Living Without article: Gluten sensitivity increasing

[patc73]

I thought this was an interesting online article, from the "Living Without" website:


More of Us Are Getting Celiac Disease. Why?
Posted by Living Without editor Alicia Woodward at 02:26PM in blog - Comments: (1)

August 31, 2011

It’s documented by recent studies that the number of people in the United States with celiac disease has increased notably since the 1950s. This increase is way beyond what can be explained by heightened awareness and better screening tools. Interestingly, it tracks the upward trend in prevalence rates of other autoimmune conditions, such as diabetes and food allergies, as well as childhood disorders like asthma, autism and ADHD.

What’s going on?

Researchers are delving into the problem and experts speculate on multi-factored causes, likely a mysterious combination of environment and genetics.

Theories behind environmental contributors include the “hygiene hypothesis” (industrialized society has become so sanitized that it’s prompting our immune systems to misfire), as well as multiple chemical toxins, timing of gluten introduction in infancy and even the dropping rates of breastfeeding.

I interviewed celiac expert and researcher Alessio Fasano, MD, director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland, about this and other issues related to gluten sensitivity (non-celiac gluten intolerance), a couple months ago. Here’s a snippet of that conversation [click here for the full interview]:

Up to 20 million Americans may have gluten sensitivity. That’s in addition to 3 million who have celiac disease and 400,000 to 600,000 with wheat allergy. Humans have consumed wheat as a staple for generations. What’s going on?

Dr. Fasano: Although we’ve been eating wheat for thousands of years, we are not engineered to digest gluten. We are able to completely digest every protein we put in our mouth with the exception of one—and that’s gluten. Gluten is a weird protein. We don’t have the enzymes to dismantle it completely, leaving undigested peptides that can be harmful. The immune system may perceive them as an enemy and mount an immune response.

It seems like we’re seeing an explosion of gluten-related health problems.

Dr. Fasano: Two components are coming together to create this perfect storm. First, the grains we’re eating have changed dramatically. In our great-grandparents era, wheat contained very low amounts of gluten and it was harvested once a year. Now we’ve engineered our grain to substantially increase yields and contain characteristics, like more elasticity, that we like. We’re susceptible to the consequences of these extremely rich, gluten-containing grains. Second, and this applies to the prevalence of celiac disease that’s increased 4-fold in the last 40 years, is the upward trend we’re seeing in all autoimmune diseases. We’re changing our environment faster than our bodies can adapt to it.

Dr. Fasano elaborated on these thoughts in the keynote address he delivered at the Celiac Disease Foundation’s annual conference on May 14th. I’ve excerpted some of his comments:

“….Perhaps the most important aspect [as to why certain people suddenly develop celiac disease in their senior years] is the change of that “parallel civilization” that lives with us for our entire life, i.e., the bugs that live in our guts.… The composition of that village was changed and [these patients] switched from [gluten] tolerance to the immune response. At the Center for Celiac Research in Maryland, we are really looking into this aspect of the story to see if, indeed, this is true.” (CDF Newsletter, Summer 2011)

Could it be as simple (and complex) as unbalanced pathogenic gut flora? Maybe it comes down, at least in part, to our multi-generational overuse of antibiotics combined with our national bad eating habits and their effect on the bacterial balance in our guts. Maybe the future of celiac research includes examining how to foster the healthiest possible environment for growing and maintaining the most vibrant village of good microbes and bacteria in our intestines.

Hurray for probiotics? Just a thought. What do you think?

Comments (1)

I believe that people completely underestimate or are unaware of the huge changes in our food supply that have taken place within the last 50 years. Farming practices have dramatically altered. Food genetics have been manipulated for highest profitability not highest nutrition or food safety. Food imports have changed food manufacturing practices world-wide.

Food supplement companies and pharmaceuticals source materials world-wide with minimal quality control. Food chemistry has maximized utilization of every aspect of gluten grains to the point where it is nearly impossible to limit exposure to glutens. Glutens are in processed foods, medications, supplements, packaging, clothes, cleaning supplies. Since exposure plays a significant role in triggering immune reactions it's not surprising that there has been a big upswing in numbers of affected individuals at earlier and earlier ages. Older people have had at least had some years of lower exposure. Today's children have never lived in a world where gluten wasn't in practically every food they might eat.

It's popular to blame 'bad eating habits' for a host of illnesses. However, I believe that the huge rise in numbers of celiacs, gluten intolerance cases, ADHD and other autoimmune disorders has more to do the the fundamental changes in the food supply. I never had 'bad eating habits' yet I became gluten intolerant as a senior. Why? Because if you have the genes and gluten exposure is unavoidable, then eventually the intolerance will be triggered.

I think that the percentage of people who carry the genes for celiac/gluten intolerance has remained about 30% of the population. Consequently the 4 fold increase in the last 40 years is most likely due to an increase in exposure. The increase also coincides with the rise in use of genetically modified grains in the 1970's, the big changes in farming and food industry. It's not a matter of 'bad eating habit's if the food that is available to us is making us sick.

Posted by: Jean S | September 1, 2011 11:14 AM Report this comment

[tex]

Hi Pat,

The article is interesting, but it contains some major errors, and it's obviously written by someone trying to find someone else to blame, for her own diet "misfortune".

The increase also coincides with the rise in use of genetically modified grains in the 1970's, the big changes in farming and food industry. It's not a matter of 'bad eating habit's if the food that is available to us is making us sick.

Well, she's probably correct that the food we're eating is what is making us sick, but it's not because the raw commodities have changed significantly - it's because of differences in the way they are processed, and the way we eat them, and it probably has a lot to do with all the unnecessary additives that are used in processed foods today. Articles such as that are a prime example of how false rumors get started. "Genetically modified grains in the 1970's"? That's news to me, and I've been farming since the late 1950's. No one in production agriculture had even heard of "genetically modified grains" until sometime in the latter 1990's, let alone had any modified seed available to plant. Monsanto scientists might have been experimenting with the concept, but there was no commercial seed available for sale. Where do writers get such BS?

Unless she can prove that she has been eating a home-made, cooked-from-scratch diet similar to what her great-grandparents ate, rather than the conventional highly-processed western diet that she has almost surely been eating, her claim that, "I never had 'bad eating habits'", are just wishful thinking, and her bad eating habits are very likely the reason why she developed celiac disease as a senior. She ate gluten all her life. Period. That's a bad eating habit for anyone who has a celiac gene, or any other gluten-sensitive gene, for that matter. Why try to blame agriculture, or the food industry, or anyone else? She's the one who chose to eat a gluten-rich diet - no one held a gun to her head.

My thoughts on the original research-based article that she was commenting on, are in the thread at the following link, that I posted a week ago:

http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14470

Everyone wants to blame the "system". Everyone wants to blame anyone except themselves. That's the American way - it's why our justice system is always jammed with lawsuits trying to transfer legal responsibility to anyone with enough money to make them a prime target for a frivolous lawsuit.

Hey - as far as I'm concerned, the reason why I was so sick for so many years, and I ended up with so much permanent damage, was because of my own stupidity - I didn't bother to learn about the dangers of gluten, until it was too late. Sure, the medical community, and our governments have repeatedly dropped the ball, by failing to discover the problem, and by failing to warn us about the risks, but ultimately, it's our own fault, because as we have all discovered, after we developed a disease that the medical community hasn't been very successful at treating - ultimately, our health is our own responsibility, and we now realize that we should never have trusted it to anyone else, let alone the government.

At least, that's the way I see it.

Tex

[patc73]

Tex, thanks for clarifying the claims about whether our grain has changed or not...I didn't think so. Most of the incorrect comments were in the "reply" part after the article, by "Jean S.", who obviously was misinformed. This is why newbies like me get so confused; doctors know practically nothing about MC and some of the online info is incorrect. But we have this forum and those of us who have lived with the disease for a long time can help cut through the "crap"!

[tex]

Oops! I missed the fact that most of the worst errors were in responses, and not in the article itself. Sorry about that. That's why it's usually best to post a link to an article, rather than to quote more than just a little part of the article. People like me are likely to assume that whatever is quoted is from the article, and now that I look at it more carefully, I see that wasn't the case.

Oh well - as Rosanne Rosannadanna used to always say, when she made a bad boo boo, "Never mind!".

Thanks for the clarification.

Tex

[KYKatie]

I absolutely loved Gilda Radner and all her SNL characters. But Tex, you're thinking of Emily Litella who would talk at length about something that had nothing to do with the word she was using, then would say "Never mind." (My favorite was euthanasia; she didn't understand what all the fuss was about the youth in Asia; what about the youth in Europe or the US or Russia?) Rosanne Rosana Dana said "It's always something; if it's not one thing, it's another."

Yes.......I spent way too much time watching SNL back in the day when it was at its best!

[tex]

Hmmmmm. You're right of course. For some reason or other, my memory of Emily Litella is very weak, so I apparently just associated both phrases with the Rosanne character. I hope that's not a sign that my Alzheimer's is gettin' worse.

Thanks for pointing that out. And as Emily Litella used to always say, "Never mind!"

Tex