Week 3.

I think a good word to describe how I feel is "bleh" - although google doesn't think it's a word.
Some symptoms that I'm experiencing from eating gluten: [warning: these are for the interest of science and not for the squeamish]

• Almost complete loss of brain function. For example, instead of putting hot water from the zip into my Milo, I turned on the tap and poured cold water into my cup. Oops. It didn't taste very nice. Umm, what was I saying, oh yeah, bad brains. I feel like a zombie: always saying "braaains!"
• Excessive augh... wind and occasional gut aches/discomfort. I'm feeling really bloated and without my huge hoodie on I look like my sister who is six months pregnant.
  
• A bit of weight gain too, but it's not surprising considering my lounge lizard and almost gluttonous lifestyle for the last three weeks.
• Really, really, really tired.
• Money. Yeah, I've been living it up with squiggles, crumbed fish, fairy bread, gingernuts and other good things. All this creates a little dent in my bank account, but hey, why else do I get money from the government! haha! I even bought some English muffins just so I could quote Oscar Wilde. ["I'm particularly fond of muffins."]
  

All of those things make assignment writing very difficult, plus now that I've got most of the symptoms finally written up here for everyone to admire, I'll stop complaining and give you a little science lesson.

So, I'm having my biopsy on Thursday. What is it? Simply put it's me lying on a table under general anesthetic [whoop!], tube with a camera on the end shoved down my throat and into the small intestine seen here:

[psst: It's the grey squiggly bit by the way.]

After a short sight seeing tour they grab a sample of the intestine lining and it's over. Now they just have to test the little sample to see if I have coeliacs.

How do they do that?
I don't know. Some involved microscopic method probably. I don't care, as long as they can tell me whether I've got the disease. However I am curious as to what gluten actually does to my gut lining. So, I looked it up.
Like the controversial "Dr gluten" said, "open your mouth and you see wet skin." [or something like that.] That skin lines all of your insides, [taking a few different forms in different parts actually, but it's all wet.] Anyway, the lining of your small intestine looks a bit like that, however on a microscopic level you can see this, in a cross section of your gut lining:
Ok, this is a healthy gut lining. The crypts [haha, I know! It's not at all gang related...] make the Epithelial cells which sit on the villi absorbing nutrients. They take about two weeks to travel up the villi. The whole of your small intestine lining, taking into account the contours of the villi is about the size of a tennis court. It is really important that everything works well so that you can absorb vital nutrients, like vitamins and minerals.
However, if a person with coeliacs eats gluten this is what happens [over a couple of weeks]:

Gluten kills epithelial cells which causes the villi to collapse [reducing the size of your gut lining by heaps] and the crypts become really deep because they are working overtime trying to produce more epithelial cells, which of course are killed off as soon as they are produced. Without the special cells doing their job the person who owns the intestine finds it really difficult to absorb nutrients. That's why heaps of coeliac people are anemic, because their gut can't absorb the iron.

So, if my gut looks like the latter: I have coeliacs. If not, I'm just gluten sensitive.

Did all that make sense?