Gluten-Free All-In-One For Dummies. Dummies Consumer

with celiac disease eats gluten, everything’s going along just fine until the gluten reaches the small intestine.

      The first thing that goes wrong at this point is that wheat causes the body – in all humans, not just celiacs – to produce too much of the protein zonulin. This excess of zonulin causes the junctions between cells in the small intestine to open too much, and next thing you know, there’s a party in the bloodstream and all sorts of things can get into the bloodstream that shouldn’t be there – things like toxins and gluten fragments.

      When stuff leaks through the intestinal wall that normally shouldn’t be able to, it results in a condition called leaky gut syndrome.

      So now, thanks to the excess of zonulin that was released because the person ate gluten, the gluten fragment has made its way into the bloodstream. In people with celiac disease, the body sees gluten fragments as invaders – toxins that shouldn’t be there. So it launches an all-out attack against these invaders, but – and here’s why celiac disease is called an autoimmune response – the body also attacks itself.