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I am a home physical therapist. A majority of my patients have chronic and very serious health problems. Every day I see new patients and hear about their lifelong struggle with their health. For example, my latest is a woman in her fifties with diabetes, gastritis, hiatal hernia, ulcers, diarrhea, joint problems, neuropathy, spinal column tumor, balance problems, bipolar disorder and probably a few more that I forgot about. She is overweight so she is not the "typical" picture of a Celiac. This is just one of my patients, but I bet that many, many of my patients are gluten intolerant and will never know. I think it would really wake up the medical community if in addition to the studies on the "general population" and "asymptomatic" people, that there would be studies on groups of people with multiple medical problems. How many people out of 100 with the above senario would turn up to have CD? I bet a high rate of those that are chronically ill would be positive. This would really show the impact of this disease on people that the physicians see regularly. Many of my patients are so ill that they are seen on a weekly to monthly basis by their doctor. If even 20% of them were positive (but I really think it would be higher) physicians might keep it more to the front of their minds. When they are told that a large percent of healthy people have the disease they probably don't think much about it since they never see "healthy" people. It's just a thought. Maybe someone will do it someday!

Stacy
Houston

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