Now The Daily Mail Joins Daily Beast In Claims That Gluten Intolerance Could Equal Eating Disorder!

[Takala]

From the UK Daily Mail, after the ridiculous story in the Daily Beast earlier this week,

"When Going Gluten Free is Dangerous" Open Original Shared Link comes yet another one of these slams on the necessity of a gluten free diet for those with gluten intolerance, even if one has not been formally diagnosed with celiac disease, claiming that it is the equivalent of an eating disorder. The Daily Mail conveniently quotes a Daily Beast story with the same theme.

link:

"Are gluten free dieters just hiding an eating disorder ? How self diagnosis of serious food allergy can help take diet to extremes" 1/28/2013 by Sadie Whitelocks

Open Original Shared Link

  Quote

But today many adopt the gluten-free lifestyle for no medical reason and Dr Mark Borigini told Open Original Shared Link: that it is often used as 'another channel for a bigger problem - like an eating disorder.'

This Dr Mark Borigini was also quoted in the earlier Daily Beast as a writer for Psychology Today.

  Quote

“People read these articles on gluten and think this might be the answers to the problems they may have,” says Dr. Mark Borigini, a rheumatologist who recently wrote about Open Original Shared Link for Psychology Today. “If you’re using this gluten fear as just another channel for a bigger problem—like an eating disorder—then that’s of real concern.”

I looked up "Dr Mark Borigini" to see what his field of practice is, and he is - get this - indeed trained in rheumatology. He is listed online in medical doctor directories as that being his practice field. Not only that, but he has published online articles which quote him as an expert on addiction, has worked for the Veterans Administration in southern CA, and currently works for the NIH - National Institute of Health via the National Institute of Arthritis.

I'm sure that there could be a reason a Federal government employee of the American VA (that's the Dept of Defense wing which also runs the veteran's medical care) and NIH, who specializes in rheumatology is getting quoted as an expert in celiac and gluten intolerance diet necessity, and spreading misinformation, in the British tabloid media the same week that Daily Beast ran their hit piece, but it would be speculation to ask why, wouldn't it, other than the publisher of Daily Beast is also Tina Brown ?

The Daily Mail quotes the Daily Beast about a woman who went gluten free without being tested by a doctor:

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She told The Daily Beast: 'People noticed that I lost weight, and commented that I was such a ‘healthy’ eater, and that was positive reinforcement. Ultimately, my gluten-free diet became a weird space I put emotional baggage into.

'From the outside, people just thought I had allergy issues, but really, it veiled all these other things that were going on... I remember thinking if I were to let go and start eating wheat again, that I would balloon.'

Researchers estimate that some 80per cent of Americans who go gluten-free do not have celiac disease.

(bolding mine.)

Obviously, one is supposed to then conclude, according to the Daily Mail and Daily Beast, that it could be up to 80% of Americans are fad dieting when they eat gluten free.

And here we come to the heart of the matter:

  Quote

(from the Daily Beast 1//26/2013 )

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The (gluten free food) market has grown 28 percent annually since 2008, reaching $4.2 billion in sales in 2012, according to the research firm Open Original Shared Link, with an estimated 18 percent of adult consumers buying or eating gluten-free products. The FDA said it would issue new, and possibly stricter, rules for labeling gluten-free foods by the end of 2012, but Open Original Shared Link to release the new regulations.

The FDA has yet to release the new regulations. And certainly everyone wants to get the last word in on that, whether or not it's a good word or a sort of "neeyah, we don't really need this anyway, since the majority of gluten free eaters could be merely neurotic people trying to lose weight."

[mushroom]

Seems like we have come full circle again, back to the "it's all in your head" diagnosis. We are obviously masochists, firstly, because we like to deny ourselves the things we have grown up liking; we have poor body image and have been misguided into thinking this will help us lose weight; we have eating disorders that we disguise through pretending we must eat gluten free... OMG, really, my head is so messed up now, I think I need a shrink.

[Marilyn R]

OMG! My uncontollable diahhrea was the result of my emotional problems! I never thought of that. I thought the shame and depression were because of the D and malabsorbtion, guess I had it all bass ackwards, as well as my board certified gastroenterologist who told me to continue with the gluten-free diet despite negative test results, which are unreliable at best.

[bartfull]

Here's a different take on this: WE complain about all of the fad dieters who make it harder for folks to take us seriously. This article states that 18% of people are now buying gluten-free products. Only about 1% of people are estimated to have celiac. Admittedly, no one knows how many of us are NCGI, but it's probably nowhere near 17%. Say it's about the same as true celiac. That means 16% of the people buying gluten-free items are doing it because it's a fad.

And it wouldn't surprise me if SOME of them really DO have eating disorders.

I don't know which would be worse - for the fad to continue so that more gluten-free options become available even though people don't take us seriously, or for the fad to end. We might lose a lot of options, and I'm sure for a while people will still think we are hanging on to the fad, but eventually, when the next fad comes along, maybe people will start taking us seriously.

I just thank God there are companies like Udi's and Pamela's that are certified gluten-free, and have been around since before the fad arose. I know they will still be here long after places like Dominoes Pizza have started hawking the next trendy foods.

[mushroom]

Actually, bartful, the official 'estimate' for NCGI's is six for every celiac, so just a little over half are fad buying. Of course not all celiacs are diagnosed either, so there's actually no way of knowing people's reasons for purchase of gluten free food. Many probably start on a whim, wich turns out to work for them.

[kareng]

I wonder what they are counting as gluten-free foods that people are buying? Fritos now say gluten-free on them. Crunchmaster crackers happen to be gluten-free and say so but everyone I know buys them because they are tasty. They serve them in the same bowl with thier Ritz crackers. Chex say gluten-free on them but I doubt only people eating gluten-free eat them. I know several people who use Glutino pretzels because they are thicker and hold up better to thier beer cheese dip.

The eating disorder part - I have seen a few people with serious eating disorders on here. Gluten intolerance is a great excuse to eliminate another type of food. Then they see someone also says to eliminate dairy or soy and it gives them more things to eliminate with a great excuse. We can't do much about that except encourage them to go back to thier ED counselor.

[Takala]

I am not complaining about the "fad" dieters because it is the bureaucrats in the Federal Government, who are there (appointees or political patronage) because of their financial ties to the established, industrial food and pharmaceutical lobbies, which are DEFINING, erroneously, that this gluten free diet is a fad. They have no right to do that.

If one makes one's living dispensing pharmaceutical drugs with known, very serious and sometimes deadly side effects for an incurable, chronic disease, then one's livelihood is going to be threatened by those who defy the status quo, and self regulate their health and inflammatory responses, by selecting a diet which does not provoke their symptoms. They will lie and claim that diet adherents are promoting "cures," when the fact is that I, and anyone else, can not "cure" myself of the way my physical body processes and reacts to gluten, but I can damn well get rid of the auto immune reaction if I can avoid ingesting the trigger proteins. And I have a right to write about this first-hand, without being repeatedly slammed as promoting a false anecdote, without my integrity being impugned. So do the rest of us.

If there's now a multi billion dollar industry, with up to 18% of the population using at least some gluten free food, something is going on with regards to our food supply and with our digestive systems. If I keep running into other people with the same problem in real life, along with my spouse, without actively trying to, something is certainly happening ! I was quite prepared to be an anomaly, years ago. What is going on here ?

Re: the NIH - This seriously puts a dent in their western-styled, 'treating sickness should be used as a profit - generating activity' political-business model. This also puts a dent, or rather, another nail in the coffin, of the old American Food Pyramid, when the Federal Government tried to convert everyone in the country to a high % carbohydrate diet as a "health" endeavor, with miserable results. Good riddance! But it upsets the subset which is cleverly attempting to portray veganism as the next Big Healthy Eating evolution, because their proposed vegan diets typically rely on a great deal of grain carbohydrate from wheat products.

I don't care if other people want to eat vegan. I do care there are lobbyists in the GMO industry who are using vegans (or at least their characters as such in social media) to portray other forms of necessary food choices as immoral in a sort of "save the whales" fallacy of thought. And I do care that there are certain people in the popular newsmagazine media who are so uncomfortable with the thought that they could be "next" on the spinning wheel of life to be afflicted with a disease which means they might have to give up croissants, that they deny the entire concept of gluten intolerance. They should stop assuming that anyone "on a diet" is doing it for weight loss. They should rethink their constantly posting fashion photos of impossibly scrawny women dressed in very expensive clothes, as being desirable in our country, in the same publications running stories on "eating disorders." This isn't a popularity contest. This is life and death. They should have more compassion to those who are treated with such disdain by the established medical profession when they tell doctors foods make them feel sick.

Secondly, another point that people are missing is that many on a partial gluten free diet, defined as they purchased a gluten free food without a formal diagnosis of celiac, are doing so to avoid cross contaminating family members or avoiding cross contaminating a home kitchen, or to be able to offer something to guests who are visiting. Right there, that would at least double or triple the amount of gluten free products being sold with no "fad" behavior involved.

[dilettantesteph]

This made me mad and upset and then I talked to my daughter. She is young and thin so she is in that demographic anyway. The main reason that she is thin is that she wasn't absorbing her food properly for so long due to undiagnosed celiac disease. Several people have insinuated to her that she has an eating disorder already. The worst about it is that people won't take your needs seriously. Say you are in a restaurant and discussing your needs for careful preparation. Is the server going to take it seriously if they think that you just have an eating disorder? This is irresponsible reporting.

[Hala]

  On 1/31/2013 at 10:40 PM, dilettantesteph said:

This made me mad and upset and then I talked to my daughter. She is young and thin so she is in that demographic anyway. The main reason that she is thin is that she wasn't absorbing her food properly for so long due to undiagnosed celiac disease. Several people have insinuated to her that she has an eating disorder already. The worst about it is that people won't take your needs seriously. Say you are in a restaurant and discussing your needs for careful preparation. Is the server going to take it seriously if they think that you just have an eating disorder? This is irresponsible reporting.

You hit the nail on the head for me there. Coeliac disease has/still is causing me dramatic weight loss and I am currently horribly underweight. I already have to deal with people making judgements when they just walk past me, but when I have to make a big fuss every time I'm discussing food issues with a chef/waiter, I'm wondering whether they're thinking I'm making it all up due to some kind of eating disorder. The state of our lifelong health is in their hands, so if they don't take us seriously due to such preconceptions, it's a huge deal

[GFinDC]

  On 1/31/2013 at 1:46 AM, mushroom said:

...... OMG, really, my head is so messed up now, I think I need a shrink.

Now, haven't we all been saying that for a while now? Just kidding Shroomie!

It's sad that people get their heads all wrapped around the axle about losing weight like that woman in the article.

[mommida]

Wait a minute. I was flagged as an eating disorder at the Olympic training center as an eating disorder for lack of body fat. Not for what I actually ate, or didn't. My lack of body fat was actually dangerously low. That was years before actually knowing gluten was the real issue. Years of going to doctors, with no diagnoses to peek at the chart to see possible eating disorder or depression written down. (They should have tested for Celiac or any other malabsortion illness right then when I was a teenager.)

Would anyone have an issue with a person eating "heart smart" menu items without the person having a doctor's note? A family history of heart problems or just thinking it would be a healthy food option?

It's just time to stop picking on gluten free.

[Takala]

There's more.

Sora has this up: Mislabeling Medical Illness as a Mental Disorder

Here is the original link to the article in Psychology Today by Allen Frances, MD

DSM5 in Distress, the impact on mental health practice and research, mislabeling medical illness as a mental disorder 12/8/2012

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This is about how the American Psychiatric Association (APA) which is working on its 5th version of a new Diagnostic & Statistic Manual, version 5, aka "DSM-5," wants to make it much easier to call patients with undiagnosed, chronic pain "psychosomatic" with broadening the definition of Somatic Symptom Disorder. Also as having "psychogenic pain." In other words, "head cases."

Please read. Thank you, Sora, for the link, from the previous links I've put up one can see how several news magazines are attempting to lump gluten free dieting for gluten intolerance into the "eating disorder" category, and they quoted another National Institutes of Health rheumatologist, Borigini, who has worked for the Veteran's Admin and who also writes for Psychology Today in those articles. So it is not a coincidence that the anti gluten free diet brigade is quoting one of these other Psychology Today doctor- authors to attempt to give credence to their theme.

We need to get familiar with what terms these crooks in the "wheat lobbyist" business are using next to attempt to belittle patients who are not being adequately diagnosed and treated, including, but not limited to, a change of diet to avoid that which makes them ill.

quote from the above Psychology Today article:

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"The DSM-5 field trials produced results that should have scared off the Work Group. One in six cancer and coronary disease patients met the criteria for DSM-5 'Somatic Symptom Disorder.' Do we really want to burden and stigmatize seriously ill people with an additional diagnosis of mental illness, just because they are worried about being sick and are vigilant about their symptoms? Might patients with life threatening diseases become reluctant to report new symptoms that might be early indicators of recurrence, metastasis or secondary disease – for Open Original Shared Link of attracting a diagnosis of 'SSD'?

"The Work Group is not proposing to classify Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and Open Original Shared Link within the DSM-5 'Somatic Symptom Disorders' section, but these patients and others with conditions like chronic Lyme disease, interstitial cystitis, Gulf War illness and chemical injury will now become particularly vulnerable to misdiagnosis with a DSM-5 mental health disorder. In the field trials, more than one in four of the irritable bowel and chronic widespread pain patients who comprised the 'functional somatic' study group were coded for 'Somatic Symptom Disorder.'

"To meet requirements for Somatization Disorder (300.81) in DSM-IV, a considerably more rigorous criteria set needed to be fulfilled. There had to be a history of many medically unexplained symptoms before the age of thirty, resulting in treatment sought or psychosocial impairment. The diagnostic threshold was set high – a total of eight or more medically unexplained symptoms from four, specified symptom groups, with at least four pain and two gastrointestinal symptoms.

"In DSM-5, the requirement of eight symptoms is dropped to just one. And the requirement of 'medically unexplained' symptoms is replaced by much looser and more subjective 'excessive thoughts, behaviors and feelings' and the clinician's perception of "dysfunctional illness belief' or 'excessive preoccupation' with the bodily symptom.

"That, and a duration of at least six months, is all that is required to tick the box for a bolt-on diagnosis of a mental health disorder – Colorectal cancer + SSD; Angina + SSD; Type 2 diabetes + SSD; IBS + SSD.

(bolding mine to emphasize how this potential definition of "Somatization Disorder" by the APA impacts patients with no formal diagnosis of celiac who still have digestive troubles with the gluten grain family)

The amount of care and vigilance we have to perform in food shopping and preparation, to avoid cross contamination and illness, REALLY does not need to be used as an excuse to slap a label on the gluten intolerant community (and celiacs!) as a form of "mental illness" by the American Psychiatric Association ! Read that link above.

If they can't tell the difference between garden- variety OCD and our kitchen prep, they are performing malpractice. Think also about how careful diabetics have to be with their insulin. This is outrageous.

[dilettantesteph]

It can be really difficult to stick to the diet and the care necessary not to get glutened. Doubt makes it more difficult. We need support, not more doubt. Being misdiagnosed with a mental illness could lead to many of us to being ill from gluten for life because we wouldn't do the things necessary to avoid gluten. Having this as a possibility makes it more difficult to get the support needed from friends and family to stay gluten free. It is outrageous.