How does Gluten impair your brain

Despite a mountain of evidence demonstrating the negative health effects of gluten, the discussion continues.

For a few time, “pro-gluten” health researchers would only agree that gluten impairs gut functioning in a little percentage of people. But a couple of recent studies show an undeniable connection between gut health and brain health (1).

Given this “gut-brain connection,” even the most careful researchers are singing a different tune: gluten impairs cognitive functioning.

Connections are still being drawn among the consumption of gluten and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. At the highly least, it’s clear that minimizing or eliminating your intake of gluten decreases the risk of cognitive decline.

But how and why is gluten so destructive to the brain?

Gluten inhibits immune functioning, speeds up the propagation of diseases, interrupts metabolism, and hijacks your bio-chemical relationship with food—all of which leads to radical brain strain.

Let’s trace the process by which gluten wreaks all this havoc.
It all starts in the gut…

New analysis demonstrates that the consumption of gluten can cause an immune response in anyone—not just in those with Celiac’s disease and gluten intolerance (2).

Here’s how it works: your intestinal tract has a thin lining called the epithelium, which impedes undigested material from slipping into the bloodstream. usual consumption of gluten triggers a process known as zonulin signaling, which causes the cells in the epithemlium to separate.

When this separation happens, bacteria and toxins end up in the bloodstream, and thus trigger an immune response.

An immune response is principally inflammation—a natural, healthy bodily function when triggered infrequently. When the immune system is systematically on warning, even though, its skill to safeguard the body is suppressed, and a state of systemic inflammation sets in.

For this factor, inflammation has been called the root of all degenerative disease (wherein the body slowly loses its skill to ward off increasingly hazardous dysfunction).
…and the brain undergoes too

When this “leaky gut” situation begins to cause escalating inflammation during the body, the brain is impacted, additionally.

Systemic inflammation leads to diminished bloodflow in the brain, which leads to the “brain fog” and came down cognitive performance that’s often consorted with gluten.

You could tell that, in this way, gluten indirectly impacts the brain’s health. Unfortunately, even though, gluten also completely affects the brain in pretty scary ways.

A recent study showed that a constituent of gluten—called wheat germ agglutinin—is actually an acute neurotoxin (3). This toxin can easily cross the blood-brain barrier absolutely intact and bind to neurons for popular periods of time.

Wheat germ agglutinin is additionally pro-inflammatory, and thus collaborates even furthermore to the systemic inflammation that we debated above.

What’s worse, gluten additionally weakens the blood-brain barrier’s skill to keep out other toxins, thus provoking a downward spiral of cognitive impairment.

Lastly, the extensive majority of commercially made wheat is overrun with mycotoxins, which place trmendous amounts of pressure on the brain (they additionally ravage the immune system, cause cancer, and disrupt hormone function). You can read more about wheat mycotoxins here.
How gluten is like heroin

To top things off, another study proves that gluten breakdown products work on opioid receptors in the brain (4).

This clarifies why gluten consumption is such a hard pattern to kick—it impacts the brain in a manner that is similar to a few of the world’s most addictive substances!

Perhaps the most alarming implication of this finding is that the damaging effects of gluten may be perpetuated by psychological and physiological dependence.

It’s frequently a good idea to keep away from anything that hijacks our body’s skill to reject it as unhealthful, right? You’d possibly agree that other dangerous, addictive substances should be banished from the body. It’s about time we started this includes gluten in that classification.
So are you prepared to go gluten-free?

If you need a few more credible, there’s a wealth of information accesible to you, this includes Dr. David Perlmutter’s bestseller, Grain Brain.

Hopefully, the information presented above has at least led to a few eyebrow-raising. remind, even though: there’s no alternative for personal experience.

Try cutting gluten out of your diet, and see how you feel. Experts tell that doing so for at least 6 weeks will yield the most dramatic results, but you’ll feel the difference even by trying a shorter gluten quick.

Studies and statistics can only point us in the correct direction. At the closing of the day, it’s up to you to apply these principles, in order to decide which of them work absolute for you.

The Gluten Free Bible ….an insiders guide to going Gluten Free

Kathy

References

1 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/20/gut-brain-connection.aspx

2 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16635908

3 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19332085

4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6099562