What are the symptoms of Celiac disease?
The symptoms of celiac disease are hard to tell if they’re not the classic bloating and diarrhea or even anemia.
There’s a reason why celiac is commonly called the disease with a thousand faces, because there could be so many symptoms that you might not connect it to celiac specifically.
In this article we will try and outline some celiac symptoms and how to recognize if you have it or not.
Most common symptoms – Digestive
| Bloating | Chronic Diarrhea |
| Constipation | Gas |
| Lactose intolorence | Loose and bad smelling stools |
| Nausea | Vomiting |
| Abdomen pain |
Most common symptoms – Children
| Enamel damage to the teeth | Delayed puberty |
| Damaged weight gain – a child gains less weight as expected to his age group | Mood changes and feeling annoyed easily with impatient |
| Short height | General weight loss |
Most common symptoms – other areas
| Dermatitis herpetiformis | Fatigue, feeling tired a lot |
| Joint and bone pain | Mental health issues like depression and anxiety |
| Headaches | Infertility issues |
| Canker sores |
Please note that there might be other symptoms and we just mentioned some of the most common ones here.
From our own experience with our daughter, and what we know from other people and doctors, usually it takes more than just one symptom to show before you start suspecting Celiac disease.
We were ” lucky ” in the fact that we found out at a very early age, but a lot of people can go a life time without figuring out the symptoms.
Most symptoms will go away completely or decrease by a lot once you start going on a gluten free diet. However it is important to note that even small amounts of gluten that make their way into your system, might increase the symptoms again.
Depending on your age at the time of diagnoses, some symptoms may be permanent such as low height, if you found out at an adult age, and you never understood why you never grew in height, even after removing gluten from your diet, you will not suddenly start to grow again at an adult age.
Infographic with most common symptoms
Celiac Disease Causes
The most common cause based on research is Genes. Celiac is an auto immune disease that has a higher chance of passing with Genes. It is triggered after the person consumes gluten and the immune system attacks the small intestine mistaken the gluten to a virus or germs.
The Gene factor
In most cases, Celiac will happen in people that have at least one of the two gene groups DQ2 and DQ8. If you don’t have these genes it is not likely you will develop Celiac, however not impossible.
It is known that around 30 percent of people in the world have the genes DQ2 or DQ8, but that doesn’t mean they all will develop Celiac. Only about 3 percent of these people will develop Celiac.
The Gluten factor
research suggests that people with genes DQ2 and DQ8 will not automatically develop Celiac. However, children who have these genes and are exposed to gluten more frequently in early childhood may have a higher risk for Celiac disease.
Summing up
There are always more studies and research done on Celiac and the factors that cause it, every few years new discoveries comes up, it’s best to stay up to date on everything and make sure to notice any symptoms if you suspect a Celiac disease in you or someone you know.
References:
