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I want to thank everyone for all their messages of concern and sympathy for 
my son who has a 'mouth full of sores'.

We went to the dentist this afternoon to check the wisdom teeth (before the 
long weekend) and the dentist said - after taking a full 360-degree head 
x-ray and then visually inspecting his mouth, "the wisdom teeth are coming 
in fine - he is having a (major) oral herpes outbreak". (this may or may not 
be correct - we have had no 'herpes testing' done)

- this would be herpes type 1 - they are common cold sores actually
- but these are inside his mouth
- most people pick up the virus in childhood from common contact
- half of all 18 yrs olds have the antibodies
- by the time you are 50 years old, 90 % chance you've had it at some point 
in your life

From looking at photos, I do not think it is thrush / yeast overgrowth.

So we still don't know exactly what this is and/or what has caused/triggered 
this horrible outbreak.

Many of you have asked me why he is experimenting with gluten:
- the diet is restrictive and annoying - he wants to be able to "grab a 
burger or a sub" with his peers
- he is 19 years old and he thinks he is invincible
(we were all invincible at that age - its a problem teenagers have)
- he was never officially diagnosed

As to the issue of testing and diagnosis, the last time I checked was six 
years ago, and at that time,
the full battery of blood tests was not available. You could have either 
just the Ttg or just the endomysial antibody, depending on where you lived, 
but not both, and certainly not the IgA and IgG or a complete count.  It was 
obvious that the GF diet was working for me, so we didn't bother getting the 
kids tested.

I have always felt that ours was more of a gut flora issue due to over 
ingestion of antibiotics prescribed for recurrent ear infections, plus a 
diet heavy in carbs, sugar and processed food, than it was a celiac issue 
specifically - if your mucosa is damaged for any reason your small 
intestines may become more permeable and allow the passage of food proteins 
into the bloodstream (zonulin).

So - for whatever reasons - no - he has not been tested or diagnosed - and 
yes - that made it easier for him to experiment.

If anybody out there is in alberta with updated information on celiac 
testing, please let me know --- as one person suggested, this would be a 
good time to test him since he has been liberally ingesting gluten.

Thank you.

Janice.

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