Presenter: Lisa Shaver, ND, LAc

Original Date: October 19, 2019

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 even between friends and neighbors, nutritionists and bloggers. However, a gluten-free diet (GFD) is a medical prescription for celiac disease. When prescribing a GFD prior to thoroughly testing for celiac disease, 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 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, 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.

1.0 Ethics CEUs approved by OBNM