Hi, my 5-year-old, diagnosed in March 2016, has been complaining of stomach ache immediately after she eats. I am also noticing that her blood sugar levels are staying in the low range; also, she drops to 60s and 50s within an hour of eating. Other than that she passes a lot of gas and passing stool sometimes 2-3 times a day. In addition, she has also had two bouts of diarrhea post diagnosis. I am wondering what is going on? Does these symptoms sound like celiac/gluten sensitivity. I tried to avoid gluten all day in her meals today. She hasn’t complained of stomach ache, but, her sugar levels did drop within an hour post lunch.
Note: We got her Vitamin D levels tested yesterday and it came out to be very low - 16 as against the normal range of 75.
Does she go high later? I am aksing to see if there seems to be some sort of slowed digestion or if it is a matter of insulin dosing.
Celiac is certainly possible with diabetes, and not uncommon. IT can cause gastric and other symptoms. Just stopping gluten for 1 day will not be long enough to tell. If she does have celiac the damage will take months to fully repair (while completely off gluten).
Many will recommend that she should be tested for celiac before taking her off gluten. With my then 2 1/2 yo, I took her off gluten before testing becasue the benefits were so clear and obvious and I wasn’t going to put her under anaesthesia to test. She did test negative on the blood tests, but there is a high rate of false negative results, so this doesn’t rule out celiac. Her symptoms were quite severe; daily vomitting, abdominal pain, blood in feces, failure to thrive. We did elimintion diet and gluten was very clear cause (along with some other foods, all of which we’ve successfully introduced after a nubmer of years - except for gluten. She is now 7 1/2 and thriving).
So you need to decide if you do formal testing, or not. Recommend at least the blood tests (though keeping in mind that false negative is fairly common). If you do decide to stop gluten you should give it a good trial for at least a month to observe if it helps. Also you may wish to stop dairy at the same time (for now). Celiac damages the part of the gut that absorbs dairy as well. My daughter had no dairy for about 1 year, after which we reintroduced dairy but not gluten.
Low vitamin D is also commonly seen with autoimmune conditions. She will need to be supplemented (as well as trying to get regular and reasonable sun exposure). The correct supplement is vitamin D3, given daily. It is available at health food shops, but levels should continue to be monitored by your Dr.
Thank you! Sometimes she does spike after around 2-3 hours of eating and sometimes she does not. It is really confusing! And, I would definitely like to get her tested for gluten tolerance before eliminating it from her diet. Have booked an appointment with her endo on Nov 09. Let’s see how it goes.
Other food sensitivities may also come into play (such as lactose intolerance). It might be good to talk with your doctor about this, there are a range of tests that can help identify not only Celiac but other allergic or autoimmune reactions. And since most of us don’t get a lot of sun, vitamin D often comes from diet. And if your digestions isn’t working right, you may not digest vitamin D as it is fat soluble and fat may not digest well with some of these conditions.
We have recently added wheat bran to the flour we consume on a daily basis. I am suspecting that too. Meeting my doc more; hopefully, he can help diagnose the problem.
If I overlooked any details, I apologize in advance. You didn’t say much about the specifics of her diagnosis or the medications she is using, so there are some unknowns. Does she use metformin? That can have digestive side effects just like those you describe.
Vitamin D deficiency is common throughout the world and especially in the developed world. In the US, the usual estimates are that somewhere around 80% of the population is deficient to some degree. And that’s everyone, not just people with diabetes. Vitamin D is a vitamin that seems to affect almost everything, and definitely carbohydrate metabolism. So it’s important to get it into a good range. I have to take 10,000 units a day just to stay near the bottom of the reference range.
Are you sure you didn’t mean 1,000 International Units of Vitamin D daily?
50,000 International Units of Vitamin D3 once weekly for 8 weeks, followed by a maintenance dose of 1,000 to 5,000 I.U. daily is pretty standard treatment. I’ve never heard of anyone needing 10,000 I.U. daily… Are you taking Vitamin D3? Because taking Vitamin D2 can (paradoxically) lower Vitamin D levels.
Yes, it means what it says. 10,000 IU D3 daily and I am just barely within the reference range. Like most things that actually work, this was arrived at empirically. Started with 1000 which had virtually no effect. 2000 was just barely noticeable. 5000 made a visible difference but not nearly enough. 10,000 works as described.
I took 10,000 IUs/day for nine months before I was able to restore normal levels. Vitamin D is stored in fat, so it can take some time to reach equilibrium. Over the years I’ve been able to reduce my supplementation and am now able to maintain on 4,000 IUs/day.
@rgcainmd - for what it’s worth, my doc (who I just returned from seeing) agrees with you that 10,000 is really a lot. But . . . what works, works. Even though I am just barely in range, he doesn’t want to go any higher because of the risk of Vitamin D toxicity. He’s right, of course.
