Gluten's Obsession With Celiac Disease

There are three hundred and twenty million people living in the United States and the country’s population is fueled by food. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of Americans don’t give their bodies exactly what it needs to sustain a long healthy life. Across the United States more than two-thirds of the country’s population is considered to be overweight or obese, while one in twenty people are considered morbidly obese. (source). There are reasons for our countries health problems and a great deal of it can be linked to our countries obsession with wheat, which contains a dangerous protein known as gluten. Normally when the term gluten is brought up it is because a person with celiac disease is allergic to it. Gluten appeared in wheat towards …show more content…
This disease causes the person who is consuming the wheat to feel extreme pain in their abdominal area. Someone with celiac disease experiences a great amount of pain because their body’s immune system responds to the consumption of gluten by attacking the small intestine, which can prevent the body from absorbing needed nutrients (Res, 2013). In the book Wheat Belly Dr. Davis explains that gluten can affect a lot more people than just the one percent who have celiac disease. Gluten sensitivity is something that is more commonly found in people in the United States. One in sixteen people in the United States actually have gluten sensitivity, which is a type of celiac disease but gives off different short term and long-term side effects (Davis). Gluten sensitivity is more dangerous than celiac disease because when someone has celiac disease they experience such harsh abdominal pain that there is no way to enjoy eating wheat so a person with celiac disease will completely avoid it. On the other hand with gluten sensitivity the people that have it never get diagnosed or even know they have it. With the mixture of American culture of almost every meal consisting of wheat and someone not knowing how terrible consuming it is for them is something that shouldn’t be put together. In the book …show more content…
When someone eats gluten their body begins to digest it and breaks down the gluten proteins into shorter proteins called polypeptides otherwise know as “gluteomorphins”. The polypeptides go straight to the consumer’s blood stream and releases endorphins, which can actually become addictive. This process can cause addiction to the food and is the driving force behind food cravings. They can become so intense that doctors have given people with addictive eating behaviors Naloxone, a drug given to block the endorphins released for when a person on heroin is overdosing. The surprising thing is that when given the medication the patient would eat thirty percent less then before. (Hymand). Gluten is broken done in every single persons body like this not just people with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. This is why when someone gets a major food craving for a food item they tend to act very untimed and stressed until the food is provided. Since wheat is usually found in products that aren’t generally healthy the food cravings are usually bad choices and can lead to