Celiac disease is a serious ailment that can severely impair your long-term health and wellbeing. If you suffer from celiac disease, eating gluten can have a major impact on your quality of life, and it can lead to severe symptoms that may put your health at serious risk. Needless to say, it’s important that you avoid gluten at all costs if you have celiac disease, but also to heal your gut microbiome with proper treatment and prevention.
But what if you don’t have celiac disease? Can you still experience negative symptoms by simply having gluten in your diet? Absolutely. This is called gluten sensitivity, and it affects millions of people around the world.
It’s important to listen to your body and look for those mild symptoms that you tend to ignore and attribute to a lack of sleep or some other culprit. You might not be aware of it, but it might be the gluten in your diet that is having a negative impact on your quality of life.
Here are some telltale signs that you might have gluten sensitivity.
Bloating and abdominal pain
The first and one of the most obvious signs of gluten sensitivity is bloating, which may or may not come with abdominal pain as well. Always keep in mind that gluten sensitivity is a spectrum, and that your symptoms may range from very mild to extreme discomfort.
Regardless, it’s important to listen to your body and how it responds to gluten in an attempt to heal your gut and support long-term vitality. When you’re eating gluten-rich products like bread, pasta, or other, observe how your body reacts in the first half hour of your meal.
You’re getting bloated, overly gassy, or if you are experiencing abdominal discomfort or pain, then try eliminating gluten from your diet and see if the problem persists. Chances are that the symptoms will go away.
Recurring diarrhea
One of the more severe symptoms of gluten sensitivity that you should definitely look into is diarrhea. This is a telltale sign that something is wrong with your gut microbiome and that you need to consult a medical professional or try to eliminate the culprit yourself and see if the problem persists.
Luckily, it can be easy to do this by simply eliminating gluten from your diet. Because gluten has an acute effect on your gut, the symptoms should subside within a few days. That said, if the symptoms persist, make sure to contact your general physician to get professional advice and recommendations.
Constipation and irregularity
There are many reasons why you might experience acute constipation, many of which might have nothing to do with the gluten in your diet if you don’t suffer from celiac disease. On the other hand, if you’re experiencing constipation on a regular basis and if you’re experiencing irregular bowel movement, then it may be a good idea to analyze what you’re eating.
If you’re going for number two less than three times a week or if your stool is hard to pass, dry or lumpy, then you may have a gluten intolerance. By cutting gluten out for two weeks, you should see a reduction in these symptoms and your stool and bowel movement should return to normal.
Headaches and brain fog
While constipation and diarrhea might be clear signs that something might be off with your diet, occasional headaches and brain fog might be flying under your radar. We tend to attribute fatigue and brain fog to a lack of sleep, stress, work, and many other problems in our life. And while many of those may very well be the culprits, it’s also a possibility that gluten is the main cause of these symptoms.
Before going gluten-free, however, you should try to optimize your sleep cycles and work on your work-life balance. Dealing with the stress triggers in your life can have a profound impact on your mental wellbeing, and it may clear out that brain fog over the long term.
If that doesn’t work, however, then you should start eliminating gluten from your diet.
Anxiety and depression
On a final note, gluten sensitivity can cause more severe symptoms that are easily attributed to external and internal stimuli. Many wouldn’t consider stress, anxiety, or depression to be connected to gluten intake, but in reality gluten sensitivity can, over time, cause these issues to develop steadily.
If you want to boost your mental health and relieve the symptoms of depression and anxiety, then you may want to try eliminating gluten from your everyday life. Over time, you might notice that your mental health is improving, and that you are once again feeling positive, alert, and energized.
Cutting gluten, however, is not a cure for clinical depression. If these symptoms persist, be sure to seek professional help.
Gluten can be the main culprit in many unpleasant symptoms that are slowly but surely impeding your quality of life. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, you may want to try taking gluten out of the equation to see if the symptoms subside.
After all, you might not have celiac disease, but that doesn’t mean that your body responds kindly to gluten-rich products.
