Doctor Says "You're Not Alergic, But Don't Eat Gluten..."

You may not be allergic, but you may have a sensitivity so for the sake of justification just say that you're sensitive to the negative effects of gluten.

"It hurts when I do this," I said to my doctor.

His reply, "Well, then don't do that."

IMO, blood tests are not the end all/be all of determining if you've got an issue, especially with something like gluten. I don't have an "official" gluten allergy but I am definitely intolerant. I get very achy, migraines, so, so tired and extremely emotional. My kids are the same way but when we steer clear, we're fine.

I have a friend who is so sensitive that if her husband eats something with gluten in it and kisses her she is extremely sick for days afterward. She had blood tests but they all came back negative. Her doctor told her that regardless of what the tests showed, clearly she is unable to tolerate gluten and to avoid it. She avoids gluten and feels good, she eats it, she's sick.

I would suggest if you realize you're feeling better without the gluten, stay away from it for a few weeks at least. Then have a gluten filled day and see how you feel afterward. If you suddenly feel like crap or have a return of your symptoms then I think it's pretty clear.

I know the general consensus here is that gluten free is the current fad but for some of us we really can't handle it. I would happily eat gluten again if it didn't make me feel so horrible and I wrestled with giving it up for a long time.

I agree the blood tests do not always come out positive when you have a sensitivity. If you feel much better without it I would say that's proof right there that you're better off not eating it

My doctor said the same to me after testing negative for Celiac. I had been having severe heartburn and every other gastrointestinal issues known to man. I was always having headaches and migraines on a weekly basis. I just felt like crap. So, I decided since I needed to lose weight that I would again try a low-carb approach...which is gluten free as well. I feel like a million bucks compared to before. The answer was clear for me. Gluten allergy? No. Gluten sensitivity? Very much so.

Even for those without gluten allergy or sensitivity, gluten causes inflammation. If you have a specific inflammatory process going on, you will likely see improvement if you decrease gluten.

You'll get 5 million responses that say there's not reason to avoid gluten unless you are Celiac. The flaw in this is that gluten is processed into foods that do not naturally contain gluten (it's good marketing, and it's cheap), so you can eat a diet that looks identical to one eaten in the 1920s and your gluten intake is many multiples higher.

It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.

It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.

Great point. I always tell people to try making their own bread before they cut it out. Most of them come back to me and say that they're fine when they make the bread themselves but not when they buy it...I can't give a causal explanation but it's interesting stuff...unless of course you are a celiac sufferer, in which case it wouldn't help.

One cause for concern is that if you had a test for coeliacs and it has come back negative and a then Nurse told you the negative result means you are not allergic to gluten. Coeliacs is not a gluten intolerance or allergy but an auto immune issue and having the test will only prove you dont have coeliacs not that you are allergic to wheat or gluten. I' have got coeliacs and if I took an allergy test would probably get a negative reaction. If I had a nurse tell me this I would go back and ask for someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

I agree that cutting out gluten can sometimes be beneficial to those who have problems with their joints

It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.

Funny you say that...my dog is allergic to wheat. Never would have imagined.

I know the general consensus here is that gluten free is the current fad but for some of us we really can't handle it. I would happily eat gluten again if it didn't make me feel so horrible and I wrestled with giving it up for a long time.

that isn't what most people say here. Most people here would advise someone who has an actual medical condition that's made worse or caused by gluten to avoid gluten, or if gluten makes them feel ill, even if it's not from a diagnosed medical condition to still avoid it, because it's a bad idea to eat foods that are obviously making you ill.

the fad is people who don't have any such condition avoiding it because someone told them it was a "bad food" and that it makes everyone ill. There are a lot of people who don't have any symptoms at all from eating gluten, whose bodies cope with it just fine, who are avoiding it either because they fear some imaginary (for them) health problems from it or because they believe it to be the sole cause of their obesity. Even when some of them lose weight just by giving up gluten, it's because they are now eating fewer calories, which they could have achieved without giving up gluten. It's these people who the comments about gluten free being a fad is aimed at. Gluten allergy, intolerance, celiacs, etc have all been known about for decades, but it's only recently that people with no issues at all with gluten are being convinced to give it up for no reason. Telling these people that they can eat gluten and shouldn't worry about it =/= telling people that there's no such thing as gluten allergy/intolerance/etc.

OP: if gluten is making you ill, don't eat it. As has been said in the thread already, the blood tests for things like allergies don't correctly diagnose in all cases, i.e. just because the blood test says you're not allergic of intolerant, that doesn't mean you're not allergic or intolerant. Your doctor knows that, your nurse doesn't (nurses are not qualified to diagnose conditions or prescribe treatment) so avoid gluten. Any comments about avoiding gluten being a fad are not aimed at you.

^ This. The advice you received is from a MD and giving it up is helping you. That is absolutely not what many of us who are critical of the anti-gluent bandwagon are talking about. What we are talking about is the numerous homeopaths and chiropractors out there generally advising people to give it up or try giving it up for a while. The proportion of the population who is actually celiac (or otherwise believed to be gluten sensitive) is quite small.

Celiac is NOT an allergy. It's an auto immune disorder. People who don't have Celiac can still be allergic to wheat, gluten, corn, rice, any number of cereal grains or their ingredients. Then there's the issue of "sensitivity", which for some reason is listed as different than an allergy. Not sure why.

It's perfectly within the realm of possibility that you DO NOT have Celiac but you DO have an allergy or sensitivity. Also, I've known people with Celiac who've taken the test multiple times before it came back positive. The tests are difficult to administer properly and are often administered by people who just don't know what they're doing. Or for that matter don't even realize exactly what Celiac is. To some people this doesn't matter, as long as they know to avoid gluten. To others they want to absolutely know for sure if they have Celiac, allergy, or sensitivity.

I wish you well giving up gluten. It's tricky, for sure. 2 of our 3 daughters had gluten sensitivity that became so severe that when we finally figured out what it was, it wasn't JUST the gluten anymore. We had to give up almost all cereal grains, along with some other foods that were helping with their GI irritation. Eventually, when their bodies healed enough, we were able to re-introduce all foods but gluten. Now, we're JUST gluten free. Which is a challenge, but much better than being cereal grain free, for sure.

One cause for concern is that if you had a test for coeliacs and it has come back negative and a then Nurse told you the negative result means you are not allergic to gluten. Coeliacs is not a gluten intolerance or allergy but an auto immune issue and having the test will only prove you dont have coeliacs not that you are allergic to wheat or gluten. I' have got coeliacs and if I took an allergy test would probably get a negative reaction. If I had a nurse tell me this I would go back and ask for someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

I agree that cutting out gluten can sometimes be beneficial to those who have problems with their joints

I agree with this. A few years back I was suffering from severe depression, lethargy (sleeping in until 10 am, when I went to bed at a normal time), clumsiness, and brain fog. Not to mention either running to the bathroom in a hurry or being backed up six ways to Sunday. After reading about gluten intolerance I eliminated gluten for a week. Within a week I was sleeping normally, waking up with energy, and going to the bathroom normally as well. I went back on gluten and felt like crap--either vomiting after meals or falling asleep into a coma-like state-- but I wanted to get blood tests for celiac. They came back negative, but my doctor advised me that 1) 20% of celiacs have false negatives on blood tests, and 2) that obviously cutting gluten out made me feel better. I could have gone for an endoscopy, but money was an issue. My doctor said, "You are really your best laboratory and evidence; if what you're doing is making you feel better, then do it.

Gluten intolerance is a spectrum. There is celiac and then there are people who have intolerances without the autoimmune reaction. And it is not an allergy; I have allergies to several foods and those reactions are very different from my gluten intolerance.

TL: DR; if gluten makes you feel like crap, don't eat it. You may not be allergic, but you may have an intolerance.

I had the same kind of question. While I've not been tested for a gluten allergy, I inadvertently went gluten-free while trying a new diet and felt so much better! I was a night/day difference. I can have some gluten, but I can definitely tell when I've had too much.

I don't know the exact reason why so many health issues are popping up these days vs yesteryear. It seems there's a lot more flu/cold epidemics, cancer at younger ages, more heart disease, more of all kinds of food/medicine intolerance... of course, that's just one girl's opinion.

I am the same as this. I am not diagnosed with anything, but when I started to minimise the gluten/wheat in my diet I felt a million times better. I havent cut it out completely, but I do limit the amount I have, as I know if I have too much for too long I feel run down, achey joints, runny nose. But the odd slice of bread or cheat meal of pizza is a nice treat.

Try cutting down, see how you feel. Start to introduce it back in, track how you feel 2 hours after you have eaten the gluten product, and just gauge it from there.

Good luck :-)

For hundreds of years people ate bread and "didn't have a problem" - I hear that a lot. I ate gluten for most of my life, and the doctors say I'm fine. But after my Aunt was diagnosed with Celiacs and talked about what a difference GF made in her life, I started to think about some of my other issues and out of curiosity one day I decided to try GF for a a couple months, just to see. Now I have been diagnosed as having IBS, and I USED to have quite a few flair ups. Before I tried to go GF I switched to making my own bread and making my own Peanut Butter, and this actually helped a litlte (regular peanut butter recently had started to make me very ill, and I love to bake so I make my own bread). I went GF and a miracle occurred: the constant bloating and stomach pain from my "IBS" went away. 2 years later and everything that used to cause an "IBS Flairup" causes me NO PAIN.

Everyone reacts to things differently. I Could have gone on eating like I was and probably been fine, but would have constantly treated my IBS. Going without gluten fixed that problem and more so. I treat it as a mild intolerance, not celiacs. We don't buy things with wheat in it (like canned soups that have added wheat, we make sure to buy the Progresso versions that don't have added wheat), but it isn't so bad that if my husband wants to eat regular bread he can't. He eats regular bread, I eat gluten free. I still get plenty of nutrition and eat healthy, I just use less bread products (because GF stuff is expensive) and I make my own recipes and I don't eat "box meals". If anything going GF forced me to eat healthier. And, because baking my own GF bread is a lot more work than baking my own regular bread, it also means I don't bake a loaf of bread and then eat half of it right out of the oven.

My point? People don't realize what little things may actually be affecting them until they stop eating it. No one even THOUGHT I could have an intolerance, but gluten was hard on me. At least, that is what I assume the problem was because cutting it out made me feel better.

Does this mean when I go to restaurants and ask for the GF menu I have to deal with people who think I'm just on the "fad" of "weightloss"? Yes... Does it suck? Yes..... but do I feel better anyway? YES!


Do what makes you feel better. If that means cutting out gluten, then do it. Just make sure to get all the nutrients you need. Which, seriously, isn't all that hard. Especially if you don't have Celiacs and just an intolerance - it means that a little cross contamination here and there isn't going to make you as drastically ill as those with Celiacs.

He is a rheumatologist not a dietician. Any doctor who advises a restrictive diet like this without cause needs to go brush up on their nutrition skills.

That's a pretty ignorant thing to say. The rheumatologist obviously had a reason for telling the OP to avoid gluten. All physicians know that most blood tests have significant false positive and false negative rates. It is possible to make a diagnosis based on history and/or clinical findings.