Gluten is now found in the vast majority of modern products. It is a mixture of vegetable proteins that are found in the grains of some cereals. More and more people are switching to a gluten-free diet, mainly due to an allergy to this ingredient. The slogan “glutenfree” has also become somewhat fashionable, which is why some people reject products with gluten for health reasons.
For an allergy to gluten 10 to 20% of people with food allergies suffer from it. What are its symptoms?
- Symptoms may appear immediately or several hours after ingestion. They vary by age.
- In children, sensitization is evident through atopic dermatitis. We deal with problems of the respiratory and digestive systems much less frequently. Even a small amount of gluten causes symptoms, but many children outgrow the allergy.
- The symptoms of allergies in adults are definitely worse. Urticaria, anaphylactic shock, diarrhea or angioedema are most common. Much larger amounts of gluten are needed for the symptoms to appear, and adults, unlike children, suffer from allergies for years. Very often it can manifest itself during physical exertion.
There is a difference between symptoms that occur right away and those that take several days to appear.
Immediate symptoms:
- They appear in a few minutes, no more than an hour. They depend on gluten-specific antibodies in the IgE class.
- Diarrhea, vomiting, runny nose, bronchospasm, anaphylactic shock, skin changes similar to atopic dermatitis occur.
Late symptoms:
- It appears after a few hours or even after a few days. It is independent of antibodies in the IgE class.
- It is manifested primarily by diarrhea or exacerbation of atopic dermatitis.
Allergy treatment gluten is based primarily on a gluten-free diet. As with most allergies, the only way out of the situation is to avoid the allergen. There are plenty of recipes and ways to eliminate gluten from your diet online.
This is the best medicine for people suffering from intolerance to this ingredient. The danger and some difficulty lies in the fact that in many products gluten is simply hidden, difficult to detect. Not everything that seems gluten-free actually is. Nevertheless, this type of diet has a lot of advantages, because it is definitely healthier and more diverse, because it requires the search for completely new flavors and dishes that do not contain gluten. This is an opportunity to develop your culinary skills, because you often have to, for example, bake something yourself to be XNUMX% sure that it will not contain this harmful substance for allergy sufferers.