Is there something you can do to get rid of a mild allergy?

Gluten allergy????????

• I know this is long but please read it all - thanks. I am 14 male, and in the past 3 weeks or so I've started to have pains in my abdomen, my legs, my arms, and my back. The pains are in the muscles and bones but are very mild and not long lasting, they also come and go. But I had lower back pain for 2 weeks which was fairly constant, and now the same for a week with upper back pain. I have been feeling quite tired as well lately. When I eat a meal with foods containing gluten I usually feel quite bloated even if I had not eaten much, the pains mentioned above also seem more prevalent. Also when I was quite hungry, I had 50g of licorice and even that made me feel bloated for a short while, before feeling hungry again. Same thing happened with a small cup cake. I've also experienced some diarrhea with the licorice, the stools were very poorly formed and passed very quickly. When I ate a meal without gluten, I felt fine and the pains did not seem so prevalent. However it has only been the past few days that I have had these bloats, so this must mean that I am just starting to develop the allergy. One more thing I am experiencing, in the past week or so I have not been having as many erections, could this be due to anemia caused by the allergy? I am having some erections but they are not as hard and I also have not always been waking up with them. I still have sexual interest, but sometimes when I think of girls I can't get it up like I used to, and I still am having spontaneous erections. When I masturbate though I do get an erection much more easily. But when I just think of girls its not always the case, but when I am thinking of girls I also sometimes get a bit paranoid about not having an erection, since I'm worried about it could that actually be preventing me having an erection in the first place? Or could it be anemia related? I have heard that the allergy itself is in as many as 1/7 people (most of which are unaware as they tend to have very mild symptoms which they do not expect to be the allergy) so I would not be any different, and it also makes it seem more likely. I had a blood test about 6 weeks ago for something totally different (thats not important anymore, its also unrelated, no point me going through that now) and they didn't notice anything about a gluten allergy, I also wasn't having symptoms then, so could it just mean ive developed it recently? (However from the blood test they did say I had a slightly lower number of red blood cells, but I definately was not anemic according to them, they thought it was just my diet which usually wasn't very good. But recently I have changed that a bit). Also are all my symptoms related to this possible allergy? I am quite worried about the erection one, as that seems fairly unrelated. Any replies would be very helpful, thanks.

• Answer:

  It's probably not an allergy, it's probably gluten intolerance. The end is still the same, you can't eat gluten, but what gluten intolerance does it prevents you from absorbing nutrients so you develop symptoms of malnutrition. The bone pain, exhaustion, and sexual changes are all related to your malnutrition. When I was 15, I was at the worst of the disease and I had absolutely no libido. Your body conserves it's energy by shutting down the non-vital organ systems and the reproductive system is the first to go. I stopped having periods. And you're right about the frequency. It's so often overlooked and it's really hard to diagnose. Even if the doctor thinks to test you, the false negative rate is really high. I think you should just try the gluten free diet for a few weeks and see if it helps. Let me know if you have any questions!