by Melissa Diane Smith

New to the topic of genetically modified organisms? Here’s a quick primer.

Imagine engineers manipulating common food crops and making them produce their own insectide or making them resistant to chemical herbicides that kill other plants. These sound like scenarios that you might see in a scary futuristic sci-fi movie, yet they have already happened and many of us are unknowingly eating foods that are genetically modified in one of these ways – or both of them – every day.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

A group of Italian researchers has written in the most clear medical language so far that non-celiac gluten sensitivity exists and affects many more people than celiac disease. But gluten sensitivity lacks definitive blood tests to diagnose it, so the best test right now to determine it is seeing if there is relief in symptoms from a gluten-free diet trial.

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by Melissa Diane Smith

If you’re confused about how you can find out if you’re gluten intolerant or not, here’s a rundown on the subject from three top experts.

Walk into your doctor’s office to try to find out if you’re gluten sensitive and you’ll almost always have trouble getting an answer. For one thing, your doctor may not want to run blood tests to test for the condition. If he does, he’ll probably only pay attention to tests that screen for tissue damage in the gut, an indicator of celiac disease. If the tests for tissue damage are negative, it’s common for a physician to ignore the test results that indicate an immune reaction (IgA and IgG gliadin antibody levels), even if those immune reaction tests come back positive. Many doctors simply tell their patients that they don’t have celiac disease and should keep eating a diet that contains gluten.

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