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Gluten Intolerance, also known as Celiac Disease, was once thought to be a rare genetic disorder until 2003 when it was discovered that it is, indeed, quite common. Where once gluten intolerance was thought to affect 1 in 4000 people it is now thought to affect 1 in 133 and researchers expect that number to drop even lower. Yet, even with this new discovery many people in America are going undiagnosed.

Celiac disease is an inherited disease of the digestive system that damages the villi in the small intestine causing chronic inflammation rendering it unable to digest foods. The villi enables food digestion. The damage to the villi is caused by the protein gluten found in the following grains: wheat, rye, barely. Some gluten intolerant people are also sensitive to oats and millet. Many with gluten sensitivity are also allergic to milk.

When people with celiac disease eat grains that contain gluten their immune system responds by damaging the small intestine which, over time, causes malnutrition due to malabsorption of nutrients. Malabsorption can cause someone to appear anorexic, but also, obese.

I found that many of my patients who were obese and complained of hunger were actually hungry. Once they embarked on a gluten-free diet to heal the small intestine their hunger cravings subsided and they lost their excess weight. Being too thin or too heavy is just one of many reasons to be tested for gluten-intolerance.

Symptoms of Gluten Intolerance:

Gluten Intolerance can cause an array of symptoms. It affects each person differently. Common complaints are behavioral changes; bone or joint pain; fatigue; pale, foul-smelling, or fatty stool; inability to gain weight; muscle cramps and muscle weakness; stomach problems; tingling and numbness in legs from nerve damage.

Reviews of celiac disease in the world’s leading independent general medical journal Lancet lists the following known problems associated to gluten when celiac disease is not diagnosed:

Lancet 1997:349:1755

Lancet 2003:362:383

• Alopecia (abnormal hair loss)
• Anemia
• Mouth sores
• Arthritis
• Autoimmune diseases, glandular disorders or attacks on any organs are 10X more common in people with celiac
• Cancers (especially of the small bowel, lymphomas, esophageal)
• Dermatitis herpetiformis (a itchy skin rash)
• Elevated liver enzymes tests
• Gastroesophageal reflux (GERD)
• Gastrointestinal symptoms (abdominal discomfort, diarrhea, constipation)
• Infertility or miscarriage
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Lactose intolerance
• Liver disease of unknown origin
• Malabsorption of nutrients & nutritional deficiency such as iron, folic acid, calcium, magnesium and fat soluble vitamins
• Neurological symptoms such as peripheral neuropathy, ataxia, epilepsy, cognitive dysfunction.
• Osteoporosis or osteopenia, check vitamin D level for malabsorption
• Psoriasis

Disease Linked to Celiac Disease:

People with celiac disease tend to have other autoimmune diseases. These diseases include epilepsy, thyroid disease, systemic lupus erythematosis, type 1 diabetes, vascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and Sjogren’s syndrome. A diagnosis of multiple sclerosis has sometimes been given when in fact the person had celiac disease. Gluten may be the underlying causes of these autoimmune disorders.

How is Celiac Disease Diagnosed?

Years ago the only way to diagnose celiac disease was with a small bowel biopsy but today it can be diagnosed with simple blood tests that measure antibodies to gluten. Antibodies are proteins that react against the body. Those with celiac disease have high levels of antibodies to gluten in their blood. For the test to be accurate you must continue to eat grains containing gluten until you are tested. If not, the test results may be negative even if have celiac disease.

What is the Treatment?

The treatment does not involve medication. Instead, you simply must follow a gluten-free diet.

For most people, following a gluten-free diet, will stop symptoms and heal intestinal damage. It will also prevent further damage. Noticeable improvements usually begin within a week of starting the diet but the small intestine may take anywhere from 3 to 6 months in mild cases and up to 2 years in severe cases to completely heal so that villi that can absorb nutrients from food into the bloodstream.

The Gluten-free Diet

A gluten-free diet means not eating foods that contain wheat (including spelt, triticale, teff, and kamut), rye, barley and oats. The foods and products made from these grains are also not allowed therefore food label reading is a must. Hidden sources of gluten include food additives such as modified food starch, preservatives, and stabilizers along with medicines, anti-acids, vitamins, supplements and beverages.

People with celiac disease can eat rice, soy, amaranth, quinoa, potato, or bean flour instead of wheat flour. Grocery and health food stores now offer gluten-free bread, pasta, and other products. Gluten-free products are available on-line from many sources.

In order to stay healthy people with celiac disease must avoid gluten for the rest of their lives. Eating any gluten, no matter how minute an amount, can damage the small intestine.

Web References:

Excellent site for information on celiac disease. What to eat and where to purchase gluten- free foods:

Celiac Disease and Gluten-free Diet Information at www.Celiac.com

Foods that are safe for celiacs to eat and those that are not are listed at http://www.celiac.com/st_main.html?p_catid=12

Information on the FDA’s new position on gluten-labeling can be found at Food Navigator: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=80101&m=1FNU926&c=rmgrxyuscipjdni

Book Reference:

Living Gluten-Free for DUMMIES by Danna Korn

About the author
Leslee Dru Browning is a 6th generation Medical Herbalist & Nutritionist from the ancestral line of Patty Bartlett Sessions; Pioneer Mid-Wife & Herbalist. Leslee practiced Medical Herbalism and Nutritional Healing for over 25 years and specialized in Cancer Wellness along with Chronic Illness. She now devotes her career to teaching people, through her writing, about Natural Healing from An Herbal Perspective.

www.newstarget.com

Bill Maher ends his show with a rant about Big Pharma, astutely observing, “If you believe you need all the pills and drugs the pharmaceutical industry says you do — then you’re already on drugs.”

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Many of the television commercials seen by teenagers are for junk food products. According to research released this week by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, this may be a major reason obesity rates continue to rise among 12-17 year-olds. The studies examined by researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago and University of Michigan concluded that 26% of TV ads seen by teens were for food products. The vast majority of these products contain high amounts of fat, sugar and sodium.

The groups most impacted by junk food ads are low-income and minority teens. With higher percentages of fast food restaurants in urban communities and race specific junk food marketing campaigns, it is obvious why teens in these groups are experiencing skyrocketing obesity rates.

To make matters worse, poorer and nonwhite neighborhoods also have fewer fruit and vegetable markets, bakeries, specialty stores, and natural food stores. In the Detroit metropolitan area the poorest African American neighborhoods are an average of 1.1 miles further from the nearest supermarket than are impoverished white neighborhoods, according to a 2005 study by the Institute of Medicine.

Teens also have few healthy choices at school. According to the research, many middle schools and high schools offer more unhealthy foods than nutritious foods. Many people believe schools carry a substantial burden of responsibility — just behind parents and individuals — when it comes to addressing childhood obesity.

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) serves twenty-nine million school children every day and costs American taxpayers more than $7 billion a year to provide “nutritionally balanced” meals. Many students, however, fill up on items such as soft drinks, chips, and cookies, which are high in added sugars, fats, calories, and sodium, but low in nutrition. Such “junk foods” sold in vending machines, cafeteria a la carte lines, and school stores are known as “competitive foods” because they compete with federally funded meals.

In the article “Soft Drink Pouring Rights,” New York University Professor and renowned author Marion Nestle stated the following:

Healthy People 2010 objectives call for meals and snacks served in schools to contribute to overall diets that meet federal dietary guidelines. Sales in schools of foods and drinks high in calories and low in nutrients undermine this health objective, as well as participation in the more nutritious, federally sponsored, school lunch programs. Competitive foods also undermine nutrition information taught in the classroom. Lucrative contracts between school districts and soft drink companies for exclusive rights to sell one brand are the latest development in the increasing commercialization of school food. These contracts, intended to elicit brand loyalty among young children who have a lifetime of purchases ahead of them, are especially questionable because they place schools in the position of “pushing” soft drink consumption. “Pouring rights” contracts deserve attention from public health professionals concerned about the nutritional quality of children’s diets.

As of March 2007, federal efforts to establish consistent nationwide nutrition standards for all competitive foods and beverages sold in schools was embodied in the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2007. First introduced in both houses in May 2006, the bill was reintroduced in the 110th Congress and has continued to enjoy bipartisan support from numerous co-sponsors.

In May 2006, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services released a report recommending concrete steps that industry can take to change their marketing and other practices to make progress against childhood obesity. Among the agencies recommendations are that food companies:

· Intensify their efforts to create new products and reformulate existing products to make them lower in calories, more nutritious, more appealing to children, and more convenient to prepare and eat; · Review and revise their marketing practices with the goal of improving the overall nutritional profile of the foods marketed to children, for example, by adopting minimum nutritional standards for the foods they market to children, or by otherwise shifting emphasis to lower-calorie, more nutritious products; · Review and revise their policies to improve the overall nutritional profile of the products they market and sell in schools.

In focusing on racial and ethnic populations in which childhood obesity is more prevalent, the agencies recommended that:

· Food companies make a concerted effort to include, as part of their marketing of more nutritious, lower-calorie foods, promotions that are tailored to these communities; and · Food companies, the media, and entertainment companies tailor their outreach efforts to promote better nutrition and fitness to these populations.

In 1983, food marketers spent $100 million on television advertising to kids. Today, they pour roughly 150 times that amount into a variety of mediums that seek to infiltrate every corner of children’s worlds. The average American child today is exposed to an estimated 40,000 television commercials a year — over 100 per day. Since 1980, childhood obesity rates have tripled among adolescents.

www.newstarget.com

On September 24, 2007, scientists across the country – including six Nobel prize winners, alarmed by the prospect of registering methyl iodide as a pesticide, issued a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson urging the Agency not to sanction the broad use of methyl iodide now or at any time.

“The gratifying thing is that EPA has been responsive to people who are really concerned about this,” Robert Bergman, a University of California at Berkeley professor who organized the scientists’ letter, told the Associated Press. The letter criticized EPA’s scientific analysis, calling for an independent scientific review of the agency’s assessment.

Methyl iodide and methyl bromide are injected into the soil at rates of 100-400 pounds per acre to kill soil-borne pests. Because of the high application rates and gaseous nature of these chemicals, they drift away from the application site to poison neighbors and farmworkers. EPA’s analysis evaluated possible buffer zones around fields and concluded that bystander exposure would not be significant. It said farmworkers could protect themselves sufficiently with respirators.

The Montreal Protocol, a 1992 commitment by the world’s nations that includes the phase out methyl bromide - one of the five deadly pesticides targeted by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers - gave hope that farmworkers and others would finally stop being put at risk by this deadly pesticide. Unfortunately, EPA is not only backpedaling on this, but is also facilitating the chemical industry and agribusiness efforts to introduce methyl iodide, a fumigant that may be even more hazardous to human health than methyl bromide.

The state of California lists methyl iodide as a carcinogen under Proposition 65. EPA found that methyl iodide caused thyroid tumors–and introduced a previously unheard of cancer ranking of “Not likely to be carcinogenic to humans at doses that do not alter rat thyroid hormone homeostasis.” The EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee came to this conclusion using only a single study—in which 62-66% of the rats in both the control and the high dose group died during the experiment. In addition to thyroid tumors, the study showed significant changes in thyroid hormone levels, which are closely tied to metabolic disorders. Other animal studies evaluated by EPA also indicated that methyl iodide causes respiratory tract lesions, neurological effects, and miscarriages.

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=200

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(left) Aerial photo of Aurora “organic” dairy factory farm courtesy of Cornucopia Institute

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any hotter (or any more mind-boggling), the “organic” dairy factory farm controversy reached a new level of intensity over the past week. The USDA announced, to the disappointment of the organic community, that they were not going to take further disciplinary measures against Aurora Organic Dairy, a company that just a few weeks ago had a portion of its organic certification suspended by the USDA for “willfully” violating National Organic Standards since 2003 by failing to pasture its animals and by bringing conventional calves onto its feedlots and then declaring them organic. But caving in to pressure from Aurora and other big corporate players in the organic sector , the USDA now says the #1 organic private label dairy processor in the U.S. can continue selling milk produced on its factory farms as “organic” to its longstanding customers including Target, Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, and Woodstock Farms.

In a mind-twisting manipulation of logic, the new acting Secretary of Agriculture, Chuck Connors, a notorious cheerleader for biotech and corporate agribusiness, announced last week that this issue, regarding Aurora’s violation of the USDA National Organic Standards, falls outside the scope of the USDA National Organic Standards. “I know there is controversy out there on a number of issues that really fall outside the bounds, if you will, of what constitutes that organic standard that is necessary in order for the product to have our seal,” said Connors.

(image above) Healthy Land/Healthy Cows—”Real” Organic Farms

(image below) Aurora “Organic” factory confinement dairy—Platteville, Colorado

Now that they have the USDA in their pocket, Aurora is threatening to sue the Organic Consumers Association and Cornucopia Institute for educating and mobilizing consumers to oppose Aurora’s blatant violations of organic integrity. In related news, the recent issue of Fortune Magazine reports Aurora’s factory farms generated a record 100 million dollars in “organic” dairy sales to consumers this year. In other words, when it comes to suing the OCA, Aurora has plenty of money, from selling its cheap “organic” factory farm milk to Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and Safeway . So given this David versus Goliath situation, OCA needs your financial support today, more than ever, to defend ourselves from this attack by Aurora and to expose the ongoing negligence of the USDA.

Donate to OCA

www.organicconsumers.org