I'm starting to suspect that I have celiac disease. I recently decided to cut out all gluten from my diet and my digestion problems have improved drastically.
However, I'm definitely not back to my old self yet. I can only eat small amounts of food at a time and foods like raw vegetables and dairy are impossible for me to digest at this point.
Occasionally I have mild pains around my abdomen. I assume this is from damage that gluten caused to my intestines. When I was eating lots of gluten I had almost constant pain in my abdomen, so this is definitely improving over time. My bowel movements aren't "normal" yet, but they are improving. They are becoming more and more solid each time. My energy is also pretty low.
In a blood test I took a couple years ago, I received this result:
Gliadin Ab, SIgA - 6 U/ml
Which I believe indicated a subclinical gluten intolerance. Interestingly at this time I did not have severe digestion difficulties. However, on the same test I also had:
Total Salivary SIgA - 0 mg/dl
I believe this indicated that I had a depressed immune system. I would also get colds and flus very frequently around this time, at least once a month.
However, now in present day after improving my diet drastically through metabolic typing, I no longer get colds and flus nearly as often (I've had one in the past year). My hypothesis is that I improved my immune system and actually improved my body's ability to attack the gluten in my diet which caused an increase in digestion difficulties when eating gluten.
Anyway, I hope this gives you some background info on what I think is going on. I would love to hear your professional opinion on any of my observations. And specifically my questions are: What can I do to speed up the healing process? Do you have any tips on someone healing their intestines from celiac disease?
Thanks for your help,
Jesse
Hello Jesse,
Thank you for your sharing your road to optimal health asthis will be an inspiration to others as they start their journey.
It is my understanding that Glutamine can aid in the repair of damage to the small intestines as well as the use of pancreatic enzymes.
Good Health, Glen Depke Traditional Naturopath
Thanks Glen. It seems that I am slowly, but surely healing on my own. At first it was pretty painful to digest just about anything, but my pain is almost completely gone now. I've been eating just chicken legs and pears and been doing pretty well :). Home made chicken broth has also been very helpful because it is so easy to digest.
Slowly I plan to introduce foods I used to eat like dairy and see how I react to them.
Anyway...I wish I had discovered my problem with gluten earlier...maybe then I wouldn't have been such a skinny kid most of my life. I probably had small amounts of damage being done to my intestines my whole life, but didn't know it until it got very bad recently.
Now that I know what the problem is though, I plan on putting on a lot of good healthy weight.
Jesse E
You say you know what your problem is...and it may be true that you have Celiac Disease. However, the ONLY sure way to know is for you to undergo an upper endoscopy done by a gastroenterologist who would biopsy the first part of your small intestine. The biopsy specimens will be examined by a pathologist and the pathology report will say for sure whether you have Celiac Disease or not. Blood tests are not enough.