Gluten and the “Leaky Gut”

Dr. Alison Astill-Smith passionately described her journey overcoming Hashimoto’s thyroiditis on my Wizard of Eyes radio show. Alison is a physician and director of Metabolics, a leading vitamin manufacturer in the UK. After she had learned that gluten was associated with thyroid disease, leaky gut and immune disorders, she decided to have herself and her eight children tested for the three genes responsible for the sensitivity. She found that six of her eight children also had the genes and that multiple medical disorders and symptoms disappeared with abstinence from gluten.

You don’t have to have celiac disease to be sensitive to gluten, especially if you have a genetic predisposition. What happens is that wheat gluten disrupts the G.I. endothelial cells’ connections with their neighboring cells. This allows gluten, casein (from milk) and other molecules to pass through the gut barrier and get directly into the lymphatic system. It must be remembered that there is twice as much lympn in the body than blood and as many as 70% of your lymphocytes are in the intestines of any one time. Therefore, a “leaky gut” allows your lymphocytes to contact and become sensitized to these foreign proteins.

Dr. Astill-Smith has been conducting seminars throughout Europe on the topic of gluten sensitivity and its insidious consequences.. She is to be applauded for wanting to share this information as one of her life missions. If you have a sensitive digestive system,thyroid disease or unsolved immune disorder you would do well to eliminate gluten products for two weeks and note any difference. You should always be your own best medical detective.