celiac: gluten vs starch

[Guest guest]

The first folks to indict the gluten *protein* as causal in celiac disease

found that

" Gastro-intestinal function was investiaged in ten children with

coeliac disease... The removal of wheat flour from the diet resulted in rapid

improvement, both clinically and biochemically. Deterioration folowed by

reintroduction into the diet of wheat flour or wheat gluten, but wheat starch

ahd no

harmful effect. "

and therefore " a high caloric diet may be given throughout with biscuits made

from corn-flour, soya flour, or wheat starch instead of wheat flour. "

( et al, Coeliac disease: Gastrointestinal studies and the effect of

dietary wheat flour, Lancet, quoted in Gotschall, BVC)

This apparently paved the way to the gluten theory of celiac disease. But it

obviously isn't true. Modern gluten-theory advocates do not allow purified

wheat starch or corn flour. It's believed that trace amounts of gluten remain.

Where gliaden is not present in the grain naturally, or would be

theoretically absent from a purified starch, it's believed either traces of

gliaden

remain, traces of gliaden have contaminated the grain, or other proteins like

glutenin are the culprits.

I wonder how the original gluten-theorists could have found purified wheat

starch to be perfectly fine. Since modern gluten-theorists believe trace

quantities of gliaden are roughly equivalent to large quantities in the immune

reaction, the absence of gliaden just doesn't explain it.

Everyone seems to ignore the fact that gliaden is not just a protein, but it

is a unique protein-*starch* complex, in which the starch is contained in the

center of the protein, completely shielded from digestion, especially in

someone that cannot break down the molecule. It seems *this* would be a better

indicator of why some folks could tolerate wheat starch-- because the giaden and

the starch have been separated. And in fact, the mal-digestion of wheat can

be reversed if the gluten is first separated from the flour and then *added

back in*! (Gottschall, 34).

Yet obviously many or most folks who can't tolerate gluten cannot tolerate

wheat starch. (Doesn't reflect well on gluten-theory's founding study.) This

seems to indicate that either a)some people have direct causal damage by gluten

to the intestine, but the people in the above study did *not* and celiac can

therefore be separated into gluten-induced and non-gluten induced, or b)people

with damaged intestines have different capacities to digest wheat starch,

some can do so if it is freed from the gliaden, others simply can't digest it--

making these folks *not* reactive to the trace gluten, but rather to the wheat

starch.

Either way, not all celiac can be gluten-induced, because if the trace gluten

in wheat starch is either non-existant or does not effect 10 out of 10

celiacs, but other celiacs (most apparently) *do* react to it, than obviously

the

two groups of celiacs can't both have the same reaction to gluten-- that or

neither of them are reacting to the gluten.

" Elevated levels of gliadin antibodies are found in many people with a

variety of ailments, many of which do not include celiac disease. They are even

found in apparently healthy people. Because of this, such abnormal AGA results

are often dismissed as meaningless. The IgG class of antibodies is by far the

largest group of antibodies in the human body. These antibodies don't

identifiy any specific disease and are often found elevated in people who have

few or

now symptoms. " (Braly et al Dangerous Grains, p68)

Now I wonder if these " non-specific " antibodies have been studied enough to

know whether they are always in reaction to gluten or not.

Anyway, it's perfectly reasonable and probable or even definite that gluten

proteins shouldn't be leaking into the blood stream, but that says little about

*why* they're leaking into the bloodstream.

And there is evidecne Heidi provided recently that a variety of lectins

including gluten can cling to intestinal membranes having deleterious effects.

But

why aren't they digested in the first place? Could it be genetic? Sure.

But lactose intolerance and a lot of other enzyme problems are often or usually

*not* genetic, and enzyme disfunction is always present with intestinal

problems, and sometimes when those problems are cleared up, away go the enzyme

problems. So there might be absence of enzymes to digest gluten, this could be

temporary or not.

Microorganisms secrete toxins that are often powerful enzyme disablers.

Moreover, we know that in celiac and a plethora of other intestinal disorders

enzymes to digest non-protein foods are also effectively disabled, such as those

to digest disacharides.

Furthermore, it seems that there is some assumption that there are only

genetic reactions to *proteins* and not *carbohydrates*.

That is flat-out false. There is a wide variety of reactions to different

sugars and starches based on genetics, and some people can have blood sugar

problems with say, corn syrup, and have perfectly stable blood sugar with

sucrose

or some other sugar. And others will react specifically to fructose. These

problems involve lack of enzymes too, and the other article on fructose I was

going to post a few months ago, but never got around to finding a good scanner

to get it up there, has a section on inherited dis-metabolisms that are

fructose-specific.

Furthermore, Heidi posted some research recnetly that found that

gluten-intolerance often had to be stimulated by some sort of virus or bacteria

or other

microorganism. I know Heidi has generally taken the pro-gluten-hypothesis

stance when this issue has come up, but for me that pretty much blows away the

genetic-gluten connection argument.

If microflora imbalance is a pre-requisite to gluten insensitivity, that

shows right there that starches and antibiotics are at least as important and

probably much more important in terms of causality, in contribution to

gluten-related intestinal disorders.

Again, I am NOT denying gluten's role in these problems. I'm just far from

convinced it plays a *causal* role. If someone does fine on non-gluten grains

and not on gluten grains, that obviously pinpoints gluten as a culprit-- in

their SYMPTOMS. But how many of these people are getting intestinal biopisies

on grain-inclusive non-gluten diets to show the progress with their symptoms is

correlating with intestinal rehabilitation?

DG does point out that consumption of gluten after presumed healing is likely

to contribute to cancer and other problems, but they are referring to gluten

" desensitizing " therapies. On the other hand, their are claims that with

proper intestinal rehabilitation people *can* tolerate gluten. So it seems at

least *possible* that some folks who eliminate their symptoms but can never eat

gluten again *could* be eliminating their symptoms that are directly caused by

gluten without addressing more fundamental issues that are contributing to

their intolerance of gluten.

Chris