Gluten/Celiac, Migraine, & ADD/ADHD Connections 1

Blood Vessels Diminished in Function Contribute to Migraines and to ADD.
– One cause for all these problems, often over-looked, is gluten sensitivity. I have posted many notes here on this topic, but with the last post at CorePsychBlog added the migraine interest. Celiac Disease, ‘CD' in some of these abstracts, is end stage gluten sensitivity.

When we do SPECT imaging at CorePsych we measure rCBF – regional cerebral blood flow, and there you can see the brain vascular problems often associated with migraines on the SPECT image.

These are some additional reference links you will appreciate on migraine, blood flow and gluten sensitivity:

1. Hadjivassiliou M, Gibson A, Davies-Jones GA, et al. Does cryptic gluten sensitivity play a part in neurological illness?. Lancet 1996;347:369–71.  “Our data suggest that gluten sensitivity is common in patients with neurological disease of unknown cause and may have aetiological [causal] significance.”
2. Hadjivassiliou et al. Headache and CNS white matter abnormalities associated with gluten sensitivity Neurology 2001; 56: 385-388  “The authors describe 10 patients with gluten sensitivity and abnormal
   MRI. All experienced episodic headache, six had unsteadiness, and four
   had gait ataxia. MRI abnormalities varied from confluent areas of high
   signal throughout the white matter to foci of high signal scattered in
   both hemispheres. Symptomatic response to gluten-free diet was seen in
   nine patients.”
3. This excellent link at Celiac.com has several references on migraines including one regarding migraines in children.
4. This link will take you to several articles at Celiac.com that address the ADD/Gluten connection.
5. Mirza M, et al Interictal SPECT with Tc-99m HMPAO studies in migraine patients, Acta Neurol Belg. 1998 Jun;98(2):190-4. “The SPECT images revealed clear interhemispheric asymmetry in the upper frontal and occipital parts of the brain in migraineurs. It is suggested that an impaired regional cerebral vascular autoregulation may exist even during headache-free intervals in patients suffering from migraine.” [SPECT Imaging shows impaired vascular activity even when not having a migraine.]

I'll have some more soon – interesting how migraine and ADD can similarly impaired problems with cerebral blood flow