The yummiest gluten free brownies ever!

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I have Celiac Disease.

reference: http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/de.....02-FAQ.htm

Gluten intolerance is a little more difficult to diagnose because the definition is not universally agreed upon within the medical community. This make it very difficult for people who have not officially been diagnosed with Celiac Disease but still display many of the symptoms and have ‘abnormal’ test results. More research with regards to gluten intolerance is needed.

reference: http://ezinearticles.com/?Diag.....;id=239028

There are all sorts of websites that give plenty of quality information and here is a list of some of my favorites:
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http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/000233.htm
http://injust10pages.com/blog/.....rance_blog
http://www.health.harvard.edu/.....gluten.htm

Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disease (like Lupus, Hashimotos and Juvenile Diabetes). It basically means that your immune system confuses itself for a foreign body and attacks itself. Celiac Disease is a mostly genetic disease. There have been genetic markers found in the blood that are strongly linked to the condition (HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8). People with Celiac Disease also produce antibodies which show that the disease is ‘active’ and damage to the villi. The villi are like tentacles in your intestine that wiggle around and absorb the nutrients from food. When these villi get damaged, you struggle to absorb fats and other nutrients and can become very sick. To diagnose Celiac Disease you will have to have blood tests done first. If these come back positive, you’ll then be sent for a biopsy of the villi (which isn’t pleasant). If these show signs of Celiac Disease, you will be diagnosed. The diagnosis has NOTHING to do with symptoms. You can have no symptoms and still have the condition.

Compared to Celiac Disease, very little is known about non-Celiac gluten intolerance. Basically because most doctors don’t care. If there are no serological tests to prove you have a disease, it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately this is the case here. But there has been a lot of ground breaking research done in the past year that shows non-Celiac gluten intolerance is a very real condition. If you do nothing else and don’t bother to read the rest of my answer, please read this website- http://celiacdisease.about.com.....search.htm.

The tricky thing is that you’ve probably already begun a gluten free diet. So if you have not have the tests for Celiac Disease, unless you want to go back to eating gluten, it’s too late. For the doctors to observe the antibodies and damage caused by Celiac Disease, you must be eating gluten for at least 6 weeks before your tests. If you’re feeling a lot better now, you most likely don’t want to feel crap again! And at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. The outcomes will still be the same, if you test negative for Celiac Disease, then you’ll probably go back to eating gluten free because you feel better, if it comes back positive then you have no choice but to go back on a gluten free diet. If you feel better eating gluten free, then you have your answer.

But the main things you should be aware of, do not screw around with your diet. If you definitely have just a gluten intolerance, you could eat gluten every now and again and just put up with it. But if you have Celiac Disease, this a big no-no! You should also ask your doctor to test your iron, b12, foliate and vitamin D levels. These can be decreased in Celiac Disease. Also, if you’re prone to broken bones, then I’d recommend a bone density scan. Osteoporosis occurs in people with Celiac Disease at a higher rate than the general public. Also, people with Celiac Disease may have more problems with their teeth. So regular check ups are very important. And also be aware that having one autoimmune disease, makes you more likely to develop more.

But none of these ^^ problems occur in non-Celiac gluten intolerance, they ONLY occur in Celiac Disease. So this is not advice that you should go out and take/do. You probably don’t need a bone scan and it’s likely your teeth are fine, but it’s just something to keep in the back of your mind.

I hope that’s helpful.

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Diagnosed with Celiac Disease 4 years ago, many other family members have it.

If you were diagnosed with gluten intolerance but weren’t tested for Celiac disease, I would get the celiac test, too – it’s a blood test, and you have to get it before you go gluten free or it won’t test properly. There is no test for gluten intolerance except avoiding gluten and seeing how you feel. And unfortunately, improving on a gluten free diet is what happens with celiac disease, too, so the only way someone knows they are truly gluten intolerant is if they get all the tests for celiac disease, those are negative, and they STILL improve on a GF diet.

4 members of my family are celiacs. One is gluten intolerant. And I want to stress that there aren’t any tests for gluten intolerance, truly. They only just had conclusive proof that it exists and is separate from celiac disease last year. There are some stool tests that claim to test for this, but they can’t indicate celiac disease vs. gluten intolerance, so they don’t distinguish between the two. Some blood tests claim to test for this, but they deal with allergies rather than intolerance.

Celiac Disease is an auto-immune disorder where gluten triggers the body to attack itself. It destroys the villi in the gut and makes a person slowly starve to death. And it can be really slowly – some people have this disease for decades, slowly getting sicker and more exhausted and more and more problems cropping up. It lead to severe vitamin deficiencies that will need to be monitored, along with other conditions that can happen in conjunction with auto-immune disorders. It is genetic, and others in the family should be tested if one comes back positive.

Gluten intolerance is, well…they don’t know. It’s a catch-all term used to mean ‘eating gluten makes your body do bad things.’ It might inflame the intestines and inhibit nutrient absorption, it might give headaches, it might cause eczema issues, it might cause joint pain. All sorts of things. They don’t know what the mechanism is. They don’t know what the results are. They don’t know what the risks are. We may end up discovering that it’s a number of gluten-related problems that have been put under one umbrella, even. It’s just too new to know, yet.
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