Allergy Healing: Gluten Allergy and Celiac Disease

[An interview with Sabrina Nelson]

Many people today have allergies or sensitivities around gluten, and Celiac disease is becoming much more common. As an allergy healer, I often have people ask me if an allergy to gluten can be healed and my answer is YES!!!

That said, the fact remains that gluten, like dairy, is mucus producing, so there is controversy about whether or not it should be a part of our diet. I believe in our culture we eat a lot more grains and dairy than is healthy for the body, but like all things, in balance and moderation we can enjoy some of these foods without getting sick, having pain in the body, or experiencing negative emotional states.

So, can celiac disease be healed by healing allergies?

From an allergy healing standpoint, allergies cause inflammation in the body and inflammation in the body can lead to autoimmune diseases and disorders. So to me it makes sense that if an allergy can be healed, the body can return to its non inflammatory state, and thus the autoimmune disease or disorder can be healed. Although I have found that where a simple gluten/grain allergy can be healed relatively easy and quickly, an autoimmune disease like Celiac will need more allergy healing work to completely resolve.

It is my experience that people who are diagnosed with an autoimmune disease have many allergies that have been growing in number and severity, in many cases over a long period of time, or sometimes are triggered by severe emotional trauma or stress. Either way, someone with Celiac is “allergic” to many other things, not just gluten, so there is more work and time required.

Enough from me in this article! What I really want to share with everyone is what someone with Celiac disease, who has experienced the allergy healing work that I do, has to say about Celiac and what allergy healing has done for her.

So, I had a little Q and A session with Sabrina Nelson who was diagnosed with celiac when she was 15, and since has become quite the expert on this subject.

What is celiac disease?

Celiac is an autoimmune disease centered around the small intestine. It’s caused (with few exceptions) by a mutation to the HLA-DQ gene, which is part of a network of gene receptors (meaning they bind to other things) in the immune system that tells your body if a cell is part of itself or not. People with celiac either have the DQ2 or DQ8 version of the HLA gene. HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8 both bind to gliadin peptides (aka a gluten protein) more tightly, making them much more likely to initiate an autoimmune reaction. When that happens, the body targets it’s small intestine, attacking and flattening its villi (the little finger-shaped bulges in the small intestine that are responsible from absorbing critical nutrients). This stops the body from being able to absorb nutrients and causes a whole bunch of other problems!

What would happen to you when you had gluten?

Immediately after, I would get really bad stomach aches. Then I would experience headaches, nausea, dizziness, shakiness, bloating, brain fog, and extreme tiredness. My skin would break out and I would get big, dark bags under my eyes. Sometimes it would even trigger migraines or panic attacks. Now, the gluten-attacks are much shorter, and the extent is usually a couple days of stomach pains and sleepiness.

What lengths did you go through to de-gluten your life, so to speak?

As soon as I found out, I immediately stopped eating gluten. My mother and I did a lot of research to identify which foods were safe and which were not. Let me tell you, there is such a learning curve with this! Over the next few months, I learned more about cross contamination and skin absorption, so our entire kitchen went gluten free and I threw out and replaced all of my hygiene and beauty projects.

You mentioned to me that you couldn’t even be in the “energy “ of gluten without getting sick. Tell me about that.

Even after all of that, I still wasn’t feeling that much better! Even being in the same room as gluten made me sick. I couldn’t go to restaurants, grocery stores, or even coffee shops without feeling the effects of being near gluten. It was so tiring! Once I had some allergy healing done, this completely changed. Much to the delight of my bread and pasta loving boyfriend, I have absolutely no problem being around it.

Is this condition permanent, one without a cure in your opinion and experience?

The idea circulated by allopathic medicine is that celiac, like other autoimmune diseases, has no cure. But what that really means is, no cure yet exists within the institution of mainstream medicine. Thankfully, allergy healing is different! While I do still react to gluten, my current condition is nowhere near what it used to be–like our bodies, it’s highly mutable. With enough allergy healing, people with celiac will be well on their way to living a completely normal (well, it terms of food and health, that is!) life that’s even better and healthier than life pre-diagnosis.

How has healing allergies changed this disease for you?

For one thing, I can be around gluten! This has radically altered how I can interact with others in food-centric settings. While I still cannot ingest gluten, I can go out to restaurants, bakeries, dinner parties, all without feeling sick. Another thing is that, by reducing my hyper-sensitivity to gluten, I’ve reduced my sensitivity to other foods as well. With allergy healing, both for gluten and other foods, I have been able to eat a diet so much more rich and diverse than I thought I would ever be able to again. Finally, when I do accidentally ingest gluten, my life doesn’t stop. The symptoms are mild enough that I can still function. Thank goodness!

Would you say you are 100% celiac free? If not what percentage of improvement would you say you have experienced?

Because of the severity of what can happen if someone with celiac continues to eat gluten (or if they don’t heal their underlying allergy problems!), I’m always going to stay away from gluten. However, I believe that my disease is less severe than it was before allergy healing. And I definitely believe that my quality of life has improved more than 100% in many more ways than one. I am 100% free of many other severe allergies that Kim has cleared for me, including eggs (they used to make me throw up and now I love them!), non-gluten grains, and many different types of fruits and vegetables.

Anything else you would like to say?

If you’re doing everything you can think of and you’re still not feeling better, try allergy healing. I didn’t think I would ever feel better, until I did. Celiac, or any bad allergy, can feel overwhelming and scary and endless, but it doesn’t have to be that way! Your relationship with food does not always have to be full of fear. I went from being afraid to eat anything other than apples and almond butter to looking forward to cooking and eating every single day. Your body isn’t against you, it’s just trying to tell you something. You can heal your body. Kim helped me heal mine.