Gluten Sensitivity: Its Disparate Symptoms and How to Test for It
I have to say I was shocked the first time I saw this list. Just look at it! All these are symptoms of gluten sensitivity — and they’re common! — and ANY of them can indicate this immunologic process:
- Abdominal pain
- Skin rash or eczema
- Headache (very much including migraine)
- Foggy headedness, or impaired memory or cognition
- Fatigue (a big one)
- Diarrhea
- Depression
- Anemia (chronic anemia that does not improve with oral iron supplementation is a classic indicator of gluten sensitivity)
- Numbness or tingling
- Joint pain
I doubt a day goes by that I don’t see one or more of these symptoms in my practice, often with multiple combinations of them occurring in the same person. Regrettably, such scenarios have become typical.
Unfortunately, the most commonly ordered lab tests for diagnosing gluten sensitivity are woefully inadequate for this purpose and measure only certain kinds of potential reactivity. They result in many false negatives, leaving significant numbers of people with the incorrect impression that they’re fine ingesting gluten-containing foods — as they (and their doctors) continue to scratch their heads about the origin of their puzzlingly persistent symptoms.
A much more thorough test is necessary to make a definitive assessment.
In my practice I use Cyrex Laboratories (no affiliation), who provides such testing and who have done truly pioneering work in this area. Cyrex’s Array 3 — Wheat/Gluten Proteome Reactivity & Autoimmunity — tests a couple of dozen parameters covering the entire wheat proteome, and results are reportedly accurate to within one or two standard deviations, an uncommon standard of reliability. Array 4–Gluten-Associated Cross-Reactive Foods and Foods Sensitivity — identifies gluten cross reactivity (as well as other food sensitivities), in recognition of the fact that even non-gluten containing foods (such as dairy, rice, corn, and oats) can “cross react,” behaving in the body just as though they were gluten. You can have a look at these useful tests on Cyrex Laboratories’ website.
So, for all of us, if we happen to have some puzzling or diagnosis-defying symptoms that just won’t go away, and certainly if we suspect any kind of autoimmunity, I suggest that gluten sensitivity and/or cross reactivity are common enough phenomena to think about ruling out.
More info on gluten:
Wheat and why we shouldn’t eat the stuff
(Photo credit: The proteins glutenin and gliadin together make up the gluten fraction of gluten-containing grains. The photo is of a molecular model of the spiral structure formed by the HMW subunits of glutenin. The model was developed by Drs. O. Parchment and D. Osguthorpe at the University of Bath, UK.)
About Chris Decker, ND
Dr. Chris Decker is a licensed naturopathic physician, homeopath, and certified GAPS practitioner with offices in Vermont and Massachusetts, where she maintains a full-service practice that includes clinical nutrition, homeopathy, and, in Vermont, laboratory diagnostics.
