Wondering If I Should Get Tested

[megsybeth]

I just came to this board while searching related to my son who I strongly suspect has celiac. The thing is, the more I read, the more I wonder if I should get tested myself. It's not something I ever would have thought of but then I read different things and they connect to a lot of health issues I've always dismissed as minor or psychosomatic. As a child I sometimes had stomach problems, pain mostly, but thought it was just stress, also migraines and canker sores. I still often get canker sores. And I sometimes have stomach pains and diarrhea but I always just figure it's from too much coffee or not sleeping well. Twice I've gone to the emergency room for extreme stomach pain that they couldn't diagnose and I always worried I was getting an ulcer.

I've never noticed a strong reaction to wheat but I do notice that I have an aversion to a lot of wheat products. I've always hated sandwiches, usually just eating the insides. But then again I love cake and cookies and will literally eat them until I'm sick.

I don't really know if I get bloating. I guess I'm not that in tune with my body but I do have a very big belly compared to the rest of me, which is very thin. When I was a child I looked like a spider.

I do think I'll have blood work done as a way to get a better picture of my son, but do you think I'm just spending too much time thinking of these things and reading into what I have? I don't really think of myself as sick, but I guess if I do have celiac, I need to be taking care of my body.

[Takala]

The genes are hereditary and he would have had to have inherited them from somebody... so if it did turn out that he had celiac, they would recommend that you get tested also, as a first degree relative.

You might also not be sick enough yet to think of yourself as "sick," like you said, because for you what might feel normal might be for another person feeling bad. There is something really odd going on in our culture right now that we seem to need so many people medicated for depression, anxiety, thyroid, diabetes, asthma, bone loss, heartburn, etc - all these can be linked to celiac. The chemicals that effect mood in the brain are mostly made and live in your intestines, not your brain, but in your gut, along with all that bacteria with which you cannot digest your food.... alter the gut flora, say, with a wheat and sugar diet, and sometimes strange things happen.

Intense sugar cravings for junk food area also a sign of malnourishment, as your body interprets being low on some minerals as "FEED ME NOW" which gives you a temporary surge when you eat that junk, but then you crash afterwards and the cycle begins again. Once you are getting what you actually need, the desire for a lot of junky carbohydrates diminishes.

[MitziG]

You sound a lot like a celiac, and yes, you should be tested. The signs of celiac can be so varied and unpredicatble that the medical establishment would do well to test EVERYONE, before making another diagnosis and writing a rx. Celiac just messes with your body in a m8llion, often vague and unspecific, ways.

[Celiac Mindwarp]

Remember, get tested BEFORE you give up gluten if at all possible.

[megsybeth]

Thanks everyone! I do think I'll get tested and will call my doctor tomorrow. I'm just going to have to learn more about the testing to figure everything out. The thing is my son has had a full celiac panel at least twice before now and stool testing and was negative. But I want to look at the numbers again. He is getting an endoscopy in two weeks, which he hasn't had. He was initially tested for short stature but now he seems to be a poster child for celiac with all the GI symptoms and no parasite, infection showing up on the tests. It's not that I want to get a positive test, but for my son especially I want to know something so that we can help him and know it's not something even scarier.