If you are new to a gluten-free diet, you may wonder how much gluten is too much gluten, and you may wonder what to do if you accidentally consume gluten because you couldn’t control the preparation environment or because you just didn’t know something was made with gluten.
While the Codex Alimentarius and the FDA define gluten-free as less than 20 ppm (parts per million), this doesn’t help the layman user trying to understand how much gluten will hurt him or her or a loved one. According to recent studies, it takes remarkably little gluten to do measurable damage.
So first I will try to teach how important it is that you avoid gluten at every turn, and then I will try to help you heal yourself in those inevitable (but hopefully rare) moments where you accidentally do eat a bit of gluten.
Read on to learn how little daily gluten it takes to do damage if you have celiac disease and to discover some reasonable steps you can take to help yourself heal after gluten exposure.
Read How Much Gluten Is Too Much?
Too often people suffering from some kind of gluten intolerance walk away from a negative celiac disease test not realizing they may still be suffering some kind of non-celiac gluten intolerance. If your blood test indicates the celiac disease symptoms you’ve been experiencing are not actually caused by celiac disease, you may be suffering from one of several gluten-related conditions possible even when celiac disease isn’t present.
Because doctors and researchers recently agreed upon an existence of a non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), we now have four separate and distinct medical conditions that may occur independent of a formal celiac disease diagnosis. In addition to non-celiac gluten sensitivity, a wheat allergy, dermatitis herpetiformis and gluten ataxia are all possible medical diagnoses related to some form of gluten intolerance.
It can be difficult to distinguish wheat allergy symptoms from celiac disease symptoms, so you should be careful not try diagnosing yourself. Dermatitis herpetiformis is often referred to as a gluten allergy rash, but it is not really an allergy. It is an autoimmune mediated response.
The mystery of gluten and the consequences of consuming it continue to evolve. Read on to discover how to distinguish these different forms of non-celiac gluten intolerance from each other.
Read Non-Celiac Gluten Intolerance
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
One of the earliest ways to diagnose symptoms of celiac disease is a deficiency in one or more of the minerals or vitamins absorbed into the bloodstream through the intestinal wall where celiac disease first impacts the gastrointestinal tract. Because the first section of villi damaged by gluten intolerance is the proximal small intestine, the vitamins and minerals absorbed often are deficient in cases of untreated celiac disease.
These vitamins include fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D, E and K, and these minerals include calcium, magnesium and iron. An iron deficiency can lead to anemia so it is important to detect low ferritin. In several ways early symptoms of gluten allergy can dovetail with early low ferritin symptoms, so if a blood test indicates you have low serum ferritin, you may want to discuss the possibility of celiac disease or a non-celiac gluten-sensitivity with your doctor.
While change of diet or iron supplements can help many people suffering from low ferritin symptoms, if you have celiac disease you must strictly adhere to a gluten-free diet. This can be more difficult than you realize as many people don’t understand what is gluten and how pervasive it is in the western diet.
Read on to learn more about how celiac disease impacts ferritin, identifying low ferritin symptoms and treating low ferritin levels.
Read Low Ferritin Symptoms
With the gluten-free product industry expected to surpass 5 billion dollars in profit by 2015, the sirens of commerce have become a big part of the gluten-free diet fad. I suppose it isn’t a surprise that this has become a difficult matter, but I’m afraid many people forget the real suffering endure by people stuck between the marketing hype surrounding the gluten-free diet and the medical reality inherent in gluten intolerance… people stuck between anti-gluten fanaticism and gluten-free skepticism.
Celiac disease symptoms are real, and celiac disease continues to be terribly undiagnosed. And still even in the mainstream people don’t seem to really understand gluten itself (What Is Gluten?) or the varying ways people can suffer some degree of gluten intolerance.
While many muddle the matter with terms like gluten allergy symptoms, wheat allergy symptoms and non-celiac gluten sensitivity, the core issue of gluten intolerance requires a patient, nuanced understanding our current deeply polarized cultural divide struggles to appreciate. Read on to consider my take on trying to find a middle ground between fanaticism and skepticism.
Read Gluten-Free Diet Fad?
Learning to accurately define gluten is an important step in mastering the gluten free lifestyle. When you first try to tackle gluten intolerance, you must first learn to answer, what is gluten?
Despite what you may have read on many misinformed, vague or just plain inaccurate websites out there, gluten is not a protein itself and it is possible to have a poor response to consuming gluten and yet still test negative for celiac disease. Gluten is rather a protein composite — that is, it is made up of many different proteins — and non-celiac gluten sensitivity is even more common than celiac disease.
Celiac disease symptoms occur as a result of the proteins gliadin and glutenin in gluten. And gluten allergy symptoms may occur as a result of either consuming wheat or consuming any food containing even a trace of a gluten-containing grain.
Understanding these things helps you to better identify and isolate the foods containing gluten and to better adapt an effective and healthful gluten free diet. These are all important steps towards treating your gluten intolerance and developing a more healthy and happy life for you and your loved ones.
So read on to develop a clear, accurate and comprehensive understanding for what exactly gluten is.
Read What Is Gluten?
You are not alone if you are confused by the vocabulary used in the gluten intolerance discussion. There are over a dozen different terms used interchangeably to represent three different conditions, and most people don’t even realize that there are three distinct conditions under the gluten intolerance umbrella. From gluten-sensitive enteropathy to non-tropical sprue, over half a dozen terms refer to celiac disease alone. And the confusion only increases when you try to explain how the common term gluten allergy is itself technically inaccurate. At the heart of all this we must ask, what is gluten? But beyond gluten we need to understand how celiac disease, gluten sensitivity and a wheat allergy are three different conditions, all which must be respected and treated properly, no matter what vocabulary you use to describe them. So whether you are trying identify celiac disease symptoms or you are trying to find meaning in gluten allergy symptoms, let’s find out what all the words mean under the gluten intolerance umbrella.
Read Gluten Intolerance Vocabulary
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
Persevering a condition where celiac disease symptoms are triggered by a staple of the western diet is difficult for people of any age, but identifying and diagnosing celiac disease symptoms in children can be particularly difficult and troubling. We will distinguish celiac disease symptoms in children as symptoms that manifest more often in individuals of adolescent age or younger and that occur in individuals who ultimately test positive for celiac sprue disease.
Read Gluten Intolerance for a comprehensive overview of this often puzzling health phenomenon.
While I’ve tried to place each of these symptoms of celiac disease in children in the most appropriate age group, the truth is all of these symptoms can occur at any age. For that reason, here is a more conclusive single list for your reference. You should should also check the lists in my silent celiac disease symptoms and celiac disease symptoms articles.
Read Celiac Disease Symptoms In Children
I think too many people online use the term gluten allergy incorrectly and sometimes irresponsibly. I use the term on my website also, for example in my article on gluten allergy symptoms, but I try to use this term in a deliberate way to draw some of the people using this phrase to read my articles. I hope that by reading this article people will gain a better understanding of this term, the conditions often addressed by people using this term and how it can be misused.
The term gluten allergy is deceptive and somewhat meaningless, but I will try to provide a gluten allergy definition that will help people better understand the conditions typically related to this term. If you are familiar with my approach or my site you may know I have a problem with a couple of terms used when referring to this sensitive and complicated issue.
Most of the time when people say gluten allergy, they are actually talking about gluten intolerance. In most cases, an intolerance to gluten isn’t an allergy. Both gluten intolerance and celiac disease, a closely related condition, are autoimmune diseases. The symptoms that result from these autoimmune diseases are not like the allergic reaction you would associate with a peanut allergy or even hay fever. The reaction and the body’s systemic response is very different.
Read Gluten Allergy Definition
