Modern wheat a "perfect, chronic poison," doctor says

[pnwmom]

281. No, it's more than that. I'm curious why it is important to you to be so dismissive

of gluten sensitivity. How does it hurt you or anyone else that researchers and doctors are taking this seriously now? People with real gluten problems don't appreciate being told by people who know nothing about them that they are followers of a fad. I was diagnosed by a gastroenterologist 10 years ago. Was he a fad follower, too?

I don't think you're keeping up with current research. This article just talks about one new study. But there are many more out there by neurologists, gastroenterologists, and others. Celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg in gluten sensitivity. Some people with gluten sensitivity have the Classic celiac damage to the villi; but many more have other problems related to an immune system reaction to gluten.

I'm gluten sensitive but I don't have Celiac; instead, I have symptoms of ulcerative colitis when I'm exposed to gluten. Some people with Crohn's are also sensitive to gluten. Should we all be dismissed as insignificant because we don't have classic Celiac disease?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576200393522456636.html

"People aren't born with this. Something triggers it and with this dramatic rise in all ages, it must be something pervasive in the environment," says Joseph A. Murray, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. One possible culprit: agricultural changes to wheat that have boosted its protein content.

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In the new study, researchers compared blood samples and intestinal biopsies from 42 subjects with confirmed celiac disease, 26 with suspected gluten sensitivity and 39 healthy controls. Those with gluten sensitivity didn't have the flattened villi, or the "leaky" intestinal walls seen in the subjects with celiac disease.

Their immune reactions were different, too. In the gluten-sensitive group, the response came from innate immunity, a primitive system with which the body sets up barriers to repel invaders. The subjects with celiac disease rallied adaptive immunity, a more sophisticated system that develops specific cells to fight foreign bodies.

The findings still need to be replicated. How a reaction to gluten could cause such a wide range of symptoms also remains unproven. Dr. Fasano and other experts speculate that once immune cells are mistakenly primed to attack gluten, they can migrate and spread inflammation, even to the brain.

Indeed, Marios Hadjivassiliou, a neurologist in Sheffield, England, says he found deposits of antibodies to gluten in autopsies and brain scans of some patients with ataxia, a condition of impaired balance.

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