Celiac Misdiagnosed As Fibromyalgia?

[mrstrishch]

Hello all! I'm new here... just found you all a few days ago, but have been reading and reading since then. WOW, so much here!

Anyhoo... I was reading an article in a magazine a couple of weeks ago about celiac disease and it said that at least 15% of people who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia actually turn out to have celiac instead. Woah... that's quite a lot in my opinion. Well, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia almost 10 years ago, have had symptoms for over 12 years. Things just continue to go down hill. After reading that article I started researching on the internet. It seems I have quite a few of the symptoms of celiac, but I've had so many dr.'s in the past basically think I'm a hypochondriac that I don't want to bring this up quite yet. I actually didn't dr. at all for over 5 years and just recently went to a new dr. because of pain and depression. She's very understanding of the fibro, and I don't want to look like a hypochondriac again. Soooooooooooo...

I'm going gluten-free for a while. I figure if there's a 15% chance that this could be the problem after all, then it's worth a try. If there is a noticeable difference then I'll talk to a dr. about it.

How long does it take to see results?

Has anyone else dealt with being misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia?

My mom has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia as well (several years before I was), and one of my sons (16yo) shows symptoms and another son (18yo) has problems concentrating that have always been attributed to borderline ADD (he doesn't have the hyper part). I'm trying not to get my hopes up that this might be what's wrong with all of us... something that actually has a chance of being treated by diet and leave us feeling better than we have in years. wow... trying not to go there.

[gf4life]

Hi Trish and welcome to the board.

You may want to bring the subject up to your new doctor before trying the diet. It is a simple blood test to start and it may very well just get you a diagnosis. If you choose the diet first you could mess up your future test results and any hope of convincing other family members to get tested could go down the drain.

Please do not let the doctors make you feel like you are a hypochondriac. Take the article in with you if you want to to let you doctor see where you are getting your information, and write down all of your other celiac symptoms so you don't forget once you are there. It might help to mention that others in your family have similar problems.

God bless,

Mariann

[mrstrishch]

Thank you for your reply and your concern, Mariann! I'm going to show my Beloved husband the thread about reasons to get tested and we'll discuss it from there. Our reasoning up to now is that we know our other family members will have no problem either going gluten-free or being tested if they see a difference in my own health. Also, with being *over*weight I guess I'm just afraid the dr.'s will roll their eyes. Even though I've read time and again that celiac sometimes manifests in weight gain, the medical community seems to not agree... at least those not completely informed. I've had very bad experiences with dr.'s in the past, so I guess I'm gun-shy. The other points brought up in the other thread were good, though, so we'll see...

[cyberbec]

Can you tell me the name of the magazine and the month the article was in? I would like to have a friend read it.

Thanks,

cyberbec