Posted on 02/06/2013 6:51:45 PM PST by nickcarraway
Eat no wheat.
That is the core, draconian commandment of a gluten-free diet, a prohibition that excises wide swaths of American cuisine cupcakes, pizza, bread and macaroni and cheese, to name a few things.
For the approximately one-in-a-hundred Americans who have a serious condition called celiac disease, that is an indisputably wise medical directive.
One womans story of going gluten-free.
Now medical experts largely agree that there is a condition related to gluten other than celiac. In 2011 a panel of celiac experts convened in Oslo and settled on a medical term for this malady: non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
What they still do not know: how many people have gluten sensitivity, what its long-term effects are, or even how to reliably identify it. Indeed, they do not really know what the illness is.
The definition is less a diagnosis than a description someone who does not have celiac, but whose health improves on a gluten-free diet and worsens again if gluten is eaten. It could even be more than one illness.
We have absolutely no clue at this point, said Dr. Stefano Guandalini, medical director of the University of Chicagos Celiac Disease Center.
Kristen Golden Testa could be one of the gluten-sensitive. Although she does not have celiac, she adopted a gluten-free diet last year. She says she has lost weight and her allergies have gone away. Its just so marked, said Ms. Golden Testa, who is health program director in California for the Childrens Partnership, a national nonprofit advocacy group.
(Excerpt) Read more at well.blogs.nytimes.com ...
True but I am gluten esp wheat sensitive. I didn’t know I was until I stopped eating grains for months. I haven’t had gluten in 2.5 years. I had some on my last birthday and was sick all night. I can’t digest it any more.
We can do without it. It is definitely not healthy.
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