Gluten Intolerance/Celiac Disease

A friend just referred me to this site and found this post for me. I have recently been diagnosed with Celiac disease and after cutting gluten from my diet I have already seen improvement in my cycle. I had read while being diagnosed that a gluten intolerance can cause ammenorreah (the absence of a period for a time) and unexplained infertility. genx77, are your periods regular? My cycles went anywhere from 4 weeks (highly unlikely) to about 9 weeks which I believe was like a partial ammenorreah thing. This definitely put a damper on our chances of concieveing! Like you said we are busy people... so five straight weeks of BDing... was just impossible! Since I've been on the G-free diet I've had a 4 week cycle and a 5 week cycle, which to me is a miracle. This is not our only obstacle in the infertility world, my husband never learned to swim and it appears his boys followed suit, however I am a believer of the one step at a time theory and there is no denying that my irregularities were causing a big issue. I just hope that knowing when to BD will help get his boys through the maze!

Hi, our son is probably celiac. When we found out I did a lot of reading on celiac & fertility. What I found out is, if you are a celiac, it takes your body 6-12 mths on a GF diet till it's in reasonable shape to carry a healthy baby to term and provide baby with all the necessary nutrients. I know this sounds long and discouraging. And this only applies if celiac is the cause for your fertility issues (it may not be). But it can cause otherwise unexplained infertility, stillbirths and m/c. Sorry to sound like the voice of doom. We had a stillbirth, followed by a year of not conceiving. Then we went GF in April 06 and I quickly conceived (also did acupuncture, Vitex, light exercise, Reiki, meditation). Here I am today....3 m/c later. Technically, my last m/c was another stillbirth of a 16 wk old baby girl.
If you suspect celiac, you may be better off waiting a while and totally focusing on getting your body as healthy as possible. While I love all my babies, if I had known I would have chosen to wait rather than go thru hope, loss, grief, hope, grief.....over and over.
I wish you much, much better luck and success than we've had.
By the way, to find out for sure if you're celiac, a biopsy is the gold standard to tell for sure. We chose not to do that and just stay GF. My hubby and I have done bloodtests for celiac, but if you're on a GF diet, they come back "clean". And even if you are celiac, the bloodtest may not pick it up.
It's probably better for most people wo avoid wheat (once you research it, you find out wheat has been in human diet for a short time and may simply not agree with our bodies the way veggies and other grains do), so if you can stay GF, do that. Chech out Bette hagman's books. I've been baking breads, cakes, cookies etc. It makes it more bearable.
Best wishes, nammymom

Hi I'm new to this forum, but I am a self diagnosed Celiac survivor. Yes, I have gotten pregnant since eliminating Gluten, but I miscarried too. I was 7 months pregnant when I started getting severly sick and being dibilated with it. I would go to the hospital and they would treat me as if I was lying to them about the pain, and even tested me for all the major drugs as if I was abusing them during pregnancy (I would not anytime for that fact or matter). I went into the hospital about 7 times in 3 months until I decided that they were making me worse that if I laid in the bathroom floor for 12 hours vomiting and crying. Finally at 9 months pregnant, I went in and our daughter was born still at 38 weeks 7lbs 3ozs 19 inches. I never thought it could have been related the Celiac. Then I was never formally diagnosed with it but when I have it I'm deathly sick. Then I eliminated the gluten and feel tons better but we've been TTC'ing since then, and it's just not working. Well except the M/C in Dec. March is when she passed. I'm glad I read the PP that said having it can cause still birth and M/C....at least I know that now I'm gluten free for over a year and should be on the right track to normal again.

Thank you ~Teneal

Tenk, I'm so sorry about your loss. I'm sorry about all of us losing babies and having trouble in this regard. A friend of mine mentioned a book "The celiac pregnancy" or something like that (I haven't read it). It apparently explains quite well what goes on in a woman's body, I mean a celiac mom. Sadly, it does seem to take a long time (they advise 1 year) on a strict GF diet to improve odd. Celiac can present in over 200 different symptoms, which makes it hard to diagnose. It can even present as soem cancers, and certainly with symptoms we'd associate with irritable bowel syndrome, fatigue etc. There's a great magazine called "Living Without" it has tons of good info, recipes, resources etc. You may be able to borrow it from the library. Most books on celiac I've read discuss how it can affect fertility. Sometimes celiacs have no symptoms, so I'd recommend your partner go GF as well. I wish I could leave you with some encouraging words. The good news is, your body can recuperate and repair itself really well on a GF diet. And there are tons of great GF manufacturers now. I love Bob's Red Mill, The glutenfree pantry, Arrowhead Mills, .... learn to bake your own bread (Bette hagman) and you may not miss gluten.
Best of luck!

I need to research the gluten/fertility connection a bit more. I'm gluten-free too after having gut issues for years that progressively got worse in 2005. I also broke out in hives and psoriasis that wouldn't go away until I did an elimination diet and found out what was causing the sudden breakouts.

I instantly lost a good portion of my gut (fat and bloating), working out was easier and I feel like I'm absorbing my food and not getting hungry so soon after eating. I am not entirely strict with my GF diet though: I still use soy sauce and a few other things, but overall I am much better w/o bread, pasta, cereals, and so on. My PCOS have gotten much better as well.

I dont know what caused my stilbirth--they never found a reason. : It could be anything from cord to my thyroid.

Tenk - I am so sorry to hear of your stillbirth and miscarriage. I hope you'll have a baby soon.