Autoimmunity And Food Part 2

Autoimmunity and Food Part 2

Dr. Mark Gallant & Dr. Colin Bartoe

Continuing the story of Leaky Gut, we have particles (like gluten) that are too big in the bloodstream, and your body views them as a foreign invaders.  Your immune system attacks these particles and brings little pieces of them back to something like a command center, where your immune system remembers them and makes special cells called antibodies to attack it when it shows up again.   So, when you eat this food again, now your body remembers it from before and creates the antibodies in preparation for a new “attack”.  The big problem with this is that these big food particles often look like other body tissues.  Gluten looks an awful lot like your thyroid to your immune system.  So if you have a gluten sensitivity, and you eat gluten, then which of the following do you think will occur?

 1) Your body remembers gluten and thinks you are being invaded

 2) You make antibodies to fight against it

3) These antibodies attack anything that looks similar

4) Your thyroid comes under attacked by your own defense system

This is a trick question because ALL of those things happen and they happen in that order.  Autoimmune disease is where your immune system attacks your own body.  Food sensitivities are a common way that autoimmune diseases start.

                  Now, this is where I get asked how wheat can do this.  Hasn’t it been around for thousands of years?  The answer to this is NO, at least not the wheat that we are eating now.  When you cultivate crops, you want to do whatever it takes to make that a good strong crop that makes a lot of food.  People have been cultivating particular strains through breeding and, more recently, genetic manipulation.  The strains that produce greater quantities get used and the other, less productive strains get discarded.  Through our many years of breeding the highly productive crops, wheat of today is not the wheat of old.  It acts differently in our body than it used to.  In addition, wheat can be stored in silos for up to two years in silos while waiting for good market prices.  In those silos, the grain has a chance to degrade and collect molds and mildew, which further degrade the wheat.  Those molds and mildews can be killed with bleaches or other cleaning processes, which even further degrades the wheat. 

                  So what to do?  Well, first realize that not everyone has a gluten sensitivity.  There are ways to find out if you do.  In our office, we use Cyrex Labs, which is the only lab that I know of that can test for antibodies to all of the different proteins in wheat.  They can also test for different foods that look like gluten to your body that can have the same immune response as gluten. The other option that we use is a special elimination diet.  It is less expensive than the lab tests, but it is also not as accurate. If you do end up having a sensitivity to a food, then you can remove that food from your diet.  That can seem a bit lame, but skipping cake is better than your thyroid failing.  If you don’t have a sensitivity, remember that still do everything in moderation.  That means bread, too.  A varied diet helps keep you from developing a leaky gut.  I [Dr. Gallant] personally don’t have a gluten sensitivity, and I’d like to keep it that way.  That means I don’t eat bread that often.

                  Last thing – gluten free diet.  This means read the label.  Look at the ingredients.  If you are gluten free, avoid wheat, soy sauce (it has wheat in it),flour, and thickeners like cornstarch.  Gluten free breads are better when purchased from bakeries that make gluten free items daily.  Sometimes gluten free products stay on the shelf for longer periods of time, so they can have a bunch of preservatives in it.  That might not be the healthiest things either.   You have to be vigilant, because most processed foods have gluten in them.  Learning to cook at home from scratch will make your life easier.  Also, if you have a stronger sensitivity (you will know it), then watch out for medications.  Over the counter drugs, supplements, and pharmaceuticals often have minute amounts of gluten in the binders and fillers.  Even colorings for tablets or capsules may contain gluten. If you have this level of sensitivity, then it would be to your advantage to find a compounding pharmacist that can make what you need without those fillers or binders. If you appreciate the information, please let us know. We are happy to take suggestions for topics of discussion and follow us on facebook to stay up to date on our blog.

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