What are your thought's on Gluten?

My friend Dhru Purohit just posted this, thought I'd share here. Dhru is Partenred with Dr. Mark Hyman MD and former co-founder with the CLEAN program with Dr. Alejandro Junger MD.

Personally I feel a LOT better off Gluten. And I've heard from friends who live overseas that the Gluten there is different than what is here in America. A friend who is highly sensitive to Gluten here in California thrived on the Gluten in Italy. Interesting. As I grew up in NY, with NY Pizza as a staple to my diet, I'll sometimes cheat, but usually I stay away and it seems to be working.

How about you, what's your take on Gluten?

From Dhru:
I overheard a well meaning friend of mine (that just happens to be a doctor) tell a mutual friend of ours that, "Unless you have celiac, there's no reason to avoid gluten."

Non-celiac wheat sensitivity (NCWS) is real and the science is catching up with what millions of people who are noticing in their n-of-1 personal trials.

Here's one of the very promising study recently published by Columbia Medicine. Summarized from Chris Kresser L.Ac's blog:

"In a recent study, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center sought to obtain objective evidence to determine if NCWS is real (4). They enrolled 80 individuals with self-reported non-celiac wheat sensitivity (NCWS), 40 individuals with celiac disease, and 40 healthy subjects for the study.

The researchers took blood samples and intestinal biopsies from all 160 patients. The blood samples were used to look for particular signaling molecules and proteins in the blood, while the biopsies were used for histological analysis of the tissue microstructure. In addition to comparing these measures between conditions, they also took a subset of 20 NCWS patients who had adhered to a gluten-free diet for six months and compared their blood and biopsy samples before and after gluten avoidance."

So what did they find? Non-celiac wheat sensitive individuals have … drumroll … leaky gut! NCWS subjects showed increased intestinal permeability compared to healthy subjects. This is not really all that surprising, since we know that gliadin, a component of gluten, can affect tight junction proteins.

In addition, subjects in the NCWS group had systemic immune activation. Serum levels of both lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LBP) and sCD14 were significantly elevated in individuals with NCWS in comparison with individuals with celiac disease and healthy controls. These are sensitive markers of microbial translocation. In other words, they indicate that bacteria and other microbes from the gut interior are “leaking” into the bloodstream, inducing a low-grade, chronic inflammatory response from the immune system (6).
Histological analysis of biopsy tissues showed that the NCWS group also had epithelial cell damage similar to the celiac disease group, a result supported by elevated levels of serum marker FABP2 (7). Moreover, in the subset of NCWS individuals analyzed before and after adherence to a gluten-free diet, they found that inflammation and cell damage markers improved significantly after six months of gluten avoidance."
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This isn't an "everyone should be gluten free post. But it is a "do what works for you post."

If you feel better avoiding gluten, even if you're not a celiac, keep doing your thing. Trust your own gut.

If your intestines really leaked undigested food matter/faeces into your bloodstream, wouldn't you get septicaemia rather sharpish?

"If your intestines really leaked undigested food matter/faeces into your bloodstream, wouldn't you get septicaemia rather sharpish?"

Exactly. As a septicemia survivor, I can say for a fact that you won't have vague, non-life-threatening symptoms.

@joel - Do you read your own sources? From your link:

Historically, the only way bowel toxins entered the blood stream was through trauma, for example by sword or spear.

This quickly led to septicemia that might be treatable, or more probably, ended in death

That is the only reference to septicaemia and it's saying it's caused by sword or spear piercings, not leaky gut syndrome. When not even a functional doctor can explicitly make the claim that leaky gut syndrome leads to septicaemia, you know it's dodgy science.

Kharrazian and Permutter are NOT medical doctors. Both make unsubstantiated claims.
Really Joel, it does seem you are here to sell your own brand of 'healing' , and to make sly digs at genuine science.

@ambling - Yes, if my own brand of healing is for other's to heal, I'm a fan. If gluten works for you - by all means - continue, and respectfully allow others to try what works for them. I'm all for self-choice with the most about of information

You know what they call the person who graduates last in medical school? A Doctor.

You're right Dr. K is not a medical doctor, however drperlmutter is
http://www.drperlmutter.com/about/
David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, ABIHM is a Board-Certified Neurologist and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition - See more at: http://www.drperlmutter.com/about/#sthash.hetstHUB.dpuf


Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS, MNeuroSci, FAACP, DACBN, DABCN, DIBAK, CNS - See more at: https://www.functionalmedicine.org/page.aspx?id=370#sthash.WIqLRB50.dpuf

here are their biographies if you wish to look up their credbility
http://brainhealthbook.com/datis-kharrazian/
https://www.functionalmedicine.org/page.aspx?id=370

Without making an assumption if you have or have not. I'm legitametly curious, have you ever tried going without gluten for a time period? That was my initial question. no worries if you'd rather no answer

@DutchessCountyJim - glad to hear you found good information on healingwell last year!

Good grief, it's hardly like a gluten-free diet is some new, radical concept: it's been around for decades. For whatever it's worth, I tried a gluten-free diet a few years ago. Followed it strictly for 6 weeks; saw no improvement in my symptoms at all. I even went on a liquid elemental diet (which was meant to be for 6 weeks, but I couldn't stick it for that long), which was also gluten-fee and everything else free, and again I saw no improvement in my symptoms. If anything I got worse on it.

I am not against anyone with IBD trying a gluten-free diet. In fact it's probably even a good idea to try it. But IBD isn't coeliac disease. Going gluten-free isn't going to treat the underlying cause of IBD, unlike with coeliac disease. Treating the symptoms isn't the same as treating the inflammation: you can feel better, but the inflammation is still simmering away in the background. People who go on diets make that mistake all the time: they go on some restricted diet, feel better, then think they're practically cured. It's even worse if their diagnosis is new, in my experience. In reality, if it's really IBD (and not a misdiagnosis or, worse, self-diagnosis), they are not cured in the slightest. There have been many people who have found that out the hard way.

I could not agree more with ambling's last post. Even though you have a UC diagnosis yourself, you don't seem to understand what IBD is. It's not a lifestyle disease and you don't do anyone on these forums any favours by trying to treat it as though it is. IBD causes physical damage to the intestines, unlike IBS. It can also be very, very hard to consistently treat, even with the strongest meds currently available to us. If Remicade doesn't work, then diets are exceptionally unlikely to - practically everyone on the UC board who has had surgery has said they tried diets as well as meds. Neither worked, hence surgery.