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Gluten and Other Intolerances

Gluten intolerance is one of the most misunderstood and misdiagnosed issues in nutrition today. Western medicine looks at certain markers in the blood and only if these markers appear, will they, with great hesitation, suggest that you eliminate gluten from your diet. M.D's may also perform a horrendous biopsy of the small intestine which is the gold standard for diagnosing celiac disease. Me? I just use your arm and muscle test for weakness when wheat (and rye, barley, oats, spelt and kamut) or other foods are placed in your energetic field. And I am very accurate. No need for the pesky invasive stuff.

I will also look for increased markers for inflammation in blood tests, as celiac disease (a really serious gluten allergy) acts as an autoimmune disease of the intestinal tract. It can cause the body to attack its own tissues, reacting to gluten as a foreign substance. If it does this, it will damage the lining of the digestive tract and impair nutrient absorption.

What is the difference between gluten sensitivity and celiac disease? Gluten sensitivity does not show up on the blood tests for celiac disease, but it can still produce many of the same symptoms of celiac including the fatigue, depression, digestive disorders, skin rashes and more. Only about 1% of Americans have definitive celiac disease, but many more of us have a gluten intolerance which can wreak incredible havoc on our lives if we don't discover and handle this issue. (See drbea.com/hot news/Gluten Intolerance.)

Did you know that probably a good 90% of us have trouble digesting gluten? Grains are a shadow of their former selves now, adulterated into I don't know what, thanks to Monsanto et al. Then they sit around getting moldy in huge silos for months before they are ground for our bread. The fungus and mold on the grains held in the silos are ground along with the grain and baked into the bread which we then eat. Sometimes, it's hard to know for sure whether a patient is sensitive to the wheat or to the molds or to the preservatives and additives. If we are this person who has trouble digesting wheat and we continue to eat wheat for most of our lives, then we are in danger of developing a serious gluten or even celiac problem later in life.

Celiac and gluten intolerance go hand in hand with dysbiosis, too. Dysbiosis quite simply is a word that refers to opportunistic oftimes commensal bugs in your gut that have overgrown and are now out of control and don't belong there anymore, like fungus, molds and yeast. Because of this our digestion becomes so poor that we are unable to secrete enough digestive juice to kill exogenous bugs like parasites, c.difficile, giardia and e.coli as we ingest them ( and we do, pretty much on a regular basis) and very soon we are overrun with them, too. That's when you call me.

Some of us are lucky and only have to eliminate wheat from our diets. But others of us have a much more severe form which requires us to eliminate all the gluten grains: Wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut and oats. Sometimes even corn, too. Two years ago researchers were hypothesizing that 1 in 133 children and adults suffer from some form of gluten intolerance, and I'll bet this number is even higher now.

Check out this website. Click on Handouts and read the wheat handout. I list many products there that you can eat instead of wheat. I can also recommend www.elanaspantry.com. She has many gluten-free items on her website. Whole Foods now has an entire aisle devoted to gluten-free products, and I can highly recommend a pasta that is indistinguishable from gluten pasta. You can get it at Vitamin Cottage and it's Tinkyada brand. Take it from me, it's not that hard to be gluten-free.

Just so you know, there are about 10 foods that cause over 90% of the reactions: Milk, eggs, peanuts, fish, shellfish, tomatoes, citrus, soy, wheat and tree nuts like cashews and almonds. Some allergies are life-threatening (like peanuts), but by and large, I am not talking about anaphylactic shock here with the swollen airway and the emergency tracheotomy drama, but just the slow but steady wearing away of health on a very deep level. Or maybe chronic digestive issues that require Prilosec, or a moderate depression requiring Prozac or hyperactivity requiring Adderall. A painful sinus infection which just doesn't go away. Or, chronic constipation. The symptoms of food allergy can be very subtle and not what they seem.

Cows milk usually produces a lot of mucus and chronic upsets in the intestines. Goat milk, on the other hand, is much better tolerated by everyone and some with a cow allergy can readily do goat. Citrus and tomatoes are famous for causing canker sores and other skin issues.

See how it works? You eat foods you shouldn't, probably for a long time. You ruin your digestion. The bugs that usually live with you happily run wild (like candida for example) and overpopulate your gut shoving out the good bugs, like lactobacillus. Your now very poor digestion allows bad bugs from the outside in because there is no more juice to digest them. And soon you are sick as a dog. And it all started because you continued to eat the foods to which you are sensitive, breaking down your ability to digest all foods and bacteria and parasites and molds.

It's best if you find out which foods you are sensitive to and eliminate them entirely from your diet. Don't fool around with your immune system.

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