Gluten, the sticky stuff!

Gluten
Endocrine Disruptor

Where do I begin when talking about Gluten? I have always known that bread was not for me even though I love it. When “gluten-free” became all the rage I thought it was just a new health food fad or another scam just like soy was in the early 90’s and that if you didn’t have celiac disease you didn’t have to worry. But I wanted to look further into it because of how I personally feel after eating bread and it’s never a good feeling. I have been eating Ezekiel bread since high school. I keep it in my freezer and toast it with my eggs, then I re-read the ingredients a few years ago and found it had soybeans in it and that even sprouted grains contain gluten, so I no longer eat it unless its the gluten free version.

Going gluten free is not an easy task because it’s in everything (90% of processed foods) from twizzlers, canned soup, jelly, frozen dinners, salad dressing, toothpaste and even french fries. You name it, if it’s in a box, on the shelf or in the freezer in the grocery store make sure you read your ingredients carefully. The reason for this is that it has an opiate effect on our brain acting as a food stimulant giving some people food obsessions along with the proteins in it that block lecithin (sugar substitutes do this also)  in our liver which is the enzyme that tells the brain we are full. When you go back and look at the history of wheat and when it was first dramatically changed by scientists in a lab and you look at the sudden explosion in weight gain followed by an explosion in diabetes with hundreds of autoimmune diseases to follow, it all begins to fit together and there’s no denying that wheat is not meant for human consumption. I have read several books and done hours of research double checking the “facts” I read about. I have done my best to take all that information and lay it out in a simple way, so you can get a general idea of what it is, why it’s bad, and how going off of it can dramatically change your life. If you are interested in knowing more on this subject I suggest you read The Wheat Belly, Grain Brain and Grain Maker.

Going 100% Wheat free, Gluten Free and Dairy free is a nutritional goal of mine and it’s a constant journey but I am feeling better and I noticed weight loss as a side effect.
“Grains are a food of desperation, if we were starving and all we had was a moldy loaf of bread, you should eat it. So that’s how grains got their start in the human diet by the way. It was a food of desperation. Think of it, if you saw a wheat plant would you think, that looks yummy? Because you can’t really eat that plant, you can’t eat the leaves, the stalk, the roots, you can try to isolate the seed out of the husk, you have to dry it, pulverize it, reheat it, only then can you even begin to consume it but even then you can’t digest it. And therein lies the source of lot of the problems with grains, because we are incapable of digesting most of the proteins in grains. And those proteins, when left intact have all sorts of peculiar effects, like the protein gliadin, if it remains intact, which it does, it initiates the processes of autoimmunity, it causes intestinal leakiness.

“Wheatgerm agglutinin is a large protein in wheat, rye, barley and rice of all things, is completely impervious to human digestion but in its passage from top to bottom, reeks all sorts of peculiar effects, such as blocking gallbladder function, blocking pancreatic release of enzymes, so we can’t digest the proteins in grains. We can digest the amenable Pectin and that shoots the blood sugar sky high, but that’s the only thing we can digest with any kind of efficiency.”                  ~Dr. William Davis, Cardiologist and Author of Wheat Belly

Gluten is the Latin name for “glue,” and signifies the doughy complex of proteins that trap the air from the yeast in bread strengthening the dough during bread making. Gluten is a plant protein present mostly in the grains wheat (wheatberries, semolina, spelt, durum, emmer, dafrina, einkorn, farro, farina and graham), rye, barley and kumquat. Gluten is made up of two proteins, gliadin and glutenin. Gliadin is what causes health problems in most people, immune system reactions, inadequate nutritional absorption and inflammation. Essentially, we are all allergic to Gluten, some of us more sensitive than others with the symptoms often going misdiagnosed or unnoticed. Gluten is a protein that our body does not accept and is unable to digest properly, wheat being the most harmful and most common.

Gluten protein and casein protein molecules are the same so when you go off gluten you must go dairy free as well to get results as many people are allergic to the casein protein found in milk. You don’t want to have to go through two withdrawal periods, especially with children. When you are having a gluten free lifestyle you cannot be on a low-fat diet plan as well since you will not get better and you will not get the results desired; you will get worse. You need to be on a ketogenic diet plan with lots of good healthy fats, low carbohydrates and gluten free. Your brain is fat and it needs good fat to function properly; good fat is brain food. Gluten is not just a GI issue; it’s a serious neurotoxin. For example, something as simple as a child playing with playdough and then having 98+multiple seizures in one day (playdough is primarily made up of wheat dough) if the child has celiac disease.

Anyone with thyroid issues should get checked for celiac disease, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, Addison’s, Hashimoto’s or Graves’ disease, the thyroid is a small butterfly shaped gland in the front of our throat in charge of controlling our thyroid 3 and thyroid 4 hormones affecting our moods, menstrual cycles and much more. The thyroid seems to be a target for gluten and when it’s not functioning properly it’s a target for fluoride as well. Celiac disease is also related to diseases involving inflammation of the brain like Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia and Dementia.

Signs of Gluten Intolerance or Celiac Disease

Adrenal Fatigue
Disruption to the entire endocrine system
Unexplainable mood issues, depression or anxiety, ADHD, frequently changes in mood
Fatigue or Exhaustion, mid-afternoon crashes, or constant feeling of sleepiness
Insomnia, interrupted sleep, never reaching REM sleep
Feeling exhausted after a good night sleep
Chronic fatigue or Fibromyalgia
Migraine Headaches and Chronic Migraines have been linked to Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease
Autoimmune Diseases such as: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, Graves’ Disease, Ulcerative colitis, Lupus, Psoriasis, Scleroderma and Multiple sclerosis
Swollen painful Joints and Arthritis
Infertility in both Men and Woman
Polly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), Irregular menstrual cycles
Malabsorption of calcium causes very low calcium levels leading to weak bones and teeth
Canker sores inside the mouth can occur within 1 hour of eating gluten (caused by processed sugar also)
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Constipation, especially in children
Keratosis Pilaris, raised hard bumps on the skin (often thought of as harmless and overlooked)
Dermatitis herpetiformis
Skin condition that looks like goosebumps except it never goes away

“There is an essential requirement of protein needed for human health, there is an essential amount of fat in the diet mandated for human health, the human requirement for carbohydrates is none, not one single gram of carbohydrates is required for human health.”                             ~Dr. David Perlmutter Neurologist & Author of the New                                                                York Times #1 Best Seller, Grain Brain

Side effects of a gluten, wheat and dairy free lifestyle

Your insatiable food obsession will no longer haunt you after a couple weeks
Reduced appetite, reduced calorie intake
Weight loss is usually dramatic especially in obese people
Inflammation, swelling and puffiness will be noticeably gone
Reduced joint pain
Reduced acid reflux
Issues with irritable bowel disease will diminish
Improved sleep cycle
Improved brain function and clear thinking
Increased HDL, reduced LDL and a reduction in triglycerides
Increased energy

Conditions and diseases that show improvement after going on a wheat, gluten, dairy free diet:

Asthma Allergies Atherosclerosis ADD/ADHD Adrenal insufficiency
Autism Alzheimer’s and dementia Autoimmune diseases Breast Cancer
Chronic candida Chronic fatigue Crohn’s disease Colitis Celiac disease Congestive heart failure
Low DHEA levels (Dehydroepiandrosterone) Diabetes Failure to thrive
Fibromyalgia High Cholesterol High blood pressure Hormonal imbalances
Hyperinsulinemia Irritable bowel syndrome Low Testosterone
Lupus Multiple sclerosis (MS) Obesity Osteoporosis
Osteoarthritis Parkinson’s Peri-menopausal symptoms Polly cystic ovarian syndrome Premenstrual syndrome Post viral syndrome
Post-traumatic stress syndrome Post-polio syndrome Rheumatoid Arthritis Schizophrenia
Thyroiditis

Wheat/Gluten
Wheat gets picked on the most when talking about gluten because it is the most widely used of all the grains containing gluten and wheat is dramatically different today than it was 60 years ago. What’s different about it? Everything, the wheat plant itself is a hybrid of the original wheat plant, the way we process it is more industrialized and the way we eat it. In the past wheat was in bread, muffins, pancake mix and thanksgiving stuffing; now it’s in more than 90% of all processed foods. Wheat is a hexaploid species, the spinoff of three ancestor plants becoming one, with no less than 6 sets of chromosomes and 6.5 times more genes than found in the human genome, it can produce no less than 23,788 different proteins.

The wheat plant used today is called high yield, semi dwarf wheat. It’s a creation of genetics research labs from the 1960’s; it was created by Norman Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, credited with saving one billion lives. He is responsible for the creation of the new “improved” species of semi-dwarf wheat along with complimenting fertilizers and pesticides which increased yield immensely. During the mid-20th-century this new form of farming technology was proliferated worldwide by companies like Monsanto and Dupont, credited for ending world hunger. The high-yield, semi dwarf wheat plant is a stocky plant, 18 inches tall, unlike wheat of the past that was a slender plant reaching four and five feet tall and populates 99% of the wheat fields across the world.

A lot of the gluten problems began to occur with the creation of this summer high yield wheat because the wheat genome has undergone significant changes, compounded with the fact that the government placed its nutritional value so high on the national food pyramid, telling us it was healthy and should not only be a staple in our diet, but that it should be the cornerstone of our diet, leading people to believe they could eat as much of it as possible with the outcome being a healthy life with a healthy heart. Now scientists, leading cardiologists, neurologists and many others in the medical field are beginning to link modern day wheat (triticum aestivum) with almost every autoimmune disease known to man along with behavior and digestion issues.

Eating healthy fats
Eating a diet high in healthy fats (low sugars, low carbohydrates) will help you lose weight and stay lean with a healthy brain. Eating carbohydrates/sugars signals the body to make and store fat. This goes back to the hunter gatherer days of mankind, eating fat signals the body that food is not scarce, and the body is in a good state.

“The human brain is made up of 60% fat. Its’s made from the fat that you eat, it doesn’t come out of thin air and interestingly enough about half of that fat is saturated fat, the dreaded saturated fat in meat and eggs that we were all told to avoid. That’s craziness. 50% of human breast milk fat is saturated fat. How can it possibly be wrong to the developing brain?”
~Dr. David Perlmutter, Neurologist & Author of the New York Times #1 Best Seller, Grain

Brain & Brain Maker
If one wheat protein has the power to incite an adverse reaction, what would 23,000 different proteins do when presented to the body for processing concurrently? Remember, gluten is the Latin word for glue so imagine if many of wheat proteins were disulfide-fused proteins (glued together), with the same, sturdy sulfur-based bonds found in human hair, making it impossible for our digestive system to break it down fully.

Gluten Proteins and what they do (there are thousands of them)

Gluten (Gliadin + Glutenin): Gluten is the general name for the two insoluble plant proteins responsible for the sticky, elastic texture in dough, found in wheat, barley and rye. New studies show corn gluten to be similar to wheat gluten.
Glutenin: It is the protein that gives the dough its stretchy effect, makes it able to stretch and roll and shape dough.
Gliadin: Gliadin is what causes health problems in most people, immune system reactions, inadequate nutritional absorption and inflammation. This protein breaks down the cell walls and allows the intestinal walls to become increasingly permeable allowing things like wheat germ agglutinin, Amylopectin A, Lectins and many other toxins, bacteria and fungi into the blood stream causing autoimmune responses.
• Gliadin exorphins (Gluten exorphin A5, Gluten exorphin B4, Gluten exorphin B5, Gluten exorphin C): Gluten exorphins are a group of opioid peptides formed during digestion of the gluten protein. Wheat via this gliadin protein is an opiate (morphine/heroin) that acts as an appetite stimulant that affects many people in many different ways:
o Schizophrenics have an increase in paranoia, hallucinations and hearing voices
o People with eating disorders (binge eating or bulimia) food obsessions
o Everyday healthy people suffer from the appetite stimulant effects of over eating, ingesting large amount of extra calories
o ADHD and Autism suffer from behavioral outbursts and hyperactivity and difficulty with attention spam
o Causes mania (high) in people suffering with bipolar disorder
• Gliadin causes intestinal permeability: Also known as leaky gut syndrome, this happens when the intestinal wall becomes permeable and the absorption of toxins, fungi, parasites and bacteria leak out of the gastrointestinal tract through the cells lining the walls of the intestines into the rest of the body. Leaky Gut is linked to ADHD, Autism, schizophrenia, Crohn’s disease, Celiac disease and many other autoimmune diseases.

Amylopectin A: Is a complex carbohydrate (long chain sugar), It’s easily digestible and raises your glycemic index. According to the table of glycemic index two pieces of wheat bread raises your blood sugar higher than 6 tablespoons of white table sugar. High blood sugar will lead to very high blood insulin levels which eventually lead to visceral fat and diabetes.
Wheat germ agglutinin: Wheat germ agglutinin blocks leptin receptors in the liver. Leptin is what is released to send the message to the brain to tell you that you were full. Wheat germ agglutinin causes social hunger and opiate derived hunger. Studies have been done on rats showing that wheat germ agglutinin causes damage to the intestines similar to celiac disease.
Fast omega-gliadin, gamma-gliadin and slow omega-gliadin: Are all water/salt-insoluble proteins found in wheat that cause major allergens. There have been twenty-seven potential wheat allergens identified.
Glutamine: Glutamine protein makes up 47% of the total protein content in wheat. It is also one of the major allergen components in wheat.
Prolamins: A group of plant storage proteins found in wheat, barley, rye, corn and sorghum and as a minor protein in oats.
They have a high proline and glutamine content, only soluble in alcohol solutions. This makes them impossible to digest because we are made up of mostly water and our stomach acids do not contain alcohol solutions to break this protein down.
Lectins: Lectins proteins act as a plants immune system. They are toxic to fungi, molds, insects and anything that try to invade the plant and harm it. It’s a four-part complex molecule found in most plants. In some plants it’s toxic to the human body, causing damage to your gastrointestinal tract. In some plants lectin is benign to the human body. Rysin is a lectin; it’s a neurotoxin that is used in chemical terrorist attacks. Toxic levels of Lectins are found in grains, beans (including soy, corn and canola oil), Nightshade vegetables (potato, tomato, peppers, goji berries, okra and eggplant) and dairy. Soaking grains and beans, then rinsing and soaking them again until sprouted has been said to lessen or remove the toxic lectins.

“Food is the most powerful intervention in terms of health that exists”
~Dr. David Perlmutter, Neurologist & Author of the New York Times #1 Best Seller, Grain Brain & Grain Maker

Fun Facts About Gluten, Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease
People who go gluten free often experience a sudden rush of energy return to their lives.

People who go gluten free often lose weight

If you’re low on Vitamin D then your Vitamin A, K and E are low as well, these are all the fat soluble vitamins. You should take your fat soluble Vitamins with a healthy fat such as cold pressed olive oil, avocado oil, MCT oil, or fresh nuts and seeds.

If you have been diagnosed with an Autoimmune disease and have experienced any of the other gluten intolerance symptoms they very well may be linked. Try going off Dairy and Gluten for four weeks and take note of the changes in your body before and after.

The Arthritis Foundation has published information regarding the link between gluten sensitivity, joint pain and arthritis. People with Arthritis who are unaware of their gluten intolerance will suffer greater symptoms if they stay on gluten.

When you are on gluten your body remains in an inflamed state, this can make it difficult to reproduce

A common sign of Gluten intolerance is often described as feeling completely normal and out of the blue you become depressed, experiencing anxiety.

Gluten intolerance is known to cause sleep issues, insomnia, constant exhaustion.

Vitamin & Mineral Deficiencies associated with celiac disease: Vitamin A, D, E, K & B, Folic Acid, Magnesium, Niacin & Calcium and many more.

Wheat Germ Oil will test gluten free but it is not Wheat free and it will cause reactions in people with celiac disease. It is commonly found in cosmetics.

Wheat Grass and Barley Grass are cross contaminated and are not considered Gluten Free and can cause severe reactions in people with celiac disease.

There are no text books on celiac disease in the United States even though they have known about it since the 1950’s.

MRI scanning of people with Celiac disease or Gluten Intolerance show they had significant inflammation in their nervous system.

“We’ve known since the late 1970s that gluten breaks down in the stomach to become a mix of polypeptides that cross the blood-brain barrier. Once they gain entry, they can then bind to the brain’s morphine receptor to produce a sensorial high. This is the same receptor to which opiate drugs, creating their pleasurable, albeit addicting effect. “
~Dr. David Perlmutter

Just because it says it’s “Gluten Free” doesn’t mean it’s healthy!!!!!

Gluten Free Food Ingredients to Avoid:

Potato Starch Tapioca Starch
Rice Starch Artificial sweeteners
Artificial Coloring Preservatives
Often containing several types of Sugar (there are over 50 different names for sugar)

The difference between flour and starch is that both products started out from the same plant whether it was a corn kernel, brown rice kernel or a potato. Starch is heavily processed and is just one step away from being a sugar and this is one of the reasons gluten free processed foods are no healthier than a snickers bar. Starch raises your blood sugar higher than sugar does. Starch has almost zero nutritional value and is just empty calories.

“Eat Fat Get Thin”
~Dr. David Perlmutter, Neurologist & Author of the New York Times #1 Best Seller, Grain Brain

But, what is left to eat?
Better Choices
• Homemade gluten free food with clean ingredients
• Vegetables that grow above the ground, lots of colorful vegetables
• Raw Nuts and Seeds (soaked overnight is best)
• Clean grass fed, antibiotic free or wild-caught meats
• Clean Wild Caught Fish (sockeye Salmon, anchovies, herring, shrimp with the “BEST CHOICE” label only
• Clean oils, cold-pressed olive, coconut, walnut, avocado, cold pressed MCT oil
• If you must have dairy only consume Raw Goats milk products
• Low fruit sugars
• Zero carbohydrates are needed, if so only eat root vegetables and quinoa and keep your intake below 60 grams a day

Recipes at http://www.wheatbellyblog.com Dr. William Davis, Cardiologist and Author of Wheat Belly

Recipes at http://www.drperlmutter.com Dr. David Perlmutter, Neurologist & Author of the New York Times #1 Best Seller, Grain Brain & Grain Maker

Disclaimer: The strategies, suggestions and techniques expressed here are intended to be used for educational purposes only. The Author, Kira Miller, is not rendering medical advice nor is she trying to diagnose, prescribe or treat any disease, condition, illness or injury.
If you are under the care of a physician, it is imperative that you consult their advice before beginning any new exercise or nutrition program.
Kira Miller claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss or damage alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application or interpretation of the material presented here.