Gluten Is DESTROYING Your Health (Stop Eating It TODAY!) | Mark Hyman

A few decades ago, most people didn’t know anything about gluten. Today there is an unmistakable trend of people going gluten-free in the hopes of solving all of their gut woes. Why is this?

In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman explores this question with the world’s top gluten expert, Dr. Alessio Fasano. Dr. Fasano founded the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1996. In 2013, he moved the Center to Massachusetts General Hospital and renamed it the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment. He is chief of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

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Dr. Hyman is an 11-time New York Times bestselling author, family physician and international leader in the field of Functional Medicine. His podcast, The Doctor's Farmacy, is a place for deep conversations about the critical issues of our time in the space of health, wellness, food and politics. New episodes are released every Wednesday here on YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Find him and more of his content all over social media:

[tinman]

My wife became sensitive to eating wheat products, which made her increasingly sick until she could not eat wheat at all. Then, in 2019, a trip to France showed that she could eat anything she wanted - baguettes, croissant, pasta, etc. So, she started making her own bread from organic Italian flour and Einkorn flour when we got back to the US, and has no issue. The idea promoted here that "they make bread differently" in Europe doesn't make sense. My wife makes bread the "quick" way, only letting the dough sit for 2 hours. She does not have any reaction to eating Italian flour. However, even one bite of anything made with flour from the US makes her sick. Bottom line: There is something very wrong with the wheat grown in the US.

[chinookvalley]

I was really sick with a lot of illnesses as a kid. At age 7 we moved to a farm. TA-DA! My immune system turned 180*. Fresh grown foods with NO chemicals, around livestock and domestic pets, played outdoors dawn till dusk when I wasn't in school. My parents made a wonderful decision that saved my health and my life.

[booswalia]

It boils down to... greed is killing us.

[velvetpaws]

About 25 years ago, I discussed this in Germany, with a farmer who studied agriculture and has a PhD in this field. He told me that the wheat of pre-WWII was different. It contained - naturally - just traces of gluten. Then, the farmers were paid for their wheat grains by means of determination of the gluten content. More gluten, higher price. The gluten is one of the key ingredients that gets extracted from wheat, for usage in other food items that are now industrially produced and have to be processed for preservation and consistency etc... So, more gluten, more money for the farmer per ton of wheat. This then triggered the selection of grains higher in gluten content, and it was pushed basically to the extreme. In other words, even in the bread we eat, there was never this much gluten. It seems that human bodies don't like gluten, but can deal with minimal amounts without any problems. Now, when we are overloaded with gluten, not only in the bread itself, but also in most other commercial food items, our body cannot process this onslaught. We are getting allergic to it and we can no longer tolerate it.
Gluten is invisible, so it is impossible for a normal consumer to see it and avoid it. And labeling for gluten is relatively recent. Before that, nobody knew in detail what was put into the food items we all eat.
I wish we would reconsider the way we make our food. All these additives (colorants, preservatives, humectants, taste enhancers, processing aids, etc etc...) are making our food more or less questionable, if not outright unsafe. We usually find out AFTER lots of people are already sick. That is unacceptable. Children have all kinds of issues which were never known pre-WWII. Before that era, there was hardly any processed food out there. The TV dinner craze and such all began after that fateful war.

[nickmeale]

That was a pretty powerful speech. I make pizza for a living in Australia with cheap Aussie wheat but long fermentation times, 24 hours or longer. I get the same response that people can 'digest my pizza better' than others. Whether you believe it or not is another story but long fermentation and minimal yeast seems to be key. Make no mistake that all the italians I've worked with know about long fermentation times for bread/ pizza and homemade pasta techniques in their restaurants.

[nancybenson]

At just over a year old my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease by a Yale graduate pediatrician. That was in 1970. It is a genetic disease for her. My family is Northern European. As soon as she went on a rice, banana and lean meat diet she began to thrive. For those that actually have celiac disease it is debilitating and ruinous to their ability to thrive. It is not intolerance it is devastating to their health. It is an auto immune disease like Crohns and Minimal Change disease, asthma, lupus. And it isn’t something that has happened in the last 50 years. Gluten sensitivity is different than celiac disease. Full blown celiac in a child is like watching your child starve and not knowing what is causing it. Their belly swells. Their skin becomes fragile, eczema broke out on her. They are sick! After doctors said it was an allergy to milk for months I finally took her to the pediatrician that diagnosed it, and we had a biopsy done and she had celiac disease. That saved her from years of suffering.

[SueFerreira]

A Greek physician named Aretaeus of Cappadocia, living in the first century AD, wrote about “The Coeliac Affection", which he named “koiliakos” after the Greek word “koelia” (abdomen). He noted “If the stomach be irretentive of the food and if it pass through undigested and crude, and nothing ascends into
the body, we call such persons coeliacs”. 
A few other physicians made similar notes over the years, but during World War II, a Dutch pediatrician, Dicke noticed during bread shortages in the Netherlands, children with celiac disease improved, but they quickly deteriorated again when Allied planes made food drops which included bread. A few years later, working with others, he produced a series of seminal papers, documenting for the first time the role that gluten from wheat and rye plays in celiac disease.

[halifaxguy]

The story of the wife being able to eat pasta outside of North America resonates with me. I have TERRIBLE I.B.S. complications if I eat bread/wheat products here in Canada. When I was in Paris and in Ireland just before the pandemic I held off for a while and tried it and had NO issues. It was so wonderful I ate it every day that I was there for 3 weeks with no issues at all. A week after getting home I tried ‘homemade’ bread from the grocery store bakery. I didn’t get through a single sandwich before I knew what a horrible mistake I had just made.

[strangertobluewater]

It’s the pesticides used on the wheat crop. I know this from experience in a bakery where people would get rashes from touching certain flour. But a brand switch would stop the reaction. Anyone working in baking, flour factory or the pizza industry may be familiar with this.

[tomtharos]

50 years ago they didn’t soak wheat in Roundup to harvest it.

[naedatanner]

My grandfather, born in 1910 was a Saskatchewan wheat farmer. He had Celiac disease. My grandmother used rice and potato flour. ✌💖🇨🇦

[aidenmartin]

I’ve had gluten intolerance all my life but I didn’t know that I had it. I knew the illness and symptoms I had ran in my family but it wasn’t until my niece was diagnosed when she was an infant that we had a name for what was wrong. Been off of gluten for several years now and it’s definitely made a difference to my health. No longer having daily headaches, frequent migraines, hand tremor, leg pain and restless legs syndrome as well as gut problems.

[stevefitz]

I was having problems 60 years ago and was treated for irritable bowel my entire life until I had repeated bouts of diverticulitis and had surgery. I am a cardiologist and my symptoms were not consistent with celiac disease in the textbook of medicine. When I was recovering from surgery I heard Jillian Anderson talk about her clients with celiac disease and their symptoms were like mine. I went gluten free and was much better.

[thesaintmustwalkalone]

My child developed an intolerance to wheat. Started ordering organic wheat (no glyphosate) and grinding it myself. No more issues... No more encopresis!

[electraspy]

I truly believe it’s city or county water that is ruining our guts, even with filters systems. Husband & I both grew up in the countryside that had water wells, never gut issue. In our 30’s, we moved to the city and had our children. We started having gluten issues within a year. Myself & my daughter would break out in hives. My husband & son would have awful stomach issues.We lived in 3 different places over 6 yrs, all on city water. We had to eat gluten free for years. 6 yrs ago, we bought a ranch in country with a water well. We started noticing our sensitivity to occasional cheats, say cookies, weren’t causing any issue. Eventually we started testing reg foods and in last 2 yrs we have had no issue whatsoever. Wheat bread, pizza, pasta... no issue, no hives, no bloat, no toilet issues & no vomiting. For us, I’m convinced City Water was wrecking our stomach balance.

[wheathusk]

This is true when I was in India we ate rice and wheat regularly almsot everyday and everyone does so. Its a staple and no one ever is gluten intolerant there. When I moved to North America I started developing a gluten and rice sensitivity and had to go on a keto diet. It caused chronic inflammation and auto immune disease in my body not just intolerance. Imagine something I ate for 30 years no problem and within a year I can't tolerate it.

[coreymihailiuk]

This information is incomplete. A new strain of wheat was developed in 1969 that when tested years later was found to have as much as 10 times the amount of gluten than the preceding strain of wheat that was grown for centuries. The only country that didn't accept this new strain of wheat developed in 1969 was Italy. You can still find this ancient type of wheat in Tuscany. You did mention this dwarf strain but nothing about the testing that has proven to have a higher amount of gluten.

[andromeda_]

This is definitely true for me. I started developing gastrointestinal issues after moving to the U.S. I remembered the first three years were specially hard, even eating out at nice restaurants would cause an incredible amount of abdominal pain.

I now have wide range of food sensitivities including gluten and lactose and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder at 32.

[Okie]

Dr. Hyman makes a good point. In the northern US and Canada where they have cool summers, they spray the wheat and kill it with roundup poison to dry it, 2 weeks before they get ready to harvest it. Here in Oklahoma and the southern states, it's hot enough where the wheat naturally dies and dries without having to poison it. The problem is, when you buy flour in the grocery store, you don't know where it's grown.

[lorimc]

I often traveled to Europe (most often Germany) for work and it was very obvious I could stuff my face with bakery products there with no problem, but these same products in the US would make me bloated and sick. I have to say the exception is the UK, which is much closer to US products and I would limit the flour products I ate there. I would literally bring home German flour in my checked bag on a regular basis. I miss having access to that now that I no longer travel. I should also note customers and coworkers from both Europe and South America get sick or bloated eating US food. When they would comment about it, I told them to stop eating our bread, pasta, and misc flour products. They always later agreed it helped relieve sickness. Number 1 lesson from years of traveling. Wish everyone would be able to experience how obvious it is.