What’s really behind ‘gluten sensitivity’?

No definitive answer yet, but an interesting overview of some of the current state of the art.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/what-s-really-behind-gluten-sensitivity?utm

 

Quite a balanced article that explains the problems behind all the hype.

The main problem ...guess what? ....poor sampling and no context for the real scale of the problem (once you remove lifestyle free from’ers or those that just have got wind from eating too many carbs/eating imbalanced diets/poor eating habits) and self reported questionnaires with a very small sample size.

Looking at this from a statistical point of view over time it’s clear that the boom in free from consumption over the last 10 years is unlikely to be from a sudden surge in a medical condition. The lack of a biomarker for genuine cases will mean that all studies will have to cut through a lot of food fad nonsense to properly study it.

I don’t doubt that something is going on for a small number of people, but there is more poor science and misinformation out there than real fact based evidence.

Most people without an allergy/sensitivity to gluten that have the average western diet (not enough veg/too much refined carbs) will feel better if they concentrate on reducing carbs. My personal view is that I doubt that it is necessary to pay double for a gluten free version of a product in the majority of people that shop the free from aisles (80-90% of cases). It’s making a lot of people money though.

 

There’s also a theory that it may be the glyphosate in the wheat products that are causing symptoms, rather than gluten.

This would explain why the gluten-containing bars did not elicit symptoms by the study participants, since it sounds like the bars contained isolated gluten rather than wheat.

 

I'm fairly well convinced the millions of pounds of glyphosate/industrial chemicals has caused the intestinal permeability, and the rest is then subgroups of who makes antibodies to what.

But say buh-bye to your scientific career if you try studying that though.

 

But why would that have happened so suddenly for so many people? That’s what I keep coming back to. If you look at the growth of the popularity of free from it is only over a very short period of time.

Also glycophosphate is found in loads of things not just wheat and including quinoa, so you would expect this to be a problem for fruit and veg crops and maize which is the go to substitute used by the people who make the most popular items (gluten free bread and biscuits etc)?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cfia-report-glyphosate-1.4070275

Whilst I am not advocating for systemic non selective herbicides, if glucophosphate were driving the consumer growth you would expect the organic sector to be growing in consumer popularity when its not...it’s in decline.

 

One thing I don't think the article mentions is that the gluten content of wheat, in particular, has been greatly increased over the last 50 years or so by selective breeding and genetic modification. This makes life much easier for industrial bakers but may come at a cost.

The Wiki page on gluten also references "a higher amount of cytotoxic gluten peptides", which is above my pay grade but sounds bad!

 

It still comes back to scale though and timeframe....so if say something significant happened over the course of a short period of time say a year somewhere between 2000-2005, then perhaps you would then see a large swing to free from products a few years later building with the growth we’ve seen to today.

Breeding new strains of wheat has happened over a much longer time period (this is breeding selection/crossing not genetic modification) so still doesn’t account for the speed of the swing.

The only thing that affects swings so fast is lifestyle changes (mainly due to consumer behaviour affected by price and or fashion) and significant fast acting events (toxins, microbiological infection etc). It still doesn’t add up to explain the sheer scale of demand.

 

Nice article!
There is lot you can find out by eliminating things. Wheat has a lot of fructan and spelt doesn't. They both have gluten.
I score on the IgG panel low-positive for wheat and spelt, but I have a real problem with wheat and not so much spelt, so I'm pretty sure it's mostly the FODMAP's for me. I get horrible constipation from wheat, but it's dose dependent. So I could handle one candybar (with wheat) a day without any really obvious problems.
If I only had IBS than I would be balancing it like that, eating little bits. I now eat gluten free, just because i'm not entirely I don't get an immune-repsonse to it and because of the ME I want to do literally everything, even though it might only help me 0,5%. I don't mind eating gluten free anyway.

The prevalence of IBS is somewhere around 10-20% in the population. I think the boom came from people realizing they could solve those problems with changing their diet. So there is a boom in awareness that gluten/wheat/FODMAP could be the reason for your IBS, but the problem has probably been there for a while. People just had psychosomatic IBS before that

 

I don't mean to derail the thread, but at some point certain key crops, including wheat, cane sugar, and corn began being dessicated for "easier" harvest by being drenched in glyphosate. So the plant itself was now being killed by the application of massive amounts of toxic product before consumption.

There could be all kinds of contributing factors that are not being considered after the intestinal damage phase got underway--like protein size, or even the confluence of these practices with the epigenetic ramifications of the preceding generation's exposure to things like DDT.

It's easy to think our logic circle is complete, when human intelligence is always expanding to include more factors that were before unrecognised or not obvious.

 

On a serious note. I think my sister suffers from psychosomatic IBS due to anxiety. So there might be some exceptions.

 

How do you know it’s psychosomatic?

I’ve seen loads of people with IBS that were initially not that open to diet changes, because they themselves really thought it was stress related. I’m not saying that stress or anxiety doesn’t exacerbate the problem, but all those people got rid of their IBS with dietchanges (fodmap), now they can just be stressed without also having to run to the toilet...

There is also a lot of research that indicates that it might actually be the other way around, that anxiety is caused/exacerbated by changes in the microbiome, so the bowel problems could also be the cause of the anxiety.

 

The popularity of gluten free has been growing significantly since around 2005 whereas at a similar time organic food popularity started to decline.

Glycophosphates have been used on most crops since the 1970’s ....I’m pretty sure that the two things can’t be connected ...why would it only be a problem with wheat? And not carrots or maize or any other product that has glycophosphate on it, and why has it only become a “thing” some 30 years later? I’m struggling to see a connection?

 

I’m thinking this figure may be slightly overinflated

 

IBS relationship with Mood Disorders

"A number of psychiatric comorbidities affect the patients with IBS. In particular, anxiety disorders and mood disorders occur with a significant greater frequency, indicating that the assessment or treatment of these comorbid conditions may influence the outcome of IBS".

 

Plus if you are eating a gluten free diet you tend to eat other grains in greater amounts, rice in particular as that tends to be the basis of gluten free flours but also corn and other less common ones. I assume those contain plenty of glyphosate. I just can’t see the link.