Disorganized And/or Dyslexic?

[Tidings]

Hi everybody,

Was wondering if folks with Celiac disease or Gluten Intolerance tend to be DISORGANIZED and/or have problems with DYSLEXIA? I guess those are two unrelated (?) conditions, but ever since I got CFS (back in mid-1980s) (feels more like mid-1800s!!), I have been plagued with both a tendency toward dyslexia and an inability to be organized in my home and office.

These problems came on almost overnight, after I contracted CFS. (Am now tempted to think that the CFS may have been Celiac all along, or that the CFS *led to* Celiac/Gluten intolerance after a couple years, so am not sure what to call the condition anymore? Maybe CELIAC FATIGUE SYNDROME...)

For someone who used to be so tightly organized that it would make people sick (used to actually find the minutes/seconds spots on my taped music and type up the little cassette cards with all the titles and min/sec notations) to suddenly lose all ability and motivation to keep house and office tidy and organized was shocking. It's been an awful struggle to FIND anything and you can imagine the bad "feng shui" in such a situation.

Luckily, as I've become more aware of food sensitivities and have eliminated many problem substances, my ability to resume a more organized life is improving (still a long way to go and probably will never be as organized and tidy as in younger years--for one thing, over time we amass a LOT OF STUFF which in itself leads to lack of tidiness and organization). Another thing that seems to help is to affirm "DIVINE ORDER" and ask for Divine Assistance in sorting and organizing things in my life.

The dyslexia thing came on quite suddenly and almost seemed to be a situation where right and left eyes were no longer working together as efficiently; it's possible that the left and right brain hemispheres were involved. Reading became less enjoyable and a plodding chore.

Between the two brain-problems, dyslexia and disorganization, I noticed my handwritten notes became a nightmarish jungle impossible to decode later on. Very upsetting! Writing might start at the left on one line, then veer off in another direction, and maybe even crawl around the edge of the paper. I have no idea what my brain was doing to create such a mess, but it reminded me of classic research studies of spider-webs spun by spiders on LSD! ARGH!

Wondering if others have these brain-problems and are they related to food allergies?

[Juliebove]

Before we learned of the food allergies, the school thought my daughter had ADD and/or dysgraphia. Dysgraphia is sort of like dsylexia but instead of seeing things backwards or in the wrong order, she would write them that way.

Within two weeks of changing her diet, I got a new kid! So yes, I do think gluten can affect things. She has since outgrown the gluten allergy but is still allergic to wheat. So her diet hasn't changed that much. But today she got some BBQ potato chips that contain barley. This is something she couldn't have before.

[Skylark]

Food sensitivites can affect ADD, dyslexia, and mind function. So can thyroid illness. I was disorganized and pretty unmotivated before I got onto some cytomel recently, and my memory was horrible. Some people are sensitive to food chemicals like salicylates and that can cause big problems too.

[srall]

I totally believe this. I'm a stay at home mom with ONE child, and for years I would look around and wonder how other women could be so together and organized while I was buried alive every day. Not to mention I was just counting the minutes until I could just sit on the couch from exhaustion. I've always been a really strong speller, and now when I'm writing I forget how to spell simple words. I will say that I went on my gluten-free diet in April, with a major setback in May, and then my daughter was out of school for the summer. Now she's been back at school one week, my house is already more organized and clean than it's been in years...and the energy I have to get through the day is so much greater than the past decade. At first I thought going gluten-free was just going to be about not having D or C all the time anymore, and now looking back I realize there have been so many areas of my life affected by my diet, it's truly mind boggling.

[Tidings]

Before we learned of the food allergies, the school thought my daughter had ADD and/or dysgraphia. Dysgraphia is sort of like dsylexia but instead of seeing things backwards or in the wrong order, she would write them that way.

Within two weeks of changing her diet, I got a new kid! So yes, I do think gluten can affect things.

Hi Juliebove,

That ADD thing is sooo frustrating. After I contracted sudden-onset CFS (as a result of a major flu and other stressors, including death of mother) and before I stopped ingesting gluten (several years in between these events), I went through YEARS of ADD. It was so painful and frustrating. I would sit at my cluttered desk, start to write a check to pay a bill, then decide I should instead answer a letter sitting there awaiting a reply, then say, no, first I'll make a cup of tea, then go in kitchen and get distracted, begin to straighten things up in there, then say, "Oh, I was supposed to pay that bill and get it in the mail!" so I'd head back in to my office, and rummage around to find my checkbook, and say, "Oh gosh, I've got to make this phone call!"; and this would go on and on, all day long, all week long. It's a wonder ANYthing ever got done. It drove me to tears because I just could not stay focused on one thing at a time and take care of it and then move on to the next task. Thank God that has improved a lot since adjusting diet (and also enlisting Divine Assistance!).

Best of luck to anybody struggling with Attention and Organization problems. The good news is that things CAN improve.

[Tidings]

By the way, a related problem that plagued me during those early CFS-years, which has improved, was that I lost the ability to type! (Dyslexia or uncoordinated brain hemispheres at play, apparently...) This was devastating as my line of work involved editing/typing all day long and my typing speed with about 99.9% accuracy was around 115 wpm. Suddenly my fingers just got all tangled up and as soon as I'd type a word all wrong, I'd have to back up and retype it, and get it all wrong again.

I bring this up in relation to the brain-disorders that can accompany food allergies and other conditions like the "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" that some people are now asserting might actually be unrecognized/undiagnosed Celiac Disease.

The encouraging thing is that, gradually with much perseverance, my typing has returned almost back to normal; the accuracy is still not quite what it was, but at least my "fingers remember" for the most part where the keys are and the hand-eye-brain coordination is much better. So there is hope.

[GFinDC]

I beleive that dyslexia symptoms can be caused by celiac. I've had them myself over the years and they are greatly reduced now that I am GFCFSF. My typing has actually gotten worse though, but that is due to nerve damage from a broken elbow. I do more cleaning and organizing when I feel good and get enough sleep, which is something that is still a problem, but getting better.

The divine assistance is my biggest help in all of this though.

[missy'smom]

Before we learned of the food allergies, the school thought my daughter had ADD and/or dysgraphia. Dysgraphia is sort of like dsylexia but instead of seeing things backwards or in the wrong order, she would write them that way.

Within two weeks of changing her diet, I got a new kid! So yes, I do think gluten can affect things. She has since outgrown the gluten allergy but is still allergic to wheat. So her diet hasn't changed that much. But today she got some BBQ potato chips that contain barley. This is something she couldn't have before.

That's so interesting Julie!, I'm glad you shared that. My kiddo has an ADHD DX-we were careful to get a very thorough evaluation. He's always been unmedicated. At one point, before we took him completely gluten-free, I was looking into dysgraphia because he would get numbers backwards, consistantly! Nobody else noticed or cared! But it was very striking. I did not see the dramatic results that many see when they take their kids gluten-free, but things like this come up from time to time when others share or we reflect on the past and we can say, those particular things no longer seem to happen. He's been asking to go off his gluten-free diet lately and it's a tough decision that we will be asking his allergist's input about soon. So this bit that you've shared is another thing I'll be adding to our consideration. It's hard for him to understand why he should be gluten-free because the possible symptoms and changes haven't been very noticable to him. With him, the original blood and skin allergy tests were pos. for wheat but current skin test is neg., after maybe a year gluten-free. The one time he had a Celiac panel, it was neg.

To the OP, I noticed dramatic differences in memory and processing of info after going gluten-free. Not all overnight. It was a process but for example, I was an avid reader and I tried to read books that I had read in college, I couldn't read them at all before gluten-free. I found myself re-reading the same sentences over and over and having difficulty moving forward and feeling like it was way over my head. At some point after gluten-free, I could read those same books with no problem! that being said, I seem to have some selective memory these days and I'm not the one doing the selecting! It's not gluten now. Maybe it's something else but I don't know what or maybe too much going on-too many balls in the air-too many challenges to manage!