<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

Ron Hoggan wrote:

> "There is no evidence that gluten withdrawal can stay the course of the
> disorder and in many patients the complication has made its appearance when
> the patient was already on a gluten free diet."
>
> I do not recall reading about this in celiac children, beyond abnormal EEGs
> or in cases of cerebral calcifications leading to a treatable epilepsy,
> which responds to a gluten-free diet, and little else.
>
> The evidence points to the need for early diagnosis and treatment of celiac
> disease, especially in childhood.
>
> While the gluten-free diet, along with other dietary adjustments, seems to
> have alleviated my neuropathic symptoms, ie: vision; hearing; positional
> vertigo; peripheral numbness; dizziness; etc. I appear to be one of the
> lucky ones. The evidence also suggests that one or all of these symptoms may
> be back.

Thanks, Ron for your detailed answer to this debate. I'd like to add to
it. As a social worker, my training is less about etiology of mental
disorders, and more about environmental factors which influence a
person's behavioral functioning. While going gluten-free might arrest
further damage, it makes sense to me, as a professional, that damage
during critical developmental periods can continue to have lasting
effects on both the biological and the social development aspects of
mental function.

Additionally, people who have lived in a neurologically impaired state
will be different that those who have not, just because life experiences
tend to differ. The most easily understood example I can give is that of
a child diagnosed ADHD, who improves on a GF diet. Although the present
ADHD may improve, no one can erase the effects of having had ADHD, and
having interacted with one's world in that way (with all the stress
between the child and parent, teachers, siblings, etc.). The improving
child still has to learn basic skills which build healthy relationships
with adults and with peers, where those basic skills may not have been
learned, or those relationships may have been strained by the
hyperaactivity in the past.

Any time impairments are healed, we have to adjust to life without the
impairments, including making healthier adjustments to developmental
steps we took when we were not so healthy. It seems to me, that as we
remove the biological challenge to mental development (read: gluten), we
free those of us with neuropathies to make those adjustments more easily
than if the gluten continued to challenge the nervous system.

I welcome responses to what I've said, privately
(mailto:[log in to unmask]).

Amy Anderson LMSW(Inactive)