Is Gluten-Free A Fad Or Is Gluten A Real Threat To Our Health? with Maggie Ward

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

There is a gluten sensitivity spectrum out there and many of us fall somewhere on the spectrum. Most of the folks that come to see us, I think fall on the end of the spectrum where, you know, it may not be celiac, we can't really determine that based off the testing.

We'Ve done, but they have to pretty much treat themselves as if. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman. Supplements are one of those things that I'm always being asked about. Is it worth spending the money? Do we need them if we eat really well? Can your body even absorb them? The answer to most of those questions is it depends. Now, there are definitely certain supplements I never recommend taking because they are not made in a way that your body can take advantage of and you just pee them out. And there's definitely some supplements we can benefit from because our food supply, even if we're eating whole organic foods, just doesn't provide enough of certain nutrients that we need for optimal health. Now, a major one of those nutrients that I suggest is magnesium. Now, most soils have become depleted in magnesium, so it's a tough mineral to get through diet alone. In fact, 80% of Americans are actually insufficient or deficient in magnesium. Now, since it's crucial for hundreds of reactions in the body and impacts everything from metabolism to sleep, to neurologic health, energy, pain, muscle function, and lots more, it's really important that we strive to get enough magnesium. It also plays a role in our stress response, and everyone I know could use a hand in better managing stress to promote better overall health. I like to call magnesium the relaxation mineral. Now, my favorite new magnesium is from a company called Bio-Optimizers. Their magnesium breakthrough formula contains seven different forms of magnesium, all of which have different functions in the body. There is truly nothing like it on the market. I've noticed a real difference when I started taking it. I've tried a lot of different magnesium products out there. I also love that their products are all soy free, gluten free, lactose free, non-GMO, free of chemicals, fillers and made with all natural ingredients. Plus, they give back to their community for every 10 bottles sold, they donate one to someone in need. Right now, Bio-Optimizers is offering their Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal to my listeners during the entire month of November. They're offering free shipping and up to 40% off on select products and are giving away free bottles on their amazing enzyme, Probiotic P30M, as well as their HCL Breakthrough Supplement. Just go to biooptimizers.com/hyman. That's B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com/hyman and use the code HYMAN10 to receive this amazing offer. I think you're gonna love it as much as I do. Right now, more than ever, we need a strong immune system. And that is why I'm offering my eight-part Sleep Masterclass free to my entire community. If you want to get access to my free course and reclaim your sleep, go to DrHyman.com/sleep and sign up today free. That's DrHyman.com/sleep. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, and this today is a special episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy called House Call, with none other than my nutrition director at the Ultra Wellness Center, Maggie Ward. Now, this is a place for conversations that matter, and if you are confused about gluten, if you've heard that you should be gluten free, if you don't even know what gluten is or why you should care about it, and this conversation is gonna matter to you because it's gonna go deep into what is gluten, why is it a problem, how does it affect us, and how do we deal with it? So welcome, Maggie. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Maggie is awesome.

She's been my nutrition director for 12 years. She went to Best Year University, got a master's in nutrition, and she's been the anchor of our whole nutrition team for well over a decade and has helped so many patients get better using food as medicine. And then I've said before, this is probably the only practice in the country other than now Cleveland Clinic, because I also started that one, where you cannot see the doctor unless you also agree to see the nutritionist. Because if food is medicine, how can I practice medicine without a nutritionist? So you are it. You're the bomb, Maggie.

Thank you for joining us. I'm happy to be here.

Thanks for having me. Okay, so let's talk about gluten. First of all, what is gluten? Why should we care about it?

And let's talk about why it's such a problem. Right. It's not just a fad. So gluten is the, the most predominant protein that's in some grains, wheat being the most common one. So wheat, rye, barley, although wheat also encompasses things like spelt and Kamut and Pharaoh and traditional. Yeah. So there are other grains within that family. And even oats. And we'll talk a little bit more about oats because they can go either way. But, you know, it's mostly wheat that we eat in the form of bread, crackers, pasta, right? All the flour that comes in through our diet, we're getting gluten in, in many foods and it Not necessarily a bad thing for everyone, but it is really the most common food sensitivity and something we see in so many people that we work with here at the Ultra Wellness Center. So I really wanted to kind of dive through it a little bit more of what is the big picture and who needs to be careful and how we do that.

Yeah, so Maggie, is this like, how come gluten's all of a sudden a thing? Because, you know, when I went to medical school 30 years ago, I was like, you had celiac disease, maybe a few people had it. very small percent of the population, 1% of the population. But now you've got, you know, like maybe 20% or more having gluten sensitivity and all these issues. We have a 400% increase in celiac disease in the last 50 years. It's been proven by research. It's not just a fad. What's going on? Right.

Well, I think when it started, right, it was the prevalence was thought to be a lot lower and we know it to be a lot more common. I think it's still a minority of the population. It's missed and underdiagnosed quite a bit because, yes, in medical school you learn about celiac disease, but I think the thinking is that for someone to have it, they would have, you know, diarrhea all day, every day. And we know that. And we know that's not the case. I mean, I've had some people with no digestive issues and come back positive on a celiac panel, but for them they had rheumatoid arthritis or another autoimmune condition going on. It just was presenting differently. So I think for that reason, doctors aren't always screening for it. But so there's that issue of celiac, but then I always kind of describe it as a spectrum. there is a gluten sensitivity spectrum out there and many of us fall somewhere on the spectrum. Most of the folks that come to see us, I think fall on the end of the spectrum where, you know, it may not be celiac. We can't really determine that based off the testing we've done, but they have to pretty much treat themselves as if.

So that's, I think, where it's not an on or off phenomenon. You have it or you don't. Because traditional medicine, you go to the doctor, they go, well, if you have.

An abnormal biopsy of your intestine, you have celiac. Otherwise, you don't, so don't worry about it. Right, right. So there's a whole other area of gluten sensitivity, and for many people, it's making them really sick, even if it's not celiac. I also think there's something going on with the quality of gluten. I saw it years ago and I had so many folks telling me when they came back, like, oh, you know, I was eating pasta in Italy, I was eating bread in France, and I was fine. And I come back here and I get so sick. So that's part of this epidemic of what we're seeing of gluten sensitivity, is it Know, they hybridized it way back in the fifties and added more gluten. Many of our breads, they put more gluten in it. Gluten is what makes bread spongy. So you put it in there and you get these nice big loaves of bread and, you know, more is better in this country. So I think that's a part of it. We spray it with glyphosate and various pesticides and, and there's a good chance people are reacting to that. That destroys the microbiome. Exactly. So once you muck up with the gut microbiome, you're going to have a lot of digestive and other issues. So that I definitely think is, I, I Can't tell you how many people tell me I eat it abroad and I'm fine. Not our celiac folks, but many other folks that are really sensitive. So the spectrum is what is being missed, I think, in conventional medicine.

And, you know, we, I don't always- I wanna underscore what you just said. There are some key reasons why we're seeing this increase. So one, it's the change in the kind of wheat we're eating, right? They've hybridized it. The dwarf wheat has way more gluten proteins and the way more inflammatory gluten proteins than heirloom wheat, you spray with glyphosate, which not all wheat is full of glyphosate, but a lot of it is. And that causes damage to your gut, which causes more leaky gut and more gluten reactivity. It also is sprayed with, in the preservative when it's put in the bread called calcium propionate, which is actually a toxin that causes problems with behavior and attention and focus. So it can cause a lot of brain issues for people. Right. And then on top of that, we've created a background level of dysfunction in our gut over the last decades by our poor quality diet, starch sugar, low fiber, processed food, which damage our microbiome, makes it more like we have a leaky gut. We've taken antibiotics, we take acid blocking drugs, we take steroids, we take hormones, all of which mess up our gut. We have increased rates of C-section, increased rates of bottle feeding, All these things make your gut more likely to become more sensitive. Right, sets you up to become more sensitive. That's why we're seeing this sort of.

Escalation of gluten sensitivity over the last 50 years and it's real. Right. And, you know, not many of us are eating these like whole wheat berries. I mean, we're eating in the form of flour. So, even if you get organic, you know, bread or whole grain bread, I mean, it's still refined carbohydrates and, and you're selectively feeding things in your gut. You probably don't want to be feeding too much and throwing off your blood sugar. So, When people go gluten-free, I do think part of the reason they feel better, as long as they don't start eating a lot of gluten-free junk, is they transition over to more whole carbohydrates, whole foods, and they feel a lot better for that reason too.

So for that reason, you know- Gluten-free junk food is still junk food.

Cake and cookies, if it's gluten-free, is still cake and cookies. Right, exactly. So I really wanted to bring attention to that because we see, I can't tell you how many symptoms I've seen get better not across the board, but just I've had brain fog get better taking gluten out, I've had joint pain get better, I've had skin get better. So people joke around, like, do you take everyone off of gluten? I'm like, if you saw how many people got better off of gluten, you'd take it off.

We see people who come to see us who are ill. And so we have a select, we call it selection bias. But I would say when people walk in the door with any kind of chronic illness, for me, checking gluten antibodies and what we call a Cyrex 3 test, which we'll get into, which looks at way more proteins around gluten, it's like checking their blood pressure.

Yeah.

Or their temperature.

Right.

It's a vital sign for me because it's so common. It's such a big deal. And, you know, I just saw this guy the other day who had all this severe lymphedema and inflammation in his body, and he had, he had one of the worst gluten tests I've ever seen. Yeah. And he didn't know it. And he's, like, 50 years old. Yeah. So anytime anybody comes in with a chronic issue that's not getting better, especially anything that's in inflammatory or digestive in any way or neurologic, it's the first thing I look at.

Yeah, and I think the question I get a lot too is like, well, why was I okay eating gluten through my younger years and why is it an issue now? And I'm like, well, even with celiac, right? That's a genetic condition. You're technically born with it, but when it develops can really vary. So you need to have like the genetic predisposition, gluten in your diet and some type of trigger. So an infection, a really stressful event, toxins again, something has compromised your gut lining and now how you're reacting to these proteins. So for some people, it might not even be a life sentence. I mean, if they have celiac or something similar, they have to be really careful. But other people, sometimes if you get the gut sorted out and healed, they can tolerate. Yeah.

When I was really sick with mercury poisoning and when I was really sick and had gut issues, I couldn't eat any gluten. And now, I mean, I don't eat a lot, but now I don't handle some. It bothers me and I don't really have antibodies because I fixed my gut.

Right.

And I think we see a lot of these patients who may not have any symptoms for years and years, like you said. And then when they're 50, they get an autoimmune disease or they get something. And you check and they have celiac. They actually have celiac or they have really severe gluten sensitivity. And I think, you say it's genetic. About 30 plus percent of the population has the gene for celiac. Only 1% get it. And I think it's all the things you're saying. It's all these insults that are from the environment, our diet, antibiotics, etc. that make us susceptible.

But your genes are never gonna say you're gonna get that disease. It's usually your environment that needs to turn those genes on. So yeah, it's true. And even though you have the genetics, it doesn't mean that it's not a way to diagnose for it. But it's good to know your genetics.

And it's a spectrum, you know, like you look at the antibody test and there's a normal level, right? Like there's, you know, 0 to 20 or whatever on the antibody test on your blood level. But when you think about it, there is no normal level of antibodies to gluten in your blood.

Right?

And you talked to Dr. Alessio Fasano who has been on the podcast who's the world's expert in gluten at Harvard and brilliant guy. And he said, you know, look, if you have any antibodies, it means three things. One, you've been eating wheat or gluten. Two, you have a leaky gut. And three, your immune system doesn't like it. Right? Right. So if the level is five, it's.

Not as bad as 20, but it's not as good as zero.

Right. And you don't want to go to 20. Right? So I don't. So a lot of people say, oh, my tests are fine, but they mean it's a spectrum. It's a continuum. It's not on or off. Right. And it's always worth doing an elimination diet because the cost is low, the benefits high, there's really no downside to getting off it for six weeks, let's say, or even two weeks and seeing what you'd feel like. And if your symptoms get better and then you eat it again and you feel worse, there's your answer.

Right, right. I think it's a little tricky too though with gluten, 'cause typically with elimination diet, you use two to three weeks off of that food, you should feel better. We've had a lot of people where it's up to three months before- Three months. I saw it clinically for a while, Now that we're testing for it more, you see these antibodies to gluten stay around for a long time after someone's been off of it, right? You're no longer getting exposure, those antibodies should come down, the inflammation should come down. So that's something to keep in mind for listeners because I've had a lot of people say, you know, I went gluten free for three weeks and I didn't feel all that much different. And then I'm like, I think you got to give it longer. It's around that three month mark that a lot of people like, you know.

My joints finally started feeling better around that point. So that's something to keep in mind.

Dr. Justin I had a patient when she was off for 10 weeks before.

She started to feel better with psoriatic arthritis.

Right. Yeah. And, you know, usually it's a combination of a few other things that need to be sorted out, but you really want to give yourself a good time period. So, if you've never done up to three months, you should. And, you know, it sneaks in in a lot of places, which we'll talk about, but, you know, most folks who are fairly sensitive have to be 100.

Plus percent off of it or they will still be reacting. And it's 150%. I mean, if people have... Dr. Fasano said to me once, if you have a thumb full, a thumbnail full of gluten in three months, you're back to zero. Yeah. Like, you can't even cheat a little bit if you want to do it because your body then creates an immune response. And I remember a patient who had rheumatoid arthritis and she was very, you know, good, but, you know, she was trying all the functional medicine stuff, which would get a little bit better. She was, wasn't, it wasn't cutting it. And I said, look, you think you're gluten free? And I went through a diet and she was getting some and maybe she had some soy milk with barley malt and this and that. So I said, why don't we put you on just a 10-day Ultra Clear Plus Shake, which is what we were using back then, which is basically a rice protein, low allergenic, just no other food, just this shake for 10 days, see what happens. Everything went away. And I was like, wow. And I think I saw her like three months later or six months later and she had completely changed. She lost 40 pounds or arthritis was gone. She felt great. And I think one of the things I just want to emphasize is that whatever condition you have, almost anything really in medicine, it should be on your list of things to think about.

Right, right.

Because when you look, for example, the New England Journal of Medicine had an article years ago, which listed over 55 different diseases that were really caused by celiac and gluten, but were masquerading as something else. Right. Osteoporosis, iron deficiency, schizophrenia, autism, cancers, you know, you name it, autoimmune diseases, migraines, I mean, just disease after disease. And if you really look at that list, and that's just, I think, a short list compared to things I've seen over the last 30 years, you're going to think that pretty much anybody who has a serious chronic illness or has chronic symptoms or is just not feeling great should check for it and also should try an elimination diet.

Right, right. And this is where two testing can be helpful because there's some people that think they're 100% off of it. I've had several folks come in already knowing they have celiac or are very sensitive and they're off of gluten. we still test them. And the antibodies that we're looking for, this is through the Cyrex 3 panel that we do. There's about 32 different immune markers that they're looking at at various parts of the gluten protein and wheat and other proteins within wheat. But so it's a very sensitive test. And these antibodies shouldn't be in your system if you have not been eating gluten and they come back positive. And that's like, okay, you're getting some hidden sources. when you eat out, are you doing all the precautions you need to do? Have you checked your body care products? Is your house gluten-free? There's so much contamination that happens in the house of not everyone in the house is gluten-free and they're sharing space and food. So this is where you have the testing can be really helpful to kind of dig in. And again, traces can make a difference even if you don't have celiac for someone that's really sensitive.

So tell us about like some of the common things we see.

One of the cases you have was a thyroid. Yeah, so I wanted to kind of focus on autoimmunity because that's a lot. Anytime I see someone with an autoimmune condition, if they're not gluten free, I'm like, you gotta start there just to make sure that's not triggering it.

Because again, even if you don't have celiac, I want to emphasize what you said. Anybody who has an autoimmune disease, gluten should be on your list. Absolutely.

What to check and what to eliminate. It is easy to do and you can have profound results. Absolutely. Yeah, because even if you don't have the celiac, what we so often find is that when you take gluten out, these other antibodies to the thyroid, other conditions of autoimmune, conditions, they get better, the numbers start getting better. So we've seen that clinically and now we're, you know, we test for it so much more. So even if you're on celiac, we do find it can trigger a lot of other autoimmune like conditions. So that's, I was kind of want to focus on two cases around autoimmunity. The first one is a 38 year old woman with Hashimoto's, which is the autoimmune condition you can get with your thyroid. Very common and a lot of reasons to have it. But she was interesting. She was a really intense triathlete, so very competitive, high exercise person. She came with severe fatigue just in for nutrition because I think she, you know, want to focus on nutrition and weight loss, which is not typically what you see with low thyroid function. But her thyroid antibodies were extremely high, some of the highest I've ever seen. And she also had a liver enzyme that was elevated too. So I was, you know, wondering if there maybe was a toxicity component to that. And I do think she was a bit malnourished given the high level of exercise that she does, her some of her nutrition labs, like, even her cholesterol was coming back low, which could indicate that she wasn't getting all the nutrition or maybe not absorbing all the nutrition she needs. So I, you know, like I always do with autoimmune, I'm like, let's. Let's take all the gluten out. She kind of did her own research and went full on paleo, which takes out all the grains and all the legumes, which sometimes really can make a difference for folks that are gluten sensitive. And I really focused again, getting enough good fats and protein, good quality carbohydrates in her diet. with the exercise piece, you know, I was thinking there could be an adrenal component to that and your adrenals are very closely linked to your thyroid. So she, you know, worked on some other lifestyle things and did some yoga.

And restorative stuff that I think was important. But she, but, you know, when you see Hashimoto's, which is very common, right? One in five women have low thyroid. A lot of that is autoimmune thyroid conditions. Probably the most common autoimmune disease in the country, you know, is not all related to gluten, but probably, I would say a third. of my patients who have Hashimoto's when.

I check their gluten antibodies are elevated.

Right.

It's a piece of the puzzle, right? When they get off gluten, they get better. Right, exactly. It's so often a piece of the puzzle. It's usually not the only thing, but it's definitely a big component for a lot of folks. And again, being a high-level triathlete, your digestive system takes a hit to that. And I think she got a little bit of leaky gut where before the gluten may not have been an issue. And she'd also had a daughter soon before and sometimes just the process of going through a pregnancy can switch what goes on with the immune system as well. And on her blood test, she found elevated IgG. Yeah, so I had her, you know, she didn't do any specialty testing with us. I just had her, she had a good local doctor who did more integrative stuff. I said, have them do a celiac panel and not just check tissue transglutaminase, which is what the kind of the gold standard, so to say, right, for blood work is for celiac. You can check for antibodies to gliadin, which is part of the gluten protein. You could check for deaminated gliadin. so I wrote out what to ask her doctor for and they ran it and she did not have the tissue transglutaminase, which right mostly is what they're going to look for for celiac. But she did have anti-gliadin antibodies and I was like, you should not have those, you know, so you may not have celiac, but you could have something similar.

So yeah, so that's a good point because a lot of doctors will check the basic test and they say you're fine and they only check like one antibody called TTG, right? But they don't check the anti-gliadin antibodies, which are less specific but actually more sensitive. So they'll show up often when the other one doesn't. And they do indicate a level of leaky gut, a level of wounding sensitivity, and they are definitely contributing to all sorts of issues for people.

Right. And we did some other nutritional stuff. She was low in iodine and we did some sea vegetables and things which is important for thyroid. So again, there's other things that are going on. But that, you know, when I had a two-year follow-up with her, obviously we had a few follow-ups in between, but She said her digestion was great, her energy was great. Her thyroid antibodies, you know, what I think we hear in conventional medicine is like, you got autoimmunity, you have it. You know, why check antibodies? It doesn't go away. So her thyroid peroxidase, which is one of the ones they check, came down to lesson zero, whatever the normal is. And her thyroglobulin antibody, which is the.

Other one, is slightly elevated but came down significantly. So that's remarkable. So she had one of the highest levels of autoimmune antibodies you'd ever seen. and after getting her gut sorted and getting the gluten out of her diet and optimizing your nutritional status, doing stress reduction, she actually had a complete normalization on one of them and almost normal the other one, which, quote, doesn't happen in traditional medicine.

And she's on armor. She's on some thyroid support. She does feel better with it. And I think there's, you know, often a need for it. But, you know, she pretty much reversed her autoimmunity by going paleo. That's amazing. So it, that was Pretty remarkable. It's nice to see when things, you.

Know, kind of quickly turn around for some people.

What about this other case you had? So this other one was a bit more complicated. She's a young woman, 27 years old, but she has mixed connective tissue disease, which, you know, is kind of a combination of similar lupus or scleroderma. It's kind of a mix of where.

Autoimmunity can affect many different tissues. So it's a bad autoimmune.

It is a bad autoimmune. It affects like all the tissues and organs and skin and liver and kidneys and muscles and so on. And then she came in with all those symptoms, you know, a ton of joint pain. She had a lot of digestive stuff, which she said she kind of always had her whole life fatigue, she was depressed, she had weight gain, probably because she was so inflamed. She wanted to lose about 20 pounds or so. And her symptoms did start in her teens with some, you know, exercise stuff. And then by the time she came to see us again, only just in her twenties, she was getting arthritis in her, in her hands. So she was on autoimmune suppressant medications. She was on cellcept, but she had been on a lot of things over the years, a Meprozol for her reflux because she had a lot of the digestion issues. She was on a low gluten diet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't count. That's what I was talking to people. What is low gluten? It's like being a little bit pregnant. What is low gluten? I was like, you have all these conditions. You have to take gluten out. And she had done testing, I think some specialty tests that did show she was reactive to gluten and soy before, and that's why she was low. But I told her, you know, you got to be 100%. And she said, you know, I do feel like my headaches are worse and my stomach's worse when I have gluten. So, we got our strict gluten-free, you know, I kind of low grain, I try to get it low allergen overall. I told her to come off the coffee, no alcohol, anything else that could be inflammatory to her gut.

And you also did this test, which was not the normal test. So, you mentioned a little bit earlier. So, when you go to the traditional doctor, they'll do a celiac panel, they'll do the TTG, they'll do sometimes gliding antibodies. But we at Ultra Wellness Center do a different test from the lab called Cyrex, which looks at not just a few proteins in the wheat, but all sorts of different like dozens of different- Dr.

The gliadins, glutens, or different parts of the gluten proteins. So they're breaking them down to these smaller units so you can really get a closer, you know, look at what the immune system's reacting to. And there's a section there of transglutaminase. So it's not the same thing as tissue transglutaminase. You can diagnose celiac with it, but what Cyrex says is that folks that have these other transglutaminase reactions, are more likely to have an autoimmune condition related to gluten. So this is where it's like, okay, it may not be celiac, but you probably have something very similar. So out of 32 markers, 30 of them came back positive on a low gluten diet. I mean, she wasn't eating a standard American diet at all. She did have a celiac panel. Her tissue transglutaminase, again, that gold standard was borderline high, which it should not really be showing anything. And her deaminated gliadin was high. she did have the genetics. She had it's called HLA-DQ2 and DQ8. The DQ2 is positive, which brings your risk up pretty high for celiac. We also did a Cyrex four, which is known as kind of their autoimmune profile as well. So they're looking at dairy. Dairy we know is big allergen in and of itself, but a lot of people that react to gluten seem to react to dairy. And they've, you know, with paleo, a lot of folks take out all grains and sometimes that is helpful. According to Cyrex research, oats and oats have been identified a long time ago, even when they're gluten-free, when they're not contaminated with gluten, there is a protein in there very close in structure to gluten.

So many people do react to it. I see that a lot. I mean, I see, oh, I run the gluten-free oats and I'm like, no. Yeah, usually.

If you are still having any symptoms, then you should just get rid of all your oats. Yeah, so I tend to throw oats in the gluten category and then they also suspect rice, which I've always thought of as a low allergen grain, but we do have a lot of folks that seem reactive to rice. corn and millet. So those are the ones I kind of focus on. They also check corn, soy, some of these other common allergens.

Yeah, and so what happens is, you know, the way I think about it is gluten is sort of the gatekeeper, right? When you eat gluten, you become sensitive to it. It opens up the channels in the gut, creating what we call leaky gut. And then other foods get in and you get these cross reactions. So you get other grains, you get dairy, you get soy, But it's really the gluten that sort of started the whole thing. And if you fix the gluten and you heal the gut and you get rid of all those other foods for a short time, maybe three months, six months, maybe a year, you can heal the leaky gut and then become able.

To tolerate a much wider diet. Absolutely. So I think that's a fear of so many people when they start reacting to so many things. I'm like, you know, a lot of.

These foods are not at fault.

You know, there's something else compromising your gut. The gluten. Biscander. What's that? Like the innocent biscander. Yeah. And I'm like, once that gut gets healthy, you know, your immune system's not going to be seeing it and reacting as much. And she, because she was on these immunosuppressants, we did a different type of leaky gut test called the mannitol lactulose test, which basically looks what's leaking through the gut. And she did come back with increased permeability between the cells that line the digestive tract. So, you know, this is the gut is where you need to focus for autoimmunity because so much of the immune system lines that. So if that's not healthy and it's leaky, that's probably what's triggering autoimmunity for folks.

What'S really important what you did with her was not just get rid of the gluten or the food reactions. And I see this as a common mistake even by traditional doctors with patients who have celiac. And I have a whole group of patients in my practice who have been diagnosed by their traditional doctor with celiac, but they're still sick. And, and what is happening with these patients is that there may be other cross-reactive foods like we talked about, like dairy, other grains, but their gut is leaky and needs to be healed. So once you take out the damaging force. It can heal a little bit, but that's where functional medicine comes in. That's where we do it. The ultra wellness comes in. We look at the whole gut, we look at the microbiome, we do test testing to figure it out, and then we put people on a whole repair program. Right. And I, this is so essential for people.

Yeah.

The 5R program from functional medicine. And I just think it's such an important, you know, philosophy of restoring the gut by taking out all the bad stuff, clearing out the bad bugs, putting in pre and probiotics, putting the nutrients that help heal the gut, and giving all the things that are needed to actually totally fix the problem. Right.

And that's what we did. The doctor who she was working with here did the 5R program. So you remove what is causing the damage, in her case, the gluten, but she had a lot of dysbiosis and imbalances of the gut microbiome. Based off a breath test, she had some overgrowth of bacteria. so the doctor treated her with an herbal protocol. We replaced her digestive enzymes because you make enzymes in your gut, you know, and when that becomes leaky, you need some support there and help you break down your food while you're, well, until you're able to do it yourself. And then you reinoculate by bringing good bacteria. And the food has a big part to do that because a lot of our fibers and vegetables are going to feed the gut microbiome and you repair. And that's what we do a lot. Like, again, with certain herbs that heal the mucosal layer of the gut and glutamine, which nourishes the gut. you know, that type of protein. We gave her some zinc. So all of that was really important because I think if we just took out the gluten and some of these other foods, I mean, she was malnourished and she needed supplemental support and she needed support with her diet. And that was we focused on getting more good fats and protein. She said she was like always hungry and after she added these in, she's like, I feel satiated and I've lost 15 pounds. Like, I'm not hungry because my blood sugars are steady and my insulin's down. You know, she was getting it. and she had lost weight around her belly.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing, Maggie, what we see with autoimmunity here and gluten. I mean, when you have these patients who that's the issue, it's a miracle. Yeah. You know, people get misdiagnosed with all sorts of problems. Oh, you have rheumatoid arthritis. I mean, I just talked to one of my patients yesterday who was struggling and she had rheumatoid arthritis, been diagnosed for that. Turned out she had Lyme disease, not rheumatoid arthritis, right? Or another patient had, you know, rheumatoid arthritis, but it was gluten. So we always joke in functional medicine, say just 'cause you know the name of the disease doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you, right? cause you have a label, doesn't tell you why. And gluten is one of those things and celiac is one of those things that can cause dozens and dozens and dozens of different diseases and symptoms that we think may be something else. Right? Right. When you see someone with schizophrenia, you don't go, oh, that's a gluten problem.

But probably for about 20% it might be. Glutamorphins. Yeah. Which are measured in the Cyrex 3. So those are compounds that get produced when folks aren't digesting gluten properly and they're basically like an opioid, right? Where they impact cognition. So whenever we see a mood disorder, you know, very common in kids and on the spectrum and things, we take out gluten and we take out dairy because casein, you know, the protein in dairy can do that too. And there's research on this, you know, that these xenomorphins, they cause effects in the brain. So this is why there's so many different mechanisms that we're starting to understand of how people can react and present in with so many different symptoms.

Yeah.

Rheumatoid arthritis joints is a huge one. One of my first patients here, the gentleman, 55 years old, I'll never forget, because he was one of my first ones, on his intake packet, he said he had celiac. I think we may have seen him together. And I was like, you, have celiac? He's, no, no, I had it. I'm like, well, you're born with it. You still have it. He had such bad rheumatoid arthritis, his joints were deformed. And he's like, this is celiac?

And because he had no digestive issues.

No one ever asked him what he was eating.

Oh, yeah, I had it when I was a kid. Yeah.

And I'm like, so I don't know what the thinking was back then, and his digestion got better, but it went and attacked, he had issues elsewhere. So, that's, yeah, you gotta think outside the box.

Well, this is great, Maggie. Gluten is such a big topic. It's sort of the topic of comedy shows. People are like, I'm gluten-free. I don't know why. It seems like everybody's doing it, so it must be good. But I think there is a reality to this. functional medicine doctors and nutritionists, we really see this every day. It's one of the most powerful things we can do is to identify these problems, to treat people, to clean up their gut, to clean up their diet, and to help resolve a whole myriad of symptoms. So if you're listening to this podcast and you suffering from any kind of mysterious thing that no one can figure out, one, functional medicine might be your ticket to figure it out. And two, gluten might just be one of those things. And it's really why I've created, wrote my book, the 10 Day Detox Diet, which is really sugar elimination, but also eliminates gluten. That's why I've created the 10-day reset, which you can go to getpharmacy.com and learn more about it, which is essentially a 10-day elimination diet. You can do it longer, obviously, but it's really powerful to just get an immediate hit of, if you take out all the crap and put in the good stuff, what happens to your body? So I encourage anybody who's suffering from anything that is just not explained or not easily fixed, whether it's runny nose or headaches or eczema or psoriasis or joint pain or brain fog or whatever digestive symptoms, stuff that we think we have to live with, I call it FLC syndromes when you feel like crap, that you can often trace it back to what you're eating. And gluten is one of those big factors. And it's not a joke, it's real, it's not a fad. And I think you have to know what you're doing in order to properly treat this. It's not just a matter of getting a regular test, seeing it's fine or abnormal and treating it. You really need to go through the whole process that we do in functional medicine. That's really what we're here for at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. We have a great team of physicians and nutritionists to work with our patients remotely now over Zoom or virtual telemedicine. We'd love to help you if you're suffering. So feel free to look us up, melthrewellnesscenter.com and if you love this podcast, please share with your friends and family on social media. Tell us your experience with the gluten, either eating it or getting off it and what it's done for you and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and we'll see you next next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter and in it I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/pix to sign up. That's drhyman.com/pix, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hyman Plus on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap try free to start your seven-day free trial.