Heard another one at the Ideas Festival this week:
Deb Newell has formed the Hunter Gatherer Dinner Club.
She puts the case for [b]grains[/b]being the problem in our diet causing gut problems (she calls it ‘leaky gut’).
She says that cereals used to take more work to collect and prepare (thresh grind cook) than they provided in energy to eat so they were never a main food for early humanity.
She’s also very concerned about the Earth’s soils and says that when we grow grains we rob the soil – grain does not give back to the soil.
She says: When grain came into the diet our community health collapsed:
[ul]developed dental caries
osteoporosis
Leaky guts (***)
people got a lot shorter especially women[/ul]
She gives Professor Alessio Fasano at Stanford University as a reference on leaky guts and grain. He seems to have done a lot of research on Coeliac Disease.
[url=http://www.komar.org/faq/celiac_disease/Fasano-Scientific-American-8.2009-1.pdf]Here is some of what he says[/url]:
We found that one in 133 apparently healthy subjects was affected meaning the disease was nearly 100 times more common
than had been thought. Work by other researchers has confirmed similar levels in many countries with no continent spared.
The classical outward signs—persistent indigestion and chronic diarrhea—appear only when large and crucial sections of
the intestine are damaged. If a small segment of the intestine is dysfunctional or if inflammation is fairly mild symptoms may be less dramatic or atypical. It is also now clear that CD often manifests in a previously unappreciated spectrum of
symptoms driven by local disruptions of nutrient absorption from the intestine. Disruption of iron absorption for example can cause anemia and poor folate uptake can lead to a variety of neurological problems. By robbing the body of
particular nutrients CD can thus produce such symptoms as osteoporosis joint pain chronic fatigue short stature skin lesions epilepsy dementia schizophrenia and seizure.
LEAKY SMALL INTESTINE
In most people links known as tight junctions “glue” intestinal cells together. In those with celiac disease the junctions come apart allowing a large amount of indigestible gluten fragments to seep into the underlying tissue and incite
immune system cells. Treatments that reduced leakiness could potentially ease not only celiac disease but also other
autoimmune disorders involving unusually permeable intestines.
Microbes collectively known as the microbiome may differ from person to person and from one population to another even varying in the same individual as life progresses. Apparently they can also influence which genes in their hosts are active
at any given time. Hence a person whose immune system has managed to tolerate gluten for many years might suddenly lose tolerance if the microbiome changes in a way that causes formerly quiet susceptibility genes to become active. If this idea is correct celiac disease might one day be prevented or treated by ingestion of selected helpful microbes or “probiotics.”
This theory would predict removing gluten from the diet ends up healing the intestinal damage. Regrettably a lifelong adherence to a strict gluten-free diet is not easy. Gluten is a common and in many countries unlabeled ingredient in the human diet. Further complicating adherence gluten-free products are not widely available.
Alvine Pharmaceuticals in San Carlos Calif. has
developed oral protein-enzyme therapies that completely break down gluten peptides normally resistant to digestion and has an agent in clinical trials. Other investigators are considering ways to inhibit tissue transglutaminase so that it does not chemically modify undigested gluten fragments into the form where they bind so effectively to DQ2 and DQ8 proteins. The Australian company Nexpep is working on a vaccine that would expose the immune system to small amounts of strongly immunogenic forms of gluten on the theory that repeated small exposures would ultimately induce the immune system to tolerate gluten.
Another suggestion is to start a hookworm infection (the
parasites dampen a host’s immune responses in the gut)
Hookworm parasites(Princess Alexandra Hospital Australia and collaborators/ in human trials)
Avoid gluten in the diet of infants through their first year of life.(University of Maryland and separately Marche Politechnic University Italy/in human trials)