Could what’s showing up on your face be a direct result of something that you’re eating? When it comes to gluten – that’s a definite YES. “Gluten face” can be induced by eating gluten containing foods like wheat, rye and barley, and can cause a bloated, puffy, red face. But the key to treating it is more complex than just choosing gluten-free products.
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Could what’s showing up on your face be a direct result of something that you’re eating? When it comes to gluten – that’s a definite YES.
You wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and you almost don’t recognize yourself. Your face is puffy & swollen, you have new blemishes that seem to have sprung up overnight, red blotches on your cheeks, and dark spots on your chin. It looks like you’ve been binging on alcohol and salt, plus have a bad sunburn. But the only thing you did was eat some pasta yesterday. Could gluten have anything to do with what you’re seeing in the mirror?
Before we dive into what is commonly referred to as “gluten face”, let’s take care of some housekeeping details. First, the difference between celiac disease, and gluten intolerance:
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder, caused by gluten – the protein found in wheat, rye & barley. The hallmark finding is damage to the lining of the small intestine, with shrinking of the villi – the fingerlike projections that absorb nutrients, and an increase in inflammatory cells in the lining of the gut. Celiac disease can cause a wide variety of symptoms, including bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, a change in weight, constipation, fatigue, anemia, rashes, joint pain, neurological symptoms, a “foggy brain,” other autoimmune phenomena, or no symptoms at all.
Gluten intolerance (sometimes called non-celiac gluten sensitivity) can cause similar symptoms to celiac disease, but it isn’t an autoimmune disorder and there’s no actual damage to the lining of your small intestine. The diagnosis of gluten intolerance is made based on your response to removing gluten from your diet, or sometimes you take the gluten out and you don’t notice much difference, but when you reintroduce it, the symptoms all come right back and it’s very obvious that you are sensitive to gluten. In addition to bloating and gas, we see a lot of non-GI symptoms with gluten intolerance, including rashes, brain fog, behavioral changes, joint pain, and fatigue.
Some people discover they’re gluten-sensitive while experimenting with low-carb diets to lose weight. And sometimes, in addition to losing weight, they notice that their skin improves when they stop eating gluten. Now there can be other reasons for that too, because many of these low carb diets, in addition to excluding gluten, also exclude processed food and dairy and refined sugar. And these are all things that can mess up your skin. But coming up, I want to share with you what is specifically known about the effects of gluten on your skin and appearance.
The classic skin condition in celiac disease is a rash called dermatitis herpetiformis that affects between 10 and 20% of people with celiac disease. DH as we call it – an abbreviation for dermatitis herpetiformis – is a chronic, itchy, blistering skin condition with clusters of small papules and vesicles on the elbows, knees, buttocks, back, or scalp, and the face and groin can also be affected. On the extremities – the elbows and knees – the rash is usually symmetric, so it occurs on both elbows and both knees. DH is an external manifestation of an abnormal immune response to gluten, in which IgA antibodies form against proteins in the skin. When you eat food that contains gluten, your immune system activates and produces these IgA antibodies, that then get deposited into your skin, and it’s these deposits that cause the itchy bumps and blisters.
But DH isn’t the only skin condition we see in people who are sensitive to gluten. If you have celiac disease or gluten intolerance you are also at higher risk for eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, chronic dry skin, acne, hives, vitiligo, and alopecia – and research show a large percentage of people who suffer from those conditions will find relief when they eliminate gluten from their diet.
In addition to those autoimmune skin conditions, there’s also a syndrome that’s referred to as gluten face. A typical gluten face has red, puffy cheeks, with spots of hyperpigmentation – especially on the chin, and some people will also have pimples around the chin area in the lower part of the face. And the face in general looks bloated and swollen. Now, what is causing those changes? Gluten has been shown to increase the inflammatory response, and that inflammatory response can show up on your face, making it look bloated or puffy because of the fluid retention that accompanies inflammation, and creating pigmentation issues, like age spots and dark areas. And yes, the solution, if you have gluten-face, is to go gluten free, but the trick is not to eat gluten free products. And I’m going tell you why.
Switching from gluten containing products to gluten-free equivalent products is a terrible idea. Why? Because gluten-free products use chemicals and synthetic substances to try and reproduce that doughy gluten-like quality, so they’re typically full of emulsifiers like soy lecithin and carrageenan and other substances that can also have a negative impact on your gut and your skin.
So what I recommend as a rule of thumb is if a food says gluten-free on the package, don’t buy it. That’s typically going to be on the label of bread or pasta or cookies or frozen pizza or waffles and other ultra processed foods. A bag of rice or some sweet potatoes is not going to say gluten free on it. So avoiding gluten free packaged foods is essential, especially if you are trying to improve the appearance of your skin, because again, it’s not just the immune mediated inflammation from gluten, these other food derived chemical ingredients can also cause an inflammatory response.
Another question that people often have is: if you don’t have celiac disease but you’re gluten sensitive and you think you have gluten face, how much gluten can you eat? Is there a small amount of gluten that you can get away with? The answer is your body is going to tell you. I know in the case of my husband, and I talked about the connection between his eczema and gluten a couple weeks ago in episode 12. For him not to have an eczema breakout, he has to be around 80% gluten free. Once regular gluten starts to creep into his diet his eczema starts to flare up. So what I recommend is 100% elimination for a couple months to get things under control, and then once your skin is healed, you can try reintroducing a little bit of gluten to see what the threshold amount that you can tolerate is.
Now of course, if you have celiac disease, zero amount of gluten is what you should be eating because ongoing exposure to gluten if you have celiac disease, even if you don’t have any symptoms at all, even very small exposures to gluten if you have celiac disease can cause damage to your gut lining and can eventually lead to more worrisome things like anemia, and arthritis, and cancer. But that’s only in people who have diagnosed celiac disease, not in people who are gluten sensitive.
So now that you know the difference between celiac disease and gluten intolerance and how both of these conditions can impact your skin, I want to leave you with three takeaways about gluten face:
So that’s it for this episode of the Gutbliss Podcast on gluten face. Coming up next week on the Gutbliss podcast, the 1st in my series on the gut-brain connection.
The Gutbliss Guide to Healthy Skin is a whole new approach to improving the health of your skin from the inside out. Over 70 pages of detailed information, including a product ingredient guide, skin care recipes you can make at home, a nutrition plan that tells you exactly what to eliminate and what to add in – plus, my favorite green smoothie recipes that will have you glowing. You can find it all under Gut Guides.
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