Updated September 03, 2013.
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In theory, you should be able to treat gluten ataxia problems with your gait, muscles and extremities due to an immune system reaction to the protein gluten by eliminating gluten from your diet.
Research that's been done on gluten ataxia (mainly by Dr. Marios Hadjivassiliou, a consultant neurologist at Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, England who first researched the concept of gluten ataxia) indicates that this may be true you potentially can stop the damage to your neurological system by following a strict gluten-free diet.
However, at least one other study performed on patients with suspected gluten ataxia doesn't back this up it didn't find statistically significant improvements in ataxia symptoms in patients following a gluten-free diet (although the data trended in that direction).
Dr. Hadjivassiliou's theory is that the diet needs to be very strict in order to have a positive effect on these neurological complications. That involves removing as much trace gluten as possible as well as the obvious gluten-containing foods.
This theory that you need to rid your diet entirely of gluten, even the trace gluten commonly found in gluten-free-labeled foods is backed up by anecdotal reports of people with gluten ataxia and other neurological conditions. These gluten-related neurological symptoms seem to take much longer than gastrointestinal symptoms to improve, and only seem to get better on a diet that's free of trace gluten.
However, there's no medical research as of yet to back up this theory, and so not all physicians buy into the concept of using a gluten-free diet to treat ataxia.
Gluten ataxia is characterized by actual brain damage that results in problems with your gait, limbs and eyes. The damage is progressive, and signs of the disorder usually become apparent in your mid-50s, according to a consensus document published in 2012 published in BMC Medicine.
Symptoms include unsteadiness on your feet, clumsiness and problems walking, changes in speech and difficulty swallowing. Diagnosis is tricky, since there's no accepted medical test for gluten ataxia.
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