It's estimated that while no one is born with celiac disease, 1 out of 250 habitancy worldwide will invent it at some point in their life. If you live in the United States your odds are about twice that. If you are a caveman, your odds of getting it are zero.
How do you feel? Less than perfect? You might even have it yourself. Most cases of celiacs aren't diagnosed until the patient is gravely ill. That means that a lot of habitancy (possibly even you) are leading their lives in quiet desperation and may never know why.
So what is celiac disease? Technically, it's just an adverse reaction to gluten. Over time it destroys the small intestine's potential to assimilate nutrients. Other than maybe a genetic predisposition to this disease, there is no known cause and no known cure.
What's a gluten? It's a protein found in grains. If you eat bread, pasta, doughnuts, pancakes anyone else containing grain, you are eating glutens. Because it acts as a binding agent it's also found in a lot of non grain products as well. There is a lot of gluten in our processed food.
Why is celiacs so hard to diagnose? Partly because the symptoms range all over the board, from irritable bowl syndrome to itchy rashes to osteoporosis to sudden weight loss to about a hundred other things. As your diet changes the symptoms can get best or worse and even smoking (for anyone reason) seems to offer some security against this disease. So, in a sense, your physician is shooting at a animated target.
Speaking of shooting at a animated target, ever see those pictures of the Indians covered in buffalo hides, sneaking up on the buffaloes? Well, one day they noticed that when lightening struck the ground and burned a section of forest, the grass grew back very lushly and attracted a lot of buffalo. So after a while, they just lit an area on fire, waited for the grass to grow back, disguised themselves as a buffalo and let the animals come to them. Sure was a lot easier than chasing herds of buffalo over the prairie.
Back to celiac disease. For 2.5 million years we didn't eat grain. Consequently, we didn't have celiac disease. Then about 10,000 years ago we invented agriculture and started eating grain. It wasn't a natural food for us, but it tasted good and most habitancy could cope it pretty well. Unfortunately, the habitancy who couldn't tolerate it normally had kids before they died. Otherwise, by now we would all have adapted to it.
The qoute is we don't have the permissible perspective of time. As far as we are concerned, everybody has all the time eaten bread, pasta, etc. And it should be just fine. That just isn't the case. In reality 10,000 years isn't long sufficient for most of us to adjust to the poison. It would be the equivalent to person seasoning your eggs this morning with arsenic and expecting you to adjust to it by lunchtime.
While there is no cure for celiac disease, every physician will tell you that if you go on the Paleo diet the symptoms will disappear. Also, if you are suffering from arsenic poisoning, most doctors would recommend......well.....you get the point.
