International Celiac Day: The 10 symptoms that could indicate that you suffer from celiac disease

This Thursday, like every 5th of May, the International Celiac Day.

The celiacAccording to the latest data, it affects between 1 and 2% of the Spanish population. This means that in our country there are between 450,000 and 900,000 people with this disease, which is a reaction of the immune system to the consumption of gluten.

It is more frequent in women than in men, to the point that for every two celiacs, there is only one man with this disease.

And 20% of diagnoses are made in people over 60, which shows that can appear at any age.

Gluten is a protein found in:

• The wheat.

• barley.

• The spelt.

• Oats, although there are varieties of this last cereal that can be consumed if they are free of contaminants and certified.

As experts point out, it is a disease underdiagnosed, to the point that between 80 and 85% of celiacs do not know that they are.

With the added complication that when the diagnosis arrives late, other pathologies associated with celiac disease may develop. Between them:

• autoimmune thyroid. Also known as Hashimoto’s disease, it is a pathology that affects the thyroid gland. It occurs when the immune system attacks healthy tissue, causing the death of the thyroid cells that produce hormones. The main treatment is the administration of thyroid hormones orally.
• type I diabetes. It is estimated that between 3 and 8% of people with type I diabetes, one for which there is a high level of glucose in the blood, are also celiac. In this type of diabetes, the cells where the sugar is stored make little or no insulin.
• Selective IgA deficiency. A disease of the immune system characterized by the absence of immunoglobulin A (IgA), a protein that plays a key role in fighting infections.

“Sick people with hematology due to anemia, gynecology due to fertility problems, traumatology due to osteoporosis come to us at the celiac disease clinic… It has multiple manifestations,” he explains. Frances Casellas Jordahead of the nutrition committee of the Spanish Digestive System Foundation (FEAD).

However, the symptoms most frequent are:

• Weightloss.

• Fatigue.

• Nausea and vomiting.

• Diarrhea.

• abdominal pains.

• Anemia.

• Abdominal distension (feeling of swollen abdomen).

• Osteoporosis (only in adulthood).

• loss of appetite

• Irritability, apathy or sadness.

A bowl of oatmeal and fruit. Shutterstock

As alerted by , celiac disease may not produce symptoms, although there is always damage to the lining of the small intestine.

Which is the treatment?

The only treatment for celiac disease is a gluten free dietvery strict, and for life.

It is very important to watch everything that is consumed, because there are many foods that contain gluten. This protein is also present in many additives, substances without nutritional value that are added to products in the manufacturing and/or preservation process.

Some of the additives suitable for celiacs are the following:

• E-100. Common in butters.

• E-101. It can be found in ultra-processed purees.

• E-140. Present in energy drinks.

• E-260. In meat products

• E-202. Normally, in canned fish.

• E-300. In fresh and frozen pizza doughs.

“Celiac patients must be recommended to follow the diet and definitively break with gluten because, if they don’t, this disease will perpetuate itself and can become complicated”, emphasizes Dr. Casellas.

Refractory celiac disease: why is it so dangerous?

According to the study “Refractory celiac disease”, published in the , 5% of celiacs suffer from this type of celiac disease. And it is one of the most serious forms of the disease.

That’s how they define it santiago vivas and Jose Maria Ruiz de Moralesof the Digestive System and Immunology Service, respectively, of:

• “The main cause of non-response to a gluten-free diet is the continued and often inadvertent ingestion of gluten. The diagnosis of refractory celiac disease is established after the exclusion of other diseases, given the persistence of malabsorption and villous atrophy.

Gluten is present in cereals such as wheat, barley or oats. freepik

“The continuous intake of gluten, generally in an inadvertent and regular way, is the main cause of persistence of the clinic”, specify the authors of the research. However, drugs or other substances that contain gluten must also be ruled out.

For this reason, although it may initially be believed that gluten consumption has been withdrawn from the diet, there are other causes of no improvement in symptoms:

• Non-compliance with the diet (latent or unknown).

• Intolerance to other foods (lactose, fructose).

• Bacterial overgrowth.

• Pancreatic insufficiency.

• Microscopic colitis or collagenous colitis.

• Inflammatory bowel disease.

• Collagen sprue (excessive collagen deposition and manifested by persistent diarrhea with weight loss).

• Giardiasis (diarrheal disease).

There are two kinds of refractory celiac disease:

• Type I. It is the least serious type.

• Type II. In most cases, in addition to continuing with a gluten-free diet, always verified by a specialist, it requires the administration of medication such as corticosteroids. They are used intravenously or orally depending on the degree of clinical severity, in a dose of 1 mg/kg of prednisone or prednisolone. Local-acting corticosteroids, such as budesonide, have also been used with similar clinical efficacy. In the worst case, other serious pathologies such as intestinal lymphoma.

How is celiac disease diagnosed?

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