I've been following Dr. Fasano's research and had heard this before. Dr. Davis sums it up very well:

What do you have that chimps don’t have?


It makes your bowels leak, celiac or not. If you eat wheat, you will have leaky bowels. If you're celiac, it is just 5x worse.

So? Maybe that's natural or desirable some how?

Keep in mind that zonulin not only lets water into your bowels, but it lets the contents of your bowels into your blood stream. That's definitely not supposed to happen. It is probably the way that autoimmune diseases get started. Your body responds to foreign proteins (and... $hit) as if they were bacterial intruders. Then it starts to respond to proteins your own body makes and so, your autoimmune system turns against your body itself.

This would explain also why children with ASD typically do better when avoiding wheat.

Just like Dr. Davis says. Wheat is not good for anyone!

Just one more nail in the coffin for the idea that wheat is food for humans.

Any ideas how gliadin, in mimicking zonulin, enables intestinal contents to get into the blood?

And if this is indeed so, why don't we also see bacteria getting into the blood?

The answer to your question:



So, it leaks into the gut in response to bacteria but both in and out in response to gliadin.

Welll what I was wondering is not whether it happens, but how it is that gliadin allows intestinal content to get into the bloodstream.

For example, let's say (totally hypothesizing here) gliadin mimics some kind of antigen or something that the foreign bacteria present, zonulin responds as if gliadin were those bacteria. But how is it that gliadin also lets stuff move in the opposite direction, when that doesn't happen with the foreign bacteria?

I see what you mean. There must be more to it or it'd give us the runs.

I found this study by Fasano. I don't have access to the full text but maybe occludin or ZO-1 have a part as well. It's Greek to me.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16635908

I would imagine that bacteria are bigger than peptides (broken down proteins that stimulate the autoimmune system), maybe they can't squeeze through the tight junctions. Otherwise, we'd all have died of peritonitis I should think.

Cool, thanks for finding that study. I'll take a peek when I've finished me homework (due in 3 hrs 54 minutes!)

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Thanks

I get somewhat concerned with this "one-size-fits-all" theories. As someone who suffers from Crohnes disease and has gone through an elimination diet for a year (started with chicken and rice - then slowly added foods back into diet and recorded reactions) - wheat does not affect my intestines/bowels at all. In fact, it soothes them.

I cannot buy into this whole wheat is the enemy. My triggers are almost all vegi's and some fruit.

I don't think what triggers pain or visible reaction is the only measure of what affects the body, is probably their point.

PJ