Celiac Disease & Gluten Sensitivity: Need-To-Know Information

Celiac Disease & Gluten Sensitivity: You Need to Know This

Summary

Testing for celiac disease and gluten sensitivity is important for several reasons:

• Accuracy of diagnosis: Testing allows for a proper diagnosis of celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, which can be challenging based solely on symptoms. Without testing, you may not be aware of your condition and could continue consuming gluten, leading to long-term health complications.
• Treatment and management: An accurate diagnosis enables you to adopt a gluten-free diet, which is the only effective treatment for celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. Following a gluten-free diet can alleviate symptoms, promote healing of the small intestine, and reduce the risk of associated complications.
• Avoiding unnecessary restrictions: You may self-diagnose or suspect you have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity without proper testing. However, many symptoms associated with these conditions can also be caused by other medical conditions. Testing helps differentiate between celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, and other gastrointestinal disorders… thereby helping you avoid unnecessary dietary restrictions.
• Identifying associated conditions: Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that can lead to complications such as malabsorption of nutrients, osteoporosis, anemia, infertility, and an increased risk of certain cancers. Early detection through testing allows for monitoring and addressing these potential complications.

Transcript of the video

By Dr. Vikki Petersen

May is Celiac Awareness Month. I wanted to talk a little bit more about it. Not that it’s not worth talking about every day of the year. Where we stand with celiac disease is that it’s one of the most common autoimmune diseases. Yet close to 90% of people who suffer from it remain undiagnosed. Ridiculous. Why is that? Why is that?

Celiac diagnosis: The 4-out-of-5 rule

I think it has to do with the testing, which is not foolproof. Doctors require a biopsy and consider a positive biopsy to be the gold standard for testing of celiac disease — it is not.

I’ve done many videos and blogs on the “4-out-of-5” rule, which is:

• Presence of symptoms associated with celiac disease;
• Feeling better when gluten is remove from the diet;
• A positive blood test;
• A positive genetics test;
• A positive biopsy.

So the 4-out-of-5 rule means you can have 4 out of the 5 positives and still be deemed a celiac.

Considering the most expensive and most invasive is the biopsy, that means it’s not required for a proper diagnosis. Yet so many gastroenterologists are still stuck in this pre-2014 mode of thinking that it’s “the gold standard”. It is not. If that’s what your gastroenterologist is telling you, they are not up to speed and you should find another one.

Celiac disease testing: Wheat Zoomer

As far as lood testing is concerned, we do the “Wheat Zoomer” test. It’s a blood test, and what I love about it is that it gets the spectrum from Celiac through gluten sensitivity, as well as leaky gut.

It gives you a lot of data about whether you’re sensitive to gluten and/or have celiac disease. When it comes to the problem of diagnosis, typically doctors don’t like to talk about diet. They don’t like to restrict diet. They’ll say “eat healthy” if you are diagnosed with celiac, so you’re one of those 11 or 12% that actually get diagnosed and you’re just referred to a dietician (typically in a hospital), and they’ll just go over places where gluten can be found.

They won’t necessarily talk to you about all the other things that you need to eat vs. not to eat, and you just become gluten-focused (which is very important, don’t get me wrong)  but there’s also a lot of gluten-free junk food out there which you should not be eating in order to heal your gut and heal your immune system. There’s a lot of important nutrients that you need that go above and beyond that.

Celiac disease involves many systems

The other thing is between celiac and gluten sensitivity, there’s a lot of systems involved. When we think celiac, we think gut, we think GI symptoms: diarrhea and bloating and weight loss, (it can also be weight gain in adults), children failure to thrive, they tend to be on the thinner side (short of stature). As adults, you can be of a normal weight, you can be overweight, and still have celiac disease.

But there’s also the neurological aspect of it. Migraines, even seizures. Neuralgia, pains or numbness in parts of your body. Fatigue, poor sleep, other autoimmune diseases. As soon as you have thyroid issues, you definitely want look into whether you have a Celiac or gluten component as part of that, because we know gluten does have a propensity to injure the thyroid.

We also have hormonal imbalance, and not just fatigue, but also anxiety, depression… There are a lot of systems involved.

The skin is another big one. Not just Dermatitis Herpetiformis (that’s a mouthful, they abbreviated DH, it’s a little easier), not just the DH associated with celiac disease, but other skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis. You really want to rule out whether gluten is a component there.

So all these systems are involved. The testing is not perfect. So getting a doctor who really understands the nuances there, and again that spectrum from celiac-to-gluten sensitivity.

Testing answers the need-to-know

Gluten sensitivity is not “celiac disease lite”. It’s not like “Oh, well, it’s not the bad thing. So I can have a little gluten sometimes…” I was talking to a female patient the other day; we hadn’t seen her in a couple of years. She’s like “Yeah, I’m back to this and that”. And I was like “So how are you doing being off gluten?”. She goes “Yeah, okay, .”

As soon as I hear that, my little red flag starts waving up in the air. So I said “What does that mean exactly?” She goes “Well, you know, I’m mostly avoiding bread and pasta”. Oh boy…

This reeducation has to happen. It’s not just those with gluten sensitivity, it’s also celiac as well. The problem can be that some people cheat on gluten, whether inadvertently (they get it in their diet) or they choose to cheat and they don’t feel it right away. And that can be very insidious.

I always tell the patients who get an instant migraine or something instant happening to them: “You’re so lucky because you won’t get tainted without knowing it. And if you cheat now you’re gonna have this aversion therapy to gluten because you feel terrible and you don’t wanna do that again.” They’re the lucky ones.

Who is not so lucky are the people that have more of a delayed response that waits all day. They cheated: they had the cookie, they had the pasta, and they go “okay, seems all right”. Then few days later, things start to happen and they’ve already forgotten they cheated.

So it’s really important that everyone knows whether they’re sensitive to gluten or not. That’s not saying everybody’s sensitive, not everyone is. But it’s such a big thing to miss when it’s present. So do the “Wheat Zoomer” test. Do yourself a favor. Really find out for your family members as well.

It’s an easy test. It is a blood test, not hard to do.

Going to the root cause

If there’s anything about your health that you haven’t been able to get to the root cause of, and you know there’s something underlying it, you just can’t figure it out… Or maybe you’ve been on medication for a while and you’re not feeling good with that… Or the medication keeps increasing… Whatever it is that’s bothering you, that shouldn’t be bothering you.

Remember, the body knows how to heal itself and if it’s not doing that, there’s a reason why.  And that’s what we do here at Root Cause Medical Clinic. Call us for a nutriona consultation at 727-335-0400

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