Accepting and treating celiac disease with hypnosis

February 25, 2019

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease triggered by gluten you eat. About 1 in 100 people suffer from this disease. Lately, this diagnosis has become more common, which does not seem to be due to more awareness about this disease, but because people are really getting this disease more often. It is a disease that requires you to change your diet drastically in order to suffer less from the symptoms and that in turn can be very difficult to do. In this blog I discuss ways to deal with this disease, how to treat it and how hypnosis can contribute to this

What is celiac disease?

Celiac disease is a genetic disease that can be triggered by circumstances and eating gluten. If one of your parents has celiac disease, you have a 10% chance that you will also have it. So 1 in 10 children of someone who has celiac disease can also get the disease[1].

So you get an immune reaction after eating gluten[2]. This can make you unable to absorb food properly, for example, but some people are hardly affected by these symptoms.

The symptoms by which you can recognize the disease are:

Abdominal Pain
Diarrhea
Growing Bad (as a child)
Getting skinny (as a child)
Weight Loss
Bloating
Bloated belly
Flatulence
Stinky thin stools
Constipation
Skin rash
Anemia
Not feeling well
Fatigue

With babies, you can watch to see if they develop symptoms when they eat something with gluten for the first time. In some cases, in fact, this disease is not noticeable until late in life, such as when you change your diet or when you have been pregnant.

Unfortunately, there are also people who are not diagnosed until after the age of ⁶⁰, this is because they mainly suffer from very subtle symptoms such as fatigue. It is also incredibly unfortunate because they have not been able to enjoy the benefits of treatment for much of their lives[3].

To find out if you have celiac disease, tests are often done on stool and blood. In the blood, you will find antibodies to transglutamine.

Causes of celiac disease?

With celiac disease, you have a genetic predisposition that causes your small intestine to become inflamed when you eat gluten. This is an autoimmune reaction of the body that targets the small intestine. As a result, the small intestine cannot absorb foods or absorbs them poorly[4].

In the long term, if left untreated, celiac disease can trigger other autoimmune disorders such as type 1 diabetes, MS (multiple sclerosis), or dermatitis herpetiformis ( itchy skin). In addition, you may also develop anemia, osteoporosis, infertility, and/or miscarriages, be shorter than you should be, and it can even lead to colon cancer if left untreated for your entire life.

This is not even all, the following consequences can also come from a late diagnosis of celiac disease:

Lactose intolerance
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies
Disorders of your nervous system
Pancreas not working properly
Not functioning gallbladder
Neurological problems such as: ataxia, seizures, dementia, migraines, muscular disorders and multifocal leukoencephalopathy.

So doing something about it is definitely important in the long run because your small intestine is just incredibly important for the absorption of nutrients that build your body and keep it healthy.

Treating celiac disease?

Currently, a gluten-free diet is the only treatment available for this genetic disease, but this is difficult for many people. Therefore, treatments that do not require you to change your diet are now being researched.

Because you often still have to eat gluten-free at this time, treatment for the disease has quite an impact on personal life. Eating out, for example, can become an exciting affair, because what do you do if they don't have anything that is gluten-free? Or what if your wallet can barely support the cost of gluten-free food and, as a result, you can no longer afford other things that also cost money?

The result may be that you don't go out as often, for example. That when you do you feel like you are only making things more difficult for the people you are dating. In addition, you may not even be able to enjoy it because you worry that your food still has gluten because waiters hold the plate with gluten over your plate without gluten or that something else went wrong.

Social isolation and feelings of depression caused by the additional worries that can arise from treating celiac disease are therefore a real risk[5].

Dealing with the difference due to celiac disease

When you have celiac disease, this can make you feel like you are different from those around you. Research shows that children with this disease do not suffer from this, but adolescents do. Then when you become an adult you find a kind of acceptance that you have celiac disease, but that you are otherwise the same as other people.

In addition, you might also find yourself envying your friends who don’t have to think about what they eat—especially when you feel strongly that you’re different from them.

Always eating gluten-free can also be difficult at times. With family, this is less difficult than when eating with friends[6]. This is probably also because family deals with this better than friends because they have known you longer, and you may not be so good at finding friends who also accept that they have to take you into account as a celiac patient.

Your likelihood of adhering well to the gluten-free diet has a positive correlation when you interact with other people who have this disease, such as at a support group. In addition, it also helps if you read and understand the labels, can buy enough gluten-free food, have had explanations from a dietician and make regular appointments with them to check how your diet is going now[7].

So you have the behaviors that need to go right with regard to dieting and then the social consequences that you feel because you have this diet and because 99 out of 100 people don't have to deal with this.

How do you handle this?

Using hypnosis can help reinforce healthy behaviors so that you’re strong enough to resist those tasty—but, for you, extremely unhealthy—hamburgers. Hypnosis is very often used to change unhealthy behaviors, such as quitting smoking or, indeed, adopting a healthy diet to lose weight. This healthy diet can also refer to a gluten-free diet to ensure that your small intestine continues to function properly.

Generally, this is done by making sure that you really don't like eating gluten. Hypnosis makes you feel that eating anything with gluten is disastrous and can even make you nauseous. This makes it much easier to avoid products with gluten.

Generally, this is done with a guided visualization and a post-hypnotic suggestion. For example, the visualization helps you feel good about eating foods that do not contain gluten.

Post-hypnotic suggestion affects the very behavior after you have been under hypnosis. Usually the post-hypnotic suggestion is given toward the end of the hypnosis session after the guided visualization. This can be done in the following way:

"You now have absolutely no trouble leaving gluten products. You love eating gluten-free and are proud of the time you put into eating in a healthy way that works for you so you are and stay happy."

This is just one example, depending on your difficulties in maintaining a gluten-free diet, the hypnosis expert may give you a different suggestion.

Do you feel anxious about reading labels carefully at the grocery store? Are you afraid that people will think you’re strange, especially when you’re grocery shopping with a friend and you take much longer than they do because you’re reading the labels? Then hypnosis can also help you overcome that fear.

First, your beliefs about how the world works and how you function within it are explored. For example, why does it bother you that you’re different from your friends? Do your friends mind this, and when is someone a good friend or not? Through these kinds of questions—or even regression therapy if you’re having trouble finding the answers—your beliefs are then brought to light.

You can then use multiple techniques to change these beliefs. Hypnotic suggestions are often used to make helping beliefs stronger and to erase non-helping beliefs in your subconscious.

You often get these kinds of suggestions along on an mp3 to listen to during self-hypnosis, you also practice this with your hypnosis expert first. You may also be given a guided visualization to enhance the effects.

Suggestions may take the following form, for example:

"You may take the time to read labels."

"It is good to ask serving staff about gluten-free options."

"Friends accept you as you are."

"There are more and more gluten-free products coming on the market," said Mr. K.

These are just examples. Depending on your beliefs, the hypnosis expert may give you other suggestions.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and how you can use it to help yourself or others? Then come to a hypnosis workshop or sign up for one of our training programs.

[1] https://www.thuisarts.nl/coeliakie/ik-heb-coeliakie

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673617317968

[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/apt.14490

[4] https://celiac.org/about-celiac-disease/what-is-celiac-disease/

[5] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apt.14942

[6] https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/11293149

[7] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261561404000299