Gah. I’m sick of these sinus infections. This is the fifth one I’ve had since October.

Late last night I woke up from a dream thinking: “What if it’s related to celiac?” I don’t remember what the dream was, but I remember laying there wondering if by eating gluten I was causing my immune system to go haywire and forget to take care of my sinuses — leading to inflammation and infection. It’s a possibility — celiac disease, being an allergy, wreaks havoc on your immune system. I asked Google. There’s enough out there to cause suspicion.

I have a doctors appointment today. I’m going to ask him to run a CBC lab and test for IgG and IgA antibodies. I suspect they’ll come back positive for celiac sprue (gluten allergy). If not, I don’t care. As of this afternoon, I’m cutting gluten. We’ll see how I feel in a few weeks.

Common lists of symptoms of undiagnosed early cealic sprue read like a check list of things I’ve (mostly) silently dealt with the last few years. Everything from joint inflammation (hands, shoulders, back, elbows, knees), follicular keratosis (itchy bumps full of white hard ‘stuff’ on my skin), wretched gas (stay away after I eat spaghetti), constant acid reflux (even when I’d lost weight), and now (possibly) sinusitis. All these are related to the immune or digestive systems. If I’m having gluten issues, it would link those two systems together.

Maybe I’m looking for causation from correlation. I could be really, really wrong about this. But there’s a distinct family history. My mother has celiac sprue. My brother has celiac sprue. My wife’s GI diagnosed her as celiac sprue after she went gluten free and all her issues went away. So it’s not like this is going to drastically alter the lifestyle of my home.

I’m sick of being sick. If ripping gluten out of my diet (man I am going to miss wheat flour) means a reduction in some of these issues, then it’s worth a go.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 10:50 am and is filed under Core Dump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.