Hot Topic: Celiac Disease by Elizabeth Carpenter

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, fingerlike 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.

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 what symptoms to watch out for. Here at www.get-fit-at-home.co.uk we will help you to achieve a healthy, balanced diet even if you suffer from Celiac disease. Here’s how.

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.

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.

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.

Copyright 2008 Elizabeth Carpenter | www.get-fit-at-home.co.uk | We are the biggest team of personal trainers in the UK.