There’s a reason your friend’s gluten-free diet is actually making them feel better

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As more and more of your friends go gluten-free, you may be wondering: Is there something to this latest diet craze? Is gluten-intolerance a thing? Is it getting more common?

The answer is simply no.

Only about 1 percent of Americans actually have coeliac disease, the rare genetic disorder that makes people intolerant to gluten, and that number is not on the rise. In other words, in a room of 100 people, chances are one has celiac.

In fact, a study published this month found that the prevalence of celiac has remained basically unchanged since 2009.

And as for all those people who say they don’t have celiac but are just ‘sensitive’ to gluten, a 2013 study out of Monash University suggested that this probably isn’t real.

So what’s really going on when people stop eating gluten?

Alan Levinovitz, an assistant professor at James Madison University who studies the intersection between religion and medicine and the author of the book The Gluten Lie, says it essentially comes down to a mix of psychology and behavioural change.

In the book, Levinovitz interviews Monash University director of gastroenterology Peter Gibson, who helped write the 2013 study concluding that non-celiac gluten ‘intolerance’ was probably not a thing…. Read More>>

Source: Science Alert

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