The Gluten Guide
To gluten or not to gluten! It seems like just in my lifetime the ‘gluten free’ movement has become a thing. Some 50 years ago I imagine no one considered gluten as a concern unless you had diagnosed coeliac disease.
So what’s happened and how can you figure out if you should be eating gluten or not?
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. It gives baked goods their stretch and lovely texture. In the digestive tract it causes the release of a protein called zonulin. Zonulin controls the permeability of our intestinal lining by opening up the tight junctions that hold the intestinal cells together. This cellular barrier serves as an important immune barrier between the outside world and the inside of your body. While zonulin is stimulated temporarily in everyone who eats gluten, some people will have a more exaggerated response to this or won’t repair the ‘leaky’ state quickly enough.
This ‘leaky’ state then allows for the uncontrolled entry of molecules in the small intestine to move into the blood system where an immune response is stimulated. Read more on this here.
I believe that more and more people are reacting to gluten for 2 reasons:
We have a lot more gluten in our wheat than we used to. This is due to the hybridisation of wheat which caused a more disease resistant crop, faster growing crop and higher yield crop but at the cost of being lower in nutritional value and higher in gluten. Therefore a greater zonulin release.
Most diets are now full of ingredients/’foods’ that are damaging to the gut lining and the gut microbiome. Such as refined flours, trans fats, processed oils, emulsifiers, preservatives, thickeners, flavours, sugars etc. A diet like this makes the gut more vulnerable to damage from the likes of gluten containing foods.
You also might be particularly sensitive to gluten for a few reasons:
You have unrelated digestive issues and the presence of gluten, and release of zonulin, exacerbates these issues. In this case once the root cause of the digestive issue has been addressed gluten can be reintroduced.
You have non-coeliac gluten sensitivity. You are still having an immune reaction to gluten but it is not detected as coeliacs or not as exaggerated as coeliacs - i.e. you don’t have autoimmunity.
It’s not necessarily the gluten but the foods that gluten is contained in that you’re reacting to. When we think about what foods contain gluten they are typically processed foods and don’t serve our health well e.g. bread/pasta/pizza/muffins/pastry etc. With all clients I see, I’ll encourage them to remove all refined processed carbohydrates. Without actually telling them to go gluten free they inevitably largely will as they cut out bread/pasta/pizza/muffins etc.
If you have any of these symptoms, particularly a combination of 2 or more, I would consider going gluten free for a month to see if it improves them:
Persistent diarrhoea or constipation
Pain or bloating in your gut
Brain fog
Unexplained fatigue
Unexplained low iron levels
Thyroid disorders
Joint pain or inflammation
Skin conditions such as eczema or psoriasis
Autoimmune conditions
When going gluten free it’s important to choose foods that are naturally free of gluten as opposed to foods that have been processed to become free of gluten which are often expensive and full of additives in order to still give them a ‘gluten’ feel. Some alternatives would be:
Rice and rice flour
Buckwheat and buckwheat flour
Quinoa
Polenta
Amaranth
Millet
Sorghum and sorghum flour
Teff and teff flour
What about oats?
Oats don’t technically contain gluten but they do contain a protein that is very similar to gluten. So if you’re particularly sensitive to gluten you may still react to oats. For the trial period it’s worth omitting them and then re-introducing to see if you get a reaction or not.
If you discover that you are in fact reacting to gluten in one way or another this is a great discovery! It’s important to view it this way - otherwise you’ll be disgruntled and that’s not going to do you any good! Your health will greatly improve by removing it from your diet and you'll have a better quality of life.
You’ll also want to think about incorporating some gut healing foods/supplements. If you have been reacting to gluten for a while the microvilli, tiny finger-like projections on your intestinal cells, might be damaged/flattened which will compromise your digestion and absorption of foods. Adding in gut soothing foods like bone broth, collagen, gelatin, gutamine and slippery elm can help to repair this lining.
If you discover that you can tolerate gluten think about the following things:
Continue to remove processed carbohydrates
Only consume gluten containing foods that you could replicate at home e.g bread or pizza made from flour, water and a sourdough starter or yeast. We want to avoid all the additives.
Continue to investigate other sources of your digestive discomfort - microbial imbalance being a common one.
All of these recipes are gluten free:
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
