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Coeliac (Celiac) Disease
I have a number of friends who cannot tolerate gluten. That’s the protein that you find in wheat, barley and rye grains and sometimes in oats. Eating anything containing gluten causes their immune system to attack their small intestine. That means no breads, sausages, sauces, snack foods, preserved foods, pancakes, pastries... I rather bland and boring diet. If my friends break the diet they become violently ill, although other sufferers may have more subtle symptoms, or none at all, and their disease is discovered by accident. Even in people who get quite ill, the diagnosis of Coeliac disease is easy to miss, because many health problems show up as digestive upsets. The treatment for coeliac disease is a strict gluten-free diet: no wheat, barley, rye –- and for the most part, no oats, either, because oats are generally cross-contaminated with gluten from other grains. Not easy to maintain, although there are now companies that specialise in making gluten-free alternatives to most food products. But gluten is often found (some would say “hidden”) in many products. Last year I almost poisoned one of my coeliac friends by giving him 100% rice crackers - no gluten in rice, right? There was in these! Patients and their families must adopt special guidelines for shopping, food preparation, and dining out. They have to take great pains to explain to waiters and chefs what to avoid (thickening agents, obviously, but marinades, flavour enhancers) and reading food labels is critical, because even products you would never expect to contain gluten do (those rice crackers) and once safe foods change their recipes. Even in patients who have no obvious symptoms, the strict diet is important, because microscopic amounts of gluten are enough to trigger the body’s autoimmune response and eventually causes serious complications by inflaming the lining of the small intestine. This causes hairlike projections called villi to atrophy. They shrink and die. Since all the nutrients in our food are absorbed into the bloodstream through cells on the villi, this damage results in a condition known as malabsorption syndrome. Malabsorption leads in turn to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, osteoporosis and other problems. The symptoms of coeliac disease can begin in infancy, childhood, or adulthood. There is a strong genetic component to the disease, which is diagnosed by a combination of blood tests for autoimmune system antibodies, plus a biopsy of the small intestine to look for the atrophied villi that are characteristic of coeliac disease. |
http://www.celiac.org/
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This intel was contributed by David Rich
David Rich
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May, 2012
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