What is Gluten?

Did you know gluten is an opioid? You shake your head. But it’s true: when digested, gluten proteins break down into opioid-like polypeptides called exorphins that some researchers say operate to mask the inherent toxicity of gluten, meaning people could be unknowingly suffering a wide array of complications from gluten in their diet. A comprehensive review of medical literature conducted by Leo Pruimboom and Karin de Punder available on the PubMed Central website published by the NIH’s National Library of Medicine examined the mechanisms by which incomplete gluten-breakdown is related to a host of non-classical Celiac’s Disease (CD) symptoms, referred to as Asymptomatic Celiac Disease (ACD). One striking statement in their paper is that “accumulating data provide evidence for the deleterious effects of gluten intake on general human health.” This is not yet well studied or consented to because patients often fail to exhibit “gastrointestinal symptoms even in individuals with proven CD.” As the authors relate, recent human studies evidence that “gluten can cause inflammatory injury in the gut, without [an individual] suffering any gastrointestinal symptoms.” Non-classical CD symptoms and related disorders observed in ACD individuals include: “diabetes mellitus type I, severe hypoglycemia in diabetes mellitus type I, psoriasis, sleep apnea in children, neoplasia, atopic dermatitis, depression, sub clinical synovitis in children, autism, schizophrenia, and irritable bowel syndrome,” which suggests “that gluten intake is related to the development of these conditions.” As far as prevalence of ACD in the population of CD patients, studies show “that only 17% of serologically diagnosed patients suffer from the classical [gastrointestinal] celiac symptoms.”With 1.4% of the global population suffering CD—a percentage steadily growing at a rate of 7.5% per year!—this is an important field of research that affects hundreds of millions of people. If Pruimboom and de Punder are correct, gluten could be responsible for the development of a whole host of non-gut-related disorders, affecting a large and growing number of people. The long and short of it is that inflammation caused by incomplete gluten digestion in individuals with CD and NCGS (non-Celiac gluten sensitivity) results in the imbalanced presence of opioid-like exorphins that could be masking the severe damage the gluten causes, and which results in a wide array of disorders. The European Society for the Study of Coeliac Disease guidelines for coeliac disease published in the United European Gastroenterol as cited on the Celiac Disease Foundation’s website states that “in patients with celiac disease, a 10-22% increased risk of neurological disorders is reported,” which may result in a misdiagnosis of psychiatric illness.

In fact, a case report published in 2015 confirmed “psychotic disorder [can be] clearly related to Non-celiac Gluten Sensitivity.” And, more recently, a systematic review of medical literature on gluten-related neurological disorders (GRND’s), published in 2020, concludes alarmingly that “neuropathological findings in GRND’s are widespread and not limited to the cerebellum,” but include epilepsy, encephalopathy, myopathy, small and large fiber neuropathy, and ataxia.

Is gluten ruining your life?
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