Vitamins and Your Health: Celiac Disease
Learn more about today’s vitamins and your health topic; what is celiac disease?
Today’s vitamins and your health topic; what is celiac disease? Celiac disease is a disease that is not widely understood. Celiac disease or gluten intolerance is a genetic disorder that affects 1 in 133 Americans but is more prevalent in the British (1 in 100). Celiac disease is a disease which affects the digestive system.
Celiac disease causes damage to the intestinal villi after ingestion of food that contains specific food grain antigens that are found in rye, wheat, and barley. The villi are small finger like projections that become damaged and flattened causing the formation of scar tissue. The developed scar tissue is not able to absorb the essential vitamins and minerals. Gluten is a protein commonly found in wheat, barley, oats, and rye. At one time oats was considered toxic to celiac sufferers but recent research indicates otherwise.
Classic symptoms of celiac disease include weight loss, diarrhea, and malnutrition. Other latent symptoms of celiac disease include no gastrointestinal symptoms and isolated nutritional deficiencies. Why does food that contains gluten cause damage to the villi in the small intestine? The immune system recognizes the amino acid sequence within the food as harmful thus triggering an immune system reaction.
Celiac disease is difficult to diagnose because of the presentation of mild symptoms such as mild weakness and bone pain to more severe symptoms such as chronic diarrhea, progressive weight loss, and abdominal bloating. If celiac disease goes untreated, the patient can increase their chance of developing gastrointestinal cancer from 40-100 times when compared to a normal individual. Treatment for celiac disease requires the individual to follow a strict 100% gluten free diet. Vitamins and your health encourages you to stick to a gluten free diet if you are diagnosed with celiac disease.
Kristy Haugen
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