Overview

An autoimmune disease that is triggered by consuming gluten-containing products, notably wheat, rye, and triticale. Treatment is by careful avoidance of gluten-containing foods.

It is noted that many people who have complaints that are related to gluten sensitivity do not have the GI-symptoms of Celiac Disease; furthermore, gluten sensitivity is statistically associated with a number of other auto-immune diseases.

Please see conventional, complementary, and alternative medical treatments for important background information regarding the different types of medical treatments discussed on this page. Naturopathic, Complementary, and Alternative treatments that may be considered include:

Etiology

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that is associated with genetic variants in the HLA DQ2 and DQ8 genes; however not everyone who has either of these genetic variants actually has celiac disease.

Diagnosis

Blood tests can suggest the presence of celiac disease, but the blood tests may show false negative results, especially if the patient has been avoiding eating gluten. Signs, symptoms, genetic testing, or family history may also suggest celiac disease. However, definitive diagnosis requires an endoscopic biopsy of the small intestine to rule out other diagnoses or co-morbidities Go to celiac.orgceliac.org

Treatment

Conventional Treatments

According to Go to celiac.orgceliac.org, the mainstay of both conventional and naturopathic treatments for celiac disease is scrupulous avoidance of foods containing gluten, as well as treating any dietary deficiencies caused by malobsorption of nutrients

Naturopathic, Complementary, and Alternative Treatments

Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN)

Low Dose Naltrexone has been shown to be effective in treating Crohn's Disease, due to it's immune-modulating effects [Farmer1985  🕮 ], [Smith2007  🕮 ], [Smith2011  🕮 ]. Dr. Weyrich suspects that Low Dose Naltrexone may also beneficial as an adjunct to gluten avoidance in treating Celiac Disease.

Dr. Weyrich has been trained to use Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN). However, Dr. Weyrich has not treated any cases of celiac disease with LDN.

Please see What is Low Dose Naltrexone? for more information.

Immune System Balancing

[McCulley2018, pp 28, 35, 60, 89, 203-209] reports that celiac disease is a TH1-dominant, localized, autoimmune disorder, and proposes an approach to treating this disease, which should be supervised by a properly trained medical professional. Dr. Weyrich has considerable interest in this topic, but has not treated any cases of celiac disease with Immune System Balancing.

Please see What is Immune System Balancing? for more information.

Hypotheses

[Sikiric2023  🕮 ] reviews animal studies suggesting that the synthetic peptide BPC-157 benefits gut repair. However, the Go to FDAFDA has not approved this substance for human use, so Dr. Weyrich cannot recommend its use in treating celiac disease and cannot vouch for the quality of black-market suppliers. Since no Phase-1 clinical trials have been completed, the federal Go to "Right to Try""Right to Try" law does not apply.

References