Most people with celiac disease don't know they have it. That's not a guess. Research from the Celiac Disease Foundation shows that about 80% of Americans with celiac disease are undiagnosed. They spend years dealing with bloating, fatigue, headaches, and stomach pain, and they chalk it up to stress or a "sensitive stomach." Celiac disease testing could give them answers in a matter of weeks, but most never get the right tests ordered.
If you've been told your labs look fine but you still feel lousy after eating bread or pasta, this is worth reading.
Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition triggered by gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye. When someone with celiac eats gluten, their immune system attacks the lining of the small intestine. Over time, this damages tiny structures called villi that help your body absorb nutrients.
It's not a food allergy. It's not a sensitivity. It's an autoimmune disease, and it causes real, measurable damage to the gut lining every time gluten is consumed.
About 1 in 100 people worldwide have celiac disease. But because the symptoms overlap with so many other conditions, it takes an average of 6 to 10 years to get a proper diagnosis. That's a long time to feel bad without answers.
Most people picture celiac disease as a digestive problem. And yes, GI symptoms are common. But celiacs can show up in ways that have nothing to do with your stomach.
Here are symptoms that often get missed:
A lot of people in Springfield and southwest Missouri deal with several of these at once. They see different doctors for each symptom but nobody connects the dots. That's where the right testing makes a difference.
Celiac disease testing starts with a blood panel. The most common test looks for tissue transglutaminase antibodies (tTG-IgA). If your immune system is reacting to gluten, these antibody levels will be elevated.
Other blood tests that may be included:
One thing people get wrong all the time: you have to be eating gluten for the tests to work. If you've already gone gluten-free on your own before getting tested, your antibody levels may come back normal even if you have celiac. That's a false negative, and it happens more often than you'd think.
If blood work is positive, the traditional next step is an upper endoscopy with a small intestine biopsy. A gastroenterologist takes tiny tissue samples from the duodenum and checks for villous atrophy, which is the flattening of those nutrient-absorbing villi.
Here's where celiac disease genetic screening adds another layer of clarity. Celiac disease is strongly tied to two specific gene variants: HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8. About 95% of people with celiac carry HLA-DQ2, and most of the remaining 5% carry HLA-DQ8.
Genetic screening doesn't tell you that you have celiac disease. What it tells you is whether you could develop it. If you don't carry either gene, your chance of ever having celiac is close to zero. That's a powerful piece of information.
Genetic screening is especially helpful in a few situations:
The test itself is simple. It's usually a blood draw or a cheek swab. No prep needed, and it doesn't matter whether you're eating gluten or not at the time.
A lot of people come in saying their doctor ran "the celiac test" and it was negative. When we look closer, sometimes only tTG-IgA was tested. If that person happens to have IgA deficiency (which occurs in about 2-3% of celiac patients), the test can miss the diagnosis entirely.
Other times, people were already avoiding gluten when the test was drawn. The antibodies had dropped, the test came back normal, and they were told they don't have celiac. But they were never told the test only works if you're actively eating gluten.
This is why a full celiac workup matters. You need more than one marker. You need context around diet and timing. And in many cases, genetic screening helps fill in the gaps that blood work alone can leave.
Celiac disease doesn't usually show up alone. It runs alongside other autoimmune conditions at a higher rate than the general population.
People with celiac are more likely to also have:
If you already have one autoimmune condition and you're dealing with gut symptoms, fatigue, or nutrient deficiencies, celiac disease testing should be part of the conversation.
There's also a growing body of research connecting celiac to osteoporosis and bone density loss due to poor calcium and vitamin D absorption. For women in their 40s and 50s across the Ozarks region, this connection is worth knowing about.
A confirmed celiac diagnosis means a strict, lifelong gluten-free diet. Not "mostly" gluten-free. Not "I only cheat on weekends." Even small amounts of gluten, as little as 50 milligrams (about the size of a small breadcrumb), can trigger intestinal damage in someone with celiac.
The good news is that the gut can heal. Most adults see improvement within weeks of removing gluten, and full intestinal healing often happens within 12 to 18 months. Follow-up testing, usually repeat tTG-IgA levels, helps track whether the diet is working and the immune response is calming down.
A functional medicine approach also looks beyond just removing gluten. It asks what damage has already been done and how to repair it. That might include targeted supplementation for iron, B12, vitamin D, and zinc. It might involve gut healing protocols to restore the intestinal lining. And it often means testing for related conditions that may have gone undetected.
If you're in Springfield, Nixa, Ozark, Branson, or anywhere in the 417 area, and you've been dealing with symptoms that no one can explain, celiac disease testing and genetic screening are worth pursuing.
At 417 Integrative Medicine, we talk with patients in the Springfield area every week who have been dealing with unexplained symptoms for years. Many of them had never been told that celiac disease testing goes beyond a single blood draw, or that genetic screening exists as an option.
Celiac disease shouldn't take a decade to figure out. The right testing, done at the right time with the right context, can change everything.
