Stress and Celiac Disease – Could The Two Be Interlinked?

It is likely that at one point in your life, you have encountered a stressful situation such as loss of a loved one or job, a big move or illness or any traumatic incident. Naturally, your body is designed to recover from life’s day-to-day stressors, however, there may be times when stress becomes severe and your body suffers from unexpected consequences.

Stress disorders are sometimes misunderstood, causing some patients to be under-diagnosed. As a patient, you may be asked to ‘cheer up’ or worse still you may be labeled as someone who is ungrateful to the beautiful things in life. However, past researches shows that under-treatment of anxiety, depression and other stress could lead to some autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s and sclerosis. But the big question is, can stress trigger celiac disease?

Stress and Celiac Disease

What Does the Research Say?

Researchers from the University of Iceland sought to see if stress disorders might interlink with autoimmune diseases. They recorded 100 000, 41-year-old males with stress disorders between 1981 and 2013. They then compared them to 120 000 of their siblings plus 1.1 million other people that had no stress disorders.

The research concluded that if you have stress disorders, you have a great risk of 41 autoimmune diseases. This is in comparison to people without stress disorders.

Do Antidepressants Reduce the Risk of Celiac?

In a Dr. Huan Song study, he says that in case you have PTSD and you are under medication with antidepressants, you have a low risk of having an autoimmune disease.

To him, this goes a long way to show that there is a potential link between stress disorders and the onset of autoimmune diseases such as celiac.

RELATED: What Is Autoimmune Disease?

Why Do Vietnam Soldiers with PTSD have Autoimmune Diseases?

Dr. Song also shows that if you are a Vietnam War Soldier with PTSD, you were likely to have autoimmune diseases.

He looks forward to conducting other studies on the genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to dysfunction of the immune system. He is yet to arrive at the conclusion.

Is the Risk for Autoimmune Diseases Similar?

Still, in relation to the recent study, the stress risk for autoimmune diseases is not equal. If you have stress disorders, you are at a higher risk for celiac disease as compared to rheumatoid arthritis.

Conclusion

This recent study aims at showing that stress can damage the immune system of the body. Further research will help to prove that.

Basically, you should know that extreme stress in life could greatly affect your lifestyle such that you might adopt bad eating habits, you may avoid exercise, you may indulge in increased alcohol consumption and possible substance abuse, among other things. In turn, all these changes in your lifestyle are great contributors to autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease.

According to Dr. Song, when you are suffering from great trauma and emotional reactions, you should seek medical assistance. This will reduce the impact of the stress on your health such as getting a celiac disease or other autoimmune diseases.

Disclaimer: This information is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease. All material provided on this Site is provided for information purposes only. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition, before undertaking any diet, exercise, other health program, or other procedure set out on this Site.