Would You Like Dr. Drew To Be Your Doctor?

Think again.

Recently Dr. Drew interviewed actress Jennifer Esposito on his show where she was invited to talk about celiac disease. The interview turned to be truly astounding and shocking not only to the viewers who have celiac disease but also for people with any chronic illness or debilitating health conditions.

Jennifer has been struggling with unexplained symptoms and getting a diagnosis for 19 years until four years ago she was finally diagnosed with celiac disease. It was a long difficult journey that took its toll on her body and it is no wonder that one day she collapsed on the set of CBS’s Blue Bloods TV show.

However, CBC did not take her celiac disease seriously and as Jennifer twitted “CBS. . . PUT me on unpaid leave and has blocked me from working anywhere else after my doc said u needed a reduced schedule due to celiac.”

To make things worse the interview with Dr. Drew did not go well and was lacking compassion.

Dr. Drew was caught on camera as…

  • Having a god-complex: as a doctor Dr. Drew knows everything better than anybody else
  • Arrogant and offensive that somebody would dare challenge him
  • Ignorant
  • Dismissive of Jennifer’s symptoms
  • Unable to listen and hear what Jennifer Esposito  was trying to say about her experience with celiac disease
  • Felt offended by her knowledge about celiac disease and leaky gut syndrome that he is obviously missing
  • Doubted everything Jennifer was saying about celiac disease and that it could have such devastating consequences
  • He basically was trying to put his words in her mouth and he had difficulties accepting her version of the story that did not fit his agenda (who else knows better than you what happened to you and how do you feel?)
  • And the list goes on.

Sounds familiar? You probably can recall a similar situation that happened to YOU during a visit with your doctor.

Watch the video and decide for yourself:

Many thyroid patients can relate very well to how Jennifer feels and what she went through because unfortunately their situation in terms of difficulties to get diagnosed despite having symptoms is very similar.

On average it takes 6 to 8 physicians and a couple of years for thyroid patients to get a proper diagnosis and even longer if at all for the treatment to work.

We all heard many times from the ignorant physicians that:

  • “nothing is wrong with you”
  • “all our symptoms are in your head”
  • “it is just a part of getting older”
  • “you need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight”

Just because doctors have difficulties to diagnose the disease it does not mean that your symptoms are not real.

What Dr. Drew is missing about celiac disease?

Unfortunately, the common belief that gluten-free diet is all what people with celiac disease need in order to completely recover is far from reality.

The truth is that the traditional gluten-free diet does not work.

One study concluded that:

“Complete recovery of intestinal mucosa occurs very rarely in adult celiac patients despite adherence to gluten-free diet. “

After 16 months on the gluten-free diet only 8% of patients had “normalization” of the intestine confirmed by a biopsy. Complete recovery was found to be exceptionally rare in adult celiac patients despite following traditional gluten-free diet, symptoms disappearance and negative celiac disease related blood tests for antiendomysial antibodies of the immunoglobulin A (IgA) and anti-tTG antibodies.

According to this study, astonishingly 92% of people with celiac disease do not heal on the gluten-free diet. This happens due to the following reasons:

  1. Leaky gut syndrome when the intestinal lining becomes more permeable allowing yeast, toxins and larger undigested food molecules to go through and enter the bloodstream. This process is an underlying cause of adult food allergies, many unexplained symptoms and autoimmune diseases including celiac, Hashimoto’s and Grave’s.You cannot reverse celiac disease without healing leaky gut first but the traditional gluten-free diet does NOT fix leaky gut.
  2. About 65% of celiacs continue to show inflammation of the intestine after 2 years of strict gluten-free diet that was confirmed by medical tests and examination even though they appeared to be symptom-free.
  3. People with celiac disease have gut flora imbalances when bad bacteria multiply and take over the good ones. This process results in high amounts of toxins and toxic by-products produced by pathogenic bacteria and gut dysbiosis or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth that further damage the intestinal walls and trigger inflammation.
  4. Reaction to gluten-like proteins in foods that are assumed to be gluten-safe such as corn and other grains that are traditionally considered to not contain gluten.
  5. Cross-reactivity of gluten with 24 other common foods that can cause similar symptoms and reactions as gluten.
  6. Years of gluten induced damage to the intestines that cause malabsorption of nutrients and as a result multiple nutritional deficiencies and state of malnourishment despite eating enough food.  After 10 years of being gluten-free, about 56% of all people with celiac disease are likely to continue to be depleted in critical nutrients such as vitamins D, calcium, B12, folic acid and selenium caused by malabsorption.
  7. The traditional gluten-free diet has all the elements of the Standard American Diet that is high in carbohydrates, pro-inflammatory oils, sugar, soy, additives, preservatives and processed foods and lacks whole foods, fresh vegetables and nutrients.

You can NOT heal celiac disease if you continue to eat all these foods.

While eating gluten is toxic and a gluten-free diet is absolutely necessary, the traditional gluten-free diet does not address all these issues and is basically the wrong treatment for celiac disease. All what it does, it removes the trigger of autoimmunity but it does not heal the gluten induced intestinal damage.

A gluten-free diet alone is not enough to completely reverse celiac disease and this puts patients who follow this treatment protocol at higher risk to develop other autoimmune diseases and certain types of cancer.

How to reverse celiac disease the proper way

  • First and foremost the important step is to heal leaky gut and inflammation of the intestine.
  • Restore good intestinal bacteria and get rid of bad ones.
  • Reverse food allergies: Find out what foods you are allergic to and remove them during the healing phase. After the intestine is healed most people are able to re-introduce most of the foods with exception of gluten back into their diet.
  • Use digestive enzymes (such as MAX Digest) to help digest gluten after accidental consumption of gluten containing foods.
  • Choose highly nutritious, fresh whole foods instead of Standard American Diet.

P.S. The celiac community found Dr. Drew’s interview to be extremely disrespectful to all of those who have faced the everyday struggle of this disease. The community requests a public apology and a new episode about the truth of celiac disease. You can sign HERE to support this petition.

P.P.S. Do you like what you read and would like to read more? Subscribe to the Outsmart Disease thyroid blog updates and get your FREE e-mail course Nutritional guide for Hashimoto’s disease.

 

 

About Marina Gutner, PhD

Marina Gutner, PhD, researcher, medical writer, thyroid blogger, founder and Admin of Outsmart Disease who writes about life-changing treatments for hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's thyroiditis and autoimmune disease and how to balance hormones in women