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Comment by alexcaza | Hacker News Reader

This isn't exactly true. The blood test and biopsy can _sometimes_ find celiac disease, but it _cannot_ diagnose gluten intolerance/sensitivity.

If you have an intolerance or sensitivity, the blood test will come back negative as your body doesn't produce antibodies indicative of celiac, and your villi remain intact, so the biopsy will show nothing. However, you can still have some incredibly unpleasant side-effects from eating gluten.

Even in folks with celiac disease, it can go under the radar. If you've been eating a gluten free diet prior to the tests, the results can come back negative, but that doesn't mean you don't have it.

Source: I have celiac disease, and it was a pain in the ass to get diagnosed.

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It is insult to injury that the charity Coeliac UK is completely unwilling to assist those who are 'only' gluten intolerant, that is, those for whom the blood test comes back negative. At least here in Britain, the general attitude towards allergies and intorlerances has improved, but the majority of establishments still have no gluten-free menu, let alone an isolated coeliac-safe kitchen.

It's the same in Canada (Montreal, specifically)—if not worse. It's getting better, but oh man, the amount of "gluten friendly" restaurants dripping in cross contamination is horrid. The amount of trust I have for most restaurants, even "gluten free" ones, is pretty much at zero.

Same goes for vegan / veg restaurants.

Always avoid supporting them. Always joke about their incompetence and rudely ask any of their members asking donations to leave. Do it frequently enough they will soften their stance.

My aunt had celiac. She would have some real problems if she accidentally ate the wrong things. My mom tested negative for celiac several times, but she would have the same problems if she ate the same wrong things as my aunt. A more distant relative (child of a cousin or something) developed Crohn's disease (I think) and basically had similar problems as my mom and aunt if she ate similar things.

While I do think that previous posts are not wrong in that there is too much of a fad in blaming everything on gluten by people who probably aren't sensitive, we should not be dismissive of people just because some people might be mistaken. Plenty of people appear to have real problems, which, like you say, aren't always straight forward to diagnose.

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