Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate. (Plurality should not be posited without necessity).

I've been suffering continuous, disabling digestive and other "unrelated" symptoms since at least 1999, and despite having had almost every test modern medicine offers, there's been no explanation and no solution. It is somehow tied to eating, it wasn't caused by dairy, and that the only time I could remember it subsiding was for a month in 2002 when I tried the Atkins diet.

A few months ago a doctor mentioned celiac disease, or gluten sensitivity. I read more about it and learned that many people with celiac experience a wide variety of symptoms for a long period of time without a diagnosis, which results in doctors going in all directions trying to chase down supposed multiple ailments that don't really exist. A characteristic of celiac is the often complete absence of any sign of the root cause of all of these symptoms -- for as long as decades. And of my dozens of symptoms, gluten sensitivity could explain every single one.

I got the blood test a few days ago and then started a gluten-free diet (the only treatment). Three days after removing gluten there is a sea change in the way I look and feel. Everything's not all better by any means, but it is no longer intensely uncomfortable just to exist. I don't know how the test results will come back, and what else might be going on, but after ten years progress feels pretty sweet.

Maybe Occam is right again.