Immune responses to gluten, the proteins found in cereal grains are a common cause of an impressive number of diseases. The remarkable fact is that eating “normal”, often-recommended foods can be hazardous to your health.  Gluten is a general name used to describe proteins found in wheat and other cereal grains such as rye and barley. Any flour made from the starchy endosperm of grains contains proteins that are potentially problematic to the grain allergic person.

Gluten is a mixture of proteins classified into two groups, the prolamines and the glutelins. The prolamine, gliadin, seems to be a major problem in celiac disease; anti-gliadin antibodies are found in the serum and in circulating immune complexes associated with this disease. There is considerable variability in the protein content of various foods made from cereal grains, and this variability is one of the many reasons why food reactions are not consistent.

Celiac is the best defined gluten disease. The classic presentation of celiac disease is chronic diarrhea, with abdominal bloating, sometimes pain, weight loss, iron deficiency and other evidence of nutrient malabsorption. Celiac disease is immune-mediated and should be described as gluten allergy. 

People who are diagnosed with celiac disease often feel like outcasts and resent the hard work of avoiding gluten. We have taken the opposite approach and ask a much larger group of people to exclude gluten along with other popular foods as a routine measure of restoring health. 

A list of diseases that occur with increased frequency in celiac patients resembles the list of disorders reviewed under our descriptions of delayed pattern food allergy.  These diseases include diabetes, thyroid disease,  anemia, rheumatoid arthritis, sacroileitis, sarcoidosis, vasculitis, inflammatory lung disease, eye inflammation, cerebellar ataxia and schizophrenia. These and other immune-mediated disease can be linked to gluten ingestion. These associations suggest that people with a tendency to immune hypersensitivity diseases are vulnerable to food antigens that can cause systemic autoimmune disease.

Gluten-caused diseases are curious diseases that confuse everyone who has them, treats them or studies them. The first confusion is about “normal food” causing serious disease. 

Bread and cereals are normal staple foods. Toast is normal breakfast food. Bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, hamburgers, sandwiches, hot dogs, pizzas are described as normal foods and many people eat these foods every day.

Confusion arises when evidence accumulates that bread can make some people chronically ill. Bread can cause autoimmune disease. Bread can cause cancer if you have celiac disease and continue to eat gluten. The task of a person with gluten disease is to live in a bread culture without eating bread. How can anyone accept such a deviant path?

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Gluten Problems & Solutions

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