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973741 tn?1342342773

How can you tell the difference between celiac disease and gluten sensitivity?

Gluten free is all the rage. Sigh.  But how do you tell the difference between gluten sensitivity and celiac?  And how do you diagnose gluten sensitivity?
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Avatar universal
See my comment above to the other responder but in response to your question as to how gluten sensitivity is diagnosed, it's often with a food tolerance test AFTER all appropriate tests are done for coeliac and they can't come up with a diagnosis. Because then it genuinely is just a sensitivity.
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17357660 tn?1573804379
I went to a alternative doctor, who did a bloodtest and it came back that I was Gluten intolerant. I think, by eliminating gluten for a month or two and then re-introducing, you can tell if you have a big reaction or not. Is it's celiac disease I think you will even react to spores of gluten, so I would try that first.

Does it really matter if it's coeliac disease or sensitivity? If you really want to know, you have to get a gut-biopt but then I think you have to be eating gluten regularly. And even then the tests can come back negative, while you might feel better without the gluten.

I do feel a lot better if I don't eat gluten (and sugar and milk products too actually). I once had a day that I really didn't care, well, let me say that the toilet and I got very good friends that day... Spores of gluten I think I can handle, but perhaps my body thinks differently. Maybe I don't recognise the symptoms as symptoms, because I have eaten gluten for about 39 years, just started 2 years ago eating glutenfree.
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1 Comments
Actually it REALLY matters. Firstly, the difference between gluten sensitivity and coeliac is that the latter is an autoimmune disease which means you need to be checked and monitored to ensure you are not developing refractive illness. You are predisposed to develop further autoimmune illness and you are more susceptible to certain blood cancers. Your compliance is absolutely critical to your survival and ability not to develop cancer of any sort.

Secondly, a person who is gluten sensitive who is exposed to gluten accidentally, is not nearly as ill as a coeliac is. The level of toxicity is simply not the same.

So in response to your comment, there is an enormous and vast difference between those two health conditions and the one is exponentially more serious and needs to be acknowledged as such.

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