Why should you consider chiropractic care to support your healing process of Celiac disease, Gluten intolerance and allergies?
In this blog post, I will talk about the differences in Celiac disease and gluten intolerances as well as the nervous system and how it relates to the organs, immune system, digestive system and your autonomic nervous system. I will keep it basic and try not to overwhelm you with all the details, focusing on creating a complete overview of the information.
Celiac Disease vs. Gluten Intolerances/Allergies
Many people think that celiac disease and allergies are the same, but there are many differences in the two. Celiac disease is a genetic intolerance of gluten that causes your immune system to have problems, having this disease is not the same problem as having a wheat allergy. Allergies affect the IgE antibodies that can be measured on a CBC and Celiac disease does not have a IgE response. Celiac disease causes the hair, called Villi, which are the tiny hairs along your intestinal walls that aide in moving your food through the digestive tract and helps it become digested. What happens with Celiac disease is that your gut starts to attack itself; the villi start to lie down and get glued to the intestinal walls, and when that happens it causes the intestinal wall to perforate and leak. This process causes Leaky gut syndrome, resulting in not allowing your body to absorb all the nutrients in your food. The two main differences between Celiac disease and gluten intolerance/allergy is an allergic reaction that could cause an anaphylactic response, Celiac disease does not, but in contrast Celiac disease causes rashes, known as dermatitis-herpetiformis.
How Can a Doctor of Chiropractic Help?
If your spine is out of alignment in the low back and sacrum, it can affect the nervous system that innervates the skin and muscles of the abdominal area, low back muscles, legs and your genital area. Your low back area has many neurons that affect your important involuntary portion of the autonomic nervous system. These neurons affect the involuntary portion of your digestive, endocrine and reproductive system, they function on their own. The sympathy portion of the nervous system exits from the spine forming neurons from the low back and sacral area. The neurons then form ganglia in the abdominal area, such as the celiac ganglia, that helps with the digestive system.
The parasympathetic portion of the autonomic nervous system come from the cranial nerve at the base of your brain, this is called the vagus nerve. This nerve runs from the brain along the spinal cord to innervate the digestion in the liver, stomach and intestines. The low back nerves forming the sacral portion of the parasympathetic nervous system, reach the organs of the pelvis such as the bladder and the reproductive organs.
Enteric Nervous System
One area that gets over looked is the enteric nervous system, ENS, which innervates the digestive system. The brain controls the ENS to help decide how the food will be digested, however if the the nerve from the brain is cut off the ENS can still work.
In your neck region you have cervical vertebrae one and two: C1 and C2 misalignments can cause pain in the area, migraine headaches, general headaches, sinus issues, drainage issues, ear pain and even the optic nerve can get affected from C2 spine. This can cause vision issues; if you are experiencing allergy issues it is because your body is not handling the allergen properly. By keeping your cervical area in alignment, this could help with your immune response which in turn could help with your allergies, ear infections, sneezing and vision issues.