We’ve talked in the past about our love of TED and how many of its big picture talks can help us frame new ways of thinking about the gluten free diet (”GFD”) and Celiac Disease (”CD”). In the video below, Bill Davenhal discusses the impact that geography has over health.
Davenhall walks through his own live, having lived in several “red zones” for health; he grew up in PA, lived in Louisville, KY, which he proclaims as “Rubbertown”, and then moved to smoggy Los Angeles.
His approach to geomedicine, as he terms it, is broad and long term. Having lived years in these places, he claims, that his physicians;
Never asked about the water put in my mouth or the food that I ingest in my stomach.
For CD, the implications might be more profound with a more tactical approach to data. If every restaurant someone with CD visited in the past month had poor options for those on the GFD, then the probability of gluten ingestion is higher than for those who made different choices. Davenhall makes a brief case using big time periods; the impact appears as if it might be more profound if smaller periods of time and a more detailed focus on location were made. Think restaurants, not states and the impact on CD becomes more profound.
Davenhall closes with a quote from respected physician Jack Lord;
Spectrums are everywhere, from the classic visible light spectrum of ROY G BIV (or his Russian cousin, VIB G YOR), to the progression from birth to death, gradual changes and their delineations provide useful frameworks for understanding how things work.
There is an obvious spectrum of the impact consuming an item could have on an individual. On one side we have severe negative reactions, and on the other, we have extremely positive reactions. In the middle we have neutral events. Our focus here is on the impact on an individual, not on an entire population. The spectrum has five clear values:
Strong Negative: If the item ingested kills the individual, it is a poison.
Weak Negative: If the item harms the individual, it is a toxin or allergen.
Neutral: If the item has no impact, it is a non-actor.
Weak Positive: If the item sustains the individual, then it is a food.
Strong Positive: If the item improves the individual, it is a medicine.
From a severity standpoint, gluten is somewhere between the weak and strong negative for those with CD. For those with some kind of wheat anaphylaxis, it is clearly a poison. For the population at large, it is somewhere between neutral and weak positive. While this framework for thinking about gluten is focused on individuals, it is a first step in exploring the impact of gluten on a population.
Just when we thought Zach at Gluten Free Raleigh couldn’t do anymore to help those with recent CD diagnosis or those who pursue the GFD, he has topped himself. Today he’ll be presenting this petition to the City Council to increase awareness of the big eight food allergens and gluten.
Please take the time to sign up to the petition here.
Scary Halloween Costume for CD / GFD (This product contains wheat and gluten)
There is no shortage of postings on the reactions caused by wheat and gluten to those with CD; at yesterday’s Whole Foods vendor fair we saw many who were recently diagnosed and as is common they all spoke about how much better they now felt being on the gluten free diet (”GFD”). I was first diagnosed in 2006 and am frequently surprised at my reaction to seeing wheat; my wife notes that I recoil like a shiver, seeing a snake, or like I’ve touched something hot. This has clearly been a learned reaction.
Because of that I had to stop watching Saturday Night Live off of my DVR this afternoon; the entire show was sponsored by Bud Light’s new Golden Wheat variety. I’ve got nothing against Anheuser-Busch Inbev; I’m on record that Redbridge is one of my favorite GF beers. I respect GE and NBC’s creativity in looking into novel methods of sponsorship. It was just too much everytime they through the logo up on screen.
We frequently hear from those on the GFD or with CD about dreams, sometimes even nightmares, that involve accidental gluten ingestion. The challenge of having to avoid this pesky protein works its way deeply into the psyche and becomes a significant part in one’s personality. The best way to address problems like avoiding gluten is to be meticulous, enumerate the variables and take a quantitative approach.
The Czech Republic is not a friendly place to visit for those of us who pursue the gluten free diet (”GFD”). CD is not widely diagnosed. Flour is put in practically everything, and as I found out, literacy isn’t the highest even if you have a trusty “I’ve got CD and pursue the GFD cards.” (Thank you as always, to the people at www.celiactravel.com).
The search results in our Juno Nutrition food database when you look for products that are Czech. As always, we show an aggregate safety result in the Gluten Summary.
To prepare for the trip I went down to the local Czech restaurant, Klara’s, in Cary, NC. As usual, I went to visit around 2 in the afternoon, just the right time for management to still be around, but after the lunchtime rush so you can sit and talk. Klara had heard of CD and knew of the GFD for her customers, but hadn’t ever gone through her menu in detail. We spent about an hour going through each item on the menu. Klara was kind enough to tell me if which items were GF, which items would always contain gluten, and which items might be made to avoid gluten and how to ask for them.
We walked away with 66 products; 27 okay / 1 unknown / 28 avoid. It was extremely helpful and it led to my first trip to Praha and Liberec where there was no accidental gluten exposure.
Terms and abbreviations matter, especially for CD and the GFD
We’ve spent a lot of time lately reading the scientific and medical literature around Celiac Disease (“CD”) and ways to improve conformance to specialized diets, particularly the Gluten Free Diet (“GFD”). We’ve always used GF to denote Gluten Free, however, we were pleased to see how widely these abbreviations were used across continents and scientific fields.
It’s essential to use consistent and precise language in everything we do here at Juno Nutrition because of all of the different fields and disciplines we work with. There are a lot of complex things in pursuing the GFD, the least we can do is use a common set of abbreviations. Terms like CD and GFD dominate the scientific and medical research literature that weighs on our health; we should do our best as a community to exercise the same consistency.
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
From The Analects of Confucius, Book 13, Verse 3 (James R. Ware, translated in 1980.)
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