Healthy hearts: Gluten-free diets don't help people without celiac disease, study finds

cbc.ca - Gluten-free diets shouldn't be promoted to prevent heart disease among people without celiac disease, gastroenterologists say after a large U.S. study.

The food industry has stimulated popularity in gluten-free diets. Recognizing this public interest, researchers at Harvard Medical School said they wanted to see whether avoiding gluten actually has health benefits for those without the disease.

To that end, Dr. Andrew Chan, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, and his team used diet and health outcome data collected from 110,000 health professionals over 26 years to link estimates of gluten in the diet to diagnoses of coronary heart disease.

Celiac disease affects one to two per cent of Canadians, or about 300,000 people, Health Canada estimates.

The researchers recognized that celiac disease is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, which is reduced after these individuals go gluten free. (ontinueReading