Nutritional supplementation and dietary restriction in the resolution of enthesitis-related arthritis

Gluten sensitivity presenting as a neuropsychiatric disorder

There has been increasing recognition in the medical community and the general public of the widespread prevalence of gluten sensitivity. Celiac disease (CD) was initially believed to be the sole source of this phenomenon. Signs and symptoms indicative of nonceliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), in which classical serum and intestinal findings of CD may be absent, have been frequently reported of late. Clinical manifestations in patients with NCGS are characteristically triggered by gluten and are ameliorated or resolved within days to weeks of commencing a gluten-free diet. Emerging scientific literature contains several reports linking gluten sensitivity states with neuropsychiatric manifestations including autism, schizophrenia, and ataxia. A clinical review of gluten sensitivity is presented alongside a case illustrating the life-changing difference achieved by gluten elimination in a patient with a longstanding history of auditory and visual hallucinations. Physicians in clinical practice should routinely consider sensitivity issues as an etiological determinant of otherwise inexplicable symptoms. Pathophysiologic mechanisms to explain the multisystem symptomatology with gluten sensitivity are considered.

What's out there making us sick?

Throughout the continuum of medical and scientific history, repeated evidence has confirmed that the main etiological determinants of disease are nutritional deficiency, toxicant exposures, genetic predisposition, infectious agents, and psychological dysfunction. Contemporary conventional medicine generally operates within a genetic predestination paradigm, attributing most chronic and degenerative illness to genomic factors, while incorporating pathogens and psychological disorder in specific situations. Toxicity and deficiency states often receive insufficient attention as common source causes of chronic disease in the developed world. Recent scientific evidence in health disciplines including molecular medicine, epigenetics, and environmental health sciences, however, reveal ineluctable evidence that deficiency and toxicity states feature prominently as common etiological determinants of contemporary ill-health. Incorporating evidence from historical and emerging science, it is evident that a reevaluation of conventional wisdom on the current construct of disease origins should be considered and that new knowledge should receive expeditious translation into clinical strategies for disease management and health promotion.

An analysis of almost any scientific problem leads automatically to a study of its history.

—Ernst Mayr