Muscle pain - An early sign of Autoimmune Disease?

Do you have constant or intermittent episodes of chronic pain?

Do you need regular visits to your local osteopath, chiropractor, physio or massage therapist to help keep these pains at a manageable level?

If the answer is yes, then you could possibly have the early signs of autoimmune disease.

An autoimmune disease occurs when your body's immune system has destroyed part of itself. A familiar autoimmune disease is  Rheumatoid Arthritis, where where your immune system destroys the lining of your joints. Another example is Hashimoto's Disease where your thyroid gland is destroyed.

I recently wrote a blog titled "Shoulder pain, your thyroid and soya". After reading this article, a friend of mine in the UK commented to me on Facebook that he had been diagnosed with Hashimoto's and was now on medication. Previous to the diagnosis he had suffered from a recurrent shoulder problem for many years which since he has been treated for his thyroid has disappeared.

There are three main factors that lead to the development of an autoimmune disease:

1. Genetic predisposition - whether your family suffered from an autoimmune disease.
2. Triggers - food sensitivities, heavy metals, chemical toxins.
3. Intestinal Permeability - "A leaky gut".

One of the main food sensitivity triggers for autoimmune disease is wheat gluten or gliadin. The second most common autoimmune disease triggered by gluten is Hashimotos disease.

The concept of helping peoples chronic pain issues by taking them off gluten or gluten cross reactive foods, such as soya, is not unfamiliar to me. I have helped hundreds of people this way but have not really understood the true mechanism.

As a guide in my diagnosis of clients I use Applied Kinesiology or muscle function testing. With AK I can detect weaknesses in individual muscle groups. I also use it to test for food sensitivities. In AK each muscle in the body is linked to a specific gland or organ. I can therefore test how the muscle for the thyroid which is the Teres Minor and see if it weakens when the person is in contact with a particular food or any other trigger such as gluten. This is just a guide for me that this person needs further lab investigations for the foods I find that weaken that muscle.

Studies have shown that antibodies for autoimmune diseases can be found in the blood 9 years before the person starts exhibits signs and symptoms of the disease. Up until that point it can the person could be happily unaware that anything was happening in their body that was sinister. Chronic persistent muscle problems could be your bodies early warning system like the red light on your dashboard.

There are tests available through Cyrex Labs which can tell you whether you have these autoimmune antibodies in your system.

There are of course many many other mechanisms that could be causing muscle pain but this makes sense to me. I welcome any questions or comments.

Gluten Free Diet: Why it might not be helping?

I have lost count on the number of clients I have advised to gluten free because I thought it would help their symptoms.

For the vast majority it was a positive experience as their long term chronic symptoms disappeared. For the minority, the effort was not rewarded even though they had been 100% gluten free. Up until a few months ago this had been a puzzle to me until I was listening to a podcast in my car on the way to work. The podcast was a an  interview with Dr Tom O'Bryan, who is an internationally renowned expert on Coeliac disease and gluten sensitivity.  He was talking about a brand new set of blood tests that were now available which looked at gluten sensitivity. The test that interested me the most was for Gluten Cross Reactivity (GCR).

To understand what GCR is you have to understand how the body normally reacts to gluten

When your body gets sensitive to gluten it produces antibodies which are little Arnold Terminators that go around zapping the invading gluten proteins that are in your blood. Unfortunately sometimes Arnold gets confused between the gluten proteins and similar proteins in your body and starts zapping them.

GCR occurs when Arnold starts thinking that the proteins from other foods are gluten proteins. The body then produces more gluten antibodies to zap those other proteins but which will also continue to attack your body. So you may as well be eating gluten and no wonder your symptoms don't change.

The GCR test which is available through Cyrex Labs in the US tests the most common foods that cross react to wheat gluten.

These include: cows milk, casein, whey protein, soya, milk chocolate, instant coffee, yeast, oats, sesame, buckwheat, hemp seed, millet, sorghum, amaranth, quinoa, tapioca, teff, corn, and rice. 

As I mentioned these are only the most common and many foods have not been researched as yet. However if you have had no change in your symptoms on a traditional gluten free diet and you eat some of the above it would be worth getting tested or just try avoiding them all and seeing if you see any benefit.

Since learning this information I have begun begun routinely testing my clients for the above foods. To date that tested positive for wheat gluten were positive to some of the cross reactive foods.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.