Gluten in the News!

I was so delighted to see a feature news report about Gluten, in this past Friday’s NBC Evening News.

As an integrative physician, I’ve been aware of the importance of gluten sensitivity for many years. However, until recently we did not really have a reliable accurate way to test to see if people are gluten sensitive.

This changed about a year ago when a new stool test that looks for gluten anybodies was released. For many months I used that test and found great benefit for my patients.

However now, the last six months, we have had available at the office a new extremely sensitive test for finding those patients who do NOT have Celiac Disease, but who are gluten sensitive. This test is run by Cyrex Labs, and you can read more about it on their site.

I have had some of the most gratifying complete successes in my practice in the last six months by identifying gluten sensitivity in patients with a list of problems that have baffled their conventional doctors.

If you think you are gluten sensitive, please to talk to me about it when you next see me for an appointment.

Of the people I test for gluten sensitivity somewhere between 50 and 60% of them do truly turn out to be gluten sensitive. Everybody asks why is gluten so much in the news?  Part of it is our expanding knowledge and recognition of the problems with gluten. However, another part of it is the food industry, who is hybridizing the wheat we eat in order to increase the gluten content. Supposedly a higher gluten content makes the bread taste better.

In any case people are now overwhelmed by an enormous amount of gluten when they consume wheat products. This accounts for part of the sensitivity. For if you expose a person to any allergen whether it’s pollen or gluten in a high enough concentration, their body will begin to react.

The important thing to remember with gluten sensitivity is that over 50% of people with gluten sensitivity do not have digestive symptoms. However, they have many other symptom complaints, that are not obviously connected with gluten.

Wheat Belly is a most informative book about how wheat causes obesity and is not your friend!

Without doing the blood test I mentioned above, you can test yourself for gluten sensitivity by 100% (not 99%) avoiding gluten for 6 to 8 weeks and then reintroducing it and see how you feel.I was very pleased by this short news snippet which you can watch HERE. They rightfully point out, which I point out to my patients, that a lot of gluten free foods at the “health food store” are full of other junk, including lots of sugar and fat. Be careful when something says gluten free on the label!

I hope this video is informative to you. I also would to refer you to my 3 part podcast interview of Dr Tom O’Bryan, and expert in gluten sensitivity. The first of these 3 podcasts is HERE