While avoiding gluten might seem just another diet fad, there are actually a lot of people who would benefit from it, not just those with Coeliac disease. There is even a term for it: Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS).
NCGS describes patients who test negative for Coeliac disease and wheat allergy, but suffer from similar symptoms which disappear when gluten is avoided. Common symptoms include: abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhoea and constipation, but also joint pain, skin rashes, headaches, ‘brain-fog’, chronic fatigue, depression and ADHD-like behaviour.
Until recently we believed that NCGS did not involve intestinal damage, but new research shows that wheat exposure actually does cause damage to the intestinal cell lining and triggers an immune reaction.1 It is unclear, whether this immune reaction is caused only by gluten-proteins or if other components of wheat (like amylase-trypsin inhibitors and fructans, found in FODMAPS) are involved. Therefore it is also called Non-coeliac wheat sensitivity/ NCWS.
Up to 1 in 3 people are believed to be affected by NCGS/NCWS, making it much more common than Coeliac disease (1 in 100 suffer from coeliac disease, but are often undiagnosed).
Gluten has been shown to increase intestinal permeability (see Prof. Alessio Fasano’s work on zonulin), allowing larger food particles and pathogens to pass into the blood stream, where they cause an immune reaction. This is associated with some autoimmune diseases, which is why avoiding gluten can reduce flares and is often worth trialling.
If you want to find out, if it makes a difference to your symptoms, avoid all gluten containing foods for 6 weeks and keep a symptom diary. Then re-introduce and observe your reactions.
1 Uhde, et al., (2016). Intestinal cell damage and systemic immune activation in individuals reporting sensitivity to wheat in the absence of coeliac disease. BMJ Journals, 65(12), 1930-1937. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2016-311964
2 Fasano A. (2011). Zonulin and its regulation of intestinal barrier function: the biological door to inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer. Physiological reviews, 91(1), 151–175. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00003.2008