Gluten and Your Diet — What You Need to Know

But when you have gluten sensitivity, it's like someone took a sledgehammer to the wall and broke the wall into big clumps. 17 bricks, 33 bricks, 18 bricks, 44 bricks. These big clumps of brick that still have all the mortar on them. That's when you have gluten sensitivity and you don't break down your foods very well. Those big clumps go into the bloodstream and the immune system goes into action to fight it, and here comes the whole cascade of effects. The blood tests look at one clump. They look at 33-brick clump. It's called a 33-mer peptide of gluten called alpha-gliadin. All the blood tests look for the same thing, alpha-gliadin. That's all they look for. But we know there are over 60 different peptides of gluten, clumps of the brick wall, 60 different ones that the immune system will react to. Why are we only testing one? Which is my question. So a laboratory just opened up 3 months ago and they're testing the top 10 peptides of gluten. And now we aren't getting the false negatives anymore. And people are learning exactly what it is they've got and there's an accurate test. The lab is called Cyrex, C-Y-R-E-X, cyrexlabs.com. And your listening audience can go there and they can find a doctor in their area that has an account with Cyrex and order the test to be done. And if they don't have someone in their area, then Cyrex will tell you where the closest one is.

Can you do it internationally?

Not yet. Soon, but not yet.

Right.

I've been speaking— I've been speaking in Mexico and Canada and London and Brazil, and they're all very, very interested. They really want these tests because it makes perfect sense. Times. So we hope within the next year— actually, I was speaking to someone last week from New Zealand who would like to help to bring the tests over to New Zealand and Australia. Yeah, that's great. I'm sure within the next year they'll be there.

So I guess, you know, I guess because obviously a lot of my listeners are listening in from Australia, what tests can we ask for, or is it really just learning to speak body?

Well, the only tests that are available are looking for— if you say I want to test for gluten sensitivity, what they check is gliadin. They check because 50%— the studies say 50% of celiacs will have antibodies to gliadin, but the rest of them don't. And they say, well, it's not a good test then. But no, they say it's not a sensitive test. Well, that's true. That's because these people are reacting to a different peptide. They're not reacting to gliadin. The other 50% are not reacting to gliadin, they're reacting to gluteomorphins or glutenins or a 17-mer or a 13- or 11-mer. They're not reacting to the 33-mer. So the first test that's done, and as far as I know, the only test that's done in Australia, is for the 33-mer gliadin peptide, and the other is transglutaminase. Transglutaminase is an enzyme that is in the Saran Wrap that covers the shags. Uh, do you have Saran Wrap over there?

Uh, I don't think we call it that. Maybe, um—

Oh, you're right, right. It's like, like cling wrap. Yeah, good. So the cling wrap. So transglutaminase is an enzyme inside the cling wrap, and if your body makes antibodies to transglutaminase, you destroy the transglutaminase and you destroy the cling wrap, and you get the leaky gut intestinal permeability. That is such a major problem. So the only tests that are over there are gliadin and transglutaminase, as far as I know. If you're positive there, you're really positive. If you're not positive there, it doesn't mean that you're negative for celiac disease. It just means that that test doesn't identify it. So the most sensitive thing you can do is do a gluten-free, dairy-free diet for 3 weeks. No dairy of any type. And no gluten of any type for 3 weeks.

Why, why not?

Lots of help. The enzyme that breaks down the sugar molecules in dairy, the enzyme is called lactase. Lactase is produced in the single cell, single, single cell outside lining of the shags, of the epithelium. So when your shags are inflamed or your shags wear down, you don't produce the enzymes to break down the protein molecules in dairy. And you fuel more inflammation because of the poorly digested protein molecules of dairy. In papers where they've looked at this, they put people on a gluten-free diet and check to see if they were making their enzymes to dairy. And 6 months, the answer was no. It took a year. A year on a gluten-free diet and then some of these people, not all of them, but some of these people started making their enzymes again to break down dairy. Right. And when you eat dairy, if you have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, when you eat dairy, your body still thinks you're eating gluten. It's a cross— it's called a cross-reactive reaction. Cross-reactive.

And I've heard you talk about caffeine, getting rid of caffeine except green tea. What, what is the reaction there with caffeine?

Well, there's two levels to answer that question. First, as part of the protocol to heal the gut, Getting caffeine out of there is important because it'll cause some inflammation in the intestines and you're trying to heal the damage that's there. The second level of that question is that caffeine is a cross-reactive food— excuse me, coffee. Coffee is a cross-reactive food. So if you're sensitive to coffee, not everyone is, but if you're sensitive to coffee, your body thinks you're still eating gluten. And you keep getting the same kind of damage as if you're eating gluten.

Right. So how would you find out if you're sensitive to coffee?

Well, there's a, uh, the blood test from Cyrex Labs. They have a test called cross-reactive foods. This lab is set up specifically to identify gluten sensitivity and identify the complications that occur from gluten sensitivity. This lab is, I do believe, going to change the face of medicine. In terms of the test because doctors will have much more ammunition now to show to the patient why they feel the way they do, which will instill more compliance. The patients will follow along with the recommendation and then they get better.

With that said, let me ask you this question. What do you think of the, I guess, the compliancy of the doctor to implement lifestyle changes to the patient? Because I don't know, Western medicine does seem a little bit on the other side of, You know, let's prescribe pills rather than look at the patient's health.

Well, that's true, that's because that's how they're trained. Unfortunately, the education system for our medical doctors is not one that teaches them about healthcare. They're taught about crisis care. And when there's a crisis, here's the medication to use. And so we call that acute care, and it's of great value. And you know, almost all the medications that have been approved in the US, I'm not sure how it is in Australia, but certainly here in the US, all of the medications have been approved, they're short-term use. They were not designed to be taken long-term. And the result when you take them long-term, nobody knows what the complications are gonna be. And so people get surprised with some of the complications that occur. Unfortunately, our medical doctors are not trained in healthcare. They're trained in crisis care. So we need to reeducate them. And there are many, many schools now that are doing that. Functional medicine is beginning to take a more primary role in the education of medical doctors, which is just fabulous. Yeah, just fabulous. So that you'll have the best of all worlds.

I heard a parent say the other day, it was a debate we were having. Obviously I didn't want to take part in it because my opinion was a little bit too outspoken, but One of the parents said that you should get your child adapted to gluten. So give them gluten at an early age and they will adapt to it. Can you explain perhaps maybe the problems with this approach?

There are some research papers that have identified in a, in the group of high-risk infants, meaning their parents, one or two of their parents have celiac disease, in that group of high-risk infants, if you introduce minute amounts of gluten to them between 3 and 6 months of age, not before and not after, but between 3 and 6 months of age, it seems to have a beneficial effect in strengthening their resilience to being exposed to this food that they're likely genetically sensitive to. What is minute amounts of gluten? Well, a child between 3 and 6 years of age doesn't have teeth yet, so they're still breastfeeding. I believe and recommend our patients consider that when your child's got teeth, it's time to give them food. Until then, there's one food that's the ideal food for them. So a child's breastfeeding between 3 and 6 months. So if the mother has just a little bit of gluten, half a cracker, half a cracker is all it takes, and she chews it very well and takes some digestive enzymes, those molecules, those protein molecules, will get into the blood going to the infant. And so you're exposing the infant to minute amounts of predigested, poorly, but predigested gluten, minute amounts of it, and it appears to be able to stimulate the immune system to desensitize that baby to gluten. It appears to be that way. It's not a recommendation from the American College of Pediatrics or any other medical education group that I'm aware of, but there is some talk about it and there have been some papers written about it.

Okay, and if the child is, say, let's say 2, 3 years old or 4 years old, would you recommend, you know, Is that too late in a sense?

Well, if the child has not had gluten and they're 2 to 4 years old, they're, they're well on the way to being extremely healthy and strong. As the numbers keep coming out about the frequency of gluten sensitivity, it gets more and more shocking. Yeah, but if so, if they're between 2 and 4 years of age and the parent wants to know what to do here, if there's a family history of celiac disease, or gluten sensitivity, the first thing I would do is recommend the genetic test. If the child is carrying the gene, don't expose them to gluten. If you can keep gluten out of their life, they're going to do much better. Yeah, if they've got the gene and there's a family history of celiac disease.

A functional—

if the—

sorry, continue.

If the child does not have the gene Then you can do, if you want, I guess, you can do a small amount, which would be a third of a cracker. I'm just— some small amount and have them chew it really well and do that 3, 4 days a week for a couple of weeks. Then do the blood test looking for the antibodies to the multiple peptides of gluten, not just to gliadin but the multiple peptides, and hopefully the test will be over there. Before too long so that Australians have access to it also.

Yeah. So a functional medicine, I guess, tip that I was given was blue eyes, blonde hair, and much more at risk of having gluten intolerances. Is this true?

Well, there is a tendency for certain ethnic groups to have more of a tendency towards it, more vulnerability towards it. And blonde-haired, blue-eyed is one of those groups. The Mediterranean cultures— Greeks, Italians, French, North Africans— and the Norwegian— I'm not sure what the term— the Nordic cultures also have a high sensitivity and vulnerability, as does Ashkenazi Jewish people. And I'm not sure that there's been a differentiation between Australia, New Zealand, and the US. I think they all fall into that same category.

Right, okay. One of my teachers taught me that gluten affects the brain and basically builds plaque on it like a tooth. Can you explain this?

Yes. The most common system of the body that's affected by gluten is the brain. It's not the gut. The most common system is the brain, and it can cause what's called small vessel disease, where some of the blood vessels plaque up. They get hardened, not inside the center of the blood vessel, but the walls of the blood vessel get hardened. Other areas of the brain will— it will cause white matter lesions in the brain where part of the brain tissue called white matter starts to calcify. It just hardens up. And there actually are some papers of reversing those lesions in the brain when you put a person on a gluten-free diet.

Right, so you can— it can return. So is— would gluten be linked to things like Alzheimer's?

Yes, it has actually. Journal of Gastroenterology in 2008, they published a paper. Two people, they checked, they checked them out of the Alzheimer's facility after they put them on a gluten-free diet because they came back, they were functional again.

Right.

And so yeah, it'll affect any tissue of the body, any tissue of the body. I'm sorry, let me say a little differently. It'll affect any tissue of the body, and I say it like that 3 times, 4 times, then people still say, well, could it affect my liver? It'll affect any tissue of the body— your thyroid, your skin, your nose, your eyes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, colitis. The list goes on and on and on. There are over 19,000 papers now published in the medical literature on gluten sensitivity and celiac disease.

So it can even affect things like muscle tears and muscle pulls, things like that.

Oh my goodness, any tissue in the body, but especially that, you bet.

Yeah.

Athletes that have a lot of fibrosis find that when they go on a gluten-free diet, their muscles soften up and they're much more pliable, which allows them to be much more elastic, which means they get more power out of every contraction of the muscle.

Yeah, absolutely. I just wanna shoot to some Facebook questions. Some of these we've kind of already answered, but just to reiterate. And one of the Facebook questions I got was, what about rice?

Rice does not have toxic gluten peptides in it. Rice is rice, and some people are allergic to rice. Some people are allergic to tomatoes. You know, some people are allergic to artichokes. You can be sensitive to anything. Rice is on the cross-reactive food panel because a lot of people eat rice on a gluten-free diet, and that's not a problem. But remember, we're not supposed to be eating the same food every day. The only thing we're supposed to have every day is water. Everything else is supposed to come through the seasons. So our diets will vary through the seasons. So when you're eating rice 5, 6, 7 days a week, you easily can build up a sensitivity to rice.

Yeah, for sure. What would you say to this statement? Gluten is nothing to worry about if you're not a celiac.

Somewhat. Well, if it's the general public, they just don't know and it's not their fault. If it's a physician, he's got his head in dark places. Hmm. That there are hundreds and hundreds of articles of gluten sensitivity outside the gut causing ataxia— causing ataxia is when you get the cerebellum area of your brain destroyed and you can't walk very well anymore. And there's nothing wrong with your legs, it's that you don't have the control in your brain. And that can be from gluten. As a matter of fact, it's the main cause of idiopathic ataxia. Idiopathic means we don't know where the problem comes from. When someone's got ataxia and it's idiopathic, gluten sensitivity is the main culprit. It's published in the literature. Gluten sensitivity will cause chronic fatigue. It'll cause fibromyalgia. It'll cause major depressive disorder. Not minor depression where a little medication helps, or moderate where you have to take a couple of drugs. Major depression. Which is very, very difficult to treat. These people just don't function very well, and they're staying alive on their medication. And gluten sensitivity will cause major depressive disorder by itself without celiac disease. So that person, if it's a healthcare practitioner, they need to read the literature a little more before making statements like that.

Yeah, so I guess my— the other Facebook question I was going to ask, but you've kind of already answered it, is Why should the average person cut out gluten from their diet? And just as you've said, because it can lead to all these other problems and it affects every tissue in the, in the body.

Yep. Yeah. What, what you'll find out in the next year or so as the papers are published is that 7 out of 10 that are checked have gluten sensitivity. You just have to have— you just have to have a test that's sensitive enough to identify them. 7 out of 10. And gluten sensitivity, with gluten sensitivity, autoimmune diseases are 10 times more common. And most of us die with autoimmune disease. So it shortens your life, it reduces the quality of your life, you suffer more, but it doesn't happen in a day with one sandwich. Unfortunately, it happens accumulatively over a number of years.

For sure. Now, another— the last Facebook question I was actually given, um, I've never heard of this one, but I wanted to ask you This is what his naturopath said, and he's not sure if it's correct, but she said that if you're gluten intolerant, you may not be intolerant to all types. She said there was 4 types. Now I've never heard of the 4 types. Have you ever heard of this, or is this naturopath completely, you know, no idea what he's talking about?

I don't know what she's talking about, about 4 types of gluten. There's different strains of wheat. There are different peptides when you break the wall. Inefficiently. There's different peptides—33-mer, 17-mer, 11-mer. There are over 60 peptides that are putative, meaning they trigger an immune response from gluten. There's different types of gluten, but it sounds like this person is talking about different categories of gluten, and, and I don't know what she's referring to. But for example, the one about sprouted wheat. And is it better to eat sprouted wheat? The answer is no. The proteins are not broken down into single cell— single amino acids with sprouted wheat. They still have to be digested, and the body is, is very resistant to digesting these proteins. So a vast majority of people will still have gluten sensitivity and celiac disease eating sprouted wheat. You, you can't do it. It's not a safe food.

Cool. So if I was just to, I guess, simplify for the listeners and just correct me if I get this wrong, but when we eat gluten, gluten raises antibodies and those antibodies attack the gut. In turn, that inflames the GI tract and that attacks the intestinal lining and the cell wall set up to, you know, increase gut permeability and all those things that we don't want. And that can cause leaky gut. Is that right? Or am I missing something from the picture there?

That is correct. You've got it exactly correct. Excellent.

Okay. So what are your final thoughts and how would you sum up gluten?

1 out of 70 women admitted, 1 out of 70 pregnant women admitted to the hospital for any reason whatsoever, turns out to be a celiac patient. Now, celiac patient, to be a celiac patient, you have to have total villous atrophy. So if they had expanded their horizons to look for partial villus atrophy or just an increase of inflammation from gluten, the number would not be 1 out of 70. It'd probably be closer to 20 or 30 out of 70 have gluten sensitivity. But the only numbers they used were with celiac. So it's 1 out of 70 had celiac disease. 90% of these women had a poor outcome of pregnancy. 90% of them, meaning they lost the baby, it was a premature birth, the baby was born with birth defects, something. 90% of them. Every one of those women, when, when you put them on a gluten-free diet for a year, 9 out of 10 of them had a healthy second baby. No, excuse me, 8 out of 9 of them had a healthy second baby. 8 out of 9 had a healthy second baby. This kills people. It kills people, and you don't know that it was gluten. You think it was an unexplained miscarriage. You think that it was liver problems that your godmother died with. No, it was liver problems secondary to gluten sensitivity. You think it was a heart attack your grandfather died. No, it was a heart attack secondary to gluten sensitivity. Much of the time, much of the time. So if you don't feel like a million bucks in life, the first thing, the very first thing I would recommend people consider if you don't feel like a million bucks— and that means not artificially with 2, 3, 4 cups of coffee a day, or a couple of pops in the middle of the afternoon to keep your energy up, or eating lots of candy, or excess exercise— nothing to keep you artificially stimulated. But if you don't feel like a million bucks, please consider gluten as a potential candidate that's holding you back from living the life that you deserve to live. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So you, you have a couple of DVDs and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners out there who wanna learn more about gluten. Can you, can you direct us as to how can we get ahold of those DVDs and other podcasts and things that you've done?

Yes, yes, of course. My website is www.thedr.com, T-H-E-D-R, so don't spell the word doctor out, just D-R dot com. And there, there's a link to a number of past webinars and interviews that I've done. You can listen to them. And there are two DVDs. The first DVD is about 2.5 hours. It's with my friend Susan Vess, a brilliant nutritionist and a cook. A chef. Her website is specialeats.com, and that DVD, I talk for 2.5 hours to the general public with slides and pictures and explanations of what is gluten sensitivity, what is celiac disease, how can it manifest. So I do that for 2.5 hours, and Susan comes on and talks about how do you begin a gluten-free diet, and that's on the website thedoctor.com. The second video is a set It's a 3-DVD set, uh, professionally videoed of my, my all-day talk last year on gluten for doctors. So it's a little more technical, much more technical. But that one, if doctors order that or healthcare practitioners order it and then they take the test— I wrote a test up— if they take the test, we then list them on our website as a gluten coach. And I put a caveat there that says, I don't know how these people practice, but I can guarantee you They were in the seminar or they reviewed the seminar and passed the test. So they know about gluten. And so that's called Find a Gluten Coach. That's on our website also. Uh, so doctors who order that second DVD set take the test. They then are a gluten coach. There's no charge to them for that. There's no backend. I don't want anything from them. I just want people to be able to find somebody that knows what they're talking about. When they're dealing with gluten sensitivity. So 2 DVDs, the, the 2.5-hour one and the 7-hour one. They're both on the website. Excellent.

And what's— what does the future hold? What are you working on currently?

Gluten sensitivity is the mechanism, the most common mechanism that stimulates the development of autoimmune diseases. And the papers will be coming out on that in the next 2 to 3 years, paper after paper after paper. Tests are about to be available called predictive antibodies where you can do a panel of 24 antibodies. Usually one antibody is $200 to $300 for one. And this lab is going to be doing this 24 antibodies for about $400, I think. So there'll be 24 different antibodies to your brain. And you can find where the autoimmune mechanism is going on in your brain years before there's so much damage that there's obvious symptoms. Or antibodies to your heart, or antibodies to your skin, or antibodies to lupus or to MS, years before you have symptoms, which will give the patient an opportunity, a window of opportunity to shift their lifestyle because we'll be able to show you what's coming down the pike for you. So that's on the horizon. Our goal right now is to get the word out about gluten completely, and so that every doctor knows just the basics about this, and then educate on how to address gluten sensitivity and celiac disease.

Sounds fantastic. Really doing some awesome work, and I'd like to thank you so much for being on the show, and just remind the listeners to check out Dr. Tom O'Brien's website, www.the dr.com, that's D-R-S, sorry, D-R. No, no, no, no, no, excuse me. Yeah, there's no S. No, it's dr.com for more information, you know, to contact Dr. Tom O'Brien. So thanks again, really appreciated. And, you know, wish you the best of luck in the future. And thank you so much for your contribution to the field of nutrition because it's absolutely awesome.

Thank you very much. And thank you for spreading the word with us out there that people that listen to you today, This may change their lives. So thank, thank you very much for the opportunity to share this information. You're very welcome. Speak to you next time, Tom. You bet. Bye-bye.

So that was the Gluten Show. Hope you guys enjoyed. Remember to check out Dr. Tom O'Bryan's DVDs at www.thedoctor.com. Links can be found on my website or just chuck it into Google and you'll find his website. Hope you guys enjoyed. Post your comments below in the comment box and remember to share this with your loved ones and your friends. Speak to you next time, guys.