Negative test- not enough gluten?

[Hj101]

Hi there, I had a ttg antibody year this week which came back at 0.4 (I couldn’t get ranges or any more info from the receptionist. The problem is I have been mostly gluten free for nearly a year (I had a little strop in November and December and have up on gluten free but then realised I felt horrible). The doctors think I’m a bit of a nutcase and chasing diagnoses, and only gave me a week to reintroduce gluten before my blood test. I ate as much as I could but obviously it’s far from the recommended 6 weeks. Can anyone tell me what the normal range is? Also, would I be within reason to push for further testing? I have continued reluctantly to include gluten just in case my doctor agrees to send me for further tests.

Thanks in advance

[BabsyWabsy]

I had a similar experience where the GP wanted me to reintroduce wheat / gluten a couple of days before testing for coeliac. It was very much an afterthought on his part as he shouted out to me as I was leaving the building! But I refused because it would have been a complete waste of time. For a long time, I had been struggling with modern wheat, but have no issue with ancient grain such as spelt, so I knew gluten is not the problem, something else is. I even react to 'gluten free' codex wheat starch. So the surgery settled on 'wheat allergy' on my notes. I am not convinced about that either. If your surgery has a web page, (most do now) once you have registered for access, you should be able to see all your test results with ranges, recent visits, future visits etc. The standard GP surgery web page model is a bit clunky, but OK when you get the hang of it.

[Hj101 in reply to BabsyWabsy]

Thank you, I will find out about the online access.

[Hil101]

Everyone is different, of course. When I gave up gluten after a high blood test (116 in whatever measure should be below 10), I quickly felt better and had lots of new hair coming through after years of hair thinning. HOWEVER, within about a month I began to feel dreadful as my immune system realigned itself and began to react horrifically to any minuscule trace gluten and also to oats and millet. I also struggled with nightshade-family plants and, for a while, eggs and dairy.

There would have been no question of my reintroducing gluten, I'd have been in hospital. I hope you haven't got coeliac, can you try other techniques for reducing the reactivity of your immune system, such as meditation? I used a good NLP practitioner and Buteyko breathing and finally, now, it's just gluten oats and millet that I have to avoid. It's possible to tend towards chronic hyper-ventilation when suffering allergies. It was addressing this which improved my personal health massively.

Good luck

[CatDaddo]

I had a blood test a few weeks ago to find out why I’ve never been symptom-free after 5 years of following a strict GF diet (it’s pretty bad). The test came back negative but after a follow up consult with a GI specialist, I have an endoscopy tomorrow because he believes I got a false negative. Apparently the blood test is not super accurate.