Gluten Allergy and Wheat Lectins
Gluten allergy, wheat allergy and wheat lectin intolerance can easily be confused.
A gluten allergy is the body's immune response to proteins in gluten. Gluten should be harmless to the body, or so one would think. This is not always the case, as I will explain later in this article. Some people's bodies decide that gluten proteins are foreign invaders and this triggers an immune response, leading to an allergic reaction.
An intolerance to wheat lectin is a different matter, and it is far more common than you might think. Anyone with type O blood can not tolerate wheat lectin. It causes the blood to clump together, which is a bad start. Then the immune system attacks the clump, including blood cells and lectin, in an attempt to get rid of it.
This sounds very similar to an allergic response to wheat proteins. Where there is wheat, there is gluten, so it is possible to confuse the two situations. If you're blood is type O, you should avoid wheat as much as possible, although gluten is not necessarily a problem. It may be, and of course if you are celiac you must avoid gluten anyhow, which includes wheat.
But for those people with type O blood and who are neither celiac nor allergic to gluten, wheat is still a problem.
Wheat is not the only food that type O people must avoid. And blood types A, B and A / B have their own list of foods to avoid. With gluten allergies being such a high-profile topic these days, it is worth noting the truly huge number of people world wide that should be avoiding wheat.
