Gluten: a problem or no?

Here's my honest opinion (+ why)

Whether you’re struggling with digestion, autoimmune issues, brain fog, or just want to optimize how you feel, what you eat directly impacts your microbiome and gut lining.

One of the most controversial but increasingly supported steps toward better gut health is avoiding or limiting gluten. This isn’t just about celiac disease. It’s not even just for people who notice clear reactions to gluten.

There is enough evidence suggesting that even people without a diagnosed gluten allergy or noticeable reactions can experience negative effects from gluten.

Here’s why:

Gut Lining Damage (even without celiac)

Gluten has been shown to increase a protein called zonulin, which regulates the tight junctions in your intestinal lining. When zonulin levels rise, the gut lining becomes more permeable.

The gut lining is always permeable, but it’s selectively permeable. Allowing the things that need to get through through and preventing the harmful things from passing.

But when zonulin increases to high levels, selectivity is lost and even harmful things can start rushing through. This is what’s called leaky gut.

This can allow bacteria, toxins, and undigested food particles to slip into the bloodstream, triggering inflammation, skin issues, autoimmunity and much more.

In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial with people who had celiac, they found that acute gluten exposure increased gut permeability by 70%.

This effect isn’t limited to people with celiac disease. Even in people without celiac, gluten has been shown to increase intestinal permeability.

As this study indicates, gluten increases gut permeability in everyone to some degree, but the severity depends on your genetics and gut health.

We Objectively Don’t Digest It Well

Gluten is a complex protein that isn’t easily broken down by human digestive enzymes.

The gliadin in it, which is rich in the amino acids proline and glutamine, makes it resistant to complete breakdown by human digestive enzymes. As a result, partially digested fragments of gliadin can persist in the gut.

These fragments can stimulate the immune system, leading to chronic low-grade inflammation even without a true allergic reaction.

This immune irritation can manifest as fatigue, bloating, brain fog, joint pain or skin issues, depending on the person. Which are some of the most common complaints you hear from people after eating gluten (especially in the US).

Beyond these fragments of partially digested proteins, the increased intestinal permeability from gluten discussed above is a major cause of increased immune activation and inflammation.

Many studies like this one have dug into the links between permeability and the immune response it causes and several autoimmune, neurodegenerative and tumoral diseases.

Gluten Mimics Tissues, Potentially Triggering Autoimmunity

Some gluten proteins have a molecular structure that closely resembles proteins in your own tissues. Including tissues in the thyroid, nervous system and skin.

This can confuse the immune system. Once it starts attacking gluten, it can accidentally start attacking your own tissues, a process known as molecular mimicry.

We’ve seen quite a few studies and reviews linking conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis and certain skin disorders to celiac disease. Many practitioners automatically screening patients for other conditions when one of these conditions shows up.

Don’t Overlook The Pesticides

Modern wheat is often blasted with pesticides like glyphosate, especially right before harvest to help dry the crop. Glyphosate has been shown to have antibiotic-like effects, killing beneficial gut bacteria.

It also disrupts enzymes involved in detoxification and chelates (binds) important minerals like magnesium and zinc, both critical for gut and immune function. This combination can lead to mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress and damage to the gut lining.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s also linked to reproductive issues, liver damage and even cancer. See this post I did on the impacts.

While gluten itself has many inherent issues, the pesticides that foods containing gluten are riddled with do too.

While it would be very hard to prove this, I firmly believe a decent amount of the people who react to gluten and believe they have a gluten issue are actually reacting partly or maybe even entirely to the pesticides.

Even if you’re eating all organic foods, you can still get pesticides (including inorganic) in your system. They infiltrate through groundwater, rain, etc.

Several studies show concerning amounts of people have detectable levels of pesticides in their system like this one which states “more than 90% of the US population has detectable concentrations of pesticide biomarkers in their urine or blood.”

Gluten-Containing Foods Are Often Slop

The average person’s diet today is absolutely atrocious. A big reason why is that 90%+ of the food in traditional grocery stores is terrible. And getting higher quality foods like organic whole foods can cost people substantially more.

Some people have no choice because they can only afford the lower quality foods but many people do it because it’s easier or they don’t see it as very important.

When you think about the foods that people are getting gluten from, what are the most common?

• Bread

• Pasta

• Pastries

• Pizza

• Cereal

• Tortillas

• Beer

Not exactly healthy foods.

Most of these contain seed oils, preservatives, gums and all kinds of other additives. Most bread in the grocery store has like 20+ ingredients, most of which you probably have no idea what it is.

Getting gluten through a high quality sourdough bread from the local bakery down the street is a totally different story than getting gluten from the foods above.

So for many people, not only can the gluten itself inherently cause some issues as discussed above, but the pesticides and other problematic additives can too. This means that even if the wheat itself didn’t cause problems, the stuff that comes with it probably does.

You don’t need to have celiac disease to benefit from reducing or avoiding gluten.

Whether it’s the direct impact on your gut lining, the immune-triggering potential, the pesticide residue or the additives in processed wheat products… there’s a compelling case for limiting your intake.

Some people may be able to eat lots of gluten and be fine. Others not so much. The impacts that it has varies from person to person.

Just like anything else.

Some people can eat like shit, drink excessive amounts of booze and still appear fine.

Does that prove that these things don’t inherently damage your health? Of course not. It just shows that the degrees to which these impacts happen vary.

The same way that some people being able to tolerate gluten fine doesn’t prove that it doesn’t have the potential to do damage.

If you’ve been struggling with bloating, brain fog, fatigue, autoimmune issues, or even stubborn skin problems, trying 30 days without gluten may be a worthwhile experiment.

If you’re trying to limit or avoid gluten focus on:

• Cutting out processed foods (most gluten sources are processed so you immediately reduce your exposure substantially)

• Stick to sourdough bread

• Instead of traditional pasta go for chickpea, lentil, cassava or rice-based

• Instead of traditional flour tortillas go for cassava, coconut flour, or corn (ensure organic and GF certified)

• Check labels to avoid all:

  • Wheat, barley, rye

  • Malt (barley-derived)

  • Modified food starch (unless specified gluten-free)

  • Hydrolyzed wheat protein

Personally, I don’t avoid it entirely. This is for a few reasons:

1. I focus on optimizing my gut and building resiliency so that when I want to enjoy things like pasta or pizza (very occasionally), I can without having a major issue.

2. I stick to high quality options like organic sourdough from the Italian bakery nearby. I don’t eat ultra processed pasta, pastries or traditional store-bought bread. I notice a massive difference when I do have the lower quality options.

But there was absolutely an extended period where I cut it out entirely while I was trying to resolve my digestive issues.

Once resolved, it was one of the last things I reintroduced. And although I do consume some from time to time, it is very limited and only high quality foods.

If you’re in a similar situation, I’d highly recommend cutting it out. Just not worth it. You’re also not getting a ton of great nutrients from the foods containing gluten… most are just a pleasurable food.

If you’re perfectly healthy and just want to maintain that, I’d still recommend being aware of the impacts gluten can have (even if you don’t notice them) and limiting total intake as well as limiting it to high quality sources.

— Nick