Gluten is it good or bad?
Gluten-free diets have become increasingly popular over the last couple of years, so much so that if you walk into any supermarket especially in New York you will notice they now carry more than a handful of options. Though more people are becoming aware of gluten-related disorders such as celiac disease the majority of people are unaware of how gluten impacts their health and is a major contributor to chronic disease.
WHAT IS GLUTEN?
Gluten is a family of storage proteins that are called prolamins that can be found in certain grains, such as wheat, barley, and rye. Many prolamins fall under the gluten umbrella. However the correct way to identify them is by the specific grains in which they’re found. For instance, glutenins and gliadins are the prolamins in wheat, secalins are found in rye, and hordeins are found in barley.
WHY DOES GLUTEN GET SUCH A BAD WRAP?
It is because gluten is a highly inflammatory substance that triggers increased intestinal permeability not just in a few people but in EVERYONE. What does this mean?
To illustrate, it means that the first line of defense, the wall that surrounds and fortify your city, that of your body’s internal environment becomes breached. This allows marauders, hooligans and criminals such as gluten, to have free rein. Even though many crimes go unreported in major cities, the effect is still damaging to the fabric of society, just like gluten is to the body.
Similarly you might be unaware of the crime which is happening in your body and the immunologic response to gluten. However, recent research shows how devastating the effects can be to your immune system when gluten stimulates the production of a protein called zonulin which increases gut permeability and blood-brain barrier permeability.
Should you be worried?
Not necessarily. Because, just like how in modern society they have many government agencies to deal with crime, fire and immigration, your body has many mechanisms to deal with disruptors to its environment.
However, there is a caveat, if these systems become overwhelmed.
How so? The danger is that to keep up with the overload your immune system starts to shoot first and ask questions later by producing antibodies against gluten. This leads to a person now having a gluten sensitivity.
Gluten sensitivity exists on a spectrum. At one end is Celiac Disease which is an autoimmune reaction to gluten where the intestines are damaged, this affects 1 out of 133 people in the United States and globally 1.4 percent of the population. A much greater number of people have what is called non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) which may or may not cause intestinal damage or symptoms. Symptoms can vary depending on each person’s individual weak links. Therefore, it can manifest as neurological disease in one person and Hashimoto’s disease that affect the thyroid gland in another.
A review paper in The New England Journal of Medicine listed 55 “diseases” that can be caused by eating gluten, including osteoporosis, inflammatory bowel disease, canker sores, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and most autoimmune diseases, as well as many psychiatric and neurological diseases such as anxiety, depression, dementia, schizophrenia, migraines, and neuropathy.
What can you do If you think you have Gluten Sensitivity or celiac disease? Stay tuned because and I am going to release some more information on this shortly.
References
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/gluten/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29202198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5105039/