Everything You Need to Know About Gluten
Celiac Disease
You don’t have to have full blown Celiac disease to have problems with gluten. About 7 percent of the population shows some signs of gluten sensitivity, meaning that they show some milder symptoms associated with the protein gluten but not enough to be considered having Celiac disease.
The problem with gluten is that many of us are allergic to gluten and that is called Celiac disease. Those with Celiac disease will have an immune response when gluten is consumed. This can cause such symptoms as intestinal distress, diarrhea, bloating and other long term problems such as nutritional deficiencies and bone loss due to decrease in nutrient absorption. About 1% of Americans have Celiac disease.
Rates of Celiac disease are on the rise and not just due to increased awareness and diagnosis. Analysis of blood samples from 50 years ago show that only about .2 percent of the population had Celiac disease back then, compared to the about 1% now, an almost 5 times increase.
Though more and more people are being diagnosed with Celiac disease as awareness is growing, there are still a lot of people out there with the disease that don’t even know it! In fact estimates say that about 80 percent of people with the disease remain undiagnosed.
Symptoms
There are a host of symptoms that have been attributed to gluten, including some health conditions that have been previously misdiagnosed or simply had no known cause. Here is just a short list of symptoms that can because due to gluten intolerance or Celiac disease:
- gastrointestinal distress;
- fatigue;
- mood swings;
- joint pain;
- skin problems (rash or acne);
- asthma;
- impaired hearing;
- brain damage.
Quick Rise Breads
People are of course trying to figure out why there is such an increase in Celiac disease and gluten intolerance and one of the biggest culprits is probably the practice of quick rise breads. In the past, bread was made by soaking and fermenting the wheat for long periods of time which broken down the gluten or kind of predigested it.
Today, everything has to be made faster, to mass produce enough food for everyone in a shorter period of time. That means that we use yeast and other chemicals to quickly rise the bread and the gluten is left mostly intact, ready to reak havok on our digestive systems.
