by Sayer Ji
Celiac disease (CD) is increasingly being recognized as a global problem, due in large part to the role that molecular science has played in revealing that the genetic locus of susceptibility for the disease on chromosome 6, known as HLA-DQ2, which is found in 95% of patients with celiac disease, also occurs in 20-30% of healthy patients.1 Also, in 5% of patients with classically diagnosed celiac disease, the HLA-DQ2 genetic locus is not present at all, revealing that there is no absolute genetic determinant for the disease, and that epigentic factors beyond the control of the gene, such as diet and environmental exposures, play a primarily role.
What all of this means for CD is that the genetic susceptibility locus, HLA DQ, does not determine the exact clinical outcome of the disease. Instead of being the cause, if the HLA genes are activated, they are a consequence of the disease process. Thus, we may need to shift our epidemiological focus from viewing this as a classical “disease” involving a passive subject controlled by aberrant genes, to viewing it as an expression of a natural, protective response to the ingestion of something that the human body was not designed to consume.
If we view celiac disease not as an unhealthy response to a healthy food, but as a healthy response to an unhealthy food, classical CD symptoms like diarrhea may make more sense. Diarrhea can be the body’s way to reduce the duration of exposure to a toxin or pathogen, and villous atrophy can be the body’s way of preventing the absorption and hence, the systemic effects of chronic exposure to wheat.
I believe we would be better served by viewing the symptoms of CD as expressions of bodily intelligence rather than deviance. We must shift the focus back to the disease trigger, which is wheat itself.
People with celiac may actually have an advantage over the apparently unafflicted because those who are “non-symptomatic” and whose wheat intolerance goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because they lack the classical symptoms and may suffer in ways that are equally or more damaging, but expressed more subtly, or in distant organs. Within this view celiac disease would be redefined as a protective (healthy?) response to exposure to an inappropriate substance, whereas “asymptomatic” ingestion of the grain with its concomitant “out of the intestine” and mostly silent symptoms, would be considered the unhealthy response insofar as it does not signal in an obvious and acute manner that there is a problem with consuming wheat.
It is possible that celiac disease represents both an extreme reaction to a global, species-specific intolerance to wheat that we all share in varying degrees. CD symptoms may reflect the body’s innate intelligence when faced with the consumption of a substance that is inherently toxic. Let me illustrate this point using Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA), as an example.
WGA is glycoprotein classified as a lectin and is known to play a key role in kidney pathologies, such as IgA nephropathy. In the article: “Do dietary lectins cause disease?” the Allergist David L J Freed points out that WGA binds to “glomerular capillary walls, mesangial cells and tubules of human kidney and (in rodents) binds IgA and induces IgA mesangial deposits,” indicating that wheat consumption may lead to kidney damage in susceptible individuals. Indeed, a study from the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan Italy published in 2007 in the International Journal of Cancer looked at bread consumption and the risk of kidney cancer. They found that those who consumed the most bread had a 94% higher risk of developing kidney cancer compared to those who consumed the least bread. Given the inherently toxic effect that WGA may have on kidney function, it is possible that in certain genetically predisposed individuals (e.g. HLA-DQ2/DQ8) the body – in its innate intelligence – makes an executive decision: either continue to allow damage to the kidneys (or possibly other organs) until kidney failure and rapid death result, or launch an autoimmune attack on the villi to prevent the absorption of the offending substance which results in a prolonged though relatively malnourished life. This is the explanation typically given for the body’s reflexive formation of mucous following exposure to certain highly allergenic or potentially toxic foods, e.g. dairy products, sugar, etc? The mucous coats the offending substance, preventing its absorption and facilitating safe elimination via the gastrointestinal tract. From this perspective the HLA-DQ locus of disease susceptibility in the celiac is not simply activated but utilized as a defensive adaptation to continual exposure to a harmful substance. In those who do not have the HLA-DQ locus, an autoimmune destruction of the villi will not occur as rapidly, and exposure to the universally toxic effects of WGA will likely go unabated until silent damage to distant organs leads to the diagnosis of a disease that is apparently unrelated to wheat consumption.
Loss of kidney function may only be the “tip of the iceberg,” when it comes to the possible adverse effects that wheat proteins and wheat lectin can generate in the body. If kidney cancer is a likely possibility, then other cancers may eventually be linked to wheat consumption as well. This correlation would fly in the face of globally sanctioned and reified assumptions about the inherent benefits of wheat consumption. It would require that we suspend cultural, socio-economic, political and even religious assumptions about its inherent benefits. In many ways, the reassessment of the value of wheat as a food requires a William Boroughs-like moment of shocking clarity when we perceive “in a frozen moment….what is on the end of every fork.” Let’s take a closer look at what is on the end of our forks.
Read more on the topic at the Dark Side of Wheat