With celiac disease, you can’t digest food. You don’t get nutrients you need. It’s difficult to stay nourished. The physical symptoms are severe, sometimes so severe that you can die.
Auto-immune thyroid disease can throw your entire hormone system out of whack. The thyroid regulates all the hormones in your body.
And when you have either one of those diseases, odds are pretty high you have the other.1,2
People who have gluten intolerance or sensitivities tend to have even more immune-system problems that are just as serious.3,4 Diabetes, osteoporosis, and asthma, just to name a few.
True, gluten isn’t a problem for all of us. Just a lot of us.5 It’s estimated that 97 million of us are gluten intolerant and don’t know it. Millions more have auto-immune thyroid disease, also known as Hashimoto’s.
The good news is that going gluten-free helps. Of course, if you’re eating a Paleo-type diet, you don’t have to worry about being gluten free. A Paleo diet is naturally gluten free because it doesn’t include grains.
But gluten can be hiding in anything—like canned vegetables, medications, soy sauce, and even oats. So it’s key to check everything you ingest.
The obvious solution is to take gluten out of your diet. It will give your immune system one less harmful invader to fire at. And it might save you from developing thyroid disease or other serious conditions later on.6
The best way to find out if gluten is harmful to your system is to try an elimination diet. Remove it completely for at least 3 weeks. Once you slowly reintroduce it, you’ll find out pretty fast that it’s a poison. You’ll most likely experience cramps, joint pain, headache, and fatigue right away.
It’s easier to go “gluten-free” than ever before. Read every label and don’t assume that something is gluten free even if it’s “wheat-free.”
References:
1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19352315
2 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19014325
3 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20103030
4 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/13
5 http://www.statisticbrain.com/gluten-celiac-disease-statistics/
6 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10931424