Testing Question

[graciebean]

About two years ago I began to show many of the same symptoms of someone with Celiac Disease after I ate certain things. My hair was falling out in handfuls, I was actually beginning to gain a lot of weight. I was showing signs of going through early menapause, I had duplicate rashes on my body, I was feeling very lethargic. I went to a specialist and tested negative for Celiac. What the specialist told me to do was take it completely out of my body for a month, slowly integrate, bread, etc in small amounts. If I have the same reaction, I have the gluten intollerance. Well, when I did that, the reaction was even worse than before.

I have been completely gluten free for two years now and it has completely changed my life. My hair is much healthier, my hormones are normal, etc. Would it be worth it to have an endoscopy and an intestinal biopsy since I have now been gluten free for a couple of years?

[Newbee]

About two years ago I began to show many of the same symptoms of someone with Celiac Disease after I ate certain things. My hair was falling out in handfuls, I was actually beginning to gain a lot of weight. I was showing signs of going through early menapause, I had duplicate rashes on my body, I was feeling very lethargic. I went to a specialist and tested negative for Celiac. What the specialist told me to do was take it completely out of my body for a month, slowly integrate, bread, etc in small amounts. If I have the same reaction, I have the gluten intollerance. Well, when I did that, the reaction was even worse than before.

I have been completely gluten free for two years now and it has completely changed my life. My hair is much healthier, my hormones are normal, etc. Would it be worth it to have an endoscopy and an intestinal biopsy since I have now been gluten free for a couple of years?

No. Because you have been gluten free for so long your biopsy would likely be negative even if you had damage to begin with. They say the intestines can heal quickly after going gluten free. Even though my doctor was certain I had celiac because my blood tests were so highly positive I still had to continue to eat gluten until the day of my endoscopy just because it was possible even a few weeks of going gluten free could have caused my body to start healing to the point that it would not show the damage. So with 2 years you are very unlikely to get a correct result. If going gluten free has worked for you, keep doing it.

[Skylark]

What Newbee said. You would most likely have a normal endoscopy and your doctor will just say that you've always been fine.

I'm glad you figured out how to feel better!

[Roda]

From a celiac testing stand point it is not worth it to have a biopsy because of the high likelyhood that it will be normal. If you are having other problems or concerns that would warrent the procedure, do consider it. There are lots of other things an EGD(upper endoscopy) can look and test for.