Neuropathy and Celiac Disease

"Every patient suffering with neuropathy of an unknown cause should be tested for celiac disease."

http://millercenter.uchicago.edu/learnaboutpn/typesofpn/inflammatory/celiac.shtml

Those of us who have suffered for a while with CD know that every unexplained symptom is a symptom of CD. My grandmother was a poster child for obscure symptoms and I must be related!

Early on in the "year of my diagnosis" I must have had severe restless leg syndrome. During sleep, my appendages would go to sleep. Sleeping arms, while sleeping? Doesn't sound so bad? But it was bad! I would wake with my arms all akimbo and not know where they had been or what they had been doing! It took twenty minutes of slapping and cold water to reorient my appendages and that can be most unpleasant for the rest of the body!

I can speak light of it now, because I no longer have that problem. But my Grandma H, (our familial matriarch of celiac disease) suffered from unexplained neuropathy, both hands and feet were numb. When she had bouts of feeling, it was a stinging pain that eluded all painkillers. It was disabling and disheartening. It took twenty years of a myriad of medicines and a plethora of prescriptions to disabuse the hypocondriac diagnosis and find she really had celiac disease.

That was twenty years and 100 progeny ago. She was our pioneer and our guinea pig and so many of us have those same symptoms of an obsure disease that was diagnosed earlier in our lives due to her.

We love her for it. Grandma, you so suffered, but all was not for naught. You have saved us from the torturous years of not knowing and you are another reason for my sticking to the GF diet.

You are the best!

http://jccglutenfree.googlepages.com/peripheralneuropathy "Celiac disease should be considered in patients with idiopathic neuropathy even when gastrointestinal symptoms are absent."

http://www.celiac.com/categories/Celiac-Disease-Research%3A-Associated-Diseases-and-Disorders/Ataxia%2C-Nerve-Disease%2C-Neuropathy%2C-Brain-Damage-and-Celiac-Disease

http://www.modern-psychiatry.com/celiac_disease.htm Ha! Not so nuts as they thought...