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Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
A fact to ponder: Growing concerns about potential harmful effects of gluten has resulted in rising sales forgluten-free products worldwide and it reached almost $2.5 billion in 2010.
Is It Leaky Gut or Leaky Gut Syndrome?
What are proteins and source of dietary proteins
Proteins are combinations and permutations of naturally occurring aminoacids. Sources of dietary proteins include animal muscle, milk, egg and plant proteins.
- Muscle protein are derived from the ingested meat.
- Most of milk protein is comprised of caseins and whey proteins.
- Egg proteins are contained in egg white (albumin) and the yolk.
- Sources of plant proteins include cereals, lentils/beans (also known as Daal) etc.
What happens to consumed proteins in the GI tract
- The intestines breakdown dietary proteins into smaller components so that they can be absorbed into the body. The digestion in the gut occurs via actions of a variety of digestive enzymes that break the protein down into simple amino acids or a combination of aminoacids known as peptides.
- Larger peptides are further broken down into aminoacids or smaller peptides with 2-3 aminoacids.
- The absorbed breakdown products are then utilized by the body for its energy needs as well as synthesis of other proteins.
Is It Leaky Gut or Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Discriminant role of gut
The digestion/absorption process in the gut is complicated by the presence of many harmful as well as harmless intestinal bacteria, proteins, toxins in the gut lumen. The GI immune system helps distinguish between harmful and harmless and deals with them accordingly.
Healthy gut when interacting with dietary proteins or harmless bacteria does not provoke any immune reaction. Part of interaction involves sampling by passage of small amounts of proteins/bacteria across the barrier, like a small “test dose”. If sampling reveals that the product or the bacteria is foreign and/or potentially harmful, an inflammatory and protective response is generated.
What happens in immature/unhealthy gut
- In a poorly or inadequately developed gut and gastrointestinal immune system due to complex interaction of early age, genetic predisposition and exposure to environmental insults, the intestinal barrier is highly permeable as opposed to selectively permeable in a healthy normal gut.
- This breakdown of the barrier in the presence of immature immune system allows for sensitization to food proteins/allergans which might not have occurred in a healthy system.
- Food protein related allergic reactions are involved in many cases of asthma, urticaria, eczema etc.
- Leaky gut allows for larger molecules to pass through the gut allowing them access to the entire body including the brain.
Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
Dietary proteins of interest in neurobehavioral dysfunction
Two dietary sources of dietary proteins that have been getting increasing attention among public for the potential widespread effects in the body especially neurobehavioral dysfunction are the gluten from grains and casein from cow’s milk.
Public opinions along with changing dietary habits are far ahead of scientific community which is trying to figure out whether such claims are valid.
What is Gluten
The term gluten is used for a heterogeneous complex of water soluble proteins derived from wheat, rye and barley and triticale (cross between wheat and rye). This complex includes potentially toxic
proteins, gliadins and glutenins.
Adverse response to gluten is not just seen in celiac disease. Rather there is a wide spectrum of gluten-related disorders including non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
Celiac disease not only affects the gut but in some cases, gluten attributed symptoms and disorders extend beyond the gut including skin diseases and cancer. Patients suffer symptoms on exposure to gluten-related products and improve upon gluten exclusion.
Is It Leaky Gut or Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Wheat is a young food on evolutionary time scale
Wheat is the most popular grain grown followed closely by rice and maize or corn. Most of the dietary wheat is ingested in a processed form as pasta, pizza, bread, cakes etc.
It was originally grown in the Fertile Crescent of southwestern Asia also called cradle of civilization since this area was the source of first ancient civilizations.
Our original genes were based on hunter-gatherer diet. The movement from paleo diet to an agriculture based ancient societies several thousand years ago marked a dramatic evolutionary swing affecting the food patterns and as a result a critical defiance of the well-established earliest human immune system.
The result was the abrupt assault on the gut defenses and the immune system was the advent of gluten related diseases. Wheat allergy and celiac disease has been with us since then. Bakers’ asthma due to inhalation of wheat and cereal flour has been with us since the ancient Roman Empire.
It should be noted that the disrupted defense mechanisms involved in different disorders may be different and as such in part contribute to different manifestations.
Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
Increase in use of gluten grains in recent decades
- Development of wheat varieties has been dependent on the technological changes and not nutritional needs such that the some of the newer varieties had increasingly higher gluten content.
- Older strains of wheat grown during the middle ages contained much less toxic proteins than that are presently available.
- With the start World War II and the rationing preceding it in many parts of the world, there was a big push to increase the agricultural production to meet the nutritional needs of the population.
- Even the establishment of Nutrition Society in Britain in 1941 had its roots in the underlying goal of increasing wheat production. Not surprisingly, the world wheat production by the end of 20th century had increased by 500 percent.
Health implications of increased high gluten exposure
- Increasing amount of potentially toxic compounds over a “short” period of evolution can make the human genome and defenses unable to adapt. Current consumption of gluten worldwide is the highest it has ever been. For example, consumption is 10-20g/day/person, with some consuming as high as 50 g/d.
- The high per capita consumption may allow body’s adaptation defenses in subjects at lower risk to develop illness because of being overwhelmed by the large amount of toxic exposure.
- The rapidly increasing proportion of populations potentially adversely affected by gluten in so many diverse ways makes one wonder how and why gluten is so toxic to so many in so many different ways.
Is It Leaky Gut or Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Disorders associated with gluten
- Celiac disease
- Nonceliac gluten sensitivity
- Dermatitis herpatiformis: some but not all patients with celiac disease develop it.
- Gluten ataxia: Cerebellum part of the brain is involved and gluten-free diet is used
for treatment
Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
How do different clinical syndromes occur in different patients?
- The variation in gut immune response and clinical symptoms suggests that the gut-immune response to harmful substances depends in part upon the subjects’ genes and the predisposition to certain disorders. However, data suggest that genetics can only explain part of the problem.
- The variety of skin, cancerous and neurobehavioral symptoms etc. may be a function of o how diet/environmental toxins are affecting the genes (suppression or activation), the gut as well as brain (e.g. pollution) in any particular individual.
- Not all gluten exoprhins are the same further creating another element of complexity in variability of inter-individual manifestations. Different gluten peptides may bind selectively to different areas of brain Many a times they tend to be selectively binding to discreet opiod receptors in brain thus creating manifestations unique to that part of the brain.
- The final clinical outcome depends upon how the body’s immune/defense system reacts to the toxic products of gluten like gliadin. This complex interaction depends upon the body’s immune architecture and its manifestations (depressed or excess) depending upon the other environmental stimuli affecting the genes.
- The overall load of glutenous ingestion also plays a role in at least the severity of symptoms.
Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
Is It Leaky Gut or Leaky Gut Syndrome?
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