gluten can cause coeliac disease and the skin ailment, dermititis herpetiformis, in those whose immune system reacts excessively to especially the three specific protein fragments discovered by the team of Dr Bob Anderson, head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's (Australia) coeliac research laboratory. Coeliac disease impacts an estimated 0.25% of the US population, and it's digestive impact is severe due to inflammation of the small intestine due to the excessive immune response to gluten's "toxic trio."
However, a much higher percentage of individuals are allergic or sensitive to gluten in a manner that does not produce the severe diarrhea of coeliac sprue or the specific skin rash of dermatitis herpetiformis. For these individuals, who make up approximately 5% of Americans (about 15% purportedly have an immune reaction to at least one food), nausea, hives, eczema, mental sluggishness, autoimmunune rheumatoid arthritis, migraines, and respiratory difficulties (anaphyaxis is rare) are the common symptoms.
The proclivity toward gluten sensitivity is genetically linked, and it can be lessened by waiting a full year before feeding a newborn infant any gluten products. Waiting in this way apparently gives the newborn digestive tract a chance to fully develop, and to not allow as many undigested (and therefore perceived by the immune system as foreign) gluten particles to attract babies' antibodies.
Currently little can be done for all of these gluten-related patients unless gluten from wheat, rye, barley, and maybe oats (with oats' avedin being similar to gluten) is avoided. Anti-inflammatories, naturopathic and allopathic, are the most common attempts to control symptoms. In my own case I can eat gluten without getting eczema if I am relaxed and getting plenty of sun. The more stressed I feel, and the less sun I get, the more eczema appears. Before I found out I was gluten sensitive, ten large eczema rings wept down my left chest and left arm and mental sluggishness soon after eating could be extreme -- especially if the gluten came along with sugar in a dessert.
This symptomatic experience of mine is quite common, and if gluten sensitive folks refrain from gluten assiduously for a year or more it is often possible to continue eating moderate amounts of gluten throughout life with minimal reaction. But some, such as my mother and sister, can simply never eat gluten without experiencing some dreaded symptom. Desensitization, using the toxic trio, may be a godsend for them and others who want to relax more around food choices -- often filled with gluten in our grain loving culture.
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