speech delay b/c of gluten?

[izamo12]

My son was diagnosed with celiac disease at about 1 year and hald. Before he started to get sick, he was blabbering alot of making noise. In the months following the dx he lost alot of weight, became less active, and became unitrested in thing, and rarely made noise or said anything. hes is now 2 and a half and he is just now starting to say more words and attempting to talk more. His gross motor skills are above average, thats what his therapist said. I guess my question is, is it possible that his speech delay is because of him being sick before, would eating gluten affect his speech?

[Ennis-TX]

34 minutes ago, izamo12 said:

My son was diagnosed with celiac disease at about 1 year and hald. Before he started to get sick, he was blabbering alot of making noise. In the months following the dx he lost alot of weight, became less active, and became unitrested in thing, and rarely made noise or said anything. hes is now 2 and a half and he is just now starting to say more words and attempting to talk more. His gross motor skills are above average, thats what his therapist said. I guess my question is, is it possible that his speech delay is because of him being sick before, would eating gluten affect his speech?

YES, i have gluten atexia with my celiac and it can cause nerve issues and brain issues. I sometimes stumble for words and wording. We have another member I talked to who looses much of their speech ability when glutened. They explain it as they know what they should say but the words do not come to them, like they can identify a object the the name does not connect with it. It is hard to explain unless you have it but that about sums it up.

Eating gluten with celiac disease can cause your antibodies to flare for weeks. Side effects especially the neurological ones can linger for months. If you son has these then yes each glutenening could be setting him back weeks if not months on his ability to try to learn to speech and process words. The disinterest, lack of activity, etc. Sounds like he might get the brain fog that many of us get. Our minds just become foggy and do not work right, sorta dazed out of it.  At his age where he should be learning this core and critical skills being like this for a few days or a week could set him back and he has to try learning again.

[Victoria1234]

Hello, I had a son who was speech delayed so I know how scary it can be. Mine is 19 now and He is never quiet anymore! I can hardly remember those days!

Im trying to understand his story. He was ok before he was diagnosed, but afterwards he stopped making progress towards speech? What changed besides going gluten-free, if anything? Was it immediately afterwards or was it weeks or months afterwards? Because it would make much more sense to have symptoms resolve on a gluten-free diet. Unless he was gluten-free for a good amount of time, and then had accidental gluten, and had a temporary setback like Ennis spoke of. But again, being affected by accidental gluten is something that happens once one is on the gluten-free diet for awhile.

Glad you have a good therapist. We had good luck with all of ours and we were so blessed with his treatment. Took awhile to actually get one as our first ped said it was just a boy thing and he'd outgrow not talking. Luckily we moved and the new ped was on top of things!

 

[pschwab]

My son was two and a half when diagnosed. We didn't notice any speech issues, but we did see a dramatic increase in vocabulary and grammar about a month after going gluten free. My theory is that he was so focused on how terrible he was feeling physically that he couldn't focus on developing his verbal skills until he started to heal. He's four now and his verbal skills are on or above age level.

[ch88]

Celiac disease can cause the types of symptoms you mentioned.  A speech delay can also be a sign of autism spectrum disorder even without motor or coordination problems. Pku is another common diet related disorder. i don't have the medical knowledge to know if that is what is going on or not in this case.

[Ssarahharas]

I have a 5-year-old son with autism who cannot speak and we go to speech therapy to overcome it. Therapy fees are a bit expensive for us and we are looking for alternatives. We have found an app designed for children with autism called Otsimo | Speech Therapy SLP and they have an app about speech. We started using it and it was really useful. I would like to share the app's site with you http://app.otsimo.org/speech, hopefully it will be useful for you.

[Zzmama]

I just wanted to mention that I just found this thread. My daughter was diagnosed today with celiac and off the chart inflammation. She suffers from speech delays. I absolutely believe the two are linked after seeing these comments and a study, “Celiac presenting as autism” which outlines cases of improved speech with diet changes . Thank you to the parents for your encouraging references to your own children’s improvements.