1. You Know You Have Celiac Disease
It is estimated that 2.5 million people in the USA have celiac disease and are undiagnosed. Diagnosis is the first step to wellness. Be grateful for your path to diagnosis, whether you requested testing or someone else thought to test you.

2. You Feel Better
The symptoms of celiac disease vary greatly from one person to the next, but fatigue seems to almost always be present. Improved energy and a decrease in symptoms are undeniably among the top benefits of diagnosis.

3. You Have An Instant Community
Many people suffer undiagnosed for years, often in isolation. A diagnosis brings you into a community that can finally understand what you have and are going through. You have an immediate support system through national and local support organizations and online social networks.

4. You May Help Your Children Or Other Familiy Members
It is recommended that all first-degree relatives of someone diagnosed with celiac disease be tested, whether or not they have symptoms (that’s children, parents and siblings). Testing of symptomatic second degree relativesis also recommended (grandparents, grandchildren, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews). Your diagnosis may help someone you love get diagnosed. I have seen this many times in my medical practice.

5. You Might Help A Friend
Your diagnosis may help someone you know or even a stranger learn more about celiac disease. Knowledge increases awareness. Awareness increases the number of people properly diagnosed. Conversations like the ones you have with friends and coworkers, at the grocery store, or with restaurant staff, can lead to a diagnosis.

6. You Lower Your Risk Of Other Health Problems
The initiation and adherence to a strict gluten-free diet decreases your risk of developing conditions associated with celiac disease, such as osteoporosis and other autoimmune conditions. The sooner you are diagnosed, the lower your risk of additional diagnoses.

7. No Medications Or Shots Required
While a gluten-free diet is challenging at first, with time it becomes your norm. No shots, surgery or medications are generally needed. If you consider the treatment for many other chronic diseases, you may feel relatively fortunate.

8. You Learn To Cook
For many people, a diagnosis means the first time they have ever read labels or started cooking on a regular basis. Hopefully. this steers them to a healthier diet. They may rely less on fast food and consume more whole, unprocessed foods. One can clearly follow an “unhealthy” gluten-free diet by relying on packaged or processed foods, but it is just as easy and less risky to take on the challenge of learning to cook. Even simple recipes can be delicious.

9. You Try New, Interesting Foods
Ethnic cuisines such as Indian, Thai and Persian have many naturally gluten-free dishes. Alternative grains such as quinoa, millet, teff and buckwheat may now be part of your culinary vocabulary. You may never have ventured into trying these cuisines and foods without the need for a gluten-free diet.

10. Your Worries About What Is Wrong Are Gone
Those strange, unexplained symptoms you had prior to diagnosis, which may have been attributed by your doctors to a range of causes from stress to psychiatric illness, now have an explanation. They also typically disappear with initiation of a strict gluten-free diet.

Source: https://theceliacmd.com/ten-positive-aspects-of-a-celiac-disease-diagnosis/
Adapted from Gluten-free Albania.