Is Gluten Damaging your Brain?

Do You Have Any of These Symptoms?

Do you get headaches? 

Have you ever gotten one as a result of gluten contamination or ‘cheating’?

Have you had balance or dizziness problems, sometimes known as ataxia? 

How about numbness, tingling or other sensation type issues?

For you, are any of these known side effects due to gluten exposure - meaning that you experience them when you come into contact with gluten?

If you or someone you know falls into this category, whereby gluten affects you neurologically, read on.

Gluten Can Damage Your Brain

A study out of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry last August 2012 revealed that a group of celiacs who were referred to see a neurologist, had significant brain damage.

This group of individuals, average age forty four, when compared to a control group had significantly greater damage to their brains. Since the researchers found damage to both the white matter and grey matter, I thought we should define each.

The white matter makes up about half of the brain and seems to be involved in connectivity, or uniting various partss of the brain that are involved in performing mental functions. White matter affects how the brain learns, even into adulthood.

The grey matter of the brain is made up of nerve cells. The grey matter includes the parts of the brain involved in muscle control plus sensory perception such as seeing, hearing, memory, emotions and speech.

One of the researchers, Dr Hadjivassiliou from the University of Sheffield in the UK, is renowned for his work in the area of celiac disease and gluten sensitivity.

The goal of the research was to determine the extent of brain abnormalities in celiac patients.

While it’s certainly not news that gluten can cause brain and nervous system symptoms, the extent to which this study showed significant damage to the white matter of the brain is certainly worth sharing with the general public who suffer from these symptoms, and the neurologists from whom they seek advice.

The study consisted of 33 diagnosed celiac disease patients, whose condition was confirmed by biopsy. Each patient was compared to a control group and differences in brain volume and chemistry were evaluated.

The study revealed that celiac patients had diminished cerebellum volume (the part of the brain that coordinates and regulates muscle activity) plus multiple regions of decreased grey matter density.

In the Study, 30% of Celiacs Showed Brain Damage

Thirty six percent of patients showed white matter abnormalities, completely unexpected for their age group, with the highest incidence in the headache group. They demonstrated twice the number of white matter abnormalities on MRI as compared to the other two subgroups. 

Celiac patients suffering from balance disturbance were discovered to have half as many white matter abnormalities as the headache group, while those with sensory loss revealed about a sixth of the white matter abnormalities. All groups were markedly more affected than the control group that was free of celiac disease.  

While we have long known of the nervous system irritation created by gluten, did anyone for an instant consider that their gluten ingestion could be creating permanent brain damage? That they could be compromising the size and function of their brain? Not likely. But this study reveals that such an outcome is indeed possible.

Anyone Suffering from Neurological Symptoms Should be Tested for Gluten

If you or anyone you know suffers from headaches, imbalance problems, sensory problems or any sort of nervous system imbalance, including seizures and depression, a thorough work-up for gluten sensitivity is an excellent idea.

If you are currently the patient of a neurologist, please share this information with them. Increasing the awareness of your neurologist on this topic will likely benefit many of his or her patients who are gluten intolerant and are unaware of it.

Share this with your family doctor who likely treats many, many patients with complaints of headaches. The likelihood is that a percentage of them are gluten intolerant and potentially suffering from brain damage as a result. You would be doing a humanitarian service to enlighten your doctor to something that he or she has likely not considered.

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 – call 408-733-0400. 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.

Until next time, I wish you very good health.

Dr. Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of HealthNOW Medical Center

Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

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

Reference:

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. 2012 Dec;83(12):1216-21. doi: 10.1136/jnnp-2012-303281. Epub 2012 Aug 20.

Should we be 'nervous' about coeliac disease? Brain abnormalities in patients with coeliac disease referred for neurological opinion.

Currie S, Hadjivassiliou M, Clark MJ, Sanders DS, Wilkinson ID, Griffiths PD, Hoggard N.

Gluten Intolerance and the Benefits of Breast Milk – Good and Bad?

I have always been a big proponent of breast feeding. Children who are breastfed are found to have higher IQs and a better overall health status. The benefits that Mother Nature packs into mother’s milk has not been successfully mimicked by any man-made product. Far from it in fact –the formulas on the market are quite atrocious when it comes to nutritional standards for health.

Does breast feeding reduce your child’s chances of developing celiac disease?

It turns out that the risk of developing celiac disease was shown to decrease by a whopping 63% for children breast fed for more than two months compared to those children breast fed for less than two months. I will admit that I would have lost that bet – I would have assumed that two months wasn’t long enough to make that large a difference. But apparently a little goes a long way when it comes to the value of breast milk.

Another study looked at children fed breast milk for three months or more and found an even better result. These children were five times less likely to develop celiac disease as compared to those babies who fell within the less than three month mark.

We used to think that celiac disease was a yes or no proposition, with no gray areas. In other words it was believed that you were born with the disease or you were not. That is incorrect and recent research has proven that celiac disease can develop in those who have the genetic predisposition at any time during their life. In fact the incidence of celiac disease in the general population is known to increase from 1% to 4% (or 5%, depending on the research you look at) with age.

This tells us that the presence of genes for celiac disease and the ingestion of gluten in the diet, are not sufficient to cause the disease to manifest itself. What’s the third factor? The health of the GI tract is the final link. A healthy GI tract will have adequate healthy probiotics to keep the celiac disease genes turned off, thereby preventing the disease from expressing itself. The unhealthy GI tract no longer has robust good bacteria and their weakening numbers makes them incapable of keeping bad genes turned off. The result is the ‘turning on’ of the celiac genes.

Getting back to breastfeeding, it is known that breast milk is a wonderful colonizer of healthy probiotic organisms within the gut. The colostrum mothers produce helps their baby’s immune system mature, thereby preventing disease, especially digestive infections that could create a leaky gut and increased predisposition to gluten intolerance as well as other food reactions.

What about the timing of introducing gluten to children?

Two major studies confirm that timing may be quite critical. In one it was found that infants who were receiving breast milk at the time of gluten introduction had a 52% reduced risk of developing celiac disease as compared with those babies who were not receiving breast milk when gluten was introduced into their diet.

The second study was a landmark study conducted in Sweden, unbeknownst to anyone at the time it occurred. In other words, only retrospectively, was it understood what happened. Here’s the story: In the 1980s a change of guidelines occurred as regards when gluten should be introduced into the diet of an infant. Prior it had been maintained that gluten should be introduced while a child was receiving breast milk. In the 1980s the new guideline recommended that gluten be introduced after weaning had occurred.

The result was a dramatic spike in the incidence of celiac disease in the country of Sweden. After much research, the guideline was reversed and the incidence of celiac disease was restored to its prior level.

Can Gluten in Mom’s Diet by found in Breast Milk?

I was very happy to find this study passed along by the Gluten Intolerance Group that confirmed something I’ve seen clinically for years, but heretofore had not seen any research support.

When babies would come in with colic or constipation or vomiting or rashes or a host of other ailments, the first thing we would do with a breastfeeding mom is change HER diet. We saw, that when Mom was no longer ingesting gluten or dairy (or whatever the offending food was found to be) baby’s symptoms resolved. Obviously that points to the fact that these foods traveled in to the breast milk in a form that could bother baby.

Yet many researchers have stated that the gluten protein was not found in breast milk and there was no indication that a mother consuming gluten could affect her child’s health through her breast milk. When research does not agree with my clinical evidence working with patients, I have learned that clinical experience usually wins out. And so it was in this case. The study cited by GIG referenced that indeed gliadin (the protein found in gluten) was found in high levels in the milk samples of 54 out of 80 healthy mothers on a normal, unrestricted diet. While the presence of gliadin would be fine with a child having no tendency toward intolerance, it obviously is a big problem for those little ones that are already expressing a reaction.

In summary, breastfeeding is very important and healthy for baby. The only caveat is perhaps needing to alter what Mom is eating to prevent certain sensitive foods from entering into the milk. This is not difficult however and a happy baby is well worth the effort.

I hope you found this informative and please pass it along to the mothers and future mothers whom you know.

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!”

Gluten Intolerance & Overweight - Why They Go Together

Gluten intolerance used to be synonymous with celiac disease, and celiac disease was synonymous with being underweight. Times have changed and being ‘locked in’ to the notion that unless someone is very underweight their chance of being gluten intolerant is next to nil, is obsolete.

Unfortunately, patients continue to be refused testing from ill informed doctors who simply observe their patients physique and from that decide that gluten sensitivity or celiac disease isn’t a likely diagnosis.While I must admit that I truly am tired of hearing stories of doctors refusing to test individuals because they don’t fit the classic celiac profile of extreme diarrhea, abdominal pain and underweight, today I wanted to address an association that isn’t typically looked at - gluten intolerance and overweight. 

Those with the classic type of celiac disease tend to be underweight because they have been suffering with a small intestine that has been incapable of absorbing much in the way of nutrition. We now know that the ‘classic’ celiac disease is not the most common and therefore we see celiac and gluten sensitive patients who have weight to lose.

The human body is very intelligent. If it perceives that it’s under physiological stress, it will tend towards ‘holding on’ to everything it can. Much in the way squirrels store nuts for the cold winter, the human body will burn very few calories when under stress. While it’s ‘smart’ for the body to conserve, it also can  result in weight gain.

Identifying the major stressor for the gluten intolerant patient, gluten, goes a long way towards resolving that stress, and often patients begin to see weight loss occur as a result of initiating a gluten-free diet.

For others the secondary effects of gluten intolerance must be addressed as well. These are such things as:

1.       Hidden infections in the intestine

2.    Nutritional deficiencies

3.       Cross reactive foods

4.       Hormonal imbalance

5.       Enzyme deficiency

6.       Probiotic imbalance

7.       Toxins such as heavy metals

Lifestyle factors can also contribute to overweight in the gluten intolerant patient. Removing gluten from the diet is not an easy task, no argument there.  But ‘being gluten-free’ is not the only important factor when adopting a healthy diet. A daily checklist of good, highly nutrition food consumption would include:

1.       8-10 glasses of purified water, depending on your weight (1/2 your weight in ounces of water is the formula)

2.       7 – 9 servings (or more) of fruits and vegetables, depending on your sex - men need 9

3.       Whole non-gluten grains if they suit you – some people suffer cross reactive problems

4.       Beans and legumes

5.       A small amount of good oils such as olive, coconut oil and fresh nuts

6.       A small amount of hormone-free animal protein, unless you’re vegetarian/vegan

7.       No dairy products

8.       Little to no sugar and no high fructose corn sweeteners

9.       Little to no processed, pre-packaged foods

          10.   Little to no caffeine 
          11.   No fast food 
          12.   No artificial sweeteners – they actually cause you to gain weight and are toxic 
          13.   No soda

Does that sound like a lot of ‘don’ts’? I’m sorry, but I wanted to be thorough. You can concentrate more on the ‘dos’ to stay on the positive side of the equation, but at least look over the things you should avoid, so you are aware of what they are.

Some patients think they are eating a healthy diet but ‘live on’ artificial sweeteners and caffeine, as an example, because they don’t consider it a problem due to their low calorie count.

I am glad that there are so many gluten-free options available to us in our grocery stores. But the truth of the matter is that unless it’s naturally gluten-free, such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, etc then it often falls into the category of a highly refined, pre-packaged food that you should only consume rarely.  The gluten-free breads, cakes, cookies and the like are great for birthdays and holidays, but they should definitely not be part of your daily diet.

Please don’t let this advice overwhelm you. Take it in baby steps and make small changes to start. See how you feel and let me know of any questions you have. 

Finally, I must advise you that some of gluten's secondary effects such as hidden infections, nutritional deficiencies and cross-reactive foods, to name a few, do require the help of a doctor to diagnose and treat. If you feel that you may be suffering from any of these issues or just don't feel good and don't know why, consider taking us up on the offer of a free health analysis. Just call us at 408-733-0400. Our destination clinic treats patients from across the country and internationally. You don't need to live local to us to receive assistance.

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!”