Disease, Drugs or diet? What is your choice?

I have just seen a boy Joseph in my Clinic. He is ten years old. He is gluten sensitive (diagnosed by high gliadin antibodies and a good clinical response to a gluten-free diet).

He complains of a sore tummy, he is tired and irritated. He has a degree of reflux and constipation.

In the past, he went gluten-free with good effect - all his symptoms disappeared. However, he has been eating gluten for the last year again and is now sick again.

Both he and his parents are reluctant for him to go back on a gluten-free diet because it is somewhat complicated for them, it is inconvenient and it costs more.

He has a choice of three outcomes: Disease, Drugs or diet?

1. DISEASE He can continue with disease probably getting more symptoms, and having a significant impact on his health, particularly in the future.
2. DRUGS He can take drugs for reflux, constipation and pain. This means he still has the ongoing disease and also the potential of harm from chronic medication.
3. DIET He can choose dietary changes. He needs to be on a gluten-free diet and eat more healthy food.

The third option is the most complicated for his family but would give him the biggest benefit. The choice seems like a no-brainer intellectually, but when you apply these thoughts to the real life, many people chose drugs and disease.

My call: diet not drugs. Eat better food for better health.

Cheers Dr Rodney Ford

http://www.drrodneyford.com

Laurie Donaldson asks on facebook: "I wonder how it feels, Dr. Ford, to be one of the people who has known this all along and has tried so hard to get the word out!"

Well Laurie, thanks for the question. In one word, it feels "frustrating!"

I have spent 30 years treating children with food allergies (and most docs still won't 'believe' in food allergy.

I have spent 21 years (since 1990 when the gliadin antibodies were available) learning more and more about gluten/celaic/sensitivity - and guess what - most docs still won't 'believe' in gluten intolerance.

So what can I do?? I have written 9 books on allergy, gluten and nutrition (2 more to come out soon); I have travelled the world speaking about gluten-harm; I have launched the concept of Gluten Free Planet; I do blogs and facebook and twitter!; I run an allergy clinic; I write medical articles and present at GI conferences; I advocate advocate advocate.

I am the first person to describe "Gluten Syndrome" and have written the book about it!

It is hard work - but as Churchill said "Never, Never, Never Give Up". I am an optimist - we (the GF community) will prevail.

If you want me to speak somewhere - please invite me - I will see if I can make it.

thanks

Cheers Rodney

(join me on facebook)

Are you gluten diseased?

When we are unwell, we look for a diagnosis for our illness/disease. Say we have been diagnosed with the ‘flu’. We get better and so we no longer have the flu. We are well.

In my question on facebook I asked, Why are you Gluten free? In the options I wrote "I had celiac disease". I used the past tense because when you go GF you should no longer be diseased. I want to talk about health, not disease.

Why do people use the description “celiac disease” when they are now fully recovered? Yes, they need to be gluten-free life-long. Yes, if they eat gluten they will get diseased again.

People could say “I am a healthy celiac”

What do you think?

Cheers Dr Rodney Ford

Anonymous food at conference

I was at a gastroenterology conference last week (ESPGHAN). The information was excellent (in Sorento, Italy).

But I am very disappointed about the lack of any food descriptions. The food was anonymous. No labels, no description, no allergen declarations.

At a GI/food allergy/nutrition conference, I would have thought that people on special diets would be catered for. For example, I am Gluten Free. Morning & Afternoon teas had no GF option. Boxed breakfasts - no GF option. Lunch boxes - GF option was hard to track down (no info given about how to get this food). There was no indication about dairy/eggs/nuts in any of the food. It was definitely not a food-allergy friendly conference. Very odd. This lack of food action does not give a very good message - we should be taking food allergy/intolerance seriously, at every venue. I say: less talking and more doing.

Celiac gate-keepers reluctant to accept gluten syndrome

I have read these comments with interest. So far, all comments support my position that gluten syndrome is common, and usually not associated with coeliac disease. Nobody has yet made a contrary statement.

I am a paediatric gastroenterologist. In my clinic, I look for coeliacs every day - I find a few, but for every coleiac, there are another 10 children with gluten intolerance. All you have to do is look at pubmed and put in the search words 'gluten sensitivity' to find the medical research that documents the gluten syndrome. I gave Matt Philips (the author) lots of these references, however he chose to mostly ignore them (so that he could write a 'balanced' article.

Most gastroenterologists do not want to accept gluten intolerance as this would be inconvenient for their on-going practice. Currently they wield the power of endoscopy as the gate-keeper of the coeliac diagnosis. So best to pretend that the gluten syndrome is a placebo effect (nonsense!) and that these gluten sufferers are deluded. Crazy. My purpose is to help my patients get better, and often this means seeing if gluten might be causing them harm. Coeliac disease is not the only condition that is triggered by gluten.

Dr Rodney Ford. http://www.drrodneyford.com

Doctor denies gluten problems

Oh dear, it is a pity when doctors speak out about gluten not causing any harm to people other than celiac disease.

Doctor denies gluten problems

These 'disbelievers' should get up to date and read the latest medical articles that clearly state that gluten-sensitivity is a real entity that demands attention.

Please make a post on this newspaper site - to make a stand.

The reporter says 'But Dr Lane's position is unexceptional. Most of the experts I spoke to said that not only is there no medical justification for the majority of people who are following a gluten-free diet, it's just not healthy.'

Why is the GF diet healthy for celiacs, but unhealthy for anyone else? Weird logic.

So much dogma and not enough thought.

Cheers Dr Rodney Ford

Celaic Gut: When will my bowel recover?

Celiac disease is defined as “small bowel mucosal damage, which is reversible on a gluten free diet, in genetically predisposed people (who carrying the DQ2/DQ8 HLA gene)”. Gluten can trigger your body’s immune response that can then go onto cause this tissue gut damage.

However, this damage is slowly progressive: the longer you have been eating gluten, the worse the damage. Of course, when you have this gluten-gut-damage, you do not absorb your food nutrients very well, and this leads to many other health problems. But, with any on-going gluten ingestion, the gut damage is perpetuated.

The good news is that as soon as gluten is (completely) removed from your diet, the bowel at last has a chance to recover. In children, who have had a shorter time of gluten exposure, their bowel usually recovers very quickly (within weeks their symptoms go away, and within months their gut is completely normal). It is rare for a child to not have complete gut recovery.

The bad news is that as we get older, and have had this gluten assault for a lot longer, our gut damage can be more severe and more extensive. Consequently, you can take a lot longer to get better. You might take weeks and months to begin to feel better and sometimes it takes years for the gut to fully restore to normal.

Of course, if you still eat small amounts of gluten, or your diet is not scrupulously purged of gluten, then this small amount of gluten-toxicity can keep causing you ongoing damage to your gut (and other organs, especially nerves and brain).

To check if your gut has properly healed, you can either have second endoscopy (which is often scheduled about a year after you have started a gluten free diet), or you can see whether or not the tissue-damage-markers (tTG, DGP, and EMA) are coming down. There is a good correlation between blood test results and endoscopy.

The lesson from this: diagnose celiac disease as early as possible, and once diagnosed remain strictly gluten free without exception, lifelong. If you have ongoing gut disease and ongoing symptoms, there may be other things going on and you may need to have other strategies to help gut healing.

Cheers, Dr Rodney Ford, Author of The Gluten Syndrome

The Gluten Syndrome is now available (in next 24 hours) as an eBook (only $4.99) revised new edition, 2011: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/58338