From Few to You

Among thoughtful and informed medical providers and public alike, there is an ongoing transition toward recognizing adverse health effects from grains as being common and normal rather than rare and abnormal.  Not all medical providers, of course, support this change in perspective and some are downright hostile toward it.  Likewise, a segment of the public seems to be irritated by the gluten free trend and consider it just a silly fad. 

Yet, if medicine is to be science based, no credible medical provider can dismiss the possibility that a large proportion of the U.S. (and possibly world) population may be sensitive to certain molecules present in most grains.  Similarly, those that belittle the gluten free movement as a fad might, in fact, be an unknowing victim of grain sensitivity.

Celiac disease may have been described by the ancient physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the first century CE.  It was not until the 1940's, however, that the Dutch physician Willem Karel Dicke connected the disease to wheat as a result of the Dutch famine of 1944, in which wheat was scarce and those suffering from the disease seemed to dramatically improve.  Since that time, modern medicine has narrowly defined the disease as an autoimmune disease resulting from the ingestion of gliadin, a component of wheat gluten.

Sayer Ji, the author of "The Dark Side of Wheat," discusses the emerging viewpoint that wheat represents a human species-specific intolerance that should be universally avoided.

Some issues raised in the video

• 150+ adverse health effects associated with wheat consumption, as determined by biomedical research housed on the National Library of Medicine
• Wheat intolerance/toxicity does not need to be immune mediated, i.e. it has direct, adverse effects on our cells which antibody, gene or intestinal biopsy tests may not accurately diagnose.
• Genotype plays a part in the disease process, but is not itself sufficient to induced wheat-associated illness
• The grain-based diet while thousands of years old in cultural time, has only been consumed en masse for a nanosecond in biological time (e.g. 10,000 years)
• Wheat is exceptionally addictive, due in part to the high levels of glutamic acid it contains. Glutamic acid is a natural "flavor-enhancer," activating the umami receptors, driving us to consume more and more of the same.
• Grains, and particularly wheat have pharmacological active properties, e.g. gluten exorphins and gliadorphin
• The Roman Empire was known as the "Wheat Empire" due to the fact that its entire cultural hegemony over those it conquered was predicated on the biological imperialism that wheat consumption made possible.
• Has humankind mastered the cereal grasses, or have the cereal grasses mastered us? We take care of their reproduction, their nutrition, their natural predators, in exchange for nourishment. But are we being nourished? Are grains the staff of life, or a crutch upon which we prop up our nutrient-starved bodies?
• The celiac disease sufferer is allowed to be sick from wheat, whereas most of the world deals with asymptomatic, or "out of intestine" varieties of wheat intolerance.
• The emerging view is that the body responds appropriately to wheat's inherent toxicity through classical symptoms of gastrointestinal distress, including diarrhea. As this is the body's way of expelling an offending substance as quickly as possible, perhaps saving the body as a whole from wheat's profound systemic adverse effects.