National Celiac Disease Awareness Day on Friday the 13th
No Friday the 13th is not Celiac Disease's unlucky day as it actually a celebratory day as September 13th is a day all about awareness for the autoimmune disease!! It gets to ruin the villil in my small intestine and get a day dedicated to it... #ThatsSoCeliac .
If you've read the About page and my "New Here? So Am I" posts then you know I created That's So Celiac to create a community for those with celiac disease while also creating more awareness around the autoimmune disease. So you could imagine how excited I am to be writing about National Celiac Awareness Day. This day was created to encourage humans who do not have celiac disease to support those with the autoimmune disease. Why do we celebrate a disease that has gluten lovers needing to avoid gluten, so they do not continue to damage the villil in their small intestine or other things? Well we celebrate to honor the doctor who identified a link between celiac disease and diet. Everyone please give a round of applause for Dr. Samuel Gee, who is a leader in celiac disease research. Again why September 13th? Well because Dr. Samuel Gee was born on Sept. 13, 1839.
To celebrate today, I thought I would provide you with 13 facts (all facts are from my own research over the last 2.5 years - I made sure to credit sources that I used direct information from) about Celiac Disease that you may not know:
Celiac Disease is also commonly known as celiac sprue, coeliac disease, non-tropical sprue or gluten sensitive enteropathy.
The autoimmune disease affects 3 million people.
An autoimmune disease is an illness that causes the immune system to produce antibodies that attack normal body tissues. Autoimmune is when your body attacks itself. It sees a part of your body or a process as a disease and tries to combat it. This definition come from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology.
A wheat allergy isn't the same thing as celiac as a wheat allergy is a true allergy, while celiac disease is an autoimmune disease!
Celiac causes inflammatory changes in the small intestine that make it more difficult for essential nutrients to be absorbed.
Those with celiac disease are traditionally low in fiber, iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc, folate, niacin, riboflavin, vitamin B12, and vitamin D, as well as in calories and protein (go read the Celiac Disease Foundation's article on this).
According to the Celiac Disease Foundation, zinc deficiency is particularly associated with these skin lesions (currently battling this with my own body - working with a integrative health practitioner to figure this out).
Gluten can be found in medicine (I will be writing more about this in the future as drug companies are not required to list if there is gluten or not in their product!!!). Don't believe me? Go read about it.
There is no cure for celiac disease - it is a chronic and permanent disease. We have to adjust our lifestyle to a gluten-free lifestyle.
6-10 years is the average time a person waits to be correctly diagnosed. (Source: Daniel Leffler, MD, MS, The Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center)**
Over a four-year period, people with undiagnosed celiac disease cost an average of $3,964 more than healthy individuals. (Source: Long et al, 2010)**
It tends to be a trend that most people think a blood test (this helps when looking at the small intestine) will confirm you have celiac disease, but to 100% confirm you have the disease and get a proper diagnosis, you must have an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (I know from experience and talking with my doctors - 3 years of advocating for myself and finding the right GI doctor).
If you think have celiac disease and have already gone gluten free, but want to get tested, you must put gluten back into you diet for the endoscopy to be accurate!!
I hope that this day continues to get attention and that research continues to be done, so that diagnosis can happen earlier instead of it taking years to get an accurate diagnosis and so that the healthcare field can become more informed and not misdiagnose those who are suffering from it. Cheers to more research, continuing to grow the advocacy for the celiac community, and to living our best gluten-free lives!
**I have done a lot of research and reading on celiac disease, but sourced these specific bullets from beyondceliac.org**