Autoimmunity and wheat

Autoimmunity occurs when your own immune system is no longer able to distinguish friend from foe. It means that antibodies, lymphocytes, killer T cells, macrophages and inflammation-mediating proteins can’t tell the difference between, say, the protein of a fungal wall from proteins in your liver or joints. It’s as weird as a mother not recognizing her children, sometimes as tragic as friendly fire. Depending on which tissues in which organs are attacked, the misdirected immune attack of autoimmunity can express itself as autoimmune hepatitis (liver tissue), primary biliary cirrhosis (bile ducts), type 1 diabetes (pancreatic beta cells), uveitis (iris of the eye), skin (psoriasis), platelets (autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura), muscles (polymyositis), thyroid (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Grave’s disease), or just about any other organ or tissue. Wheat consumption has now been confidently identified as both the initiating process in autoimmunity, as well as a perpetuating factor. Autoimmunity is just one way that tells us that this “food” was never appropriate for human consumption in the first place. First consumed in desperation 10,000 years ago, after not consuming grains for the preceding 2.5 million years, then altered by the efforts of geneticists and agribusiness, increased wheat consumption accounts for the increasing landscape of multiple autoimmune conditions, especially type 1 diabetes in children (and, now, adults), Hashimoto&...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs