This stems in part from the intimate relationship between the gut and the brain. The foods we eat and our gut health have a profound impact on brain health.
- Depression
- Brain fog
- Memory loss
- Anxiety disorders
- Cognitive decline
- Irritability
- Poor focus and concentration
- Neuromotor issues
- Psychiatric disorders
- Early hearing loss
- Neuropathy
- Dementia, and so on.
Gluten Causes Brain Problems, Not Gut Problems: Study
Most neurological literature shows that gluten sensitivity can be primarily—and at times exclusively—a neurological disease, finds a research review published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.When either celiac disease or gluten sensitivity causes brain symptoms, a strict gluten-free diet can bring about a profound reversal of symptoms.
Most Doctors Overlook the Impact of Gluten on the Brain
Published research and laboratory investigations have found that gastrointestinal inflammation from gluten sensitivity can lead to white matter lesions in the brain. White matter lesions are areas of damage seen on MRIs in neurodegenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis. Even inflammatory bowel disease has been shown to cause white matter lesions due to the gut–brain relationship, or gut–brain axis.Even though research has established a link between gluten and neurological diseases, most doctors overlook this mechanism in clinical scenarios.
Neurologists typically don’t look at gastrointestinal mechanisms—they don’t do gastrointestinal or food protein sensitivity testing, and they don’t evaluate for celiac disease. Those matters are left to the gastroenterologist.
However, because most people with neurological problems don’t have gut complaints, they don’t land in the office of a gastroenterologist.
Standard Gluten Sensitivity Testing Misses Most Diagnoses
Standard testing for gluten sensitivity falls short. That’s because it only tests for alpha-gliadin. In reality, people can have an immune reaction to many different compounds in wheat. To truly screen for gluten sensitivity, you need to test for immune antibodies to all of these compounds.Wheat is made up of more than 100 different components that can cause a reaction, not just one. A person can react to one of the many proteins in wheat, or a combination of proteins, peptides, and enzymes associated with wheat.
It’s best to screen for other immune-reactive compounds associated with gluten besides just alpha-gliadin. These include wheat germ agglutinin, native and deamidated alpha-gliadin, gliadin toxic peptides, gamma-gliadin, omega-gliadin, glutenin, gluteomorphin, prodynorphin, and transglutaminase 2, 3, and 6.
It’s also ideal to screen for other foods that cross-react with gluten, such as dairy or other grains. Knowing about cross-reactivity helps patients to eliminate foods their immune system mistakenly responds to as if they were gluten.
How Gluten Cross-Reactivity Can Damage the Brain
Cross-reactivity, also known as molecular mimicry, is one of the scariest ways gluten impacts the brain. This occurs when the immune system mistakes brain tissue for gluten and attacks and destroys the tissue. It does this because both gluten and brain tissue have proteins made up of identical amino acid sequences.The part of the brain called the cerebellum is extremely sensitive to gluten. When people have antibodies to gluten, those antibodies can also bind to cerebellar tissue, signaling the immune system to attack, destroy, and remove the tissue.
