I started researching autoimmune disease at midnight, after the kids went to bed, with too many browser tabs open. Our family lives with celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, and PCOS under one roof. I kept noticing the conditions did not arrive alone. They came in clusters. I wanted to understand why. That question sent me back seventy years to a pediatric ward in the Netherlands.
Physicians had written about a wasting bowel condition in children for centuries before anyone linked it to food. In 1888, Samuel Gee, an English pediatrician, described the condition in enough detail that later researchers could recognize it as celiac disease. But the trigger remained unknown. Willem-Karel Dicke was a Dutch pediatrician who treated children with celiac disease in The Hague. In the winter of 1944 to 1945, a Nazi blockade cut off food supplies to the western Netherlands. The period became known as the Hongerwinter, the Hunger Winter. Bread disappeared from shelves. Dicke noticed his pediatric celiac patients improved during the bread shortage.
Dicke saw the improvement within weeks. When wheat returned to the Dutch food supply in 1945, the children's symptoms came back. Dicke and his colleagues ran a series of controlled feeding experiments based on that pattern. By 1950, they had identified wheat gluten as the trigger. Rye and barley also provoked symptoms.
From Wartime Scarcity to a Gluten Connection
Dicke's work identified the trigger. Explaining the immune mechanism took another few decades. Researchers mapped celiac disease as an autoimmune response, distinct from a food allergy or a simple intolerance. When a person with celiac disease eats gluten, the immune system attacks the small intestine's lining. That damage prevents nutrient absorption, which explains the weight loss, fatigue, and digestive symptoms that pediatricians and parents described in celiac patients long before anyone had identified gluten as the cause.
This distinction placed celiac disease in the autoimmune family alongside rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune thyroid disease, and Type 1 diabetes. Once researchers could group these conditions by mechanism, they documented a clear pattern. People with one autoimmune condition often develop another.
Shared Genes, Shared Susceptibility
The overlap shows up in clinical screening programs. Diabetes clinics and endocrinology practices routinely screen for celiac disease and thyroid disease when a patient presents with Type 1 diabetes. The same gene variants, called HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8, appear in celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, and autoimmune thyroid disease. A pediatrician who sees a child with one of these conditions will often screen for the other two at the next visit.
Shared genes mean shared susceptibility. But genes alone do not tell the full story. Something in the environment flips the switch. Researchers have identified viral infections, shifts in the gut microbiome, and the timing of gluten introduction during infancy as three areas of active investigation. For our family, the clustering plays out in real time. Kolbie has Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease. I live with celiac disease and PCOS.
What This Means for Families Like Ours
When I sat in a gastroenterologist's office after Kolbie's celiac diagnosis, I kept returning to the clustering data. We already managed Type 1 diabetes with insulin doses, blood sugar checks, and carb counting. Adding celiac disease meant adding label reading, cross-contact vigilance, and a new layer of meal planning.
The research pointed toward a practical step. A single autoimmune diagnosis should prompt a conversation with your doctor about screening for common co-occurring conditions. Here are three questions to bring up:
- Ask for a thyroid panel at your next checkup.
- Learn the symptoms of celiac disease so you can request testing if they appear.
- Talk with your doctor about which additional screenings make sense for your family.
For our family, the practical response was food. Celiac disease is one autoimmune condition with a clearly identified environmental trigger: gluten. Removing gluten from the diet removes the trigger. Most autoimmune conditions do not offer that clarity.
How Clean Monday Meals Fits Into This Story
The food piece is how our family's work began. When Kolbie could no longer eat regular ramen after her celiac diagnosis, the loss felt real. Ramen was her favorite food. I couldn't find a gluten-free version that tasted good and had clean ingredients, so I made one in our kitchen. That first chicken ramen seasoning lived in a mason jar in my spice cabinet.
The products we make at Clean Monday Meals grew from that specific need. Our Clean Ramen Noodles contain one ingredient: organic brown rice flour. Our seasonings are gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free, with no MSG, no seed oils, no artificial flavors, and no fillers. Clean Monday Meals exists because our family needed food that fit a celiac diagnosis and a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis without giving up the comfort of a bowl of ramen.
Where Autoimmune Families Go From Here
Autoimmune conditions cluster. They share genes and they share triggers. Celiac disease offers something rare: a clear dietary removal that helps. Our family leans on that fact every day.
If you are managing celiac disease alongside another autoimmune condition, the clustering is documented, the screening tools exist, and you are not alone in the overlap. Our free Recipe App has hundreds of gluten-free, dairy-free recipes to lighten the load. Talk to your doctor or dietitian about what monitoring makes sense for your family. Be gentle with yourself. The research will keep coming, the dinner table will keep being set, and we figure it out one meal at a time.