, I don't drink nearly as much milk as I used to and my symptoms seemed to have gotten worse.

I have a friend who just told me that she recently cut out gluten from her diet because she was diagnosed with celiac. I had never heard of it before this. All of her symptoms matched mine. Plus, my dad's doctor, just told my dad to start cutting out gluten for some of his symptoms (which are very close to mine). Ah! What to do? I love all things bread and wheat. Going gluten free would be extremely hard for me (as I'm sure it is for everyone else). I'm just not sure if my symptoms are relevant to celiac at all. Some symptoms match, some seem totally far off.

Am i overreacting thinking it's celiac? Am I more likely to just have an intolerance?

[Skylark]

You need to stay eating gluten and get celiac testing from your doctor. It's OK to be off the dairy for testing but the celiac tests do not work on a gluten-free diet. Celiac IS inflammation of the intestines and it's far more common than Crohn's. There isn't a single symptom you have listed that doesn't match celiac. Gluten can mess up our bodies in more ways than you would believe. Pain, bloating, mucus, and alternating C and D are absolutely celiac symptoms.

Once you get tested you still probably want to give the diet a try. Gluten intolerance is not much different from celiac as far as symptoms, only the tests will all be negative. It's also possible to get false negative celiac tests and if you have a dramatic improvement off gluten you may want to stick to a celiac diet anyway.

There are plenty of good gluten-free foods. It's a big change, but once you're used to the diet it's not the hardship you might imagine.