Elimination Diet: Gluten and Grains

Gluten sensitivity and gluten free diets are becoming more common these days because gluten is associated with many different symptoms and diseases.

Gluten and grains can wreak havoc on the digestive tract, causing leaky gut and inflammation without obvious and immediate indicators. Often times people don’t know they are having problems they don’t even realize they aren’t absorbing crucial nutrients until they start to develop symptoms. But even then, they are likely not going to attribute their symptoms to gluten.

Hippocrates said, “All disease begins in the gut.”

Ideally when you eat food, the digestion process breaks it down into smaller particles, such as amino acids, vitamins and minerals. When all is going well the nutrients from our foods are properly absorbed and transported throughout the body for use. The leftovers are excreted as stool, or poop. However when you consume gluten the body releases a protein called zonulin, which controls the space between the cells that line your digestive tract. Gluten causes an over release of this protein which pushes these cells apart. When enough damage and irritation to the intestines occur, it can result in leaky gut. This is when the impaired lining starts to allow undigested food pieces, bacteria, yeast, parasites and toxins to enter the circulatory system. When this happens the immune systems becomes overactive trying to fight these foreign molecules whether they are viruses, bacteria or parasites and it produces antibodies to bind to these substances. Antibodies are the search team of the immune system's search-and-destroy system, tasked with finding the enemy and marking it for death. This becomes a problem when the search team is tagging our own tissues for destruction which is what happens in autoimmune conditions. If you are consuming gluten regularly, overtime with an immune system on hyper alert it may lead to any number of symptoms. Gluten has also been found to play a role not only in digestive and immune related issues but also many mental, emotional and behavioural issues, headaches and more. A fair trial of a gluten free diet should be at least 6 weeks and for some up to 6 months. Although you may want to consider cutting gluten for good! If you want more information on the effect of gluten on our bodies and minds read the books "Wheat Belly" by Dr. William Davis MD or "Grain Brain" by Dr. Perlmutter MD.

Have you ever considered cutting out gluten and grains for a few weeks just to see how your body responds?

I highly recommend you do!

Give your body a few weeks without inflammatory foods weighing it down, and you will FEEL the difference.

Check out The Reset Program for a guided Elimination diet protocol to follow.

In health,

Sheena