Celiac Disease Analysis

Celiac disease is a disease that affects at least 3 million Americans including myself. A gluten free diet is often written off as a fad diet but for those living with Celiac, it is anything but. This disease affects your daily life, physically and mentally. I chose this disease because it affects me personally (and my mom and granddad) and many people don’t understand or simply don’t want to understand what Celiac is. Celiac disease is an immune disorder where people can’t tolerate gluten (gluten is wheat, rye, barley, and is mainly in bread products but is also used as a filler for many other food items) because it damages the inner lining of their small intestine. When people with Celiac eat gluten, their immune system damages the villi

When I was diagnosed in 2010, there was very few gluten free options for me and so it was difficult for me to adjust. My granddad and mom were diagnosed around the same year, in 2013, and in those short 3 years, there had been many new items sold as more people got diagnosed with the disease. But it’s still pretty dangerous for someone to go out to eat because in restaurants, who sometimes are just in it to make money because gluten free is a well-known fad diet, there is the possibility of cross contamination that can make anyone who is very sensitive (like me) to gluten to become accidentally ‘glutened’ (a slang term many Celiacs use to describe when you accidentally eat gluten). Sometimes a completely gluten free diet doesn’t make your pains go away completely. It may cause them to go down significantly but not completely go away (like me). Unfortunately, you are born with Celiac and it cannot be prevented. The more closely related you are to a family member with Celiac, the more likely you are get it yourself. In 50% of people who have Celiac, it’s likely that a close family member has it as well. You have Celiac for your whole life. To conclude, Celiac disease is a complex disease that can be hard to be diagnosed. Something I learned from the research for this essay was that researches do not know the exact cause of celiac