drued

You have been bombarded with steroids and antibiotics nearly all your life. No wonder your system is such a mess. Try the Paleo diet (which is free of most allergens) for three months to see if there is a difference. Add a good probiotic daily (one that does not include L.Casei)-- this is very important. Due to the extensive nature of your treatments, no doubt you will need longer than three months to see any startling change, but you never know. Good luck.

I was also told that there are tons of people out there who are labeled "Celiacs" but are in fact only intolerant to Gluten (or non-celiac GI). So at the end of the day you really need a great doctor for an accurate diagnosis. Yeah I agree that the treatment is the same but to get a 100% accurate diagnosis, a great doctor is needed.

An elevated tTg or EMA (anti-self antibodies) indicates damage to the intestinal wall. Your antibodies were positive directly to gliadin, which in themselves do not prove intestinal damage, but would prove gluten intolerance. However, your symptoms are very suspicious for celiac disease - in particular the low B12 and the rapid weight loss. If your doctor did not run a total IGA antibody test, then he should have. If you are deficient in the IGA antibody your tTg and EMA test will be falsely negative. Celiac disease is not the worst form of gluten intolerance, considering all the conditions which can result from gluten intolerance. (See Healthier Without Wheat/Stephen Wangen). If you are a person who is obssessed with knowing for sure whether you actually have celiac disease, which must be diagnosed with a biopsy (although false positives are not uncommon), then you will need to get back on a gluten diet for at least 6 weeks before having the biopsy. Some doctors ask for 3 months. Do you really want to do that to your body? But if you don't think you can be motivated to follow a gluten-free diet without the positive diagnosis of celiac disease, then by all means go back on gluten and get the biopsy.

I've been following Bard's Beer for about 6 months. They sent an email to me stating that they should have gluten-free beer by late July or early August. They were asking that people go to distributors and tell them about getting their beer. I went to the Ramapo web site and it said the price of the beer was $45 per case plus $15 shipping. Whew! That is also different than the prices that were quoted on this board.