March 16, 2010
Is it possible i have coeliac disease?
Category: Coeliac Disease
I am 18 years old, for the last couple months i have been feeling real tired, had no energy and have had pains in my gut. I had blood tests a couple days ago and they said my antibodies are highly sensitive for coeliac disease. Does this mean that i have got the disease? Howcome it has only occured in the last couple months, i though you had to be born with this kind of thing for it to occur.
4 Responses to “Is it possible i have coeliac disease?”
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March 16th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease
You can also look on http://www.webmd.com and talk to doctors on there and ask them questions about it.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Coeliac disease is also called Gluten enteropathy and it points to an intolerance to gluten the protein in wheat. The best thing to do is to eliminate wheat from your diet for a period. See how you go on and then reintroduce it to see if the symptoms reappear. If so present your finding to the doctor and he will help. There are many gluten free options in supermarkets nowadays.
Good luck
March 16th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
The disease is, at its core, an intolerance for gluten. In other words, it is an allergy. As with any allergy, most adult sufferers are born with the allergy or develop it as a child. however, there are some allergies – and gluten is one of the most prominent amongst them – that can develop in adulthood as well. So yes, it is possible that you have developed the disease. Exhaustion, abdominal pain, and abnormalities in the white blood count (antibodies fall under this category) are all symptoms of coeliac disease – but your doctor will probably do further tests to determine the diagnosis for certain, as there are other disorders that can cause similar symptoms.
If you do have coeliac disease, your doctor will explain how to manage it properly. As with any other dietary disorder or allergy, you will have to be careful what you eat, carefully monitor your intake of anything that may have gluten, and check in regularly with your doctor, but as long as you are responsible the condition is quite easy to manage. My best friend has the disease, and she has been fine.
Hang in there!
March 16th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Ok, here is the CORRECT answer.
Celiac is a genetic, AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE (antigen caused, not histamine caused like an allergy) that is triggered by exposure to gluten. It is in the same catagory as Diabetes1, Lupus, Chron’s etc. This is NOT an allergy at ALL!
You carry the genes, (at least 40% of the population does) and then at some point it seems to get triggered. No one is certain what triggers it, there are many theories out there though. Some people feel that it is trauma or stress to your body, surgery, an accident, length of breastfeeding, age when you are exposed to GLUTEN (in wheat,barley, rye, triticale, spelt, etc.) , amongst other things. I personally fist noticed symptoms when I was about your age, and was misdiagnosed with lactose intolerance and IBS.
Anyway, what they probably got was a celiac blood panel consisting of the following tests, you need to go to the link and scroll down to screening tests:
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/celiac/
what they are looking for is a high TTG (indicating inflammation or autoimmune process), and a positive gliadin IGG and IGA antibodies. Those are the antibodies that they said are highly sensitive. It doesn’t mean you have celiac, it just means that you body will produce them in high numbers (usually, but that is getting into IGA defiency and they will test for that at the same time) if you are a celiac.
If those numbers are high, then it is most likely that you have celiac.
Dropping just wheat from your diet will do you no good as gluten in hidden in everything, and not just limited to wheat. It is any grain in the within the grass tribe Triticeae. Think MALT (that’s barley), modified food starch, vitamin E in your lip balm, etc. Also do NOT go on a gluten free diet and see if that helps, you need to be making antibodies to have the tests come back positive. If you go gf early, your tests run the risk of a false negative, thus prolonging your diagnosis and healing.
Hope this helps, and the other answers do not confuse you. So basically what you are waiting on is to find out your antibody levels. This test has a failry quick turn around, you will have your answer in a matter of days.
Good luck!