The Link Between Gluten and Modern Disease
by Vin Miller
Gluten sensitivity is estimated to potentially affect nearly half of the population. Although this is a vague estimate, it’s clear that gluten poses a risk to the health of many people and can even cause many of today’s most serious diseases.
Gluten sensitivity and celiac disease result from the inability to completely digest the gluten proteins found in most grain based foods. Unfortunately, celiac disease often takes years to be diagnosed and gluten sensitivity is rarely even diagnosed at all. Because grains are such a significant part of the modern diet, many people who unknowingly don’t digest gluten well are consuming it on a regular basis and are destroying their health and inviting disease in the process.
Gluten’s Role in Modern Disease
Over the coarse of a lifetime, the chronic immune reactions, inflammation, and tissue damage associated with the incomplete digestion of gluten proteins is often the root cause of conditions such as cancer, autoimmune disease, and neurological disease. As such, undiagnosed cases of celiac disease and gluten sensitivity often lead to a significantly compromised life and even premature death. Problems with gluten digestion are also associated with osteoporosis, epilepsy, learning disorders, infertility, miscarriages, liver disease and a wide variety of other conditions. Despite the compelling evidence, gluten sensitivity and celiac disease are rarely considered as possible causes of these problems.
Cancer
Cancer is either rare or non existent in primitive cultures that follow diets consisting of natural and traditional whole foods such as meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables. History shows that the introduction of grain based foods to such cultures is paralleled by an increase in the prevalence of cancer. As obvious as this connection may seem, it’s been ignored for far too long.
While gluten certainly isn’t the cause of all cancer, many terminally ill cancer patients have experienced dramatic improvements from following a gluten free diet. Despite this, many medical professionals are unwilling to embrace this possibility and claim that a gluten free diet will result in nutritional deficiency and be too compromising to a cancer patient’s quality of life. This couldn’t be any further from the truth. The potential damage caused by improperly digested gluten is much more likely to cause nutritional deficiency than the absence of grain based foods, especially when they’re replaced by highly nutritious whole foods such as meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables. Furthermore, the challenges of following a gluten free diet are nothing in comparison to the horrendous side effects of most modern cancer treatments.
Even in good health, we all produce mutated cells that have the potential to become cancerous. However, a strong immune system can regulate and destroy these cells without a problem. It’s when immunity is compromised or inhibited that these cells are more likely to reproduce and cause cancer. Gluten contains opioid mimicking peptides called exorphins that have been found to cause such a state. These peptides can increase the risk of cancer by preventing the immune system’s natural killer cells from detecting and destroying cancerous cells. Exorphins can also facilitate the progression of cancer by increasing insulin production which has the effect of feeding cancer cells and assisting their growth.
Autoimmune Disease
According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 20 million Americans suffer from autoimmune disease and the number is growing. I personally know quite a few people who suffer from autoimmune disease and it saddens me to see such a simple and promising solution to such a debilitating disease be so easily dismissed.
Autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissue. Although there are many forms of autoimmune disease, the most common forms include arthritis, insulin dependent diabetes, thyroid disease, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, lupus, fibromyalgia, and cirrhosis. In many cases, it’s the consistent presence of incompletely digested food molecules in the blood stream that leads to autoimmunity. This is especially the case with gluten because it contains peptides that closely resemble human tissue and provokes the creation of antibodies that attack organs, glands, joints and other important areas of the body.
Instead of considering a gluten free diet as a potential or even partial solution, most conventional treatments are based on potent medications that inhibit the immune system and create additional susceptibility to infection and illness. Although gluten is not always the cause of autoimmune disease, people who suffer from it have a lot to gain and little to lose by trying a gluten free diet.
Osteoporosis
Although it would be easy to assume that gluten sensitivity can influence the development of osteoporosis by interfering with calcium absorption, this isn’t entirely the case. In addition to calcium, other nutrients such as magnesium, boron, zinc, and vitamins A, D, and K are also essential for proper bone development and maintenance. However, the absorption of these nutrients is often impaired by the intestinal damage that’s characteristic of gluten sensitivity and especially celiac disease. The multiple nutrient deficiencies that are likely to result will significantly increase the risk of osteoporosis.
Even without celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, the consumption of grain based foods are still a risk factor for osteoporosis. This is because grains contain a substance called phytic acid that can bind to the important minerals needed for bone maintenance and prevent their absorption. Fortunately, you can eliminate this problem by soaking grains in water to deactivate the phytic acid. Nuts and seeds should be soaked as well.
Brain Disorders
Gluten sensitivity and celiac disease are often associated with autism, memory loss, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and neurotransmitter deficiencies that can lead to depression, anxiety, and irritability. In more extreme cases, gluten sensitivity and celiac disease are also associated with seizures, schizophrenia, impaired ability to walk and talk, and visual and auditory hallucinations. It’s believed that undigested gluten proteins can cause these disorders by affecting blood flow in the brain or by causing irreversible damage to brain tissue.
Another problem with grains is that they’re highly susceptible to mold growth. One of the molds that commonly grows on them is called ergot and happens to be what the hallucinogenic drug LSD is derived from. Although it’s rare for moldy grains to make their way into the foods we eat, the toxins produced by this mold have the potential to cause neurological disorders.
Intestinal Disorders
The intestines are where the problems associated with gluten sensitivity and celiac disease first start. As such, it should be no surprise that gluten is often involved in the cause of various bowel disorders. Gluten has a strong association with irritable bowel syndrome in particular. Approximately 80% of people who suffer from it experience improvement from following a gluten free diet. In addition, research has shown that 60% of people who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome are sensitive to wheat, and that’s only one of the many grains that contain gluten.
In addition to irritable bowel syndrome, the intestinal immune response that’s often provoked by undigested gluten can cause autoimmunity and ultimately lead to Chrohn’s disease. Furthermore, the inflammation and damage associated with this immune response can also cause colitis and increase susceptibility to intestinal infections.
Knowing Your Risk
Based on the wide range of serious diseases and disorders that gluten can cause, the potential risks of eating it should be taken seriously, especially considering how common grain based foods are in the modern diet. If you have a family history of gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, any of the conditions described above, or any other reason to suspect a problem with gluten, it would be a good idea to either follow a gluten free diet or have yourself tested for gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. You can read my previous article about the danger of grains to learn more about the testing options that are available and the basics of a gluten free diet. You can also read Dangerous Grains by James Braly MD and Ron Hoggan MA.
This article is a part of Real Food Wednesdays.
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Hi Vin. I am curious about your feelining towards the other grains. Rice, millet, corn, buckwheat, ect. Do you avoid these in your diet? Thanks.
Vin, another fantastic article in your campaign to educate people about grains and gluten. I was aware of some of these problems with gluten but not all of them. Thanks for sharing this and good luck in helping to solve this problem.
Don – I think whole grains can be a good supplemental source of nutrition if prepared properly (buckwheat technically isn’t a grain but still needs to be prepped), but I think they’re inferior to the basic whole foods such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. As such, I don’t think they should be a significant part of a healthy diet with or without gluten related issues.
Based on the belief that grains weren’t much of a factor in our evolution, I avoid all of them except on rare occasion (as was the case with trying Uno’s gluten free pizza).
I think a more thorough analysis of the nutritional qualities of grains versus more traditional whole foods will be a great topic for a future article!
Stephen – I’m glad you learned something new. Thanks for your support!
So, what would a “good” diet consist of? I assume JUST fruit, veggies and meat? No grain, no dairy? How about potatoes? I am struggling with what DO I eat for meals and snacks? If I don’t eat starch, then the meal just doesn’t seem to satisfy me. Maybe this seems obvious to you, but lately I just feel like I don’t know what to eat. This just seems so hard, and I don’t think it should be!
Hi Pegeen! Grain and dairy have become such a large part of our diet that it’s completely understandable for you to feel this way.
Yes, an ideal diet would “just” consist of meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables. While that sounds extremely restrictive at first, it’s not at all once you realize how many different types of these foods are available to you.
If your meals aren’t satisfying you, adding more protein and/ or fat should help. High purine sources of meat, which are likely to also contain fat, such as grass fed beef or lamb or free range dark meat chicken with the skin are excellent choices. Game meats such as buffalo or venison are especially high in purine.
In addition, two excellent sources of high quality fat include coconut oil or ghee. You can even use butter since it doesn’t contain the casein or lactose from dairy that usually cause problems.
If you still feel that you need to increase your starches, you can get plenty from vegetables and fruit. Yes, potatoes are fine as long as you don’t feel that they affect your blood sugar. I suggest sweet potatoes over white potatoes because they’re more nutritious. Squash, zucchini, carrots, green beans, and peas are a few other vegetable sources of starch.
Any leftover portions from your meals can be used as snacks. Properly prepared raw nuts and nut butters, beef or turkey jerky, and fruits and vegetables that are easy to carry around such as apples, bananas, baby carrots, etc. are all excellent snacks as well. If you snack on fruit, it’s usually a good idea to have some protein and/or fat with it to balance the carbohydrates. For example, you can have apple slices dipped in a nut butter.
Here are two excellent books that contain a wealth of nutritional knowledge as well as recipes that should give you plenty of meal ideas.
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
The Garden of Eating by Rachel Albert-Matesz & Don Matesz
Finally, the line between eating grains and dairy and avoiding them completely doesn’t always have to be so strict. As long as you’re confident that you don’t have a sensitivity to either, then you should be able to do well with moderate amounts of them in your diet. It’s far better to follow a diet that consists mostly of meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables with some grain and dairy than to frustrate yourself with a completely grain and dairy free diet and end up going back to unhealthy eating habits. However, considering that grain and dairy are the two most common causes of food sensitivities, I think it’s safer to avoid them if you can manage. If you choose not to, organic whole grains that are soaked and sprouted and raw (unpasteurized) whole fat dairy are the best choices.
You are awesome! Thanks for your patience and advice.