1. Celiac Disease Impacts the Small Intestine
Celiac disease is known as a digestive disease that commonly affects the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. Those who suffer with celiac disease cannot tolerate a protein called gluten, which is most readily found in wheat, rye and barley. If you have celiac disease, when you eat foods that contain gluten, your immune system responds by attacking the small intestine. The tiny, finger-like protrusions lining the small intestine are destroyed and so are the villi, which generally allow nutrients from food to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Not being able to properly absorb nutrients into the bloodstream leads to malnutrition and a whole other array of health problems, which can sometimes complicate the proper diagnosis of celiac disease.
2. Signs of Celiac Disease
Celiac disease affects everyone--adults and children--differently, but most all symptoms occur in the digestive system or in other parts of the body. For example, you may experience diarrhea and abdominal pain, while another person may experience irritability or depression. All in all, the most common symptoms can be anything from gas, constipation, fatigue, muscle cramps or itchy skin rash called dermatitis herpetiformis. And this is by far an exhaustive list, but it gives you an idea of the symptoms. And sometimes there are those who do not have any symptoms of celiac disease, but they are still at risk for complications that include malnutrition.
3. Most Common Treatment for Celiac Disease
The most common treatment for celiac disease after it has been properly diagnosis is to follow a gluten-free diet. When you are first diagnosis with celiac disease, your doctor may send you to a nutrition specialist to set you up on a gluten-free diet plan, which will allow you to become better informed about celiac disease and help you make wise choices in regards to the foods you consume. Once on a gluten-free diet, you must avoid gluten for the rest of your life, because consuming any gluten, no matter how small an amount, has the potential to damage the small intestine.
4. Getting Started on a Gluten-Free Diet
Getting started on a gluten-free diet will mean avoiding foods that contain wheat, which includes spelt, triticale, kamut, rye and barley. Any foods and products made from these grains are not allowed either. So, in other words, when you have celiac disease you are not to eat most grain, pasta, cereal, and many processed foods. Regardless of these restrictions, you can eat a well-balanced diet with a variety of foods, which include gluten-free bread and pasta. For example, you can use potato, rice, amaranth or buckwheat flour or products that contain these flours in place of wheat flour. For the most part, you are able to enjoy a balanced and satisfying diet of meat, fish, rice, fruits and vegetables as they do not contain gluten, and you can eat as much of these foods as they like.
5. Watch Out for Hidden Gluten When Shopping or Dining Out
Following a gluten-free diet is challenging, and it will require an entirely different approach to grocery shopping and eating that will affect you and how your overall health the rest of your life. Checking food labels for "gluten-free" will become an important aspect when grocery shopping, since many products are produced in factories that also manufacture wheat products. Plus, when dining out you will want to be careful, as you never know about hidden sources of gluten that can be included in additives which could be in modified food starch, preservatives, and stabilizers. You will always want to ask the waiter or chef about ingredients and preparation when dining out to insure that you are not in fact consuming foods that in the end will not be beneficial to you and cause your celiac disease to flare up.
