Whats the difference between celiac disease and just a gluten intolerance or sensitivity?
Everyone is gluten sensitive to some degree, it is a spectrum, but not all medical people agree with this just yet. This is the crux of the problem. In many articles gluten intolerance is equal to celiac, any other sensitivity is ignored or unimportant to the author in that particular study. In other articles, the author refers to gluten sensitivity and then gluten intolerance in reference to the spectrum. Other authors refer to gluten intolerance as all reactions to gluten, autoimmune or not, with celiac being the autoimmune reaction. It can be very confusing until you determine which way the author is leaning with that individual article. The problem stems from celiac studies being still in its infancy… just a few years ago doctors thought it was rare (which it is NOT, it is grossly under diagnosed!) and that children with it could grow out of celiac in adolescence (which they can not!). So there isn’t much agreement on the terms, or even the existence of non-celiac gluten intolera
Celiac disease is a degeneration of the lining of the small intestine caused by a sensitivity to gluten. Gluten is the protein portion of wheat, rye, barley, and wheat relatives (spelt, kamut, emmer, einkorn and triticale). I found an interesting paper recently on the impact of celiac disease on nutrient status and bone density. Researchers compared 54 Northern Italian children with untreated celiac disease to 60 presumably healthy children. The celiac patients had extremely poor vitamin D status, with a deficiency rate of 35.18% compared to 5% in the control group. This was using the lenient cut-off point of 20 ng/mL. Average serum 25(OH)D3 in celiac patients was less than half the level of the control group. The celiac patients also had low serum calcium and magnesium, and elevated parathyroid hormone. Celiac children had lower bone mineral density. All parameters returned to normal after 6 months on a gluten-free diet. This confirms what has been shown numerous times before: celiac
Sub-clinical gluten intolerance is often confused with a medical condition called celiac disease, celiac sprue or non-tropical sprue, sometimes referred to as gluten enteropathy or gluten intolerance. The reaction to gluten in celiac disease is similar to sub-clinical gluten intolerance, except as to the degree of intensity. Comparing sub-clinical gluten intolerance to celiac disease is like comparing first-degree sunburn from a day at the beach, to a third degree burn from a fire victim. They are both burns, but vastly different based on the severity or degree of damage. Celiac disease is not hidden, or sub-clinical, and as such it is easier to diagnose. A person with celiac disease may have blood in their stool or experience disabling pain when they consume gluten-containing foods. Other symptoms of celiac include steatarhea, which is undigested, and unabsorbed fat in the stool and dermatitis herpetiformis, a skin condition. These obvious symptoms often lead doctors to recognize thos
A blog dedicated to living with Celiac in New York City reviewed Elizabeth Hasselback’s discussion of her life with Celiac disease on the January 26, 2007 episode of “The View.” “Yesterday there was some question as to when The View would cover celiac disease in more depth. The question was answered on today’s pre-taped episode, when Elisabeth Hasselbeck spent about three minutes discussing her condition with her co-hosts during the “Hot Topics” portion of the show. [Update: You can view the segment here, though you might need to download a plugin to access it.] The much-anticipated segment began when Barbara Walters switched the Hot Topic from Angelina Jolie to Hasselbeck’s health. Walters, who seemed to have trouble remembering the name of her co-host’s condition (“What do you call it?”), mentioned that people had been writing in about it. Then Rosie O’Donnell chimed in, saying “Explain to people what this is, because a lot of people have said to me, ‘Elisabeth never eats the food. W
