Treatment Guide

Lady Gaga Jumps on the Gluten-Free Diet Bandwagon – Perhaps With Good Reason

John Libonati Gluten Free Works

lady gaga gluten free

Is Lady Gaga Going Gluten Free For Her Health??

According to a news release on MSN.com, Stefani Germanotta (a.k.a. Lady Gaga) is the newest celebrity to say she’s going gluten-free. She made the announcement on the latest leg of her ‘Born This Way Ball’ tour.

She is described as doing so in order to “make sure she is in the best shape for the grueling workout.”

Then the article drops a bombshell… “Her aim is to drop 10 lbs in a month.”

This is where celiac disease experts, bloggers and media know-it-alls usually start lobbing grenades.

Why the Big Deal?

Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity are serious medical conditions that require a gluten-free diet. Many people diagnosed with one or both disorders chafe at the fact that they cannot eat what they want. While a diagnosis is important, medical professionals and the media emphatically make the groundless claim that the gluten-free diet can be bad for your health unless you are medically diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

Lady Gaga is reported to have neither celiac disease nor gluten sensitivity in the MSN article. The article emphasizes her aim to use the diet to get in shape and lose 10 lbs in a month.

Lady Gaga goes on gluten free diet

Lady Gaga has switched to a gluten free diet as she begins the latest leg of her ‘Born This Way Ball’ tour inSofia,Bulgaria.

Lady Gaga has switched to a gluten free diet.

The ‘Poker Face’ singer has started the next leg of her huge ‘Born This Way Ball’ tour inSofia,Bulgaria, and she has opted to go on a new diet to make sure she is in the best shape for the grueling workout.

A source said: ”Gaga has decided to go on a major body blitz and cut out all gluten and wheat from her diet, which is very hard to do. She has given her people strict instruction to advise staff at venues and restaurants about her new diet because she is taking it very seriously.

”Her aim is to drop 10lb in a month.”

The 26-year-old singer is thought to be rationing her carbohydrate intake to just two portions a week, and living off a diet mainly consisting of fish, chicken and vegetables.

The source added: ”She allows herself one potato or rice portion a week and has been snacking on Ginnybake cakes from wholefood shops – they are gluten free cookies.”

 

Before pulling their grenade pins, people who would attack Ms. Gaga should look at her history and examine the article closely, especially the line, “thought to be rationing her carbohydrate intake to two portions a week, and living off a diet mainly consisting of fish, chicken and vegetables.”

How credible is the article if it is based on the “thought” of some unknown person? Also, it seems the story’s reporters received little training in nutrition since most vegetables consist mainly of carbohydrates. Potatoes are vegetables and Ginnybake cakes are virtually 100% carbohydrates. So much for rationing carbohydrates.

Why Might Lady Gaga Adopt a Gluten-Free Diet?

Digging into Lady Gaga’s history, especially her health history, may help reveal reasons she may have for adopting a gluten-free diet that are not covered in the MSN.com news feature.

Stefani Germanotta is smart. She has built an enormous fortune in a relatively short period of time and catapulted herself from complete nobody to one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world in 6 years. According to Forbes, she made $100 million in 2011. During a television interview, she claimed she had purposefully studied ultra-successful celebrities and planned her rise to stardom by employing the strategies and tactics they implemented.

But just because a person is smart and successful, does not mean she is healthy.

Lady Gaga has a history of depression dating back to her teens. In an interview with Lifetime’s “The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet” she admitted, “I was very depressed when I was 19. I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there and it was lonely and it was still. It was just my piano and myself. And I had a television that I would leave on all the time to feel like there was someone hanging out with me.” As Gaga recently told aUKmagazine, “I have a chronic sadness that recurs… I was overwhelmingly sad, and I didn’t know why, because I had all these things to be happy about.” This admission offers psychologists and the media an easy rationale for health or personality issues, “It’s in her head.” Like many people, she self-medicated. Instead of food or alcohol or cigarettes, her choice was cocaine, which she gave up when she realized it was impeding her success. A history of drug use offers reporters and medical professionals another convenient excuse for future health issues, “She’s a drug addict.”

But, could her sadness be due to chronic nutritional deficiencies? Gaga’s statement, “I was so sad and didn’t know why,” is common among people with celiac disease and completely in line with someone suffering from nutritional deficiencies.

There have been other health problems.

Lady Gaga was forced to cancel concerts due to bouts of dizziness and fatigue.

Most relevant to this article, she tested mildly positive for systemic lupus erythematosus in 2010. At the time, Gaga reported having no symptoms. However, investigative journalist, Ian Halperin, who wrote biographies of Michael Jackson, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, said in a July interview with Star Magazine that Gaga’s outfits are not just for spectacle but help disguise her illness. Halperin went on to say, “her lupus is far worse than she lets on. Part of the reason she wears wigs and make-up is because her hair is falling out and she’s covered in red blotches, both side effects of the disease.”

If this is true, then Lady Gaga could be quite sick. It could also help explain her decision to adopt a gluten-free diet.

Why? Because lupus has been connected to gluten.

Systemic Lupus Erythamatosus is a serious autoimmune disease that is sometimes fatal. Lupus is Latin for “wolf” and erythematosus means “redness.” Together, these terms refer to the reddened lesions resembling a wolf bite that appear on the face of people with SLE. Other symptoms include fever, weight loss, arthritis, nervous-system problems, and sometimes heart and kidney damage.

Common treatments include prednisone and other powerful medicines that suppress the immune system and can result in side effects including anxiety, depression, bloating and weight gain, none of which are attractive prospects for superstar celebrities who have to operate at their max while fitting into body revealing costumes. Most doctors do not consider food sensitivities when evaluating SLE patients.

This is a shame, because in some cases, lupus was discovered not be lupus at all. The real culprit was gluten sensitivity.

Gluten sensitivity can be misdiagnosed as SLE. Gluten sensitivity, or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, includes adverse health reactions stemming from an immune reaction to gluten. These reactions can produce lupus-like symptoms.

The potential for misdiagnosis was presented in the medical case report ‘Gluten Sensitivity Masquerading as Systemic Lupus Erythamatosus’ published by Dr. M. Hadjivassiliou where three patients who had been misdiagnosed with SLE completely recovered when gluten was removed from their diet and were taken off their SLE medications.

Celiac disease, like gluten sensitivity and lupus, is an immune system mediated disorder. In this case, the body attacks gluten, but like lupus ends up destroying its own tissues, especially along the lining of the small intestine resulting in nutrient deficiencies. One of the classic symptoms of celiac disease is a bloated abdomen, but symptoms can affect any body system and mimic other autoimmune disorders such as SLE.

Celiac disease is estimated to be successfully diagnosed by medical experts less than 5% of the time, usually years after symptoms first start to show. The diagnostic antibody blood tests are not pass/fail and are not 100% accurate, yet most doctors who would even consider celiac disease rely on them exclusively and tell their patients “you don’t have it” if the tests return a negative result. In fact, a negative result just means the patient’s antibody levels at that particular time are not high enough to warrant an intestinal biopsy.

Most doctors are clueless about gluten sensitivity. Even the majority of celiac experts discounted the idea that gluten could cause non-celiac symptoms until very recently. Gluten sensitivity prevalence estimates are unknown. Reports seem to range between 8 to 30% of the population. Some are higher.

This means the average person with a gluten-related disorder is far more likely not to receive a prompt and proper diagnosis by a doctor. Yet media and medical professionals claim no one should remove wheat, barley, rye and oats from their diet unless diagnosed by a medical professional.

Considering gluten sensitivity would never enter most doctors’ radars when forming a diagnosis, what is the percentage of people who are similarly misdiagnosed?  Well, in one study, 23.3% of 103 patients with SLE tested positive for gluten antibodies. That means almost one in four patients were experiencing an immune reaction to gluten, or gluten sensitivity reaction.

Is Lady Gaga misdiagnosed with lupus, when she actually suffers from gluten sensitivity? Is this partially behind her rationale to start a strict gluten-free diet?

Although the Lupus Foundation of America’s website mentions nothing about the gluten-free diet as an alternative treatment, a quick Google search of “lupus and gluten” returns tons of forum posts and blog articles describing the connection between gluten and lupus and descriptions by patients about improvement or remission of their symptoms when they adopted a gluten-free diet.

Lady Gaga undoubtedly has access to the internet, and like most people, probably uses Google, the #1 search engine in the world, to research topics. Maybe she discovered the link between gluten and lupus.

What is Gluten and Why is Not Eating It Such a Big Deal, Really?

Gluten is the term that describes the storage proteins found in grains of wheat, barley, rye and oats. These plants are not air. They are not water. Frankly, none of them are necessary for life or good health. And regardless of the massive marketing efforts of cereal producers, all four of these grains are pitifully poor in nutrients unless fortified – with synthetically produced vitamins.

In fact, populations with no access to these weeds happily lived gluten-free for thousands of years. They worked, raised children, built civilizations, and blissfully went about their business without ever realizing they were missing out on gluten. Nobody told them they were jeopardizing their health by not eating gluten as our news and medical people tell us. And speaking of health, they did not have the soaring rates of cancer, mental disorders and autoimmune diseases our gluten-reliant populations are experiencing.

The Paparazzi Perpetuates Misinformation

Most media reporters do not understand diet or nutrition, think doctors know everything about health, and tend to disregard context and focus on sensational points in stories.

An article about a weirdo celebrity jumping on a fad diet in a vain attempt to lose weight is much juicier than a performer adopting a gluten-free lifestyle in an attempt to treat her lupus and maintain her energy levels during an exhausting music tour.

So Where Does This Leave the Newly Gluten-Free Lady Gaga?

The entertainment industry is cut throat and demanding. Drug addiction, extreme dieting and acting weird will not affect an actor or musician’s ability to get work. These things tend to generate publicity, which brings fame and money. On the other hand, being reputed to have an incurable, debilitating, sometimes fatal disease will definitely have a negative impact. Producers and tour executives know a performer who cancels shows loses them money. A smart, incredibly determined and highly successful celebrity like Gaga knows how they think and knows that being seen as quirky is a whole lot safer than being seen as sick.

Just because you are a world famous superstar making $100 million per year doesn’t mean your doctors can always figure out what’s wrong with you or will prescribe you the right treatment. Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley come to mind.

Perhaps Lady Gaga is jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon in a quest to get in shape and lose weight, thereby continuing her pursuit of stratospheric fame and fortune.

Or, maybe Stefani Germanotta, an obviously intelligent, extraordinarily driven and highly successful performer-entrepreneur who has suffered with lupus, unexplained depression and fatigue has connected the dots and determined that self-treatment through diet is a better bet than depending on “professionals” and possibly slipping through the significant cracks in the medical industry.

One thing is sure. Lady Gaga should ask her doctors to test her for gluten sensitivity and celiac disease if she has not already before she removes gluten from her diet. A positive diagnosis, as difficult as it may be to obtain, will significantly improve her chances for good health as doctors will take a medically diagnosed condition seriously. And she can always remove gluten from her diet even if the tests return a “negative” result. People stop eating meat, milk, artificial additives and other things they don’t like or things that don’t agree with their bodies all the time without anybody attacking them. People who stop eating gluten, for whatever reason, should be treated the same.

What do you think? Let us know by commenting below!

 

 

Sources:

 

  1. MSN.com http://news.ph.msn.com/entertainment/lady-gaga-goes-on-gluten-free-diet-1
  2. Recognizing Celiac Disease, p. 168. http://recognizingceliacdisease.com
  3. Lupus May Be Gluten Allergy. http://www.bastyrcenter.org/content/view/703/
  4. “Lady Gaga’s Battlewith Depression.” Psychological Care and Healing TreatmentCenter.  http://www.pchtreatment.com/psychological-treatment-blog/lady-gaga-battle-depression-treatment/
  5. “Gaga is sick and obsessed with her weight,’ explosive new book accuses singer of drug abuse and starving herself.” Dailymail.co.uk.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2012203/Lady-Gaga-sick-obsessed-weight.html#ixzz24BS0SoLp

 

 

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Author Information: John Libonati, Philadelphia, PA
Publisher, Glutenfreeworks.com.
Editor & Publisher, Recognizing Celiac Disease.
John can be reached by e-mail here.

 

About John Libonati

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Author Information: John Libonati, SW Florida Publisher, Glutenfreeworks.com & The Gluten Free Works Treatment Guide.

8 comments

  1. I agree – my good friend had been suffering from depression for 12 years and was on 3 different anti-depressants simply to cope. She had pain in her joints and muscles and the doctors thought it was fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis and were set to treat her for those. They also thought she had kidney cancer because of elevated hormone levels. She went on a gluten free diet to see if that was her problem and everything got better. She has had no anti-depressants for 2 years, she has no pain, she is sleeping well and the hormone levels in her kidneys are back down to normal. Her doctor said he’d never seen anything like it! She had also been on thyroid medication for 20 years. In the last two years they have reduced that medication twice as well as her thyroid is now healing. Gluten sensitivity does not necessarily mean you will have digestive problems.

  2. “Gluten sensitivity does not necessarily mean you will have digestive problems.”

    That is so true, there are so many weird things that happen to people! Some people get really sleepy, some people get foot pains. You just never know. Personally, I get acne.

  3. John,
    Another very insightful article, with which I totally agree. I have known for many months that Lady Gaga has been gluten-free (and had SLE), and demanded the same from her dancers. I also noticed many more months ago that in performances she did not move as well as such a young and in shape woman should. As a celiac, I have had most of the symptoms of SLE, yet in 2 blood tests we have not found the lupus antibodies. Both diseases have appeared on lists of “the great impersonator disease.” Dr. Allesio Fasano has expressed that leaky gut is involved in other autoimmune diseases.

    My mother was a nurse who specialized in alcohol and drug rehabilitation. She told me many years ago about a doctor whose lecture she attended, who professed the idea that “all addiction begins with wheat.” My doctor told me about her doctor (probably the same doctor) who taught her about the dangers of wheat and gluten many years ago. She has said that any kind of addiction to a substance indicates gluten intolerance.

    • Avatar photo

      Michael,

      Do you think your mother may have the name of the doctor you stated addiction begins with wheat? We found a study years ago that lined gluten and drug/alcohol dependency, but I have been unable to find it.

      -John

      • John,
        My mother died in 2008, shortly after my celiac diagnosis. I am sure she had celiac as well. My doctor who diagnosed me, who has been gluten free for decades, learned the same concept, that all substance dependence results from gluten sensitivity, learned it from Dr. Theron Randolph, (google him) who died in 1995. I suspect that is who my mother heard it from. His office was a few blocks from where I now live.

  4. Information on Wikipedia for HLA-DQ2 includes, regarding DQ2.5, the gene with the greatest risk for celiac, and the gene which is said to be possessed by more than 90% of those with the disease, “DQ2.5 and the linked DR3 are associated with probably the greatest frequency of autoimmune occurrence relative to any other haplotypes. The haplotype is positively associated with coeliac disease, dermatitis herpetiformis, juvenile diabetes, Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS), Sjögren’s syndrome, and autoimmune hepatitis (although significant proportion of the risk is secondary to coeliac disease). DR3 and/or DQ2.5 are linked to the following diseases: Moreen’s ulceration,[5] “bout onset” multiple sclerosis,[6] Grave’s disease[7] and systemic lupus erythematosus.[8].”

    Other information on Wikipedia says that DR3 is a risk for sporadic Inclusion Body Myositis, which Dr. Tom O’Bryan mentioned in one of his recent web talks as being the most common cause of muscle pain in people over 50. Dr. O’Bryan has always mentioned MS and lately Lupus in his talks.

    Dr. Peter Osborne wrote in a recent email that gluten sensitive people have 7+ autoimmune diseases. I find now that is true for me, and I have the DQ2.5 and celiac. I don’t have all of the diagnoses, but have had all of the symptoms of most of the autoimmune diseases mentioned in this post and gluten ataxia and osteoporosis.

  5. We have heard from Dr. Alessio Fasano that gluten causes temporary increased intestinal permeability in all people, and that leaky gut is most likely a prerequisite for any autoimmune disease. In Dr. O’Bryan’s Gluten Summit I learned that people with non-celiac gluten sensitivity get autoimmune diseases, too. Dr. Marios Hadjivassiliou has found that not only do the vast majority of patients with celiac disease have the symptoms of gluten ataxia, DQ5 and DQ6 are risks for gluten ataxia. The immunologist Dr. Aristo Vojdani said recently that there is no gluten-free diet without dairy-free. He also said that antibodies to gliadin can attach to your cerebellar tissue. Recently Dr. O’Bryan revealed that 40-50% of people with DQ2or DQ8 have non-celiac gluten sensitivity. He said that he has non-celiac gluten sensitivity and had high antibodies to 3 kinds of brain cells: cerebellum, basic myelin protein and ganglioside.

    Moving on to Dr. Amy Myers’ Autoimmune Summit, she and Dr. O’Bryan agreed that they have never seen a patient with an autoimmune disease that was not helped by a gluten-free diet. Dr. Amy Myers, who had Graves’ disease and Dr. Terry Wahls, who has MS, both independently came up with most of the same diet protocols that I did. We all have eliminated gluten, grains, dairy, sugar, legumes and nightshades. Dr. Walls has eliminated eggs. I have eliminated cruciferous, but thanks to Sueson Vess, celiac chef who used to lecture with Dr. O’Bryan, I know that I can tolerate nightshades and cruciferous if I ferment them.

    Dr. Kelly Brogan M.D., women’s psychiatrist, is gluten-free, dairy-free and sugar-free, and insists that all of her patients go gluten-free.

  6. I appreciate your insights as I am gluten-free. But it is best that you don’t make wild guesses as to why Elvis or Heath or some other celebrity died. After all, you don’t want people making wild accusations against going gluten-free, as you strongly stated, in your article. We’re fighting to show the legitimacy of going gluten-free, and we know that we reap what we sow, when it comes to flying accusations. Perhaps we should ask Lady Gaga to reveal, for herself, why she has gone gluten-free, instead of guessing for ourselves.

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