You can also read Dr. Kelly Brogan’s article “This Is Your Body (and Brain) on Gluten” to get greater perspective on the topic.
Considering these factors, it is not surprising that gluten removal from the diet could result in what the title of the published case report described as a “Dramatic improvement of parkinsonian symptoms after gluten-free diet introduction in a patient with silent celiac disease.” We’ve seen similar remarkable recoveries with brain-metabolism optimizing fats like coconut oil in cases of debilitating dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
In this new case study, the 75-year-old man presented with a 1-year history of “difficulty walking, instability, and fatigability.” His neurological examination revealed:
Facial hypomimia (reduced facial expressions)
Bradykinesia (extreme slowness of movements and reflexes)
Rigidity
Postural instability
A brain scan was performed using Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), revealing abnormalities consistent with low dopamine production and which in combination with the clinical data lead to a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Additional laboratory blood work revealed lower than normal level of serum folate, elevated homocysteine, with normal vitamin B12 levels. To assess the possibility of asymptomatic malabsorption due to a silent celiac disease further blood screening was explored. Anti-gliadin antibodies, markedly elevated IgA, anti-transglutaminase antibodies, and positive anti-endomysial antibodies – all signs of gluten associated autoimmunity. Finally, a duodenal biopsy was performed revealing intestinal characteristics (flattened villi; crypt hyperplasia) consistent with celiac disease. As a result, the gastroenterologist prescribed a gluten-free diet.
Remarkably, after only 3 months of abstinence from gluten, the patient reported an almost complete remission of symptoms, subsequently confirmed by a neurological evaluation. 18 months later he was reexamined and was found to have improved further.
Notably, the patient did not see measurable improvements in the dopaminergic abnormalities discovered in his brain scan, which would be expected in classical Parkinson’s disease, which is marked by the degeneration of the dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra of the brain. The authors therefore did not posit that the celiac disease “caused” Parkinson’s disease in the patient, but rather that celiac disease exacerbated parkinsonism in this case. The case, however, does illustrate the possibility that a number of patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease are suffering from previously unidentified and unreported gluten-associated Parkinsonism, which from the outside clinical presentation can look identical. Those folks, who would benefit greatly from removing the cause of the neurological problems – namely, gluten/wheat removal – are often overdiagnosed and overtreated with drugs aimed at alleviating Parkinson’s disease, but which ultimately can lead to accelerated degeneration of endogenous dopamine production in the brain, enhanced neurotoxicity due to drug metabolites (e.g. 6-hydroxydopamine), and the production of dyskinesias (movement disorders) that are far worse than, or were never present within, the pre-treatment condition.
From: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/dramatic-recovery-parkinson-s-patient-gluten-free-diet
Toms Blog on Life and Livingness