I’m trying to explain the difference between coeliac disease and wheat intolerance to a coworker and while I understand the complexities of coeliac disease and how it can effect different people to different levels, I struggled when he asked me to explain the key differences between the disorder and an allergy.
In: Biology
I usually type up long comments here but I’ll try to keep this ultra brief.
In an autoimmune disease, the sensors on your immune cells get triggered by things in your body, like proteins on the surface of some cells. Upon activation they recruit many other immune cells and begin attacking the target to destroy it, confusing it for a foreign body. So your body ends up destroying some part of it and it manifests as the disease.
In an allergy, the sensors get hyperactivated by foreign yet innocuous or harmless substances. So the immune cells things it’s a foreign enemy that will hurt you and needs to be destroyed, and so they summon a large force of the immune system to combat this enemy. And in the process, it could kill you due to the complications caused by this excessive reaction (like swelling due to the release of so many signal molecules to make your blood vessels locally leaky, to help the immune cells mobilize towards the battle site, and this swelling can sometimes be life threatening like when it’s in the tongue or throat blocking your breathing for example, and this is just one example of the complications).
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