400% increase in 10 years is quite a lot. That's only the ones diagnosed with crohn's and not IBS or celiac or various other labels, I'm sure.

I wonder how many decades it will be, before science can look back at the past, the way we look back at say, the 1870s, and recognize that things like antibiotics and frankenwheat were so destructive?

PJ

Hindsight and distance work wonders. Sadly, too many people are adversely affected by the time we are distanced enough to see clearly.

I sometimes think that if we'd pay more attention to Murphy's Law and not rush all meds through, or stubbornly cling to outdated, terribly wrong information, that we'd be able to improve our foresight. But the hope of improving humanity isn't what greases the wheels of progress or epiphany. It's money.

I'm so cynical. But I think I've earned the right to be. Too bad I'm not contagious. Blind acceptance never got anyone anywhere except drinking the funny Kool-aid.

Yep, it's a whole lot. But 5,000 is already ridiculously high. Consider the traditional populations Price observed had exactly zero incidence of Crohn's. From zero to 5,000, what's that in %? What we can say is that we're comparing two non-zero incidences of the condition, so both groups do the same thing, and one group does it more than the other. It's highly unlikely that whatever they're doing is genetics. We're talking about a 10 year span, but a 400% increase. That's not nearly enough time to explain a 400% increase in births of people who are genetically predisposed to the condition. Could be other innate functions like immunicity, but again that's also a question of births of people with these innate predispositions. No, the sole factor responsible for that kind of increase in such a short time is environmental. That makes it very easy to find. The logic is like this. Since there's a 400% increase in incidence of the condition, and since the sole factor for this increase is environmental, then this environmental factor must also have increased by 400%. However, since we're talking about a sub-group, not the entire population, the increase of this factor for the whole group must be much lower, but still high enough to be very obvious. And since we're talking about a sub-group, it must be even more obvious within this sub-group, like with smokers for example.

We're talking about a condition which is strictly limited to the gut, so I'm gonna say it must be related to what we put in that gut. I'm gonna say it's wheat. It's the first thing I'd check and the first way I'd check it is by removing wheat entirely, then see if the condition improves and to what degree, how long it takes, what else improves as the case may be, etc. It's possible we're dealing with a spectrum of conditions caused by a single factor, with Crohn's being at the extreme end of this spectrum.

I agree. How hard is it to treat wheat as a suspect and have patients seriously remove it from their diet for, say, a month or two? Just to see what happens. Do this before loading up the patient with a cocktail of meds. How much would that hurt, it's not taking drugs or messing with your body.

I just don't understand the medical profession's reluctance to go this route...OOPS, I forgot, no drugs, no profit and reward from that whole system. God forbid if people treated anything with diet.

I know wheat isn't the culprit behind everything, but it's behind a heck of a lot more than everyone suspects, I'd bet money on that.

It's true, it's a mindset. Partly because no one realizes the wheat has changed.

I've lost track of the number of people I have informed of how wheat now has multiple chromosomes and built-in weedkiller... and they look at me like I have sprouted another head.

And they don't believe either one of them.

I know, it's tragic. I wish I had KNOWN about this 10 years ago when I was trying to eat so healthy buying whole-grain breads, things made with organic corn, etc. There was so little information about this then. I reconnected with an old friend who realized she was celiac but didn't make the connection for myself -- because my primary symptoms weren't gut-related but arthritis/severe joint pains (now known as "celiac arthritis," but completely unaware of it then).

I think Dr. Davis does a great job explaining this in depth and in various ways on his blog, but I'm mystified as to why so many people are either so ignorant about this or so resistant to it. Maybe because grains are so ubiquitous, there's almost a sense that if everybody else is eating it, it must be okay. Plus the addictive pull that works on people on a subliminal level and makes them resist (as with sugar).

But it's much more accepted to shun sugar. Meanwhile, grains are pushed so hard and in SO many things that it may be just too much for some people to sort it all out and make the transition.

I just read an article in a local newspaper about how really young kids are showing severe behavioral and mood issues. I wonder how much of this imbalance is due to wheat?

I wish people would get that, as you said, it's CHANGED and not the same as what we grew up with, wheat is so much more toxic now and has complicated effects on the system.

And yet if I try to talk to people about it, there's just so little receptivity, it's almost pointless. I think about this a lot, I wonder what it will take for more people to wake up and realize that many of their health problems (and those of their kids) can get better.

Yes, wheat has changed for the worse, it has been bred to increase gluten content for one thing. However, even with ancient grains that had not been fiddled with, the gluten caused problems for certain people in the population, and some more than others. So it's a mistake to think the earlier grain, say from the 1800's or before, was that much healthier.

I've seen and read on message boards the link of wheat to ANY autoimmune disease: IBS, hashimotos, meniere's, etc and so many people cured when they stopped eating wheat. Why doctors fight a gluten free trial is beyond me. Its free and easy.
Leslie

I think wheat is "round-up ready" nowadays and they treat the fields with round-up before harvest. So you're eating a whole bunch of herbicide when you eat wheat.

No GMO wheat has been commercially grown - yet.

How too much junk food could destroy a young person's bowel: By bravely posing with her colostomy bag, Bethany has highlighted a disease that is on the rise
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...thats-rise.html

That just got me all upset... Dr. Davis, of Wheatbelly, thinks it's so avoidable.