How Celiac Disease Affects The Brain

Jane (her last name withheld for privacy) had had migraine headaches for as long as she could remember. Even as a small child in elementary school, she would often have a horrible headache an hour or two after lunchtime. She had a migraine headache after every birthday party, or, more precisely, after every birthday cake, and she struggled throughout college and early adulthood to participate in daily life and hold down a job.

When Jane turned 30, however, her problem got even worse. Migraine medications had never worked, and Jane had gone from specialist to specialist to try to find relief. This time, Jane's neurologist informed her that a scan of her brain revealed ominous white spots that indicated a form of cancer known as lymphoma.

But further testing revealed that Jane did not have lymphoma. She happened to mention to the neurologist that her migraines were worse when she had also had diarrhea, and the doctor decided to test for celiac disease. Sure enough, Jane tested positive for antibodies to gliadin, the protein in wheat and related grains that gives dough its “stretch,” and a biopsy of her intestine revealed damage from the disease. Jane's celiac disease did not cause severe symptoms in her digestive tract that would lead a doctor to test for the problem, but it did cause inflammation in the brain.

Happily for Jane, a grain-free diet brought her nearly total relief from migraine—and recurrent diarrhea. The white patches in her brain did not spread, and after about two years they were no longer detectable.

Gluten Sensitivity Can Cause a Variety of Brain-Related Symptoms

People who had recurrent seizures that did not respond to medication, depression, hallucinations, psychotic breaks, and even autism have improved when put on gluten-free diets.

Brain-related diseases that are driven by gluten sensitivity tend to present themselves in a consistent pattern:

• The symptoms of the disorder can disappear and reappear, usually suddenly, over a long period of time.
• The disorder doesn't respond to conventional medications.
• There is usually some other sign of gluten-sensitivity disease, such as repeated bouts with constipation or diarrhea, or both, skin rashes, and evidence of calcium or vitamin D deficiency (due to the inability of the digestive tract to absorb these nutrients).
• Improvement occurs when the patient starts a gluten-free diet.

See Also: Could You Have Celiac Disease And Not Even Know It?

Healing the Gut-Brain Axis

Gluten-related brain diseases are a vivid example of the importance of the gut-brain axis.

Friendly bacteria in the colon also modulate the activity of the immune system. In the case of celiac disease and the brain, treating an autoimmune disease of the colon seems sometimes to heal brain disease. But is a gluten-free diet always the answer?

Heal The Gut, Heal The Brain

Doctors have known for a very long time that celiac disease sometimes causes symptoms outside the digestive tract. An especially nasty form of skin inflammation known as herpetiform (herpes-like) dermatitis is caused by reactions to gluten, and many people who have celiac disease develop painful neuropathy (nerve deterioration) and ataxia (loss of muscle control).

However, more and more doctors are treating patients who have these symptoms of celiac disease outside the digestive tract without obvious evidence of disease in the digestive tract.

Curing Some Cases of Dementia, Epilepsy

Investigators at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota believe that celiac disease may activate antibodies in the digestive system that travel through the bloodstream to the brain. Their understanding of the disease process remains theoretical, but they have been able to cure many cases of autoimmune epilepsy and age-related cognitive decline.

The Mayo Clinic doctors use a three-step treatment program to correct autoimmune disease of the brain.

• Destructive antibodies are filtered out of the blood through a process called plasmaphoresis.
• Patients are given steroids to suppress their own overactive immune systems.
• Then patients are given transfusions of immunoglobulin G, slow acting immune agents, from healthy patients to regulate their own immune systems and to help protect them from infections.

Not Every Case of Brain-Related Disease Is Caused by Gluten Sensitivity

In 2013, the Mayo Clinic tested for antibodies in 140,000 patients who had various symptoms of brain disease. The overwhelming majority of those tested did not have antibodies for autoimmune disease. Only about 1 in 10 people who has seizures, schizophrenia, migraine headaches, or muscle weakness disorders has a condition driven by gluten sensitivity, but for those 1 in 10, treatment can be life-changing.

How can you find out whether gluten sensitivity is causing your symptoms? Tests for the antibodies associated with the disease can be run from a saliva sample. You don't even have to have blood drawn. Most health insurance policies in the US cover this kind of testing in full, no copay required, but if you do not have health insurance or you have not met your deductibles for the year, most states (except New York) allow you to arrange for your own celiac disease antibody testing.

Researchers believe that thousands of people may be locked away in nursing homes and psychiatric treatment facilities who could return to normal lives if they were treated for celiac disease.

See Also: Autism - Should You Try a Casein and Gluten Free Diet for Your Child?

Elderly people assumed to have Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia have been able to go back to their own homes when they have received the care they need. Many more have experienced significant improvement but not complete remission from their symptoms when they eliminated grains in their diets.

There's no need to go gluten-free if you don't have any symptoms, but if you do have symptoms that don't respond to medication, why not get tested? The test is simple, reliable, and relatively inexpensive about $100 if you have to pay for it yourself, free under most insurance plans, and you may be able to start improving right away.