You Are What You Wheat

Why Gluten Can Gum Up Your Guts

By Dr. Alex White, MD

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Anyone who is the least little bit gluten intolerant or has celiac disease knows the symptoms – suddenly their belly balloons to twice its normal size while inside, a sound like a bear with a toothache makes its presence known.  Aside from discomfort gluten intolerance can exert, a more sinister influence can take place in your body, by sapping your energy to the point where it takes everything you have to get out of bed, or leaving you looking like a zombie at work.  The after effects of gluten intolerance can include constipation, diarrhea and depression along with a host of other symptoms that can persist for days or weeks.  The solution for most people with this condition is to avoid anything that contains wheat.  But this in itself can be a tall order, since so many things contain gluten.

Got Gluten?

Say goodbye to most Bread, Beer, Cookies, Cake, Crackers, Cereal, Pasta, Pastry, Pizza and Whiskey.

While it is suspected that around 1% of the population in the US has Celiac disease, there is a growing number of people that have some sensitivity to gluten.  Add to that the fact that wheat isn’t the only grain that contains gluten and you can find it hard to eat healthy, since whole grains are rich in vitamins and minerals.  Fortunately, there are a few whole grains that are gluten-free, including amaranth, millet and quinoa, but trying to find restaurants that are gluten-free is no easy task.  Every supermarket today sports a gluten-free section, but these products are pricey and do not always taste quite the same as the product they are replacing.  (I have yet to try a gluten-free muffin that tastes as good as one made with wheat flour.)

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Of course, if your health depends on eliminating gluten from your diet, you have no choice.  That being said, wheat isn’t the only culprit.  Other grains known to contain gluten include rye and barley.  Some people who are sensitive to gluten can even have an adverse reaction to oats and corn, neither of which contain gluten.

Just as with an allergy, gluten sensitivity results from the body overreacting to an introduced outside agent (in this case food that contains gluten).  In response to what it sees as an assault on the body, it reacts by spiking insulin levels and sending a flood of antibodies to repel what it perceives as an invading organism.  As a result, this impedes the intestinal tract by damaging the intestinal villi and in so doing making it all but impossible to absorb nutrients.  This means that food stops being digested and in in short order, the food stuck inside you begins to ferment, which in turn causes bloating.

Cavemen Don’t Eat Quiche

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The reasons a growing number of people experience some level of gluten intolerance has to do with our ancestry.  Hominins, among which Homo Sapiens can be included, have been around for somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million years.  During the majority of that time, people ate pretty much anything that didn’t eat them first.  That being said, what they didn’t eat was wheat.  That was something that was first cultivated around 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent.  As a result, humans were not designed to digest wheat.  It was an acquired trait.  Add to this the fact that modern wheat, along with many other cereal crops, has been modified to enhance crop yields, as opposed to making these grains more nutritious, and it’s a miracle that any of us can stomach the stuff.

From a medical standpoint, this presents a problem, since everything from processed food to dietary supplements can be anything but gluten-free.  The reason this is a problem is that many of the symptoms and complications of gluten sensitivity can mimic other medical conditions.  Even worse, less than 1% of patients who have a sensitivity to gluten are correctly diagnosed.  Aside from stomach and intestinal issues, gluten sensitivity can cause a number of other symptoms, such as headaches, rashes, vitamin deficiency, joint pain, autoimmune disorders and more. 

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Trying to completely eliminate gluten from your diet can be just as complicated once you are diagnosed with the condition, since even trace amounts can cause symptoms.  Not only are gluten-free alternatives to bread, pasta and other food more expensive, the elimination of an entire category of food means you will also have to invest in nutritional supplements to provide the vitamins and minerals that you are no longer ingesting.  Even this can prove problematic.

For instance, many brands of fiber supplements are not gluten-free.  In fact, a number of popular fiber supplements use wheat as their source of fiber.  Should you choose one of these fiber supplements you could be in for a rude awakening.  Even worse is the fact that the USDA allows companies to claim their fiber supplements are “gluten-free” as long as they contain less than 20 parts per million of gluten.  However, the devil is in the details, as you will see with the following popular brands.

1.       Benefiber -  While this popular powdered fiber supplement is labeled gluten-free, its primary ingredient is wheat dextrin, a portion of the wheat plant that does not contain the gluten protein. 

2.      Metamucil – Comes in powder, capsules, heath bars and wafers.  While the powder and capsules are gluten-free (less than 20 ppm), their wafers contain gluten, since they have wheat flour listed as an ingredient. 

3.      Fiber-Choice – While their chewable wafers are considered gluten-free, their gummies are not.

4.      There are a number of other supplements that are listed as gluten-free but whose product is made in factories known to process eggs, soy, nuts, fish or shellfish.  If you have other food allergies, you need to read the fine print.

MicrobeFiber.com

MicrobeFiber tm is produced chemical-free using a patented method that allows us to extract soluble fiber from a vegetable host in its purest form.  This is why your body can consume and assimilate 30 grams of our fiber each day.  With MicrobeFiber, you are consuming real food, not fillers and chemicals.  The contents of this product is gluten-free, GMO-free and kosher.

While fiber supplements can be a great way to get the nutrients back in your system that you lose when you shun food that contains gluten, make sure you only take supplements that are not going to cause an adverse reaction.  After all, you are what you wheat.

Alex White, MD is the Clinical Research Director of MicrobeFiber™