Making “Light” of Gluten Sensitivity Will Harm More than Help

A patient sent me a response from an “As the Doctor” column hosted by Drs. Oz and Roizen entitled “Don’t buy into gluten phobia by cutting grains”. This response was to a reader’s question who asked: “My family consumes a lot of 100 percent whole-grain wheat products, but I've heard so much about gluten problems that I'm worried we're harming our health. Should we cut back? — Anonymous”

Part of their response was as follows: “Because gluten gets more bad press than Lindsay Lohan, gluten-free foods have become a fad. We're going against the grain and suggesting you keep doing exactly what you're doing.”

My patient was irate and I don’t blame her.  She stated that: “Oz and Roizen are showing their ignorance when they did not even ask the gluten concerned person to look at a family history for autoimmune diseases before dismissing the issue.  Personally, I think these men are doing a lot of damage and are missing the mark.” 

She went on to state: “…the general public does not understand gluten sensitivity and the dangers involved.  After reading this little sound bite over their morning coffee and a bagel, people will be less likely to be checked for gluten sensitivity.  The financially strapped person will be more likely to disregard the issue since it is easy and cheap to fill up a hungry family's belly with bread than nutritious fruits and vegetables.”

In the authors’ defense they made a brief attempt to define celiac disease and how it affects the small intestine and they did include that “Some experts feel that gluten sensitivity affects far more people than the 1 percent of Americans who know they have celiac disease“. But when listing symptoms associated with a gluten intolerance that their reader should be on the lookout for, all they could come up with was the following: “itchy, blistery rash, having really awful smelling poop or even vague symptoms, like feeling unusually irritable”.

Hmmm. What about: 

• Depression, anxiety
• Infertility/miscarriages
• Neurological disorders
• Headaches / Migraines
• Memory Loss
• Unexplained chronic fatigue
• Increased liver enzymes
• Iron-deficiency anemia
• Osteoporosis
• Autoimmune disease
• Craving for  gluten
• Obesity
• Diarrhea and/or constipation
• Gas, bloating, abdominal pain
• IBS, colitis
• Frequent canker sores
• Dental problems
• Psoriasis, eczema or unexplained rash

I know it’s a long list but that’s the point isn’t it?  My patient was exactly right, Dr Oz and Roizen’s dismissal of gluten-free as a “fad” and “phobia” will certainly prevent many people who had been considering looking into it from doing so.  And what a terrible shame that is.

Well, I’m not on Oprah but I am committed to getting the word out.  Let’s overcome any negative influence this article may have had by investing some time and effort into enlightening friends, family and co-workers of the TRUTH about gluten. 

Please let me know what I can do to assist.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Why Vitamin D Levels Won't Rise Despite Supplementation

It’s estimated that nearly one billion people around the world are deficient in vitamin D and need to be supplemented. We’ve discussed the important functions that vitamin D performs in earlier posts (see post of May 4, 2008) but let’s summate the highlights of its function.

Benefits of Vitamin D:
1. It strengthens your immune system, reducing your risk of cancer as well as colds and flu.

2. It affects the development and maintenance of bone health. In people who are vitamin D deficient, you will see a wide variety of bone disorders, such as osteoporosis, osteopenia and osteomalacia - the inability to mineralize bone, causing pain and weakness.

3. It has been shown to improve hypertension and drastically reduce the risk of heart disease.

4. It can help with diabetes, psoriasis and there are even some studies that link Alzheimer's disease, depression and multiple sclerosis to low vitamin D levels.

5. Deficiency is associated with musculoskeletal pain and fibromyalgia.

6. It is commonly malabsorbed in patients with celiac disease and gluten intolerance. Note: vitamin D deficiency subsequent to celiac disease and intestinal damage has been discussed previously and is not the focus of this post.

All too often patients are supplemented with vitamin D only to find in subsequent testing that they are still deficient. Knowing the importance of normalizing these levels for optimal health, the patient is left frustrated as they have followed their clinician’s instructions accurately.

What is the reason? There appear to be two major reasons vitamin D supplementation does not work adequately. The good news is that there IS a solution.

1. It has been a protocol for some time to use vitamin D2 as a supplement when D levels are found to be very low. Prescribing 50,000 IU for several weeks to a patient very deficient in vitamin D has been a standard accepted protocol.

Research reveals flaws in this protocol. The vitamin D2 potency is less than one third that of vitamin D3. Vitamin D2 has a shorter half-life in the blood and a lower affinity for the vitamin D binding protein. What this means is that according to a recent study in the French Internal Medicine Review, “vitamin D2 should not be regarded anymore as suitable for supplementation or fortification.”

So if you’ve been supplementing with vitamin D2 switch to D3 and recheck your levels in a few months. You should also feel much better with this preferred form.

2. Very recent research brings another very important issue to light. Retinol, a form of vitamin A, competes with vitamin D (even the preferred vitamin D3) and prevents its absorption. When you supplement vitamin A you can do it in two forms. Beta carotene, or pre-vitamin A derived from vegetables (or a supplement) which, in your intestines, is converted into the correct amount of retinol needed by your body. Your body will not convert beta carotene into excessive levels of vitamin A. Retinol, the other means of supplementing vitamin A, when given directly as a supplement, bypasses the natural controls of the body as seen above when beta carotene is the source. One could, therefore, get too much vitamin A in the form of retinol.

In an ideal world, all the vitamin A you require would come from vegetables you ate and all the vitamin D you need would come from sunlight. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a place and many of us are deficient. And as discussed previously, we are not a culture that excels in consuming adequate quantities of vegetables.

Cancer, heart disease and diabetes are leading killers of Americans. As an example, a study by Dr. William Grant, Ph.D., a research scientist, found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D. That’s truly fantastic!

Since proper vitamin D status is known to lessen the incidence of these diseases, it is critical that you maintain an optimal status.

But what if another supplement interfered?


In the recent British Medical Journal 2010; 340:b5500, an article entitled:
“Association between pre-diagnostic circulating vitamin D concentration and risk of colorectal cancer in European populations: a nested case-control study” was published. In this article the researchers confirmed that low vitamin D levels are a risk for colon cancer and those with the highest levels are half as likely to develop the disease as compared to those with the lowest levels.

However, what they almost missed was that vitamin D levels are almost entirely negated in those with the highest vitamin A intake. Ingesting vitamin A, in the form of retinol could negate the effect of supplementing with vitamin D, even with levels as low as 3,000 IU/day. That is not a high dose.

Many people are completely losing the benefits they could receive from adequate vitamin D due to taking vitamin A (retinol), either in the form of multi-vitamins or cod liver oil.

Many people take cod liver oil based on the fact that it DOES contain vitamin D, A and omega-3 fatty acids. Now it appears that it should be avoided. Vitamin A and D do work together but the form of vitamin A (beta carotene vs retinol) and the ratio between the two must be balanced. On the other side of the coin consider this: being deficient in vitamin A precludes the proper function of vitamin D.

Like most things in nutrition (and life), neither too much nor too little is beneficial.

While it’s unclear what the exact correct ratio is, we do know this: vitamin A should be ingested in the beta carotene form, not retinol. Based on this research it seems unlikely that the amount of beta carotene gotten in a multiple vitamin would create any imbalance to vitamin D absorption.

Help me spread the word about this. In our clinic we see an abundance of patients deficient in vitamin D. Optimizing those levels create wonderful health benefits.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance. If you would like to improve your health consider calling us for a free health analysis - call 408-733-0400. We are a destination clinic and we treat patients from across the country and internationally. You don't need to live locally to receive help.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen
Founder of HealthNOW Medical Center
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”