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With this article on Gluten Allergy Symptoms, I will attempt to clarify something I feel confuses many people researching Celiac Disease (or Celiac Sprue Disease) and gluten intolerance.

Before you can understand the problems with gluten, you must be able to answer the question, what is gluten? For that reason, you might start by reading the home page of this site. For a more comprehensive understanding of the unique substance known as gluten, try my guide focusing on this subject: What Is Gluten?

To be honest, the term gluten allergy symptoms itself creates confusion and I’m not fond of it. I titled this article this confusing term on purpose to draw those using it so I might educate them on why it isn’t the best term for this condition. And yet even as I wrote it, I have come to the conclusion that it may still have a purpose if we can get the health community to use it in a specific way and in a consistent manner.

The first aspect you must understand is that clinical Celiac Disease and even Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) is fundamentally different than an allergy in the traditional sense. Celiac disease is not a food allergy; it is an autoimmune disease. I explain this to some degree with the main article of this site, but because I receive an overwhelming number of emails targeting the phrase gluten allergy symptoms, I thought I better address the term more directly in its own article.

Read Gluten Allergy Symptoms

Conclusive results for gluten intolerance are often found by putting a patient on a gluten elimination diet to see if the elimination of gluten relieves the symptoms. This usually isn’t the first step though. Blood tests and allergen tests should be done first because an elimination diet can be somewhat risky if there are other issues present.

One of the first steps should include a blood test to look for raised antibodies and other biomarkers to determine if the patient has celiac disease. If a gluten elimination diet is done first it can impact the results of the blood test possibly causing an inaccurate diagnosis. In some cases a doctor may also suggest a biopsy of the intestinal wall to check the condition of the villi.

Some doctors still think celiac disease is relatively rare, so if the patient tests negative for celiac sprue disease, an allergen test is often performed. It is important to note that just because your test results for celiac disease are negative doesn’t absolutely mean you don’t have some form of gluten intolerance. A negative result also doesn’t exclude the possibility of a wheat allergy. For more on the distinctions between these conditions, please read gluten allergy symptoms.

Read Gluten Intolerance Test