Celiac disease is on the rise. Is it because of how we grow wheat? Can you be sensitive to gluten—a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye—without having celiac? Should you buy an at-home antibody kit to test yourself? Can you trust gluten-free packaged and restaurant foods? Here’s what you need to know.
What exactly is gluten sensitivity? “The honest answer, at this point, is that we don’t really know,” says Daniel Leffler, director of clinical research at the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Are “antinutrients” robbing your body of vitamins and minerals? Is celery juice a miracle healing tonic? Does your liver need a boost from supplements and coffee enemas? What’s behind gluten sensitivity? Here’s what to know about the nutrition trends du jour.
"Helps digest gluten and carbs," reads the label of me+my Gluten Assist. Really?
Breaking down gluten
“Gluten is a really tough plant protein,” notes Daniel Leffler, director of clinical research at the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “A variety of enzymes in the stomach are responsible for chopping up proteins, but they don’t work on gluten.”
That allows long fragments of undigested gluten to leave the stomach and enter the small intestine. Most people can tolerate those fragments. But not those with celiac disease.
“Their immune system mistakes gluten for a dangerous foreign protein, and attacks it the way it would attack bacteria or a virus,” explains Leffler. “That damages the intestine, and causes abdominal pain and diarrhea and so on.”
What’s the most common reason why people buy gluten-free foods?“No reason at all,” says one survey.
The respondents’ other reasons: they see gluten-free foods as a “healthier option,” good for “digestive health” or “weight loss,” or they “enjoy the taste.” Those reasons were all more common than “gluten sensitivity,” which was cited by only 8 percent.
But in a recent study, even GI symptoms like diarrhea or bloating weren’t a reliable sign of celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder that makes people unable to tolerate gluten, the protein in wheat, barley, rye, and some other grains.
“Our study asked about abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, weight loss, irritable bowel syndrome, dyspepsia, GERD, difficulty swallowing, bloating, and distention,” says Joseph Murray, a gastroenterologist and celiac expert at the Mayo Clinic.“None were significantly associated with having celiac disease.”
“We’re going to reveal the major signs of gluten sensitivity,” promised Dr. Oz on one of his shows several years ago.
His first sign: weight gain.
“It’s not just eating the gluten that makes us heavy,” Dr. Oz claimed. “When you have a gluten sensitivity, it’s really getting your hormones out of whack, and that then leads to inflammation and swelling.”
This makes you “hold on to fat” that you should have burned off, he told his viewers. “And even if you go on a diet, if there’s gluten in there, you don’t lose weight.”
Stomach pain, diarrhea, weight loss. Those are some of the symptoms of celiac disease, which is an autoimmune reaction to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye. At least one out of 100 Americans have celiac. Most of them don’t know it. And studies suggest that some people who don’t have the disease still can’t tolerate gluten.
