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Gluten, SIBO and Diabetes connections

AliB

AliB

Well-Known Member
Messages
334
Location
South Wales
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Insulin
Some interesting articles on the role that Gluten and SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth) may play in connection with Diabetes.

http://www.celiac.com/articles/21902/1/ ... Page1.html

http://www.celiac.com/articles/21898/1/ ... Page1.html

https://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/i ... rticle.pdf

I am convinced that SIBO is, and has been an issue for me for many years. The SIBO came first. That was followed by weight gain issues, then restless legs, then diabetes and finally an awareness that gluten and dairy intolerance had been a problem for many years. It's all connected.

Carbohydrates encourage certain pathogenic gut bacteria. They also affect blood sugar. Hmmm.
 
Hi Ali,
It all becomes clear, when i read other peoples experiences with Gluten and its effects. My son Andrew was a chubby little 3yr old, and when i look back i can remember the restless, painful legs, that kept him awake at night, then he began to grow taller and slim down. The Drs put it down to growth spurts, even the hospital consultant, and x-rays showed nothing! then he became a skinny fellow and before i could bat an eyelid he developed T1 diabetes, he tested positive for coeliac the following year, but i'm convinced it started long before.
I have problems with the gluten free pasta, have you ever seen how much starch comes out of it, its like wall paper paste! So i boil it and rinse it twice whilst cooking and can never get the carb insulin ratio right, considering Andrew can eat 200g of the stuff in one sitting, even a baby elephant would find 20 units of insulin too much :) Sorry i've rambled on, good thread,
Suzi x
 
Hi Suzi. Yes for me the gluten thing had been an issue for many years - I just didn't fathom that it was the gluten that was the problem. My Mum was type 1 and Coeliac was only picked up on in her about 4 weeks before she died which was pretty criminal. I just wish I knew all this back then. As an offspring of a Type 1 I should have automatically been tested for Coeliac Disease. But when do they ever do that?

I still think that somehow the SIBO is at the root of it. Quite how I haven't really got to the bottom of, but I am sure it will all come out eventually. I suspect that it is at the bottom of many of our so-called 'auto-immune' diseases. Whether it is the bugs themselves that are the issue or the toxins and by-products they produce perhaps we will never know. So little is known or has even been bothered to be investigated.

As i mentioned on the Coeliac forum I post on - there are many people out there who carry Coeliac genetic markers yet who don't seem to have any issues with gluten. What makes the difference? Could it be that those who do have issues have SIBO, and those that don't, don't?

I wonder too about 'inherited' diseases and whether again that has more to do with not inherited diseases but inherited bacteria and microbes! If parents have compromised or pathogenic gut flora then the chances of their offspring inheriting them is pretty high. We like to share things in families and perhaps we sometimes get more than just colds! How we fare in the disease stakes may have as much to do with what or where the microbes are in our particular gut and that could explain why we don't all carry the same health issues.

Complicated stuff isn't it............but one, that to me, makes an awful lot of sense.

Yes, the GF pasta is pretty revolting. I dumped carbs in general pretty quickly after going GF because I had never been able to cope with carbs very well anyway. GF carb foods are typically much more carb-dense and I do feel that they can sometimes make things worse. I see over and over again people on the Celiac forum becoming intolerant of one food after another - commonly grains and starches, and I do feel that the reason for that is that the gut bugs just adapt to a different food source and start causing problems with that.

If your son is eating a lot of food, that may be because gut damage from the gluten/SIBO issue has caused malabsorption problems and his body can't get enough nutrition. In that case it might be prudent to make sure that most of the food he gets is of optimum nutrition from meat, fish, poultry, lots of vegetables (raw are good), some fruit, plenty of good fats, a little honey and good plain probiotic yogurt, rather than 'dead' carbs. If you can keep his carbohydrate levels lower, not only would it keep his sugars more stable and possibly mean that he would need less insulin, but it also would provide less food for the bugs. The more carbs we eat the more we encourage them.

My digestion ended up collapsing and I have had to rebuild it over the last 18 months. It was only by following the low-carb regime that I have managed to claw it back to a relatively good level. I keep it low as I still have some healing to do (and bugs to get rid of) and because it keeps my BS stable and prevents spikes and hypos.
 
Hi Ali,
Youv'e had it rough, but at least you have found out the cause and can treat yourself, and probably better than any medic! Andrews bs is being controlled better now on a 5th injection a day (horrendous for a 10yr old) only because his levemir doesn't last the 24hrs and we feel its a far better alternative than Lantus (tried that, horrible stuff) His weight is increasing, he's also stretching, and growth is fine, infact his almost the tallest in his class. We have tried lowering his carb intake at meal times, and he's usually hungry all the time, but of course no one will tell us the safe level of carbs for a growing 10yr old. He loves his GF lasagne and cheese pasta, and i don't think i could deny him those. He eats plenty of fish, seafood, vegetables and fruit, infact since being diagnosed i think my shopping bill has gone up by 30 %.
Take care,
Suzi x
 
Ali,

Did you see the recent article in Scientific American about the connections between coeliac, gut problems and autoimmunity.... http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... e-insights


I'm convinced I can't tolerate gluten/lactose but I tested negative on the coeliac antibody screen. I'm cutting them out of my diet though. I did some IGG antibody testing and had a skyhigh response to gluten, lactose and eggs.

Also out of interest, what is restless legs a symptom of? I have had that too really badly since childhood.
 
Hi goji,
Don't know about Ali, but the way Andrew described his restless legs, was pains, dull aches, couldn't get comfy in bed at night, couldn't walk far without getting pains ect. When he tested possitive for Coeliac his count was greater than 300, since diagnosis 3 yrs ago his last count was 7. I don't know if anyone gets a zero after eliminating gluten from there diet completely, our 7 is as perfect as he'l probably ever get as he does cheat now and again, ie a slither of birthday cake, a sneaky bite of vanilla slice, meals where i haven't read the ingrediants correctly. But we do our best, and he's only a child and i'm only human! What i can tell you is that i have friends who have children that have tested negative several times for coeliac and only by doing a endoscopy have they found wheat/gluten intolerences.
Take care,
Suzi x
 
Well, for me the Restless Leg Syndrome was linked to the gluten, and dumping that stopped the RLS, and the burning feet, and the IBS-D and the awful stomach pain.

Although I actually had to educate my Doctor about Celiac Disease, even lending her a book on it, she now appears to have genned up on it and is much more knowledgeable (at least she is prepared to learn from her patients which is a huge plus in her favour!). When I saw her last a month ago she said that she now sends people for Celiac testing several times and has found that it can take 3 or 4 or more tests before the panel will come back positive. Personally I'm not bothered about testing now - not only have I been off the gluten for too long, even if it did come back positive I would not have a biopsy, neither would I want the ****** GF carbs that you can get on prescription.

Testing for Celiac/Coeliac is pretty useless at best. The annoying thing about the test is that they only count it as positive if it is greater than 10. To me, any reading above zero would indicate gluten intolerance. Mine was only 1 (I was only tested once) but dumping the gluten has had such a radical effect that as far as I am concerned the test was wrong. They set it at 10 because some of the 'healthy' controls were also getting readings - of course, if they set it at anything above 0 then at least half the population would be Celiac! Those healthy controls probably would get gas and bloating but because that is considered 'normal' it is not considered in the equation. Gas and bloating should never be considered normal.

Again though I feel that the gluten intolerance is really just a symptom of SIBO. Depending on where it is in the gut will affect the type of symptoms people get. My issues are weight gain, gluten intolerance and diabetes. My husbands are Fibromyalgia, depression and brain-fog. We both benefit from being off gluten, but although it may well be a contributory factor, I do not believe that it is necessarily the cause.

I am eating a very low-carb diet, not only to help keep my sugar level low, but also to deprive the bugs of most of their food source. I am taking quite a bit of coconut oil too which is a natural antibiotic (but unlike drugs does not touch the good bacteria). Last night before bed I took a couple of probiotic capsules (gluten-free) but a couple of hours later WW3 broke out in my gut - awful gas and bloating - I think there was a battle going on down there! I also had RLS for a while which suggests to me that although it was a similar reaction to when I get 'glutened' it was more likely caused, and probably is with the gluten, by bacterial reaction rather than the food itself.

There do seem to be treatments that help, like Rifaximin but again it seems that it only holds them at bay for a while and then they come back even stronger.

The bloating I am getting is in my upper intestine not my colon as I originally thought - sometimes it is so bad it feels as if everything up the top is being squashed - when it was really bad it pushed my stomach up and caused a hernia and was squashing my liver against my back.

I am determined the beggars aren't going to win - they have deprived me of my health and vitality for the last 40 years and I have had enough now. I will beat them one way or another.

It really is all connected as that last article pointed out - but I am sure that the SIBO precedes all the 'autoimmune' diseases or diseases, illnesses with no other known cause (and maybe even some with one!). Like another post I made on the low-carb section about Diabetes being cured in a man who had had a stomach bypass. Removing part of his Upper intestine probably removed the little beggars that were triggering the Diabetes! Within two hours of the op his BS had gone to normal and stayed there. It does beg the question, what if insulin resistance is caused by toxic by-products from the bugs, and not the insulin itself? And if that is the case then maybe Type 1 comes from the same source, but is just affected more radically?

I know that as the SIBO has increased and got worse, I have become more resistant. My Mum was type 1 with gluten intolerance (although she didn't realise that's what it was). She also was anaemic all her life (perhaps the bugs were depleting her iron reserves) which no one ever investigated, and I now know from her symptoms that SIBO was a problem for her.
 
I had 'growing pains' as a child as did my daughter. She also used to get night terrors as a child which were pretty distressing. I knew that somehow it was connected to her diet but didn't know what or why.

Her gluten-induced issues are more mental than physical with depression and acute mood swings being predominant. That, to a certain extent is how it affects my husband and was how it affected my Dad. He too I now can see was very gluten intolerant, but at the end of the day as families we all share our homes and our bugs with each other so it is no surprise that we are all affected by it.

Predominantly though I still feel that the SIBO problem is driven by things like the indiscriminate and often unnecessary use of antibiotics which destroys the gut defences and the high-carbohydrate Western diet that ensures a steady supply of food for the bugs. Why would they want to leave?

We have a friend. She is in her late 60's, looks at least 10 years younger, has hardly ever had a days illness. She has never had any antibiotics - oh, and she eats raw garlic sandwiches! She doesn't have any problem with SIBO, nor does she have any problem with gluten.
 
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