Celiac Disease: What is it?

Celiac Disease (or Celiac Sprue) is a digestive condition that damages the small intestin and ultimately interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food. Hence, Celiac Disease is a very serious condition, despite everything you heard until now.
It can lead to very serious conditions such as Cancer and it can also damage all parts of your body depending on the vitamin deficiencies you get due to the disease. On my particular case the neurologic system was the worst part. This was of course, due to Iron Deficieny. (Of course this varies from individual to individual)

Surprisingly enough all caused by Gluten.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley and oats.

Putting this into simple terms, the auto-immune system will attack the small intestine as soon as gluten is detected on your system.
This is why Celiac Disease is cataloged under the auto-immune diseases list. The damage is not caused by gluten itself, it’s caused by the auto-immune system - gluten just triggers the reaction. It’s pretty much like poison for Celiacs.

How does this happen?
The villi, finger-like or hair-like protrusion following the small intestine become flat. As such, no nutrients are absorbed; and typically the Celiac individual may temporarily develop intolerances to other proteins, such as Lactose.

Usually, after the villi has returned to its normal shape, the side-effect intolerances will fade away.

Symptoms of an untreated Celiac Disease:

• Irritability
  Can be mild or extreme in a few cases depending on your life style. If you’re already an easy-to-irritate person, then you’d probably fall on the “extreme” section. Stress-management techniques can be highly effective on reducing irritability. Remember to relax every now and then, you deserve it, and it will payoff!
• Depression
  Also can be mild or extreme. Suicidal thoughts might also scare your mind every now and then especially if you have no idea what’s wrong with you (which can be the primary cause of your depression…frustration)
• Trembling
  WATCH OUT FOR THIS. Great sign of this. I had this myself, on the right leg constantly. I used to thought it was due to work 8 hours on a desk (don’t ask me why). In reality this is just your body telling you that something’s not right. Even though this is a “physical” thing, it’s neurological because you do it without even noticing it. It comes right off your brain.
• Fatigue
  Megan from YouTube described this as “the pregnant-like nap in the afternoon”. I guess I cannot find anything better to describe it. I’m sure you will start noticing that you sleep a lot more then everyone else.
• Dermatitis Herpetiformis (Skin rash that will never go away)
  Dermatitis Herpetiformis is itself also caused by gluten and it’s merely a reaction of your skin to it. As you start your gluten free diet, you will start noticing that the rash will only be “active” after you have been contamined by gluten. The more gluten your system has, the worse the rash will become. Dermatitis Herpetiformis can be effectively controlled with a specific drug called Dapsone. Dapsone won’t cure you though, it’s just out there to help you control the rash. Only a gluten-free diet will clean your system and this may take up to 2 years.

Have you noticed that I underlined “untreated”? It really was intentional. Once you have CD under control, everything will go away, so hang in there!

Elisabeth Hasselbeck is one of the celibrities with Celiac Disease.
She explained what Celiac Disease is in short during one of her shows (TheView).
Here’s the video:

And here’s another one with a doctor on her show:

(don’t you all love her anyway?)

And here’s Megan’s video (the person I mention earlier) explaining what Celiac Disease is (pretty simplified):

So what’s a Celiac?
A Celiac is usually what people tend to call to an individual who has Celiac disease.

Celiac Disease is not something that you can “get” from someone. It’s genetic, inheritable from your family.
This does not necessarily mean that your parents are Celiacs as well. But it usually means that one of them carries the bad gene. On a family where those genes exist, there is a 10% chance for each member to get it. Meaning, your brother might not get it, but still carry the gene and his son has a 10% of getting it.

Don’t worry though, you’re definately not alone and this is completely manageable!
Nowadays there’s everything gluten-free, even bread!

2 of the top gluten-free food manufacturers:
Glutano
Schär