Daughter with Possible Celiacs

This condition is very treatable thru diet and a little supplementation. You will wantd to find a doctor who utilizes these methods, before going to drugs. Not that drugs are "bad" it is just that they are designed to treat the symptons and not necessarily get to the root of the problem. Since nutrition absorption is probably an issue, you will need a children's vitamin which also has probiotics and is isotonic in from. I have found one I like called "might-i-mins" To look it up, you can go to www.marketamerica.com/W. and search on "childrens vitamin". If you have any further questions you can e-mail me directly at ____@____.com

I met a most amazing woman with Celiac Disease in Philadelphia a few years ago, her name is Alice Bast. She started a Celiac Awareness Foundation. You can check their web site out at:

http://www.celiaccentral.org/

I highly encourage you to contact them for more information. As I mentioned, Alice is amazing and her foundation would be a great resource for you.

You don't say where you are but you might be able to find a local celiac's or gluten free support group to meet with. In Ft Wayne at the Natural Foods Co-op all foods are clearly labeled as gluten free or not so it makes shopping easier. AS another mom said how lucky you are to find out now rather than her suffering for years (as I did) also most celiacs are also intolerant of dairy protein(casien) --it is not a lactose problem--so avoid dairy also--at least until her health is better and then only fermented dairy(yogurt etc

If you daughter does have celiac disease, what a blessing that she finds out now, when she's young, instead of suffering through her whole life wondering what's wrong. I have 2 friends of mine who didn't find out they had celiac until they were in their 20s and 30s!!! One of them suffered from infertility for years, and they had stopped trying for a baby. At a completely unrelated doctors visit, she told them about the bowel and stomach issues and was tested for celiac and turned out to have it -- once she went off of gluten (completely 100%), a year later, she became pregnant without any help -- likely due to her body healing from the major damage that gluten was doing to it.

So... a few things to know about celiac - it runs in families, is genetic! Gluten acts like a poison to the body, affecting everything from digestion to the nervous system. In people with undiagnosed celiac (who are eating gluten over their lifetime), the rates of bowel cancer are significantly higher.

So, if your daughter is positive, please check you and your husband (assuming you're her bio parents) for celiac as well, since either one or both of you is carrying a gene for this AND is likely intolerant to gluten too. Probably best for the whole family to adopt a gluten-free diet for *at least* 6 months and watch how the health of the family improves!

Here's a good link for gluten-free, dairy-free recipes (probably best to keep your daughter off of all cow's milk for a while, too, along with going gluten-free, because her gut is likely damaged from the gluten and so is also likely to be unable to tolerate cow's milk):
http://www.paleofood.com/

And check out the gluten-free bloggers - some great, yummy recipes, and lots of inspiration and hope that making this diet change (gluten free) is really a new beginning, not some horrible deprivation! Just two examples:
http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2007/05/do-you-have-ce...
http://www.glutenfreeorganics.blogspot.com/

And definitely join online forums where those with celiac hang out, and specifically, parents who have children with celiac hang out so that you can get good tips and advice from them - it will be important for you to be very informed about celiac so that you can help your daughter's doctors understand, because A LOT of them just aren't familiar with it or "don't get it".

Best of luck, and again, look at this as a really lucky discovery - it could mean vastly improved health for your daughter and your whole family!

My 3 year old daughter has Celiac disease. She was diagnosed over a year ago because she hadn't gained weight for a year and had a very distended abdomen. She had a positive blood test and was referred to Riley GI department in Indy. She sees Dr. Molleston who is great. She did a scope of her stomach which is the best way to truely diagnose it, and it was positive. Your daughter will need to consume gluten a few weeks before having a scope if necessary to get accurate findings. Within a couple of weeks after changing her diet after the scope, she was a different kid. She is so happy and active now. Before she was very winey. It is a life changing thing to take on and it is very hard but we have many more easy days than hard days. If you need any info on how to be gluten free just let me know. Good luck.