I know a number of women who cannot eat gluten or they get really sick but who don’t necessarily feel really well even when they don’t eat gluten. This has been puzzling me, since I have continued to get healthier and healthier.
So, I asked my trusted chiropractor and here’s his perspective from his clinical observation: He hasn’t seen people really get healthy and recover from celiac if they haven’t gotten desensitized to gluten.
So, what does this mean? There are a number of ways to desensitize to gluten. He uses Applied Kinesiology. NAET or similar ways of desensitizing energetically use tapping along the meridians, acupressure/acupuncture, and others. Energy Psychology methods, such as EFT and TAT have been used to desensitize people to allergens also.
When he first diagnosed the celiac, he would test me each visit for gluten sensitivity, even though I wasn’t eating gluten. And I would test weak, week after week. He would repeat the desensitization process, and then gradually, my body began to stay strong when tested. It has now been a number of months since my body has tested weak for gluten. This doesn’t mean that I can now eat it, though, perhaps for someone who had just developed a sensitivity from eating so much of it, they could begin introducing some of it, if they wanted.
If this is you, and you knew how to do muscle testing, you could do this for yourself to see if it’s safe for you to consume gluten again, and even find out how much and what kind would be okay for you to eat. More on this in a later post.
But, if you do not produce the enzyme that breaks down the gluten fraction called gliadin, then it will never be good for you to eat gluten, no matter how desensitized you become. Celiac.com can help you begin to understand this more: http://www.celiac.com/articles/8/1/What-is-gluten-What-is-gliadin/Page1.html.
Wishing you a happier and healthier tomorrow!
Holly
Dr. Rodney Ford is a pediatric gastroenterologist who has written 7 books on gluten! He sees gluten as a brain disruptor or neurotoxin. I have been drawn to his work since discovering links between gluten and “brain fog” or brain disruption. The more anecdotal evidence that emerges about gluten and mental health issues…the more his theory makes sense to me.
Here’s some of what he has to say…
“Gluten-sensitivity is a disease of your brain and nerves.
The gluten puzzle
I have come to this conclusion after studying the effects of gluten on my patients for over a decade. I am a pediatric gastroenterologist and allergist. I run a busy clinic for children and their parents. I have been increasingly concerned by the large numbers of my patients who are affected by gluten. I was perplexed by their wide-ranging symptoms. The puzzle was to explain how gluten could cause so much ill health to so many people in so many different ways, including celiac disease.
Faulty brain control
Eureka! The solution came when deep in discussion with my friend and colleague, Ron Harper, Professor of Neurobiology, UCLA. We were both struggling with the concept of multiple symptoms that needed to be explained. The answer appeared absurdly simple: disturbed “brain control”. It suddenly seemed obvious—gluten could disturb the neural pathways of the body. Gluten was gradually damaging the brain and the nerves of susceptible people. It was the brain that was the common pathway for the manifestations of all of the gluten symptoms. So I set out to research what the world medical literature had to say.
Is gluten a neurotoxin?
I felt excited. I reviewed my patients in this new light—I began looking for a brain-grain connection. I began to see gluten as a neurotoxin—this could provide a universal model of gluten-sensitivity. This toxicity might act through inflammatory mechanisms or cross-reactivity with neurons. I began accumulating the evidence for my proposal that gluten-sensitivity is a brain and nerve disease.”
for more on this…
My recommendation? If you suspect that gluten might be a problem for you based on symptoms you are experiencing and you are either in therapy, or struggle with anxiety, depression, ADD, ADHD, and eating disorders, it is VERY WISE to get this checked out. Depending on your proclivity, you could go to an allopathic or alternative health care provider for testing. You could, too, just stop eating gluten and notice if there are any changes for you in your symptoms. If there are, then please find a practitioner who really understands the process by which the body heals itself and can provide supplementation to boost the deficiencies that will emerge as you heal.
Wishing you a happier and healthier tomorrow!
Holly
