Leaky-Gut-Gluten-Interview - Dr. Peter Osborne .pdf
Karen Brimeyer:
It should be if they’ve read through the manual. I do talk about the
tight junctions so if you can give a little bit of a background but if they brought manual,
they should know what a tight junction is.
Dr. Peter Osborne:
So, okay, a tight junction is a protein that basically anchors the
intestinal cells closely together because if we don’t have closely anchored intestinal cells,
in other words, if the cells aren't tightly compacted together or very close together, we
develop these leaks in our intestines and this is where a lot of food can leak through into
the bloodstream.
Hence the term leaky gut. The technical name for that is intestinal
permeability. But gluten causes this, of regulation of this protein zonulin and zonulin
causes the gut cells to spread apart and so gluten in and of itself directly can create a
leaky gut. So, that was discovered eight or nine years ago at the University of Maryland
by Dr. Alessio Fasano who’s one of the leading researchers in the field of celiac disease.
So, that’s one of the components of the gluten intolerance aspect. It's not a reaction. It's
a gut dismantling which then leads to subsequent immune reactions and this is one of the
reasons why some people can go through life not react, no react and then one day and
then all of a sudden they're starting to react.:
Well, they were always reacting. It was just the process that was
building over time.
Karen Brimeyer:
Yeah, more and more damage was being done as they were eating it
more and more.
Dr. Peter Osborne:
Right.
Karen Brimeyer:
So, a lot of people say that they don’t have any digestive issues so
they automatically rule out gluten intolerance and I know that that’s not always the case.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Peter Osborne:
Well, actually there's a lot of research that’s being done in the field
of gluten and how it affects the nervous system. And the actual most leading researchers
now think that gluten doesn’t affect the gut directly. It actually affects the nervous
system in the gut and that’s what leads to the problem. So, one of gluten’s primary
targets is nerve tissue and of course, the nerves, you know, from your brain to your spine
to your organs, your nerves feed absolutely every tissue in the body.
So, gluten – it'sactually now thought that gluten affects
other tissues more commonly than it affects the gut. In
essence, celiac disease is more of a rare manifestation of gluten sensitivity as
opposed to some of the other ways that gluten can affect people. And so some of thos
ways might be – one of the more common is called gluten-induced neuropathy.
So, it can cause nerve damage and some people manifest it as ataxia or vertigo so they
lose their ability to stand in balance. Some people develop tremors or seizure disorders.
Some people develop psychological disorders. We've linked gluten to schizophrenia,
bipolar disease. Most people are aware that gluten sensitivity has directly been linked
now to autism, in Asperger’s disease and ADD and ADHD with the groups of doctors
that have been prescribing gluten-free diets for autism. That’s been out in the press quite
a bit. So, gluten can affect, literally it can affect the nervous system in a host of different
ways. Think of it like a drug. If we give 1,000 people an identical drug, we're going to
get 1,000 reacting in different ways. We're not going to get everybody reacting exactly
the same way to a drug.
Well, gluten much the same way acts like a drug and different people are going to react to
it in different ways depending on their own unique biochemistry. So, some of the other
diseases associated with gluten sensitivity and gluten intolerance are autoimmune disease
as a general rule and there are 140 different autoimmune diseases. We've got rheumatoid
arthritis as one, lupus, Hashimoto’s which is a type of hypothyroidism, Graves disease,
Addison’s disease which is an adrenal failure disease. We've got psoriasis and eczema,
dermatitis herpetiformis.
These are all autoimmune diseases that a lot of people are just
not aware that there's an association with gluten causing autoimmune disease. So, they
go to their rheumatologist. Rheumatologists are doctors that specialize in the treatment
of autoimmune disease and they're given a bunch of heavy drugs and unfortunately the
heavy drugs don’t really do a whole lot. They kind of relive pain a little bit but beyond
that they shorten your life by about 20 years and they never fix the autoimmune disease at
its core and so until rheumatologists get on board and start looking at gluten in their
offices, we're going to – we have kind of an uphill battle to get the information out there
to people with autoimmune disease.
Karen Brimeyer:
And gluten really can affect, you know, pretty much any area of you
body. It's not just celiac diseases.
Karen Brimeyer:
It should be if they’ve read through the manual. I do talk about the
tight junctions so if you can give a little bit of a background but if they brought manual,
they should know what a tight junction is.
Dr. Peter Osborne:
So, okay, a tight junction is a protein that basically anchors the
intestinal cells closely together because if we don’t have closely anchored intestinal cells,
in other words, if the cells aren't tightly compacted together or very close together, we
develop these leaks in our intestines and this is where a lot of food can leak through into
the bloodstream.
Hence the term leaky gut. The technical name for that is intestinal
permeability. But gluten causes this, of regulation of this protein zonulin and zonulin
causes the gut cells to spread apart and so gluten in and of itself directly can create a
leaky gut. So, that was discovered eight or nine years ago at the University of Maryland
by Dr. Alessio Fasano who’s one of the leading researchers in the field of celiac disease.
So, that’s one of the components of the gluten intolerance aspect. It's not a reaction. It's
a gut dismantling which then leads to subsequent immune reactions and this is one of the
reasons why some people can go through life not react, no react and then one day and
then all of a sudden they're starting to react.:
Well, they were always reacting. It was just the process that was
building over time.
Karen Brimeyer:
Yeah, more and more damage was being done as they were eating it
more and more.
Dr. Peter Osborne:
Right.
Karen Brimeyer:
So, a lot of people say that they don’t have any digestive issues so
they automatically rule out gluten intolerance and I know that that’s not always the case.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Peter Osborne:
Well, actually there's a lot of research that’s being done in the field
of gluten and how it affects the nervous system. And the actual most leading researchers
now think that gluten doesn’t affect the gut directly. It actually affects the nervous
system in the gut and that’s what leads to the problem. So, one of gluten’s primary
targets is nerve tissue and of course, the nerves, you know, from your brain to your spine
to your organs, your nerves feed absolutely every tissue in the body.
So, gluten – it'sactually now thought that gluten affects
other tissues more commonly than it affects the gut. In
essence, celiac disease is more of a rare manifestation of gluten sensitivity as
opposed to some of the other ways that gluten can affect people. And so some of thos
ways might be – one of the more common is called gluten-induced neuropathy.
So, it can cause nerve damage and some people manifest it as ataxia or vertigo so they
lose their ability to stand in balance. Some people develop tremors or seizure disorders.
Some people develop psychological disorders. We've linked gluten to schizophrenia,
bipolar disease. Most people are aware that gluten sensitivity has directly been linked
now to autism, in Asperger’s disease and ADD and ADHD with the groups of doctors
that have been prescribing gluten-free diets for autism. That’s been out in the press quite
a bit. So, gluten can affect, literally it can affect the nervous system in a host of different
ways. Think of it like a drug. If we give 1,000 people an identical drug, we're going to
get 1,000 reacting in different ways. We're not going to get everybody reacting exactly
the same way to a drug.
Well, gluten much the same way acts like a drug and different people are going to react to
it in different ways depending on their own unique biochemistry. So, some of the other
diseases associated with gluten sensitivity and gluten intolerance are autoimmune disease
as a general rule and there are 140 different autoimmune diseases. We've got rheumatoid
arthritis as one, lupus, Hashimoto’s which is a type of hypothyroidism, Graves disease,
Addison’s disease which is an adrenal failure disease. We've got psoriasis and eczema,
dermatitis herpetiformis.
These are all autoimmune diseases that a lot of people are just
not aware that there's an association with gluten causing autoimmune disease. So, they
go to their rheumatologist. Rheumatologists are doctors that specialize in the treatment
of autoimmune disease and they're given a bunch of heavy drugs and unfortunately the
heavy drugs don’t really do a whole lot. They kind of relive pain a little bit but beyond
that they shorten your life by about 20 years and they never fix the autoimmune disease at
its core and so until rheumatologists get on board and start looking at gluten in their
offices, we're going to – we have kind of an uphill battle to get the information out there
to people with autoimmune disease.
Karen Brimeyer:
And gluten really can affect, you know, pretty much any area of you
body. It's not just celiac diseases.
