Hello, Dr. Vicki Peterson here. I wanted to speak with you today about a patient who wrote in—not someone I’ve met in person, but someone I’ve interacted with over the internet. This individual was experiencing frequent eye infections. They started sporadically, a few times a year, and then became quite chronic. Fortunately, this person learned about the potential of gluten causing problems throughout the body and eliminated gluten from his diet. He’s been gluten-free for four years, and the only time his eyes bother him is when he accidentally consumes gluten. He certainly doesn’t try to cheat, but as you well know, sometimes accidents happen.
He spoke with the specialist he had been seeing because the most recent time he got into gluten, he developed such a severe infection that he needed antibiotics again. The specialist commented that if all he was getting were eye infections that could be treated with antibiotics, she didn’t see the point in him changing his diet. I wanted to address that because it’s certainly very dangerous advice. What this specialist doesn’t know is that gluten can affect all aspects of the body. It shortens your life when you don’t adhere to a gluten-free diet and are gluten intolerant. We know that it sets you up for autoimmune diseases. When you have one autoimmune disease, you tend to get more. The list goes on and on, with over 300 different symptoms and conditions associated with gluten.
To fool around with, “Well, you have an infection, just take an antibiotic,” especially when this specialist didn’t consider that this individual, when consuming gluten regularly, had gotten to the point where he was chronically on antibiotics. We all know what that does: it weakens your immune system. What a catch-22—you have a weakened immune system that can’t defend against infection, and gluten is already weakening your immune system. It’s not a pretty picture, not to mention how many other aspects of someone’s health can be affected.
If you know somebody who has a chronic condition and their doctor just says, “You have a chronic sinus condition, you can take this medication and keep it under control,” that’s not treating the condition; that’s masking the condition. Until you have a treatment that eradicates the condition, you’re just providing temporary relief. Sometimes, so much damage has occurred that we can’t completely come back from it, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This individual figured out that these infections were absolutely coming from gluten ingestion. When he didn’t ingest gluten, he didn’t have any infections. To just treat it topically, symptomatically, is a very dangerous game to play. You probably know people who are treating themselves that way.
Just the other day, a patient came in who tends to get lightheaded and lose her balance, and it all has to do with sinus congestion. She said her other doctor was giving her this medication and that medication, and it really wasn’t working. She wasn’t sure what other medication to try. I said it’s not about medication; it’s about finding out why. Where is the sinus congestion coming from? We could help her with that.
I know it’s a different mindset. I know it’s not what you hear day-to-day, but this is the premise of functional medicine, and it works very well for the human body. Consider looking around at your friends and family. See if anybody is just doing a temporary fix on symptoms that may have a root cause. Perhaps it’s gluten, perhaps it’s something else, but the point is, it is something. I’m more than happy to help them figure out what that something is.
Until next time, I hope this was helpful. Let me know your questions and comments. I love to hear from you, and I wish you very good health.
