I've been through the whole coeliac testing regime and will describe what they do here in Australia. I imagine it is similar everywhere. You can have a anti-gliadin blood test which INDICATES if you may have a reaction to gluten....indicates only. The only sure way to tell though is to have a colonoscopy with biopsies to test your intestinal villi (small finger-like projections that absorb nutrients). If your villi are flattened, this qualifies as coeliac (celiac in the US) disease. Gluten is not only found in breads and wheat. Rye, triticale, and even oats are suspect. Gluten is found in many seasonings and sauces (anti-caking agents for example), processed meats, barley, malt (yes- beer), and many more foods (even toothpaste...), and there is the ever present possiblity of cross-contamination, so just 'cutting out' obvious wheat products, despite your best intentions, may not eliminate gluten from your diet. You need to keep up a normal wheat diet (even if you suspect you have coeliac) and get tested for it. That way the results will be most accurate. The villi do recover temporarily in some people who go off gluten for awhile, but will damage again later when they go back on. If you do have coeliac then you need to contact your ceoliac society and get an ingredients list etc. to learn what you can and cannot have. A coeliac diet is for life and you cannot cheat. Often people test themselves later (cheat) and find there is no reaction, but that does not mean that damage to your health is not occuring, and that serious health problems later will not occur. Some people with coeliac have very little obvious digestive distress, but their health is affected by the lack of absorption of nutrients. The good news is that once on the diet you will not have serious life-threatening health problems later (unlike undiagnosed or diagnosed coeliacs who are still eating gluten), and most people get better (as villi recover) on the diet (I'm an exception as I'm still struggling with IBS-D seven years later and believe me I NEVER cheat on the gf diet- I don't even eat out much because of the cross-contamination fear). I'm trying this diet to see if I can stabalise. One final thing; if it does turn out you have the disease, cut out lactose as well as often you cannot digest that when the villi are flat. I hope that helps.
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Re: You don't need to startve to do an exclusion diet...
