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If you have not been diagnosed with Celiac disease, Colitis or another gluten-related intestinal illness, or you do not see a direct correlation between your chronic health symptoms and eating foods containing gluten, it can be hard to be motivated to eliminate gluten from your diet.
Why are some people sensitive to gluten and not others?
It was so hard for me to think about living life without bread and the baked goods that were a staple in my diet growing up, I remember saying, “If I have to give up wheat to feel better, just take me now’. I had been suffering chronic neck and back pain for years including a painful bout of frozen shoulder, brain fog, fatigue, acne, racing heart, UTI’s and more. The first time I eliminated gluten from my diet, I experience a dramatic reduction in pain and
brain fog after only 5 days. During those 5 days, I experienced intense mood swings, headaches, fatigue, and food cravings. After that, my mood, energy and appetite started to normalize and I began to feel better than I had in years. I was astounded! I did not realize gluten was contributing to my symptoms because my symptoms were not in my gut. That was over 10 years ago. Today I am completely symptom-free.
What is gluten?
Gluten is a protein naturally found in some grains including wheat, barley, and rye. It acts like a binder holding food together and giving it a stretchy quality. I will refer to wheat and gluten interchangeably, but it’s important to know that it’s also in barley and rye. Gluten does not occur naturally in oats, but most oats are processed on the same equipment as wheat and small particles of wheat easily find their way onto the oats and oat flour. People who are very sensitive to gluten can react to these trace amounts of wheat in oats, so gluten-free oats are processed on separate equipment to prevent cross contamination. But oats do not contain gluten.
How do I know if I am sensitive to gluten?
Eliminate gluten from your diet completely for two weeks, then introduce it again. Try not to make other changes so, gluten is the only variable. You may notice an improvement in your health within the first few days, but sometimes the improvement is so subtle, and we are not accustomed to observing our bodies, that we don’t notice much until we re-introduce wheat again. You will most likely experience a reaction to the gluten after not eating it for 2 weeks.
Your body will have a chance to clean-up and begin healing the inflammation, and when it’s in “healing’ mode instead of “coping” mode, it will try to protect you from the gluten instead of tolerating it.
Why are some people sensitive to gluten but not others?
We are not actually sensitive to gluten. Gluten IS hard to digest and eliminate. Wheat has been cross-bread over the years for a higher gluten-content so it can make lighter, fluffier baked goods. Our bodies have a hard time producing enough digestive enzymes to break it all down. It ends up caked on the insides of our stomach and intestines, thickening our lymphatic fluid, storing between muscle fibers and connective tissue and disrupting the liver and kidneys. BUT, the underlying cause of gluten-related symptoms is VIRUSES! Over the past century, our bodies have become petri dishes for viruses because of all the pollutants and toxins that have entered our environment such as radiation, pesticides, heavy metals and more. These toxic chemicals have found their way into our air, water, and soil and into our bodies and livers. The viruses feed off toxins and have adapted to feed off of gluten, dairy and eggs so they can live in us like parasites. At first the symptoms are mild and seem normal but they get worse over time and are the cause of all our chronic health problems. When we eat gluten, we feed the viral parasites in our bodies. They grow and produce waste. Viral waste is poison and highly inflammatory. So what we perceive as a
gluten intolerance or sensitivity is actually an inflammatory response to viral waste. We are actually reacting to viral toxins! How we react to gluten depends which viral strains we have and where they are located in our body.
Eliminating gluten from my diet 10 years ago was a game-changer! I discovered that I felt much better without it. The improvement in my health, energy and outlook, allowed me to start making more changes in my diet and lifestyle that have completely eradicated all my chronic health issues. I look forward to sharing more information about the underlying causes of chronic illness and how to “Eat to Heal”.
If you would like to know more about me and how to heal chronic illness, check out my website conniesalgadowellness.com and follow me on Instagram or Facebook @empoweringwellnessnow.
For delicious, nourishing, simple, tried-and-tested gluten-free recipes click the recipe link tree on my Instagram account or simply scroll down the page. Potato tortillas, waffles, pancakes, wild blueberry muffins, oatmeal raisin cookies, oat millet bread, and buffalo cauliflower are a few of my favorites. I highly recommend you follow @medical_medium_recipes for more delicious gluten-free recipes.
If you would like to learn more about wheat and gluten and how it affects our bodies, I recommend the following:
Wheat Belly by William Davis, MD
Medical Medium Revised and Updated by Anthony William
Cheers to Good Health!
There is much love here for you!
written by Connie Salgado
Master Footzonologist and Wellness Consultant
Connie healed all her chronic symptoms including frozen shoulder,
back pain, fatigue, brain fog, hypothyroid and more.
She has been helping others to recover their health for over 10 years.
Cedar City, UT
ConnieSalgadowellness.com
@empoweringwellnessnow