Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
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Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#2> Instead, the doctor prescribed him a cocktail of antibiotics, antifungals, and antiprotozoal medications.
> “If my intestines were a warzone, we went full nuclear,” Johnson remarked
Is that giardiasis treatment, or just let's kill everything and hope for the best? Glad it worked out for him.
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#3Wild. So how exactly did cutting gluten out of his diet mask his symptoms that effectively? Does gluten somehow feed/provoke the giardia? Or were the dietary changes mostly irrelevant?
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#4Wild. So how exactly did cutting gluten out of his diet mask his symptoms that effectively? Does gluten somehow feed/provoke the giardia? Or were the dietary changes mostly irrelevant?
This isn’t an uncommon presentation - disease processes that lead to inflammation of the small bowel can be expected to resemble gluten sensitivity.
Gluten consumption, on its own, can cause small bowel inflammation and this effect is well known (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5677194/)
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#5Wild. So how exactly did cutting gluten out of his diet mask his symptoms that effectively? Does gluten somehow feed/provoke the giardia? Or were the dietary changes mostly irrelevant?
This isn’t an uncommon presentation - disease processes that lead to inflammation of the small bowel can be expected to resemble gluten sensitivity. Gluten consumption, on its own, can cause small bowel inflammation and this effect is well known (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5677194/ )
That's interesting—I know that NCGS is somewhat controversial and its causes aren't totally understood, so this makes me wonder how many people with NCGS have some other, undiagnosed underlying condition that the gluten's aggravating.
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#6> Instead, the doctor prescribed him a cocktail of antibiotics, antifungals, and antiprotozoal medications. > “If my intestines were a warzone, we went full nuclear,” Johnson remarked Is that giardiasis treatment, or just let's kill everything and hope for the best? Glad it worked out for him.
> Is that giardiasis treatment, or just let's kill everything and hope for the best? Glad it worked out for him.
The second one.
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#7So this is actually shockingly similar to something that happened to me. I did a lot of back country travel with sketchy water and developed something close to dairy intolerant for more than 10 years to the point I wasn't sure if I had always had it. Eventually I got lucky on a test (for E. Coli not giardia) and the treatment was to go to nuclear on my intestines. That week wasn't fun. Now i can eat ice cream and dairy with out trouble. I'm not convinced that test was related to the 10 years of symptoms, but the hard reset on the gut definitely worked.
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#8I've been looking for relief from abdominal pain, bloating, poorly formed movements, and breathing problems for well over a year now. It started right after a round of antibiotics, which strikes me as a very clear cause-and-effect situation involving some sort of microbial imbalance.
I don't think restrictive diets are a great idea, because I want to stay healthy otherwise and ultimately restore that balance, but curiously enough, I've found that wheat might be exacerbating some of these symptoms—despite eating it without issue my whole life.
No matter how neutrally and deferentially I approach doctors with this info, I'm treated like a paranoiac for merely inquiring about certain possibilities like so-called SIBO. I'm pretty sure I'd get dragged straight to the loony bin if I ever mentioned parasites.
Sorry for making this about me, but I wrote all this to say: this guy is very lucky he's a medical student. Even with similar evidence, I have a hard time believing he'd get medicine (and respect) as a single mother. The moment she whipped out slides like he did, they'd be writing an antipsychotic Rx.
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#9Yes
People in developed countries have very little knowledge of parasitic diseases (ok, maybe only of tick-bourne diseases)
You wouldn't need Dr House to diagnose tape worm in a lot of less developed countries.
Re: Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment
#10> Instead, the doctor prescribed him a cocktail of antibiotics, antifungals, and antiprotozoal medications. > “If my intestines were a warzone, we went full nuclear,” Johnson remarked Is that giardiasis treatment, or just let's kill everything and hope for the best? Glad it worked out for him.
They did this to me once after finding an allergy test was inconclusive. After about 9 months of being ill and having nutritional issues I was back to where I was again with the same problem
This turned out to be lactose so I just avoid it and all is good now. Could have been a new finding but I suspect the problem was just poorly identified to start with.
Totally useless.