# So non-Celiac gluten sensitivity is not a thing after all & is basically garden variety hypochrondia **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 27, 2016, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396 "2016-01-27T18:59:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/1 "2016-01-27T18:59:17Z")
New study. The approx. 1% of the population of people actually diagnosed with Celiac Disease have to avoid gluten, the rest with self diagnosed gluten sensitivity are just indulging themselves in hypochondriacal fantasies. [Scientists who found gluten sensitivity evidence have now shown it doesn’t exist](http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-who-found-evidence-for-gluten-sensitivity-have-now-shown-it-doesn-t-exist) Science marches on! > [@](#): > > The subjects cycled through high-gluten, low-gluten, and no-gluten (placebo) diets, without knowing which diet plan they were on at any given time. In the end, all of the treatment diets - even the placebo diet - caused pain, bloating, nausea, and gas to a similar degree. It didn’t matter if the diet contained gluten. (Read more about the study.) > > “In contrast to our first study… we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten,” Gibson wrote in the paper. A third, larger study published this month has confirmed the findings. > > It seems to be a ‘nocebo’ effect - the self-diagnosed gluten sensitive patients expected to feel worse on the study diets, so they did. They were also likely more attentive to their intestinal distress, since they had to monitor it for the study. > > On top of that, these other potential dietary triggers - specifically the FODMAPS - could be causing what people have wrongly interpreted as gluten sensitivity. FODMAPS are frequently found in the same foods as gluten. That still doesn’t explain why people in the study negatively reacted to diets that were free of all dietary triggers. > > You can go ahead and smell your bread and eat it too. Science. It works ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/2 "2016-01-27T19:26:38Z")
Don’t tell the anti-gluten whackos. They’ll all become vegans or something, and that’s far worse. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/3 "2016-01-27T19:30:03Z")
You mean it’s not going to work like a miracle cure as a placebo anymore? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/4 "2016-01-27T19:31:10Z")
Well, if you’re sensitive to FODMAPS, you might as well say you can’t eat gluten, because you can’t eat stuff with gluten in it, generally. ---
**Author:** ![MoonMoon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonmoon/32/2959_2.png) [@MoonMoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoonMoon)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/5 "2016-01-27T19:31:34Z")
But thanks for making things even more difficult for people with true food allergies, gluten avoiders. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/6 "2016-01-27T19:36:56Z")
I’m confused about how the conclusion from the larger study: “Conclusions: Just over 1 in 4 respondents self-reporting as NCGS fulfill criteria for its diagnosis.” is equivalent to “it doesn’t exist.” It seems to me to confirm what we’ve already know, which is that there are a lot of people who have latched on to gluten sensitivity when it really isn’t an issue for them (or something else entirely is causing the problem). ---
**Author:** ![inedible\_knapsack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/49beb7/32.png) [@inedible\_knapsack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inedible_knapsack)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/7 "2016-01-27T19:56:11Z")
Some people are desperate to feel healthy and get attention/praise. They’ll just move on to the next idiotic fad, and they’ll be enabled by food manufacturers eager to make a buck off the rubes. My grocery store is chock full of gluten free food now. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/8 "2016-01-27T20:00:02Z")
Some people are legitimately sick, and can’t find out what’s wrong with them. If you have non-specific digestive problems, they scope you and don’t find a smoking gun, you start trying shit. Saying “some people are desperate for attention” may be true, but there are a lot of people who are desperate to find something, anything, that makes them not feel like shit all the time. ---
**Author:** ![inedible\_knapsack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/49beb7/32.png) [@inedible\_knapsack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/inedible_knapsack)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/9 "2016-01-27T20:16:05Z")
Let me clarify my jerkface position, **Zsofia**. I know one person who actually has celiac disease (my MIL) and I’m sympathetic to her suffering. I also have my own gastro-intestinal difficulties. However, I work with several young, healthy people who caught on to the fad late in 2014 because they wanted to “feel better.” To be clear, they didn’t feel bad at the time, but they came to believe that gluten was somehow detrimental to well-being. And they talked about how much better they felt all the time. They still ate plenty of garbage, you know, just not gluten. So yeah, there are plenty of people who are looking desperately for solutions, and if they try going gluten free in the hope of feeling better that’s understandable. It’s the dopes who feel just fine, try something different and then act self-righteous about it that grind my gears. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/10 "2016-01-27T20:20:03Z")
I’m a bit touchy on it because my husband had the scope, got told “\”, has found that many things on the FODMAP list seem to affect him… but hey, who knows if that’s why? And that eating bread, pasta, etc. makes his skin go to hell and his heart thump and make him feel awful, which actually seems to be separate from the gut response to the FODMAP stuff with stone fruits, honey, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/11 "2016-01-27T20:30:31Z")
> [@MoonMoon](#): > > But thanks for making things even more difficult for people with true food allergies, gluten avoiders. How’s that? I’d suspect the gluten avoiders are making things way easier for true Celiacs, now that there’s gluten-free stuff everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![MoonMoon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonmoon/32/2959_2.png) [@MoonMoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoonMoon)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/12 "2016-01-27T20:39:40Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > How’s that? I’d suspect the gluten avoiders are making things way easier for true Celiacs, now that there’s gluten-free stuff everywhere. By food allergies, I meant foods which cause anaphylactic allergic reactions, like tree nuts, shellfish etc. People, in general, don’t “get” food allergies and tend not to take them very seriously. The ‘gluten-free by choice’ crowd, who _won’t_ die if they ingest gluten, have made it even harder for legitimate food allergies to be taken seriously. True celiacs have my sympathy, but they weren’t the driver behind gluten-free everything. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/13 "2016-01-27T20:50:20Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Some people are legitimately sick, and can’t find out what’s wrong with them. If you have non-specific digestive problems, they scope you and don’t find a smoking gun, you start trying shit. Saying “some people are desperate for attention” may be true, but there are a lot of people who are desperate to find something, anything, that makes them not feel like shit all the time. You know what, I don’t really care if people avoid gluten because they think it makes them feel better. They are lucky, there’s about a gazillion gluten-free products out now. What pisses me off is when they try to tell _you_. “Do you know what gluten does to you? It’s poison!” (actual quote) It doesn’t do anything to me so please bring me more and stop lecturing me with your ignorant inanities. Remember the aspartame freakouts? Ugh. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/14 "2016-01-27T21:22:45Z")
> [@MoonMoon](#): > > By food allergies, I meant foods which cause anaphylactic allergic reactions, like tree nuts, shellfish etc. People, in general, don’t “get” food allergies and tend not to take them very seriously. The ‘gluten-free by choice’ crowd, who _won’t_ die if they ingest gluten, have made it even harder for legitimate food allergies to be taken seriously. I’m not sure if Celiac disease is technically an allergy or not, but it is certainly an allergy by the colloquial meaning. I think the ‘gluten-free by choice’ crowd has certainly made their lives better, simply by driving the ubiquity of gluten free choices. I doubt that they ‘gluten-free by choice’ crowd has had any adverse impact at all on the seriousness with which society at large takes, say, nut allergies. If anything, they’ve probably raised awareness of other food allergies to some degree. > [@](#): > > True celiacs have my sympathy, but they weren’t the driver behind gluten-free everything. Of course not. That’s kind of my point. All that said, totally agree with **Anaamika** that any lecturing _me_ about the adverse impact of gluten on _my_ body is most unwelcome. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/15 "2016-01-27T21:25:44Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Remember the aspartame freakouts? Ugh. I knew a woman who started having trouble with her eyesight; it got so bad she met the criteria for legally blind. Her doctors couldn’t find any reason, but one of them finally suggested she cut out the four to six diet sodas she drank every day. She went cold turkey, and she got her eyesight back. Since the original blindness was idiopathic, it’s difficult to prove that stopping consumption of aspartame was what cured her, but the timing is certainly suggestive. She and her parents are pretty vocal in being anti-aspartame, and I really can’t blame them. Everyone’s body and physiology and metabolism does not react exactly the same as anybody else’s. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/16 "2016-01-27T21:26:08Z")
TBH, I’ve had allergies all my life and it’s only in the last ten years they’ve really become widely accepted. When I was growing up in the 80s if you had allergies you were either disbelieved or mocked. I can’t even imagine the reaction I’d have had if I said I was allergic to (delicious, delicious) shellfish back then. Now not only do I not get disbelief, people are _concerned_ about me. “Hey, there’s shrimp in the soup, you probably don’t want to eat it.” I don’t really remember a time when people were more accommodating for allergies. As long as you are not one of those people that try to dictate where people eat every time, most people are very understanding. It’s when you pull the “I can’t eat there, so nobody can” card that everyone hates you. **slash2k** , 4-6 diet sodas a day is a _lot_. I totally get that they would cut out aspartame from _their_ diet. But you even suggest that there’s no actual link from the aspartame to the blindness. She has no right to tell _me_ what I should and should not eat, and I would frankly be annoyed if she started lecturing me. But then, I’d never even consider drinking 5-6 diet sodas a day, so I could go around lecturing people on that, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/17 "2016-01-27T23:17:44Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > **slash2k** , 4-6 diet sodas a day is a _lot_. I totally get that they would cut out aspartame from _their_ diet. But you even suggest that there’s no actual link from the aspartame to the blindness. She has no right to tell _me_ what I should and should not eat, and I would frankly be annoyed if she started lecturing me. > > But then, I’d never even consider drinking 5-6 diet sodas a day, so I could go around lecturing people on that, I suppose. If the aspartame in 4-6 diet sodas is enough to cause blindness, is the aspartame in 1 or 2 simply benign or does it just cause damage much more slowly? I don’t know the answer; nor do I know why she was affected and her sibling was not. (She was only a teenager at the time, so it wasn’t like this occurred after many many years of overindulgence.) Maybe she has no _right_ to tell you what you should eat, but do you have the _right_ to tell her she can’t speak about her experience and what she and her doctor think? (And yes, her doctor says he has no competing hypothesis for her blindness or its remission. There may or may not be a link to aspartame, but nobody has yet offered another explanation as to how she went from 20/40 to 20/600 to 20/60 in the span of eight months.) ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/18 "2016-01-27T23:34:58Z")
> [@MoonMoon](#): > > By food allergies, I meant foods which cause anaphylactic allergic reactions, like tree nuts, shellfish etc. People, in general, don’t “get” food allergies and tend not to take them very seriously. The ‘gluten-free by choice’ crowd, who _won’t_ die if they ingest gluten, have made it even harder for legitimate food allergies to be taken seriously. Food allergies aren’t always anaphylactic in reaction - but they are alway diagnosable by a reputable (key word there) medical professional. But yeah, a lot of people don’t get food allergies and don’t take them seriously. But even if eating peanuts “only” causes me to break out in an intense rash, as opposed to a life-threatening reaction, I still shouldn’t be eating them because poking one’s immune system is not a good idea, it makes me feel miserable, and allergic food reactions can become worse with each exposure - so let’s quit while it’s “just” a rash before it becomes something worse. The hangers-on, whether it’s a gluten fad, food “allergies”, lactose intolerance, or whatever just make things harder for those with legitimate medical problems. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/19 "2016-01-27T23:52:22Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > The hangers-on, whether it’s a gluten fad, food “allergies”, lactose intolerance, or whatever just make things harder for those with legitimate medical problems. Except, of course, for the fact that they increase awareness of food allergies and create greater opportunities to acquire foods without allergens through their own unwillingness to consume these foods. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2016, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396/20 "2016-01-28T02:04:07Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > How’s that? I’d suspect the gluten avoiders are making things way easier for true Celiacs, now that there’s gluten-free stuff everywhere. Yes I have an aunt who truly has celiac and the current fad has make it easier for her. Even a trace of gluten makes her deathly ill. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-is-not-a-thing-after-all-is-basically-garden-variety-hypochrondia/744396.md?page=2)