Some things I can relate about Celiac-Sprue :

* It is typically pretty hard to diagnose. In part this is
because it looks like lactose intolerance and/or irritable
bowel syndrome (in fact it is actually _causing_ both
of those if you have it).

* There are several diagnostic blood tests with differing degrees
of sensitivity. Mine came back negative. The definitive diagnosis
is by an endoscopy in which they take a biopsy of the villi
in the small intestine (the "villi" essentially help the digestion,
and the Celiac flattens the villi). That’s how I was diagnosed.

* The treatment is to entirely stop eating something called
"gluten" (which _roughly_ translates to "wheat"). After a month
or so you figure out how to do this. It is hard at first,
but worth it, since gluten is messing up the small intestine
in a major way - especially the top of the intestine, which is
where calcium and vitamin D gets digested I believe.

* Celics have to _entirely_ stop eating gluten. Once your system
is gluten free, even a little gluten does a lot of damage -
which can happen without symptoms! So you have to be very
strict with food I’m afraid - it isn’t at all bad after a while.

* Not a lot of attention gets paid to it, which probably
contributes to the poor diagnostic hit rate I mention above.
Personally I think this is because there’s no money in it for a
drug company - there are no medications, you just stop eating
gluten. So there is no point in a company "marketing" the cure.
Hence it has a low profile, a lot of doctors tend not to
understand it well.

* Different people suffer from it to _vastly_ different degrees.
Some people have it so badly that they have it diagnosed at a
few months of age, some limp on with it for ages.

* It can be brought on by stressful events (a pregnancy was
given as an example).

That’s roughly all I know. It is not bad to cope with at all once you get the hang of it! I feel a _lot_ better gluten free!

Niles.