.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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
AbstractFull Text
(HTML)Full Text (PDF)
