Avoiding Gluten Due to Belly Bloat?
Are You Avoiding Gluten Due to Belly Bloat?
Let me start out this post with a little history. Once, a long, long time ago when I was just starting out in my nutrition career, I learned about the gluten-free diet. It was, and is, prescribed for adults and children who are diagnosed with celiac disease.
If you’re not familiar, celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that causes a person to have an immune-type reaction to eating gluten.
So, what is gluten anyway?
Gluten is not a carbohydrate as some may suspect, but is actually a protein found in certain grains, like wheat. Gluten damages the intestinal tract in people with celiac disease causing various symptoms and malabsorption.
The symptoms of celiac disease need a complete article by itself because the way celiac disease shows up now is so different from the way it used to present itself 30 years ago. The only way to treat celiac disease, even now, is lifelong avoidance of gluten.
Back in the “old days”, it was very difficult to find gluten-free products. People with celiac disease usually had to find them in health food stores, if they were lucky enough to have one in their area. Otherwise, a person with celiac disease would be forced to avoid all bread, cereal, and pasta products entirely.
Not easy and not fun. Oh, and if they did find some gluten-free bread or pasta, it wasn’t very tasty from what I remember.
All of this background is why I had such a hard time hearing so many people I know announce that they were on a gluten-free diet. Being the dietitian that I am, I would always ask them whether or not they had celiac disease, and they would almost always say no.
Wait, what?! Why would you adopt such a difficult diet voluntarily? The answer was always, “Bread makes me bloated.”
What to do instead
So, I understand why people are doing this. Avoiding bread products makes them feel better.
However, recent research and a newer diet have been able to shed some light on why avoiding gluten-containing foods works on reducing belly bloat.
Monash University in Australia has shown that products made from wheat, rye, and barley, which contain gluten, also contain short-chain carbohydrates called fructans. These fructans cause water to flow into the small intestine and gas to form in the colon or large intestine.
Some people are more sensitive than others to this sudden expansion of the gut, so they have less tolerance and more symptoms. Recent studies show that people who are avoiding gluten because of belly bloat or other symptoms are actually reacting to the fructans in the bread, not the gluten.
Fructans are not the only carbohydrate known to cause these uncomfortable symptoms. There are several of them, and Monash University developed a diet to find out which carbohydrate affects each person suffering from IBS. The diet is oddly named the Low FODMAP diet.
This is not a fad diet and shouldn’t be started without some preparation. First of all, celiac disease is serious and must be ruled out before starting the Low FODMAP diet. Symptoms may improve on the diet even if celiac disease is present. It really is important to know if you have that diagnosis first.
Learn more about the Low FODMAP diet here. It is usually suggested for those with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). But if you want to try it for non-painful belly bloat associated with bread products and celiac disease has been ruled out, you could try the FODMAP Gentle approach.
Either way, full diet or gentle, you should definitely use a Monash-trained registered dietitian nutritionist to help guide you through the phases of the diet. It will make the process so much smoother. Monash University has a dietitian directory with a worldwide list of dietitians who have completed the training for their diet.
By the way, I’m a Monash-trained dietitian. So you can skip the directory and just contact me for more info.
References:
The Celiac Disease Foundation. https://celiac.org/about-celiac-disease/what-is-celiac-disease/
Monash University. https://www.monashfodmap.com/
Skodje GI, Sarna VK, Minelle IH, Rolfsen KL, Muir JG, Gibson PR, et al. Fructan, Rather Than Gluten, Induces Symptoms in Patients With Self-Reported Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity. Gastroenterology. 2018;154(3):529-39.e2.
Nordin E, Brunius C, Landberg R, Hellström PM. FODMAPs, but not gluten, elicit modest symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized three-way crossover trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2021.