<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> >The 2 least invasive things you can do to see if you have CS is have a >blood test that looks for antibodies IgA & IgE blood tests. (Warning >though , these tests are fairly unreliable). Here in Australia the (now-proven-to-be) unreliable anti gliaden antibodies test for celiac has been replaced by the anti-endomysial antibody test - which has 95% specificity and 95% selectivity. I.e. it's very accurate. This info is from my gastro-enterologist. >The "gold standard" is to have a biopsy done, and if you are going to do >that, best to do it early & while you are still on gluten. The above test was well on the way to making the biopsy unncessary, last time I checked with my specialist, about 18 months ago. >Nobody would choose to follow the GF diet just for the fun of it...... >it's tricky & inconvienient! I haven't eaten gluten for about 18 months. (I'm not celiac (as originally suspected), but do clearly have some sort of serious intolerance to glutenous grains in general, and wheat in particular.) This has been pretty easy. It all began for me when I started researching the diet that our species evolved on. For several million years we have been consistently eating animals: particularly organs, but also (to a lesser extent) flesh. That has constituted more than 50% of the diet of our kind in recent millennia. On top of that we ate fruit in reasonable quantities, then a certain amount of leaves, nuts, eggs, roots, et al, as well. I eat all the above, in the form of liver and kidney, chicken and fish (much closer to the fat profiles of our 'ancestral' meats than today's bred-up, grain-fed, hormone-enriched cattle), salads, nuts, eggs, potatoes and yams...I could go on. It took five minutes to adjust to, because for the first time in a long time I was eating a diet which didn't make me chronically ill. Very attractive! NB: Humans did not even start on grains (in any quantity) or dairy until maybe 7000 years ago: not nearly long enough for most of us to adapt. This explains why these two food groups produce more allergies across the world than you can shake a stick at. Indeed if you follow the demograhic map of celiac incidence, you notice that the incidence gets greater and greater on a north-west trajectory out of the Middle-East up through Europe to Scandanavia. The precise route that the spread of agriculture took from the dawn of the Neolithic Age. This is not the place to develop a long disquisition on the paleo diet (as it is called), but more can be found out from an excellent interview with diet researcher Ward Nicholson at leisure://www.syndicomm.com/nicholson/interview1a.html There is an excellent mailing list on the subject at <[log in to unmask]> by the scientists who are at the cutting edge of research in this most interesting field. I realise I am getting off the track of diabetes here. But maybe I am not. In a year or so I have lifted my energy considerably, reduced my sleep requirement by two hours, improved my mental acuity ('brain fog' has been banished), cured my unquiet intestines (after years of pain and upset), dramatically reduced my psoriasis, all but eliminated a nasty case of 'incurable' psoriatic spondylitis - a crippling arthritic condition - with the blood tests to prove it, and gained a measure of that magical sense of control over my health. I am not saying that "my" diet is the best, nor that it will cure diabetes. What I am saying is that we have been given umpteen versions of Man's "natural" diet over the years - by every 'expert' with a barrow to push - but in this decade for the first time we have a mound of carefully collected data on what that diet really was and therefore is. My point is that every dietary regime (for diabetes or anything else) should at least be informed by these findings. Best Wishes to all, John ________________________________________________________________ * Postal: PO Box 890 Ipswich QUEENSLAND 4305 * Phone & fax: 61 7 3281 8520