
Gluten intolerance may really be immune dysfunction - sharer
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-big-bad-gluten.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&src=me&WT.nav=MostEmailed
======
Scramblejams
My wife doesn't have celiac disease. Her knee suffered some damage some years
ago. If she adds gluten to her diet, it swells up like crazy and hurts. If she
removes gluten from her diet, within two days it shrinks back down and looks
like a normal knee again and feels (mostly) fine. I won't pretend to
understand how gluten affects everyone's body, but I know something about what
it does to hers.

It's odd to use the word "myth" in the title, but then leave the door open in
the penultimate paragraph to immune system issues being wrapped up in all of
this because I think it's entirely possible that for some people (like my
wife), the immune system is counterproductively stimulated by gluten.

Having said that, I think a lot of this current GF stuff is simply a fad. But
fad or not I'm grateful for it because it gives my wife, who really does have
a problem with gluten, many more options when shopping than she had just ten
years ago.

~~~
TD-Linux
What you describe is a common symptom of celiac disease. Did you get tested?

~~~
dangero
And just to add to that, the blood test can be unreliable. A stomach biopsy is
the best way to verify the condition.

~~~
tiatia
I doubt that. Remember a paper I read about how a stomach biopsy may not
necessarily always find a gluten intolerant.

I nearly died on that shit (Gluten). My life would have been very different if
it hat been picked up in my teens. In the end I figured it out myself when I
was basically dying (they looked at me when I waked into the hospital and
said: Mate, sorry to tell you but the first thing we have to do is an HIV
Test. This may give you an idea how I looked.) I know my form of intolerance
is rare (1:10.000 to 1:100.000).

My life is different now. I feel better than ever.

------
evmar
The editorializing of the headline here is changing the argument. The article
(titled "The Myth of Big, Bad Gluten") is arguing that gluten may not itself
be bad, but rather the body's reaction. This new title implies gluten
intolerance is a myth, which is contradicted by stuff like
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837)
.

~~~
dang
Perhaps the submitter was trying to make the title less baity, in accordance
with the HN guidelines. (Submitted title was "Myth of gluten intolerance".)

We've changed it to something that uses neutral language from the article.
Suggestions for a better title are welcome.

~~~
evmar
Thanks as always for maintaining the tone of the site!

------
evanpw
This is a much better summary of the evidence, in my opinion:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-
yo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-you-wanted-
to-know/)

------
jameskilton
Not one single mention of RoundUp or any of the other toxic chemicals farmers
spray on crops (especially wheat) right before/during harvest to kill them and
dry them out faster. Like the article says, we as a species have eaten wheat
for thousands of years with little problem. Why now? The correlation between
gluten intolerance and the rise of late-crop RoundUp raises some big
questions.

~~~
ajross
Um... The whole point here is that unscientific nonsense needs to be killed.
And specifically that non-Celiac gluten sensitivity has no real evidence for
it.

So your response is to trot out an equally unfounded (AFAIK) hippie-inspired
pseudo-theory. Seriously?

~~~
learnstats2
Why is it so urgent to kill this?

It does nobody harm if some people choose to avoid gluten, and greatly
benefits coeliac sufferers who have increasing good nutrition options.

~~~
nroach
anecdote: my wife has had exema her entire life. after a particularly bad
episode, we eventually we tried an elimination diet methodically eliminating
one food category at a time. it took about 2 months to rotate through all the
possible suspects but in the end, eliminating wheat completely cleared the
problem. then, one morning we had meatless sausage and she had a bad
reoccurrence. first ingredient on the sausage? wheat gluten. (this was before
allergy labelling in the US, and we just didn't think it would contain wheat).

On the other hand, we've had other family members try avoiding gluten because
they perceived it was 'bad', without a causal linkage to any symptoms.

So, is non-celiac gluten intolerance rare? Probably. Do most people avoid it
for the wrong reason? Probably. But to make the blanket statement that
intolerance doesn't exist is misinformed and denigrates the very real problem
that a small subset of the population does have.

~~~
batbomb
Important note on anecdotes (especially on HN):

There are many thousands of active users on Hacker News. If there are 50
active users over an hours time looking at a given topic, and those 50 active
users know an average of 50 people fairly well, that means there's potentially
~2500 anecdotes for any given topic.

Say something happens in .1% of the general population, but it's noteworthy
enough to be an anecdote. For any given topic, it's quite possible to
drastically over represent that anecdote, as it's quite possible that there
will be ~3 such anecdotes for any given topic and the normal case, which isn't
especially noteworthy, gets no mention.

Lesson: At a large enough scale, one-in-a-thousand anecdotes can occur several
times for a given topic.

------
nextstep
Here is an alternative theory that tries to explain why people in the United
States don't tolerate wheat very well:
[http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-
toxic...](http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-
its-not-gluten/)

~~~
maxerickson
Be sure to dig up the USDA source document and observe on page 3 that
glyphosate is _not_ applied to a majority of wheat acres:

[http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemi...](http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemical_Use/ChemUseHighlights-
Wheat-2012.pdf)

~~~
harryjo
glyphosate is on 45% of acres, so approximately half of the wheat you eat.

~~~
maxerickson
There are 3 types of wheat shown in the table, glyphosate is only applied to
45% of the acres for one of them (Durum).

Durum is only a small fraction of wheat grown in the US:

 _Durum wheat, accounting for 3-5 percent of total production_

[http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx)

So, no, it is not applied to nearly half of the wheat that is grown.

There's also not a whole lot of evidence that it is widely applied to the
mature plants prior to harvest.

edit: This is poor phrasing: "only applied to 45% of the acres for one of
them". The table does not claim to be comprehensive. So a better statement
would say something like: the table only lists glyphosate being applied to 45%
of one of the types.

------
jmount
"How to become Gluten intolerant"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798)

------
MrFoof
Interesting story. I had a friend that didn't have celiac disease, but
genuinely had some form of gluten intolerance. It mostly just caused her
terrible cramps. For about six years, doctors couldn't figure out what was
causing it, so she had changed her diet to be nearly carb-free, and went on
with her life. Problem? Hint: she liked camping.

Ending up being a parasite she likely caught on a camping trip, which also
brought on a combination of a fungal and viral infection. She was getting
desperate, so she had went to an osteopath which ended up making the
discovery. Her PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the
parasites and fungal infection, and now she's back to eating normally.

~~~
harryjo
> osteopath which ended up making the discovery.

> PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and
> fungal infection

nice teamwork!

------
ErikAugust
My continued hunch is that is not gluten, but a general collection of foods
that cause inflammation.

Commonly, these foods are made up of carbohydrates (such as wheat) but there
are fats and proteins as well.

Not to sound too crude, but if you fill your gullet full of inflammation-
causing food day in, day out - yes, you will not feel well.

If you are not at all an active person - and you're consuming 2-3 meals of
over 1500 calories, well - maybe you should point to that is a potential
problem?

Simply removing gluten isn't going to make your day too much better if you are
washing down GF products with sodas and eating trans fats.

------
curtis
The article mentions hygiene in passing, even though it seems like the Hygiene
hypothesis
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis))
deserves at least a paragraph.

I'm not claiming that the Hygiene hypothesis is true -- we clearly don't know
that. But I think it definitely deserves further consideration.

------
gregwebs
Why is an opinion piece about a nutrition topic with 1 citation worthy of
discussion on Hacker News?

Here is an article with citations and discussion of modern research and
patient experience that comes to a different conclusion:
[http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-
be-...](http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-be-more-
serious-than-celiac-disease/)

I won't bother submitting it to Hacker News since it doesn't have the official
NYTimes scientific stamp of approval.

~~~
mattmanser
_Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac is a globally recognized leader in the fields of
ancestral health, Paleo nutrition, and functional and integrative medicine_

Yeah...

Really scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research. Not a snake oil
salesman at all.

Also any article in the format "X reasons [thing] is more harmful than [other
thing]" can generally be laughed at.

~~~
brerlapn
TFA clearly doesn't support your re-written straw man headline, and by
comparison:

\- Kresser: 21 citations to "scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern
research"

\- NYT OpEd guest writer: naked unsupported assertion that "most of these
assertions [about gluten], however, are contradicted by significant evidence"
providing no references or scientific discussion

Which one is snake oil again? More ironic, the Kresser article does talk about
gluten as an auto-immune trigger, making your dismissal seem even more knee-
jerk. There are people doing serious work on nutrition, but you won't have
much luck finding them in the NYT, much less the OpEd section.

~~~
atinoda-kestrel
_Which one is snake oil again?_

Well... cod liver oil, actually. And that would be here:
[http://store.chriskresser.com/](http://store.chriskresser.com/)

Frankly, I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in either.

------
PaulHoule
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY)
<\- Clap along if you're gluten free because you think it's cool.

------
tiatia
“If eating wheat was so bad for us, it’s hard to imagine that populations that
ate it would have tolerated it for 10,000 years,” Sarah A. Tishkoff, a
geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies lactase persistence,
told me.

Sarah, turn on your brain. What about Game Theory? What if wheat is addictive
and mankind did not enslave Wheat but wheat (and possible other crops)
"enslaved" mankind?

There is evidence that wheat may not be as healthy for you as you think. Also,
the wheat from 60 years ago has very little to do with our current wheat.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin)

[http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-
opiate/](http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-opiate/)

[http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-
and-](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and-) toxicity/wheat-
grains/

[http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-
more-...](http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-from-
the-china-study/)

~~~
hudj1jcnapru38
> Are the gluten haters correct that modern wheat varietals contain more
> gluten than past cultivars, making them more toxic? Unlikely, according to
> recent analysis by Donald D. Kasarda, a scientist with the United States
> Department of Agriculture. He analyzed records of protein content in wheat
> harvests going back nearly a century. It hasn’t changed.

~~~
kbenzle
As a plant breeder I can assure you the gluten content has certainly gone up!
We call it a "Multi Trait Index" for baking quality, and we can show nearly
every years released varieties increase in the MTI. What is the number one
weighted factor of the baking quality MTI? Gluten percentage. Also, this
article is bunk, saying, "if people can maintain an enzyme to digest lactoes,
we should be able to evolve an enzyme to break down gluten too. "Total
hoggerty poggerty applesauce!" NYT, you are cut off!

~~~
hudj1jcnapru38
Not trying to put you on the defensive, but do you have some objective online
resources I can examine to learn more about this?

