Celiac Disease in Children
Celiac disease is a disorder related to genes. In infants, the symptoms of the disease are developed after the three to five months because; as from this stage other supplementary food is given to the baby. Most of the doctors give advice to the mothers not to give any solid food to the baby or she can start solid food gradually after six month.
If infant is not gaining weight and becoming irritable and having abnormal stool then you need to visit the doctor. If infant passes grey coloured, large and foul smelled stool, in the first observation it will look like diarrhea. But in celiac disease, stool will float on the water surface because of presence of large amount of fat.
Baby vomits many times just after consumption of the little amount of the gluten containing food. In such condition child can not gain body weight or someone loses weight so it becomes quite difficult to identify the exact reason of the diarrhea and vomiting. If blood testing or stool testing is done then it will become easy for mother as well as for doctor to diagnose the exact reason.
Symptoms of celiac child
- Child above three to four years become irritably restless and not able to concentrate on anything
- Does not remember the things because of problem in memory and mental function
- Baby looks very nervous, depress because of nervous and psychological changes
- Small intestine loses villi. In children recovery is faster still recovery of complete problem is impossible
- Damage of villi in small intestine leads to loss of absorption capacity of digested food
- After eating any food products produced from wheat, oat, rye and barley shows diarrhea and vomiting
Why does your child have celiac disease?
There are three important reasons of having celic disease to your child;
- Celiac disease is a hereditary disease. Your baby got the genes causing disease from any one of the parent i.e. from mother or father
- If one parent is having celiac disease then there is two to fifteen percent of chances causing disease to your child
- Siblings have thirty to forty percent of chances of developing celiac disease
- If there is any changes or mutatation in the genes related to immune system it can cause celiac disease
Provide gluten free diet
After the diagnosis of celiac disease you should be mentally prepared that your child diet is different than the other children throughout his/her life. Family support is very important, as your child grows it's your responsibility to give him information about the disease and make him/her understand to strictly avoid the gluten-containing diet.
Treatment or the celiac child
Always make him/her relax and inform that his diet is little bit different than the normal one. It is not any big or serious disease only you will have to follow certain type of diet. If whole family adapts gluten free diet at least up to the stage that your child is able to understand the exact problem and how to beat it, it will really give mental support to him/her and becomes easy to accept the problem.
