Do celiac disease symptoms resolve after following a gluten free diet?
Temmuz 23, 2010 | Diet
I suspect that I might have some celiac issues with my health… I have extreme hunger, poor digestion, muscle aches and nerve pain.
I know there are blood tests you can take for testing, but I am wondering if you follow the gluten-free diet religiously, if other symptoms will go away (muscle pain, nerve pain) in time.
Comments (2)
I’m not a doctor, but I think you should investigate other possibilities before assuming you’re celiac unless:
You have noticed that every time you eat food that contains gluten you get diarrhea, but you don’t get it when you don’t
or
You’ve been keeping a food diary, and your symptoms reduce when you leave out gluten.
There are many and varied symptoms for celiac, and not everyone gets diarrhea, some get constipation (which is difficult to pin down, as it builds up over time), and some get an alternation between diarrhea and constipation.
Your symptom set is not typical, so far as I can tell from your question, but that doesn’t rule celiac out, it just means it is possible that other things may be causing these problems – and the nerve pain is something that should be investigated, I think.
Of course, there are other non-celiac forms of gluten intolerance, so if you are reluctant to invest in a potentially expensive investigation, you could try going gluten free for 3 weeks, then doing a challenge by eating gluten at every meal for a day. That should definitely show you one way or the other whether gluten is an issue for you.
Just because you have some of the symptoms that celiac disease causes does not mean you have celiac disease. If you have celiac disease and the nerve and muscle pains are caused by it, they take a long time to get better after you start the gluten free diet. It would be much better to get tested beforehand and then start the gluten free diet so that you know if you have celiac disease and have the potential for improvement because of the diet.
On the other hand, if you go gluten free and your hunger and digestion issues clear up, you might be on the right track.
The short answer to your question is that if you have celiac disease, eventually your symptoms will clear up although nerve pain usually takes awhile.