Celiac Disease

Our Approach

At Franciscan Health, our doctors can help you thrive with celiac disease. Through nutritional counseling, our certified nutritionists and registered dietitians can help you go "gluten free" through advice tailored to your health history and food preferences.

If you have severe nutritional deficiencies, your doctor may recommend taking vitamin and mineral supplements as well. Your doctor may also suggest a steroid regimen to help manage inflammation if your small intestine is damaged.

What is a gluten-free diet?

A gluten-free diet involves eliminating foods that contain gluten from your diet. Eating gluten free means you avoid most:

• Breads
• Cereals
• Pastas
• Processed foods

Once you remove gluten from your diet, inflammation in the small intestine usually begins to lessen, often in a few weeks. Symptoms may even start to disappear in just a few days.

Diagnosing celiac disease

To determine if you have celiac disease, your doctor will perform a physical examination and evaluate your medical history. You may also have a blood test to measure gluten antibody levels. Sometimes, your doctor may recommend a biopsy (tissue sample) from your small intestine to check for damage.

What is celiac disease?

Celiac disease is a digestive and autoimmune condition. If you have celiac disease, you can't digest gluten, a protein found in grains. Grains that have gluten include barley, rye and wheat.

When people with celiac disease consume gluten, their immune system forms antibodies to it. These antibodies cause inflammation in the intestines and damage the villi, where nutrients from food are absorbed.

Celiac disease may increase a person's risk for:

• Having a child with a congenital disorder (a condition that a person is born with)
• Infertility
• Intestinal cancer
• Osteoporosis

What causes celiac disease?

Anyone can get celiac disease, but it's more common in people who have:

• A family member with celiac disease
• Autoimmune thyroid disease
• Down syndrome
• Sjogren's syndrome
• Microscopic colitis
• Turner syndrome
• Type 1 diabetes

Some gene mutations also seem to increase the risk for developing celiac disease. It can be triggered by:

• Childbirth
• Emotional stress
• Pregnancy
• Surgery
• Viral infection

Gluten intolerance symptoms

Celiac disease can cause a variety of symptoms, including:

• Acid reflux and heartburn
• Anemia (low blood count)
• Aphthous (mouth) ulcers (canker sores)
• Reduced bone density (osteoporosis)
• Constipation and gas
• Diarrhea
• Fatigue
• Headaches
• Missed menstrual periods
• Muscular cramping, bone and joint pain
• Reduced spleen function (hyposplenism)
• Seizures
• Skin rash (dermatitis herpetiformis)
• Weight loss