Feel free to discuss any topic of general interest, so long as nothing you post here is likely to be interpreted as insulting, and/or inflammatory, nor clearly designed to provoke any individual or group. Please be considerate of others feelings, and they will be considerate of yours.
This integrative medicine doc says gluten intolerance is caused by our stomachs not fully breaking down gluten, and says we can be healed in 6 months or more. Is he on crack? Could there be any truth to what he describes? The celiac community is up in arms, of course.
Only the type of gluten found in wheat, rye, barley and spelt causes a reaction. The reason for this problem is that gluten is not water-soluble so it doesn’t denature (open up) unless there is a lot of acid in the stomach. If it doesn’t open, then the enzymes can’t digest it and it goes into the small intestine as a whole protein. The immune system then says, “This isn’t supposed to be here — it must be an infection,” and begins to cause a reaction.
The secret that most doctors won’t tell you is that just because you reacted to gluten in the past doesn’t mean you will always have this problem. It is curable — at home by improving the digestion of the stomach. This will improve your life in more ways than simply going on a gluten-free diet. The diet is necessary for a time (usually six months or more) while you work on the stomach, but most eventually become “normal” again.
why are drug companies investing in research to develop enzymes to break down gluten.
Good question! I myself take the Biocore DPP IV enzyme every time I eat out. Not sure if it helps with cross-contamination, but I'll do anything (assuming it's harmless and relatively inexpensive). I haven't had an obvious gluten-induced D since I started taking it, so I think I'm a believer. Now if only it would help my rash!
The guy is full of it. I've pointed out a number of times in the past that no one, absolutely no human alive today, can digest gluten. The reason why most people don't have clinical symptoms from exposure to the resulting peptides is because their immune system is not on the ball, and it lets the peptides slip by with only minimal increases in the openings of the tight junctions. Reread the research published by Dr. Fasano and associates in the Scandanavian Journal of Gastroenterology, a few years ago, where he demonstrated that gluten causes everyone's (not just celiacs') tight junctions to open. The difference is that the tight junctions open wider, in a celiac's gut.
CONCLUSIONS: Based on our results, we concluded that gliadin activates zonulin signaling irrespective of the genetic expression of autoimmunity, leading to increased intestinal permeability to macromolecules.
The bottom line (as demonstrated by their research) is that everyone produces zonulin in response to gluten. Everyone! That means that no one can digest wheat gluten.
Tex
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.
