An overview of gluten intol­er­ance by Dr Jana Mostert:

If your lit­tle fin­ger does not reach to the last joint on your ring fin­ger, you may be genet­i­cally pre­dis­posed to gluten intol­er­ance (Braly’s sign)

Gluten is a pro­tein com­pound found in some grains (high­est in Wheat).  Gluten is what makes dough “sticky” and pli­able, giv­ing bread its chewy con­sis­tency.  Extra gluten is often added to shop bought wheat breads to make them even softer and chewier than if only plain wheat flour is used.  Although wheat con­tains the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of gluten of all the grains, it is also present in Bar­ley, Rye, Oats and Spelt.

The mucous mem­brane lin­ing of the intestines become inflamed in peo­ple that are gluten intol­er­ant when gluten is con­sumed.  This con­stant inflam­ma­tion may even­tu­ally dam­age the intesti­nal lin­ing to a point that absorp­tion of nutri­ents is neg­a­tively affected.

Celiac dis­ease is diag­nosed if gluten intol­er­ance is bad enough to cause atro­phy (thin­ning) of the intesti­nal lin­ing with severe nutri­ent depletion.

The most com­monly expe­ri­enced symp­toms of gluten intol­er­ance are abdom­i­nal bloat­ing and cramps, flat­u­lence,  diar­rhoea and/ or con­sti­pa­tion, with a whole range of less com­mon symp­toms e.g.  eczema, sinusi­tis, weight gain, swelling, fatigue and low iron levels.

Gluten intol­er­ance is caused by genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion com­bined with gluten con­sump­tion and trig­ger­ing fac­tors like stress­ful events.  Peo­ple with Braly’s sign, where the lit­tle fin­ger is much shorter than the last joint of the ring fin­ger, are much more likely to be gluten intol­er­ant than the gen­eral population.

Test­ing for gluten intol­er­ance by blood tests will only be pos­i­tive if there is severe diges­tive inflam­ma­tion and gluten is still con­sumed (blood anti-transaminase, anti-myelysin and anti-gliadin).  Genetic tests can also high­light a ten­dency to gluten intol­er­ance (the mark­ers of HLA-DQ2 or HLA-DQ8 hap­lo­type) but are extremely expen­sive and only shows a pre­dis­po­si­tion to gluten intol­er­ance and not that the dis­ease is present.  An anti-gliadin stool test can be per­formed if the patient is cur­rently eat­ing gluten , and biores­o­nance tests e.g. BIORES or BEST tests can be pre­formed (which are cost effective).

Treat­ment of gluten intol­er­ance is com­plete or par­tial avoid­ance of gluten, depend­ing on the sever­ity of the symp­toms.  In peo­ple that are highly gluten intol­er­ant as lit­tle as a knife­point (1g) of gluten can cause intesti­nal dam­age.  L-glutamine (an amino acid that is only related to gluten by name) is highly effec­tive in repair­ing intesti­nal lin­ing damage.

Ref­er­ences:
Braly, J and Hog­gan, R; Dan­ger­ous grains 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten