Be very wary of self-diagnosis – a medical opinion is vital to be sure that you’re not missing something – but the quiz at www.glutenfreequiz.com to see whether you are possibly one of the many undiagnosed coeliacs should be a great tool. It indicates areas of high risk, and asks key questions to establish your personal risk of developing coeliac disease.
Interestingly, one of the facts that Dr John La Puma quotes is that people with lung or breast cancer have less risk than others for CD – one-third the normal risk. I wonder why this is, and if this indicates that people already diagnosed with CD have less risk of lung or breast cancer?
Unfortunately, I don’t think the quiz is quite working yet. I stepped through the quiz twice this morning, and both times it took my email address, but didn’t record the name/address details I had entered, told me my score, but not what the score meant, and then sent me three copies of the same email (which still didn’t tell me the results, but included the error message ‘SurveyAnswerTextNull’, which perhaps means that it didn’t record my answers to the questions either).
This is a shame, as I think this could be a useful tool to help people decide whether they were at risk of CD or not – or, perhaps more importantly, whether their symptoms indicate coeliac disease, and therefore whether to report their symptoms to their doctor, or not. I do hope that Dr La Puma can get the problems with the quiz resolved.
Has anybody else tried it yet?
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I’ve written a book summarising what we’ve learnt over 20 years of dealing with the gluten free diet, and it might be just what you’re looking for. It packs the lessons we’ve learned into what I hope is a helpful and straightforward guidebook. It’s available on Amazon, as a paperback or for your Kindle… |
It is amazing how many people I meet that try self-diagnosis. I don’t recommend it. The amount of research you go through when you a first diagnosed is substantial. People just removing the basics – bread, pasta etc will never get an accurate reading. In fact it will make things harder to diagnose in the long run.
Great blog!
Suzi..
http://gluten-free-living.net
Thanks, Lucy, for trying the quiz.
It’s been made better by people like you who try it, find a flaw, and suggest an improvement. Thanks again.
About 200 people have taken it thus far, and we’ll publish the results shortly: the results look terrific.
The quiz helps people speak with their doctor to decide whether they should be screened with laboratory examinations (specific blood tests) for being gluten-free. The quiz aims for improving self-knowledge in this area, and for raising awareness about gluten.
Thanks again,
JL
Hi John – thanks for dropping by.
Here in the UK it’s estimated that 1 person in 100 has coeliac disease, but that 4 out of 5 of those are undiagnosed. That’s a lot of people …
Tools such as your quiz are invaluable in raising awareness, and the collation of your results should be interesting – I look forward to seeing them.