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Gluten-free isn’t a fad for these folks, it’s a necessity.
More and more cases of celiac disease continue to surface lately. Symptoms for people who suffer from the disease show up almost immediately after the consumption of gluten. Why do people react so quickly?
Some immune cells drop stomach-churning levels of immune chemicals, also known as cytokines, into the blood quickly after the cells interact with gluten. This triggers nausea within a few hours. Those immune cells react to gluten proteins in wheat, barley, and rye. This eventually leads to damaging the small intestine.
These immune cells normally don’t act up until a day or two after exposure to a protein, but people with celiac disease start feeling it within an hour or two. To test the immune cells (also referred to as T cells), researchers injected gluten peptides under the skin of some volunteers who had the disease. Around the two-hour time period, levels of cytokines and T cells began to rise.
As a result of this test, the volunteers became nauseous and some even vomited. With this information, the hope is that therapies can be developed to block the gluten-reacting T cells. Doctors would also have the opportunity to diagnose celiac disease by measuring IL-2 levels in their blood, instead of tests that force participants to eat gluten.
