Sounds like a lot of drama, doesn’t it?
Halloween, or not – these mimics, marauders and masqueraders are present in your body all the time!
And even though your body is beautifully designed to deal with these pranksters at a moment’s notice, sometimes your immune system does make mistakes.
Or rather, we think of them as mistakes, but in all actuality, your immune system is simply doing what it’s designed to do – which is to protect you.
So, what’s really happening is that some of these invaders are actually very clever – mimicking or masquerading as something other than what they really are.
And the immune system gets confused.
Let me explain.
Cross-Reactivity
As you know, gluten is a protein found in certain foods.
Many of the foods you eat contain proteins, all of them different. And this is why the immune system can get confused – because the proteins (even though they’re different) can look very similar.
For example, the proteins in dairy products – more specifically casein, – look almost identical to the proteins in gluten.