Are you Wheat Intolerant?

People often suffer certain symptoms or conditions of which they do not know the cause. It can be frustrating to consistently not feel your best, sometimes people suffer certain nagging symptoms for so long they don’t even know what it would be like to be without them. This happens a lot with certain intolerances to food, it may not be immediately obvious and since we eat so many different kinds of foods it can be very hard to realize that a particular food isn’t making you feel well.

This article is about wheat intolerance, a relatively rare condition in general, but the most common of all food intolerances. Before examining the symptoms and solutions to wheat intolerance, it’s important to distinguish between intolerance and an allergy. The terms wheat intolerance and wheat allergy are often incorrectly used interchangeably. A wheat allergy is just like any other food allergy; it involves an auto immune response to the allergen and consequently produces common allergic reactions in the allergic individual. Wheat intolerance, on the other hand, is a chemical reaction inside the body which is produced due to the body’s inability to digest wheat; it is actually much more common than wheat allergy. Wheat can be difficult to digest due to a protein called gluten, and when people have hyper sensitivities to this protein their body reacts negatively, a condition known as celiac disease, or wheat intolerance.

The symptoms of wheat intolerance are frustratingly vague, making the condition difficult to identify. The symptoms also tend to be quite mild at first, and often become more severe as time goes on. Children who have wheat intolerance often exhibit symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting, and skin rash, but since these symptoms can mean so many things it is very difficult to know if a child in particular has a wheat intolerance.

Symptoms can vary widely for adults, but there is a set of common symptoms which you should be aware of. These symptoms include diarrhea, stomach cramps, bloating, vomiting, constipation, flatulence, nausea, eczema, skin rash, lethargy, weight loss, and irritable bowl syndrome, or IBS. If you suffer a significant amount of these symptoms, it is advisable to just cut gluten out of your diet altogether.

If the symptoms persist, then they must be caused by something else, however if they cease then you probably have a wheat intolerance. All you can really do from then on is avoid gluten as much as possible, which can unfortunately be difficult since so many things have gluten in them. You simply have to educate yourself on what kinds of foods contain gluten and be vigilant.  Nowadays there are many more options for gluten free foods than there were previously, so with a little bit of research you should be able to continue to enjoy a wide and varied diet.