Recently I’ve noticed an expanded gluten-free food section at my grocery store, a new gluten-free menu at a favorite Greek restaurant and even glamorously gluten-free eye shadows at a high-end makeup counter. Along with the requisite celebrity and sports star proponents, at least two friends of mine credit their choice to forgo gluten — a complex protein found in wheat, barley and rye — with weight loss, an energy boost and myriad other benefits.
So what’s fact and what’s the latest health-fad hype? There’s still some gray area, but some studies indicate that a growing number of people do have a problem digesting gluten, says family medicine and chronic pain specialist Gary Kaplan, director of the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean. He notes that this number includes everyone from children with wheat allergies to the estimated 1 percent of Americans who have celiac disease — a serious autoimmune disorder that interferes with absorption of nutrients, causing wide-ranging health problems — and can’t tolerate even a picogram of gluten.
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