If I hadn't "gone on the internet" my celiac disease wouldn't have been discovered until I went into celiac crisis--apparently the TTG test produced an actual panic value because 2 doctors called me the day they got it to tell me to stop eating gluten NOW and not worry about the biopsy. This was a test I got by using the magic words "let's rule it out then" because I work for doctors. Most people don't know those magic words. For over 20 years I had been taking a ridiculous number of diabetes tests (protip: I don't have diabetes) because of my weight but was never tested for celiac because I'm adopted and it's a genetic disease--people either find out when they go into a crisis (their guts stop working entirely and they have to be hospitalised) or when a family member is diagnosed.
During that entire time I kept hearing that all my chronic pain and other issues would go away if I lost weight.
Everything got better when I stopped eating gluten. Ironically, it would all have gone away completely if I had stopped over 20 years ago when I first got sick. Even more ironically, I lost a lot of weight (though not as much as they wanted me to, LOL) because when your guts don't work right you are hungry all the time. It turns out that celiac disease is the root cause of nearly all my autoimmune issues, my infertility, my bad teeth and a whole lot of other shit. Some of them went on too long to reverse; I still feel a lot better, but if they had considered other potential diagnoses than "diabetes" I could've been healed completely long ago.
My comment would be:
1) always test anyone with chronic pain and mood problems for celiac because 1 in 133 people have it and most don't know; 2) consider other diagnoses than "you're too fat" for people who report chronic pain, especially in their LATE TEENS/EARLY 20s 3) not all fat people have diabetes, so don't stand there looking like a bump on a pickle when they don't have diabetes and you can't think of another explanatin.
I realise this is all HAES, but these are concrete examples.
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Date: 2014-09-05 02:04 pm (UTC)During that entire time I kept hearing that all my chronic pain and other issues would go away if I lost weight.
Everything got better when I stopped eating gluten. Ironically, it would all have gone away completely if I had stopped over 20 years ago when I first got sick. Even more ironically, I lost a lot of weight (though not as much as they wanted me to, LOL) because when your guts don't work right you are hungry all the time. It turns out that celiac disease is the root cause of nearly all my autoimmune issues, my infertility, my bad teeth and a whole lot of other shit. Some of them went on too long to reverse; I still feel a lot better, but if they had considered other potential diagnoses than "diabetes" I could've been healed completely long ago.
My comment would be:
1) always test anyone with chronic pain and mood problems for celiac because 1 in 133 people have it and most don't know;
2) consider other diagnoses than "you're too fat" for people who report chronic pain, especially in their LATE TEENS/EARLY 20s
3) not all fat people have diabetes, so don't stand there looking like a bump on a pickle when they don't have diabetes and you can't think of another explanatin.
I realise this is all HAES, but these are concrete examples.