Can a Positive Test Be Reversed?

Imagine you were told that you had a disease but a later test revealed you were no longer positive. That would be cause for celebration, in most cases. Gluten intolerance is, unfortunately not one of those cases. Why? Tests for gluten intolerance and celiac disease have a few liabilities:

1. They are not adequately sensitive, meaning that false negatives abound.

2. In order to get a positive result, it is absolutely mandatory that the patient is eating gluten at the time of the test.

3. A gold standard is the elimination of gluten for 30 days, which most doctors are uncomfortable asking their patients to perform.

Doctors Tell Patients they No Longer Have Celiac

I can’t tell you how many times I have met a new patient suffering from ill health who tells me that they ‘had’ a diagnosis of celiac disease or gluten sensitivity in the past, but it was later discovered that they were ‘fine’. They often mention that they felt much better when they were following a gluten-free diet, but the subsequent negative test result was enough to end their gluten-free lifestyle (and their improved health).

Whenever I hear such a story I ask if the patient was following a gluten-free diet at the time of the second test. Inevitably they say ‘yes’ or ‘mostly yes’. The problem with that is that these tests are not accurate if you’re not consuming gluten. But a negative test doesn’t mean that gluten is no longer a problem, it simply means that you made some improvement in your health by removing gluten and the test is no longer showing positive – and sorry to sound like a broken record but these are INSENSITIVE tests – they often don’t show positive even when there is a serious problem – so they certainly aren’t going to be positive when there’s no gluten being ingested.

Additionally, even when someone makes an effort to ‘mostly’ remove gluten, that’s often enough to move these insensitive tests into the negative zone. So a doctor who looks at the second negative test and then questions if gluten is truly a problem is simply a clinician who doesn’t understand how gluten works within the human body. He’s treating gluten intolerance the way he would an iron deficiency or a high white blood cell count – this is a grave error for the health of one’s patient.

Doctors Refuse to Recommend Gluten-Free

Another issue I’ve been running into with patients is that they have received a positive celiac test along with discovering other health problems such as diabetes or high blood pressure. Their doctor advises them to follow a diabetic protocol, as an example, and take the prescribed medication but ‘not worry about’ the gluten-free diet because it’s so stressful and difficult to implement. (Insert your favorite expletive here: ______!!)

This is one of the most egregious injustices that I have ever heard of. Just because the doctor can’t imagine following a gluten-free diet, he condemns his patients to a lifetime of ill health and premature death? I truly wish I could say that such occurrences were unusual but they are not.

Not only do 95%+ of the people suffering from celiac disease and gluten sensitivity remain undiagnosed, but we worsen even those terrible statistics by then reneging on the diagnosis or not implementing treatment!

This is one of those days where it feels like we have a long way to go. But on the plus side, we have seen such miracles in the clinic this week with several gluten intolerant patients that it makes my heart happy. So team, here’s what we need to do: Spread the word!

Please help me to do this by telling friends and family about this site, the blog, the youtube videos – all of it. I do this for all of you towards the goal of early, efficient diagnosis and effective treatment. Our destination clinic sees patients from across the country as well as internationally. We are here to help!