Research at Washington University shows that people with osteoporosis (bone thinning) may be up to 22 times more likely to suffer from celiac (an autoimmune reaction to gluten) than people with normal bones.

“Our results suggest that as many as 3 to 4 percent of patients who have osteoporosis have the bone disease as a consequence of having celiac disease, which makes them unable to absorb normal amounts of calcium and vitamin D,” says principal investigator William F. Stenson, M.D.
“(In our study) bone density — which is the way bone health is measured — improved dramatically on a gluten-free diet,” Stenson adds. “We believe the diet allowed intestines to heal and that permitted normal absorption normal of calcium and vitamin D to reverse bone loss.

“One of our conclusions is that the incidence of celiac disease in patients with osteoporosis is high enough to justify screening for everybody with osteoporosis,” Stenson notes. “The idea is that if a patient has osteoporosis as a consequence of celiac disease, the most direct way to correct their bone loss would be to put them on a gluten-free diet.”

Not Just Digestion

Problems deriving from the gluten in wheat, barley and rye were once thought to be mostly digestive issues. No more. Increasingly, gluten is found to cause brain and nerve problems. Oftentimes, people who suffer these neurological injuries don’t report any stomach or intestinal symptoms.

In a study looking at a connection between gluten and mental illness, scientists examined birth records and blood samples from more than 700 children born in Sweden between 1975 and 1985. More than 200 of the children eventually developed psychoses like schizophrenia and delusional disorders. They found that the mothers who had gluten sensitivities were much more likely to give birth to children who later suffered from schizophrenia. While the researchers are not sure what links a mother’s gluten sensitivity to a child’s later illness, they believe their research points an important way to improving long-term health.

“Our research not only underscores the importance of maternal nutrition during pregnancy and its lifelong effects on the offspring, but also suggests one potential cheap and easy way to reduce risk if we were to find further proof that gluten sensitivity exacerbates or drives up schizophrenia risk,” says study lead investigator Håkan Karlsson, M.D., Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Delusional Disorder

Now when these researchers discuss delusional disorders linked to gluten, it reminds me of the strange experiences I used to have before I began my gluten-free diet in 2007. Back then, bedtime had become a delusional funhouse. Floating faces in the dark, distorted alternative universes, strange visions — my brain would be hard at work providing a side show that had me convinced I was dreaming before I was even asleep.

After I gave up gluten, my evening visions petered out. Occasionally, when I relapse and experience an unusual vision in that twilight zone between being awake and asleep, I suspect it is connected to the inadvertent consumption of a food contaminated with gluten.

Neurological Difficulties

My mental difficulties with gluten are hardly unique. Other brain and neurological problems that may be linked to gluten include:

• Dementia: When researchers at the Mayo Clinic fed a gluten-free diet to people with celiac who were suffering from memory and cognitive problems, they found significant improvement in some of the patients.
• Migraine: Researchers have reported that a migraine headache can be the first sign of celiac disease.
• Nerve damage: Studies show that up to half of all people with celiac disease (intestinal damage from gluten) suffer from peripheral neuropathy — deterioration of the nerves in the hand and feet that can cause numbness, pain, burning and tingling.
• Difficulty in walking: Known as gait ataxia, difficulty in walking caused by gluten can be a serious issue. It can interfere with your sense of balance and make you unable to stand on one foot.
• Epilepsy: Epilepsy, especially in children, is frequently linked to celiac disease.
• Autism: Research at Penn State shows that when parents of autistic children eliminate gluten and casein from children’s diets, their behaviors and physical problems often improve.

Intolerable Proteins

Despite the dangers gluten presents to large numbers of people, gluten permeates much of our food supply. If you read food labels, you’ll discover sources of gluten like wheat, barley, rye and malt (made from barley) are added to a surprising number of foods. Added to that, many foods that should be gluten-free are frequently contaminated with gluten.

So going on a gluten-free diet can be quite a challenge. But if you need to eat gluten-free to save your brain, the task is obviously well worth the effort. I know that for me, the alternative is unthinkable.

“We have identified a syndrome in modern society that has not been recognized until recently,” says Till Roenneberg of the University of Munich. “It concerns an increasing discrepancy between the daily timing of the physiological clock and the social clock. As a result of this social jet lag, people are chronically sleep-deprived. They are also more likely to smoke and drink more alcohol and caffeine. (We’re also finding) that social jet lag contributes to obesity; the plot that social jet lag is really bad for our health is thickening.”

Each of us has a biological clock, Roenneberg explains. We can’t set those clocks like watches. They are entrained by daylight and night-darkness to provide the optimal window for sleep and waking. In modern society, we listen to those clocks “less and less due to the increasing discrepancy between what the body clock tells us and what the boss tells us.”

Roenneberg and his team have collected 10 years of data that show that people with more severe social jet lag are also more likely to be overweight. In other words, it appears that living “against the clock” may be a factor contributing to the obesity epidemic.

“Waking up with an alarm clock is a relatively new facet of our lives,” Roenneberg says. “It simply means that we haven’t slept enough and this is the reason why we are chronically tired. Good sleep and enough sleep is not a waste of time but a guarantee for better work performance and more fun with friends and family during off-work times.”

Not Just For Kids

Celiac disease, the autoimmune reaction to gluten that can destroy the walls of the small intestine, was originally considered to be a childhood illness. After World War II, when scientists figured out that gluten was the culprit in killing children with celiac, it wasn’t believed that older adults could develop the disease.

Bread shortages in Europe during the war had helped provide the clues needed to understand the roots of celiac disease. Until then, no one had been able to discern why children with celiac failed to thrive even though they seemed to be eating a nutritious diet. But when many Dutch kids were forced by the war to do without bread in the early 1940s, the children with celiac enjoyed improved health. When bread was reintroduced to the country, they became sick once again.

A doctor from Holland named Willem-Karel Dicke is credited with making the connection between consuming wheat proteins and celiac. In 1950 he wrote the thesis that helped convince the rest of the medical world that foods made from wheat, barley and rye were to blame for causing the misery of celiac.

Gluten For Adults

But what was first thought to be a digestive disease that afflicted children has now proven to be a disorder that increasingly strikes older adults. Research shows that “a substantial portion of (people with celiac) are diagnosed after the age of 50.” One out of three people discovered to have celiac are now over the age of 65. Researchers estimate that anywhere from 2 to 3 million Americans with celiac — about 95 percent of its victims — don’t even know they have the disease.

That high rate of undiagnosed disease is causing major health issues. Older adults may already have difficulties properly absorbing nutrients from their diet. But if they have celiac, which interferes with the proper functions of the digestive tract, their absorption of nutrients may grow even more defective.

A shortage of iron and other micronutrients is responsible for the fact that up to 80 percent of older people with celiac suffer anemia. They also frequently experience deficiencies of folate and vitamin B12.

Additionally, celiac can interfere with the absorption of calcium and vitamin D, nutrients that are needed to keep bones strong and help protect against a wide range of disease.

Autoimmune Dangers

If you’ve got celiac you also run a higher risk of other autoimmune dysfunctions. Autoimmune thyroid issues are rampant among people with celiac and most elderly adults with celiac suffer from an underactive thyroid.

Some of the most common signs that you have celiac include:

* Frequent stomach aches and cramps

* Diarrhea

* Anemia

* Depression

* Persistent fatigue

* Memory problems

* Muscle cramps

* Nerve tingling in hands and feet

Celiac Headache

A growing number of researchers now also believe that gluten can be linked to severe headaches. In a study reported in the Journal of Headache Pain, researchers emphasize that eliminating wheat may be an important step in relieving headaches. In addition, other research has shown that migraines are one of many neurological problems linked to celiac.

Nobody fully understands why older people are increasingly susceptible to gluten reactions. But it is understood that eating a gluten-free diet can make a big difference in your health if gluten is giving you serious health issues.

Chemical Time Bomb

Dow’s intentions of selling its new GMO corn and the subsequent massive increase in use of the weed killer 2,4-D has raised a storm of controversy. Steve Smith, agricultural director of Red Gold, an Indiana tomato processor, has called the planned use of the new corn a “ticking time bomb.”

“We are all producers and people who have no problem with new technology. But we see this new piece of it having side effects we don’t think people have adequately thought of,” he tells Reuters.

Objections to the innovative corn, which Dow is calling Enlist, are especially strong among farmers who don’t use Dow’s herbicides but have lost crops to drifting residues of chemicals like 2,4-D.

“It’s a major issue for farm country,” says John Bode, a lawyer for food firms and farmers who want stricter regulations of the Dow corn and herbicides.

“Massive amounts of 2,4-D… can cause major changes, threatening specialty crops miles away,” Bode says.

Reuters also reports that farmers like David Simmons, who owns a vineyard in Indiana, have had serious damage to their crops from drifting 2,4-D originating in neighboring fields. “I’m faced with looking five years down the road. Is it even going to be profitable to grow grapes if I continue to get this damage every summer?” Simmons wants to know.

Health Effects

A few of the folks who are working against the new GMO corn call it “Agent Orange corn” because 2,4-D was an ingredient in that infamous herbicide sprayed during the Vietnam War. But Dow points out that the ingredient in Agent Orange that caused most of its health-threatening side effects (like cancer and birth defects) was another chemical, 2,4,5-T, which has been outlawed. The chemical 2,4-D in contrast is used by many consumers in their home lawn-care products.

On the other hand, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, warns: “Many studies show that 2,4-D exposure is associated with various forms of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, nerve damage, hormone disruption and birth defects. USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) must take these significant risks seriously and reject approval of this crop.”

The Environmental Protection Agency, however, says that 2,4-D has not been shown to cause cancer in humans.  And The New York Times reports that farmers like Brooks Hurst, who grows corn in Missouri, are urging approval of the GMO corn. “I think it’s a crisis and we need something to have a solution to get rid of resistant weeds,” Hurst says.

The Times also reports that this corn is only the initial phase of a new Dow program to introduce many 2,4-D ready crops. Soon to come are cotton and soybeans that will be suitable for the herbicide. They report that Monsanto is working on soybeans, corn and cotton that can tolerate similar herbicides.

Herbicide In The Air

No one can be sure of the long-term effects of the use of these crops and weed killers. There are reports that 2,4-D is especially prone to vaporizing and traveling in the air for long distances.

“This volatilization thing is a situation we’ve never had to face before on a widespread basis,” Smith told The Times.

Smith is worried that applications of 2,4-D made late in the growing season when temperatures climb will increase the spread of the questionable chemical.

But Dow’s spokespeople insist that their new formulas for 2,4-D will minimize volatization.

“This is going to be a solution that we are looking forward to bringing to farmers,” says Joe Vertin,  a Dow spokesperson.  But organic farmers and others concerned with the degradation of the environment and the subsequent health risks are uneasy.

It’s A Gluten-Filled World

Every loaf of bread, bagel or cookie in the supermarket should come with a warning label: “This isn’t made with your grandparents’ wheat.” These loaves of bread, thick cookies, bagels and other wheat foods we consume have been baked with a grain bred to be rich in gluten, the sticky protein that gives them extra elasticity. Wheat from decades ago was much lower in this problematic protein.

All that gluten we’re swallowing (it’s also in barley and rye) is leading to a huge health problem. The 3 million Americans with undiagnosed celiac, those whose immune systems are silently destroying their bodies, are at quadruple risk of an early death. Another 20 million Americans are gluten-sensitive, made miserable by gluten. In these sensitive folks, gluten can cause stomachaches, memory loss, depression, headaches, lethargy, mental fog, eczema, infertility, joint pain and irritability.

For an unknown reason, the celiac rate among Americans has climbed 400 percent in recent decades.

When Gluten Escapes The Gut

In many of us, gluten stimulates a significant release of a molecule called zonulin, an evildoer that makes the walls of the intestinal tract much more permeable to large molecules. That allows gluten and other undesirables to penetrate the gut and have access to the rest of the body. When the immune system senses that these invaders have entered the circulation, it ramps up its attack on the body. It’s as though the body were a disabled spaceship in a science fiction movie and a crazed crew member has hit the auto-destruct button. But your body doesn’t blow up immediately. Instead, the immune system goes haywire looking for things to take apart. It may destroy the villi in the intestines (where nutrients are absorbed) or attack other parts of the body like the nerves or brain.

When zonulin levels climb to unmanageable levels, the intestinal tract gets extremely leaky, allowing passage to all kinds of large molecules from food that cause further havoc in the body. This can make you more vulnerable to diabetes, multiple sclerosis and a range of discomforting allergies. Zonulin may even make the blood-brain barrier deteriorate in people who have brain cancer.

Gluten-Free Diet

Lately, as more and more people try eating gluten-free to see if it improves their health, there’s been a backlash among naysayers who insist the gluten brouhaha is overblown. Kara Rowe, for example, director of outreach for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, is currently going on a gluten-free diet for a month (and blogging about it). She says she is doing this to better understand the implications of a gluten-free diet, but you can’t help but wonder if she’s looking for talking points to use against the idea of going gluten-free.

Rowe seems a little obsessed over planning her diet too carefully. She notes after one day that “I am a bit off on the ideal breakdown of calories. Am also going to have to work at getting about another 100 calories in and more water. Body feels fine…” She figures she ate 30 percent carbohydrates, 46 percent fat and 24 percent protein that day.

Which makes me wonder: If her body feels fine, why get bent out of shape worrying about a few carbs here or there? And since she lives on a wheat farm, it’s hard to believe she’ll come out in favor of a diet that omits wheat.

Walking In The Park

Of course, if you’re considering going on a gluten-free diet, only you can decide if you want to try it as an experiment to see if it improves how you feel. As Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine notes, in an interview with the website Living Without, “… the gluten-free diet isn’t a walk in the park.” He also adds, “If you’re gluten sensitive, you’ll see quick improvement on the diet, in a matter of days or weeks at the most.”

I know that when my memory was being destroyed by gluten, a gluten-free diet improved it noticeably within 10 days. On the other hand, I’ve been off gluten for more than five years, and I feel that it has taken all that time for some aspects of my digestion to improve significantly.

Meanwhile, researchers are continuing to search for the physiological mechanics that make so many people vulnerable to celiac and gluten sensitivity. As Fasano points out, “… if we can understand what the heck is going on with celiac disease, it could lead to huge, huge changes in preventive medicine.”

Despite the recent findings of undesirable chemical residues in chicken, we’re supposed to believe that the levels are too low to affect human health. But reassurances from the agricultural industry about the harmlessness of these toxins are not too reassuring — not when analyses show the birds are consuming drugs like Benadryl that you would never expect to be in your drumsticks and chicken wings.

When Keeve E. Nachman, a researcher at John Hopkins, discussed with The New York Times what he and his fellow scientists discovered in chickens, he admitted, “We were kind of floored. It’s unbelievable what we found.”

Banned Antibiotics

Originally, the tests on chicken were designed to check the birds only for antibiotics. In those experiments, the researchers found evidence the chickens were being fed floroquinolones, broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, particularly those infections that have become resistant to older antibiotic drugs. These findings were an unpleasant surprise because floroquinolones have been banned for use in U.S. poultry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 2005.

In the tests, the scientists examined feather meal, a byproduct of poultry production made from poultry feathers, to determine what drugs the chickens may have received prior to their slaughter and sale.

“The discovery of certain antibiotics in feather meal strongly suggests the continued use of these drugs, despite the ban put in place in 2005 by the FDA,” says David Love, another one of the researchers. “The public health community has long been frustrated with the unwillingness of FDA to effectively address what antibiotics are fed to food animals.”

“We strongly believe that the FDA should monitor what drugs are going into animal feed,” urges Nachman. “Based on what we’ve learned, I’m concerned that the new FDA guidance documents, which call for voluntary action from industry, will be ineffectual. By looking into feather meal, and uncovering a drug banned nearly 6 years ago, we have very little confidence that the food animal production industry can be left to regulate itself.”

The laboratory tests of feathers also showed the presence of acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) and caffeine. Chicken from China was found to contain ingredients linked to Prozac.

“This study reveals yet another pathway of unwanted human exposure to a surprisingly broad spectrum of prescription and over-the-counter drugs,” notes study co-author Rolf Halden, of Arizona State University.

Chicken Decline

All of these findings reflect the changing status of chicken in our modern system of industrial agriculture. And it reminds me: Many years ago, when I was a young, broke musician living on a couch in an apartment in New York City’s Little Italy, chicken trucks would periodically drop off live birds to a butcher store on Thompson Street that catered to the neighborhood’s Italian cooks. There the birds would be killed and plucked one by one and sold.

Today, I’m sure that broke musicians still sleep on New York City couches, but I doubt that chicken trucks still navigate Manhattan streets. As for me, decades after trading in my Stratocaster for a computer keyboard, and living in Alabama, I still encounter chicken trucks. But there’s little resemblance between those trucks I saw in the 1970s with their feisty, complaining, colorful birds and the present-day dingy, foul-smelling, dilapidated vehicles that wend their way on rural roads to chicken factories. The chickens of the 21st century are white, passive lumps that seem barely alive.

The sight and smell of these unhappy birds on filthy trucks is persuasion enough for me that we should be eating organic food, never mind the chemicals hidden in their flesh.

Gluten Confusion

Many people are confused by what gluten is and the problems it causes. A contributing factor to this conundrum: Medical researchers are still busy trying to clarify exactly how gluten does its damage in the human body. Scientists don’t completely understand why some people seem to react badly to gluten while others apparently tolerate it.

But here are some of the most common myths that people believe about gluten:

1. Eating a gluten-free diet is a fad that will soon fade away. For people whose health suffers because of gluten, this diet is no fad; it is a necessity. Since there is no cure for gluten sensitivities, the only recourse is to avoid gluten permanently.
2. Gluten sensitivities and celiac disease are problems that people develop as children. While researchers used to believe that celiac, the autoimmune reaction to gluten, was a problem that always appeared in younger people, they now know that you can develop a gluten problem at any age. As far as researchers know, you can be gluten-tolerant today and, for some unknown reason, wake up tomorrow with a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.
3. Sensitivities to gluten are allergic reactions. When you suffer a health problem like celiac, it is a disease, not an allergy. Allergies cause reactions to things like pollen, peanuts, dairy, eggs, etc. An allergic reaction is a direct immune response to an allergen. For instance, inhale pollen and you sneeze it out. In contrast, when you have celiac, your immune system is inflamed and the immune cells attack the body itself. In many cases of celiac, the immune system attacks the intestinal walls and destroys the sections that absorb nutrients. That can lead to anemia, osteoporosis and other diseases that result from nutrient malabsorption.
4. If a food is wheat-free, it doesn’t contain gluten. Even though wheat may be the most common source of gluten in the American diet, it isn’t the only one. Foods containing barley (like malted milk and beer) are also rich in gluten. So is rye bread. And foods that should be naturally gluten-free may be cross-contaminated with gluten. For example, some packages of beans may note that they are processed in a plant that also handles wheat. In that case, there may be gluten present in the beans even though beans are a naturally gluten-free food. French fries at many fast food places may contain gluten from seasonings or be contaminated from frying oil that unintentionally contains gluten from other foods.
5. Eating a gluten-free diet is very expensive. Eating gluten-free is pricey if you insist on eating gluten-free baked goods that substitute for normal bread, cookies, waffles, cakes and other processed foods. But if you stick to meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit and nuts, the diet should not be any more expensive than a conventional diet. However, eating out at restaurants that do not make allowances for preparing gluten-free items may be problematic. Many restaurant workers don’t understand how to make sure dishes are gluten-free and not cross-contaminated.
6. Only a small number of people suffer from celiac disease. Experts estimate that about 1 percent of the U.S. population has celiac disease. Those same experts note that at least 2 million of these people don’t know that gluten is the source of their health problems. If you are one of these people and you unwittingly keep eating foods containing gluten, you quadruple your risk of dying this year. In addition, research shows that the number of people with celiac seems to be doubling every 15 years. Nobody knows why.
7. When gluten causes a health problem, it is a digestive problem. Gluten has been connected to 300 different symptoms including depression, headaches, ataxia (difficulties controlling muscle movement), brain fog, arthritis, thyroid malfunction, skin rashes, etc. In my case, gluten caused my immune system to attack my brain and nerves. I suffered Alzheimer’s-like symptoms until I gave up gluten.
8. Going gluten-free is an easy way to lose weight. If you eat gluten-free baked goods and indulge in sugary soft drinks, juices and other beverages rich in sweeteners, you probably won’t lose weight on a gluten-free diet. But if you stick to meats, fish, vegetables, fruits and nuts and go easy on the sugar, you may find it a relatively painless method for taking off pounds. Plus, if gluten is fomenting inflammation in your body that causes you to retain fluid, giving up gluten may help you lose weight. When I gave up eating gluten, I initially lost five pounds in the first three days on a gluten-free diet.
9. If you don’t have celiac or an apparent sensitivity to gluten, you can digest gluten just fine. Despite the fact that you may seem to tolerate gluten, you can’t digest it. Nobody can. Even under the best of circumstances, gluten passes through you without incident. But you derive no nutritional benefit from gluten.
10. If you’re gluten-sensitive, you can still eat some bread or other food containing gluten once in a while as a treat. Gluten difficulties are diseases. If you react to gluten, there is no such thing as a safe level of gluten exposure. Giving gluten up entirely is the only safe course of action.

Permanent Problem

Millions of Americans suffer from celiac and gluten sensitivities, and these are health menaces that continue to grow. Researchers continue to puzzle over how gluten causes its physiological destruction, but there is no puzzle over how to treat a gluten problem: Eat a gluten-free diet.

Gluten Confusion

If you feel like you don’t really understand why there’s such a big fuss over gluten and why this troublesome protein is causing so much controversy, you’re not alone. Researchers who specialize in studying the topic have been confounded by the different types of sensitivity to gluten they have found, the growing numbers of people who react to gluten and the wide range of physical illness it causes.

According to scientists, there seem to be at least three main forms of reactions related to gluten. The first, an immune response to wheat, is an outright allergy. In that instance, the body’s immune system attacks the allergen as though it were a life-threatening pathogen.

The second type of reaction is what is called an autoimmune response. In this case, eating foods like bread, cookies and cakes made from wheat, rye and barley causes your immune system to attack the body. This can cause celiac, a condition that destroys the digestive tract. It may also lead to gluten ataxia (autoimmune damage to the motor neurons that coordinate movement) and dermatitis herpetiformis (rashes and other skin problems).

In my case, gluten caused an autoimmune attack on my brain and nerve cells. My mental condition deteriorated to the point that I suffered what seemed to be Alzheimer’s disease. But I was lucky and caught the problem in time. When I took gluten out of my diet, my descent into dementia stopped and I recovered my memory.

Sensitivity

In some people, gluten causes sensitivities that cannot be classified as either allergies or autoimmune responses. Despite the uncertainty of what causes these sensitivities, they are still making people miserable. Gluten sensitivity can lead to bone and joint pain, weight loss, chronic fatigue, eczema, headaches, depression, anemia, numbness, diarrhea and brain fog.

Research into how gluten affects us shows that “you’re never too old to develop celiac disease,” says Alessio Fasano, M.D., director of the University of Maryland’s Mucosal Biology Research Center. Fasano’s research shows that in the United States, since 1974, the number of people with celiac has been doubling every 15 years.

“You’re not necessarily born with celiac disease,” says Carlo Catassi, M.D., a researcher with the Universita Politecnica delle Marche in Italy. “Our findings show that some people develop celiac disease quite late in life.”

Fact is, nobody can digest gluten. In those without an apparent reaction to gluten, the substance merely passes through the digestive tract and is eventually excreted. Because of gluten’s indigestibility and toxicity, our use of wheat as a food has been called an “evolutionary mistake.”

Researchers writing in BMC Medicine note that during the 10,000 years humans have raised wheat, the types of wheat we use have been bred to contain more and more gluten. They note that “Apparently the human organism is still largely vulnerable to the toxic effects of this (gluten) protein complex…”

Serious Dilemma

If you have puzzling health problems that don’t respond to treatment, going gluten free can be worth a try. Consider that at least 3 million Americans right now have life-threatening issues with gluten but don’t know about it. And if you have celiac and keep eating gluten, your risk of death is quadrupled. It is also estimated that more than 36,000 women in the United States are infertile because of celiac and don’t know it.

While not everyone needs to be on a gluten-free diet, make sure that you are not a victim of an evolutionary mistake.

Gluten Research

Medical researchers are having a hard time nailing down all the implications of what gluten does to human health. We know that gluten, a type of protein found in wheat, barley and oats, cannot be digested by humans. We know that some people have an extreme reaction to eating foods containing gluten. After that, the research picture grows murky.

For those who suffer what is called celiac disease, ingesting gluten causes the body to begin an autoimmune reaction that destroys the lining of the intestinal tract. As the structures in the small intestine called villi are compromised, the body’s ability to absorb nutrients malfunctions. The results are often severe digestive distress and nutrient deficiency diseases. And as you start to suffer malnutrition because nutrients are passing through you, you can also be subject to leaky gut syndrome. The walls of your damaged intestines begin to leak, allowing substances into the body that can stimulate further destruction by immune cells.

In people who react to gluten as I do, digestive problems are milder but gluten sets off an immune inflammatory attack on nerves, brain cells and other parts of the body. This can lead to brain fog, problems with muscle coordination and memory difficulties that resemble Alzheimer’s. In my case, going off gluten restored most of my memory. (Though I can still be in trouble at the supermarket if I don’t have a written list of all the items I intend to buy.)

Beyond those symptoms, reactions to gluten can include a collection of discomforts so bewilderingly wide-ranging it’s hard to believe they’re all linked to same substance. People sensitive to gluten can suffer headaches, chronic fatigue, osteoporosis, lymphoma, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, irritability, depression, joint pain and a whole host of other distressing difficulties.

Gluten Complications

Complicating this situation is the fact that some people react to gluten but don’t seem to suffer full-blown celiac disease. Consequently, researchers want to categorize these folks as gluten-sensitive but have so far failed to come up with a rigorous definition of who falls into this category. As you might expect, they also are having trouble coming up with a precise calculation of the percentage of the population that suffers these sensitivities.

Don’t forget – nobody can digest gluten. Does that mean everyone has at least a low-level gluten discomfort but only some have problems serious enough to notice? So far, the experts can’t seem to agree.

If you decide to eat a gluten-free diet, you should focus on eating real food, not items designed to mimic foods that contain gluten. Minimize processed gluten-free foods like cookies, cakes and breads. Seek nutritional guidance if you need help recognizing which foods contain hidden gluten. (Look here for some tips.) Eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Eat good sources of protein like fish and meat. (Eat organic, free-range meat where possible.)

If you’re worried about your nutritional status on a gluten-free diet, you can also take a multi-vitamin and multi-mineral to stay supplied with micronutrients.

Inescapable Problem

Experts now estimate that at least 1 percent of the U.S. population suffers from celiac and most don’t know it. Researchers are also baffled about the fact that the incidence of celiac has quadrupled during the last 100 years. Amidst all this controversy, increasing numbers of people are trying a gluten-free diet. Although others differ, my experience with going gluten-free has convinced me it’s a great idea for just about everyone.