I am 10 1/2 months gluten free now and mostly feel better. Gone are the canker sores, leg cramps, eczema. The only thing is I still have alot of gas (the kind that my family makes horrible jokes about, this doesn't bother me). I also still don't have normal BM's. The only time I get the D now is when I get accidently glutened or overdo the dairy. Now its just not D but still not formed. I tried giving up dairy a few weeks ago, didn't see 100% improvement so started adding small amounts of hard cheeses and butter back into diet. Thought that was fine since same not D but not normal BM either. Yesterday, I had 1 TBS of Parmesan on my gluten-free pasta at lunch and 1TBS cheddar plus 1 TBS sour cream on my tortilla soup at dinner. This morning I feel glutened again and I know everything I ate was gluten free. So my question is, am I not giving it enough time with Completely dairy free? I'm guessing its probably casein and not lactose since I had maybe at the most 1-2 grams of lactose in those meals if any. So is two weeks enough time to know if its casein/dairy or should I go longer or look for another intolerance? BTW my mom was diagnosed lactose intolerant, she still has symptoms (wont listen to me about testing for celiac) plus she's 1/4 native american (she looks like more than a 1/4) and thats why the doc simply said LI. When she eats dairy she gets all itchy and her tounge feels swollen. This is driving me nuts trying to figure it out!

Hi Kathy, I'd try going dairy-free for longer than a couple of weeks - more like 3-4 months to see if you notice anything. Also, keep a food diary and see what kinds of patterns develop over the next few months. Hopefully that will help you figure it out.

Thanks Janet, I was faithfully keeping a food diary up until August, so I need to do that again. I do remember everytime I had pizza, I usually had D in the morning. I always blamed it on the gluten-free crust, such as the vinegar or gelatin etc in the different recipe's I would try. Since my D usually shows up the next day, does that point more to Casein instead of LI? On all the internet sites about LI it shows symptoms within 30 minutes to 2 hours. Sometimes I get a reaction in an hour, such as when I tried pumpkin flavored yogurt last week (i did make sure it was gluten-free) but usually i have gas then the D comes the next morning. Theres not alot of info out there on casein except info for autistic children, not much about adults.

I have very different symptoms for casein and lactose. A lot of medications have lactose and I usually get cramps and diahrrea. Casein gives me horrible brain fog and constipation and I can actually relate to the symptoms of autism because that's a familiar reaction. For me, it's pretty immedate on the casein. The lactose thing usually shows up a few hours later or the next day.

I guess you could test the casein vs. lactose thing by drinking lactose free milk or using ghee which is supposed to be casein free. You could also try goat or sheep products and see if that makes a difference. This site has a comparasion of the two that might be helpful: http://www.foodintol.com/dairy.asp