Yes, you will be asked to drop the roll of nickels on your right foot from a reasonable height. Don't worry, they weigh less than half a pound. We ask that starting first thing in the morning you drop the roll on your right foot. Then do this every 4 hours till you go to sleep for the night. Also do it if you wake up for a late night snack. Feel free to contact me if you would like to participate in this experiment.
Hopefully by now you have figured out that this is a facetious experiment. If you dropped that roll of nickels on your foot just once it very likely would not do any structural damage. If you did it several times every day for an extended period of time there would definitely be structural damage. It would probably start with soft tissue break down first and progress to microfractures. What if you didn't stop when there was obviously damage being done? Doesn't seem worth $2 does it?
You may ask what is the point of my stupid study? Well, hold your horses, I am getting there. There was an actual study published in The International Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology back in 2007. The authors wanted to know if people without celiac disease had any reaction to gluten. They introduced gluten to human tissues of the non celiac subjects. Here is the result quoted from the article:
The data obtained in this pilot study support the hypothesis that gluten elicits its harmful effect, throughout an IL15 innate immune response, on all the individuals.Every one of them had an innate immune response. That is crazy, weren't only people with celiac supposed to react to gluten? But it's no big deal right?
Yes, it is a big deal. What that means is the immune system is put on alert and made ready for a fight every time a person eats wheat, barley or rye. The innate immune system is what produces inflammation. Inflammation is suspected as a cause of many chronic diseases. Now if this is happening several times a day, is the immune system ready to fight off real dangers like viruses and infections? Or if the immune system is constantly agitated, it's eventually gonna want to fight something, right? It then begins to attack the body it is supposed to protect. This is what an autoimmune response is, the body attacking itself.
Some people have gluten intolerance that shows up very young and is prominent with the classic symptoms. Most others can tolerate gluten a bit more just like someone could tolerate dropping a roll of nickels on their foot. It may not be a problem early on but sooner or later it will catch up to you. To stop eating gluten is as obvious to some as stopping the nickel dropping experiment. Unfortunately, gluten is not an obvious problem to most people and even most experts.
CP
2 comments:
This is a great study share with people who wonder why anyone who does not suffer from celiac should avoid wheat. Thanks for posting!
Thanks for a great post! I believe we live in a day where Western Civ's history of eating processed food (a form unknown to our bodies until the last 100 years or so) is catching up with us. The few people untouched by western culture do not seem to succumb to autoimmune disease & such. I learned almost 4 years ago that gluten was the culprit making me ill. So, gluten is "evil" to me. :-)
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