Team Celiac raising awareness
By ROBERT LINNEHAN
The Cherry Hill Sun
10/10/2009

It’s not often a group can raise awareness about two diseases during one charity walk, but a local family hopes to bring a lesser known disease to the forefront while raising money for Type-1 Diabetes research.

Donna Bell and her daughter Evey, 6, have registered a team of 200 to 300 participants for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation “Walk to Cure Diabetes,” event at Cooper River on Oct. 18. This will be the team’s third year of participation, Bell said.

Evey, Bell said, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes – or Juvenile Diabetes – when she was just 3 years old. The JDRF expects to raise about $150 million nationally with this year’s walk, all of which will go to diabetes research and awareness.

For the past two years the team has either been named after Evey or her last name, Bell said, but this year the group is doing something different. For the walk this year, the team will be named “Team Celiac,” to help raise awareness about Celiac Disease, which affects 20 percent of people who have been diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes.

Both Bell and Evey have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease.

“We decided to raise awareness for Celiac while completing this walk and raising money for the JDRF,” Bell said. “I created a support group for families who have children with Type-1 and Celiac, and they’ve stood by me, and they’ll have all their kids walking with us at the event. If we can raise awareness about Celiac for the general public, that would be huge.”

According to Celiac.com, Celiac Disease – also known as Gluten Intolerance – is a genetic disorder that affects 1 in 133 Americans. People diagnosed with the disease typically show symptoms after eating foods that contain gluten, a protein found in wheat products.

The symptoms for Celiac Disease vary, but usually affect the gastrointestinal system. However, people afflicted with the disease don’t necessarily show symptoms related to the gastrointestinal system, making the disease a fairly hard one to diagnose. The only cure, per se, is to switch to a gluten free diet, which usually means staying away from any foodstuffs that contain wheat.

According to Bell, 97 percent of people with Celiac Disease are never diagnosed.

“The money we raise will go to the JDRF, but we’ll also be raising awareness of the Celiac Disease,” she said. “If you go to your doctor with headache or migraine symptoms, they typically won’t check you for Celiac, but those are symptoms. It doesn’t just have to be G.I. issues. I personally was anemic for years and my doctors had no idea why. But, two weeks on the gluten free diet and I felt like a completely different person. That’s why it’s important to get information out there to people who might not know what Celiac is.”

A booth with information relating to Celiac will be at the walk as well, Bell said, and pamphlets will be available for interested attendants.

Bell said the information booth will also be manned by people who have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease to answer specific questions.

Donations can be made by going to the JDRF “Walk for a Cure” Web site at Walk.JDRF.org. Enter “Team Celiac” into the team name box and donations can automatically be made.

“I don’t think any child or human being should have to go through this. The whole experience with diabetes is a nightmare,” Bell said. “If they cure diabetes, they will likely figure out the auto immune connection and it will open up the door for curing other diseases, including Celiac.”