MSG, Gluten and Nervous System Diseases

Gluten Intolerance Can Cause Neurological Disease

Ataxia (unsteadiness of gait or balance is highly associated with gluten intolerance – more so gluten sensitivity than celiac disease.

Some patients suffering from ataxia call themselves clumsy or accident prone as there are likely to fall into things, trip, etc. Unfortunately ataxia can get so severe that a patient’s life is greatly inhibited as they are no longer able to drive and may feel afraid to be alone.

Gluten is the most common cause of something called cerebellar ataxia. (The cerebellum, a part of the brain, helps modulate voluntary movements so that they become more accurate, smooth, and require less conscious effort to perform. A good example of this is learning to ride a bicycle. Initially you have to consciously balance, and think hard to coordinate the movements of your arms and legs, etc. Yet as you practice more and more you can eventually ride the bike without thinking about it – that is your cerebellum at work.)

50% of Gluten Intolerant Patients Have Nervous System Problems

Neurological complications are found in many patients with gluten intolerance  - 30-50% to be precise. The critical step is to try to diagnose patients, early on, who are having their nervous systems affected by gluten because it has been found that gluten-free diets sometimes cannot stop neurodegeneration (degeneration of the nervous system) that has progressed too far.

Over the years I have noticed that many of my gluten intolerant patients are also MSG intolerant. Let’s look at why that might be and how it can affect the nervous system.

Substance called “Free Glutamate” Can Act Like MSG

Insidiously enough, many companies tout their products as being free of added MSG but that doesn’t mean that they are also devoid of free glutamate. Glutamate, an amino acid, is typically found in high protein foods. When bound it isn’t a problem but prolonged cooking or processing liberates or “frees” the glutamate and that is when problems arise for some individuals. The presence of free glutamate is not found on any labels but suffice to say that most fast food institutions and many highly processed foods (especially those high in protein) have either added MSG or free glutamate present.

If you know that your body responds poorly to MSG or you have any type of neurological complaint, I would recommend that you become familiar with these foods and consider eliminating them from your diet. Remember, free glutamate does not tend to be present in what I consider fresh, healthy food. A little internet search will give you more specifics on these types of foods.

We use ‘gluten’ to refer to the protein structure found in the grains wheat, rye, barley. Factually we should be using the word ‘gliadin’ as only wheat contains true ‘gluten’. Don’t worry about it, but for this post I wanted to make the distinction for a reason. And that is to explain that gliadin is broken down, upon digestion, into the amino acids proline and glutamine. Glutamine in turn breaks down into glutamate (both are amino acids) and the highest rate of this breakdown occurs in the small intestine. So there is a cascade from gliadin to glutamine to glutamate as digestion occurs.

How Gluten and Glutamate are Related

Interestingly, gluten and glutamate share a common thread in the area of creating neurological complaints. Could the ingestion of foods with high glutamate, though gluten-free, explain the onset of neurological symptoms due to a high free glutamate? It does give one something to think about... It certainly has been the case in this some of my patients.

Let’s put this all together to understand just how gluten can create neurological problems and how glutamate might be adding kerosene to the fire.

Excitotoxicity  - the Killer of Cells

First a definition: Excitotoxicity - a process whereby excess glutamate accumulates outside cells, resulting in damage and eventual death of cells in the nervous system.

Excitotoxicity can Cause Stroke, Autism,  Alzheimer’s and Seizures

So as you can see, glutamate can kill cells of the nervous system if not removed efficiently. Excitotoxicity is associated with such disorders as stroke, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and seizures due to the fact that glutamate can result in severely decreased blood flow to the brain.

Inflammation Creates Excitotoxicity – A Bad Outcome

The bottom line is that a lot of glutamate is produced in the brain when it’s “excited”. It is “excited” when it’s inflamed and gluten is a major source of inflammation in those who are intolerant– see how it all comes full circle?

Gluten Can Inflame the Brain

We know that gluten can cause systemic (throughout the body) effects upon the immune system, even though it enters the body through the gut. It has also been well established that gut irritation can activate immune cells in the brain that initiate immunoexcitotoxicity (a process whereby the brain is subject to excitotoxic damage).

The more Brain Inflammation Occurs, the More Damaging It Is

The brain’s immune cells can secrete a number of inflammatory substances, but even worse, once it’s occurred the first time, the next irritation that occurs causes the immune cells to pour out excitotoxins, creating neurological symptoms.

Heart Disease, Diabetes and Cancer Share a Common Root Cause

There are 3 excitotoxic amino acids that are poured out, one of which is our friend glutamate. These amino acids suppress the transport system that allows glutamate to be removed efficiently from the brain. Buildup thus occurs, increasing excitotoxicity and unstable substances (called free radicals) that will react with most tissues of the body creating destruction in their wake. Free radicals are known to cause many disease conditions including cancer, diabetes and heart disease, to name but a few.

By the way, we also know that the immune cells of the brain are activated by not only gluten and glutamate but by chronic infections and toxins, including pesticides and herbicides.

What is the Take Away? 

Let’s review:

• We know that chronic inflammation is a bad thing and we want to prevent it.
• We know that when sensitive to gluten a body can become inflamed in many areas, especially the gut and the nervous system. 
• We know that we want to prevent neurological diseases such as stroke, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and seizures and that they may very well be initiated by a negative reaction to gluten, one of its breakdown products glutamate, and foods high in free glutamate.
• And lastly we also know that we want to avoid excitotoxicity as it literally spells a death sentence for the cells of the nervous system and brain.

What Can You Do?
First it must be determined if the individual suffers from gluten sensitivity or celiac disease. This can be difficult in some people who yet have no symptoms, as neurological problems may take years to develop although the damage is slowly and relentlessly occurring.

Blood tests that measure AGA, tTG, EMA and dAGA are all available. Cyrex Labs has a nice test that is more sensitive than those previously used and it’s the one we use here at HealthNOW. Our major goal is early diagnosis – we want to discover the problem before too much damage has occurred.

It must also be determined if glutamate containing foods are problematic. Many people who are sensitive to MSG know it, but unfortunately they are unaware of the free glutamate in food, so they chalk up feeling badly to some other source.

We must encourage protection of the nervous system and reduce stress on the brain’s immune cells.

How? Nutrients found in cranberries and many other brilliantly colored fruits and vegetables have potent antioxidant activity which may help fight heart disease and cancer in addition to protecting the nervous system. DHA is a powerful anti-inflammatory for the brain that not only inhibits immune activation of brain cells, but it improves blood flow to the brain and blocks excitotoxicity – all very good things!

Lastly we must remove any additional sources of inflammation to the body. Possible culprits are other foods causing problems, infectious agents, heavy metals and other toxins.

It sounds difficult but we must strive to “clean up” our body’s internal environment. We can’t swim in a sea of toxins and expect to be healthy. The body can only tolerate so much.

Neurological diseases are terrible but the good news is that they may be largely preventable.

I hope you find this information useful and please share this data with someone who has some of these symptoms or suspects they may be suffering from gluten intolerance.

If you would like to improve your health please call me for a free health analysis. I’m here to help!

HealthNOW is a destination clinic and we see patients from all over the country as well as internationally, so you don’t need to live locally to receive assistance.

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!”

Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Dr Vikki Petersen & HealthNOW Medical Center and a clickable link back to this page.

Questions re: Gluten, Glutamate and Neurological Disease

I received very good questions from readers of the recent blog post entitled: "Gluten, Glutamate and Neurological Disease", two of which follow. 

“Do you think that patients with neurological issues are sensitive to gluten in amounts well below the proposed standard of 20ppm?” “Also that it takes longer to recover from mistakes when the reaction is neurological.”

“I have also been prescribed a product with glutamate in it by a Naturopathic doctor. I have taken glutamine in the past to heal the gut, but this formula is to induce a sense of calm. Now I am wondering if it is safe...”

Glutamine is often used by health practitioners for its ability to help heal the lining of the gut.  It was found in cancer patients that the use of glutamine could assist in healing and reduce nausea and vomiting associated with the disease.  Those who were in hospital receiving IV therapy due to malnutrition were similarly found to benefit from glutamine as a healing source.

We too have used glutamine for patients who seemed to require some assistance in healing the lining of their gut.  How do I feel about that approach now?  We have discussed it here at the clinic and have made the decision to avoid the use of glutamine in any patient with a personal or family history of any neurological symptoms or diseases. There are other substances that can be used to assist healing and we therefore have decided to move more towards those applications and away from prescribing glutamine in light of this recent data.

Glutamate is a neurotransmitter in the brain – it is excitatory and is the most common one in the human body. Just to comment on the supplement mentioned above, glutamate would not be used for calming, that would be the neurotransmitter GABA. GABA has an inhibitory effect, exactly opposite to that of glutamate.  The formula that the reader refers to states that it contains both GABA for its calming influence and glutamate for its excitatory effects and it strives to balance them towards the outcome of creating a calming effect. But it isn’t the glutamate that would provide that outcome, quite the opposite.

Glutamine and glutamate freely transform into one another as the body goes through various biological processes.  They are very commonly found in the human body and I am not suggesting that we can in any way eliminate either one, nor would we want to.  What I am saying is that recent research finds that the activation or stimulation of the brain’s immune system can lead to highly deleterious effects on the body’s nervous system including stroke, seizures, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. And glutamate as well as gluten (that metabolizes into glutamine) can be a source of irritation.

In a fascinating lack of differentiation, the immune system of the brain and nervous system can be whipped into action by several different sources that yet all create the same destructive effect.  In other words, a gluten sensitive person can have initiated an immune response through gluten ingestion, but later the presence of glutamate in food or infections or pesticides or any toxin can ramp up the initial irritation to the point where broad scale damage occurs.

Such damage is extreme and one wonders if the body can heal from it.  Depending on its severity I believe the answer to be yes.  The human body is rather amazing that way.  However nerves heal slowly.  If you’ve ever cut yourself anywhere perhaps you’ve noticed that it takes some time for full “feeling” to be restored to the damaged area.  That is due to the slow healing of nerves.

We therefore want to ensure that we are avoiding any sources of stress to our nervous system.  As the first reader commented above, being extra cautious in consuming gluten-free foods would be a very good idea.  If your body is undergoing neurological stress and you are walking a tightrope between the progression vs. reversion of a neurological disease, I think erring on the side of extra caution is well worth your while.

In summary, what we are really trying to achieve is an intact healthy gut (not leaky) and an immune system that’s strong and protected.  We reviewed nutritional and dietary strategies to help achieve that in the prior post so I won’t repeat them here. Suffice to say that with any neurological problems a full scale clean-up away from gluten, glutamate, infections and toxins could very well create a huge positive impact.

I hope this helps to clarify things.  Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

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!”