Meniere’s Disease « DogtorJ.com :: Food Intolerance in Pets & Their People

Meniere’s Disease

I just received this Email and thought I would share it with you. This is a great example of how something so specific (and devastating) with an “unknown etiology” can respond dramatically to the elimination diet. I know that it is hard for the novice to this concept to believe or understand, but once we fully grasp the cascade of events that follows the damage to the duodenal villi, we can see how all roads DO lead to Rome.

Here’s the Email. Can you feel her passion?

Hello, Dr. Dogtor: I was diagnosed with Lupus 15 yrs ago. Since then I have also developed fibromyalgia. About 5 yrs ago, I suffered a terrifying but brief attack of vertigo. The vertigo episodes become more frequent to the point that I was thinking that would have to give up working and driving. I went to the Ear Institute specialist at the University of Miami and was diagnosed with atypical Meniere’s Disease which was attributed this to my lupus. Basically no viable treatment or hope was offered. Just live with it and hope it doesn’t come to requiring Cochlear Implants.

Frankly I just couldn’t accept that I would have to go through life in fear of this disabling condition. I hit the internet searching for information and ran across a man’s site where he had the same symptoms as me. Thank goodness for this man and his website! Through the course of visiting various doctors, one thought he may have allergies and sent him to a food allergist. Bingo, he was gluten intolerant. A diet free of gluten resolved the vertigo. Desperate, I tried the diet. Bingo, 24 hours of gluten free and symptoms of daily vertigo and constant dizzy subsided. I am basically a gluten addict, like so many people. When I slip on the diet, I pay the price with vertigo. I did take a test to confirm gluten sensitivity.

My purpose in writing you is just to hope that those researching gluten sensitivity will start to look into, and even mention on their WebPages that gluten can cause some other very “obscure” symptoms such as vertigo. It is a frightening thing to be told you have Meniere’s. How many people are suffering with this, and just don’t know that the bread they are eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner is the culprit.

This info needs to get on to the WebPages so that people like myself don’t have to face a lifetime of disability. With Meniere’s the worse case scenario is having to have your Cochlear removed! I hate to think of anyone with undiagnosed gluten sensitivity having cochlear implant surgery needlessly.

Elizabeth