In my last post I started to talk about chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, today I discuss the link with gluten sensitivity.
Laboratory tests will not detect fibromyalgia syndrome, but the American College of Rheumatology has issued guidelines for diagnosis, patients must experience tenderness in 11 or 18 “tender points” on the body.
• How does all of this relate to gluten sensitivity?
A lot of the points raised above can be linked to gluten sensitivity. For example, people who have certain rheumatic diseases – rheumatoid arthritis, lupus or ankylosing spondylitis – may be more likely to have fibromyalgia. One common symptom for gluten intolerant suffers is tiredness.
Researchers tested 100 patients for the prevalence of coeliac disease among people who visited the doctor for CFS.
They discovered two cases, 2% of previously undiagnosed coeliac disease among the CFS patients. The researchers wrote, “given our prevalence of 1 per cent and the fact that there’s a treatment for coeliac disease, we now suggest that screening for coeliac disease should be added to the relatively short list of mandatory investigations in suspected cases of CFS.”
This test was conducted in 2001 and only used blood tests; nowadays tests are conducted using serum testing. Had today’s more-sensitive testing been available for this study, researchers would have found a much higher rate of CFS sufferers who were gluten sensitive.
In 2003, another study identified a rate of misdiagnosed fibromyalgia in people with coeliac disease. The study found that although 82 per cent of people ultimately were diagnosed with CD complained of fatigue, doctors initially only diagnosed 9 per cent of these patients with fibromyalgia, a big difference as you can see.
Why the confusing or missed diagnosis? Many times people with gluten sensitivity are tired and that tiredness may well result from iron deficiency anaemia.
Related posts:
