Christine- Kevieb? ? about celiac

[Anonymous]

Hello Christine, I think I read a post about your family discovering they had a gluten intolerence?? If it was you, it really made me start researching it. Think I have it too. I have felt bad for most of my life and couldn’t figure out why a flour tortilla would hurt my stomach, give me a headache, make me all shakey. I read about this blood test for anti bodies so I am going to the internist today to get tested. Any other testing that you all had done? Crazy, I cut out all wheat (and the many various forms) for 2 days and alot of my symtoms went away. Too bad I am starving! Tried some garbonzo bean flour in my cookies and almost vomited. Hope to hear from you! Thanks!

[Anonymous]

there are about 5 blood tests for a celiac panel. our ped gi just ran the tissue transglutaminase—it is more specific for celiac disease. the anti-endomysial is more specific also. make sure they don’t run just the anti-gliadin, because i think other conditions can raise the level of that. sounds like you definitely have a problem with wheat, even if you don’t have celiac. there is also a non-celiac gluten intolerance which causes the same symptoms, just not the intestinal damage. there are a number of people on the boards at celiac.com that have never “officially” been diagnosed with celiac, but they stay gluten free becaue they feel so much better.

we cook with flour mixes, rather than a single gluten-free flour. bean flour can be nasty—really bitter when uncooked. we haven’t used it very often. i recently made some bread from a mix that had some bean flour in it, and it rose really high and tasted pretty good. i am going to try working with the bean flour a little more. you need to add some xanthan gum to your baking to replace the gluten.

let me know how your test comes out. a lot of people have a history similar to yours before being diagnosed with celiac. i think it is missed so much because so many people don’t have what would be considered the “typical” symptoms.

[Anonymous]

Thanks! Guess I need to test my kids because it is hereditary. I am going to try celiac.com and get some info. Going to the health food store today to look for the mixes. Looks like this could get expensive…. and I am going to be baking again!

[Anonymous]

after one of my twins came back with a positive screen and an iffy biopsy, i tested the rest of the kids—-that’s how we found all three with celiac. i have 2 older kids that have not been tested yet. we know that one of the other kids has the gene, but no active disease. i am really interested to see which/or both of us carries the gene since as far as we know, no one in our families has ever been diagnosed with celiac.

[Anonymous]

Sarah, I’m a little late jumping in with this, but if you are going to be tested for celiac, you actually don’t want to cut gluten out of your diet until after the test. Apparently, not having gluten in your system when you do the test will mess with the results.

[Anonymous]

Thankyou for the advice, looks like you have had to do your research too! I had the test, but I ate some pretzels a couple hours before so that something would turn up. Crazy how great I feel after being off gluten for a week! Starving, but feeling great! (I’m mspi allergic to apples,and now wheat- like your little dd)

[Anonymous]

Let us know how the tests go. I’m working on convincing dh to go get it done. He has IBS type symptoms, but the more I’ve read about celiac, the more convinced I am that he fits the profile. Fortunately, most of Kaelyn’s symptoms fall into the wheat allergy category, not celiac, so I’m holding onto my hopes that she’ll grow out of her allergies. It certainly has made mealtimes much more challenging!

[Anonymous]

i don’t think pretzels a couple of hours before would be enough to produce antibodies—but i’m not sure that being off gluten for only a week prior to testing would make everything go back to normal, either.

[Anonymous]

Your probably right. At the time of the test I was only gluten free for a few days. I was just sort of toying with the idea, but I immediatly started to feel better on day #2 and thought I better test asap. So if it comes up inconclusive I will try it again. Thank you for the info. on testing Christine. And thanks for the advice Kim. Its nice to know that there are others out there to keep me grounded at times when my brain doesn’t seem to be functioning right . There is so much info now available on the web, it helps to narrow things down a bit. God knows how much info and learning this site has helped me aquire that the docs. never told me about.

[Author]

Posts