The link between celiac disease and hair loss

Celiac disease and hair loss are related. In fact hair loss is one of the many causes of this inherited autoimmune disorder,that causes problems in your intestines when you eat gluten, which is in wheat, rye, barley and oats. Gluten is poison to people with celiac disease.

The hair loss problem that are caused by such disease is alopecia areata .Alopecia areata is a condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the hair follicles. This usually starts with one or more small, round, smooth bald patches on the head and can eventually cause complete hair loss on the scalp or even on the entire body (a condition known as alopecia universalis). It affects males and females equally and usually begins in childhood. There is approximately 2% of the population overall, including more than 5 million americans, have alopecia areata. Celiac disease and hair loss are more common among white Europeans or in people of European descent. Its presence in African or Asian people is very rare.

For your information,one of the first research studies concerning the link between celiac disease and hair loss was published in 1995. Italian doctors had noticed that many of their patients with alopecia also had celiac disease, and that in one of these patients -- a boy aged 14 -- the missing hair on his body and scalp completely regrew after he adopted a gluten-free diet. As a result of this case and a few others, prompted the doctors to screen a large grou hair loss and celiac disease patients. The doctors did ,in fact, find a relatively high rate of celiac disease in their patients - much greater than could be expected .The doctors recommended as a result of this study that celiac disease antibody testing should be performed in all patients with alopecia areata.

So celiac disease and hair loss can be related to its link to alopecia areata, and can also be a result of the nutritional deficiency caused by the disease itself. The treatment for this disease is to remove gluten from your diet and to address the malnutrition caused by the disease.

More on celiac disease and hair loss at hair loss disease