Celiac actually on the rise
(No Ratings Yet)Don’t we celiacs often wonder: is Celiac Disease a new-fangled disease of our modern times ( what with all the industrial food we are eating) and our forefathers did not really have issues like these; or is it that celiac has always existed, it is only now that due to more awareness on the part of both patients & doctors, more people are actually being diagnosed.
While one cannot rule out that celiac has always existed (read this fascinating piece on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease#History), studies in the US and Europe are pointing to an actual real increase in celiac disease; as Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, MD, from the Department of Medicine, Epidemiology Unit, at the Karolinska Institute and Orebro University Hospital, Sweden, and an expert in CD points out to Medscape:
“The reason for this increase is mutlifactorial, but there is probably a true underlying increase. This has been shown when old sera have been analyzed with modern techniques, (eg, in Finland)”.
Similar findings have emerged from Mayo Clinic researchers in the US:
“This tells us that whatever has happened with CD has happened since 1950,” Dr. Murray said. “This increase has affected young and old people. It suggests something has happened in a pervasive fashion from the environmental perspective”.
Dr Joseph Murray, a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist, also makes this chilling statement:
Celiac disease is becoming a public health issue. Studies show four times the incidence since 1950, with fatal complications if it goes untreated.
To quote Mayo Clinic’s Discovery Edge:
Dr. Murray lists several possible environmental causes of celiac disease. The “hygiene hypothesis” suggests the modern environment is so clean that the immune system has little to attack and turns on itself. Another potential culprit is the 21st century diet. Although overall wheat consumption hasn’t increased, the ways wheat is processed and eaten have changed dramatically. “Many of the processed foods we eat were not in existence 50 years ago,” Dr. Murray says. Modern wheat also differs from older strains because of hybridization. Dr. Murray’s team hopes someday to collaborate with researchers on growing archival or legacy wheat, so it can be compared to modern strains.
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