Untreated Celiac Disease: A Potential Factor in Miscarriages and Pregnancy Challenges

Written By:

Tamara Quinn

Co-Founder of Pulling Down the Moon, Reg. Yoga Teacher,

Yoga Swami

Reviewed for Accuracy By:

Sadie Wells

Registered Dietician and Fertility Nutritionist

The phrase “going with your gut” takes on increased significance when we discuss how gut health impacts fertility and pregnancy outcomes for women with celiac disease. Over the past few years, science has been uncovering how the gut is literally your “second brain”. It’s an integral part of your immune system and affects how you feel and think every day. Gut health is also one incredibly vital component of initiating and carrying out a healthy pregnancy. Against that backdrop, celiac and pregnancy can be at odds with each other. This is why women with celiac disease may experience extra challenges becoming pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to full term. The good news is that pursuing a tailored fertility nutrition plan and holistic fertility wellness care can increase the odds of success for women who may need to go gluten-free (GF).

How Does Celiac Disease Affect Pregnancy?

Gluten, a protein found in foods containing wheat, rye, and barley, triggers an inflammatory autoimmune reaction in the digestive systems of people with celiac disease. Eating anything with gluten can severely aggravate the small intestine’s lining, causing gastrointestinal distress symptoms like stomach cramps, gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, unintended weight loss, and anemia.¹

Once gluten arrives in the celiac digestive system, antibodies attack the offending gluten and the small intestine itself. During this autoimmune attack, the body damages its own villi—the little finger-like structures that absorb and send nutrients into the bloodstream. Since your body thinks it’s under attack, it painfully flushes all those potential nutrients right out of your system.

As a consequence, your body can’t access or absorb the nutrients it needs to remain healthy, which can negatively impact your ability to become pregnant or sustain a viable pregnancy. Researchers started noticing this link between infertility, pregnancy complications, and celiac disease at least three decades ago.²

Fortunately, the same studies revealed that women who addressed celiac disease with a strict gluten-free diet and additional nutritional programs for fertility were often able to successfully improve their chances of getting pregnant and lower their miscarriage rates.

In the years since researchers established a link between celiac and pregnancy complications, even more research has established strong links between nutrition and fertility rates for both women and men.³ Nutritional deficiencies, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other food sensitivities to peanuts, soy, dairy, eggs, etc. seem to play a similar role in some individuals to the way gluten impacts fertility for those with celiac disease. So, during your efforts to become pregnant or maintain a healthy pregnancy, it makes sense to explore food sensitivities.

Pregnancy Complications in Unmanaged Celiac Disease

If undiagnosed celiac disease prevents your body from absorbing urgently needed nutrients, the celiac and pregnancy combination also halts your body’s ability to deliver nutrients to a growing baby. Your body needs a healthy dose of the right nutrients to grow an entirely new human being while still maintaining your own health and well-being. Babies in utero need good nutrition for healthy development. If your digestive system can’t provide the nutrients both of you need, essential pregnancy functions can become stymied, and the risk of pregnancy complications increases. In fact, multiple studies have linked untreated celiac disease with a miscarriage rate of twice that of women without celiac disease, or with treated celiac disease.⁴‌ Some of these pregnancy complications include:

1. Risk of c-section
2. Low birth weight
3. Miscarriage
4. Still Birth

Before continuing with details surrounding celiac and pregnancy complications, we want to take a moment to let you breathe. If you are struggling with the grief of losing a pregnancy, it’s important to understand that you are not alone. As raw and agonizing as this can feel, it’s important to hold on to hope. We have gathered a whole community here at Pulling Down the Moon of families undergoing the same kind of grief journey. Please reach out to our miscarriage and pregnancy loss support team to connect with people who are uniquely able to understand and support you in your healing process and help you move forward through infertility and pregnancy loss and toward brighter days.

Most Problems Occur in Undiagnosed Women