For CFS symptoms, I hope it becomes standard practice by all physicians screen for Celiac.

I developed CFS-type symptoms when I became ill with EBV mono – I was never the same in terms of energy levels, mood, and even clarity of thought. Years later, when I developed the severe GI symptoms accociated with more progressed Celiac Disease, I was tested and diagnosed. In my case, the stress on my body from EBV probably triggered the disease almost a decade before I was finally diagnosed. I would love to see others get faster treatment though better screening and diagnosis. Celiac Disease might not be everyone’s silver bullet diagnosis, but it’s definitley worth checking, as diagnosis and treatment could change (or save!) the life of those struggling with its vague but debilitating symptoms.

Here’s one more alternate perspective: All modern humans by definition are susceptible to breathing problems at while sleeping due to our unique upper airway anatomy. Because of our ability to have complex speech and language, our upper airway is unprotected. Due to the location of our voice box below the tongue (rather than behind the tongue), the tongue can fall back easily into the oropharynx.

Dr. Weston Price, in his classic book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, showed that modern human’s jaws are much more narrow with dental crowding. This is thought to be due to a major change in our diets to processed foods and malnutrition. There’s also a pretty convincing theory that bottle-feeding (another modern, Western invention) can also cause malocclusion and dental crowding.

By definition, this constricts the upper airway even more. In everyone, the tongue falls back to some degree due to gravity, but when the jaw is smaller, it takes up relatively more space and the tongue can obstruct breathing when in deeper levels of sleep due to muscle relaxation. This can cause various degrees micro-obstruction and arousals, preventing you from staying in deep sleep. These obstructions are not long enough to be classified as an apnea, since you need to stop breathing for more than 10 seconds for this definition. In theory, you can stop breathing 20 times every hour and still have an apnea-hypopnea index of 0.

Ultimately, these multiple obstructions and arousals causes a physiologic stress response that can lead to a relative sympathetic hyperactivity, with resulting lowering of one’s thyroid and reproductive hormone function, weight gain, lowering of your pain thresholds, microscopic stokes and clotting anywhere in the body (even in the brain), amongst many others.

Annabelle

Reference:
Lentz, M. J., Landis, C. A., Rothermel, J., & Shaver, J. F. L. (1999). Effects of selective slow-wave sleep stage disruption on musculoskeletal pain and fatigue in middle-aged women. The Journal of Rheumatology, 26, 1586-1592.