Brief Introduction to Gluten Sensitivity

This month I’d like to discuss something which I have discovered to have an incredible impact on the body’s ability to heal.

I have been in practice for 20 years.  During that time I have always worked with patients in the capacity of discovering what food allergies may be having a deleterious effect on their health.  But one group of foods stands out as the most serious, insidious and most damaging.

Gliadin is a protein found in many common foods.  Grains such as wheat, rye, barley, spelt and kamut, all contain the protein gliadin. Other grains such as oats, amaranth and quinoa are also frequently problematic.  The first few grains may be better known to you, but they are all in this category.

For those patients sensitive to gliadin, it causes the small intestine to slowly erode.  What is the consequence of this?  Well, your small intestine is responsible for absorbing all the nutrients in the food you eat.  The only way that your cells get fed is because the small intestine efficiently breaks down and absorbs that food.  If the small intestine is no longer able to provide that function, your ability to absorb the nutrition you consume goes down dramatically.

Because your cells perform their job only when they are receiving adequate fuel (much like your car), you can quickly see how body malfunction would have to arise out of poor small intestine function.

In my 20 years in clinical practice, I can’t think of a symptom I HAVEN’T seen caused by a food allergy.  Everything from high blood pressure, to skin conditions, to sleep trouble to pain – I’ve seen these and many, many more symptoms completely resolved due to the discovery of a hidden food allergy and its removal from the patient’s diet.

The reason I call these food allergies “hidden” is because the symptoms can come along several hours to days after your ingestion of the food.

Imagine you ate a bagel Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon you started feeling fatigued, bloated and irritable… Would you think to blame Monday morning’s bagel?  Probably not.  But it has been well documented that the reaction to a food can occur anywhere within 3 – 4 days after eating the food.

What about that flat stomach which has been replaced by a round one.  What happened?  It turns out that the destruction that occurs to the small intestine by gliadin also swells the tissues of the small intestine.  When all those 21 feet of small intestine swell, so does your tummy.  I have a long list of happy patients who got their flat stomachs back after discovering they had a gliadin sensitivity.

While flat tummies are at the cosmetic ends of things, they are a nice side benefit from discovering a hidden sensitivity which can put you at risk for degenerative diseases including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and arthritis, to name but a few.

And if osteoporosis runs in your family you definitely want to find out if you have this problem.  Poor absorption definitely puts you at risk for developing this crippling disease.

Now, don’t worry.  It’s easy to find out if you have this problem.  There is a simple saliva test and blood test that will allow me to diagnose if you are gliadin sensitive.  And sometimes the most accurate results come from eliminating the food from your diet for a while and later reintroducing it.  But it is definitely critical to find out if this problem is affecting you due to its wide ranging negative repercussions on your health.

Yours in health,

Dr Vikki M. Petersen