Gluten Intolerance and Seizures

There are many causes of seizures, some understood better than others. I want to discuss the known association between seizures and gluten intolerance. Below is an excerpt from our book, “The Gluten Effect”. 

It is quite amazing how many other parts of your health can be actively affected by gluten without the presence of any digestive symptoms. Of all the organ systems of your body, the nervous system is the one most commonly affected by gluten after the gastrointestinal system. And, because our nervous system handles so many important functions, symptoms related to the nervous system problems are quite varied.


What Symptoms Can Be Caused?
 
There is an abundance of evidence that inflammatory changes occur in the brain and nerves that cause a variety of symptoms. These can range from:

• clumsiness
• headaches
• numbness
• mood disorders
• memory problems 

Neurological Problems Can Precede Digestive Complaints by Months or Years

It has been reported that only 13% of patients with neurologic symptoms from gluten may have digestive symptoms. And often, neurological symptoms in gluten sensitive patients precede digestive symptoms by months to years when they do occur. For this reason, it is important to keep gluten in mind as a root cause when dealing with disorders of the nervous system.


Symptoms are the body's way of getting your attention and directing you toward the site of the problem. If standard tests and exams cannot reveal a cause, then dietary factors, toxins, lifestyle issues and other stresses deserve your attention.This is where gluten should be a strong consideration. Because gluten affects so many people silently, and because most of those symptoms are not related to the digestive tract, it needs to be an early consideration when addressing many health care problems. 


Gluten's Relationship to Seizures


An excellent study was done with 171 patients who suffered seizures and likewise had gluten intolerance and calcifications in the brain. Gluten antibodies were actually found in their spinal fluid (circulates around the brain and spinal cord), and, likewise, most had the gene for having gluten sensitivity. It was notable that some patients responded well to a gluten-free diet.


The Mechanism Explained

The root cause is most likely an immune system attack of the nervous system triggered by gluten in a sensitive individual. The immune system, in addition to attacking gluten, gets confused and attacks normal brain tissue that "looks similar" to gluten's protein structure. This is known as molecular mimicry.

In the brain, once the tissue is inflamed chronically, calcium can deposit and form a hardened scar. Due to the scar, seizures develop and can be difficult to control with normal seizure medications. Seizures are basically short circuits of the brain. Suppose there were an electrical pole knocked down onto the ground. The electrical wires tore and were lying unprotected, sending out sparks from their broken ends. The electrical connection had been severed. Calcium deposits and scars in the brain essentially do the same thing. They send off electrical "sparks" that can develop into seizures if enough brain tissue becomes involved. Medication may help the sparks from spreading, but with gluten-related seizures, medicines work less well. If gluten is truly the root cause, then eliminating it can allow the tissues to heal. 


Case Study: A Lovely Girl Leaves Her Seizures Behind

T.S. is a beautiful, vibrant, nine-year-old girl who had begun having seizures at the age of four. She had undergone standard medical testing without a cause of her seizures being found. We first saw her when she was four years old. Not only did we find that she was sensitive to gluten, but she also had many intestinal infections, a Candida yeast infection and an essential fatty acid imbalance. The infections were greater in number in her than in most adults we treat, and some were very resistant to treatment, requiring two rounds of antibiotics instead of the usual one. She was treated with fatty acids in addition to a gluten-free diet.

T.S. has had absolutely no seizures for over 5 years! She told her mother that she knows that the gluten created the seizures and she is more than happy to keep it out of her diet. It is noteworthy that her mother, also diagnosed by us as gluten sensitive, never ate much gluten until her twenties because as a child, she had sensed that it bothered her. But, recalling when she was in college and consumed a lot of gluten, she remembered suffering from "brain fog" during that time. 

It's Worth Giving Gluten-Free a Try

Evidence of these inflammatory changes can be seen in some gluten sensitive patients via MRI. This was supported in another study examining patients with gluten sensitivity and seizures, which demonstrated deep-tissue inflammation in at least 20% of the children studied who had seizures.

According to the Epilepsy Foundation: 

a) By 75 years of age, 10% of the population will have experienced some type of seizure. 
b) 3% can be expected to have been diagnosed with epilepsy.

So, having seizures is definitely not a rare occurrence in our society.It is therefore critical we recognize that a percentage of those suffering may be having seizures as a manifestation of gluten sensitivity. For these individuals, a gluten-free diet may be the only effective treatment.

If you or someone you know suffers with seizures, it would be well worth your while to consult a clinician who specializes in gluten intolerance. Imagine if such suffering could be allayed with a simple dietary change. We have certainly seen it here in our clinic.

Interested In A Gluten-Free Diet?

Contact us for a FREE CONSULTATION. Call (408) 733-0400 to schedule. 

If you are not local to us, our DESTINATION CLINIC treats patients from across the country and internationally. We will help you find the underlying root cause!

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

To your good health,
Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Is Your Nervous System Being Traumatized by Your Gut?

We have long known that gluten intolerance, both celiacdisease and gluten sensitivity, are highly associated with neurologic symptoms. Migraines, ataxia (unstable gait), seizures, schizophrenia – the list is long. But a  research study sheds new light on what the mechanism may be. 

Understanding why such debilitating symptoms occur as a result of a gluten intolerance will hopefully go a long way to increase awareness in the lay public and amongst clinicians alike. It is certainly true millions of Americans suffer the effects of a gluten intolerance that creates nervous system problems unknowingly. Such individuals don't feel unhealthy but they have no idea that gluten is the culprit.

The digestive tract is sometimes called the second brain. Some say that is because it is second in importance to the brain. After all, if the food that is consumed doesn’t turn into fuel that can effectively feed the 10 trillion cells in the body, those cells will be unable to perform their job and keep the body healthy. In fact, poor digestion is absolutely linked to poor health and increased onset of degenerative disease, including autoimmune disease and cancer.

The article in Current Pain and Headache Reports looks at another possibility for naming the digestive tract the second brain, and it simply stems from anatomy. The digestive tract actually has a ‘mind of its own’, more correctly a nervous system of its own, called the enteric nervous system. ‘Enteric’ simply means having to do with the intestine. This nervous system, according to research, is very similar to the brain housed in the head in that it is bathed in similar chemicals (called neurotransmitters – which, interestingly enough, are mostly produced in the gut!), it sends and receives impulses and records experiences and is influenced by emotions. Some proof of the latter: Have you ever been nervous and had diarrhea?

This particular study cited that experiencing ‘adverse events’ created a state of hypervigilance (a state of being overly responsive - not a good thing) in the nervous system which was associated with migraines and IBS. Such  ‘hypervigilance’ was previously only associated with the central nervous system – the one attached to the brain in the head. This group of researchers feels that the initiation of hypervigilance may very likely lie in the enteric nervous system also.

What this means is that if the small intestine is genetically sensitive to gluten and gluten is ingested, it could set off a nervous system response that could create disabling diseases, such as migraines and IBS, but likely others as well. 

The take-away is that it is truly critical to diagnose gluten intolerance as soon as possible. Once that hurdle is surmounted it then needs to be followed with a program of nutrition, lifestyle and diet that will ensure healing of the small intestine and a ‘calming’ of the hypervigilant nervous system. You may sometimes hear this referred to as healing a leaky gut..

Here at HealthNOW we often see this clinically in patients who seem intolerant to many different foods and can’t seem to enjoy stable improvement of their symptoms, despite eliminating gluten from their diet. The reason for this insufficient improvement is that a comprehensive follow-up program is missing – a program that addresses what we call the Secondary Effects of Gluten. This entails evaluating for any other food sensitivities, cross reactive foods, a tendency towards autoimmune disease, the presence of any infectious organisms, healing the leaky gut, balancing the probiotic population, and more.

While increasing awareness of the presence of gluten intolerance is absolutely critical, neglecting the secondary effects, as mentioned above, can result in long-term ill health that is truly preventable.

Have you experienced such symptoms? Have you removed gluten but are only partially healthier? I’d love to hear from you.

Need Help? We're Here for You! 

If you felt as if I was describing you above, you are not alone. As I mentioned earlier, adrenal fatigue/exhaustion is almost epidemic. If you would like assistance and don’t have a clinician whom you feel can assist you, consider contacting us for a FREE Health Analysis. We are a Destination Clinic and treat patients from across the country and internationally. We would be delighted to help you as we have been doing so for over two decades.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Reference: “The Bowel and Migraine: Update on Celiac Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome”, R.K. Cady, K. Farmer, J.K. Dexter, J. Hall, Current Pain and Headache Reports, Mar 2012.

Seizures Caused by Gluten Intolerance? You Be the Doctor and Decide

The fact that gluten intolerance can create problems with the nervous system is not new news. The fact that gluten can create seizures is also not new. But it’s also a fact that it is new to most doctors, even those who are specialists of the nervous system.

Witness this true life story:

A mother contacted me who was herself a celiac. Prior to being diagnosed with celiac disease and eliminating gluten from her diet, she had seizures. Her seizures, along with a host of other problems, all disappeared on a gluten-free diet.

Fast forward to having children and she began to notice that her son would flutter his eyes oddly at times. As this worsened and she realized that it was not under his control, she moved forward to get a diagnosis. She took her son to many doctors and the agreed diagnosis was ‘absence seizures’. These used to be called petit mal seizures as opposed to grand mal seizures that are dramatic and more what most people think of when the word ‘seizure’ comes to mind.

Petit means small and grand means large in French, fyi…

Other than the diagnosis, no recommendation for cause nor cure was offered. A drug with dangerous side effects was the only ‘solution’ given to the mom and this was something she didn’t want to do. Citing her own health history as an example, the mother asked if celiac disease or gluten reactions could be causing the seizures in her child. Her question was met with degrees of distain or complete lack of interest by all the doctors she asked.

In frustration, the mother adopted a gluten-free diet for her son. Lo and behold, the seizures ceased, except when he ate gluten. Whether it was a mistake or outright cheating, the seizures did not return without gluten contamination occurring.

Armed with the data of her own ‘experiment’ in the matter, the mother again asked a neurologist about a link with gluten and her son’s seizures. Despite what seemed to be an obvious association, the neurologist categorically stated that there was no connection between gluten and her son’s seizures.

Does that make sense to you?

Even if you were unaware of research proving you wrong (which there is ample), wouldn’t you be curious enough about the association to look into whether any research existed? As a neurologist who frequently saw patients suffering with seizures, wouldn’t you be curious to see if there was any validity in this mother’s claim?

If it was your child what would you do?

Thankfully the mom found out about us on the internet and she and her son are coming to visit our destination clinic. Here we will confirm or deny gluten intolerance via a genetic test. This is the test of choice because it doesn't require a dangerous reintroduction of gluten in order to get an accurate result. We will also address the secondary effects association with gluten intolerance such as:

o   Infections

o   Cross reactive foods

o   Other food intolerances

o   Health of the probiotic organisms in the gut

o   Vitamin and enzyme deficiencies

o   and more…

While I was grateful that the mother discovered us, it made me think how many other individuals, adults and children alike, are suffering needlessly from a condition such as seizures when a dietary change could eradicate the problem.

Do you know anyone with seizures? Please alert them to this data.

If you or someone you care about needs to improve their health please tell them about our free health analysis. 

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Reference:

European Journal of Epilepsy, Vol 7, Issue 1. Pp 49-54. February 1998. ”Epilepsy, cerebral calcifications and clinical or subclinical coeliac disease. Course and follow up with gluten-free diet”

Our Hearts Go Out to the Travolta Family

It’s difficult to lose anyone in our life, but the loss of a child is even that more tragic. Jett Travolta was only 16, the same age as my youngest child. He suffered from a severe seizure disorder.

There are many causes of seizures, some understood better than others. I wanted to discuss the known association between seizures and gluten sensitivity. Please understand that I’m making no assumptions on the part of gluten being a causative agent in Jett’s condition. It’s just that seizures are such a tragic event for the patient as well as their families and any data I can provide that may help someone is something I’d like to do.

Below is some data from our upcoming book, The Gluten Effect.

It is quite amazing how many other parts of your health can be actively affected by gluten without the presence of any digestive symptoms. Of all the other organ systems of your body, the nervous system is the area most commonly affected by gluten after the gastrointestinal system. And, because our nervous system handles so many important functions, symptoms related to the nervous system are quite varied.
Your nervous system incorporates central structures including your brain, spinal cord, peripheral structures that are made up of sensory nerves (which sense pain, hot, cold, etc.), motor nerves (allowing you to perform movements) and nerves that regulate your involuntary systems (such as your heart beating, breathing while you sleep, intestinal movements, etc.). In individuals who are predisposed to gluten intolerance, gluten triggers an immune reaction that can interfere with the function of these structures.

Is Your Brain “On Fire”?There is an abundance of evidence that inflammatory changes occur in the brain and nerves that cause a variety of symptoms. These can range from clumsiness to headaches to numbness to mood disorders to memory problems. It has been reported that only thirteen percent of patients with neurologic symptoms from gluten sensitivity may have digestive symptoms, and, often, neurological symptoms in gluten-sensitive patients precede digestive symptoms by months to years when they do occur. For this reason, it is important to keep gluten in mind as a root cause when dealing with disorders of the nervous system.
Remember, symptoms are the body’s way of getting your attention and directing you toward the site of a problem. If standard tests and exams cannot reveal a cause, dietary factors, toxins, lifestyle issues and other stresses deserve your attention.
This is where gluten should be a strong consideration. Because gluten affects so many people silently, and because most of those symptoms are not related to the digestive tract, it needs to be an early consideration when addressing many health care problems. Examining the different way in which gluten affects your nervous system is an excellent way to appreciate the scope with which gluten results in a variety of symptoms. It also highlights the importance of your diet in relationship to your health.

Gluten’s Relationship to Seizures
An excellent study was evaluated with 171 patients who suffered seizures and likewise had gluten sensitivity/celiac disease and calcifications in the brain. The overwhelming majority had gliadin antibodies in the spinal fluid (which circulates around the brain and spinal cord), and, likewise, most had the gene for having gluten sensitivity. Though many were unresponsive to treatment in general, it was notable that some did respond well to a gluten-free diet.
Why would gluten cause seizures? And are the calcium deposits in the brain related to gluten? Likely, the answer is “yes” to both questions. The presence of calcium deposits reflects chronic inflammation in some tissues. When inflammation has been present for years, calcium forms scars where the inflammation is located. Additionally, brain calcifications can form as a result of a folic acid (a B vitamin) deficiency, which may have been a contributing cause to the calcium deposits in these patients. Since gluten causes digestive malabsorption, then, folic acid may indeed have been low due to that.

The Mechanism ExplainedRegardless, the root cause is most likely an immune system attack triggered by gluten sensitivity. Antibodies that are made to attack gluten get confused (due to a process known as cellular mimicry) and attack normal tissue that looks similar to gluten’s protein structure. In the brain, once the tissue is inflamed chronically, calcium can deposit and form a hardened scar.
Because of this scar, seizures develop and can be difficult to control with normal seizure medications. Seizures are basically short circuits of the brain. Suppose there were an electrical pole knocked down onto the ground. The electrical wires tore and were lying unprotected, sending out sparks from their broken ends. The electrical connection had been severed. Calcium deposits and scars in the brain essentially do the same thing. They send off electrical “sparks” that can develop into seizures if enough brain tissue becomes involved. Medication may help the sparks from spreading, but with gluten-related seizures, medicines work less well.

Case Study: A Lovely Girl Who Leaves Her Seizures Behind
T.S. is a beautiful, vibrant, nine-year-old girl who had begun having seizures at the age of four. She had undergone standard medical testing without a cause of her seizures being found. We first saw her when she was four years old. Not only did we find that she was sensitive to gluten, but that she also had many intestinal infections, a Candida yeast infection, and an essential fatty acid imbalance. The infections were greater in number in her than in most adults we treat, and some were very resistant to treatment, requiring two rounds of antibiotics instead of the usual one. She was treated with fatty acids in addition to a gluten-free diet.
T.S. has had absolutely no seizures for two years. She told her mother recently that she knows that the gluten created her seizures, and she is more than happy to keep it out of her diet. It is noteworthy that her mother, also diagnosed by us as gluten-sensitive, never ate much gluten until her twenties because as a child, she had sensed that it bothered her. But, recalling when she was in college and consumed a lot of gluten, she remembered suffering from “brain fog” during that time.
Evidence of these inflammatory changes can be seen in some gluten-sensitive patients via MRI. This was supported in another study examining patients with gluten sensitivity and seizures, which demonstrated deep-tissue inflammation in at least twenty percent of the children studied who had seizures. In addition, none of these seizure patients had folic acid deficiency, which suggests that gluten was the primary cause of their problem.

It’s Worth Giving Gluten-free a TryWhile, thankfully, seizures are an uncommon manifestation of gluten sensitivity, it is extremely important to recognize it as a cause because the only effective treatment may be a gluten-free diet. If you never think of gluten as a cause, then you will never test for its presence. It would be miserable to have to suffer, or see someone else suffer, with seizures when a potential cure may exist with a simple dietary change.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”