New Study Shows Surprising Result of Going Gluten-Free
If you have celiac disease, you MUST remove all gluten from your diet. If you don’t have celiac disease, it might still be helpful to eliminate gluten, which is a large, inflammatory protein associated with wheat, spelt, rye and barley.
going gluten-free isn’t always healthy
There are a few different approaches to going gluten free. The most prevalent is replacing “normal” bread with gluten-free bread, and “normal” pretzels with gluten-free pretzels and so on. Though this option is most common and is technically free of the inflammatory molecules causing system upset, gluten-free products often contain refined flours, sugars and other allergens such as corn and toxic oils, making them less than healthy options. It is much more effective and healthy to replace gluten with whole food options.
interesting new study on gluten
But what if there were a way to neutralize the gluten in wheat products? If gluten was broken down into pieces that didn’t cause an immune response, people who are sensitive to gluten could have their cake and eat it too – without symptoms!
A group of UK researchers tried just that in a study in the British Journal of Nutrition. Rees and her coauthors used an enzyme to degrade gluten molecules in wheat bread after it was made. This enzyme was able to break down about 40% of the gluten in the bread. In order to test whether this made a difference in gluten-sensitive individuals, the authors gave them regular and gluten-reduced bread to eat and had them record their symptoms.
According to this study, gluten-sensitive individuals still experienced symptoms of gluten exposure after eating the gluten-reduced bread. This effect makes sense given that nearly 60% of the original gluten was intact. Turns out, you can’t really be “kinda” gluten free. It really is best to ID all sources of gluten and find delicious swap ingredients when deciding to eliminate gluten from your diet.
study showed a surprising result
The study also showed an unexpected plus side of being gluten-free! In this study, when compared to individuals who didn’t avoid gluten, sensitive individuals who avoided or rarely ate gluten had:
- Significantly lower total cholesterol – by 18%!
- Significantly lower LDL cholesterol
Both of these effects were unrelated to age and Body Mass Index. High cholesterol is a known risk factor for cardiovascular events, so while you may miss your beloved breads, pastas and the like on a gluten-free diet, your heart will thank you.
At Healthy Nest Nutrition, we advise and coach people to take gluten out of their diets if we suspect it is troublesome to their digestion, or other body systems. There are lots of reasons why less gluten is a good idea. Please feel free to reach out and ask us about the other benefits of avoiding gluten, and if it might be a good idea for you. We work really hard to give you the tools that make a gluten-free diet a breeze to follow.
Sources
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/hearttruth/lower-risk/risk-factors.htm
Rees D, Holtrop G, Chope G, Moar KM, Cruickshank M, Hoggard N. A randomized, double-bling, cross-over trail to evaluate bread, in which gluten has been pre-digested by propyl endoprotease treatment, in subjects self-reporting benefits of adopting a gluten-free or low-gluten diet. Br J Nutr. 2018; 119(5): 496-506. http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2164/9792/30_Nov_BJN_paper.pdf?sequence=3
Hi! I’m Robin, the founder of Healthy Nest Nutrition. I am a board-certified holistic nutritionist in Denver, Colorado. My passion is helping people find the right diet for their bodies and then showing them how to make healthy nutrition doable and delicious!
