7 ms·

Inflammation in the body has been correlated with a lot of diseases believe it or not. Gluten is one of the big contributors to inflammation in the body. A lot

Inflammation in the body has been correlated with a lot of diseases believe it or not. Gluten is one of the big contributors to inflammation in the body. A lot of people laugh at the whole "Gluten Free" thing, but there's a good bit of evidence that significantly reducing or removing it from your diet can make a serious impact.

josephpmay 13y ago
Could you point me to the "good bit of evidence" that shows this?
- abdophoto 13y ago
  Less than 2 years ago, my wife was diagnosed with MS (Multiple sclerosis). As soon as we found out, I started digging like crazy to learn more about why this happened and what we could do to prevent it from progressing. I'm a big believer in that the body has the ability to heal itself by avoiding certain foods and intaking others. I mean, food is fuel we put in our body. After digging for a while, I came upon some staggering discoveries. First, there are people who have reversed their MS almost completely on diet alone. The diets consist of A LOT of high-nutrition fruits and vegetables along with Omega 3's, organic meats, etc. These Paleo-like diets also forbid gluten with the main reason being that it causes serious inflammation in some folks. This TEDx video by Dr. Terry Wahl was very helpful (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc). I read her book and it literally laid the foundation for which changed our eating habits entirely. A month or so after, we flew out to Massachusetts to a well-known wellness center where they performed various blood and stool tests. The Dr's (including a Nutritionist) sat down with us for the entire day and asked about daily habits from what our work days were like to what we ate. Without mentioning my own research, they also said that gluten is something we should completely remove from our diet. There's a ton of other stuff out there, but since removing gluten entirely, my wife has felt great. We just did an MRI and she has no new lesions. She no longer experiences blurriness or weakness which is great. It may not be completely because of Gluten, but removing seems to have seriously made a impact.
  - gphilip 13y ago
    All of this seems to be anecdotal. Do you know of any research (as in, studies) which support any of this?
    - gamblor956 13y ago
      Google returned this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19758171 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19758171 and a quasi-bibliography: http://www.celiac.com/articles/124/1/Multiple-Sclerosis-and-Celiac-Disease/Page1.html http://www.celiac.com/articles/124/1/Multiple-Sclerosis-and-...
    - msandford 13y ago
      I love that anecdotes are considered worthless in medicine when in fact they're very clearly good places to start. Take an anecdote and do a small population study to try and find correlation. Then if there are any significant results, start looking for causation. In history nothing is legit except for primary sources. In medicine, it seems, primary sources -- no matter how compelling -- are worth a damn. Hilarious.
      - saraid216 13y ago
        > I love that anecdotes are considered worthless in medicine when in fact they're very clearly good places to start. They're a great place to start for a scientist with training in conducting medical research and the resources to carry it out. They're a terrible place to start for an internet forum reader who has neither.
      - bronson 13y ago
        No. Medicine is so broad and subjective that it's easy to find an anecdote implying almost anything. That's why expensive double blind is so important -- even doctors fool themselves. How many "carrots cured my cancer" wild goose chases would it take to bankrupt even the biggest company? Whatever that number is, it's smaller than the number of wild-ass medical anecdotes rolling around out there. Of course, everybody thinks that their own anecdote is compelling and obvious and all their friends on carb-free diets are idiots...
- jcutrell 13y ago
  http://www.celiaccentral.org/research-news/ http://www.celiaccentral.org/research-news/ My wife has celiac disease, which is basically a gluten allergy. Her grandfather had sprue, which was renamed to celiac more commonly[1]. As much as I hate anecdotal evidence, I personally do feel significantly better on a day to day basis when I eliminate the most hefty forms of gluten (bread, for instance). Could have absolutely nothing to do with it, but it seems to hold even when I eat gluten free substitutes. Again, an anecdote, but look into celiac for more solid research on the subject. [1]http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000233.htm http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000233.htm
  - illuminate 13y ago
    Even if you particularly feel better, that's not evidence that gluten is "bad" in every way that's being claimed here.
- Alex3917 13y ago
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18404144 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18404144

josephpmay 13y ago

Could you point me to the "good bit of evidence" that shows this?

abdophoto 13y ago
Less than 2 years ago, my wife was diagnosed with MS (Multiple sclerosis). As soon as we found out, I started digging like crazy to learn more about why this happened and what we could do to prevent it from progressing. I'm a big believer in that the body has the ability to heal itself by avoiding certain foods and intaking others. I mean, food is fuel we put in our body. After digging for a while, I came upon some staggering discoveries. First, there are people who have reversed their MS almost completely on diet alone. The diets consist of A LOT of high-nutrition fruits and vegetables along with Omega 3's, organic meats, etc. These Paleo-like diets also forbid gluten with the main reason being that it causes serious inflammation in some folks. This TEDx video by Dr. Terry Wahl was very helpful (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc). I read her book and it literally laid the foundation for which changed our eating habits entirely. A month or so after, we flew out to Massachusetts to a well-known wellness center where they performed various blood and stool tests. The Dr's (including a Nutritionist) sat down with us for the entire day and asked about daily habits from what our work days were like to what we ate. Without mentioning my own research, they also said that gluten is something we should completely remove from our diet. There's a ton of other stuff out there, but since removing gluten entirely, my wife has felt great. We just did an MRI and she has no new lesions. She no longer experiences blurriness or weakness which is great. It may not be completely because of Gluten, but removing seems to have seriously made a impact.
- gphilip 13y ago
  All of this seems to be anecdotal. Do you know of any research (as in, studies) which support any of this?
  - gamblor956 13y ago
    Google returned this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19758171 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19758171 and a quasi-bibliography: http://www.celiac.com/articles/124/1/Multiple-Sclerosis-and-Celiac-Disease/Page1.html http://www.celiac.com/articles/124/1/Multiple-Sclerosis-and-...
  - msandford 13y ago
    I love that anecdotes are considered worthless in medicine when in fact they're very clearly good places to start. Take an anecdote and do a small population study to try and find correlation. Then if there are any significant results, start looking for causation. In history nothing is legit except for primary sources. In medicine, it seems, primary sources -- no matter how compelling -- are worth a damn. Hilarious.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      > I love that anecdotes are considered worthless in medicine when in fact they're very clearly good places to start. They're a great place to start for a scientist with training in conducting medical research and the resources to carry it out. They're a terrible place to start for an internet forum reader who has neither.
    - bronson 13y ago
      No. Medicine is so broad and subjective that it's easy to find an anecdote implying almost anything. That's why expensive double blind is so important -- even doctors fool themselves. How many "carrots cured my cancer" wild goose chases would it take to bankrupt even the biggest company? Whatever that number is, it's smaller than the number of wild-ass medical anecdotes rolling around out there. Of course, everybody thinks that their own anecdote is compelling and obvious and all their friends on carb-free diets are idiots...
jcutrell 13y ago
http://www.celiaccentral.org/research-news/ http://www.celiaccentral.org/research-news/ My wife has celiac disease, which is basically a gluten allergy. Her grandfather had sprue, which was renamed to celiac more commonly[1]. As much as I hate anecdotal evidence, I personally do feel significantly better on a day to day basis when I eliminate the most hefty forms of gluten (bread, for instance). Could have absolutely nothing to do with it, but it seems to hold even when I eat gluten free substitutes. Again, an anecdote, but look into celiac for more solid research on the subject. [1]http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000233.htm http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000233.htm
- illuminate 13y ago
  Even if you particularly feel better, that's not evidence that gluten is "bad" in every way that's being claimed here.
Alex3917 13y ago
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18404144 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18404144