Celiac disease covers a spectrum of illness from ambiguous, relatively mild digestive symptoms to more destructive and even life-threatening disease. The digestive tract is injured by gluten proteins and does not work well.

When the diagnosis is first made, a gluten-free diet is prescribed. Wheat, barley, rye, and oats were excluded for many years on  gluten-free diets. Rice is the principle substitute for cereals. As a matter of policy, the Alpha Nutrition Program continues to leave out wheat, barley, and rye. Oats is an optional food that is introduced late in the program to assess acceptability for each individual.

Gluten and other food antigens make their way through human bodies in a remarkable fashion. Consider the long and improbable path of milk proteins through a mother's gut, into her blood, through her liver, out into her breast milk, through her infant's gut mucosa and into the infant's nasal mucosa to cause rhinitis, the infant’s lung to cause asthma, or the infant’s skin to cause eczema.

Page 2 of Tutorial on Gluten Diseases

Return to the Gluten Center

Gluten Free: Gluten restriction should be part of a more comprehensive diet revision, preferably in the form outlined in the Alpha Nutrition Program. The best dietary plans are based on what is good to eat, more than what is bad to eat! No-one wants to be confronted with long lists of foods they must avoid. It is better to build a diet from scratch, emphasizing the positive. There is an entire universe of foods not related to milk, gluten-cereals, and eggs, the most common problem foods!