mark6556

No, I don't think my muscles have atrophied. I have strength and can lift heavy things. I am easily tired and my arms and legs feel heavy at times due to activity. My muscles look normal, they are not shrunk or anything like that.

I've been dealing with celiac disease for almost a year now. In trying to resolve issues with muscle weakness I've been experimenting with diet & fasting. The one thing I have definitely learned... diet has everything to do with how much weight you carry. If you want to drop weight, alter your diet more toward vegetarianism and eliminate empty carbs such as white rice and also eliminate processed foods. Your guaranteed to drop weight. Start simple. Change one meal at a time. Bottom line, if your eating more fresh fruits & vegetables overall, your eating healthier and your weight will drop. Hope this helps.

Roxnhead, thanks for your reply. You problem seems to align pretty well with mine. Can you tell me more about your new diet? The most obvious carbs are from pasta, grains, and bread. But white potatoes, dried fruits, and other vegetables can contain high carb contents. How strict did you go? Also, did your muscle weakness start after going gluten free or was it present prior to that? I recently fasted 1 week on water only and altered my diet to a more vegetarian/raw type diet following that. The fast didn't address the muscle weakness/fatigue whatsoever. My diet change has put my CBC blood profile completely in-line but the muscle weakness and fatigue is still unchanged. I debate whether a longer fast may help as I fasted until my fat reserves were depleted(I'm thin so it didn't take long at all). Longer fasting would cause more muscle tissue to be torn down and rebuilt during recovery. Whether this will help is unknown but I'm targeting another attempt this fall/winter. I have seen a neurologist(actually two of them now), both suggested myasthenia gravis also. But the blood test came back negative. I tend to think this is just the latest new medical diagnosis that all the doctors are trying to apply in real life but like many conditions... its just a general box of symptoms thats not all that well understood. Georgie, rest always improves the fatigue/muscle weakness. I also had the EMG test and the one where they stick an electrode in the muscle... Everything was found to be normal. The weakness is most noticeable in my arms but I believe it affects most muscle groups. I think you notice it more in the muscles you use the most. No issues with chewing, eye lid muscles or any of that. Stair climbings effects are definitely noticeable, especially if I have been active, if I rest, its less of an issue. Also I am adjusting my diet to include mostly alkaline forming foods. This is theorized to help build up various minerals in the body like magnesium, calcium and others without resorting to supplements. From what I've seen, if you go to a vegetarian type diet, you are for the most part doing this. Haven't done it long enough to know if it makes a difference. I've tried vitamins before and didn't find it did much of anything.

Hoping someone out there may have experienced similar things and can point me in the right direction. I was diagnosed with Celiac back in July 2009. I had very bad blunted villi. Started losing weight(8-10%) after going gluten free and after a few months my weight stabilized and more recently has begun creeping upward. Repeat biopsy taken 1 month ago showed almost normal villi. I appear to have resolved the Celiac issues through a very very strict adherance to the gluten free diet although some foods still cause excess gas. Where the problem comes in: Going gluten free appears to have kicked off problems with minor numbness/tingling in the extremeties and very bad muscle weakness in the arms & legs. The muscle weakness has been getting progressively worse for months and is reaching terrible levels. Simple things now stress out my muscles and my muscles now are sore from such simple things as washing a few pots and pans or basic cleaning up around the house. My muscles are starting to feel sore all the time no matter how much I rest. I've had my ferritin levels checked, vit D, vit b-12... all these are fine. The typical rheumatological blood items like SED rate, and CK levels are normal. I've had my thyroid checked multiple times, everything is normal. I'm at a loss for a diagnosis beyond the celiac diagnosis. My standard blood work I have done often is all normal except for high iron serum which seems to be steadily increasing so far (last measured at 165ug/dL). My total bilirubin is elevated(2-3 mg/dL) but I've had that all my life and well before I've had health problems. I don't believe this scenario fits hemochromatosis well.... Has anyone else encountered similar symptoms? And if so, did you ever determine a second diagnosis for the muscle weakness? What else could it be? thanks

My CRP has always been low and continues to be. blood test and biopsy confirmed my celiac. I'm not sure there is a connection between CRP and celiac. I would think that might be an indication of another auto-immune problem in addition to your celiac condition.

In my experience I found the fecal malabsorbtion test consistent with other test results. Blood work & a biopsy confirmed I have celiac. In addition, I had a pill camera endoscopy. That showed very serious blunted villi throughout the first half of my small intestine. The fecal malabsorbtion test also showed very high malabsorbtion. So in my experience I found the fecal malabsorbtion test very accurate. You should describe your symptoms because it might make it easier for others to pinpoint your problem or suggest other things to look it. Also note that Enterlab's website has some technical slides that indicate on average people that test positive for celiac score around 45 or more I think. But there are always outliers I'm sure. They have to establish a limit at some value... I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule but probably for most cases the value of 10 or more catches almost all cases of it. You might want to look at other things as well such as food allergies or a food elimination diet...

You might want to take a look at the SCD diet. Wikipedia has a write up on it and the book called "breaking the vicious cycle" covers it in more detail. I've read it and found it to be a logical approach for getting around intestinal problems. One thing they recommend is cooking vegetables and even fruits in the beginning to make them easier to digest as well as targeting foods that can be absorbed without any extra work by the small intestine. This makes sense if you have seriously damaged villi as I do. I just started this approach myself but haven't been doing it long enough to know if it will help or not.