Fight Celiac Disease with Probiotics and the No-Grain Diet

Celiac disease is an autoimmune digestive disorder that attacks the small intestine when a person consumes gluten -- a protein found in grains like barley, rye, and wheat. Data from the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center show that an average of 1 out of every 133 otherwise healthy people in the United States suffer from this disease. The prevalence has even been estimated to be as high as 1 in 33 in at-risk populations.

Those suffering from Celiac disease usually experience abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, and nausea. As the small intestine sustains more damage, more serious problems occur.

Undiagnosed Celiac disease has been linked to a nearly four-fold increased risk of premature death. The trouble with Celiac disease is it takes an average of four years to reach a diagnosis. This delay can dramatically increase your risk of developing other autoimmune diseases. Your risk of suffering from an autoimmune condition can increase by as much as 34 percent when you’re diagnosed with Celiac disease after the age of 20, Dr. Mercola warns.

Thankfully, more research is being devoted to Celiac disease, which was previously not given much attention by conventional medicine. A new study conducted in Spain suggests that probiotics may help relieve the effects of Celiac disease and influence the inflammation it causes by decreasing serum CRP (C-reactive protein) levels.

The Spanish study used Bifidobacterium, one of the major “good” bacteria strains that compose your gut flora. An earlier study published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG) found that there are at least two kinds of probiotic bacteria that have even greater anti-inflammatory properties than Bifidobacterium. The WJG study identified Lactobacillus and Propionibacterium as the probiotics that produce the lowest CRP.

Probiotics also help reduce the bacteria-induced production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (small proteins secreted by specific cells of the immune system) while simultaneously up-regulating the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines.

However, if you’re suffering from any inflammatory condition – be it Celiac disease, heart disease, or autoimmune disorders – the first thing you need to do is to avoid grains, Dr. Mercola points out. Taking probiotics while still eating a grain-based diet will not spare you from ill effects. Grains and sugars are highly pro-inflammatory. While probiotics are anti-inflammatory, they cannot completely cancel out the detrimental effects of a diet rich in starchy carbs, Dr. Mercola explains.

Celiac disease sufferers do best with a no-grain diet as they cannot tolerate even very small amounts of gluten. Eliminating gluten for a week or two is often enough to see significant improvement but sometimes, it may take several months. In Dr. Mercola’s experience, about 75-80 percent of all  people benefit from avoiding ALL types of grains, whether you suffer from gluten intolerance or not.

If you’re fighting gluten intolerance or want to optimize your diet, it’s not enough to simply avoid grains. You should also pay attention to the quality of all the other foods you eat. Dr. Mercola’s NY Times best selling book  The No-Grain Diet will help guide your choices and put you on an eating plan that you can stay on for life.