The Celiac Cause

In Dutch culture the term celiac disease carries a wrong connotation of it being an allergy. Despite its connotation with an allergy and sharing some of its similarities with celiac disease in the public eye, it is in fact an auto-immune disease. Meaning that the body attacks its own cells when a person with celiac disease consumes gluten and in turn permanently damages the inner lining of the interior of the small intestine. The function of the small intestine, which becomes damaged when ingesting gluten, is for the main part to break down the foods we consume and to get nutrients out of our food. It does so by absorbing these nutrients through the inner-lining of the small intestine also called the mucosa. When we are born, we start our life’s journey with a lot of reserves in our body, for example with an overdose of vitamin D. This slowly diminishes if the body is unable to get these nutrients out of the food we eat when the small intestine is impaired. This is one of the main reasons why the disease almost always goes unnoticed for a certain period of time before a patient gets diagnosed. The decline starts slowly, attacking various parts of the body. This makes it very difficult to get diagnosed correctly and quickly. The body in essence start ‘to crumble’ down because the core features, necessary to strive and survive in life are slowly degrading. This is why, after getting the right diagnosis, patients with the disease need to adhere to a strict diet that is entirely free from gluten (which is kind of impossible in this world we live in and that we’ve created together). Tiny levels of gluten are always going to be present everywhere we go, so this makes it even more important for celiacs to try to avoid all forms of consuming gluten. It only takes a tiny crumb of gluten, for a celiac patient, to start a crumbling journey all over again.

With an allergy, the body has a strong adverse reaction to consuming a specific type of food or substance (such as pollen, dust mites) but it doesn’t necessarily have to do permanent damage to the body when the food is consumed. The bodily reaction is fortunately usually reversible and in severe cases, reversible if the person with the allergy takes an antidote, for example a norepinephrine injection (EpiPen). With that being said, someone with, for example a peanut allergy, could die in a very short period of time when ingesting even the smallest trace of a peanut by going into an anaphylactic shock and as a result die without proper care or an EpiPen at hand. This is very different from someone with celiac disease because the decline starts showing up slowly in the body (although a reaction to the food intake could be noticeable quite quickly), it can’t lead to an anaphylactic shock. In part, this is also why an allergy is almost always easier to diagnose than celiac disease.