Despite my training as a scientist, I stopped eating gluten about two years ago to reduce joint pain from osteoarthritis. I’m a believer even though I have found no convincing support in the medical literature. Normally I reject ideas (Beau would say I could stop this sentence right there) that are not supported by decently large studies from reputable sources without a financial stake in the outcome and with statistically significant results versus placebo. I don’t find any such studies. I’ve looked.
But my friend Todd (okay, with that kind of opening you know I’ve gone off the rails because I’m basing this whole lifestyle change on one friend’s theory, and he’s a sales guy in solar technology, nary a medical degree in sight) was visiting about five years ago, and mentioned that he’d eliminated gluten from his diet to reduce joint pain.
Note that I filed this away for three years before even trying it. After all, it was just Todd, not the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins or UCSF or anything. As far as I know, Todd doesn’t even have an fMD (foreshadowing a story to come about my fake degrees).
Three years after Todd’s visit, I was getting frustrated by the lack of reputable treatments for my still-mild-but-advancing osteoarthritis. On my friend Ryn’s advice, I read a series of books about reducing inflammation through diet, by an MD named Gundry. I’ll save you the time and money required to buy and read three of his books: Gundry recommends eliminating tomatoes. I feel like that's enough right there, but he also decries a lot of other foods that make my life happy. Stop eating all the foods you like, recommends Gundry, in a nutshell. Some nuts are okay with him, though, like Brazil nuts, my least favorite.
It’s true that I would no longer have osteoarthritis, because I’d waste away to a tumbleweed and blow away across the desert. You watched Roadrunner cartoons, right? Like that.
So two years ago, I recalled Todd’s idea about gluten-free living, and decided to try it. I fully expected Todd’s theory to be hogwash, but I knew how to do it because one of my kids is a celiac. She’s also an extraordinarily good baker and knows which GF flour and which GF pasta brands are best.
After two weeks of GF living, huh! By (xanthan) gum, didn’t my joints feel better? I could walk down the stairs first thing in the morning without my feet hurting, without supporting as much of my weight as possible on the handrails. My fingers felt better: I could squeeze them closed without pain, and then open them right up again! As they'd say on Batman, POW!
But I’m a scientist, at least by training. I have diplomas, somewhere, to attest to it. As a scientist, I ascribed my better quality of life to the most reasonable reason: placebo effect. Had to be! There’s no evidence that eliminating gluten works, other than anecdotal evidence from Todd and a few internet people I don’t know and who probably are wackos.
And then one night around midnight, three weeks into my GF experiment, I woke up with fingers throbbing. Aha! said I triumphantly---in my head, so I didn’t wake Beau. Ha! The placebo effect is wearing off. Ha! I can stop this annoying GF diet and just accept this joint pain as a side effect of age. It’s not that bad, I told myself. Some people don't get to be this age, the first prime number in the seventh decade of life. It's not that high a price.
In the morning I remembered we had eaten Trader Joe tilapia fillets for dinner the night before. Checked the package—oh heck. They’re battered with panko, and the panko was made of wheat flour, as default panko tends to be.
I’d accidentally done a double-blind experiment on myself.
It counts as double-blind because I was both the administrator of the tilapia and the test subject. You can argue that it’s a single-blind experiment, and you might win, depending on the jury.
Now I am a believer. Joints feel better, and I imagine that by not eating gluten I’m also slowing down the inevitable progress of osteoarthritic joint damage. So now I eat never eat gluten.
What, never? No, never. What, never? Well…hardly ever.
Sometimes I choose to eat gluten, knowing that I’ll pay the price with increased joint pain for the next day or two. Most foods just aren’t worth it, because there are excellent GF equivalents. However, a chewy New York bagel, with that perfect thin, shiny crust. The deep-dish spinach pie with red head at Windy City Pizza. Also the black sesame cake, in the eponymous story that's about to be published on this site.
Otherwise I’m gluten-free, for reasons supported only by Todd and my one double-blind experiment.
I don’t care if they revoke my science degrees. I feel better.
[Photo creds: Business Insider. They identify the molecule as gluten, but astute readers will recognize the molecule as gliadin, a component of gluten. Gliadin is the real culprit when it comes to celiac disease. Dunno if it's also responsible for my alleged joint pain.]
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