{"id":4212,"date":"2021-04-06T08:58:31","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T08:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.centaxpharma.com\/gluten-unhealthy-or-not\/"},"modified":"2021-04-06T08:58:31","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T08:58:31","slug":"gluten-unhealthy-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/gluten-unhealthy-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Gluten: unhealthy or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Confusion<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe \u2018new wheat\u2019 makes you fat, promotes diabetes and the ageing process, damages the heart and brain and is bad for the skin.\u201d<\/strong> We hear statements like this more and more often in our society, and the relevant women’s magazines spread them too. But what if all these claims<\/strong> about wheat and the gluten it contains are simply not true<\/strong>? At the moment there are so many different sources with differing opinions. How are you supposed to find the truth in this jungle of information?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can reassure you. In February we set out to clear up nutrition myths<\/strong> and so find a way out of this chaos<\/strong>. Our first topic, then, is gluten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone surely knows somebody who swears they cannot tolerate gluten or that it makes them fat. But if you look at the statistics on intolerance, you quickly notice how few people in Germany are actually affected by this condition. Only 3% of the population<\/strong> actually suffer from an intolerance<\/strong>! Nevertheless, 2 million people regularly buy gluten-free foods, and sellers’ revenues are going through the roof. But the question remains: are we supporting our health by doing so, or perhaps even harming it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where does the myth come from?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Time and again in recent years the trend<\/strong> has emerged that a gluten-free diet is much healthier for us. The publication of the book \u201cWheat Belly<\/strong>\u201d in 2011 then really made the trend boom. The book describes how our society is getting fatter and fatter through the consumption of wheat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author also claims that wheat protein is bad for health. Many people took this as a reason to categorically avoid foods containing gluten. Of course: nobody wants to harm themselves and their body! So the dilemma kept escalating, and by now it takes real powers of persuasion to eat pasta together with friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What exactly is gluten?\"Wheat,<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gluten is an umbrella term for a group of substances<\/strong>. It occurs naturally in cereals<\/strong> such as wheat, rye and barley. In addition, gluten is being used more and more in the food industry and is therefore added to many products.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most people, digesting it is no more of a problem than digesting any other food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only people who have an intolerance metabolise gluten differently. The result is an inflammatory reaction of the immune system and the typical symptoms of an intolerance: diarrhoea, weight loss, bloating and also non-specific symptoms such as tiredness, headaches and depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth about gluten<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An intolerance is definitely no joke when you look at the symptoms. But as mentioned at the beginning, only a small proportion of the population has this condition. Everyone else who avoids gluten for health reasons and because of the trend is probably doing their body more harm by going without it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One study showed that in every single completely healthy participant a gluten-free diet led to inflammation in the gut<\/strong> [Lerner et al. 2019<\/a>]. One possible cause could be that such a diet changes the composition of the gut flora<\/strong> and thereby triggers inflammation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another problem is that wholegrain products<\/strong>, which contain gluten, also contain many valuable nutrients<\/strong>. These include vitamins B1 and B2, zinc and magnesium. Unfortunately, gluten-free foods<\/strong> are not fortified with these vitamins and minerals<\/strong>, so a nutrient deficiency<\/strong> can occur more often in those who go without cereals and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A further danger of the gluten-free trend is that the risk of coronary heart disease increases<\/strong>. To be more precise, more healthy people die of heart failure, arrhythmia and heart attacks when they go without gluten!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nutrition myth cleared up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In short, we can say: all those people who do not have coeliac disease or gluten intolerance can and should eat cereals<\/strong>. This gives you a wide variety in your diet and promotes health in the long term. A gluten-free diet, on the other hand, means limited flexibility, a lower intake of essential nutrients and a higher risk of coronary heart disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mother<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe \u2018new wheat\u2019 makes you fat, promotes diabetes and the ageing process, damages the heart and brain and is bad for the skin.\u201d We hear statements like this more and more often in our society, and the relevant women’s magazines spread them too. But what if all these claims about wheat and the gluten it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centaxpharma.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}