Sourced from: Infinite Health Blog, by Dr. Davis,
originally posted on the Wheat Belly Blog: 2012-11-06
What do you
have that chimps don’t have?
Besides your nice new iPhone and a receding
hairline, what do modern Homo sapiens have that chimpanzees do not?
Image courtesy Wikipedia
I recently attended a
conference in which Dr. Alessio Fasano spoke. Dr. Fasano is a
noted celiac disease investigator who has dissected out the
details of bowel “leakiness” characteristic of the
disease. We also had an opportunity to speak: He is a
brilliant and engaging scientist with a great sense of humor
who laid out revelation after revelation.
Among the issues he highlighted was the
fact that Homo sapiens have a gene that no other species
possesses, a gene for a modified form of the protein haptoglobin.
Ordinarily, haptoglobin is responsible for “cleaning up”
free hemoglobin in the bloodstream. Hemoglobin is contained within red
blood cells but, when damaged, free hemoglobin is released which is
toxic; haptoglobin then “cleans” up the hemoglobin for disposal.
Humans are the only species with a
modified form of haptoglobin, programmed by a gene acquired
after human predecessors, Australopithecus, diverged from
“Pan” apes, chimpanzees and bonobos, and transitioned
towards ancestral Homo species. This protein is
haptoglobin 2. The functions of this protein are
distinct from haptoglobin’s role of hemoglobin scavenging.
Haptoglobin-2 has another name: zonulin.
Zonulin proteins are found within intestinal cells, or enterocytes, with
production/release triggered by various foreign bacteria, such as
strains of E. coli and Salmonella Once triggered
by bacteria, zonulin is responsible for creating bowel
“leakiness,” allowing water to leak into the bowel:
diarrhea, an adaptive response that develops in response to foreign
invaders to flush them out. (Cholera toxin is the penultimate example
of this effect, resulting in gallons of watery diarrhea.)
By a quirk of nature, the wheat protein, gliadin,
mimics the effects of foreign bacteria and it, too, triggers
zonulin. But this function is flawed in that it generates a two-way
response: Not only can water exit, but intestinal contents are able to
gain entry in the opposite direction: into the bloodstream.
Among the most fascinating findings of
Dr.“Fasano’s work: The gliadin-zonulin leak effect occurs not
just in people with celiac disease or gluten-sensitivity; it occurs
in everybody. The effect is longer and more pronounced
(5-fold greater) in the enterocytes of people with celiac disease,
but the effect of increased two-way leakiness spares nobody.
Only humans have the gene for haptoglobin-2
or zonulin. Chimpanzees and other primates do not have this gene.
Interestingly, humans experience 75 different forms of autoimmune
disease, while chimps experience none. Dr. Fasano
presented compelling evidence, including increased zonulin blood
levels, that this mechanism of intestinal leakiness underlies
multiple inflammatory and autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid
arthritis, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, Crohn’s disease,
celiac disease, and type“1 diabetes.
Dr. Fasano was reluctant to declare that,
based on his findings, bowel leakiness induced by wheat gliadin was
sufficient reason to banish all wheat from the human diet, as he is
a very careful scientist who feels he has to further explore this
avenue and chart out all the details before making such a bold
pronouncement. But I have no such qualms. And, besides, the potential
for bowel leakiness is only one among many reasons to lose the wheat.
Lose the wheat, lose the zonulin-triggered
bowel leakiness that can lead to the myriad forms of autoimmune
and inflammatory diseases.
