chrissy

stay gluten free and have your blood work redone-----a drop in Ttg levels after being gluten free should eliminate any doubt your doc might have.

bette hagman's basic featherlight bread, when it is hot out of the oven and slathered in butter, tastes pretty much like regular wheat bread hot out of the oven. when one of my girls cooked this for the first time, i quit crying about their celiac diagnosis.

our ped gi tells me that celiac can cause liver changes----but i think that if you are gluten free, celiac should not be the cause of liver changes. i know that a positive ANA doesn't necessarily mean anything---people can have raised ANAs without having an autoimmune disease, but you obviously have one because you have celiac disease. my sister has autoimmune hepatitis and she also has PSC (another liver disease). i could ask her what she knows about the ASMA if you would like me to. my sister also is on thyroid meds.

kassie wants to know why that gal was looking on wikipedia if she is a chemisty/biology major??!!!

we were suspecting celiac in one of our girls----i tested the family since we had met our 100% coverage and i knew it was genetic---and we discovered 3 of the girls had celiac. one of them did not have any obvious symptoms, but her Ttg levels were higher than the one that had the most "classic" symptoms---and we weren't suspecting celiac in the one with the classic symptoms!!

i have not read through all of this thread, yet. i have/ had about 35-37 of the symptoms on the list (some of them seem to be repeats---just worded differently) i also remember a tick bite---but it was a LONG time ago. do any of you know of a doctor anywhere near me that would check for this? i live in southern idaho, far away from everything.

according to your blood tests, and the fact that you said you had occasional gluten, i would think that your negative test results are probably right. it only takes a little bit of gluten to perpetuate the autoimmune response in a celiac. this does NOT mean that you are not having a problem with gluten, it just means you probably don't have celiac disease.

the wikipedia entry isn't wrong----just the gal's interpretation of it. kneading bread dough DOES develop the gluten, but it doesn't CREATE the gluten. you knead bread dough so that the gluten develops into a nice stretchy structure to hold the bread together and help it rise nicely. bread that doesn't get kneaded enough won't rise as well. you have to knead the dough until little bubbles form in it. xanthan gum works the same way, kind of. have you ever mixed up a recipe and forgotten to add the xanthan gum at first-----then after adding it, the runny batter will thicken up a bit? we are "developing" the xanthan gum.

i had an endoscopy done in october. i told the surgeon that 3 of my children had celiac disease and wondered if he would do biopsies to check for celiac. ( i mean, as long as you are already down there....) he told me that he usually only did that if someone had active celiac disease. i keep wondering how he would know if i had active celiac disease UNLESS he did a biopsy. i took the lab report with me to the girls' ped gi to have him interpret it for me. after looking it over, he said, "how come he didn't biopsy the duodenum?"

just the fact that your sister has celiac disease is reason enough to get screened for it. when we suspected one of our kids had celiac, we tested the rest of the family----that is how we discovered that the other two girls had celiac, also. all three girls had different symptoms. my mother and two of my sisters have also been tested since my girls were diagnosed. my two step-children have not been tested, yet, but they are older and live away from home.

i would think it would be fine to wait 2 weeks to change your daughter's diet. who wants to make a diet change when going on vacation??!! what symptoms is your daughter having? did you ever get a copy of your daughter's tests from the clinic to be sure of what it is they actually tested. i know i asked you this before, but i have not been on this site much for awhile, so i didn't see if you had answered----sorry!! a gluten free diet can be a healthy diet, but i would want to be sure of the diagnosis before i put my child on a gluten free diet----but that is just me---there are plenty of people that try the diet without a definitive answer. if you are seeing a ped gi, though, you may want to give his advice a try----he sounds like he is willing to test again for celiac if other measures don't work.\ what about having your kids gene tested?

there is also the problem with the fact that enterolab does NOT test for total IgA levels. enterolab also will diagnose ALMOST EVERYONE with "gluten sensitive" genes----because dr. fine considers so many genes to be "gluten sensitive" genes that there is only a small chance that you WON'T have a gluten sensitive gene. also, enterolab will tell people that if they have positive antigliadin antibodies that they are having a reaction to gluten. this is not necessarily true. being constipated can raise AGA antibodies. there are even other conditions which can raise Ttg levels. it is probably not likely that someone will have raised Ttg levels and not have celiac, but it IS possible. celiac can be difficult to diagnose in some people, which is a really good reason to actually be SEEN and EXAMINED by a doctor when searching for a diagnosis rather than relying on a questionable, mail order blood test done in a lab by a doctor that has never laid eyes on you. also, the gluten free diet is used for other things and can be a healthy diet-----which would only make sence that a certain number of people are going to feel better when they go gluten free----even if they don't have celiac disease.

my computer was having trouble and i had to take it in to the shop. after getting it back, i was not able to log on to this site. when i requested a new password, i was told there was no one on the board registered under my name. i re-registered, and was logged on with my original screen name? anyone know what's up? i didn't have to put my info back in for my signature, either, it just popped back up when i re-registered.

which IgA test did they do? antigliadin, Ttg, or EMA?

our ped gi says that the tests aren't as reliable until after 3. i have read somewhere that young children don't always produce the antibodies. one of my kids is IgA deficient, but we know that he has the DQ2 gene. he will be tested yearly with an IgG test----we have already tested his total IgG levels to make sure that they are ok. we did his original IgG testing and gene testing through promethius lab.