Sounds as if you need to go on a gluten free diet.
What's Gluten?
Glutenis a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley — grains that are in many everyday foods. Most people eat food with gluten with no trouble. But for some people, eating gluten can cause a reaction in their bodies. Someone who has this problem has celiac disease.
For someone with celiac disease, eating gluten — in a piece of bread, for instance — causes an immune system reaction. Your immune system ordinarily keeps you from getting sick, but in someone with celiac disease, the body starts damaging and destroying the villi. Without villi, the body can't absorb vitamins and nutrients from food.
About 1 in every 133 people in the United States has celiac disease.
Obviously, many people who have celiac disease do not know it. If all these people were diagnosed, celiac disease would be more common than type 1 diabetes. Fortunately, awareness is growing about the problem, and there are better ways of testing people for it.
Signs and Symptoms
Some common symptoms of celiac disease are
diarrhea, decreased appetite, stomachache and bloating and weight loss. For some people, the problems occur gradually and the symptoms may be terrible one week and not as bad the next.
Or, someone with celiac disease may feel
tired and could be irritable. Some also have skin rashes and mouth sores. The problem is sometimes mistaken for other
digestive problems called
inflammatory bowel disease or
lactose intolerance.
(If this sounds like you, get a blood test and go on from there.)