For the last year or two, I've been having severe problems with my digestion and I couldn't figure out why. Well, turns out I have celiac disease. And I've probably had it all my life, but the symptoms only recently became severe enough for me to notice.

Celiac disease is a disease where your body attacks its own intestines whenever you eat something that contains gluten. Gluten is a protein contained in wheat, rye, barley and sometimes oats.

Celiac disease can cause acne because it causes lots of undigested food to be left in your intestines that isn't properly digested due to your damaged intestines. It works like this: Damaged intestines->poor digestion->undigested food in intestines->bacterial overgrowth->leaky gut->acne.

The crazy thing about celiac disease is that gluten is in everything!. It's obviously in breads, but it's also in soy sauce, BBQ sauce, malt, beer, some toothpastes and even in THE GLUE ON ENVELOPES. Yes, that's right, if I lick the glue on envelopes, I'll damage my intestines and most likely cause a small acne breakout.

Cross contamination is also a big issue with celiac disease. If gluten comes in contact with your food, even the smallest amount, it will damage your intestines. For example, if a restaurant toasts their hamburger buns on the same grill that they grill your steak, your steak could be contaminated with gluten and eating that steak could damage your intestines and cause acne.

The good thing about celiac disease is that your intestines can heal as long as you avoid gluten 100%. Once your intestines have healed, you should be able to digest just about everything just fine, except of course gluten. And once your intestines have healed, you should also have 0 acne.

Now I'm definitely not saying that everyone with celiac disease has acne or everyone with acne has celiac disease. This is just my own personal root cause.

But I do wonder how many people with persistent acne, who seem to have the most perfect diets, actually have celiac disease and are eating small amounts of gluten without even realizing it, damaging their intestines and causing acne.

If you're interested, there's more information about celiac disease here: http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/p...eliac/index.htm . I hope this post may help others investigate the root cause of their own acne.

Gluten are in many food items, but not a coincidence that they are in every worthless food you can eat, like you said: soy sauce, bbq sauce, malt, beer, (hamburger) steaks. So if you eat healthy and avoid those weird food items It would be an easy thing to eliminate most of the gluten

you'll have to pull the whole grains/rye out of my cold dead hands before i give them up

good energy to start the day

Hey Healthoid - my brother was diagnosed with being Celiac 15 years ago. Since then, my family has lived without any form of gluten. In his case, he was extremely intolerant. Its a disease that stunts growth, so people usually are shorter than other members of their family. He would stop growing for 6 months if he even had a crumb of bread. He also had to be carried by my parents because the pain in his bones was so bad (he'd describe it as having his bones "twisted" - which they were (it causes an early form of arthritus and twists the bones over time)). He was predicted to be a midget if he continued to eat gluten during his young life (however, we all stopped eating any form of gluten because even the dust affected him).

Anyway, if you are a SEVERE celiac, I wish you luck. The amount of contamination in products is endless -- Even Celiac cookies which are labeled as "Gluten Free" -- are contaminated. When the rice flour is transported in sacks, sometimes sacks of wheat break open and seap into the rice flour sacks over time. Its was pretty rough.

Because gluten is in everything, it made our family finally live like hermits. We stopped eating at all restaurants. We could not have dinner with other families unless we brought my brother's food. He couldn't spend the night with other kids because he couldn't eat cereal, pizza, sandwhiches, candies, restaurant food, mcdonald's food. He could eat plain hamburger, plain rice, plain veggies... but even then, we couldnt trust the people because these foods could not be cooked in certain oils or in the dishes that had bread DUST on it. It was insane.

He also became one of the crankiest people I have ever met when he'd have a smidgen of accidental gluten. He always had huge purple circles under his eyes (do you have this)? He also had a scabby condition all over his skin as a 2 year old (when my mom stopped nursing him and he began eating gluten). He was SO VERY TINY as a child -- because it slows down growth.

Its genetic and can only affect caucasians (If you are african and have this disease -- there is a contageous version in africa -- but extremely rare ). So other people in your family will have it and your children as well. As children, these people look sickly and malnurished. Being his sister, I am slightly intolerant. My grandmother has the disease and her bones are HORRIBLY twisted (some people faint when they see her). The gluten causes this over dozens of years of consumption. My aunt also has it and the bones in her fingers are slightly twisting, but not like my grandmother. Look around at your family members and see who else has it.

However, the FDA is cleaning up a lot of contamination issues -- and there are lists on the internet of products which are gluten free.

I certainly will understand what you are going through.

As a serious home brewer, I don't like where this thread is going.

Just to add to the informational content of this thread.......I have a niece with Celiac disease. The disease does not always manifest itself in scrawniness and stunted growth. She was always on the chubby side, average height, no acne ever. She only had off and on constipation and stomach issues, and began getting really really depressed. It took several years to get to the right diagnosis. So, yea, it can be very tricky and hard to pin down when Celiac is the problem. A small bowel biopsy along with appropriate bloodwork should properly diagnose it.

I have gluten sensitivity too! I've cut out gluten from my diet and my acne saw improvement withina month...it was very hard though; I also found out I'm allergic to rice alon with gluten, so I had to change my diet 100% (I'm from Hong Kong; rice is 80% of my diet and since moving to Canada, bread became the other 20%).

Gluten allergy is different from celiac disease, which is gluten intolerance, which I believe means you don't have enough of the enzyme necessary to digest the protein (lactose intolerance means you don't have the enzyme lactase) I just got tested for celiac disease (not because of acne), and I don't have it. Don't know whether to feel happy or sad. Wait, yes I do: definitely happy.

I agree. It's funny how having celiac practically FORCES you to eat healthy.


Thanks for your story. It's always good to hear what other celiacs have gone through.

I do unfortunately have what you could call the severe, or classic form of celiac disease. If I get so much as a drop of gluten in my mouth, my digestion will be messed up for days. I'll also be extremely tired, brain-fogged and often angry (like your brother) during those days.

I guess I'm relatively lucky in that I don't have any major growth stunting other than a small bone structure. I'm 5'11" 165 lbs (although I used to be 140 lbs. before I went gluten free for acne purposes).

I've already been eating relatively gluten-free since I was 18 (I'm 22 now) for acne purposes. However, I discovered my celiac disease in the last year or two when I began expanding my diet and experimenting with wonderful foods like lasagna. Needless to say, the results were not good. Yes, unfortunately if you have celiac disease you are pretty much forced into preparing all of your own food, but I've been doing that for years now so it's not such a big deal for me.

I do suspect that my brother and my dad and even my mom have celiac as well. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to tell them they should get tested. For some people, the cure for celiac disease (the no gluten diet) is much worse than just living with it, especially if you don't have the classic/severe symptoms like mine, so there's a lot of resistance to getting tested at all.


I find it very interesting how some celiacs are actually chubby or even fat. I'm definitely one of the skinny ones though. Depression/low energy is also one of my major symptoms. It's amazing how just one little tiny piece of gluten from something as simple as BBQ sauce will knock me out for days.

Is that true for any gluten insensitivity?

I am half-caucasian and half-asian. Is it possible for me & other half-caucasians to be affected by Celiac (which I'm sure I do not have, as I haven't had any severe complications) or gluten sensitivity/allergy?

I'm chinese, and I have gluten sensitivity, but not extremely severe. I'm not expert, but I'm sure its possible.

Anyone from any race can have it.

It's also important to note that I am in the minority with my severe symptoms. The majority of people with celiac have much more minor symptoms like gas, low energy, intermittent diarrhea and/or constipation, etc. In some ways I'm lucky that my bowels react so violently to eating even a small amount of gluten because it's very easy to tell what the problem is.

for me my acne was about at its worst when i was doing a strict gluten free diet .....i was was having lots of gluten free pasta, rice and potatoes

carbs are my main problem, but i stay away from gluten because of this and i think it can be irritating to the digestive system

Whe you said it turns out you have celiac disease you mean that you were tested positive for IgA and IgG anti-gliadin antibodies?
It's trange that your only symptoms was acne
The major problem with celiac disease is severe malasorption which leads to hypoglycemia, thermoregulation, anemia, osteoporosis, poor skin and hair ... before even causing acne
Other than leaky celiac is supposed in fact to affect acne by not providing the body the elements it needs to keep skin renewal functons in favour of more vital things

Well at least now you know why what you did worked for you but you can't generalize too much
There are many people that have zero problem with gluten and don't suffer any ill effect from the addition of starchy grains in their diet

Gluten sensitivity is not the disease. I'm sure there are many people of different races who are gluten sensitive, rice sensitive, food-coloring sensitive.

Although its not the disease, I feel sorry for anyone who any sensitivities to foods. Its certainly hard.

The people living with the disease -- are almost "handicapped." Plus, in the early 1990's, dozens of Celiac children were taken away from their parents on the grounds of "abuse" because the government thought that the families were not feeding their children (they looked so sickly).
Plus the constant bowel problems cause other problems that must be treated with surgery.


I have a gluten-sensitivity- I cant eat too much. But (thank goodness) I dont have the Celiac disease.

The problem with "gluten sensitivity" is how you diagnose it? How you tell yourself you're gluten sensitive? By feeling better when you remove gluten grains? The reason for the improvement after removing such food could be so many ...

Acne was one of my many symptoms. I had hypoglycemia, bad thermoregulation (excessive sweating, excessive heat and sometimes excessive cold), never tested for osteoporosis, but definitely small bone structure and two broken bones before I was 14, poor skin and hair (dry red skin, stretch marks, keratosis pilaris, thinning hair at a young age).

Not everyone with acne has celiac and not everyone with celiac has acne. But if you have it, and according to statistics 97% of people who have celiac disease don't know it, it is a major contributor to acne.

What prompted you to finally get tested?

In the United States, most doctors do not even know about it to diagnose Celiac Sprue.
But in Europe, almost 30% of the caucasian population has the disease, so its one of the first things the doctors test for.

I just said that there is a difference between gluten sensitivity and the Celiac Sprue disease because the question was asked whether someone who was NOT caucasion could have the disease.
I was just saying there is a big difference between the Gluten sensitivity and the Celiac Disease. Many people of other races can be very gluten sensitive, but it is not the same thing as the disease.

Although both problems are hard to deal with, the Celiac Sprue disease makes your life a living hell from the moment you are weaned (your body can be covered in blisters, or your scalp flakes off so you have severe dandruff, you are TERRIBLY cranky so that you drive everyone away from you, you have severe bowel problems which cause hemeroids... the list goes on and on ).

The people with celiac disease also have to watch out for what soaps they use -- because there are gluten products in some soaps.

Ridiculous amounts of diarrhea . On my worst days I would go 50 times plus. The diarrhea was a new development in the last year or so that I attribute to my strengthened immune system. Before I had the diarrhea, on blood tests my sIgA was 0, which is a clear sign of immune system depression (and also celiac). Because celiac is an autoimmune disease, when I improved my immune system through dietary changes, my body got really good at attacking its own intestines and thus very sensitive to even small amounts of gluten.


It's actually a common misconception that people with celiac disease will immediately have major problems early in their life. The truth is the majority of celiacs don't have major problems until later in their life, many in their 20s and even a large amount who are 40+ years old. Typically they will have suffered from relatively minor digestion problems and other health problems all their life, but never knew that gluten was the culprit until they are diagnosed.

If you really want to get some good info on people with celiac, I highly recommend the Gluten Free Forum.