All Hype? Gluten-Free Diets May Not Help Many

Gluten-free products are all the rage these days, but many health-conscious eaters who buy them may be wasting their money, the authors of a new commentary in Annals of Internal Medicine suggest.

Going gluten-free is necessary for people with celiac disease, an autoimmune condition triggered by gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye. The disease causes inflammation in the small intestine and can lead to malnutrition.

Yet many others without celiac disease have also adopted gluten-free lifestyles — no doubt inspired in part by athletes and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Victoria Beckham — in hopes of losing weight, boosting energy and resolving any number of potentially gluten-related symptoms like diarrhea, bloating, gas, headache, ADHD and mouth sores.

Many such adopters have been diagnosed by their doctors with “nonceliac gluten sensitivity,” a condition that by some estimates affects as many as 18 million Americans. But the authors of the commentary, celiac researchers Dr. Antonio Di Sabatino and Dr. Gino Roberto Corazza of Italy’s University of Pavia, question that figure, noting that there’s no official data on the prevalence of nonceliac gluten sensitivity, nor is there any consensus among doctors about how to diagnose it. Unlike with celiac disease, which can be identified through blood tests and bowel biopsies, there’s no good test to determine gluten sensitivity.

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