Celiac disease is a complex inherited digestive disorder that affects I in 100 persons worldwide. This condition involves a unique immune response within the digestive tract to gluten, a protein found in the grains of wheat, barley, rye and oats.  All persons with celiac disease, regardless of age, race or gender, are susceptible to intestinal damage when they eat food containing gluten or its derivatives. The treatment for celiac disease is a strict gluten-free diet that stops damage and allows recovery.  Probiotics and prebiotics should be incorporated into the diet to improve the quality and balance of intestinal bacteria that inhabit the colon.

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Editor’s note: Promising research published January 8, 2007 shows that adequate levels of vitamin D in the elderly are important to maintain cognitive function or thinking skills that include use of language, awareness, social skills, math ability, memory, reasoning, judgment, intellect, learning, and imagination. This study is called a retrospective review because the researchers did not actually examine anyone. Instead they reviewed data from records of 32 older adults who had been examined for memory Read More »

Editors’ note: This case report illustrates that a person can live a long time reporting apparent good health and be completely unaware that they have symptoms of celiac disease. In this case, hematomas, (which are swollen black and blue marks caused by a break in the wall of a blood vessel), that developed on his legs caused the patient to seek medical attention. The ability of his blood to clot was severely impaired and yet there was no other manifestation of hemorrhage. Discover more about bruising and hundreds of other health issues and how to treat them at the Gluten Free Works Treatment Guide.

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Muscle weakness is the lack of muscle strength to perform physical work that we should be able to do, such as lifting objects, climbing steps or simply walking or getting up from a chair. Muscle weakness is different from muscle fatigue, which is the lack of energy to continue physical work once begun. Muscle weakness is also different from lassitude, or chronic fatigue, which is the feeling of tiredness or exhaustion but without loss of muscle strength.

Muscle weakness is common in celiac disease. It may stem from one or more nutrient deficiencies, associated disorders or complications. This article addresses only nutritional causes of muscle weakness resulting from malabsorption and/or loss of minerals from diarrhea or vomiting. Read More »

Lipitor raked in more than $5 billion for pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer Inc., during 2009 according to Drugs.com. 

Are drugs making you sick?

Sales of the 5 leading drugs for mental disorders topped $12,750,023,000, while Nexium and Prevacid totaled 7,523,382,000.

All eight of these drugs deplete nutrients. 

Revenues of the Top 8 Selling Drugs of 2009

Lipitor: lowers cholesterol – $5,363,193,000

Nexium: acid reducer – $5,014,827,000

Prevacid: acid reducer – $2,508,555,000

Seroquel: antipsychotic – $3,117,591,000 Read More »

Whether due to malabsorption from an undiagnosed syndrome like celiac disease, poor diet or defective activation of nutrients, many people are not receiving or utilizing the nutrients their bodies need to thrive.

The human body is tough. You can operate at sub-optimal levels for years or decades before a clinical symptom becomes apparent or is recognized as resulting from a deficiency.

Unfortunately, this recognition frequently comes only after symptoms have become so severe as to significantly impact your health.  Until that point, medications and surgeries are more likely to be used as treatments, neither of which correct the underlying cause of the deficiency.

In fact, many drugs exacerbate nutrient depletion.  So, while they may improve your symptoms in the short term, they can cause more harm than good in the long term.

Many prescription and non-prescription medications can deplete nutrients by any of these ways:

1. Preventing normal digestion and/or absorption, so nutrients cannot get into the body.

2. Interfering with nutrient transport and/or use in the body, so nutrients cannot Read More »

Osteomalacia is common in celiac disease. Osteomalacia can occur at any age. It children, it is called rickets.  It is a metabolic bone disorder that involves slow loss of minerals from bone tissue throughout the skeleton, stemming from inadequate absorption of vitamin D. As minerals are dissolved from bone tissue to provide for essential functions elsewhere in the body, bones gradually lose their hardness.

Consequently, pronounced softening of the bones characterizes osteomalacia. Soft bones become deformed, especially bones of the arms, legs, spine, thorax and pelvis. The softer bones have a normal amount of collagen, a strong fibrous protein in the bone matrix (osteoid) that gives bone its structure and tensile capacity, but there is not sufficient calcium and phosphate minerals available to properly mineralize or be deposited in the osteoid to give it necessary hardness. Read More »

Editors’ note: This animal study investigating the effects of Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a strain of probiotic bacteria, on ulcers of the stomach lining of rats demonstrated that bacteria placed directly into the stomach significantly and according to dose reduced gastric ulcer size.  If the results of this animal research are reproduced in humans, it would demonstrate that probiotics may hasten recovery for people suffering from stomach ulcers.  The bacteria did not affect the function of normal gastric mucosa but normalized those with abnormal changes during ulceration.

“Probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG enhances gastric ulcer healing in rats.”

Lam EK, et. al.

Department of Pharmacology, The University of Hong Kong, China.

European Journal of Pharmacology. 2007 Jun 22;565(1-3):171-9.

Background: Probiotics are widely used as functional foods which have been advocated for the maintenance of gastrointestinal microflora equilibrium and treatment of gastrointestinal disorders. However, studying the role of probiotics in peptic ulcer disease is limited. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of a probiotic strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG on gastric ulcer and to elucidate the mechanisms involved.

Methods: Gastric kissing ulcers were induced in rats by acetic acid (60% v/v). L. rhamnosus GG was given intragastrically (directly into the stomach) at 10(8) cfu/day or 10(9) cfu/day for three consecutive days after ulcer induction. L. rhamnosus GG successfully colonized in the gastric mucosa especially at the ulcer margin. It also significantly and dose-dependently reduced gastric ulcer area.

Results: L. rhamnosus GG successfully colonized in the gastric mucosa especially at the ulcer margin. It also significantly and dose-dependently reduced gastric ulcer area. Cell apoptosis to cell proliferation ratio was strongly decreased and accompanied by significant up-regulation of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) and B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) protein expression at the ulcer margin. Angiogenesis was also significantly stimulated together with the induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression. Furthermore, L. rhamnosus GG up-regulated the phosphorylation level of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGF receptor) without altering the total EGF receptor expression.

Conclusions: These findings suggested that L. rhamnosus GG enhanced gastric ulcer healing via the attenuation of cell apoptosis to cell proliferation ratio and increase in angiogenesis. Regulators of these processes such as ODC, Bcl-2, VEGF and EGF receptor are likely to be involved in the healing action of L. rhamnosus GG for gastric ulcer.

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Author Information: Cleo Libonati, RN, BSN
Cleo Libonati is president/CEO and co-Founder of Gluten Free Works, Inc. She is the author of Recognizing Celiac Disease and the Gluten Free Works Treatment Guide.

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a female menstrual disorder that occurs regularly around ovulation and subsides within a few days of the onset of menstruation.  PMS affects up to 75% of women during their childbearing years.

Symptoms.  Most women with PMS will have abdominal cramps, be anxious, irritable, sad, emotionally unstable and feel bloated and uncomfortable in the days leading up to their period.  PMS symptoms commonly worsen in the years approaching menopause.

Diagnosis of PMS depends on 5 or more of the symptoms listed below with at least one symptom being one of the first 4: Read More »

Sores from acid reflux

Researchers in Switzerland have made the welcome discovery that the essential nutrient zinc effectively inhibits gastric acid secretion in humans.

The researchers were investigating whether zinc could lead to a rapid and sustained increase of stomach pH (more alkaline) in both animals and humans and provide a rapid acid suppression therapy. They demonstrated that zinc offers a new and prolonged therapy for Read More »