Presenter: Lisa Shaver, ND, LAc

Original Date: February 2, 2020

The gluten-free diet is a frequent staple in a practitioner’s list of modalities to use for a myriad of conditions. “Try a gluten-free diet” or “go gluten-free” has become a common phrase heard between friends and neighbors, nutritionists and bloggers. However, a gluten-free diet (GFD) is a medical prescription for celiac disease. When prescribing a therapeutic GFD prior to thoroughly testing for celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), a practitioner is unwittingly denying that patient a chance at revealing the root cause of symptoms and a life-long/permanent systems-damaging inflammatory autoimmune process with grave associated repercussions. We wouldn’t ask a non-type 1 diabetic to “try insulin” – it’s inappropriate. As conscientious practitioners, the medical and health community needs to be diagnosing celiac disease appropriately, or thoroughly ruling it out, prior to prescribing a GFD.

Dr. Shaver presents the top reasons why prescribing a GFD is unethical in the absence of first performing thorough testing for celiac disease and NCGS, from high risks of developing other unidentified autoimmune diseases to repercussions amid an entire family tree, to increase risks for cancers in celiacs who continue undiagnosed.

1.5 General CEUs approved by OBNM