The Crucial Role of a Gluten Free Diet in Silent Celiac Management Ep. 119

Ever wondered why your loved one isn't showing symptoms of celiac disease despite being diagnosed or being in high-risk groups? You're not alone! In this conversation, we unravel the mystery of silent celiac disease—a condition where typical symptoms of celiac disease like fatigue, diarrhea, or brain fog don't manifest. We're here to stress how crucial it is to understand that celiac disease does not always hit the alarm bell loud and clear. Many individuals show no symptoms, or experience subtle signs, often mistaken for something else.

Listen on as we discuss how silent celiac disease is often discovered in routine screenings for other health conditions—anemia or thyroid disease being common triggers for testing. Even without symptoms, the health implications of this silent disease can be severe, leading to malnutrition, infertility, osteoporosis, and other autoimmune diseases. We also shed light on why sticking to a gluten-free diet is vital, even when the disease is 'silent.' We recognize the challenges involved in adhering to such a diet and communicating this condition to others, especially when there are no visible symptoms. So, tune in and equip yourself with knowledge about silent celiac disease—it's not as quiet as it sounds.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Okay.

Speaker 1: 0:25

So today I wanted to talk with you about silent celiac disease or asymptomatic celiac disease, and the main reason being, if you have family members that you think, oh, they don't need to be tested because they're not showing any symptoms of celiac disease. I wanted you to understand that not everybody gets symptoms of celiac disease that are kind of common. So I guess, like the normal ones that we think of, like you know the fatigue, the diarrhea, the brain fog, the aches and the pains, you know the joint pain, those types of things that are pretty standard in a lot of people. So a lot of people have no symptoms whatsoever, or they might simply have just fatigue or neurological changes, but they don't link it to celiac disease. So this is why we call it silent celiac disease, because it doesn't get picked up on, because people don't, you know, present with the typical symptoms of what we know celiac disease to be. Now, I always say typical. There are hundreds of signs and symptoms of celiac disease, but generally there are like a like an umbrella of quite common ones. So why I think it's important to have an awareness about this is if you got given a celiac disease diagnosis, your doctor or your primary caregiver should have given you a letter to give to your closest family, so that being your siblings, your parents, your children, and they should have been tested for celiac disease. And you'll find that some people don't want to hear about it. They don't want to know, and if you've heard me talk about my brother, you'll know that he's one of them that was in denial for years and refused to get tested. And then there's other people, like my dad. He went and got tested, he got my siblings tested and my mom took six months to get tested. But you know, if someone's got silent celiac disease and they're, you know, i don't need to get tested because I don't have diarrhea or I don't have any bloating or any pain. No, no, no, no. This can help them understand that you don't have to have those symptoms to actually have celiac disease. Now why is this important? Well, it's important for a number of reasons, because just because you have silent celiac disease doesn't mean you don't have all the same problems that someone with you know your typical celiac disease has as far as the health implications go. So we're gonna talk about that in a moment.

Speaker 1: 3:06

But how do people with silent celiac disease get tested? This is interesting. So most people that I speak to that have got silent celiac disease say to me that it was picked up in a routine screening because they had other problems and most of the time it's from anemia. So if someone goes to the GP or the doctor and they're anemic because they have low iron, then if they've got a really great doctor, then they're gonna test them for celiac disease And then, lo and behold, they get a celiac disease diagnosis. So many people get it from that, some people get it from getting tested for thyroid disease and then they realize they've also got celiac disease. So, yeah, it can just be a routine screening for something else and then they get a diagnosis.

Speaker 1: 3:57

And then the other way is through what we were talking about with getting your family members to be tested because you have celiac disease. So you know, many people go, they get tested, they get a positive result and they are shocked because it's not the typical standard celiac disease that most people talk about. So if you were to talk to someone with celiac disease and they said, oh, it's fine, i don't have any symptoms, like I can eat gluten and nothing happens to me, you'd be like what are you talking about? Because you know that you've got, you know all these other problems that go with eating gluten, whereas people with this form of celiac disease they can eat gluten and not notice any difference, but unfortunately their body is still attacking itself, it's still doing damage. They just don't realize it.

Speaker 1: 4:51

So if you've been diagnosed with silent celiac disease or you've got a loved one that you really care about and you think they should be tested, here are the reasons why You can still suffer from malnutrition. So your body is not gonna absorb the nutrients it needs because the villi in your small intestine is still damaged okay, it's still getting damaged from the gluten And that means that your body is not absorbing the beautiful nutrients from all the healthy food that you eat and therefore it causes malnutrition. So for women, this can cause other issues such as infertility, and this is why I talked about recently that anyone that's struggling with infertility should be tested for celiac disease to rule that out. It can also lead to other autoimmune diseases. So anyone that has celiac disease and they continue to eat gluten, it can actually trigger other autoimmune diseases. So it's not worth it, because if you yourself have any other autoimmune diseases, you know that it's not nice to be living with more than just one, so that's important as well. Osteoporosis you know it can let that whole malnutrition it can lead to osteoporosis. So we're talking really brittle bad bones in future years. It's just not worth it.

Speaker 1: 6:05

So it is important for someone with silent celiac disease to still eat gluten free And, as you can probably imagine, i think this would be the hardest thing for someone with silent celiac disease because they're not feeling crappy. So for me, as soon as I found out that I could eat gluten free and it would help fix my problems sign me up, baby. I was all over eating gluten free. There was no way in hell I was going to eat gluten ever again by choice, because I knew how much better I felt by eating gluten free. Whereas if it doesn't make you feel better because you have no symptoms, how much harder is that to stick to that diet? So how much harder is it to just fully focus on what's going on inside you but not knowing right. So I think this is very, very hard for people with Silent Celiac Disease because they have to really honestly get a true understanding of the problems that are going to happen down the track if they don't stick to a gluten-free diet.

Speaker 1: 7:19

I also think it would be really hard to explain to others that you have Celiac Disease and you don't have any symptoms. Because if you have a conversation with someone and they've spoken to someone else and they had Celiac Disease and they said if they have gluten and you know it causes diarrhea and it causes brain fog and it causes pain and you know it causes all these other issues that they can barely get out of bed or vomiting, all these awful things, and then they speak to someone else and they're like, oh yeah, no, i don't have any problems. They might not believe you for a start that you've got Celiac Disease. Or they might think, well, you don't really need to take it that seriously, it's okay if you have a little bit of gluten. Or they might not be as careful if they're preparing food for you. There's all these ongoing things that I think it would be a lot harder.

Speaker 1: 8:07

So it is something to know that the more awareness there is and the more that people talk about this and share that it is, it is normal for people to have no symptoms with Celiac Disease as far as an out you know, outwardly symptoms, but they do have symptoms inside their body. They do have things going on for them inside their body that are causing them major issues if they're not eating gluten-free, and then the last problem that I think that they can face, or the challenge that they can face, is if they do accidentally eat gluten. So let's just say they're taking it seriously, they're eating gluten-free, but they accidentally get glutened. They're very likely not going to know, they're not going to notice because they don't feel any different. So that's a hard one in itself. Now, when I say that many people with Silent Celiac Disease don't have any symptoms, some of them will notice that when they do get a Celiac Disease diagnosis and they go gluten-free, they may actually notice that they feel better. Okay, so they might not have actually noticed they had symptoms, but they can go on and feel better and notice these health improvements on a gluten-free diet. So there is that, and that's a positive. So I think that that definitely does help.

Speaker 1: 9:28

But yeah, i just wanted to share this because I feel like not many people talk about this enough, and I personally think it's important mostly to help more people get a diagnosis so that they can live a healthier, better life, and this also plays a key part in mental health, and we know that people that eat gluten when they have Celiac Disease. It can lead to many mental health problems. So I honestly believe that anyone that presents with depression should it also be tested for Celiac Disease. There's so many problems that people face that it can tie in so closely to Celiac Disease. So if you and I share this and we spread more awareness, we can help so many more people. And I think if the medical industry so doctors, primary caregivers, you know all of these different people had more awareness about Celiac Disease, then it can help so many more people, and I'm passionate about this. This is just what gets me up and going every day, because I know the difference that it makes when someone gets a Celiac Disease diagnosis and takes their health and runs with it and changes their life. So, yeah, it's amazing when people can do that for themselves.

Speaker 1: 10:42

So, yeah, thank you so much for tuning in today and learning a little bit more about Silent Celiac Disease and, like I said, if you have a family member that hasn't been tested yet, talk to them about this. Talk to them that it's not always that you have to have symptoms to. You know, get a Celiac Disease diagnosis. They may still be suffering on the inside and not realize it. So, yeah, go ahead, share that with them and and teach them a bit more about it and help them because, yeah, you could completely change their future. So thanks for tuning in. I'll talk to you again soon. Take care, bye.