6 ms·

Gluten intolerance may really be immune dysfunction

60 points by sharer 11y ago

jameskilton 11y ago
Not one single mention of RoundUp or any of the other toxic chemicals farmers spray on crops (especially wheat) right before/during harvest to kill them and dry them out faster. Like the article says, we as a species have eaten wheat for thousands of years with little problem. Why now? The correlation between gluten intolerance and the rise of late-crop RoundUp raises some big questions.
- ajross 11y ago
  Um... The whole point here is that unscientific nonsense needs to be killed. And specifically that non-Celiac gluten sensitivity has no real evidence for it. So your response is to trot out an equally unfounded (AFAIK) hippie-inspired pseudo-theory. Seriously?
  - learnstats2 11y ago
    Why is it so urgent to kill this? It does nobody harm if some people choose to avoid gluten, and greatly benefits coeliac sufferers who have increasing good nutrition options.
    - ajross 11y ago
      It's a fair point. Personally I don't feel any urgency, the complaint was mostly aesthetic. But if you want to talk practicality of holding unscientific beliefs: I see your harmless gluten-free food industry and raise you a measles outbreak...
    - zo1 11y ago
      Because it's part of a much larger "anti-science" movement, and it's slipping underneath a lot of peoples' noses by sounding semi-plausible (or some other reason). If it is indeed a myth, and without merit, then it needs to be clumped together with all the other pseudo-science type stuff out there like homeopathy, chemtrails, acupuncture and chiropractors.
    - sklogic 11y ago
      These antigluten dimwits are almost always coming hand to hand with much more dangerous anti-science cretins, namely, antivaxxers and anti-GMO crowds.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      Because ass hattery like this actually drives people's behaviors. Missing in the hysteria about gluten, corn syrup and carb consumption is the witch hunts in the 90s for fat and chlorestrol. Kids loading up on sugar filled, "whole grain" frosted flakes today were eating eggs 30 years ago.
    - nroach 11y ago
      anecdote: my wife has had exema her entire life. after a particularly bad episode, we eventually we tried an elimination diet methodically eliminating one food category at a time. it took about 2 months to rotate through all the possible suspects but in the end, eliminating wheat completely cleared the problem. then, one morning we had meatless sausage and she had a bad reoccurrence. first ingredient on the sausage? wheat gluten. (this was before allergy labelling in the US, and we just didn't think it would contain wheat). On the other hand, we've had other family members try avoiding gluten because they perceived it was 'bad', without a causal linkage to any symptoms. So, is non-celiac gluten intolerance rare? Probably. Do most people avoid it for the wrong reason? Probably. But to make the blanket statement that intolerance doesn't exist is misinformed and denigrates the very real problem that a small subset of the population does have.
      - batbomb 11y ago
        Important note on anecdotes (especially on HN): There are many thousands of active users on Hacker News. If there are 50 active users over an hours time looking at a given topic, and those 50 active users know an average of 50 people fairly well, that means there's potentially ~2500 anecdotes for any given topic. Say something happens in .1% of the general population, but it's noteworthy enough to be an anecdote. For any given topic, it's quite possible to drastically over represent that anecdote, as it's quite possible that there will be ~3 such anecdotes for any given topic and the normal case, which isn't especially noteworthy, gets no mention. Lesson: At a large enough scale, one-in-a-thousand anecdotes can occur several times for a given topic.
      - dllthomas 11y ago
        I wonder if there's an important distinction to be made between allergy to gluten and allergy to wheat. Does your wife react negatively to other gluten-heavy grains?
    - blacksmith_tb 11y ago
      Unfortunately, that isn't quite true. Many GF products substitute rice for wheat, which is lower-fiber, lower-protein, and contains potentially dangerous levels of arsenic, e.g. http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm352569.htm http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm352569.ht...
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    The only acceptable way to kill unscientific nonsense is to test the hypothesis it advances, no matter how ridiculously untestable it seems to be, and then publish the raw data without redactions. This one actually seems testable. Get a bunch of volunteer non-Celiac "gluten sensitives" and put them on a controlled diet. Measure some objective physiological metrics. Blindly introduce gluten to random subjects. Determine which metrics, if any, change in response to gluten. And then, to check out placebo/nocebo, you tell all the subjects that gluten will be introduced into their diets that day, and continue monitoring the metrics. A similiar experiment could be performed on a random sample of ordinary people, with glyphosate.
- ZoFreX 11y ago
  > The correlation between gluten intolerance and the rise of late-crop RoundUp raises some big questions. Does it? Does it really? Half the point of the article is that genuine gluten intolerance is not that common, for starters, so there probably isn't a simple causal relationship that "X = bad, X is on wheat, therefore wheat is bad for us now". Secondly: Is wheat the only crop we spray RoundUp on? If not, why is it only causing issues with wheat?
- hudj1jcnapru38 11y ago
  Agreed! And the correlation between gluten intolerance and use of facebook is something that nobody is talking about. Yet when you examine the data, you find that there are more diagnoses and self-diagnoses of gluten intolerance during the time when facebook grew from a few thousand users to nearly a billion! /s
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Which is most likely the real reason for it. Most of the self-diagnosed gluten intolerance seems to be nothing but a social media fad.
- rbritton 11y ago
  My wife started having problems eating wheat-based products a couple years ago, primarily gastrointestinal. Cutting it out of her diet eliminated those problems, but there's also been an additional surprise way in how to avoid the symptoms: food that has been heavily fried (e.g., onion rings) does not trigger the negative digestive response. I have no idea why -- maybe frying breaks down whichever component (e.g., the gluten itself or the residual glyphosate) is causing the problems enough?
tiatia 11y ago
“If eating wheat was so bad for us, it’s hard to imagine that populations that ate it would have tolerated it for 10,000 years,” Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies lactase persistence, told me. Sarah, turn on your brain. What about Game Theory? What if wheat is addictive and mankind did not enslave Wheat but wheat (and possible other crops) "enslaved" mankind? There is evidence that wheat may not be as healthy for you as you think. Also, the wheat from 60 years ago has very little to do with our current wheat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-opiate/ http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-opiate/ http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and- http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and- toxicity/wheat-grains/ http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-from-the-china-study/ http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-...
- rehtona 11y ago
  The reason we're eating wheat even though we're not made for it is because we could support larger populations on that versus hunting and gathering. Farming societies eventually won, even though hunters and gatherers were more healthy, because farming societies have a food surplus (which it can store), and can then afford to wage war and expand. If you look at skeletons from before and after farming, you see that hunter and gatherers were taller, had bigger brains than we have today, and were overall healthier.
  - adventured 11y ago
    There's zero scientific basis for the claim that height inherently has anything to do with health, such that taller people are healthier. If that theory were correct, Asian people would be the least healthy on the planet. When in fact the people of eg Japan have been among the most healthy for thousands of years. Caucasians - for example in Scandinavia - getting taller did not equate directly to being far healthier than their Japanese peers. Height increases over time are driven by the type of diet consumed. The Japanese diet did not lead to height, however it did lead to health and longevity.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nextstep 11y ago
Here is an alternative theory that tries to explain why people in the United States don't tolerate wheat very well: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/ http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic...
- bsenftner 11y ago
  Of course, this will be overlooked. Thanks for posting!
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Be sure to dig up the USDA source document and observe on page 3 that glyphosate is not applied to a majority of wheat acres: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemical_Use/ChemUseHighlights-Wheat-2012.pdf http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemi...
  - harryjo 11y ago
    glyphosate is on 45% of acres, so approximately half of the wheat you eat.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      There are 3 types of wheat shown in the table, glyphosate is only applied to 45% of the acres for one of them (Durum). Durum is only a small fraction of wheat grown in the US: Durum wheat, accounting for 3-5 percent of total production http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx So, no, it is not applied to nearly half of the wheat that is grown. There's also not a whole lot of evidence that it is widely applied to the mature plants prior to harvest. edit: This is poor phrasing: "only applied to 45% of the acres for one of them". The table does not claim to be comprehensive. So a better statement would say something like: the table only lists glyphosate being applied to 45% of one of the types.
evanpw 11y ago
This is a much better summary of the evidence, in my opinion: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-yo...
gregwebs 11y ago
Why is an opinion piece about a nutrition topic with 1 citation worthy of discussion on Hacker News? Here is an article with citations and discussion of modern research and patient experience that comes to a different conclusion: http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-be-more-serious-than-celiac-disease/ http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-be-... I won't bother submitting it to Hacker News since it doesn't have the official NYTimes scientific stamp of approval.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac is a globally recognized leader in the fields of ancestral health, Paleo nutrition, and functional and integrative medicine Yeah... Really scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research. Not a snake oil salesman at all. Also any article in the format "X reasons [thing] is more harmful than [other thing]" can generally be laughed at.
  - brerlapn 11y ago
    TFA clearly doesn't support your re-written straw man headline, and by comparison: - Kresser: 21 citations to "scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research" - NYT OpEd guest writer: naked unsupported assertion that "most of these assertions [about gluten], however, are contradicted by significant evidence" providing no references or scientific discussion Which one is snake oil again? More ironic, the Kresser article does talk about gluten as an auto-immune trigger, making your dismissal seem even more knee-jerk. There are people doing serious work on nutrition, but you won't have much luck finding them in the NYT, much less the OpEd section.
    - atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
      Which one is snake oil again? Well... cod liver oil, actually. And that would be here: http://store.chriskresser.com/ http://store.chriskresser.com/ Frankly, I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in either.
- aurora72 11y ago
Scramblejams 11y ago
My wife doesn't have celiac disease. Her knee suffered some damage some years ago. If she adds gluten to her diet, it swells up like crazy and hurts. If she removes gluten from her diet, within two days it shrinks back down and looks like a normal knee again and feels (mostly) fine. I won't pretend to understand how gluten affects everyone's body, but I know something about what it does to hers. It's odd to use the word "myth" in the title, but then leave the door open in the penultimate paragraph to immune system issues being wrapped up in all of this because I think it's entirely possible that for some people (like my wife), the immune system is counterproductively stimulated by gluten. Having said that, I think a lot of this current GF stuff is simply a fad. But fad or not I'm grateful for it because it gives my wife, who really does have a problem with gluten, many more options when shopping than she had just ten years ago.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  What you describe is a common symptom of celiac disease. Did you get tested?
  - dangero 11y ago
    And just to add to that, the blood test can be unreliable. A stomach biopsy is the best way to verify the condition.
    - tiatia 11y ago
      I doubt that. Remember a paper I read about how a stomach biopsy may not necessarily always find a gluten intolerant. I nearly died on that shit (Gluten). My life would have been very different if it hat been picked up in my teens. In the end I figured it out myself when I was basically dying (they looked at me when I waked into the hospital and said: Mate, sorry to tell you but the first thing we have to do is an HIV Test. This may give you an idea how I looked.) I know my form of intolerance is rare (1:10.000 to 1:100.000). My life is different now. I feel better than ever.
  - Scramblejams 11y ago
PaulHoule 11y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY <- Clap along if you're gluten free because you think it's cool.
evmar 11y ago
The editorializing of the headline here is changing the argument. The article (titled "The Myth of Big, Bad Gluten") is arguing that gluten may not itself be bad, but rather the body's reaction. This new title implies gluten intolerance is a myth, which is contradicted by stuff like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837 .
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- omginternets 11y ago
  >gluten may not itself be bad, but rather the body's reaction Being shot with a gun isn't bad. It's the destruction of tissue from the kinetic energy of the bullet that's bad. The point is that there's (apparently) a great deal of variability among individuals, with respect to gluten.
- dang 11y ago
  Perhaps the submitter was trying to make the title less baity, in accordance with the HN guidelines. (Submitted title was "Myth of gluten intolerance".) We've changed it to something that uses neutral language from the article. Suggestions for a better title are welcome.
  - evmar 11y ago
    Thanks as always for maintaining the tone of the site!
jmount 11y ago
"How to become Gluten intolerant" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798
MrFoof 11y ago
Interesting story. I had a friend that didn't have celiac disease, but genuinely had some form of gluten intolerance. It mostly just caused her terrible cramps. For about six years, doctors couldn't figure out what was causing it, so she had changed her diet to be nearly carb-free, and went on with her life. Problem? Hint: she liked camping. Ending up being a parasite she likely caught on a camping trip, which also brought on a combination of a fungal and viral infection. She was getting desperate, so she had went to an osteopath which ended up making the discovery. Her PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and fungal infection, and now she's back to eating normally.
- harryjo 11y ago
  > osteopath which ended up making the discovery. > PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and fungal infection nice teamwork!
ErikAugust 11y ago
My continued hunch is that is not gluten, but a general collection of foods that cause inflammation. Commonly, these foods are made up of carbohydrates (such as wheat) but there are fats and proteins as well. Not to sound too crude, but if you fill your gullet full of inflammation-causing food day in, day out - yes, you will not feel well. If you are not at all an active person - and you're consuming 2-3 meals of over 1500 calories, well - maybe you should point to that is a potential problem? Simply removing gluten isn't going to make your day too much better if you are washing down GF products with sodas and eating trans fats.
curtis 11y ago
The article mentions hygiene in passing, even though it seems like the Hygiene hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis) deserves at least a paragraph. I'm not claiming that the Hygiene hypothesis is true -- we clearly don't know that. But I think it definitely deserves further consideration.

60 points by sharer 11y ago

Not one single mention of RoundUp or any of the other toxic chemicals farmers spray on crops (especially wheat) right before/during harvest to kill them and dry them out faster. Like the article says, we as a species have eaten wheat for thousands of years with little problem. Why now? The correlation between gluten intolerance and the rise of late-crop RoundUp raises some big questions.

ajross 11y ago
Um... The whole point here is that unscientific nonsense needs to be killed. And specifically that non-Celiac gluten sensitivity has no real evidence for it. So your response is to trot out an equally unfounded (AFAIK) hippie-inspired pseudo-theory. Seriously?
- learnstats2 11y ago
  Why is it so urgent to kill this? It does nobody harm if some people choose to avoid gluten, and greatly benefits coeliac sufferers who have increasing good nutrition options.
  - ajross 11y ago
    It's a fair point. Personally I don't feel any urgency, the complaint was mostly aesthetic. But if you want to talk practicality of holding unscientific beliefs: I see your harmless gluten-free food industry and raise you a measles outbreak...
  - zo1 11y ago
    Because it's part of a much larger "anti-science" movement, and it's slipping underneath a lot of peoples' noses by sounding semi-plausible (or some other reason). If it is indeed a myth, and without merit, then it needs to be clumped together with all the other pseudo-science type stuff out there like homeopathy, chemtrails, acupuncture and chiropractors.
  - sklogic 11y ago
    These antigluten dimwits are almost always coming hand to hand with much more dangerous anti-science cretins, namely, antivaxxers and anti-GMO crowds.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Because ass hattery like this actually drives people's behaviors. Missing in the hysteria about gluten, corn syrup and carb consumption is the witch hunts in the 90s for fat and chlorestrol. Kids loading up on sugar filled, "whole grain" frosted flakes today were eating eggs 30 years ago.
  - nroach 11y ago
    anecdote: my wife has had exema her entire life. after a particularly bad episode, we eventually we tried an elimination diet methodically eliminating one food category at a time. it took about 2 months to rotate through all the possible suspects but in the end, eliminating wheat completely cleared the problem. then, one morning we had meatless sausage and she had a bad reoccurrence. first ingredient on the sausage? wheat gluten. (this was before allergy labelling in the US, and we just didn't think it would contain wheat). On the other hand, we've had other family members try avoiding gluten because they perceived it was 'bad', without a causal linkage to any symptoms. So, is non-celiac gluten intolerance rare? Probably. Do most people avoid it for the wrong reason? Probably. But to make the blanket statement that intolerance doesn't exist is misinformed and denigrates the very real problem that a small subset of the population does have.
    - batbomb 11y ago
      Important note on anecdotes (especially on HN): There are many thousands of active users on Hacker News. If there are 50 active users over an hours time looking at a given topic, and those 50 active users know an average of 50 people fairly well, that means there's potentially ~2500 anecdotes for any given topic. Say something happens in .1% of the general population, but it's noteworthy enough to be an anecdote. For any given topic, it's quite possible to drastically over represent that anecdote, as it's quite possible that there will be ~3 such anecdotes for any given topic and the normal case, which isn't especially noteworthy, gets no mention. Lesson: At a large enough scale, one-in-a-thousand anecdotes can occur several times for a given topic.
    - dllthomas 11y ago
      I wonder if there's an important distinction to be made between allergy to gluten and allergy to wheat. Does your wife react negatively to other gluten-heavy grains?
  - blacksmith_tb 11y ago
    Unfortunately, that isn't quite true. Many GF products substitute rice for wheat, which is lower-fiber, lower-protein, and contains potentially dangerous levels of arsenic, e.g. http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm352569.htm http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm352569.ht...
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  The only acceptable way to kill unscientific nonsense is to test the hypothesis it advances, no matter how ridiculously untestable it seems to be, and then publish the raw data without redactions. This one actually seems testable. Get a bunch of volunteer non-Celiac "gluten sensitives" and put them on a controlled diet. Measure some objective physiological metrics. Blindly introduce gluten to random subjects. Determine which metrics, if any, change in response to gluten. And then, to check out placebo/nocebo, you tell all the subjects that gluten will be introduced into their diets that day, and continue monitoring the metrics. A similiar experiment could be performed on a random sample of ordinary people, with glyphosate.
ZoFreX 11y ago
> The correlation between gluten intolerance and the rise of late-crop RoundUp raises some big questions. Does it? Does it really? Half the point of the article is that genuine gluten intolerance is not that common, for starters, so there probably isn't a simple causal relationship that "X = bad, X is on wheat, therefore wheat is bad for us now". Secondly: Is wheat the only crop we spray RoundUp on? If not, why is it only causing issues with wheat?
hudj1jcnapru38 11y ago
Agreed! And the correlation between gluten intolerance and use of facebook is something that nobody is talking about. Yet when you examine the data, you find that there are more diagnoses and self-diagnoses of gluten intolerance during the time when facebook grew from a few thousand users to nearly a billion! /s
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Which is most likely the real reason for it. Most of the self-diagnosed gluten intolerance seems to be nothing but a social media fad.
rbritton 11y ago
My wife started having problems eating wheat-based products a couple years ago, primarily gastrointestinal. Cutting it out of her diet eliminated those problems, but there's also been an additional surprise way in how to avoid the symptoms: food that has been heavily fried (e.g., onion rings) does not trigger the negative digestive response. I have no idea why -- maybe frying breaks down whichever component (e.g., the gluten itself or the residual glyphosate) is causing the problems enough?

tiatia 11y ago

“If eating wheat was so bad for us, it’s hard to imagine that populations that ate it would have tolerated it for 10,000 years,” Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies lactase persistence, told me. Sarah, turn on your brain. What about Game Theory? What if wheat is addictive and mankind did not enslave Wheat but wheat (and possible other crops) "enslaved" mankind? There is evidence that wheat may not be as healthy for you as you think. Also, the wheat from 60 years ago has very little to do with our current wheat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_exorphin http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-opiate/ http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-is-an-opiate/ http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and- http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/toxins-and- toxicity/wheat-grains/ http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-from-the-china-study/ http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/wheat-and-obesity-more-...

rehtona 11y ago
The reason we're eating wheat even though we're not made for it is because we could support larger populations on that versus hunting and gathering. Farming societies eventually won, even though hunters and gatherers were more healthy, because farming societies have a food surplus (which it can store), and can then afford to wage war and expand. If you look at skeletons from before and after farming, you see that hunter and gatherers were taller, had bigger brains than we have today, and were overall healthier.
- adventured 11y ago
  There's zero scientific basis for the claim that height inherently has anything to do with health, such that taller people are healthier. If that theory were correct, Asian people would be the least healthy on the planet. When in fact the people of eg Japan have been among the most healthy for thousands of years. Caucasians - for example in Scandinavia - getting taller did not equate directly to being far healthier than their Japanese peers. Height increases over time are driven by the type of diet consumed. The Japanese diet did not lead to height, however it did lead to health and longevity.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nextstep 11y ago

Here is an alternative theory that tries to explain why people in the United States don't tolerate wheat very well: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/ http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic...

bsenftner 11y ago
Of course, this will be overlooked. Thanks for posting!
maxerickson 11y ago
Be sure to dig up the USDA source document and observe on page 3 that glyphosate is not applied to a majority of wheat acres: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemical_Use/ChemUseHighlights-Wheat-2012.pdf http://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemi...
- harryjo 11y ago
  glyphosate is on 45% of acres, so approximately half of the wheat you eat.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    There are 3 types of wheat shown in the table, glyphosate is only applied to 45% of the acres for one of them (Durum). Durum is only a small fraction of wheat grown in the US: Durum wheat, accounting for 3-5 percent of total production http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/background.aspx So, no, it is not applied to nearly half of the wheat that is grown. There's also not a whole lot of evidence that it is widely applied to the mature plants prior to harvest. edit: This is poor phrasing: "only applied to 45% of the acres for one of them". The table does not claim to be comprehensive. So a better statement would say something like: the table only lists glyphosate being applied to 45% of one of the types.

evanpw 11y ago

This is a much better summary of the evidence, in my opinion: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/30/wheat-much-more-than-yo...

gregwebs 11y ago

Why is an opinion piece about a nutrition topic with 1 citation worthy of discussion on Hacker News? Here is an article with citations and discussion of modern research and patient experience that comes to a different conclusion: http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-be-more-serious-than-celiac-disease/ http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-gluten-intolerance-may-be-... I won't bother submitting it to Hacker News since it doesn't have the official NYTimes scientific stamp of approval.

mattmanser 11y ago
Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac is a globally recognized leader in the fields of ancestral health, Paleo nutrition, and functional and integrative medicine Yeah... Really scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research. Not a snake oil salesman at all. Also any article in the format "X reasons [thing] is more harmful than [other thing]" can generally be laughed at.
- brerlapn 11y ago
  TFA clearly doesn't support your re-written straw man headline, and by comparison: - Kresser: 21 citations to "scientific, unbiased, peer reviewed, modern research" - NYT OpEd guest writer: naked unsupported assertion that "most of these assertions [about gluten], however, are contradicted by significant evidence" providing no references or scientific discussion Which one is snake oil again? More ironic, the Kresser article does talk about gluten as an auto-immune trigger, making your dismissal seem even more knee-jerk. There are people doing serious work on nutrition, but you won't have much luck finding them in the NYT, much less the OpEd section.
  - atinoda-kestrel 11y ago
    Which one is snake oil again? Well... cod liver oil, actually. And that would be here: http://store.chriskresser.com/ http://store.chriskresser.com/ Frankly, I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in either.
aurora72 11y ago

Scramblejams 11y ago

My wife doesn't have celiac disease. Her knee suffered some damage some years ago. If she adds gluten to her diet, it swells up like crazy and hurts. If she removes gluten from her diet, within two days it shrinks back down and looks like a normal knee again and feels (mostly) fine. I won't pretend to understand how gluten affects everyone's body, but I know something about what it does to hers. It's odd to use the word "myth" in the title, but then leave the door open in the penultimate paragraph to immune system issues being wrapped up in all of this because I think it's entirely possible that for some people (like my wife), the immune system is counterproductively stimulated by gluten. Having said that, I think a lot of this current GF stuff is simply a fad. But fad or not I'm grateful for it because it gives my wife, who really does have a problem with gluten, many more options when shopping than she had just ten years ago.

TD-Linux 11y ago
What you describe is a common symptom of celiac disease. Did you get tested?
- dangero 11y ago
  And just to add to that, the blood test can be unreliable. A stomach biopsy is the best way to verify the condition.
  - tiatia 11y ago
    I doubt that. Remember a paper I read about how a stomach biopsy may not necessarily always find a gluten intolerant. I nearly died on that shit (Gluten). My life would have been very different if it hat been picked up in my teens. In the end I figured it out myself when I was basically dying (they looked at me when I waked into the hospital and said: Mate, sorry to tell you but the first thing we have to do is an HIV Test. This may give you an idea how I looked.) I know my form of intolerance is rare (1:10.000 to 1:100.000). My life is different now. I feel better than ever.
- Scramblejams 11y ago

PaulHoule 11y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQF3vr2I0XY <- Clap along if you're gluten free because you think it's cool.

evmar 11y ago

The editorializing of the headline here is changing the argument. The article (titled "The Myth of Big, Bad Gluten") is arguing that gluten may not itself be bad, but rather the body's reaction. This new title implies gluten intolerance is a myth, which is contradicted by stuff like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837 .

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
omginternets 11y ago
>gluten may not itself be bad, but rather the body's reaction Being shot with a gun isn't bad. It's the destruction of tissue from the kinetic energy of the bullet that's bad. The point is that there's (apparently) a great deal of variability among individuals, with respect to gluten.
dang 11y ago
Perhaps the submitter was trying to make the title less baity, in accordance with the HN guidelines. (Submitted title was "Myth of gluten intolerance".) We've changed it to something that uses neutral language from the article. Suggestions for a better title are welcome.
- evmar 11y ago
  Thanks as always for maintaining the tone of the site!

jmount 11y ago

"How to become Gluten intolerant" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798

MrFoof 11y ago

Interesting story. I had a friend that didn't have celiac disease, but genuinely had some form of gluten intolerance. It mostly just caused her terrible cramps. For about six years, doctors couldn't figure out what was causing it, so she had changed her diet to be nearly carb-free, and went on with her life. Problem? Hint: she liked camping. Ending up being a parasite she likely caught on a camping trip, which also brought on a combination of a fungal and viral infection. She was getting desperate, so she had went to an osteopath which ended up making the discovery. Her PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and fungal infection, and now she's back to eating normally.

harryjo 11y ago
> osteopath which ended up making the discovery. > PCP prescribed a 4-week regimen of heavy meds to kill off the parasites and fungal infection nice teamwork!

ErikAugust 11y ago

My continued hunch is that is not gluten, but a general collection of foods that cause inflammation. Commonly, these foods are made up of carbohydrates (such as wheat) but there are fats and proteins as well. Not to sound too crude, but if you fill your gullet full of inflammation-causing food day in, day out - yes, you will not feel well. If you are not at all an active person - and you're consuming 2-3 meals of over 1500 calories, well - maybe you should point to that is a potential problem? Simply removing gluten isn't going to make your day too much better if you are washing down GF products with sodas and eating trans fats.

curtis 11y ago

The article mentions hygiene in passing, even though it seems like the Hygiene hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis) deserves at least a paragraph. I'm not claiming that the Hygiene hypothesis is true -- we clearly don't know that. But I think it definitely deserves further consideration.