Are You Sensitive or Allergic to Gluten?

People who have celiac (pronounced - SEL-ee-ak) disease cannot tolerate a protein called gluten, found in wheat, rye, and barley. Some people also have trouble with oats. Gluten is found mainly in foods but may also be found in products we use every day, such as stamp and envelope adhesive, medicines, and vitamins.

Celiac disease is a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food.

When people with celiac disease eat foods or use products containing gluten, their immune system responds by damaging or destroying the tiny, fingerlike protrusions lining the small intestine. Called villi, they normally allow nutrients from food to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Without healthy villi, a person becomes malnourished, regardless of the quantity of food eaten.

Because the body's own immune system causes the damage, celiac disease is considered an autoimmune disorder. However, it is also classified as a disease of malabsorption because nutrients are not absorbed. Celiac disease is also known as celiac sprue, nontropical sprue, and gluten-sensitive enteropathy.

Celiac disease is a genetic disease, meaning it runs in families. Sometimes the disease is triggered - or becomes active for the first time - after surgery, pregnancy, childbirth, viral infection, or severe emotional stress.

Symptoms of Celiac Disease

Celiac disease affects people differently. Symptoms may occur in the digestive system, or in other parts of the body. For example, one person might have diarrhea and abdominal pain, while another person may be irritable or depressed. Irritability is one of the most common symptoms in children. Symptoms of celiac disease may include one or more of the following:

Gas
Recurring abdominal bloating and pain
Chronic (lasting a long time) diarrhea
Constipation
Pale, foul smelling, or fatty stool
Weight loss or weight gain
Fatigue
Unexplained anemia (a low count of red blood cells causing fatigue)
Bone or joint pain
Osteoporosis, osteopenia
Behavioral changes
Tingling numbness in the legs (from nerve damage)
Muscle cramps
Seizures
Missed menstrual periods (often because of excessive weight loss)
Infertility, recurrent miscarriage
Delayed growth
Failure to thrive in infants
Pale sores inside the mouth, called aphthous ulcers
Tooth discoloration or loss of enamel
Itchy skin rash called dermatitis herpetiformis

A person with celiac disease may have no symptoms. People without symptoms are still at risk for the complications of celiac disease, including malnutrition.

The longer a person goes undiagnosed and untreated, the greater the chance of developing malnutrition and other complications.

Anemia, delayed growth, and weight loss are signs of malnutrition, the body is just not getting enough nutrients. Malnutrition is a serious problem for children because they need adequate nutrition to develop properly.

Treatment For Celiac Disease?

The only treatment for Celiac disease is to follow a gluten-free diet. For most people, following this diet will stop symptoms, heal existing intestinal damage, and prevent further damage. Improvements begin within days of starting the diet. The small intestine is usually completely healed in 3 to 6 months in children and younger adults and within 2 years for older adults. Healed means a person now has villi that can absorb nutrients from food into the bloodstream.

In order to stay well, people with celiac disease must avoid gluten for the rest of their lives.

Gluten is everywhere, in cereals, pasta, bread, cookies and processed food. But... more and more gluten-free products are becoming available.

If you think you have celiac disease, see your doctor BEFORE you stop eating foods with gluten in them. Tests can come back negative if you have stopped eating these foods before you go to the doctor.

Complications of Celiac Disease

Damage to the small intestine and the resulting nutrient absorption problems put a person with Celiac disease at risk for malnutrition, anemia, and several other diseases and health problems.

Lymphoma and Adenocarcinoma - cancers that can develop in the intestine.

Osteoporosis - a condition in which the bones become weak, brittle, and prone to breaking. Poor calcium absorption contributes to osteoporosis.

Miscarriage and Congenital Malformation of the baby, such as neural tube defects, are risks for pregnant women with untreated celiac disease because of nutrient absorption problems.

Short Stature - being significantly under the average height. Short stature results when childhood celiac disease prevents nutrient absorption during the years when nutrition is critical to a child's normal growth and development. Children who are diagnosed and treated before their growth stops may have a catch-up period.

Diseases Linked to Celiac Disease

People with Celiac disease tend to have other autoimmune diseases. The connection between celiac disease and these diseases may be genetic. These diseases include:

Thyroid Disease
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Type 1 Diabetes
Liver Disease
Collagen Vascular Disease
Rheumatoid Arthritis

Source from http://www.nexiumresearch.com/celiac_disease.html

So many diseases have simlilar symptoms! I was looking at the symptom list in this post for Celiac Disease and I see a lot of familiar ones that I posted I have over on the post about heartburn and acid reflux.

Here is the symptom list that was posted relating to Celiac Disease. I have highlighted the symptoms that I feel I have in blue.


That's quite a few of them don't you think? How do you know if my symptoms are just that of acid reflux or this disease? And don't tell me to go to the doctor, because I already have about 5 times!

I guess you could try a gluten-free diet. That means everything you consume has to be free of gluten, so you would have to read all labels on foods to see if gluten is in them.

I don't even know what gluten is and why it is an ingredient in foods. How do I know which type of foods to avoid if I were to try to remove gluten from my diet?

It says up at the top of this post that gluten is a protein.

You would have to check the labels on food to see if gluten is in them.