Who’s the baseball player below?
It is Henry Lou Gehrig. In case you don’t know who he was, he was an American baseball first baseman who played for 17 seasons in MLB for the New York Yankees (1923-1939).
Do you know who the first athlete was to appear on a Wheaties box? That’s right, Lou Gehrig! In the second half of the 1938 season Gehrig reported physical changes in his game at the midway point. At the end of the season, he said, “I am tired ... I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t get going again.” By the beginning of the 1939 spring training, Gehrig lost his power. At the age of 36 Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).
Enormous amounts of research have looked at the connection of gluten and nerve damage in the brain. 1, 2
In the 1920s, the US government found that animals fed a diet of white flour developed serious neurological diseases and died. Instead of banning this deadly product like they should have, the FDA declared that most white flour products must be "enriched" with iron and a few vitamins to "correct" the problem. Unfortunately, this decision has helped create an even more insidious situation that results in diabetes, heart disease and cancer for millions of people.
Gluten sensitivity
Gluten sensitivity is becoming a raging epidemic today. Gluten sensitivity is not a disease and therefore has no cure. Gluten sensitivity is triggered by eating products containing gluten. The only way to avoid its complications is to stay away from food products containing gluten. The average person who has a gluten sensitivity and eats a source of gluten can set off an inflammatory response that may last up to 8 months. A simple mnemonic for avoiding gluten is B.R.O.W.
Barley - most barley is contaminated via cross-contamination because it is packaged at a gluten containing facility
Rye
Oats
Wheat
There are 35 diseases that can be caused by eating gluten listed in a review in the New England Journal of Medicine. Some of these symptoms are: arthritis, ADHD, depression, anxiety, IBS, lupus, frequent headaches, fatigue, eczema, loss of muscle coordination, osteoporosis, a weakened immune system, fungal overgrowth, organ inflammation, weight loss/weight gain, and malnutrition.
Gluten sensitivity increases your risk for type 1 diabetes, obesity, gastrointestinal cancers, brain disorders, autism and thyroid disease.
Gluten evils and woes
Gluten is purposefully put in some products because it increases hunger signals to make you eat more of a product by increasing the ghrelin in the digestive tract to enhance feelings of hunger - leaving you hungry for more of that product. Gluten also interferes with leptin which tells your brain you're full and signals fat to break down. Leptin also normalizes pain sensations in the spinal cord.
• Gluten sensitivity causes inflammation that harms the body tissues by causing an autoimmune response where the immune system ends up attacking the body
• C-reactive proteins rise in response to inflammation; causing cholesterol levels to shoot up and calcium deposits to harden the arteries and blood pressure rise
• Sugar cannot fuel cancer cells by itself. Gluten and the amino acid glutamine have been studied and found to play a critical role in the cancer process.
• Gluten is an excitatory toxin; which agitates and kills neurons which like glutamate (think MSG), accelerates, activates, irritates and damages brain cells. A 2006 study took 131 children with ADHD and removed gluten from their diets and all 131 children were reported to have significant improvements.
• Gluten can be broken down into strange proteins that are a lot like psychedelic drugs. These are opium-like proteins are called gluteomorophins (think Autism and Manic Depressive Disorder).
• With gluten, the N Methyl D Aspartate receptors cause spinal cord neurons to become hyper to touch. Leptin in the spinal cord normalizes pain perception and gluten interferes with that process (think fibromyalgia).
• University of California put people on a "Paleolithic" diet, their blood pressure dropped along with blood insulin levels. Good cholesterol went up and bad cholesterol went down - in just 10 days!
• Gluten sensitivity causes you to miss out on your fat soluble vitamins like vitamin D and K
• Eating gluten has now been related to bone density problems (think osteoporosis)
Solution: STOP EATING GLUTEN!
Gluten affects everyone negatively, some effects are very evident now but most of them are sub-clinical and will not show up for years. When disease does finally manifest, the connection to gluten will be overlooked or denied. Gluten-free is a lifestyle choice for health of body and mind. If we choose a gluten-free lifestyle for obvious health reasons, we are intentionally avoiding trouble both now and in the future.
For more information on Gluten Free check out these websites:
References:
1. Gluten and Motor Neurone Disease (ALS). http://www.naturostudy.org/naturopathy-articles/gluten-motor-neurone-disease-als/
2. White matter lesions suggestive of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis attributed to celiac disease.AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2010 May;31(5):880-1. Epub 2009 Nov 12. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19910450
