The Gluten Challenge: Now or Never

Perhaps it seems strange to begin a blog about living gluten free during a time when I'm doing a Gluten Challege, and thus not following the diet. However, in less than 2 weeks I will finally be back full time, hard core on the gluten free diet. And I find that I can't wait. Even Hubs can't wait. He doesn't have any gluten issues himself, but he is so used to my gluten free cooking that he told me it feels weird eating "all this other stuff" and "I can't wait to go back to eating normally." Normal for us, is gluten free. 

So why am I off the diet? Well, after self-diagnosing myself 1.5 years ago and eating gluten free ever since, I've decided to try to get an official diagnosis. It's a long story for another post how I finally learned I was gluten intolerant and embarked on the huge life change that is going gluten free. But suffice it to say for now that due to the medical care I had at the time I self diagnosed, it just didn't happen. No one told me I should get tested, and I was feeling so much better that I didn't look into it.

Since then, as I have read more about celiac disease and gluten intolerance, I've realized that I should have been tested right away when I suspected what the problem was. The wonderful healing that comes from a gluten free diet is also knell of doom for accurate diagnosis (and diagnosis is hard enough to get accurately anyway). And the longer you are away from gluten, the more you heal and the harder it is to tell.



But there are benefits to diagnosis, and it is not impossible to get one. Just hard. It requires a undergoing a Gluten Challenge. This does not mean "the challenge of living gluten free", which many have assumed when I mentioned it, but rather "challenging the health of my body by reentering gluten into my system" and letting it wreak havoc so that I can be tested with a reasonable chance of informed results. It's not a pleasant process.

Moreover, the only thing a positive diagnosis from testing would tell me is whether I have celiac disease or not. If it's a yes, then I have it. If it's a no, then I might still have it (celiac disease can be difficult to diagnose), but I certainly have some variety of gluten intolerance, so the lifestyle I have adopted won't change.

Yet the more I've thought about it, the more I've decided I should do it, because it's really now or never. There will never be a good time to be sick and miserable. Right now I am not pregnant and have no children. I am in between jobs. Of all times, this seems it.

So again, why get tested? I have new doctors, and both of them (general practitioner and gastroenterologist) agree that I have a gluten problem based on what they know of my medical history. They think most likely it is celiac disease. The GI didn't think it was necessary for me to do a gluten challenge at first, but I mentioned benefits that could result.

For example: unless I am actually diagnosed through testing, I am not eligible for any drugs, treatments, and studies that may be available in years to come. Some drugs are currently in late stages of testing and may be on the market soon. Other benefits from diagnosis:

• knowing how thoroughly I have to avoid *all* contact with gluten, cross contamination, etc
• knowing whether my children are high risk
• simply having an easy answer to give people who ask me about it (may not be a good excuse, but why not tack it on)
  

My GI agreed to have me do the challenge and then get 2 types of testing at the end: bloodwork to test for antibodies, and an endoscopy (intestinal biopsy) which is considered the "gold standard" of celiac diagnosis.

This is week 5 of the challenge. I have 1 more to survive. DDay is Feb 5 and I can't wait.