Can stress help to triggerceliac disease? Over the years, many people who have been diagnosed with celiac have reported their diagnoses closely followed stressful life events, including pregnancy. Although the jury is still out, one study indicates they may be right.
Previous research has identified a tentative link between stressful life events and the onset of some autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis (but not celiac disease, which also isautoimmunein nature).
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What Does the Research Show?
In theory, a stressful life event (such as a divorce or even a pregnancy) could relate to a new diagnosis of celiac disease in different ways:
The most definitive study, conducted in Italy and published in 2013 in the medical journalNutrients, sought to see if stress might also contribute to the development of the celiac disease.
The researchers compared stressful events in the lives of 186 adults with newly diagnosed celiac disease to stressful events in a control group made up of adults with a diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), which is not an autoimmune condition.
The researchers in this study used a standardized questionnaire to determine “life events” — including changes in employment, education, relationships, financial status, health status, and living spaces, deaths in close relatives, criminal accusations and convictions, family and social problems and marital problems—in the last year prior to diagnosis for study participants.
They also assessed participants' gastrointestinal symptoms.
Life Events Associated With Celiac Diagnosis
The researchers found that those with celiac disease were statistically more likely to have experienced one of these “life events” in the year prior to diagnosis when compared to those in the GERD control group.This effect was even stronger when the researchers limited their analysis to those who began experiencingceliac disease symptomsonly in the year prior to diagnosis — in other words, when their symptoms appeared in the same time frame as the stressful life event.
The data analysis also identified pregnancy as a potential “life event” that precipitates celiac disease. This reinforces what many women already believe: that pregnancy can trigger celiac disease.
In addition, the study noted that more than 20% of the celiac women who reported a pregnancy said their pregnancies were stressful, while none of the women with GERD reported a stressful pregnancy.
“It is possible that celiac women could have perceived their pregnancy as a negative event more frequently than women with the control disease [GERD] because of the metabolic imbalance associated with malabsorption,” the authors wrote. However, they re-analyzed the data in an attempt to exclude problems in pregnancy, and found that “celiac women still remained more sensitive to psychosocial stressors.”
A Word From Verywell
The study supports a need for psychological support in people newly diagnosed with celiac disease, particularly in women, the authors said.
However, there’s been comparatively little research on so-called “triggers” for celiac disease, and so more research would be needed to definitively name stress as a trigger for the condition.
Instead of stress causing celiac disease, a person with a stressful life event may see a healthcare provider for pre-existing symptoms and lead to a diagnosis. For example, a pregnant person visiting for prenatal care may report symptoms that lead to a diagnosis of celiac disease.
Still, there are good reasons to avoid stress in your life that go well beyond trying to avoid celiac disease. Medical research shows that reducing stress may also reduce many of the risk factors for chronic disease (such diseases as heart disease and cancer). Stress also can impact your brain in several different ways.
To combat this, consider building stress reduction into your daily routine. Medical research may not know yet whether stress reduction can help you steer clear of celiac disease, but it may well help you in other ways.
2 Sources
Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Ciacci C, Siniscalchi M, Bucci C, Zingone F, Morra I, Iovino P.Life events and the onset of celiac disease from a patient’s perspective.Nutrients. 2013;5(9):3388-98. doi:10.3390/nu5093388
Ciacci C et al.Life Events and the Onset of Celiac Disease from a Patient’s Perspective.Nutrients.2013 Aug 28;5(9):3388-98.
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