MINNEAPOLIS - 7/6/09 A Minnesota study using frozen blood samples taken from Air Force recruits 50 years ago has found that intolerance to wheat gluten, a debilitating digestive condition, is four times more common today than it was in the 1950s.
The findings contradict the prevailing belief that a sharp increase in diagnoses of wheat gluten intolerance has come about because of greater awareness and detection, and raises questions about whether dramatic changes in the American diet have played a role.
"It's become much more common," said Dr. Andrew Murray, the Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist who led the study. No one knows why, he said, but one reason might be rapid changes in eating habits and food processing over the last half century.
"Fifty years is way too fast for human genetics to have changed," Murray said. "Which tells us it has to be a pervasive environmental influence?"
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota who conducted the study also found that the recruits who had the undiagnosed digestive condition, called Celiac disease, also had a four-fold increase in the risk of death.
Today an estimated 1 out of 100 people suffer from the inherited disorder, though most of the time people don't know they have it.
The disease occurs in people whose bodies cannot digest gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The undigested protein triggers the body's immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine, causing diarrhea, nausea, and abdominal pain. Though people live with it for many years, over time it destroys the lining of the small intestine, leading to an inability to absorb nutrients such as iron and calcium. That, in turn, causes serious conditions, including anemia, osteoporosis and even infertility in both men and women.
The only treatment is a gluten-free diet -- no wheat, rye or barley.
Murray said he initiated the study to find out whether the disease is on the rise, and whether it had long-term health consequences if undiagnosed and untreated.
He turned to medical archeology to find the answers -- a treasure-trove of blood samples taken from recruits at the Warren Air Force base in Cheyenne, Wyo., between 1948 and 1954. At the time, strep infections were raging among the recruits, mostly young men on their way to fight in the Korean War. Doctors there drew the samples as part of a now-famous study that proved treating the infections with antibiotics would prevent rheumatic fever, a serious heart ailment that can follow strep throat.
One of the doctors in that study took some of the samples with him when he moved the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. When he decided to retire two decades ago, he asked Dr. Edward Kaplan, a strep specialist at the University of Minnesota, to become their guardian. The vials were transported in frozen-pizza delivery trucks to Minneapolis, where they reside today.
"Nobody has anything like it," said Kaplan. "There are other collections, but none go back this far."
In 2000 they were used to help resolve an intense debate among researchers over whether Hepatitis C infection was a certain death sentence, or whether many people could live with it for years.
Murray used a similar design for the study on Celiac disease, published today in the journal Gastroenterology. He tested more than 9,133 samples for the antibodies that proved the recruits had Celiac disease; 43, or about one out of 652, had the disease. He then tested blood samples from groups of men from Olmsted County, more than 12,000 in all. In an older group of men, one in 121 tested positive, and in the younger group one in 106 tested positive, an increase of four to four-and-a-half times.
His findings raise questions about why the number of people with the disease has grown so fast. But rates of other immune diseases have also increased a lot. One theory is that modern, clean living, which has resulted in fewer infections, parasites and microbes in our bodies, causes the immune system to turn on healthy tissue instead. Or it may also be the modern diet, Murray said.
"The types of food we eat now are different," he said.
Gary's Comments:
Modern paleontologists tell us that 10,000 years ago when grains first appeared on the earth, and we A-Blood Types (first farmers) started eating them, that this was the beginning of modern disease as we know it because humans are not designed to eat much grain!!! Then why does our government tell us to eat 5 servings a day? Is it because it is one of the cheapest and most profitable foods for the food manufacturers in the US? A current movie, Food, Inc., portrays what happens to grain when it is milled: all that is left is starch, therefore the rise of the promotion of whole grain foods. Whole grains, although relatively nutritious, contain gluten and gliaden, which are the culprits in the rise of celiac disease. An enzyme in the small intestine called TTG or tissue transglutaminse is responsible for breaking down the gluten so that we do not react to it as it is very inflammatory. So why the increase in celiac disease? Some facts we have observed at TIFM:
- When patients present joint inflammation, very often the simple removal of all gluten containing grains improves their discomfort significantly
- Gluten, if not broken down in the gut by TTG, causes varying degrees of inflammation and the substances developed are prostaglandins and interleukins and we take anti-prostaglandins for relief of joint pain and inflammation called aspirin to Motrin so it makes sense not to put the grain in the gut in the first place! Prostaglandins and heavy metals attack the cartilage.
- Most modern pharmacologists suggest taking grains out of the diet if one wants to lose weight. It makes sense as what do they feed cattle to fatten them up?
- Are today's environmental toxins higher than they were 50 years ago? Definitely the external ones but what about the internal ones; such as mercury, cadmium, lead and arsenic. TTG is known to be compromised by the sulfur binding properties of heavy metals; thereby deactivating it. Gut inflammation occurs at anytime of life, often precipitated by stress (lack of cortisol - your body's natural anti-inflammatory) but it can be inherited also. A bad gene can be passed on from your parents but how did they develop a faulty gene? Modern functional medicine dictates that faulty genes need to be activated!! This means if you eat grain and you have a faulty gene, you will suffer from some degree of gluten damage. So why risk it by eating grains at all?
Celiac disease (faulty gene) can be tested for with a simple blood test but I have seen clinical cases of grain causing systemic distress and the test is negative so do NOT put that much hope in it but we can certainly test you for it. Instead, address why we eat grains. It is because it turns into sugar and our brain wants sugar and the commercials touting the yumminess of various grain products from Count Chocula to that 10-grain bread at Whole Foods.
What to do:
- Get tested for celiac disease
- Determine your load of heavy metals (TIFM is expert at this) - why is it that most patients suffering from varying degrees of inflammation have or have had amalgams?
- Quit eating grains!!!! And call us at TIFM. We are the experts and can help you.
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