Dangerous Grains

[YankeeDB]

I just finished the book "Dangerous Grains" by Hoggan and Braly. I thought it was very well-written, totally fascinating and covered topics I hadn't encountered in other books including the "leaky gut" concept. (I also got a lot out of the chapter on various tests.)

I learned that a "leaky gut" caused by gluten intolerance can allow substances to pass through the intestinal wall directly into the bloodstream where they can travel anywhere in the body and cause mischief. In other words "malabsorption" can mean not only NOT getting nutrients you need but also getting various substances that might be harmful when they are at large in your bloodstream. Perhaps this explains the wide range of symptoms in celiacs--any place blood goes might be "visited" by unwelcome intruders!

The take home message for me is that healing the intestine as quickly as possible to plug up the leaks is all important. I suspect that being super, super strict in the earliest days of recovery would be especially helpful. That is, for 3-6 months restrict the diet to whole foods that are non-gluten-free with NO additives. Then, after the majority of healing has occurred you can branch out into more processed, but still gluten-free, foods.

[Lily]

Hi Yankee,

I am on that type of diet per my nutritionists advice and am starting to feel better. I have been on a very strict diet to start out with, but am gradually adding a few things here and there back in to see how I feel. I highly recommend this to anyone - it helps you detox and break it down to see how it feels to feel better before you add anything back in. When you are so sick all the time it's very difficult to cope, but having a strict diet to follow has helped and I'm at the point where I can start adding things back in and it's liberating .

Lily

[new2celiac2k12]

Yankee, Excellent info on Grains:

Several days ago I tried making spaghetti with Tinkyada brand wheat free / gluten-free brown rice pasta, but it states on the bag, From Whole-Grain, I also made 1.5 lbs of fresh turkey burger, made into 1.5 inch chunks,

but I did use some seasoning, which after a few months of cooking with it seems to have been ok, used garlic, onion, lawry's salts, and some black pepper, then mixed in 1 jar of Classico's Tomato & Basil red sauce, which the company states that all their sauces are 100 percent gluten-free, and it seems I have been reacting to this, I even tried just eating the noodles, but could not tell since I was already reacting.

I thought I've been eating good enough for the past 2 to 3 months as I have been getting better, and getting back to being " Regular " but something is causing me to react again, and I feel as per my testing done by my chiropractors holistic testing, he told me that grains and dairy were my biggest concerns, rather I had a defence to the wheat test, so how do we avoid grains without wheat?

[mushroom]

When you are new it usually helps to take a good quality (high in nos. of organisms) gluten free probiotic to promote healing in the gut, and often some digestive enzymes to help break down your food since it is the longer chain (not broken down) amino acids getting through the leaky gut which create the mischief.