New enzyme pill on the horizon to break down gluten?

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Zizzle
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New enzyme pill on the horizon to break down gluten?

Post by Zizzle »

Not sure this will help us, but I might use it when eating out to minimize effects of possible cross-contamination.

http://www.celiac.com/articles/23162/1/ ... Page1.html
jgivens
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Post by jgivens »

Hmmmm...looks interesting and I think if used the way you would use it, it might be a helpful thing. I think that the food industry will be all about it so that they don't have to worry about the wheat in our diet any more. A quick fix for people who don't want to think about what they are eating. It makes me wonder if people who take the pill and eat whatever they want would be doing damage to their gut and just not feeling it.

I remember when the cholesterol lowering meds were first on the market. My mother had a friend whose cholesterol was higher than high and she ate whatever she wanted saying, "Oh this new pill I'm on cleans up all of the cholesterol. I don't have to pay attention to what I eat any more." (Not the diet necessarily has anything to do with cholesterol, but back then we thought it did).

Some pharmaceutical is going to make a lot of money on this thing if it works. :wink:
Jane
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tex
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Post by tex »

I can't help but wonder if the author of that article actually knows anything about celiac disease. His last paragraph truly sucks.
What do you think? Would you take spill [sic] that allowed your body to safely digest gluten from wheat, barley or rye without any of the symptoms or damage associated with celiac disease? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.
Besides the typo, the question is poorly worded and doesn't even make sense from a medical standpoint, anyway, because the pills do not "allow your body to safely digest gluten" — the enzyme in the pills do all the digesting of the gliadin peptides in gluten. The body is not even needed for the pills to be capable of digesting those peptides.

Furthermore the phrase "without any of the symptoms or damage associated with celiac disease" is irrelevant to the issue. The pills are 95 % effective (according to his claims), so there is definitely going to be plenty of damage, for most celiacs. If he had limited his statement to trace amounts of gluten, there might have been some truth in it, but his wording implies that he is asking for opinions based on unlimited amounts of gluten in the diet. 5 % of normal amounts of gluten is a huge amount, and virtually any celiac is going to have substantial intestinal damage at that level. So basically, he is asking his readers to rate themselves according their gullibility, ignorance, or something along those lines. But since a large part of their opinion will be based on the misleading information contained in the article, their responses will really be a reflection of his own misleading writing, based on a poor understanding of celiac disease.

Bottom line — it should help with trace amounts, but at higher levels of gluten intake, damage will continue to accrue.

Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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