How Is Celiac Related To Anxiety?

[Zeb]

I'm in the process of being checked for Celiac -- waiting for the labs to come back. I have had anxiety issues for many years and have been diagnosed having GAD. I read here on the forum and elsewhere that anxiety and Celiac Disease are like hand-in-glove with each other. Why is that?

[K8ling]

Well for me it was the fear of having a reaction in public (we didn't know what was wrong with me yet or how to prevent it) and my baby being left to fend for himself. My husband deploys a lot so there was no safety net with a spouse coming to rescue me/him.

[Skylark]

I haven't seen any convincing research as far as mechanism for the anxiety connection. Vitamin deficiency plays a role in some people, especially B12. Outside of that, all the autoimmune disorders seem to generate some degree of anxiety, fatigue, and depression. Increased anxiety has been demonstrated with lupus, Sjogren's, rheumatoid arthritis, and celiac disease.

Anxiety is one of my signs of being glutened, even after years gluten-free and with good nutritional status.

[rain]

I'm on the hunt for information related to how healing works, largely because the intense anxiety I have lived with for many, many years is slowly and steadily lessening as I stay off gluten. I'd really like to understand this better - I feel very different than before and it's a bit daunting. I suspect it's just that it's odd to me to not feel anxious.

Sorry not to have any info, but in my experience the connection between gluten and anxiety is very clear.

[BRUMI1968]

For me it was light night and day - DAYS off gluten, no more anxiety attacks. Minutes after being glutened, anxiety attacks. The thing with GAD is that it is for no particular reason, right, as opposed to other forms of anxiety? Just for some reason you have anxiety issues: for me, attacks of sweating palms, tingling skin, intense fear, stomach ache, having to poop emergently, etc. It would last between 1 and 20 minutes or so. At some points in life it was so bad I was on valium all the time - low dose permanently.

Anyway, quitting the gluten made me 100% GAD free. As to why - I do now know. It cannot be vitamin/mineral deficiency being overturned in a day or two of quitting gluten - so my guess is that it's a nervous system reaction. The body is so complex, that for us to figure out exact mechanisms for everything is just unreasonable.

One thing I would say is that if you are feeling strange about not feeling the anxiety, that is probably something that talk therapy can help with, if you're open to it. I saw a Jungian counselor for years (he had Celiac, in fact, and is the one who urged me to get tested) and we talked a lot about my health issues as part of my overall coping mechanisms and way of being in the world. It really helped a lot.