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Crohn's Disease
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Posted 9/27/2007 4:10 AM (GMT 0)
Anyone ever been diagnosed with celiac disease after crohn's?  My doctor wants me to take a blood test to rule out celiac - I'm nervous!  I don't want to give up wheat and gluten too!  I've already had to give up dairy.
Posted 9/27/2007 5:07 AM (GMT 0)
Interesting that your post showed up today. I was in the ER again this time for two impacted wisdom teeth and a failed root canal...Yepee!

Anyway, I met my first celiac patient as I was waiting to be seen. I have often questioned the association of celiac disease, wheat intolerance & cd. I have considered reducing my wheat intake just to see what would happen with the cd. Not that I haven't significantly reduced it because of the fiber content anyway. By the way...wheat is now in just about EVERY processed food. Also, I question association of soy products as well. A lot of the soy products on the market today are processed from genectically altered seed. The strictly organic soy products made from hybrid seed seem to show better results from what I've studied so far. I am a bread/cookie junkie anyway and have had to give up every dairy product that is not non-fat.

I got the celiac patient's phone number so I could follow up with her on recipes and the like. She also mentioned to me that 4 people in her immediate family have CD as well. Hmmmmm. I will try and contact her hopefully this weekend and pick her brain. She is well educated and a self proclaimed gormet cook to boot. Her first words to me were verbatim "GET RID OF THE WHEAT"! Her husband was actually the patient in the ER with ongoing gastro problems and she is a special education teacher by trade and was planning to go into work after their ER visit...so I thought I'd give it till the weekend to contact her since we were both up all night long. Also, I may end up having emergency oral surgery before the week is out myself. When I contact her I'll try and post whatever related info I get.
Posted 9/27/2007 12:39 PM (GMT 0)
My son had the blood test for celiac disease about 9 month prior to his diagnosis of CD. The test came up negative, but I still believe there's a sensitivity there for him. Haven't I read, too, that a person can be negative for celiac but still be wheat sensitive?

Anyone know how accurate the celiac blood test is? I think it's only been around a few years.
Posted 9/27/2007 4:06 PM (GMT 0)
Celiac cannot be diagnosed from a blood test alone, and I believe there are 2 or 3 separate blood test that should be done. If the blood tests comes back positive, a biopsy must also be done. Don't stop ingesting wheat before the biopsy as it may skew the results.

There's also a difference between Celiac (which is a disease) and an allergic reaction to wheat. You could have one or the other and sometimes both.
Posted 9/27/2007 4:15 PM (GMT 0)
Yes, 14 days ago I found a research some swedish scientists have done by The Academical (University) Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. They got an important award for this research in feb, 2007. They use a new technique to find if a person has certain reactions to milk, gluten and their proteins. They use something that is called a mucosal patch technique, where they are able to measure proteins from digest food that have passed the colon. The patches are on a silicon baloon, and the inflammated materials are found on these when they take out the baloon again. This important science will show the mechanism behind the inflammatorical prosesses in the mucus.

For instance: By giving the persons milk and gluten they are studying what happens in the mucus of the colon, and by excluding different possible triggers one by one, they may find out which trigger is not tolerated. The gut is a huge organ which units different diseases, and it is common that ppl. with inflammated intestines have crossover illnesses.

Scientists have the latest years assumed that milk and gluten are triggers for different inflammatorical diseases in the gut, says the responsible researcher, Maria Liden. During the latest years scientists also suspects that a certain sensitivity to gluten may excist in spite of a lack of the typical symptoms of the disease.

The research group in Uppsala have seen that the autoimmune disease Sjogrens syndrom is more common against pasients with gluten intolerance. These pasients have a lot of symptoms from the intestines, and when using the new technique they found an increased gluten- and milk reactivity. The feeling of wellness increased when they stopped using milk and gluten.

I have a copy of this article, but it's written in swedish, so I have tried to translate it to a sort of english ;-), hope I will be forgiven if my grammar and spelling is a bit confusing.
The name of the researcher is Maria Liden, MD, and other persons participating is: Ralf Nisell, Tryggve Ljung Schering-Plough.
The best from
Ingrid
Posted 9/28/2007 3:51 AM (GMT 0)

Thanks so much for your feedback!  It really opens your eyes to the diversity and magnitude of this curious disease.  I'll find out on Monday weather the celiac test is negative or positive, but know that one test doesn't determine the overall problem.

Have a great weekend :-)

Posted 9/28/2007 4:52 AM (GMT 0)
My blood test was negative for celiac - had it been positive, I would've had to undergo the small bowel biopsy to confirm. With that said, while I am not a celiac, I am extremely intolerant/sensitive to gluten, wheat and related things. I also have big issues with dairy - although I can tolerate plain good yogurt. I have been 95% gluten, wheat & dairy free for over 3 months now. The difference in how I feel is incredible. I have no more gut pain, other than my typical IBS w/C - that doesn't change regardless of what I eat, I've lost over 20 pounds and I look healthy (skin, eyes, etc). Do I have crohn's? Jury will always be out on that one, but my GI & I feel I don't and never did. However, I've had "issues" with foods for years - as far back as I can remember actually. Frankly, I haven't felt this healthy in a very long time.

This is just my experience, but I will say it's worth pursuing, IF, and it's a big if, you feel it's worth it. It was (is) very difficult to do. Finding GF things isn't easy and holy smokes, the stuff is expensive. It's been worth the effort for me though. There are no easy answers or ways to do this. You either cut it all out or not. I've learned that over the past few months. :)
Posted 9/28/2007 1:39 PM (GMT 0)
I was tested for celiac, I think some doc's rule this out as a matter of course..
Posted 9/28/2007 7:54 PM (GMT 0)

my son was first diagnosed with celiac - based upon symptoms. A really good book to read about it is Going Against the Grain by Melissa Diane Smith. In it she writes about Celiac, gluten allergy, and glueton sensitivity, and the tests that or done to dx. She gives a lot of recipes and meal plans, full of gluton free substitues. She also gives a list of supplements to augment a gluten free diet. My experince with it was that it was hard to find the grain substitutes, and took a lot more time to prepare a meal... I also found out the hard way that the diet full of raw fresh vegies and fruit, can do a lot of damage to someone with cd. My sympathy goes out to anyone that has to live gluten free....

Nat

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