Although my family is full of Celiac, my best friends son who is now 22 was dx with crohns last year and given lots of terrible meds. A couple of months ago he decided he did not want to be on meds the rest of his life and still felt sick being on the meds anyhow. He studied a lot of info online and decided to do the Paleo diet. He has been extremely strict with it with the help of his mom.

In 4 days he felt better...he was shocked. He said he had asked his gastro if the diet could cause his problems and the Doctor said NO.

He said he cheated one day and had pizza and immediately became sick again for a few days. He tried the meds again and felt worse so he went back to the diet and immediately started feeling better so he is now a believer that even something as serious as crohns can be helped with diet alone.

He said he read the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall which really helped him understand the connection with food and intestines.

Your son is young and at that in-between age of needing parents and not wanting them around so this is hard and confusing for him. Change is not easy at that age. And of course having a doctor that only wants to push drugs is not easy for parents because we were brought up to believe everything our doctors tell us and to follow their instructions to the key.

My daughter who is 19 felt this way almost 2 years ago when her celiac tests were negative. The Gastro was a jerk and said no she did not have it. I took her to our new doc and he was well go ahead and try the diet if you want but since he did not say you have to do it she said no to the diet. (She had been eating almost gluten free on her own since I had been on the diet for 6 or so months).

So, I told her to go ahead and eat all the gluten she wanted and sure enough her iron/ferritin/saturation crashed so quickly that the doctor dx her with celiac since she was DQ2 and had every symptom in the world. The doc then said...You have celiac you need to be on this diet. She said ok and is a firm believer now.

Has your sons DNA been checked? Is he a DQ2 or DQ8? Those are the celiac genes and a doctor can not say he does not have celiac with all his problems if they have not done biopsies. And even then he could have the damage somewhere else.

Good luck and eventually your son will understand. If he wants to talk to someone, I bet my friends son would write to him and talk about his new diet. Let me know.

Llonghair