Celiac disease or gluten sensitive enteropathy (GSE) affects about one in 133 people in the United States today. According to studies, celiac disease happens to five to fifteen percent of those people who have siblings and other family members who are suffering from this ailment. However, among identical twins, about seventy percent of twins suffer from celiac symptoms shortly after the other is diagnosed with the disease. Given these high incidents of the disease among twins, doctors often subject the other twin to a series of test for celiac disease even if the other twin does not manifest any celiac symptoms.

Although there are so many people who are suffering from celiac disease in the country today, it not really clear as to what causes this type of ailment. Some medical professionals believe that celiac disease can be genes related judging by the way twins often display the same celiac symptoms but there are still no concrete evidence to support the veracity of this claim.

Celiac Symptoms

Some of the most common celiac symptoms are abdominal cramping, intestinal gas, bloating, distention, chronic diarrhea and constipation, anemia, steatorrhea and weight loss even if the person has large appetite. In some other cases, celiac symptoms may come in the form of dental enamel defects, bone or joint pain, osteoporosis, depression, infertility, and fatigue and aphthous ulcers. Since most of these symptoms are non-exclusive to celiac disease, one should not assume that he or she is suffering from celiac symptoms if he or she suffers from any of these conditions. In fact, a lot of medical professionals warn against starting a gluten free diet until such time when the existence of the celiac disease has been medically confirmed. Note that gluten is important to our normal diet because it is high in protein and fiber, thus, nobody should shun this substance unless he or she develops gluten intolerance.

How To Know If You Are Indeed Suffering From Celiac Symptoms

The only way to know whether or not a person is suffering from celiac symptoms is to conduct a small bowel biopsy. This process involves gastroscopy or the passing of a tube from the mount of the patient to the gut where a small sample from the wall of intestine is taken for study. Yes, this can be quite an uncomfortable procedure but since a blood test in insufficient to establish if a person is suffering from celiac disease and the celiac symptoms can easily pass off as symptoms of some other types of diseases, this uncomfortable procedure is important to determine the true condition of the patient.