Gluten Sensitivity May Not Be About The Gluten
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When it comes to understanding of how gluten affects different people’s bodies, there’s a lot that’s not well-understood.
By this we mean: there’s a lot that’s not well-understood by science, and there’s even more that’s not well-understood by people in general.
We did some demystification, covering such things as celiac disease and the differences between an allergy, intolerance, and sensitivity, here:
And now…
A new culprit arises
Well, actually a moderately well-known culprit, just, not usually associated with this.
Researchers (Dr. Jessica Biesiekierski et al.) found that non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) appears to be driven by gut–brain interactions rather than gluten itself.
You may be thinking: “yes, but the gut is reacting to the gluten, right?”
A very reasonable assumption! And the answer is: no
As Dr. Biesiekierski put it:
❝Contrary to popular belief, most people with NCGS aren’t reacting to gluten. Our findings show that symptoms are more often triggered by fermentable carbohydrates, commonly known as FODMAPs, by other wheat components or by people’s expectations and prior experiences with food.❞
As for how she and her team figured this out, they did the largest combined analysis of its kind that’s ever been done on this topic, and found:
❝Across recent studies, people with IBS who believe they’re gluten-sensitive react similarly to gluten, wheat, and placebo.
This suggests that how people anticipate and interpret gut sensations can strongly influence their symptoms.
Taken together, this redefines NCGS as part of the gut–brain interaction spectrum, closer to conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, rather than a distinct gluten disorder.❞
You can find the paper itself, here: Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity ← where you can also read the insights of Dr. Daisy Jonkers and other researchers!
If you do want to avoid FODMAPs while still getting enough other important plant nutrients, see: Fruit, Fiber, & Leafy Greens… On A Low-FODMAP Diet!
So, with this in mind, one might wonder: is there any harm in going gluten-free as well just to be on the safe side?
And yes, there may be issues! See: Why Going Gluten-Free Could Be A Bad Idea
And as for grains in general (for most people) enjoying whole grains remains a very good idea:
3 servings (each being 90g, or about ½ cup) of whole grains per day is associated with a 22% reduction in risk of heart disease, 5% reduction in all-cause mortality, and a lot of benefits across a lot of other disease risks:
❝This meta-analysis provides further evidence that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer, and mortality from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes.
These findings support dietary guidelines that recommend increased intake of whole grain to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality.❞
~ Dr. Dagfinn Aune et al.
We’d like to give a lot more sources for the same findings, as well as papers for all the individual claims, but frankly, there are so many that there isn’t room. Suffice it to say, this is neither controversial nor uncertain; these benefits are well-established.
Want to learn more?
Here’s a guest article written by none other than Dr. Jessica Biesiekierski, the lead researcher on the first study we linked today:
Your gluten sensitivity might be something else entirely, new study shows
Take care!
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Mind Gym – by Gary Mack and David Casstevens
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While this book seems to be mostly popular amongst young American college athletes and those around them (coaches, parents, etc) its applicability is a lot wider than that.
The thing is, as this book details, we don’t have to settle for less than optimal in our training—whatever “optimal” means for us, at any stage of life.
The style is largely narrative, and conveys a lot of ideas through anecdotes. They are probably true, but whether they occured entirely as-written or have been polished or embellished is not so important, as to to give food for thought, and reflection on how we can hone what we’re doing to work the best for us.
Nor is it just a long pep-talk, though it certainly has a motivational aspect. But rather, it covers also such things as the seven critical areas that we need to excel at if we want to be mentally robust, and—counterintuitively—the value of slowing down sometimes. The authors also talk about the importance of love, labor, and ongoing learning if we want a fulfilled life.
Bottom line: if you are engaged with any sport or sport-like endeavor that you’d like to be better at, this book will sharpen your training and development.
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Antiviral Gum Gives Epidemiologists Something To Chew On
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With viruses on the rise, of course one of our biggest weapons against them is vaccination, but that approach has its limitations:
- In some places such as the US, anti-vaccine sentiments are high, and a vaccine is only as good as its uptake (i.e. if people don’t take it, they will more likely catch the disease and pass it on, including to some people who cannot be vaccinated, so non-vaccinators create a hole in herd immunity)
- Many vaccines can become outdated when viruses mutate more quickly than vaccines can be developed (we’ve seen a lot of this with COVID and Flu viruses, and that’s why we keep needing new ones)
- There are some viruses for which we simply do not yet have vaccines; sometimes this is the case even for very common viruses like Herpes simplex. or, indeed, the common cold (Rhinovirus sp.).
So, antivirals definitely have their place too. To be clear about the difference:
- A vaccine forewarns the immune system “watch out for this thing that you might encounter in the future, and prepare a defense for it according to these specifications” (it only helps if you aren’t already infected with the thing it’s vaccinating against, because otherwise the warning is too late and your body is already trying to mount a defense)
- An antiviral kills, inactivates, or otherwise severely inconveniences the virus directly (it only helps if there is a virus there to fight)
How the antiviral gum works
In few words: you chew it, the antiviral substance is then in your saliva, and it kills/inactivates/inconveniences the virus at the site of infection (e.g. your respiratory tract)
In the case of this specific antiviral gum, it’s more in the category of “severely inconveniences”, because the antiviral substance is a protein trap that binds to the virus, rendering it near-harmless.
In essence, therefore, it works less like a vaccine and more like a facemask (except it’s trapping the virus on the molecular level, rather than trying to stop aerosolized droplets from moving around on the macro level).
This was first developed as a possible tool against COVID:
…and this in turn was based on previous work quite early in 2020:
And yes, those are lablab beans, as in Lablab purpureus, also called hyacinth beans, which may not be available in all supermarkets, but are not very obscure either (common throughout most of Africa and the tropics).
Most recently, researchers have found that 40mg of the broad-spectrum (as in, it affects many viruses) antiviral trap protein, as delivered by a 2g piece of gum, was sufficient to reduce viral loads by more than 95%, including for SARS-CoV-2 as well as H5N1, H3N2, and H7N9 (various kinds of bird flu that affect humans), and HSV-1 and HSV-2 (the two most common variants of herpes, including cold sores):
You can also read a pop-science article about it, with links to more details, here:
Antiviral chewing gum shows promise in reducing influenza and herpes spread
Want to learn more?
Check out:
Winning The Biological Arms Race: Could This Be “The Ultimate Booster”?
Take care!
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The Worry Trick – by Dr. David Carbonell
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Worry is a time-sink that rarely does us any good, and often does us harm. Many books have been written on how to fight anxiety… That’s not what this book’s about.
Dr. David Carbonell, in contrast, encourages the reader to stop trying to avoid/resist anxiety, and instead, lean into it in a way that detoothes it.
He offers various ways of doing this, from scheduling time to worry, to substituting “what if…” with “let’s pretend…”, and guides the reader through exercises to bring about a sort of worry-desensitization.
The style throughout is very much pop-psychology and is very readable.
If the book has a weak point, it’s that it tends to focus on worrying less about unlikely outcomes, rather than tackling worry that occurs relating to outcomes that are likely, or even known in advance. However, some of the techniques will work for such also! That’s when Dr. Carbonell draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Bottom line: if you would like to lose less time and energy to worrying, then this is a fine book for you.
Click here to check out The Worry Trick, and repurpose your energy reserves!
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The Glucose Goddess Method – by Jessie Inchausspé
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We’ve previously reviewed Inchausspé’s excellent book “Glucose Revolution”. So what does this book add?
This book is for those who found that book a little dense. While this one still gives the same ten “hacks”, she focuses on the four that have the biggest effect, and walks the reader by the hand through a four-week programme of implementing them.
The claim of 100+ recipes is a little bold, as some of the recipes are things like vinegar, vinegar+water, vinegar+water but now we’re it’s in a restaurant, lemon+water, lemon+water but now it’s in a bottle, etc. However, there are legitimately a lot of actual recipes too.
Where this book’s greatest strength lies is in making everything super easy, and motivating. It’s a fine choice for being up-and-running quickly and easily without wading through the 300-odd pages of science in her previous book.
Bottom line: if you’ve already happily and sustainably implemented everything from her previous book, you can probably skip this one. However, if you’d like an easier method to implement the changes that have the biggest effect, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Glucose Goddess Method, and build it into your life the easy way!
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Coffee vs Frailty!
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We have written before about the health benefits (and risks) of coffee; for most people, the benefits far outweigh the risks, but individual cases may vary:
The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?) ← this is a mythbusting edition
Speaking of bitterness; coffee has abundant polyphenols, which means…
- Coffee is the world’s biggest source of antioxidants
- 65% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s for coffee-drinkers
- 67% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes for coffee-drinkers
- 43% reduced risk of liver cancer for coffee-drinkers
- 53% reduced suicide risk for coffee-drinkers
See also: Why Bitter Is Better: Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain ← while it says foods in the title, this does cover coffee too.
For mythbusting on caffeine specifically, enjoy: Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?
There are also gut health benefits from drinking coffee, and what’s good for our gut is invariably good for our heart and brain:
Coffee & Your Gut ← gut bacteria do not, by the way, have a preference about how you make your coffee or whether it is caffeinated or not
And Now The Latest Research: Strong Coffee, Strong Body?
A team of researchers (Dr. Mette van der Linden et al.) have examined the relationship between coffee-drinking and frailty, as part of a longitudinal (7-year) study of aging.
In a nutshell, what they found was:
❝higher habitual coffee consumption is associated with lower odds of frailty❞
In a bigger nutshell (perhaps a coffee cup), their results can be summarized:
- Drinking more than 6 cups of coffee per day is also associated with significantly lower odds of frailty, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
- Drinking more than 4–6 cups of coffee per day is also linked to significantly lower odds of frailty, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
- Drinking more than 2–4 cups of coffee per day is linked to a significantly lower risk of developing frailty after 7 years, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
- Coffee consumption of more than 2–4 cups per day is associated with significantly lower odds of pre-frailty, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
Now, there are some important things to bear in mind, especially for American readers:
- This was a Dutch study, so by “a cup” they mean 125ml, which is half what is called a cup the US (the measurement is specified in the paper)
- However, because in Europe we mostly don’t elongate our coffees with as much water as in the US, those cups are stronger than a cup of coffee would be in the US on average
- Thus, when they say “a cup of coffee”, actually it contains about the same amount of coffee as an American cup of coffee, just, it takes up less space because there’s less hot water added
- In other words, despite the translatlantic differences, 1 cup of coffee = 1 cup of coffee, if we’re looking at how much actual coffee is present, rather than the physical size.
Noteably, it is the coffee itself that is important, not the caffeine. So, strong coffee is better than weak coffee, but decaffeinated is as good, if not better:
❝Stratification of the results by type of coffee (decaffeinated vs. caffeinated) showed that a higher consumption of decaffeinated coffee was associated with a lower hazard of pre-frailty or frailty after three years, while higher consumption of caffeinated coffee was not associated with pre-frailty or frailty incidence.❞
You may be wondering: how is that “as good if not better”; that is clearly better?
The thing here is that this stratification of results demonstrates correlation, but does not make causation clear. Whenever a portion of a study population is abstaining from some substance, it’s important to examine why.
Otherwise, you get silly results like “alcohol is protective against heart disease” when the truth is you looked at former heavy drinkers who quit, vs current light drinkers, noted the former category died of heart disease more often, and came to the conclusion that light drinking is protective, when the reality is that the former heavy drinking was ruinous and the current light drinking was only relatively less bad (for more details on that, see: Are You Making This Alcohol Mistake?).
So, it’s possible that decaffeinated coffee is more strongly protective against frailty than caffeinated, or it could be that the kind of people who switched to decaffeinated coffee were the kind of people who were taking more care of their health in general, or it could be another reason entirely.
What that stats do show, unequivocally, is that both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee are strongly associated with reduced frailty risk, in a dose-dependent fashion (i.e. more coffee = less frailty).
There is, doubtlessly, a cap on that (i.e. you probably cannot drink 30 cups of coffee per day and expect to get 30x the reduction in frailty risk), but whatever the cap is, this study didn’t find it, and topped it off at “and more than 6 cups of coffee per day was associated with the least frailty”.
You can read the paper in full, here:
Not a fan of coffee?
If you’re not a fan of coffee, but also not a fan of frailty, fear not; there is a supplement option available:
Green Coffee Bean Extract: Coffee Benefits Without The Coffee?
Enjoy!
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Managing Major Chronic Diseases – by Alexis Dupree
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Our author, Alexis Dupree, is herself in her 70s, and writing with more than three decades of experience of surviving multiple chronic diseases (in her case, Multiple Sclerosis, and then a dozen comorbidities that came with such).
She is not a doctor or a scientist, but for more than 30 years she’s been actively working to accumulate knowledge not just on her own conditions, but on the whole medical system, and what it means to be a “forever patient” without giving up hope.
She talks lived-experience “life management” strategies for living with chronic disease, and she talks—again from lived experience—about navigating the complexities of medical care; not on a legalistic “State regulations say…” level, because that kind of thing changes by the minute, but on a human level.
Perhaps most practically: how to advocate strongly for yourself while still treating medical professionals with the respect and frankly compassion that they deserve while doing their best in turn.
But also: how to change your attitude to that of a survivor, and yet also redefine your dreams. How to make a new game plan of life—while working to make life easier for yourself. How to deal, psychologically, with the likelihood that not only will you probably not get better, but also, you will probably get worse, while still never, ever, giving up.
After all, many things are easily treatable today that mere decades ago were death sentences, and science is progressing all the time. We just have to stay alive, and in as good a condition as we reasonably can, to benefit from those advances!
Bottom line: if you have a chronic disease, or if a loved one does, then this is an immensely valuable book to read.
Click here to check out Managing Major Chronic Diseases, and make life easier!
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