Diet for Celiac Disease - What is Celiac Disease & How to Manage a Gluten-Free Diet
What is Celiac Disease?
Celiac disease is a condition through which a person’s small intestines are damaged when gluten is ingested. By definition, gluten is a type of protein that is commonplace in rye, wheat, and barley. This protein is also contained in conventional daily products like medicines, lip balms, and cereal beverages. The sustained damage of the small intestines serves to reduce the bodily capacity to absorb nutrients from the food eaten. The exact nature of the condition is that the villi that line the small intestines are destroyed through the action of the body immune system. The villi are the protrusions that are responsible for absorbing food nutrients to the bloodstream and their destruction ultimately leads to malnutrition in a patient despite the quantity of food eaten.
Other Names
Celiac disease also goes by the names celiac sprue, gluten-sensitive enteropathy, and non-tropical sprue. Though this condition mostly tends to be genetic, its onset can also be triggered by viral infections, surgery, serious emotional distress, pregnancy, and delivery.
Celiac disease portends lots of symptoms in both children and adults and these often do result in the incidence of a number of other diseases like type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, liver disease, to mention but a few.
Effective Treatment
This disease has only one effective treatment and this is by refraining from foods that contain gluten. Patients of the disease are advised on gluten-free diets and they must learn to identify foods that contain gluten so as not to make the condition worse. Adhering to a gluten-free diet will often result in a halt of the disease symptoms. In addition, the small intestines will start healing and the subsequent proper health of the villi means that the person can absorb food nutrients normally, provided that no gluten makes its way here.
It is possible that a patient on the gluten-free diet will show no marked improvement. The main cause for this is the fact that there are still minute amounts of gluten being transported to the small intestines. Often this gluten is obtained from sources like stabilizers, additives, and preservatives. Extra care should therefore be practiced in ensuring that absolutely no gluten is ingested.
Gluten-Free Diet
By being on an effective gluten-free diet you are essentially barred from eating anything that contains rye, wheat, or barley. By extension, it also means that you cannot eat foods that have been processed from any of these three food types. Foods like pasta and bread are a definite no-no. These restrictions notwithstanding, celiac disease patients have no excuse not to eat a balanced diet. They have lots of options in potatoes, soy, bean flour, buckwheat, rice, quinoa, amaranth, etc. An increasing number of stores are now selling gluten-free pastas, breads, and other processed foodstuffs. Foods like all meats, fruits, and vegetables have no gluten content and so the patient is well catered for in terms of a wholesome diet.
Patients of celiac disease need to exercise caution in their food choices lest they ingest even the slightest amounts of gluten resulting in villi damage. There are lots of websites that offer suggested food charts that can guide such persons to the right diet for their condition.