Search Weight Loss Topics:

Home » Diet » Gluten-free diets: Where do we stand? – CNN

"It is now the most popular diet in Hollywood," said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, who has led world-renowned research on gluten.

Nonetheless, "this is a medical intervention," he said. "For those who just brush it off that this is a fad and a fashion lifestyle, be considerate of the people that survive on this diet. For people with celiac disease, the gluten-free diet is like insulin for diabetics."

So how did gluten-free eating shift from a rare treatment approach to a trendy way of living? Here's a look at the rise and fall of gluten and how the gluten-free diet has shaped public health over the years.

World War II wreaked havoc across most of Europe. Children became malnourished, with limited access to fruits, vegetables and especially wheat. While that lack weakened the health of most, it seemed to strengthen those with celiac disease.

"This gentleman during World War II noted that the mortality of celiac disease was zero, and he didn't realize immediately why until when the war was over and the mortality went back to the pre-war era," Fasano said.

"Something during the war that was missing was the culprit, and one of the commodities that was missing was wheat. As a matter of fact, flour during the war was made with potato starch and not with wheat," he said.

"There's nothing specifically bad about gluten or specifically good about a gluten-free diet, outside of for these specific -- not uncommon but relatively small -- populations of people with celiac disease, which is about 1% of people in the general population," said Dr. Daniel Leffler, director of research at the Celiac Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Why exactly can gluten make those with celiac sick? Scientists originally viewed it as a food allergy, but that all changed in the decades to come.

Scientists uncovered the first signs that celiac disease could be an autoimmune disorder -- instead of an allergic one -- in the 1970s, Leffler said.

"This was sort of a surprise, because HLA-DQ2 was already known to be linked to type 1 diabetes, which is another classic autoimmune disease, but not to any of the allergic diseases. So the genetics that people with celiac disease have is much more similar to autoimmune diseases," Leffler said.

It was still thought that only people with celiac disease could have such reactions to gluten, but then the idea emerged that gluten could impact the health of some people without celiac disease, too.

"The new kid on the block is gluten sensitivity or the so-called non-celiac gluten sensitivity," said Dr. Anca Safta, assistant professor and pediatric GI section head at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina.

However, Safta said that since non-celiac gluten sensitivity is still new to the scientific literature, much confusion remains around it as a medical condition. For now, non-celiac gluten sensitivity is viewed as a condition that has the same symptoms of celiac disease but without the immune system damaging the intestines.

"The symptoms are there. Folks do get better once they remove the gluten-containing products, and the very important thing is to exclude celiac disease from the picture, as celiac disease implies that the intestinal mucosa has suffered damage," Safta said.

"As we're learning more, we don't even know if we have the correct nomenclature for non-celiac gluten sensitivity," she said. "It might not be gluten that is causing this non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and it might be a different protein found in wheat, but because of the exclusion of the gluten-containing products for symptoms to improve, that's why it's kind of gotten the name of non-celiac gluten sensitivity."

By this point, however, gluten sensitivity -- whether celiac or not -- had been mostly observed and studied in Europe. That would change in the next decade.

Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, saw many cases of celiac disease early in his career as a pediatric gastroenterologist in Naples, Italy.

"Celiac disease was considered extremely rare, almost nonexisting in the United States, and that was a quite interesting observation given at the same time in Europe, where I was coming from, there was a rampage of epidemics of celiac disease all over," Fasano said.

"Now you know, whenever you look for it, you find it, provided there are genes and environmental triggers," Fasano said of celiac disease.

"We have a major problem of celiac disease in India for example now, particularly in the northern region of the Punjab," he said. "We have problems of celiac disease in South America. We have a growing rampant problem of celiac disease in China, anywhere that you have the genetic background and the westernization of your diet."

Fasano then published more data, leading to a landmark paper that would change the scientific community's view of gluten in America.

There was a big study in the United States done by Alessio Fasano that found the prevalence of celiac disease in the United States at around 1%, which was 10 times higher than what people thought it was in the United States before that, said Leffler, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

"It really was a critical study," Leffler said.

Once Fasano turned a spotlight on celiac disease in the US, many more studies emerged about gluten sensitivity among Americans, some suggesting that a gluten-free diet may benefit a subgroup of patients with various health disorders.

"There is a possibility that some groups of individuals with other chronic inflammatory conditions, including autoimmune diseases like diabetes or multiple sclerosis, of course autism ... and schizophrenia ... there could be a subgroup of these individuals that could benefit from embracing a gluten-free diet," Fasano said.

"For schizophrenia, for example, we're talking about 20% or 25%. That's not a trivial number," he said. "The same applies with autism, which also the numbers seem to adjust a little bit less, roughly 20%."

As scientists explored curious connections between gluten-free diets and various disorders, celebrities started to weigh in.

"Gluten is crapppp anyway," she tweeted.

At the same time, companies also expanded the types of products they offer to cater to a growing gluten-free consumer base.

At the same time, more consumers who didn't have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity took on gluten-free diets by choice.

Yet experts warn that gluten-free eating might not offer benefits if you don't have gluten sensitivity -- and that the diet could do more harm than good.

"We definitely don't recommend a gluten-free diet for weight loss. My dietician will tell you that. The reason why is, when they remove gluten from a lot of these foods to make them taste more appealing, they add more calories or carbohydrates," said Dr. Runa Watkins, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who specializes in celiac disease.

"The second thing is, being on a gluten-free diet also puts you at risk for other nutritional deficiencies in the long run, such as like B-12 and zinc and folate," she added, "And cost-wise, it can be expensive. So we definitely don't recommend it just because."

All in all, for those who need to consume a gluten-free diet as a treatment for celiac disease, Watkins recommends to keep at it.

"This is a lifetime disorder that is treated with a gluten-free diet to allow healing of the gut. But when this is achieved, it doesn't mean you can go back to a gluten-containing diet," she said.

Fasano hopes the pendulum on gluten's reputation will swing in the opposite direction, from painting gluten as a monster back to depicting it as a simple protein that some can healthily digest and others cannot.

"The pendulum was all the way to left, where before, the pioneer patients with celiac disease really had a hard time to survive," Fasano said.

"Now. the pendulum is all the way to the right, where this is a fashionable diet," he said. "I think that in the future, we will see a readjustment of the pendulum. and hopefully we'll go back to where it belongs. I of course think everybody with celiac disease needs to be on a gluten-free diet. The people that will be affected by other gluten-free-related eating disorders, like wheat allergy or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, should go on a gluten-free diet, and then there is a question mark for others."

Original post:
Gluten-free diets: Where do we stand? - CNN

Your Full Name
Your Email
Your Phone Number
Select your age (30+ only)	30313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120
Select Your US State	Select Your StateAlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWashington,DCWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming
Program Choice	Select Your ProgramInjectable HGHInjectable TestoteroneInjectable SermorelinInjectable Weight LossInjectable HCG DietInjectable Vitamins
Confirm over 30 years old	Yes
Confirm that you resident in USA	Yes
This is a Serious Inquiry	Yes
Message:

Home » Diet » Gluten-free diets: Where do we stand? – CNN