Celiac Disease

So after a few weeks of trying to figure out why I get such awful stomach aches after eating, Ive pretty much come to the conclusion that I might have celiac disease. A doctor has suggested to me in the past that this is possible but we never further pursued it.

Is there anyone here with this? I know that I need to be on a gluten free diet to avoid the stomach pains but what if for some reason I accidentely eat a peice of bread? Is there any sort of medicine to help rid the pain? I plan on trying a gluten free diet for awhile but there are always chances of making a mistake. I just want to know if pepto bismal or any other kind of medicine will help with the pain?

Are they going to test you to make sure? I don't have this though I have been tested. There are other conditions that can be similar in symptoms so that is why I also think getting a proper dx. If you are i think it can take time for your gi system to heal. I was under the assumption even some OTC meds you have to be careful of. I would ask your doctor

I want to get tested to make sure but they already informed me that the test is extremely expensive and after reading a lot on the internet, I have found that a lot of tests come back with a false negative. So then the doctor charges even MORE money to do a biopsy.

Sadly I cant afford any of that.

Don't jump to the worst case scenario. Celiacs has a lot of really negative long term consequences, and can be fatal. It could be that you just have a wheat or gluten intolerance. Try eliminating things one at a time from your diet until your stomach pains go away, and then add things back in one at a time until you discover what it is that causes the pain.

The top food intolerance/allergies are: dairy (lactose); wheat; peanuts, shellfish, eggs, and gluten.

I went through something similar about a year ago... I went completely gluten free for about three months, and then slowly started adding stuff back in. After almost a year of no wheat, my stomach problems have subsided and I can eat pretty much whatever I want. If I ever get the pains again, I know that a sort of "wheat cleanse" will probably help.

thanks for the replies. Youre right, I shouldnt just jump to the worst case scenario (I tend to do that a lot). I really hope that its not celiace disease. I have been eliminating wheats from my diet and my stomach problems have gone away completely...and then I eat a flour tortilla and the pain comes back.

So i THINK its the wheat thing. I hope its just an intolerance and youve definitely given me hope couselork. It would be great if I could eventually add all those foods back.

Thanks!

priceless7, it does sound more like an intolerance to me. My sister has celiac disease and her symptoms are much more insidious than immediate stomach pain. ( maybe that is how it goes for some, I'm not sure) She just feels generally ill,  her joints ache, and her complexion gets 'orange peel' like.

You're lucky that it so much easier to find gluten free items and they are better labelled these days.

In medical circles, wheat and gluten intolerance is celiac disease. Here is an excellent article on all things celiac including how generally unhelpful both the blood tests and the biopsies are in actually ruling celiac disease in or out.

http://www.celiac.com/articles/75/1/Extract-f rom-Nutrition-Therapy-by-Stephen-J-Gislason-M D/Page1.html

The symptoms of gluten intolerance are extremely varied. So while chris1208 has a sister with more the rheumatoid response, another can simply feel tired, yet another can have bloating but no pain, another is anemic with no other symptoms...

(BTW the chris1208 -- having a direct family member diagnosed with celiac disease means you may want to have the blood test to determine if you have the genetic marker -- that way if you do develop symptoms at any point in later life, you know sooner than most you need to go gluten-free)

Celiac disease is waaaay more common than previously thought. In North America, physicians often miss it as their education comes from drug companies and there are no drugs to treat celiac disease (you just avoid gluten). It takes on average 7 years to be correctly diagnosed with celiac disease in North America. It takes on average 3 months to be correctly diagnosed with it in France.

I am celiac, as is my maternal uncle and my mother. You can have the condition from birth. Or you can develop it at any point in your life if you have the genetic marker. Triggers are often intestinal illness or even pregnancy. My case was triggered by an intestinal infection.

Despite our general addiction to wheat, I have been gluten-free for close to two years and I love it. The worst part is getting good at knowing all the hidden places you find gluten: some ice cream (seriously), soya sauce, california rolls (if it's not real crab), salad dressings, some dried spices, some ketchups...it's ridiculous how many products use it as filler.

Wheat-free is very different from gluten-free. So if you are celiac, you will not have a complete resolution of your symptoms until  you eat a gluten-free diet. However, if you eat a gluten-free diet, your symptoms (however varied they are) should disappear within 3 months. This is absolutely the best way to determine if you are celiac. If you put too much stock in lab tests, then you could indeed have celiac disease but be told you don't.

There are also absolutely no long term consequences to having celiac disease *if* you maintain a gluten-free diet for life. The long term consequences of celiac disease only occur if you continue to eat wheat/gluten. Then you will develop rheumatoid arthritis, skin problems, anemia, malabsorption, serious vitamin deficiencies and eventually bowel cancer. And often by the time these symptoms appear, a gluten-free diet does not completely resolve the symptoms because the damage to the intestinal villi is permanent and not reversible at that point. You want to go gluten-free ideally long before the villi are damaged.

Thankfully, the removal of all your celiac disease symptoms make gluten-free living such an enormous relief and bring back a quality of life you thought was gone forever, that there is no temptation to 'just have one' cookie at the office. Sorry it's a long post and I hope it helps.