More and more complaints of Celiac disease within the United States are on the rise from products containing gluten and people having ill effects from the exposure.
Today, over four times as many individuals have Celiac disease than they did during the 1950′s conducted from a recent study of 9,133 young adults at Warren Air Force Base found. Another recent study showed that Celiac disease has doubled every 15 years since 1974 and is estimated to afflict ever 1 in 100 Americans.

Another longitudinal study using 50-year-old preserved blood samples from a U.S. database showed that the antibodies associated with celiac disease weren’t as common in the 1950′s in comparison to blood samples from the past two decades, as described in a Mayo Clinic release on the research. When the samples from the 1950s were compared to the recent ones from donors of the same age, researchers found people to be nearly five times more likely to have the disease.
The immune system attacks the small intestine on areas of the lining called villi that help the body absorb nutrients after it is broken down. If an individual that has celiac disease is left undiagnosed they could continue to eat foods that contain gluten an become even more malnourished, ultimately damaging their intestine permanently and lead to the body unable to properly absorb nutrients – even after they stop consuming gluten.
The increase of these incident rates have left doctors and researchers puzzled as they try to figure out why this debilitating digestive disorder is effecting so many people.
So why the sudden surge of people being diagnosed with celiac disease? One theory is that today’s grain-based foods such as barley, wheat, rye, and possibly oats, as well as other everyday products, including some brands of lipstick, vitamins and lip balms contain more gluten than they did in the past.
A few theories of which none can be sure of claim that an increase in sanitation and better public health may have influenced the trend, according to a HealthDay article. The idea is that as a society our diets and environments become less diverse, so does the variety of gut bacteria in our intestines. As a result, our intestines may be more vulnerable to conditions such as celiac disease.
Other possibilities point to an increase of gluten in certain plant varieties we’ve come to depend on or even issues in exposing children with a predisposition to the disease to too much gluten at young ages.