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). Any replies would be very helpful, thanks.

• Answer:

  Hi Jamie. For a 14 year old, you have amazing insights and knowledge. All of your symptoms can be caused by a very serious condition called Celiac Disease - which is caused by an allergic reaction to gluten/gliadin proteins. Celiac Disease occurs in about 1:100 people (you are correct in noting that allergic reactions to gluten are more common than this). It is an autoimmune disease that damages the lining of the small intestine. This leads to maldigestion and malabsorption of nutrients. Anemia is very common with Celiac Disease. The diagnosis requires SPECIFIC tests for Celiac Disease which start with specific antibody blood tests and may go as far as an upper G.I. endoscopy exam with biopsy of the small intestinal mucosa. Sadly, because Celiac Disease is a nutritional disorder, with no available drug treatment, medical doctors rarely diagnose it (even though it is a very common disease). Medical research suggests that only 3% of people in the U.S. with this disease ever get a proper diagnosis. Treatment consists of total avoidance of all sources of glutens/gliadins in the diet. To get properly tested, you would need to find a specialist who ROUTINELY DIAGNOSES AND TREATS Celiac Disease. Best wishes and good luck. p.s. here are links to a variety of scientific papers on Celiac Disease. Some are the 'full paper' and some are the abstract (summary). http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/69/3/354 http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/669 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18375224?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log%24=relatedreviews&logdbfrom=pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19606042?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=34 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2724402/?tool=pubmed I suspect you have the intelligence to be able to understand at least some of the basic information in these papers. If you decide you want to read the full papers of the 'abstract' links, you can get the full papers through your local hospital's medical library.