The functional nutrition approach to healing celiac disease on identifying and addressing the root causes of symptoms through diet and lifestyle changes. This whole body, root cause approach is individualized based on a comprehensive functional nutrition assessment, individual symptoms, health history, and labs aiming to restore balance to the digestive system.

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

The whole body, root cause approach to healing celiac disease from a functional nutrition perspective:

Overall from a whole body, root cause approach, to heal celiac disease we would look at using a therapeutical diet, targeted supplements, and then work to rebalance the gut using the 5R Treatment Protocol linked here. Any potential root causes are identified using the STAIN method specifically looking at stress, toxins (mold, plastics, heavy metals), adverse food reactions, infections, and nutritional imbalances.

During the initial comprehensive functional nutrition assessment, we will look at:

• Past Medical History: initial comprehensive patient questionnaire, symptom questionnaire, root causes: STAIN (stress, toxins, adverse food reactions, infections, nutritional imbalances), history of N/V/D/C (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation), family history (GI disorders, celiac disease), current medications/OTC’s and dietary supplements, lifestyle factors such as sleep, stress, exercise, etc.
• Anthropometrics: changes in body weight, weight loss, weight gain.
• Nutrition Focused Physical Exam: dark circles, abdominal distention/bloating, hair loss/hair thinning, red, swollen, or coated tongue, skin rashes.
• Dietary and Food Habits: nutrient density in meals, caloric intake, meal pattern and timing, macronutrient balance, fiber types and sources, processed food and refined sugar intake, alcohol intake, adverse food reactions (food allergies or intolerances), FODMAPs, lactose, fructose, or sucrose intolerance, gluten sensitivity, histamine intolerance, prebiotic sources, probiotic sources, fermented foods, gut microbiome diversity.
• Conventional Labs: Comprehensive metabolic profile (CMP), CBC with differential, complete iron profile including serum ferritin, serum 25-OH Vitamin D, serum B12.
• Functional Labs: GI-MAP by diagnostic solutions or OAT test by mosaic diagnostics.
• Wearables Data: apple watch for exercise/HRV (heart rate variability), whoop for exercise/HRV, oura ring for sleep tracking.

A personalized functional nutrition care plan will be created for you based on the data from the initial comprehensive functional nutrition assessment that includes personalized diet therapy that is condition specific, personalized targeted supplements, as well as lifestyle changes in stress level, sleep quality, and exercise which are important for gut health.

By addressing these underlying causes — through personalized approaches like nutrition, simple lifestyle changes, and targeted supplements — functional nutrition aims to bring the body back into balance and resolve celiac disease at its root.

What are 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

How can I help treat celiac disease using functional lab testing?

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.

Are there any therapeutic diets used in healing celiac disease from a root cause approach?

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.

Are there any supplements, Probiotic strains, botanicals, or herbs that are helpful in healing celiac disease?

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 (with a 30% off discount!) and you do not need to be a client to place an order.

What are some diet and lifestyle tips that can help me during the process of healing celiac disease?

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.

How can I heal celiac disease with the help of a functional nutrition dietitian?

Each person is unique and this is recognized in a personalized functional nutrition assessment and intervention plan that engages and empowers the patient in this process to restore optimal function, manage symptoms and promote overall health and well-being.

Functional nutrition addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. We look at it from a root-cause perspective and create a focus on prevention through nutrition, therapeutic diets, targeted supplementation, exercise, interpretation of conventional and/or functional lab testing, botanicals, detoxification protocols, and stress management tools.

Overall from a whole body, root cause approach, to treat celiac disease using nutrition therapy we would look at using a therapeutical diet to manage GI symptoms, targeted supplements, and then work to rebalance the gut using the 5R Treatment Protocol linked here.

By addressing these underlying causes — through personalized approaches like evidence-based nutrition, simple lifestyle changes, and targeted supplements — functional nutrition aims to bring the body back into balance and resolve celiac disease at its root.

References:

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