Dietary Patterns and Their Health and Social Implications for Patients with Gluten-Related Disorders: A Field Study Applied to Tripoli Municipality

Abstract

This field study aimed to evaluate the living, health, and nutritional realities of patients with gluten sensitivity and celiac disease in the city of Tripoli. The study adopted a descriptive-analytical approach using an questionnaire distributed to a sample of 128 patients. The results demonstrated that patients face severe challenges in adhering to a gluten-free diet, with 88.3% reporting significant difficulties in obtaining safe food alternatives locally, which caused the strict dietary adherence rate to drop to only 62.5%. The data revealed the continued emergence of debilitating physical complications among a large segment, such as chronic fatigue (74.2%) and anemia (66.4%), alongside 54.7% suffering from psychological issues and social isolation due to the difficulty of dining out. Statistical testing (T-test) proved that the ability to strictly adhere to the diet improves significantly as the years since diagnosis increase due to accumulated patient experience. The study concluded that there is an almost complete absence of societal awareness about the disease (82%), recommending urgent government intervention to subsidize basic gluten-free goods, enforce strict regulatory laws on food and drug labeling, and launch national awareness campaigns to transform the celiac issue into a matter of food security and comprehensive societal awareness.