Also why is their reaction different than an allergy?
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An allergy is when the body reacts to a “safe” thing as if it were a “bad” thing. Your body attacks something that should really be OK.
Lactose intolerance is different. There are dozens of different, but very similar, chemicals we collectively call “sugars”. Each sugar molecule requires a different digestive chemical, called an enzyme, to be digested in the human body for energy. Lactose (-ose meaning sugar) is a kind of sugar found in milk and the digest enzyme required to digest it is called lactase (-ase meaning enzyme). Many people naturally produce lactase so they can digest milk-sugar for energy, yay. If for whatever reason the person is unable to produce lactase the sugar goes undigested until it gets to their intestines. The microbes in our intestines *can* digest sugar and they go to town on it, producing gases and waste chemicals that make are gross. That person is now very uncomfortable because they are burping and farting, maybe having diarrhea. So it lactose intolerant people aren’t having an allergic reaction, they are actually not reacting to the lactose at all. It’s the undigested lactose that’s being eaten by microbes, and the waste they produce, that’s the problem. The treatment for lactose intolerance is kind of easy, beyond just avoiding dairy, the person can ingest lactase enzyme directly (in pills or mixed into the milk), or eat fermented milk products (cheese, yoghurt) where the lactose has already been digested.
Celiac is similar to an allergy, but not quite. In an allergy the immune system is attacking foreign chemicals, in the case of celiac, what happens is the immune system starts to attack the person’s body itself. So it’s called an “auto-immune” reaction, the body attacking itself.
It’s worth noting there are multiple similar conditions that can be lumped in, or confused here. Many people who problems with dairy are *not* lactose intolerant but are having reactions due to proteins or other compounds in milk. My daughter can digest lactose, but she has a severe reaction to the proteins found in dairy so she can’t drink even lactose-free milks or cheese.
Celiac is a specific condition, but it’s actually extremely rare. Many people who avoid gluten aren’t actually Celiac patients, they just don’t like the way gluten makes them feel. That’s a preference, not a medical condition, though many people just assume they have celiac or a “gluten allergy” or a “gluten intolerance”, but again, that’s more a preference thing than a legit medical condition.
Celiac and lactose intolerances operate for completely different reasons.
Milk contains a kind of sugar called lactose. For most humans the enzymes to digest lactose are present when they’re babies so they can digest their mother’s milk, but then as they grow up they stop producing that enzyme.
A few thousands years ago, a mutation occurred that stopped that enzyme from going away. This let adults drink milk. So right now about 30-35% of the world can drink milk even as adults.
It just so happens that the 30-35% is more concentrated in Europeans and Americans, where that enzyme remains in something like 80+% of those local population, while being less than 20% in places like China.
Now when the body can’t digest something, it’s usually left to the gut bacteria to digest it, and they tend to do a messier job, releasing gasses as a bi-product. This leads to people feeling sick.
Celiac disease is an actually rare condition, with only 1 in 100 people having it. A mutation lead to their immune systems treating gluten the same way it treats a dangerous disease and when the immune system thinks the body is in really big danger it can be rather destructive in attempting to kill it before the disease kills the body.
Except in this case gluten isn’t dangerous, so the immune system is doing nothing but causing massive collateral damage.
Lactose intolerance is not an alergy, in fact it is the more normal state then lactose tolerance. All adult animals and about 70% of the human population are lactose intolerant. The problem is that we are not equiped to digest the lactose suger present in milk, but the bacteria in the later stages of digestion is able to extract a lot of energy from the lactose. So you get a bloom of gut bacteria causing lots of issues.
Coeliac disease is an autoimune disorder, similar to allergies but not quite. There are also wheat allergies which are different from coeliac disease. Celiacy affects the small intestines compared to the large intestines of lactose intolerance. There are many different symptoms, many not too different from allergies except their location. And the end result of these are bad digestion which can again cause the gut bacteria to get lots of sugars.
A lot of diseases in the digestion system have very similar symptoms. This is because you only have one output and very few nerves connected to it. So there is generally only a few ways a disease can be expressed. So there are actually very little connection between coeliac disease and lactose intolerance except the organ they affect.
However there are some recent research connecting gluten intolerance (distinct from coeliac) and lactose intolerance. This is still unconfirmed and may be a dead end. However it is possible that it is not the gluten causing the gluten intolerance but instead fructones which is often found in the same grains that contain much gluten. Lactose is one type of fructone. So it might actually be the same issue just expressed with different fructones. This research may lead to some sort of cure of gluten intollerance, in short term maybe gut microbia transplants works. Or maybe it will lead to the development of low fructone high gluten grains.
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