Celiac disease is an allergy to gluten. Sad but true, it’s often mistaken for the irritable bowel syndrome. If you get diagnosed for this syndrome, please make a request for a deeper investigation. Celiac disease is found in 1 in 133 Americans and, even if many doctors still think so, it’s not only a child’s disease.
Gluten is a protein contained in wheat, barley and rye. It can also be found in oats by cross-contamination. The allergy doesn’t trigger an anaphylactic shock, but triggers many other reactions (the first symptoms usually come about three hours after eating). At first, the small intestine gets inflamed. Also, the intestinal villi get destroyed and the body doesn’t process correctly. One of the main reactions is a drop in the bloodstream iron level. Also, frequent diarrhea is often a symptom of CD.
The only treatment for now is to avoid gluten by any way. That means that if I want to drink beer, I have to choose a beer without malt, which means a beer made of sorghum, rice, buckwheat or other grains. Also I make bread twice a week and I make my own pizza. When I want to eat pasta, I look for rice or corn pastas instead of the wheat ones. Eating whole grain wheat, spelt or any other type of wheat also triggers the same reaction even if it seems to be healthier to eat a more complete grain. I have to replace those grains with buckwheat, rice, corn, tapioca, soy, sorghum, potatoes and quinoa.
For more information on celiac disease, I suggest those sites:
http://www.celiac.org/
http://www.celiac.com/
If you have colon cancer family background or if you have unexplained diarrhea and/or low blood iron level, suggest an investigation on this side with your physician. It’s much more common than most of us think. Only in the USA, there would be one person diagnosed with this disease out of 3000. That means that there would be only 4% (1 out of 3000 / 1 out of 133) of people with CD who are diagnosed.
If untreated, CD leads to cancer and many other diseases. Please check on the net for more information.
