What is Celiac Disease?

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease in which certain gluten-related proteins in the diet cause the immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine and degrade the brush border. It is an autoimmune enteropathy occurring in genetically predisposed people, triggered by gluten ingestion; it may cause several abdominal symptoms like diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss and malabsorption.¹

Common Symptoms Associated with Celiac Disease

Symptoms are a sign that something is off internally within one of these systems: Inflammation, Gut Dysbiosis or Gut Imbalance, Impaired Detoxification, Hormonal Imbalance, Mitochondrial Dysfunction, Circadian Rhythm Disturbances, Oxidative Stress, Neuro-disruption, or Immune dysregulation. Symptoms are essentially your body crying out for help in the only way that they know how to communicate. Symptoms associated with celiac disease include:

• Bloating
• Constipation
• Diarrhea
• Fatigue
• Gas
• Abdominal pain
• Brain fog
• Skin rashes

Labs

Studies have shown that children with celiac disease have more gram negative bacteria, fewer gram positive bacteria, and less bacterial diversity in their intestines. Therefore, a GI-MAP stool test may be used to further assess gut health. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies are very common in celiac disease, often due to malabsorption. Therefore, an OAT test for nutrient deficiencies may be helpful for overall health.

My storefront is linked here to order functional labs, which is signed off by a nationally-licensed physician, to assess for gut health issues, hormonal imbalances, or vitamin/mineral deficiencies. If you need help creating a personalized functional nutrition care plan based on the interpretation of any of the above functional labs, you can work with us here.

Functional lab testing would be a good idea if you really wanted to hone in on the specifics of gut microbiome imbalances, hormonal imbalances, vitamin/mineral deficiencies.

Therapeutic Diets To Heal Celiac Disease

There are many therapeutic diets chosen for celiac disease such as a gluten-free diet or a lactose-free diet, only short-term while healing the gut, since lactose intolerance often develops in people with celiac disease. With a gluten-free diet, diarrhea should resolve within. days, and most symptoms will disappear in about 4 weeks.

Looking at it from the STAIN framework — Stress, Toxins, Adverse Food Reactions, Infections, and Nutritional Imbalances — we aim to identify the root causes and design a personalized nutrition care plan based on your unique biochemical individuality. Biochemical individuality is the concept that each of us has a different nutrition blueprint to achieve optimal wellness. We each have our own, unique genetic expression and that is shown in a personalized nutrition care plan made just for you.

Tip: Keep a food journal so that pre and post meals you can become more in tune with your body and see how certain meals make you feel. Continuously check in with yourself to see how you are feeling, this is the type of subjective information that only you can know for yourself and make sure to share this information with the dietitian that you are working with!

Ask yourself: How do I feel after eating this specific meal? *insert symptom here* It’s helpful to have a dietitian that is able to look at your food journals so that they can decipher what specific ingredient or a combination of ingredients that may be causing these symptoms. Having a food journal is also helpful to look for any potential food reactions that may be related to celiac disease.

Caution: Restrictive eating due to GI symptoms associated with celiac disease may lead to an eating disorder. It is important to not be constantly under eating, resulting in less food and nutrients in the body, just because it results in less GI symptoms! It is still possible to eat high quality and nutrient dense meals with your favorite ingredients.

Recommended Supplements, Probiotic Strains, & Medicinal Herbs

Since the small intestine requires a lot of healing after diagnosis of celiac, it may be helpful to include gut-healing supplements in the diet.

Remember supplements are there to “supplement” or to help the main treatment which is using a food as medicine approach to healing. Some general helpful supplements for Celiac Disease are:

• L-Glutamine to help repair the gut barrier
• Aloe vera to promote healing of the gut

Make sure to order from a high quality and third party tested brand instead of purchasing from Amazon where practically anyone can sell anything without any rigorous testing. To make it easier for you, you may order from my supplement dispensary below through Fullscript’s catalog where each brand and product meets strict top quality standards. You can learn more about third party testing here.

My supplement dispensary is linked here and you do not need to be a client to place an order.

Nutrition & Lifestyle Tips

Look at sleep, diet, exercise, and stress management.

Here are some helpful tips for you to begin the process of healing celiac disease:

• Chew your food mindfully and thoroughly
• Limit intake of ultra-processed foods and foods with refined sugars
• Have a stress management routine! (traditional yoga, yoga nidra, breathwork)
• For bloating, you can use herbal teas such as teas with fennel, licorice, chamomile, and peppermint.
• Having a routine that includes any form of daily movement: walking for 30 minutes daily has been shown to improve GI symptoms and lower inflammation.
• Yoga helps to reduce anxiety and stress resulting in improved GI symptoms.
• Using a bidet

Gentle reminder: Don’t stress yourself with an all or nothing mentality where you feel like you have to implement everything on this list all at once. Sometimes in order to reach the end goal, you need to take baby steps at first and build these habits bit by bit.

Referrals

References

1. Fasano A., Catassi C. Clinical practice. Celiac disease. N. Engl. J. Med. 2012;367:2419–2426. doi: 10.1056/NEJMcp1113994. ↩︎