It seems almost ‘trendy’ (in the way that lo-carb was) to not eat gluten. Is it harmful to some people? What makes one intolerant, and how does it manifest itself? Is it widespread or relatively rare? Is there any other treatment than giving up wheat?
Information on Celiac Disease from Gluten Intolerance Group
As naita’s link says, intolerance to gluten comes from the disease celiac (or coeliac, if you’re in the UK, Australia, etc.). My mother is a sufferer.
It’s a genetic thing, but not everyone who has the genetic predisposition will actually get the disease. In some people, the gene is never triggered. My mother only found out about her condition in her mid-thirties, when she started getting really bad stomach cramps and other associated maladies. Since then, she hasn’t been able to eat gluten, and ionstead substitutes things like rice crackers, corn meal, and corn pasta.
She’s used to it by now, but it would drive me crazy not being able to eat proper bread or cookies. There’s some pretty decent gluten-free products on the market, but there are also some really nasty ones.
I was not aware that eating a gluten-free diet has become “trendy” in any way. My mother is still the only person i’ve ever known with this affliction.
I have friend with the celiac problem, which was diagnosed in his 50s.
I also have a nephew who’s wheat allergy will put him into anaphylactic shock. When he was little and his mom was doing the Christmas baking, the flour drifting through the air caused such an intense reaction that he had to be rushed to the hospital? Is this a gluten allergy or a response to something else in wheat?
A good friend of mine was just diagnosed with this, and it’s a real disease. It was making his life miserable and he had no idea what was wrong until a doctor figured it out. Apparently there’s tests that can be done to determine if you have it, so it’s not something people should be claiming to have just to be trendy without knowing for sure.
A couple of people have already offered good explanations of gluten intolerance, i.e., celiac disease.
I think it seems trendy because the medical community has fairly recently become better educated in diagnosing celiac disease. Historically it’s been a tricky thing to diagnose - symptoms don’t necessarily point to a GI disorder, and definitive diagnosis requires an intestinal biopsy. So, many people with the disorder didn’t know they have it (just knew they had something wrong), or they only discovered that they could benefit from a gf diet when they tried it as a last resort, or in an effort to treat something else.
The latter is what happened to cwPartner. He was diagnosed with celiac disease as a child, but the conventional wisdom of the day was that one grows out of it. This appeared to be true, and he spent most of his life as a happy bread lover. About 30 years later, after he’d been feeling generally horrible for a couple of years, his doctor said, hey, you were on this special diet as a kid, why don’t you give it a try again since nothing else is really working? It hasn’t fixed everything, but after a couple of months many of the mystery symptoms (mainly GI stuff) did go away.
It’s very important to understand that gluten intolerance and celiac disease are NOT the same as wheat allergy. Someone with gluten intolerance/celiac disease may feel lousy if they accidentally ingest gluten - typically they’ll have some manner of lower GI symptoms some time afterward when the gluten hits the intestine. Someone with a wheat allergy may have a reaction such as zagloba described - rapid onset, anaphylactic shock, etc. - as the immune system responds to the wheat protein. People with wheat allergy can often eat other grains (such as barley, rye or oats), which do contain gluten. People with gluten intolerance must avoid any grain which contains gluten (generally wheat, rye, oats, barley, or spelt).
I met a woman online who has her autistic children on a gluten-free diet. She believes gluten has a massive impact on the worst of their autistic behaviours, and reports that they are far closer to “normal” when their diet is strictly managed. A quick Google of the words “Autism” and “Gluten” produces plenty of results, so I guess she’s not the only one trying this treatment.
Let me please be clear that I don’t mean to question anyone’s suffering - I could not be more ignorant on the subject. Here’s the backstory, which I probably should have just given at the outset.
My mother has recently been going to a doctor who has told her she is gluten intolerant - not celiac, mind you, but gluten intolerant, which is apparently a more moderate version. This gluten intolerance can cause increased mucous production, mood disorders, irritable bowel syndrome and lowered nutrient absorption. She has limited her gluten intake (eating sprouted bread, etc), and claims to feel much better - more energetic, better memory.
I extrapolated this personal experience to a certain ‘trendiness’ based on all the wheat-free products, gluten-free products I have seen (although it may be a false assumption on my part; if it is, I apologize, but my question remains).
I’m still not sure of how this illness (?) starts, or what it’s side effects are. The doctor, who came over briefly, explained that it apparently had something to do with the Kreb’s cycle, and the processing of proteins…I had a difficult time following the explanation, and I was frustrated by her evasiveness.
My sister and I both have what seems to be food allergy to wheat, which may be sensitivity to wheat gluten. Mine is mild, and hers is more severe. She had chronic health problems that were not easily diagnosed, but once she stopped consuming wheat completely her health is much more stable and robust. I tried a wheat-free diet for a while and I felt somewhat better (fewer sniffles, for example) but it wasn’t worth the trouble it takes to be wheat-free, so I abandoned it and just decided to have the occasional sneezing attack.
It seems from **Naita’s ** post that food allergy to wheat or gluten is fundamentally different from celiac disease, but I suspect that if gluten-free eating were becoming trendy, it might actually be due to an increase in the food allergy rather than an increase in celiac disease. I don’t have a cite, but I do seem to remember reading that food allergies of all kinds are increasing (or perhaps they are just being more readily diagnosed).
You can find a good deal of information about Celiac Disease and Gluten Intolerance here .
[hijack]Interestingly, celiac disease is more common among people of Irish and Scottish descent; it has been hypothesised that the historical prevalence of the potato as a staple in these places allowed the genetic predisposition for it to build up unchecked in the gene pool.
This is an appreciated hijack … because wheat can seem at first glance to be a strange thing to be allergic/intolerant to. After all, it has been the staple of many pre-industrial diets for millenia. It almost (but not quite) strikes me in the way an allergy to air would strike me.
I wonder what became of people with “modern” food allergies in the Middle Ages and whatnot? Some folks just fell sick all the time, or died young, and nobody really knew what was up, huh?
It may not be that they died at all, at least not suddenly or before reproductive age; gluten intolerance doesn’t always kill you straight away, but being constantly ill means you’re less likely to successfully reproduce.
There’s a similar hypothesis about Asian alcohol sensitivity; in the east, they were avoiding unsafe water by boiling it to make tea, in the west, we were avoiding unsafe water by boiling it to make beer (which would be the thing everybody, even children, drank); do this for a few centuries and the surviving descendants of the beer drinkers have bodies that can cope with breaking down alcohol and the descendants of the tea drinkers don’t.
I guess if you really sit down and think about it … there’s always been a lot of this kind of thing going on. Take peanut allergies – how many pre-Columbian Europeans/Middle Easterners ever got the chance to eat peanuts (IIRC, they were exclusive to the New World)?
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Yet another hijack – I’ve heard of wheat and corn allergies. Is there such thing as a rice allergy? Barley allergies? Other grains?
I follow food issues more or less professionally and my take on the subject is that there is no trendiness in wheat-free products. There is a growing recognition that gluten intolerance and celiac disease is a large enough market to be worth carrying a few products for, but nothing more than that.
When you compare the flood of products that appeared when the Atkins diet became trendy to the tiny section of wheat-free products that even health food stores carry, there can be no doubt that wheat-free has not become a national issue.
Your also need to consider that celiac disease damages the insides of the intestines where the lactase enzyme is made, making sufferers lactose intolerant as well. I can’t tell whether the OP’s mother falls into this category or not but removing dairy from the diet may help her.
You can find a listing of wheat and gluten-free cookbooks here. Milk-free and other allergen-free cookbook lists are also available at that site.
Coeliac disease could only really start to be diagnosed on a big scale once laparoscpic techniques advanced to the point where jejunal biopsies became common and safe.
People with coeliac disease need to stay off gluten, not just because it makes them feel crappy when they are on it, but because that are at an increased risk of bowel cancer if they continue to eat gluten.
Wheat/gluten allergy is, as already mentioned, a different thing entirely.
IMHO it has become trendy to have a “wheat intolerance”. Now, here is my reasoning why.
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It allows the person to be faddy and fussy about their food, without being impolite.
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It allows people with eating disorders and on diets to avoid bread, pasta, cake etc without admitting that they have an eating disorder/are on a diet etc.
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There are an awful lot of strange alternative health practitioners who advise all their clients to avoid meat, dairy, yeast, alcohol, wheat, caffeine etc. Saying “I have a wheat intolerrance” sounds better than saying “my quack told me I was poisoning my system with wheat and I believe them.”
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It’s part of a certain one-up-manship. You know “I only eat organic” is trumped by"I only eat organic wholegrains" is trumped by “I only eat organic whole grains harvested according to the lunar cycle” is trumped by “I have a wheat intolerance and so can only eat special food”.
All of which means that "“wheat intolerance” is a growing trend amongst a certain type of neurotic, middle class women. I’ve personally seen several women like this in GI clinics requesting tests for coeliac…in every case but one it came back negative. The women were distraught to have their “special condition” taken away from them, as to them it seemed to be a mark of prestige. I’m not saying it’s common, but it does happen.
Thanks, irishgirl, for expressing my concern so well - my mom is now convinced she is gluten intolerant, and that I probably am as well. I’m concerned that her doctor may be making these claims baselessly.That’s why I wanted to know how the illness develops and its symptoms.
My mom claims she had some blood tests done by this doctor that prove she is gluten intolerant…which would normally answer any doubts I have, but (as I mentioned earlier) I got to meet this doctor, and in her explanation of what gluten intolerance is and how it works mentioned the Kreb’s cycle, ATP and Pottinger’s cats…along with some sort of emotional spectrum deal (from “apathy” to “peace”). Her explanation felt like a rationale that only made sense if you thought it made sense; the steps in between seemed strange and discordant.
I would not want to contradict a real doctor, but I’d be suspicious of a diagnosis based on blood tests alone. Couple of years ago, I had a set of symptoms which we will not go into here, and a gastroenterologist suspected I had celiac disease; certainly I had some of the symptoms. The blood test seemed to point in that direction as well. Then I had the gastro-intestinal look-see, and surprise, surprise: negative for celiac disease. Instead, I had/have lymphocytic colitis. Much different treatment, no relationship to food consumption at all. If it were a member of my family with the diagnosis, I’d suggest getting a second opinion. My doctor said the blood test can rule out celiac, but can’t confirm it. Only the presence of certain specific changes in the lining of the small intestine can do that.
I’m allergic to both corn and barley, so yes, other grains.
But I’m fine with gluten grains like wheat and oats.
I should say, IANAD, just a med student. But I do get to see patients, their notes, their procedures and talk to them, just in case there is confusion.
The blood test that the doctors use is for antibodies to gliadin or to more specific genetic markers for gluten. It’s sensitive, but not specific.
Negative means no Coeliac, positive means Coeliac can’t be ruled out. Coeliac should only ever be diagnosed on a biopsy. The scope and biopsy is a routine part of the investigations, not a special option if the doc feels like it.
AFAIK there is no blood test for “wheat intolerance”. There are antibody tests for gluten and gliadin, but that’s not the same thing.
Be wary of health practitioners offering tests, whether it’s weird blood tests or food allergy tests with a voltmeter, it’s not necessarily telling you what they claim it is.
aurelian there is no harm in asking for your mother to have a scope and biopsy, if she is complaining of GI symptoms and is over 50 it’s probably a good idea anyway, if you get resistance from the doctor, ask her some serious questions.