Do I have an allergy to wheat and/or gluten?

The best way to determine whether you have a problem with wheat/gluten is to cut all of it out of your diet for a few weeks and see if your symptoms go away. Judging by your description of your reactions, I doubt you have celiac disease, but if taking the wheat out of your diet helps, it wouldn’t hurt to go and get tested, just in case (celiac usually has pretty severe symptoms, but sometimes it has practically none). If it’s just wheat berries and not other forms of wheat that bother you, it’s probably just an allergy or intolerance to that specific form of wheat, which you can probably also get tested for, just to confirm.

As for the dairy, your body definitely loses the ability to digest lactose if you don’t eat it for a while, so that’s probably what’s going on. Try introducing a little bit more each time, so you can build up your tolerance to it without overloading your system. If it keeps bothering you, try taking a lactaid pill when you eat dairy – they work really well!

If you decide to get tested for celiac, it’s important to put wheat back in your diet in a big way for at least a couple weeks. The blood test checks for an antibody reaction and can be false negative if you haven’t been exposing yourself to gluten.

@MagsRags Good point – I’d forgotten about that!

The only way to tell is to have allergy testing done.

I had lunch with someone only today who is being tested for celiac. She has to eat wheat for 30 days even though it is making her feel bad. I would say don’t initiate the test yourself. See your doctor first. Let your doctor set a baseline and prescribe the test procedure.

I would say yes, my chiro showed me the affects of food allergies through Kinesiology. She determined I was allergic to wheat, dairy and citrus which could explain the numerous mouth lesions while growing up. My wife says they all say that. One thing I do know I don’t have canker sores anymore.
I would try amaranth, or other alternatives and limit your intake of processed wheat.

Great answers – thanks guys. How do I get “tested” for allergies? Do I just go to a regular doctor?

A regular doctor will know where to send you.

Food allergies are more difficult to ascertain then airborne pollens, molds, etc. The simplest way is to log your eating habits and notice the change in behavior and mood. There are some quick ways to determine if a particular food item is not agreeable which is to measure your heart rate/ pulse, before and after ingesting it.