<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Please forgive me this really strange question; I just hope your intelligence and knowledge will help me to find answers I need. I am self-diagnosed (my blood test was negative) and been on a gf diet for 6 months. My condition improved, but I experienced new and strange symptoms during this time. I started with a very liberal gf diet, but since my improvement was so slow, I tighten the diet. I suspected additional allergies (skin tests didn't show anything), so I kept a diary of everything I ate. Still, I couldn't make any conclusion what causes these new problems. Recently however I paid attention that I have problems after visiting certain friends and even after they visit us (it happens pretty often)! Since my husband also had strange gastro/other problems during this year, I decided to check symptoms of different types of poisoning (it started as a joke...). I was amazed to find that all celiac symptoms may be also signs of a poisoning / drug overdose (see http://informatics.drake.edu/pth/html/frpth.htm for a list of all possible symptoms). The expression 'gluten is arsenic for people with celiac disease' is not an exaggeration: a healthy human body reacts exactly the same way to poisons. When I learned it first, I felt sorry I never been formally diagnosed. But then I thought the formal diagnosis wouldn't make a difference: intestines can be flattened probably from a chronic poisoning!? The same with the blood anti-body test: will the antibodies be produced as a result of a chronic poisoning? I'm not an expert but it seems to me they would. Then I asked myself why the gf diet still helped? I can see 2 explanations: 1) I'm very careful with what I eat and it's much more difficult to continue to poison me; 2) I read that at the beginning of the century many doctors prescribed carbohydrate free diet for people with intestines problems (heal faster)? Do you think my logic fails somewhere? If you do please let me know, I'll be glad to hear that. Also if you ever though about it and know something about poisons, what kind of poison/drug can it be (my symptoms: under-rib pain, abdominal pain, ovarian failure, bladder problems, diarrhea sometimes, extreme sensitivity)? Can you advise how to prove it (please don't advise me to stop seeing these people: I can't do it without any proof)? This is just a speculation of course (am I paranoid and is it a celiac symptom? ;) ). One thing that really scared me after all: we (I ) try to explain all our problems with celiac. But maybe environmental problems /toxic metals, etc. have the same outcome as celiac? Thanks! Ellen