The WHEAT Post

Yep, it's Monday. Again. How the heck did the last week slip by without me writing the wheat post? I have been promising to write about what I'd learned about wheat and gluten specifically for ages, but for some reason I was starting to dread it. Because let's face it, you hear gluten and you think: oh yeah, another demon food, wasn't fat just the enemy yesterday and now that's all we're eating? 

Yes. True. But hear me out okay? Or not. You can go, you don't have to read this if you don't want to.

Knowing what I know about wheat now and thinking back, all of the childhood issues that I suffered with for years and years with no relief are starting to make sense! 

So here's a little backstory.

I grew up in Saskatchewan. No idea where that is? It's the middle of Canada and it's known as the breadbasket of the county. Why? Because it's prairie farmland for as far and the eye can see. We grow a lot of stuff there, but wheat is a big one.

When the wheat is ready to be harvested, the days before it's cut, if the wind blows just right, it looks like waves tumbling over a golden ocean. It's glorious. I get homesick just thinking about it.

Anyway...

As I child I suffered a variety of seemingly unrelated physical ailments. I constantly had stomach troubles but it was never the same trouble two days in a row. If on Monday I was constipated, Tuesday I could have the runs, but Thursday might bring bloating and abdominal pain so severe I could hardly move. Add to that migraine headaches, moodiness (I was so not a morning person), I was always tired, and canker sores? Oh man did I suffer. There were times I might have three or four at a time. 

I also remember being annoyed by the appearance of little white bumps all over the backs of my arms and my great aunt Mary telling me I needed to scrub harder in the tub. I would rub that skin raw with a wash cloth and still they would not go away.

My mom, bless her, she had me to every doctor and specialist that you could think of, we even traveled two and a half hours away from home to the province capital to see GI doctors. Their conclusion? I was a nervous child. I'm sorry but isn't that the equivalent of doctors one hundred years ago calling any disease that affected a woman "Hysteria". Such utter bullshit. Something was wrong with me and just because it didn't show up in their tests, it was all in my head? Want to know what I'd say to them now? ---

Never mind it's a bit too crude. But it definitely has the F-word in it and a place they can shove their tests. Ahem. But allow me to get on with this post.

First a word from our Gluten expert  Dr. Tom O'Brian (Dr. Tom or Dr. T aka the Gluten Guy):

There’s a lot of confusion about gluten sensitivity. Some say it doesn’t exist. Others think going gluten free without celiac disease is unnecessary and is just a fad. But science now confirms what gluten sensitive patients and their doctors have known for years: Gluten sensitivity is a real disorder with defined symptoms that can affect any part of the body. 

The gluten protein in wheat, barley, and rye causes numerous health problems in susceptible individuals. Gluten-Related Disorders (GRD)are conditions that are triggered by gluten. Celiac disease is the most well-known GRD. It’s an autoimmune condition that results in tissue damage in the small intestine. NonCeliac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) is another Gluten-Related Disorder. People with gluten sensitivity develop symptoms after eating gluten, but the immune reaction is different than the one that occurs in celiac disease. 

Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity is more common than celiac disease. Many patients with either celiac disease or Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity do not know they have the condition. There’s a surprising fact about Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity: Most of its symptoms occur outside of the intestines and gastrointestinal tract! 

(Ha! Take that you lousy specialists who told me everything that was happening to me was a result of me being a "sensitive child".)

How do we know? In a new study, researchers from Italian medical centers that specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of Gluten-Related Disorders identified nearly 500 patients with suspected NonCeliac Gluten Sensitivity. They used patients’ reported symptoms, lab tests, intestinal biopsy results (if performed), and other factors to identify those who were sensitive to gluten. The most common symptoms reported in gluten-sensitive people
included: 
• Bloating (87%) 
• Abdominal pain (83%) 
• Lack of well being (68%) 
• Tiredness (64%) 
• Headache (54%) 
• Diarrhea (54%) 
• Nausea (44%) 
• Anxiety (39%) 
• Brain fog (38%) 
• Numbness (32%) 
• GERD (32%) 
• Joint/muscle pain (31%) 
Gluten-sensitive people in the study also experienced constipation, rashes, weight loss, anemia, depression, mouth sores, and more. More women than men suffered from gluten sensitivity, by a ratio of more than 5 to 1. The average age of the patients was 38. Nearly half of the patients had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) while 35% reported food intolerance. Almost 1 in 5 patients had a relative with celiac disease. Researchers reported that 14% of gluten-sensitive people in the study had an autoimmune disease, most commonly autoimmune thyroiditis. 

Sadly, the majority of people with Gluten-Related Disorders are undiagnosed and untreated. Do you have Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity? If you have symptoms, see a healthcare practitioner with extensive knowledge in the diagnosis and treatment of Gluten-Related Disorders. Functional medicine practitioners have experience with newer specialized tests that can help diagnose these conditions. You can also try a 3-week trial period of a gluten-free diet. If your symptoms improve when you avoid gluten, but they return soon after you reintroduce gluten into your diet, you may be gluten sensitive. If that’s the case, you would benefit from being on a gluten-free diet permanently. 

Proper diagnosis and treatment are key. Gluten-Related Disorders like celiac disease and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity contribute to intestinal permeability, more commonly known as “leaky gut.” And leaky gut, in turn, sets the stage for autoimmune disease and other conditions. In future articles, we’ll discuss how gluten triggers these processes. 

So this just goes to show how gluten can damage areas in your body beyond your gut, but why do I care? I mean apart from the fact that I have so obviously been sensitive to gluten my entire life? What got me onto this topic? Why fat loss of course. Dr. Tom was part of that FAT LOSS SUMMIT I was referring to during my earlier posts about the Always Hungry Solution (AHS).

Wheat, like dairy or soy or sugar triggers INFLAMMATION!

I can't seem to get enough information on the subject, I am always hungry for more because I really want my body to function at it's optimal level. When you're in your twenties and even your thirties to some extent, you can trash your body and it magically recovers, it seems to bounce back to better than before. This is so not the case in your forties and beyond. Things wear out, they start to break down, and they need more care and attention. I have no idea how old I will grow, but I can tell you one thing; I don't want to be decrepit.

My great aunti Anne is in her 80's, and while she is going through a battle with her health at the moment, she is so strong and resilient. Why? Because all of her life she's had an amazing positive bright can-do attitude, she's eaten healthy foods and taken in the not so good stuff in moderation (she'll have an occasional beer or piece of cake, but never over-does it) and she has remained incredibly physically active. She's a folk dancer. Even as she is working through her current health ordeal, she has gotten out to dance with her group. I love her and am so inspired I want to age the way she has, so gracefully and well.

Wheat and gluten want to stand in the way of that and here's how.

Disease is inflammation at a cellular level. Stop inflammation you stop disease. So how does inflammation happen? That's a massive subject and far too big to discuss within the scope of a single blog post so lets stick to wheat's role in inflammation shall we? Wheat causes intestinal permeability and loss of oral tolerance (immune unresponsiveness). But how?

This is how Dr. Tom described the process. Imagine your intestine as this big long massive tube that is lined with shag carpet. Now imagine that this shag is covered with cheese cloth. So as food is being broken down and digested, the molecules are moved along this tube along the carpet, certain sized molecules get through the cheese cloth and into the bloodstream via the little finger-like bits of your shag carpet. Ideally these molecules are your vitamins and minerals, things the body needs to function. Then the bigger molecules travel further along through enzymes that break them down until they are small enough to be dealt with appropriately.

But wheat comes along and it causes tears in your cheese cloth. Yikes. However, like a snake skin that sheds and regrows very quickly, your cheese cloth repairs itself. So, according to Dr. T, it heals, tears, heals, tears (your 20's and 30's) until one day it doesn't heal and chaos ensues. Your shag carpet is now mere berber. The wheat gets through and hits the bloodstream. Naturally the body views this as an invader (because it is) and it makes antibodies, as you know if you've been reading along with previous posts, the antibodies create inflammation which creates fat, which creates more antibodies and before you know it you're on the hamster wheel thinking you're doing everything right, diet exercise et al and you're still abcentric!

This process continues until you've got leaky gut or intestinal permeability, so now lots of different molecules are escaping through these tears and getting into the bloodstream and you're no longer just sensitive to gluten. Suddenly you might find that you're lactose intolerant where you never were before, or you're reacting to all sorts of foods that you used to enjoy all the time. Because as these molecules are getting into your bloodstream your body is fighting everything as if it were being attacked. If this is allowed to continue you may find yourself at the wrong end of an autoimmune disorder and you might even be a kid who has a doctor telling her she is just over-sensitive or that it's all in her head. (I'm sure I'll get over this some day, but this is new info so I'm still doing my booty dance of victory, in your face losers!)

Now you might be thinking it's all hopeless. You don't want to give up gluten forever. You think, I'll just get off it, allow my gut to heal and then I'll be okay. Nope. One exposure to wheat will trigger elevated antibodies that can leave you suffering for 3-6 months! One exposure! That's the wrong soy sauce at a sushi restaurant, that one piece of pizza, that tiny bite of a cookie! It's no bueno!! These antibodies can affect your heart or even your brain. Serious stuff noble reader. I should know, a year ago February I landed in emergency with pericarditis.

Not my best look to be sure!

I'm not trying to scare you. I'm asking you to be more tolerant of those around you who become hyper aware of the nutrient content of everything and say no thank you to gluten! 

I'm asking you to look at yourself, to check in and ask: Am I feeling okay? Is that headache really stress? Do I feel tired all the time because I'm getting older? Are my joints really achy because of age? Or could there be something else going on?

There is no reason we can't all be dancing up a storm into our 80's too, so why not do a trial, take three weeks to eliminate some of these trigger foods from your diet beginning with Gluten.

Here's to your great health.
xo
Shan