Addicted to bread and milk?
How gluten and dairy fragments can affect your child’s behaviour, and how we check for them.
If your child lives on toast, crackers, milk and cheese, and the meltdowns, sensory overload and broken sleep just keep coming, this guide is for you. It explains what happens when gluten and dairy aren’t fully digested, and how we work out whether it’s part of your child’s picture.
Where should we send it?
Two pages, free.
- The patterns that make us look further
- The tests to ask your GP for
- How these foods come back in
Inside the guide
Two pages. The mechanism on one, what to do about it on the other.
What is going on
- What gliadorphin and casomorphin are, and how they act on the brain
- The three steps from plate to brain, including the enzyme DPP-IV and the gut lining
- The behaviour, sleep and gut patterns that make us look further
- Why a coeliac screen comes first, and which tests to ask your GP for
What to do about it
- The urine peptide test, when it is useful and how to prepare
- What the research says, both supportive and mixed
- How we bring gluten and dairy back in
- The four steps: test, trial, heal, reintroduce
He will eat toast and cheese, and almost nothing else.
When gluten and dairy are not fully digested, they can leave short protein fragments called peptides. Gliadorphin comes from gluten. Casomorphin comes from casein, the main protein in dairy. Both can attach to opioid receptors, the docking sites in the brain and gut that respond to morphine and to the body’s own feel-good chemicals.
Three things decide whether that happens. DPP-IV, an enzyme on the gut lining that snips these fragments into harmless pieces. The gut lining itself, which decides how much gets through to the blood. And what the fragments do once they are absorbed.
The guide walks through all three, and sets out the behaviour, sleep, sensory and gut patterns we see alongside raised peptides. Many of these children have few or no tummy symptoms at all, which is part of why it gets missed.
Before you take gluten out
Ask your GP for a coeliac screen while your child is still eating gluten. Tissue transglutaminase IgA with total IgA, plus deamidated gliadin peptide IgG if IgA is low or your child is under two.
The screen only works while gluten is still in the diet, so taking it out first means either putting it back for weeks or going without the answer. Coeliac disease needs lifelong strict avoidance and is managed differently, which is why it is worth ruling in or out at the start.
The guide names the tests so you can take the list with you.
Out for now, back in for good
When a gluten or dairy free trial helps, it is tempting to keep those foods out forever. We treat it as the start of the work rather than the end of it.
These fragments build up when digestion and the gut lining need support. So while gluten and dairy are out, we work on the reasons they were not being handled well: digestive enzymes including DPP-IV, repairing the gut lining, and rebuilding the microbiome. Then the foods come back one at a time, as soon as the gut is ready, watching for any reaction.
This is also why it is worth doing with a practitioner. Children’s diets are often narrow already, and calcium, iodine, protein and fibre need a plan when foods come out.
Why this one is personal for us
Kelly’s son was a toddler who lived on toast, crackers and pasta. He melted down every day, could not cope with noise or clothes, and barely slept. Six weeks after gluten came out, he was a different child.
Supporting his gut is how gluten went back in, and he eats bread again today.
Every child is different and the research here is still emerging, so we test, trial carefully and focus on the gut rather than assuming. The guide sets out what the trials actually show, including the parts where results are mixed.
Send me the guide
Free, two pages.
General information for parents and carers, and not individual advice. It does not replace assessment, diagnosis or treatment by your own practitioner. Please ask your GP for a coeliac screen before removing gluten, and do not change your child’s diet without support, since calcium, iodine, protein and fibre need a plan when foods come out. © The Family Naturopath, The KAN Clinic.