There is no question that some people suffer from the extremely painful autoimmune disorder known as Celiac disease, which makes them intolerant of gluten, but true Celiac disease affects only about 1 percent of the population according to the Celiac Disease Foundation.
Most Celiac specialists agree with Guandalini. While not dismissing NCGS outright, they are skeptical that the problem is as widespread as the general population believes it is. Gastroenterologist Dr. Joseph Murray, who wrote the book Mayo Clinic Going Gluten Free, said in a 2015 Healthline report, “A number of patients who go gluten-free even though they don’t have celiac disease do better, and when they go back to eating wheat they feel worse again.” However, he also said, “They’re probably not that common, but they exist.”
The second study, from an Australian research team in 2013, suggests that what people are actually intolerant to is the carbohydrates in wheat, not the gluten. Earlier research from the same team supported that patients who claimed to have NCGS did better on a gluten-free diet, regardless of whether they knew they were eating gluten or not. They expected to confirm this in their 2013 study, and were surprised to find that they did not.
This time around the researchers concluded that the sensitivity of many patients who thought it was gluten they were intolerant of was actually an intolerance for FODMAPs – fermentable oligo-, di-, and monosaccharides and polyols. These are carbohydrates that can draw water into the intestine and ferment, which causes digestive problems for some people. Examples of FODMAPs include wheat, lentils and mushrooms.
The conclusion from the Australian team was that most patients who thought they could not tolerate gluten were actually sensitive to FODMAPs. Gluten posed no problem to them once they ate fewer of these carbohydrates.
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