Celiac; Cause for Alarm

According to Dr. Mark Hyman's article in the Huffington Post, Celiac Disease is a bigger problem than bloating and frequent trips to the toilet.

He writes as a result of reading a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

This study looked at almost 30,00 patients from 1969 to 2008 and examined deaths in three groups: Those with full-blown celiac disease, those with inflammation of their intestine but not full-blown celiac disease, and those with latent celiac disease or gluten sensitivity (elevated gluten antibodies but negative intestinal biopsy).

The findings were dramatic. There was a 39 percent increased risk of death in those with celiac disease, 72 percent increased risk in those with gut inflammation related to gluten, and 35 percent increased risk in those with gluten sensitivity but no celiac disease.

Which is alarming enough, frankly, but there's more.

Another study comparing the blood of 10,000 people from 50 years ago to 10,000 people today found that the incidences of full-blown celiac disease increased by 400 percent (elevated TTG antibodies) during that time period.  If we saw a 400 percent increase in heart disease or cancer, this would be headline news. But we hear almost nothing about this.

He also lists other diseases linked to gluten:

A review paper in The New England Journal of Medicine listed 55 "diseases" that can be caused by eating gluten.  These include osteoporosis, irritable bowel disease, inflammatory bowel disease, anemia, cancer, fatigue, canker sores,  and rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and almost all other autoimmune diseases. Gluten is also linked to many psychiatric  and neurological diseases, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, epilepsy, and neuropathy (nerve damage).  It has also been linked to autism.

It should be noted that the stories of the effectiveness of a gluten free diet in treating autism are anecdotal; no study to date has found that there is a definite link between gluten consumption and autism.

Dr. Hyman's article is extensively footnooted, and well worth the read.  And it begs the question, is gluten a bigger problem than we have thought?