Who gets celiac sprue?
Celiac sprue is gender non-specific. You can be diagnosed at any age. It is more prominent in people with Celtic or Viking backgrounds and it crosses racial lines. Until recently, the thinking was that if celiac sprue didnt present itself in childhood, it wasnt a problem. Now we find that a lot of people have a degree of intolerance, but until something happens, such as an illness or stress, the bodys systems compensate for it. An illness may compromise your bodys ability to compensate for the allergy, or a health issue itself can uncover celiac sprue and cause symptoms. Celiac sprue can be misdiagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) because the intestinal tract has limited ways to tell us that theres a problem. Sprues symptoms of diarrhea, abdominal pain and bloating, and weight loss also are present in other gastrointestinal disorders. Many times, when a patient eliminates wheat from the diet, sprue symptoms go away. But its important to understand that there is a molecule in whea
