In this article, I discuss my various thoughts and observations regarding gluten, gluten intolerance and celiac disease. I also note how radically diet, health and fitness trends have changed over the years in response to our changing environment and food supply.
Where Are They Now? The Demise of Past Diet and Fitness Gurus
I have been contemplating writing about my experiences with Gluten in a blog posting for a few days now, and one place that my contemplating mind has been taking me has been to dwell on how popular ideas and trends – many would call them fads – in diet and nutrition, health and fitness have evolved and changed, often even radically, over the years. And so, I got up early this morning and did a little Google search on the history of certain dietary trends in modern times. You see, back when I graduated from acupuncture school way back in the late 1980s, the prevailing dietary health wisdom was that whole grains should form the foundation of a healthy and longevity oriented diet. Boy – has that verdict ever changed in recent years! Now grains and gluten, the main form of protein found in wheat and other whole grains, has been thoroughly vilified, and now the prevailing dietary counsel for those who suffer from many chronic or degenerative diseases, and who want to return to a state of health has been to avoid wheat and other whole grains, mainly because of their high gluten content.
By the way – do you know what the word, “Guru” means? Gee, You Are You! I don’t remember exactly where I first heard that joke, but maybe I heard it somewhere back in the sixties, when I was drifting around in the hippie counterculture somewhere, or back in the seventies, when I was chasing after spiritual enlightenment as a part of the “Me Generation”.
Anyway, I was trying hard to remember a past diet and fitness guru’s name – you know, one who promoted whole grains as the foundation or cornerstone of a healthy, long life diet. Hhhmmm… Didn’t he keel over and croak right after he got back from a long run? Or was that Jim Fixx, the great running guru I was thinking about, who died at the fairly young age of 52? The internet articles that I was reading said that Jim Fixx’s big thing was that running was the best medicine. Weighing over two hundred and some odd pounds, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and living on a diet of fast food burgers and shakes, he suddenly quit smoking and took to running, which enabled him to shed all his excess weight. But they say that Jim Fixx didn’t give up his fast food habit, which is what may have finally done him in; and even though he died at a relatively young age, Jim still managed to outlive his dad, who died from a heart attack at only age 43, by nine years. The first name that came to my mind as I initiated my Google search was Dean Ornish, whose dietary program, which still features whole grains, has qualified for insurance reimbursement. Bravo! Dean Ornish was the one who got former US president Bill Clinton to switch to a heart healthy plant based vegetarian diet. And it seems that Dean Ornish is still going strong and doing his thing.
But still, Dean Ornish wasn’t the name I was looking for – the name of the guy who was a real big promoter of the whole grain diet and lifestyle back in the seventies. Finally, after considerable searching and reading about the lives and deaths of past diet and fitness gurus, I came upon a name that I believe was the one I was searching for – Nathan Pritikin. Yeah – his was the main whole grain based, heart healthy diet program back in the seventies. Hoo boy – there’s been a heckuva lot that has changed since the seventies – or even the eighties, when I graduated from acupuncture school. But how the heck did whole grains – and gluten – ever go from being the big hero of a heart healthy diet to the great villain that it is today? A lot in our natural – or not so natural – environment has changed, and a lot of it due to mass business and economic factors that are beyond our direct control. Like it or not, we have to live, move and have our being within the environment that Nature and Man have given us, and a lot of it ain’t that good. I firmly believe that a major factor – maybe even the most consequential factor – that has shifted the prevailing dietary wisdom away from gluten and whole grains may very well be Glyphosates and GMO agriculture. As I stated in my previous blog posting, this single development may be responsible for the alarming rise in intestinal disorders like celiac disease and gluten intolerance. And the diet gurus, keeping abreast of the times, and what they are seeing in the patients who come to them for help, were hip to what was happening and got on the anti-gluten bandwagon. After all, it’s only natural – or, more precisely, a natural response to un-natural changes in our outer environment, and our food supply.
Gluten Sensitivity and Biochemical Individuality
My sister was gung-ho about dropping gluten – after all, she had been on the Atkins diet with my mom, and the Atkins diet is all about cutting out sugar and carbohydrates. And when you think of it, carbohydrates are intimately intertwined with bread, pastries and other sources of gluten in the Standard American Diet (SAD – that’s another joke I learned in acupuncture school!). Some have even observed that wheat and wheat flour and byproducts are the mainstay of the American diet, or America’s leading staple food, and I would agree. Anyway, my sister usually goes into a restaurant and shoves all the high carb food to the side and eats everything else. I had too much of a love affair with bread and high gluten foods, so I didn’t get around to experimenting with eliminating gluten until quite recently. When I finally got around to eliminating bread and gluten, it was mainly as part of a program of carbohydrate reduction in an effort to lower my blood sugar – in other words, reducing carbs was the primary consideration, and reducing or eliminating gluten was secondary to that.
Another thing about me versus my sister is that we have differing blood types; whereas she inherited type O from my mom’s side of the family, I inherited type B from my dad’s side of the family. Type O’s they say, evolved from pre-agricultural hunter / gatherers, who ate the meat of animals they hunted for food, as well as wild nuts, berries and roots that they could forage for and gather. Type B’s are the most omnivorous by nature, and are adapted to eating a wide variety of foods, including grains. My mom had come from a Polish Catholic family, and was a meat-and-potatoes gal. It seems like my sister naturally followed in her preferences; it always amazed me how much of a carnivore my sister was. As part of her carnivorous convictions, my sister was into reading nutritional literature that praised the health virtues of animal fats, which runs against the conventional holistic healing wisdom that animal fats and saturated fats are bad for you.
But what does Greek Medicine have to say about the whole gluten thing? How does gluten figure into dietary theory and practice in Greek Medicine? In terms of their inherent nature and temperament, wheat, bread and gluten have a mainly cooling, moistening Phlegmatic nature, although not as cold, wet and Phlegmatic as milk and dairy. It tends to slow down and relax the metabolism, as well as promoting energy conserving anabolic metabolism over energy burning catabolic metabolism. There’s no question that eating a lot of bread and pastries will increase one’s phlegm levels, and those with a slow or sluggish metabolism are more prone to phlegm congestion as well as weight gain from eating wheat, pastries and other glutinous foods. But, traditionally speaking, as long as one kept a rein on one’s consumption of these foods, their undesirable side effects could be kept in check. But what really screwed things up and threw a monkey wrench into things, I believe, was the denaturing and degradation of our natural environment, which came about mainly with the advent of modern agriculture.
Wheat was aggressively cross-bred to alter the physical structure of the plant to make it easier to harvest, and along with this aggressive hybridization, the gluten content of wheat increased dramatically. The old Greek philosophers had their doctrine of the Golden Mean, but all too often, modern business and agriculture assumes that if a little of something is good, then a lot must be better. That is one of the facts that my sister really tried to impress on me – that there’s a world of difference between the wheat that our ancestors ate and modern wheat. And, like our friends the dairy cows, the human organism might just have its comfortable limits for digesting and assimilating gluten. The other big thing that happened to denature and degrade both our natural environment as well as our food supply was the advent of GMOs and Glyphosate agriculture – and with it, I believe, came subtle pathogenic changes within our own bodies, as reflected in the alarming rise of Celiac disease and a whole host of intestinal and chronic inflammatory conditions. All of a sudden, gluten became a great source of both acute and chronic inflammation. And those of a Choleric temperament are more prone to acute inflammation, whereas those of a Melancholic temperament are more prone to chronic inflammation. But with people’s digestive and immune systems denatured and thrown out of whack, I believe that people have become the guinea pigs of modern agribusiness, and whatever happens to us is like a big game of biochemical roulette.
Family Memories and Conversations with My Sister
As I look back on my childhood, I remember that I always loved bread. At the dinner table, my dad would chide me for entering into a state of “bread hypnosis” whenever I would get into eating some bread – which was often at the expense of eating the more substantial main courses that were on my plate. Looking back on my love affair with bread, and with gluten, it seems like bread, and the chewy gluten it contained, was the ultimate comfort food. If it made me feel so good, how on earth did wheat and gluten ever become the villains that they are today? When I became nutritionally aware way back in the seventies, I started to eat whole wheat and whole grain breads, and did not particularly miss the white bread that I left behind. After all, whole wheat and whole grain breads were not only more nutritious – they were tastier as well, with the subtle, nutty flavor of the bran and the germ contained within the bread I was eating. The inclusion of the bran and the germ also made for a more interesting and variegated texture to the natural bread I was eating. And with a delicious spread like unsalted butter, or some natural nut butter – and honey – spread over it, these whole grain breads were a delicious, tempting treat that couldn’t be resisted. Heck, when I went on a long road trip in my car, these whole grain breads were the ultimate road food, and I would just reach into an open sack of bread slices and pull out a slice to munch on en route – I believe that my favorite was the Cinnamon Raisin Ezekiel Bread – yummy!
My sister, on the other hand, didn’t enjoy the same love affair with bread – and yummy, chewy gluten – that I enjoyed. You see, she had a serious and persistent weight problem when she was growing up, that both my parents really got on her case about. As an adolescent, my sister, at the urging of my mom, got on board with the Atkins Diet, in which the big villain was sugar and carbohydrates. And when it comes to carbohydrates, the biggest offender is bread, pastries and other glutinous foods. Having been on the Atkins Diet, my sister got into a low carb lifestyle, which has stayed with her, by and large, to this very day. When she went into a restaurant, she shoved the bread or the pasta to the side and ate all the low carb stuff instead of filling up – and filling out – on the carbs. And so, when the anti-gluten revolution came along, my sister had no problem getting on board and getting with the program, because she had no serious bread habit to break like I did. In our phone conversations, she would tell me about anti-gluten books she had read, like Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis – which was one of the first books to come along that exploded the whole health myth about wheat and whole grains. She told me how the wheat of today was nothing at all like the wheat that our ancestors ate, and how it had way, way more gluten content. She also told me about how gluten could destabilize your nervous system, and your moods.
I recently took a continuing education course to renew my acupuncture license that was mainly about food allergies, and how to detect and treat them. The professor really got into gluten in the course, telling us that modern wheat has been aggressively cross-bred to have ten times the gluten content that traditional wheat had; in addition, said the professor, wheat and gluten are in so many different foods and products that we’re virtually inundated with it. The important thing to remember about gluten, he said, was that it was GLUE-ten, and had the power to bind things together like glue. Since the digestive process is basically one of breaking down food into its basic constituents, it was easy to see how glue-like gluten could block or inhibit that process significantly, or reduce its overall efficiency. As a follow-up measure to the course, I went to Barnes and Noble looking for a copy of Wheat Belly, but all I could find was another book that focused on the pain and inflammatory problems caused by wheat, gluten and other grains, written by a certain doctor who shares my last name, plus a final “e”. Looking at the relevant literature that was available on the bookstore’s shelves, and skimming through it, it seems like the anti-gluten thing is so entrenched nowadays as the nutritional villain that it is that the authors of these books almost take it as an axiom or an article of faith that gluten is bad news.
My Own Experiences with Eliminating Gluten: Untying the Gordian Knot
Pursuant to the continuing education course I was taking, I tried eliminating gluten from my diet to see how my body and its state of health would change after the elimination of gluten – and the results were interesting and eye-opening, to say the least. Here I am, in my seventies, and after a long lifetime of periodic abuses and indiscretions, in spite of efforts to stay healthy and in shape, I feel that trying to isolate the effects of different foods is a particularly challenging one, and kind of like Alexander’s attempt to untie the daunting Gordian Knot. How do you know for sure what is doing what? And also considering the fact that my body’s digestion and metabolism is a lot slower than it used to be in my old age – it was never very strong and quick to begin with – you have to listen to your body and its reactions, however subtle they may be, with all the care and attentiveness that you can muster. But I think I am at the point at which I can pronounce some kind of verdict or judgment of gluten’s effects on my body.
I wrote above that gluten intolerance, in its various forms, produces two kinds of effects on the human organism – inflammation, either acute or chronic; and Phlegmatic-like effects such as bloating, edema, fluid retention and a slowing down of the metabolism and metabolic fire. Of these two sets of symptoms, I would say that I lean more towards the Phlegmatic, which makes sense to me, considering that my constitutional nature and temperament was about evenly split between Choleric and Phlegmatic to begin with, but with the slowing down of my metabolism with age, and the waning of the metabolic fire within my body, the whole Phlegmatic thing seems to have gotten the upper hand. Of course, the inflammatory and the Phlegmatic-like symptoms are not mutually exclusive; the two can coexist, as in gastrointestinal bloating with considerable colic and discomfort, for example. Lose the wheat, lose the weight – and maybe even reverse type two diabetes and metabolic syndrome has been the primary motivation for me to experiment with giving up gluten, even though I also had problems with phlegm congestion and fluid retention, as well as gastrointestinal distension, colic and bloating. Oh yeah – and my brain feels a lot clearer, and I am less prone to bouts of vertigo; in Greek Medicine, the head and cranium is a main place where excess phlegm and fluids tend to accumulate.
Being a Taurus, and therefore a creature of habit and convenience, as well as one addicted to the sensual gastronomic pleasures of life, it has been hard for me to give up gluten, but I think that, at my age, the imperative that I do so is quite strong. The big challenge as one ages is to navigate the straits of health so that one minimizes the debilitating morbidity that one has to deal with, and eliminating gluten from my diet seems to be pretty desirable, even necessary for me at this point. But still, you have to keep things in perspective when it comes to food allergies and intolerances; for me, cheese and dairy, another big generator of excess phlegm, has a much greater negative effect on my body, and my digestion, than gluten does at this point. But if eliminating gluten can help my aging metabolism avoid the pitfall of high blood sugar and metabolic syndrome by speeding it up, I am all for it. But still, I miss all the gastronomic satisfaction that gluten has to offer, and am envious of those who can still eat gluten-rich foods with impunity. Satisfaction and convenience – that’s gluten in a nutshell, I suppose.
OMG – Tricky Terrain to Navigate!
The old Greek philosopher Democritus once wrote that nothing is constant in this world, that all is ebb and flow. Buddhist philosophers would call this the principle of Impermanence. Everything changes, and with the advent of modern science and technology the pace of change has greatly speeded up – and these changes have not all been beneficial for us. As far as the whole question of whether or not to eat gluten is concerned, detrimental changes in three types of factors need to be duly taken into consideration:
Changes in the Natural Environment: This is what is most beyond the direct control of the individual. With the advent of Glyphosates and GMOs, the environment or ecosystem has been flooded with residues of Glyphosate herbicides, pesticides, and other things floating through the air we breathe, like the pollen of GMO corn and other crops. And this definitely contributes to the abrupt rise in Celiac disease and other chronic digestive and intestinal conditions that have a direct impact on how our body handles or reacts to wheat and gluten.
Changes in the Food Supply: How does the wheat that you are currently eating, and its gluten content, compare with the wheat that your grandparents ate? In the beginning of his book, Wheat Belly, author William Davis makes a very cogent observation regarding how much slimmer everyone was in our grandparents’ day than they are today, and infers that changes in our primary staple food, wheat, are most likely to blame for the current obesity epidemic. He also states that the vast majority of changes that have been made in the hybridization and agricultural engineering of wheat have been made within the last forty to fifty years. Heck – that means that when Nathan Pritikin came up with his whole grain-based heart and longevity diet, the wheat and grain that he was basing it on was still basically good stuff. It kind of leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach that these changes were made by modern agribusiness, which have had such a detrimental effect on our health, without giving us due warning, or even giving us a chance to air our views and concerns about these changes.
Changes in Our Bodies / Ourselves: This comes last in the whole cause- and-effect sequence of things, since the altered or genetically altered changes in the foods we habitually consume will inevitably have their impact, perhaps even on the genetic structure of our bodies. And when it comes to gluten, what matters most is the possibility of insidious, long term changes to our digestive systems, which govern how we digest and assimilate the foods we eat, and our immune systems, which protect the host organism from what is perceived as a hostile invader – and of course, our immune systems mediate the inflammatory response. The immune system is probably the most individualized organ system in our bodies, whose job is to protect the Self from the not-Self – with the Self being defined by the individual genetic code of the fertilized egg that grew to become our bodies, which all cells of the host organism share. Feeding these altered foodstuffs to our bodies could therefore be seen as a game of genetic Russian roulette, with absolute certainty as to exactly how the biochemical pinball will bounce through our systems being virtually impossible to predict.
Celiac Disease versus Gluten Sensitivity and Intolerance: When it comes to assessing the impact that changes in the natural / manmade environment and the food supply have had on your own body, perhaps the most fundamental question is: Do I merely have gluten sensitivity or intolerance, or do I have full-blown Celiac Disease? Gluten sensitivity or intolerance is not a bona fide disease, they say, but merely a collection of diverse negative or adverse reactions to the consumption of wheat and gluten, which may be highly idiosyncratic, varying from one individual to the next. Celiac Disease, on the other hand, is a bona fide autoimmune disease in which the bodily tissue that is auto-destroyed and degraded by our own immune systems are the finger-like villi of the small intestine, primarily in the upper or proximal portion, the duodenum, although villi anywhere in the small intestine can be targeted. And the only way to stop this autoimmune destruction of the villi, which enhance nutrient absorption by increasing the total surface area of the small intestine mucosa, is to eliminate all gluten from one’s diet. There are various tests for Celiac disease that are available medically; although a genetic test can be a valuable preliminary screening device, a definitive diagnosis of Celiac Disease is made through a biopsy of the small intestine.
Beyond this most basic differentiation between gluten sensitivity / intolerance and full-blown Celiac disease, there is a finer distinction that can be made between gluten sensitivity / intolerance and a bona fide allergy to wheat. A sensitivity or intolerance to gluten is mainly a digestive phenomenon, with the adverse symptoms and reactions to gluten being primarily digestive in nature; bona fide allergic reactions, on the other hand, tend to be more severe and systemic in nature, affecting the whole body, and not just the digestive system. And with both sensitivity / intolerance and bona fide allergies, many, if not most, of the adverse reactions are inflammatory in nature. As you can see, in sorting out the complex and nuanced terrain of your body’s own reactions to wheat and gluten and gaining more resolution and perspective on the whole thing, it is a great help to have the guidance of a physician or licensed healthcare professional to guide you. And having a physician that is more open and receptive to natural, nutritional and alternative healing modalities is the best way to go.
Suggestions for Further Reading: Doctors Davis and Osborne!
When it comes to reading up and educating oneself further on wheat and gluten, as well as gluten sensitivity / intolerance versus Celiac Disease, I would recommend two books as your primary “go to” sources. The first one is Wheat Belly by Doctor William Davis, and the second is No Grain, No Pain by Doctor Peter Osborne. The former book was recommended to me by my sister, whereas the second book was a book in the same vein that I found at Barnes and Noble when I went searching for the first book – I finally found the first book at another bookstore, by the way, so now I have them both. The titles of each of these books are quite indicative of their primary emphasis, and the audiences they are addressing themselves to, with Wheat Belly written primarily for those who are struggling with weight and metabolic issues related to wheat and gluten, and No Grain, No Pain written primarily for those who are experiencing pain and inflammation due to their consumption of wheat and gluten. Both of these doctors have a strong YouTube presence, so you can check their videos out to see where they’re coming from before you buy their books.
A Final Disclaimer:
The information contained in this article is for educational purposes only, for general health maintenance and prevention, and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or medical condition. The author encourages those who read this article to consult personally with a physician or licensed healthcare professional should their condition or symptoms persist, or if they feel that they need the help and guidance of a specialist to proceed further in the clinical assessment of their condition.