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Once, pasta and bread were store cupboard staples. Now, many of us are replacing them with ‘healthier’ gluten-free foods. But are they really better for us? ... The new ubiquity of gluten-free products certainly makes life much easier for sufferers of coeliac disease, an auto-immune response to wheat where the body believes wrongly that gluten is attacking it... But coeliacs make up only one in 100 of the population ... Nutritionist Ian Marber agrees that yeast, not gluten, may be the real culprit... Marber acknowledges that gluten intolerance does exist, but probably in fewer cases than is generally believed. ......

Among the weird findings: Pulling a tick off the wrong way can lead to meat allergy. An Australian doctor found the link while studying rising cases of the allergy among people who live on Sydney's tick-prone northern beaches. "I now tell everybody I see who lives anywhere near ticks to use `Aerostart' (spray-on engine cleaner) or another high-alcohol substance," said Dr Sheryl van Nunen. "Stun the tick before you scrape it out and it can't inject what it injects." The first US case of "cannabinoid hyperemesis" was recorded in the medical literature. The syndrome was first described in 2004 in...

Bone and gut disorders 'linked'Osteoporosis patients should be screened for a gut disease, US researchers believe.Coeliac disease is an intolerance to gluten - found in wheat A Washington University Bone Clinic study of 840 people found those with the brittle bone disorder were 17 times more likely to have coeliac disease. The disease, an intolerance to gluten which makes digestion difficult, is found in 1% of the general population. The team told the Archives of Internal Medicine the study provided evidence of the benefits of a screening programme. Although coeliac disease patients commonly have a low bone mineral density, the...