A Surprising Study
I just read about an astounding study about the effects of gluten. Dr. Mark Hyman writes about it in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/gluten-what-you-dont-know_b_379089.html). Dr. Hyman reports that according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association people with diagnosed celiac disease, undiagnosed celiac disease, and gluten sensitivities have a higher risk of death than the average person. Apparently they looked at 30,000 patients from 1969 to 2008 and divided them into three groups: those with celiac disease, those with intestinal inflammation but not full blown celiac disease, and those with a gluten sensitivity (positive blood test, negative endoscopy). The people with celiac disease have a 39% increased risk of death, those with intestinal inflammation have a 72% increased risk of death, and those with a gluten sensitivity have a 35% increased risk of death. Most of these risks are associated with heart disease and cancer. It was unclear to me from Dr. Hyman’s article whether the celiacs in this study were following a strict gluten-free diet.
The most surprising aspect of this study is the fact that one does not need to have full blown celiac disease in order to be at risk from serious health issues related to gluten. Even if you are gluten intolerant,you can become very sick from eating gluten. Dr. Hyman points out that while 1 in 133 people are believed to have celiac disease, 1/3 of Americans are believed to be gluten intolerant! 99% of them don’t even know it. They are being diagnosed with IBS, inflamatory bowel diease, osteoperosis, anemia, and scores of other illnesses and are completely unaware that gluten is the cause of their health problems.
Dr. Hyman strongly recommends that if you want to know if you have a gluten sensitivity try the gluten-free diet for 2-4 weeks and see if you are feeling better. If when you reintroduce gluten into your diet you suddenly feel your symptoms return, you are probably gluten sensitive and you should stay away from gluten. Similarly if you test positive for gluten anti-bodies but your endoscopy is negative, you should still stay away from gluten. You are gluten intolerant and can become very sick.
Chek out the article with the link I provided above. It is well worth the read.
9 Responsesto “A Surprising Study”
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While I completely agree with the notion that people are misdiagnosed with diseases that are actually food allergy/intolerance related. How is it that someone has a “higher risk of death”? We are all guaranteed to die. Is it a higher risk of a certain kind of illness that leads to death? A Higher risk of death before a certain age? Those number are rather meaningless without some clarification.
Thanks for posting about this. There is a related study by Dr. Joseph A. Murray from the Mayo Clinics. He found two things: first, the frequency of celiac disease increased over the past 50 years. Second, those people with celiac disease were almost 4 times as likely to have died within 30-40 years as those without celiac.
Vicki, the reasons for this result are subject to further research because he cannot explain them (yet). But the research clearly indicates that those with celiac seem to die earlier.
Watch the entire video here: http://customchoicecereal.com/blog/specialist-on-celiac-disease-research/
Thank you very much friend.
This magnificent research, it must stimulate the celiac group to ask our politicians celiac laws, protocols, medical …
Celiac disease is not a joke, is a disease with serious health risks that must be disseminated and claimed.
Thank you very much
greetings with love
sonia gluten free
It’s great to see more studies on Celiac and gluten! My angst is the consistent message to people to try going without gluten for a couple weeks and then work on feeling better. As yet, true diagnosis is by biopsy of small intestine while on gluten. The ideal is to see the right medical professionals and be properly tested. Only then one should avoid gluten, knowing the degree of damage and/or sensitivity to gluten.
Gaining celiac awareness one glutton at a time…
Thank you for what you do!
This is an interesting study and surely parallels other research indicating a higher mortality per age category for those with the gluten syndrome.
What is fascinating to me is that some researchers, Dr. Aristo Vojdani for one, find that subsets of the gluten syndrome other than villi damage, (often labeled as “gluten intolerant or gluten sensitive and thought to be less serious) are actually often WORSE than the comparatively small subset of those with villi damage. The difference is that the damage starts in other tissues beside the villi so it gets missed for a long time or never dx at all. Snipping villi doesn’t help when the damage is to nerves, or thyroid, heart, brain or other tissue.
In many cases of non celiac gluten intolerance the gut is in worse shape. See the medical diagrams at http://glutensensitivity.net/VojdaniDiagrams.htm
You can see that the gut is WORSE damaged in the gluten intolerance diagram. This is not well understood.
However, since the focus is on villi damage, often folks don’t get dx with “celiac” until they are in very bad shape. There may have been damage building up in other areas of the body for a long time until finally the villi are also affected and they get their dx. So it makes sense that the mortality is higher in the villi damaged group. Some only get dx when they are closer to end stage.
The reason this is being missed is because gluten can break into many “pieces” for which there are no antibody tests developed. So a lot of folks get negative blood tests simply because the test didn’t check for the antibodies they happen to have.
Also tTG is not necessarily present in non celiac gluten intolerance reactions.
Also sometimes an enzyme (activation induced cytidine deaminase) is not functioning. That enzyme causes the IgM antibodies (which appear first), to convert to IgA or IgG, so the test is negative.
Furthermore, if the primary area of damage is somewhere else beside the villi, the villi will be healthy on biopsy. If the heart, brain, thyroid, nerves etc., (depending on the person), had been biopsied instead of villi they would have found the damage. As I stated earlier, perhaps years later as the damage in the body increases, eventually the villi also will be affected.
I know this is confusing but it is very important to understand that according to this viewpoint a negative blood OR BIOPSY test is NEVER conclusive. The patient may be WORSE off than his villi damaged counterpart.
We need better, more detailed antibody testing to catch multitudes of folks who land in this huge black hole.
I always worry when docs say “try the g/f diet for a while and see if you feel better.”
MANY celiac patients, and others with food sensitivities can take months to see changes in their symptoms, even years. Plus, more and more research is being done on REFRACTORY celiac disease, a condition in which the body doesn’t truly HEAL, even when on a gluten free diet.
Urging patients to “try the diet” for a while to self diagnose can lead to dangerous self-diagnosing practices that have supported SO MANY fad diets among our culture today. these diets and non-medical diagnoses do nothing to support awareness within the public/medical community of the severity of many of our (celiac speaking, here) conditions.
A formal diagnosis, detailed examination, and support by a medical team provides the most secure path for treatment of celiac (which i agree, needs to be taken much more seriously in the medical/public communities!) as well as other food intolerances.
Vicki W,
Think like an insurance agent writing a life insurance policy. For any group of 40 year olds, (a “cohort), some of them are more likely to die in the next year, ie before their 41st birthdays.
As you point out, at some point, the mortality for any cohort is 100%.
Insurance companies know a lot about how risk can vary with age, gender, marital status, etc. This study just points out another possible variable.
I’m currently on the “diet”, but for other reasons. I suffer from asthma, eczema and sinus. My doctor believes this is because of food sensitivities and has therefore put me on a very restrictive diet. No wheat, no eggs, no milk etc.
He believes this is the only way to find out where the problems lie as it could be one of any type of food and I need to experience what effects these foods have on my body once I reintroduce them. I’m keeping a food diary and have to consult with him regularly.
Liquid whole-food (gluten free) supplements are thought to be a good alternative for those with celiac because in most cases, those with celiac disease have a hard time absorbing the vital nutrients that their bodies need, in liquid form the absorbtion is literally close to 10 times that of traditional vitamins and minerals in pill form.