All,
My wife came across this interesting article. Thought i would share with everyone. This definitely makes my earlier quest on Gluten free diet encouraging.
http://www.healthnowmedical.com/blog/2012/08/24/is-gluten-damaging-your-liver/
This is a very late response, but I just saw the discussion post. My mom had PSC for 20 years, and when she turned 70, it became acute. Her doctor at Stanford told her she had maybe 2-3 more years to live as her values were so high, and not coming down well at all.
Another doctor told me about the studies in Europe (10 in all) and gave me a copy of the magazine that had this article mentioned in this post. We went to lectures by a panel of doctors from UC Davis and found that even they were starting to talk about the relationship between gluten and PSC. Her primary care physician felt that the gluten relationship to some diseases was going to be the biggest breakthrough in the next 10 years.
Both she and I changed our lives completely and became gluten free. It involved a lot of research on the "hidden" glutens in food, switching to gluten free shampoo, conditioner, make up and medicine! It was a pain to do. HOWEVER, my mom lived another 8 years longer than they said that she would. In fact, she did NOT die from PSC, but from a fall. Her liver values were high, but stable at the time she passed. Her gastro Dr. believes that it was from changing to a completely gluten free lifestyle and reducing sodium to 1200 mgs. a day or less.
I always knew if she cheated on the gluten, because the encephalopathy would kick in as a direct result of eating gluten and take a day or two to fade. Lactulose to the rescue!
I highly encourage anyone with PSC to check out that magazine on their own and to look up some of the European studies. My mom passed at age 78 and lived a long, full life. I believe she got to stay with us so long was because of the GF diet. She was also given Milk Thistle by Jarrow, by the doctor at Stanford. The dose of Milk Thistle she received was definitely more than what was listed on the pill bottle.
I hope that you switch to a GF lifestyle and that it is an easy switch!
Jill
1 Like
Thanks Jill.