Gluten and Celiac Disease and TMS

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Gluten and Celiac Disease and TMS

I don’t mean to give anyone another reason to be in pain, and I am not a doctor, so I write on these twin subjects after reading a lot about them in books, articles, web sites, and from the experiences of my sister.

If you believe you or someone you know has a problem with gluten or has celiac disease, please talk to a doctor about it. If you have either problem, I believe it may well be related to TMS and repressed emotions.

My when my sister turned 75, she began to lose weight and got dangerously thin. She lost strength in her legs and could hardly walk. Doctors gave her every test imaginable over months, but couldn’t learn what was causing her to be so thin and hardly able to walk.

An East Indian doctor suggested her ailments could be diet-related. He discovered that what my sister was eating was not giving her the nourishment her body needed. It led to him diagnosing her as being gluten intolerant and developing a disease with a terrifying name: celiac sprue.

My sister went on a gluten-free diet and quickly began to gain weight and strength in her legs. She has remained on a gluten-free diet over the years and regained her health.

The East Indian doctor saved my sister’s life but never solved the mystery of what brought on her gluten intolerance and the celiac disease. I believe it was TMS since she and I grew up like twins, stressed-out from the same childhood stresses and anxieties during the 1930s Great Depression when our parents, like millions of others, were out of work or when they found jobs didn’t earn enough to pay the bills or rent. We felt trapped in our homes and were victims of their divorce. We both had four fathers, our birth father twice.

I believe I developed severe back pain from my TMS repressed emotions of anger, anxiety, stress, feelings of rejection and insecurity, and so did my sister. On top of that she married a husband who was loving but did not help her deal with his mother who created more trapped feelings in my sister. And all this while she had four very active children. She later got life-threatening cancer, but her determination and faith helped her to recover.

One of the new “epidemics” in America today is gluten-related.

Go into almost every grocery store today and you will find a section devoted to gluten-free foods.

Celiac disease is a digestive disorder. It is caused by an immune system reaction to gluten.

Gluten is a protein found in foods made with wheat, barley, rye, and triticale. It also is found in oats that have been processed in plant that handle other grains. It also is found in some medicines, vitamins, and lipsticks.

In celiac disease, the immune reaction to gluten creates toxins. These damage the villi, which are tiny finger-like protrusions inside the small intestines. Damage to them decreases the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. This leads to malnutrition.

Treating celiac disease means eliminating all gluten in the diet. This means avoiding most bread products, cakes and cookies, beer, even ice cream where gluten is sometimes used as a stabilizing ingredient.

I hope you do not have a gluten problem, but your doctor can learn whether you do. But he or she may not try to learn what caused the problem. It may be another symptom of TMS.

And remember, no matter what you have or what your pain is, LAUGH and LOVE.

 

[Chuck]

I think there is a difference between having a food intolerance and Celiac Disease. There are some food intolerance that are not caused by a structural issue and are predominately mind-body related. I would not, however, group Celiac Disease as TMS. The main key to TMS is that the symptoms are benign, however this is not the case with Celiac Disease, where the ingestion of gluten will cause physical damage to the small intestine leading to malnutrition, loss of bone density, lactose intolerance, and cancer. These are severe physical changes that do not occur with the oxygen deprivation process in TMS. There are two interesting Q&A with an Expert responses addressing this issue, one by Dr. Schubiner and the other by Dr. Clarke. The responses are below.

Can Celiac Disease be TMS
Response by Howard Schubiner, MD

There is a difference between food allergies/food-related diseases and food sensitivities. True food allergies can and do occur as with peanut allergy where someone can actually die from it. Celiac disease is a true food allergy or food-related disease. However, many people avoid gluten on the basis of tests that are suspect and many people notice that they get symptoms when they eat gluten which is due to a triggering effect/conditioned response mechanism as opposed to a disease process. The latter group of people should be treated as TMS. The former group should avoid gluten. It may be difficult to sort out which group certain people belong in, but that's the job of a good doctor.​

What is the Relationship Between Food Intolerance and PPD
Response by David Clarke, MD

One study showed that only 4% of people who thought they had a food allergy or intolerance actually had one. Most of the rest likely had PPD, particularly when gastrointestinal symptoms rise and fall with the stress level. (That being said, the condition called Celiac disease, which is not caused by stress, can present itself in a number of subtle guises and can be checked for with high reliability by a blood test.) Stress-related gastrointestinal symptoms are quite common and can be severe enough to lead to hospitalization. When people get these symptoms they usually then recall recently consumed foods and mistakenly blame them for the problem. Foods you can eat some of the time without problems are usually not the source of the symptoms.​

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Thanks for the explanations. It clarifies my wonders about diet, nutrition, gluten, celiac disease and TMS.

I wonder why it took my sister 75 years to get celiac sprue. It sounded like TMS to me, from both of us
going through the same childhood stresses.

But I guess we're all really different.