What does Gluten-Free Diet have to do with rheumatoid arthritis (RA)? By: Stevan Mcgrath

What does Gluten-Free Diet have to do with rheumatoid arthritis (RA)?

By: Stevan Mcgrath

What does Gluten-Free Diet have to do with rheumatoid arthritis (RA)?

Rheumatoid arthritis is a condition that has left so many people crippled. This is a condition that has proved difficult for doctors to fully treat it. Due to this inability of treatment, there have been lots of inventions concerning the other alternative ways of treating this problem. Change in diet is one of those alternative ways through which various people have tried to manage this condition. A good example of diet is a gluten-free vegan diet; which is able to improve symptoms rheumatoid arthritis in some people.

Though not fully understood how this diet works out, most of the patients who tried it as a means of managing their rheumatoid arthritis have reported an improvement to their condition after a certain period of eating gluten-free and vegan. However, it should be noted that in most cases, the gluten-free diet is not used to treat rheumatoid arthritis but it is instead used to treat people who are suffering from celiac disease and others from non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Despite this fact, there has been widespread news concerning people who have reported great results from eating diets free of gluten. In some other instances, some physicians have started to recommend the diet for their patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.

Actually, the analogy that comes out here is the existence of the link between celiac disease and rheumatoid arthritis; in fact both conditions are autoimmune conditions. This means that they both occur when your immune system attacks your own tissues by mistake. Celiac disease is a condition that is caused by the gluten protein (in the barley and rye and grains wheat). In a case where an individual is suffering from celiac  disease, gluten will spur the immune cells to attack an individual’s own intestinal lining, making it to erode.

On the other side, it is actually not very clear on the causes of rheumatoid arthritis. Some researchers have attempted to argue that some times if the body reacts to some dietary proteins like gluten may lead to the development of rheumatoid arthritis. After developing rheumatoid arthritis, the effects of your immune system attacking your own tissues will occur in your joints.

According to latest research studies, people who have been diagnosed with celiac disease have a high likelihood of suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.  In addition to this information, evidence shows that it is possible for one to be misdiagnosed of rheumatoid arthritis when the actual condition is celiac disease. This could down to one such common symptom of celiac disease and rheumatoid arthritis which is joint pain; a condition that can sometimes be severe.

Gluten-Free Vegan Diet Tested in RA Patients

Of the two studies which were meant to test the role of gluten-free vegan diet in rheumatoid arthritis, a very small group of patients (a total of 27 people) were put under this diet on the first study and the other tested 22 patients with the same diet.  The first study was conducted in Norway and it was published in the journal of American Clinical Nutrition. In this particular study, the researchers asked the 27 patients to fast for a week. The next thing they did is they asked the participants to follow a gluten-free vegan diet for a period of  three-and-a-half months. This was followed by a lactovegetarian diet for a period of another nine months. Over the course of this study, these patients were able to see their symptoms improve and this was confirmed by lab results which showed significant improvements.

In the second study, 22 patients were tested on a gluten-free vegan diet, and they were compared to 25 patients who were allowed to follow a well-balanced non-vegan diet. The two groups were allowed to spend at least nine months on their diets.

The results of this study showed that about 40% of the participants who were under gluten-free vegan diet showed an improvement to their rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. When compared to those who were not following this diet, it was only one individual who showed some improvements. The other thing that the researchers tested was the participants’ levels of AGA-IgG antibodies to gluten. They also tested anti-beta-lactoglobulin to milk protein. When they looked at the results, there was a significantly reduced level of both antibodies in those people who were able to respond to the gluten-free vegan diet, but there were no significant reductions in those people who did not respond to the diet.

 So Is It The Gluten? Or The Animal Products? Or Both?

Unfortunately, It's was not possible to tell which part of the diet was most effective; this was so because the researchers did not test vegan diets and gluten-free diets separately. In addition, this second study noted that the gluten-free vegan diet did not work for everyone. As per this study, the results suggest that the likely source of the positive effects in that subgroup that followed the gluten-free vegan diet would be due to a reduced immune response to exogenous food antigens. It was however suggested by the authors that the possibility of the improvement resulting from the decrease in the antibody levels cannot be ruled out. Though, it also seems that the decreased antibodies to milk and gluten would have been caused by excluding milk and gluten products (the mechanism here does not have any proof at all).

Should RA Patients Consider A Gluten-Free Vegan Diet?

Maybe yes. Though the studies looking into this fact have been very few, most of them have showed promising results. However, for a conclusive answer, we need to have more studies looking into this analogy of whether dietary measures can have any significant improvement to the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. In the meantime, you are required to talk to your doctor first before thinking to consider taking a gluten-free diet as a means of managing your arthritic symptoms. You also need to be tested of celiac disease so as not to confuse between the two. For accurate tests, you do not need to drop gluten diet from your meals before undergoing these tests.

REFERENCES:

Rheumatoid arthritis: Risk factors. (2013, 27 July). Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Retrieved December 15, 2013 from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/rheumatoid-arthritis/DS00020/DSECTION=risk-factors.

What are the symptoms of celiac disease? (2012, 27 January). National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse. Retrieved   December 15, 2013 from http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/celiac/#symptoms.

What is celiac disease? (n.d.) Celiac Sprue Association. Retrieved December 15, 2013 from http://www.csaceliacs.info/celiac_disease_defined.jsp.

Gluten-Free Diet in Nonceliac Disease

Nutr Clin Pract (2011) 26 (3): 294-299

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