15 replies to this topic

[tarnalberry]

The deal with body fat and estrogen is that body fat _produces_ some of the estrogen in the body, and it also stores estrogen. (Obese women may have a problem with TOO MUCH estrogen.) The fact that all the rest of your hormone levels were low may be indicative of other problems (thyroid? I'm not really sure), though.

The millet/sorguhm/arrowroot issue... It depends on where he got his information. *Technically* ALL grain contains gluten. Corn has gluten, wheat has gluten, oats have gluten, etc. The thing is, the word "gluten" here is overloaded. *Technically* "gluten" means the protein found in any grain. The proteins, "glutens", found in each grain, however, are slightly structurally different. We usually use it only in reference to the particular proteins that we, celiacs, react to. So if he meant that gluten in that sense, he's correct, but irrelevant. :-)

As for whether or not they contain offending proteins... The general, updated, consensus is that these particular grains are too far removed. To address the issue specifically, arrowroot is not actually a grain, it's a rhizome (like ginger). Buckwheat also isn't actually a grain, but a fruit. Sorghum is a grain - it's a seed - but is closely related to corn, not wheat. Millet is also a grass, like wheat, but is very distantly related to wheat and doesn't appear to contain the offending protein sequences. Amaranth is the same. Years ago, it was thought that these grains contained offending gluten, and it's true that doing more testing would be nice, but botantical hierarchy strongly suggests that these grains are much too far removed from wheat to cause problems for celiacs. (And a number of us eat these without any problems.)