Wheat Belly Cookbook: 150 delicious wheat-free recipes for effortless weight loss and optimum health. Dr Davis William
Читать онлайн книгу.
Gastrointestinal Battleground
You deliver wheat products directly into your gastrointestinal tract, starting at the mouth and on down for another 30 or more feet. It therefore serves as the front line for the wheat battle.
We know that many people experience gastrointestinal distress from gluten in wheat (actually the gliadin within gluten, as well as glutenin). Of course, gluten is primarily responsible for coeliac disease, a condition marked by destructive changes in the intestinal lining that result in abdominal pain, cramps, diarrhoea, impaired absorption of nutrients, haemorrhage and occasionally death; it affects approximately 1 per cent of the population. Of the approximately 2.4 million Americans who have coeliac disease, 90 per cent don’t know it, making it among the most underdiagnosed of chronic diseases. And it’s gotten worse: Over the last 50 years, we’ve witnessed a quadrupling of the incidence of coeliac disease, a doubling over the past 20 years.
Gluten also disrupts the gastrointestinal tracts of people without coeliac disease, resulting in common complaints such as acid reflux, heartburn, excessive gas, abdominal cramping, diarrhoea and constipation. (See ‘Gluten Sensitivity: Is There Such a Thing?’.) Gluten sensitivity can develop in people with abnormal antibodies to gliadin; it can develop in people without abnormal antibodies to gliadin. Coeliac disease and gluten sensitivity combined affect up to 10 per cent of the American population, but the intestinal disruptive effects of wheat add up to far more than 10 per cent of the population, with more people experiencing the heartburn of acid reflux, the bowel urgency and crampiness of irritable bowel syndrome, and the worsening of symptoms (diarrhoea, cramps, gas, pain) of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
The lectin in wheat, wheat germ agglutinin, because it has a direct toxic effect on the intestinal tract, adds to the intestinal disruption of gluten. After all, lectins are potentially poisonous proteins in plants meant to protect them from insects, moulds, and other predators. Wheat germ agglutinin is the stuff that permits abnormal intestinal permeability to develop, allowing foreign substances – including wheat germ agglutinin itself – to gain access to the bloodstream in small quantities. (In larger quantities, direct injection of wheat germ agglutinin into the bloodstream of laboratory animals is rapidly fatal.) Once in the bloodstream, wheat germ agglutinin and its hordes of unwanted foreign compounds then migrate to your liver, joints, brain and just about everywhere else in the body, leading to inflammation and abnormal conditions in these organs. It means that people who consume wheat, and thereby wheat germ agglutinin, are more likely to experience inflammatory diseases or experience worsened symptoms of existing conditions, such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren’s syndrome, polymyalgia rheumatica, polymyositis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, seborrhoea, psoriasis and a long list of other inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.
Gluten Sensitivity: Is There Such a Thing?
For years, many doctors denied that there was such a thing as coeliac disease, the intestinal destruction that develops from wheat gliadin/gluten consumption in genetically predisposed individuals. But only the most intransigent (read: ‘crazy’) among my colleagues can continue to deny that coeliac disease is a genuine – and potentially devastating – disease.
Doctors are now struggling with the notion of gluten sensitivity, a reaction to the gluten in wheat but not achieving the severity of coeliac disease. While not everybody agrees on how to define gluten sensitivity, the most common definition is that of showing symptoms of sensitivity to wheat gluten, such as acid reflux, abdominal pain, cramps and diarrhoea, that disappear with elimination of wheat. Despite the apparent response to wheat/gluten removal, intestinal biopsy (which usually reveals extensive damage in coeliac patients) shows either no evidence of damage in those with gluten sensitivity, or inflammatory changes without damage.
One recent and important Italian study demonstrated that 56.4 per cent of people identified with gluten sensitivity, but lacking the intestinal damage associated with coeliac disease, are positive for the IgG antigliadin antibody (i.e., an antibody to the gliadin protein in wheat), but not for other markers. In other words, many people demonstrate evidence of an abnormal antibody response to the gliadin protein in gluten but don’t have coeliac disease.
Other studies have demonstrated that gluten consumption, even when subjects are blinded to what they are consuming, generates symptoms in people without coeliac disease.
Gluten sensitivity can extend beyond the gastrointestinal tract, with new descriptions of neurological impairment, especially cerebellar ataxia (loss of coordination and bladder control due to destruction of the cerebellum at the base of the brain) and peripheral neuropathy (destruction of the nerves of the legs, arms and organs). In one study, 57 per cent of people with unexplained neurological impairment were positive for antibodies against gliadin, while only 5 per cent of people with neurological impairment from known diseases (e.g., stroke) showed positive gliadin antibodies. Typically, people with these forms of neurological impairment do not have coeliac disease.
This is not just an academic debate. Observations suggest that gluten sensitivity not only can result in intestinal inflammation and neurological symptoms, but also increases mortality.
Because it required about 40 years for the concept of coeliac disease to even begin to gain wide acceptance in the medical community, it is another leap for most doctors to believe that there is another form of intolerance to wheat gluten that extends beyond coeliac disease.
Problem: If 56.4 per cent of participants in the Italian study experienced relief from abdominal symptoms with wheat removal, it means that the remaining 43.6 per cent experienced relief by saying goodbye to all foods containing wheat – but had no evidence of abnormal immune response to gliadin. Researchers from the world of gastroenterology don’t know what to do with this bothersome 43.6 per cent, dismissing it as an uncertain group, a group prone to placebo effects, or just plain nuts.
Now that you have a better appreciation that wheat is about more than just gluten and gliadin, you can readily surmise that at least some of those 43.6 per cent in the Italian study who had symptoms associated with wheat consumption and experienced relief with wheat elimination included people who likely reacted to wheat germ agglutinin, or experienced reactions to glutenin, alpha amylase inhibitors or any one or more of the many other relatively uncharted and unique compounds in modern wheat. It’s not all about gluten.
One lesson is clear: If modern medicine cannot identify the blood marker or the biopsy evidence that active destruction of some organ is actively occurring, then there’s nothing wrong. (You know how many people I’ve seen placed on antidepressants, pain-relieving drugs and narcotics, and antiseizure drugs, all to treat wheat consumption? I lost count long ago.)
In the march of scientific progress in charting the adverse consequences of consumption of modern wheat, along each step of the way we learn that many of the people who complained of a variety of health problems, but were dismissed as cranks, nuts or undiagnosable, prove to have some form of unhealthy reaction to one or another component of wheat.
In short, the human intestinal tract is poorly equipped to endure the onslaught of the dual toxic effects of wheat gluten and lectin, resulting in a battleground strewn with casualties, experienced as an astounding range of gastrointestinal and inflammatory illnesses, and managed with all manner of drugs and procedures.
Neurological Impairment: Wheat Brain
Among the most disturbing associations between wheat and ill health are the associations being made between consumption of this man-made grain and the deterioration of the brain and nervous system.
Anecdotally, mind ‘fog’ is exceptionally common with consumption of wheat. It is likely due to the mind effects of gliadin that are also responsible for addictive behaviour, worsened by the hypoglycaemia that typically develops after amylopectin A’s extravagant blood sugar high. But the effects of wheat on the human brain go far deeper than that.
While coeliac disease is usually regarded as a disease confined to the intestinal tract, over the last few years coeliac disease has become less a disease of diarrhoea and cramps, and more a disease of