Has gluten been found guilty without a fair trial? It wouldn’t be the first time an innocent food was given a life sentence. For example, after almost 60 years of so-called “hard science” condemning cholesterol, we now find out that the interpretation of the science was flawed and high cholesterol saturated fats, such as butter, have been officially taken off the FDA’s nutrient concern list.28
Is it possible that we have wrongfully given gluten the boot as well, along with dairy and other commonly allergenic foods such as eggs, soy, corn, fish and nuts?
Today, there are millions of people without celiac disease or severe dairy allergies who are electing to be gluten-free and/or dairy-free, not because they are actually allergic to these foods, but because of their food sensitivities, or simply because these foods have been labeled as dietary “no-no’s.” It is the aim of this book to share the compelling scientific and clinical evidence that gluten—along with other specified foods, such as dairy—is often not the underlying issue in the case of digestive woes and food sensitivities.
For many, the underlying issue is actually a broken down digestive system caused by:
1. Overeating certain food groups, resulting in inflamed skin that lines the intestinal tract.
2. Making poor food choices that slowly break down digestive strength and gut health.
3. Preparing and eating certain foods at the wrong times and in the wrong ways.
4. Eating out of season.
5. Eating commercially processed bread and dairy that contains herbicides, pesticides (sometimes even genetically engineered pesticides), antibiotics, preservatives, cooked oils and growth hormones that our bodies were never designed to digest.
All of these actions compromise our digestive strength. It’s no wonder so many people are no longer able to properly digest these foods!
Gluten refers to the proteins found in wheat and wheat products—including wheat berries, spelt, bulgur, durum, couscous, farina, farro, semolina, emmer, einkorn, graham, wheat bran, wheat germ, wheat starch, and KAMUT® khorasan wheat. Other common sources of gluten include triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye), rye, barley, various forms of malt, and brewer’s yeast. Oats sometimes contain gluten, but are usually gluten-free when they are specifically labeled “not contaminated by wheat.” Generally speaking, gluten behaves as a glue-like element, helping foods to bind together and preserve their shape.29-31
It’s important to know that gluten is not the new kid on the block. There is archeological evidence of flour from wild cereal grains made in (what is now) Europe from around 30,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic era.22 And, around 10,000 years ago, with the widespread rise of farming and agriculture during the Neolithic era, bread and cereals became seasonal dietary staples.32-34
Contrary to what we have been led to believe, our early ancestors may have eaten much more grass, grain and wheat than previously thought, as the Ice Age forced them to venture out of the tropical rain forests into the grassland savannas, and look for new food sources.
Field studies have shown that a human can gather enough wheat berries from a field to supply enough nutrition for the entire day in just 2 hours, so why wouldn’t early humans gather the easy-to-obtain grains from the grasslands as a mainstay of their diet? New findings suggest they did.35, 36
In the same groundbreaking report out of the University of Utah, the earliest evidence of human ancestors scavenging already-dead meat did not appear until 2.5 million years ago. Moreover, definitive evidence that humans hunted for their food does not appear until 500,000 years ago.20, 21
As for our direct human ancestors, this study suggests that about 3.4 million years ago, the hominin, Australopithecus afarensis and other human relatives ate, on average, 40 percent grasses, which included gluten-rich barley and wheat. By 1.7–2 million years ago, early humans ate 35 percent grasses and some scavenged meat from grazing animals, while another nearby hominin, Paranthropus boisei,was eating 75 percent grasses, including wheat.
To be precise, according to the science, we should be making the case that humans have less genetic experience eating meat than we do wheat.20, 21
As the studies show, humans have been eating gluten for a very long time. Why is it that, suddenly, after so many thousands or millions of years of eating wheat and other glutenous grains as in-season dietary staples, eating a gluten-free diet is now one of the most prominent dietary trends?
Many people report feeling better without eating gluten. It boils down, in part, to this: If you are not able to digest gluten well, it can lead to common symptoms such as allergies, bloating, gas, belly fat, brain fog and focus issues, chronic fatigue, insomnia, autoimmune conditions, attention deficit disorder, asthma, memory loss, headaches, rashes, joint pain, digestive issues, malaise, anxiety, depression, cravings, exhaustion and, of course, weight gain.37 No fun, right? These are all extremely valid reasons to want to avoid it.
So, you may stop eating gluten, for instance, and create a gluten-free diet based on treating the symptoms—but not the cause—of your digestive issues. This is how the rise of the popular gluten-free and other restrictive diets came to be.
I completely understand the reasoning behind why being gluten-free is such a popular choice. If you know that eating gluten doesn’t make you feel good, who in their right mind would continually choose to eat it, after all? In fact, sparing your digestive tract from the ravages of undigested proteins and allergenic foods caused by weak digestion is a good strategy in the short-term.
I am proposing an alternative to a life sentence of restrictive diets that eliminate an entire food group. Instead, let’s get to the root of the issue and heal the problem at its core and, in doing so, eliminate the symptoms caused by food intolerances. While we’re at it, we will build a digestive strength that won’t predispose us to susceptibility for toxin-induced chronic, degenerative diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders down the road.
Healing, balancing, and rebooting your digestion should allow you to once again easily digest foods like wheat and dairy. Imagine enjoying an ice cream or a delicious pastry, on occasion, without paying a painful price shortly thereafter. In this book, I will show you how to do exactly that, and explain why it is so crucially important to our health and well-being to have an optimally functioning digestive system.
As a strong digestive system is required to break down and eliminate ingested environmental chemicals and pollutants—which are, yes, even on your organic produce38—healing the digestive system is more important now than ever before. A new EPA analysis reports that almost 4 billion pounds of chemicals—62 million of them carcinogenic—are released into the environment each year in the U.S. alone.39
If you cannot tolerate wheat and dairy now, but once could, or you have found yourself slowly removing foods from your diet over the years, then this may be a sign that your ability to both digest and detoxify is compromised, which also puts you at risk for unnecessary exposure to the dangerous chemicals and toxins in our environment.
Estimates show that for every person with celiac disease (approximately 0.5– 1 percent of the U.S. population), there are at least 6–7 people with gluten sensitivity,40 which would put the approximate number of people with gluten sensitivities upwards of 3–7 percent of the population. With the current U.S. population in 2015 at around 322 million people and counting,41 that would mean there are upwards of anywhere between 9.66–22.54 million people in the U.S. with gluten sensitivities. That’s a lot of people who are sensitive to gluten, and these numbers do not begin to reflect those with intolerances to dairy and other hard-to-digest foods.
60–70 million people in the U.S. alone are affected by digestive diseases and issues.42 These are staggering statistics and, in my opinion, this prevalence of digestive issues can be decreased dramatically through strengthening and balancing our digestive system, using time-tested strategies that have been working in traditional cultures for thousands of years.
Let’s heal your digestive system! To accomplish this, I will be giving you evidence-based natural healthcare strategies in combination with wisdom from India’s 5,000-year-old traditional healthcare science, Ayurvedic medicine, as well as clinically proven strategies from more than 30 years in my natural medicine practice.
While this subject is hotly debated, there is good science suggesting the original wild wheat, with less exposure to the environmental toxins of our modern world, may have had gluten levels that reached almost twice the amount of gluten in today’s wheat!32, 43 Suggesting that, based on gluten levels alone, the original wild wheat was a much harder grain to digest compared to today’s wheat.
When researchers compared the gliadin components of gluten from 2 ancient wheat varieties, Kamut and Graziella Ra with modern varieties, the ancient wheats had total gliadin and alpha-gliadin levels that were almost twice as high as the modern wheat varieties. Alpha-gliadin is considered the indigestible toxic form of wheat that is linked to many of the gluten sensitivity symptoms.32, 43
In another study, inflammation markers were measured on 22 people who ate either the ancient wheat, Kamut, or a modern wheat strain for 8 weeks. The group that ate the Kamut, where they found almost twice the amount of toxic gliadins in the previous study, saw a more than 2 times reduction in the common inflammatory markers associated with gluten sensitivity compared to the group that ate the modern wheat. How could the wheat with the highest toxic gliadin levels be almost twice as anti-inflammatory as the wheat with the least amount of gluten and gliadins?44
In that same study, the Kamut lowered total cholesterol, fasting blood sugar and increased magnesium and potassium levels in the blood compared to the modern wheat, suggesting that the ancient wheats are a much better choice, even though they may have more gluten and gliadins.44 I agree.
Here is the scenario we find ourselves in: We are blaming gluten and it’s gliadins as the cause of our digestive imbalances, yet ancient wheat may have had almost twice the gluten that modern wheat does,32, 43 and people have been eating gluten for millions of years.20, 21 How could it be that suddenly gluten has become such an issue? How could our modern gluten be solely responsible for the recent litany of health concerns and food sensitivities?
Glutenous grains are processed and prepared much differently in our modern day than they used to be. There are actually marked differences that would have made digesting ancient wheat, even with almost 2 times more gluten than modern wheat,32, 43 easier to digest. For example, studies also show ancient wheat had more antioxidants than modern wheat, which may have offset its heightened gluten levels.45, 46 The good news is that ancient wheats are readily available in the marketplace. I’ll tell you where in Chapter 7.
In the late 19th century, technology was introduced that allowed us to process mass amounts of grains and separate the whole grain into various components. The nutrient-dense bran and germ were stripped away from the carb-rich endosperm (the part we now eat), which spikes our blood sugar without the nutrient boost.47
Ancient grain varieties were also traditionally prepared differently. They were often soaked, sprouted, and fermented before consumption, rendering them easier to digest and increasing their nutritional value. These practices, which are also in use today, can almost completely break down gluten, boost mineral content, increase levels of amino acids like lysine that make nutrients more easily absorbed and break down anti-nutrients like phytic acid.47-49
Certain studies show that although there has been an increase in celiac-based gluten intolerance in the second half of the 20th century,32 there is no evidence that this rise is due to an increase of the gluten content in wheat. In fact, according to a 2013 study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, the gluten content in wheat during the 20th and 21st century has been relatively stable since wheat processing began in the late 19th century, and the average consumption of wheat flour in America has decreased by a whopping 86 pounds per person per year from the year 1900–2008.32
If the gluten content in wheat hasn’t increased and the amount of wheat we are consuming has decreased, then we need to question how the recent rise in non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) cases could be caused by gluten. Most of my patients who stop eating gluten feel better only for a short time before the symptoms start to creep back, so again, how could it be just the gluten? Could we be missing something like we did with the 60-year cholesterol faux pas? The science will show that there are a handful of factors that are contributing to the current prevalence of gluten sensitivity, and if we stop to fix the cause of these problems, instead of just eliminating wheat altogether, most people will find that they can begin to enjoy eating wheat again.
Here is what we know: Both gluten and the casein in dairy require a strong and healthy digestive system to assimilate properly.
Stress, environmental toxins, processed foods, and a host of other factors have weakened our digestive strength, forcing many people to move from one restrictive diet to the next in an attempt to find the right diet for them—one where they can digest without issue. For years, patients on elimination diets find themselves complaining that there is nothing left that they can eat. I believe we can do better than that.
Many people, including holistic doctors and a growing number of medical doctors, have figured out that if they take away the “big three”: Wheat, dairy, and rich, fatty or greasy foods, most everyone feels better. The thought is that if these foods can cause digestive trouble, they must be bad. However, if you could handle these foods when you were younger—not to mention the thousands of years of genetics we’ve inherited from our ancestors, who digested these foods just fine—perhaps you have simply lost the ability to properly digest these foods. The good news is that it’s possible to regain the ability to digest hard-to-digest foods, even in their over-processed state—in small amounts.
Early farmers who first domesticated wheat selected seeds that were larger and easier to remove when threshing. The larger the wheat seed, the more starch (sugar) and less protein the grain had. Since the gluten content in wheat is proportional to the protein content, ancient domesticated wheat gradually increased in sugar content while decreasing in gluten, gliadins and protein.32
As wheat became increasingly hybridized and processed, the glycemic index (how quickly a food breaks down and enters the bloodstream, creating a rise in blood sugar) of commercialized wheat products spiked.50 For example, a slice of processed white bread or large dinner roll is about a 70 on the glycemic scale, while a slice of 100 percent stone-ground whole wheat or pumpernickel rates in at about 55.
The famed “wheat belly” is better termed “sugar belly” as many of the wheat sensitivities and studies linking gluten to these health concerns are more a result of excess sugar. Refined carbohydrates, such as processed white bread, quickly convert to sugar in the bloodstream.
This explosion of sugar from a high glycemic diet can cause every single symptom we have that is currently linked to gluten. In fact, much of the science supporting the grain brain theory, which links wheat to an increased risk of dementia, was based on the effect of sugar on the brain rather than the wheat itself. The theory suggested that wheat (and all grains for that matter) is the cause of high blood sugar and, thus, the smoking gun for Alzheimer’s disease. This theory is challenged by a number of studies that show wheat actually lowering blood sugar145-148 and reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s.51-56 Have we once again condemned an innocent grain, like we did with cholesterol, to the dangerous foods list, based on a flawed interpretation of the science?
I have the highest respect for Dr. Perlmutter, the author of Grain Brain, and his case is spot-on when we are talking about sugar and overeating highly processed, refined grains. Let me help you navigate around these issues and still enjoy your daily bread.
The hybridization of our food—as well as genetic modifications and toxins— has far-reaching implications upon our blood sugar, the digestibility of our food, and our health as a whole.
For instance, when gliadin (a protein found in wheat) is not digested completely, it may increase gut permeability, which makes the digestive system more susceptible to having trouble with hard-to-digest proteins.57 Gliadin also affects our body’s zonulin levels. Zonulin is a molecule that regulates our intercellular tight junctions, meaning that if our zonulin levels are deregulated, this can predispose us to the possibility of proteins from food passing through intestinal junctions into the blood and lymph, where they don’t belong, predisposing us to issues like leaky gut syndrome and inflammation.57, 58 But wait… we just read a study that high gliadin levels in wheat can actually reduce inflammation.
Even more confusing are the studies that high levels of wheat lectins called WGA (wheat germ agglutinin) found in wheat are linked to a host of health issues including inflammation, disruption of our digestive health and deregulated immune responses.59
Lectins are found in all grains, even non-gluten grains like rice and beans and even potatoes and tomatoes, which would condemn all these foods as some experts do. But in a 1999 study in the prestigious British Medical Journal, lectins are blocked by naturally-occurring sugars in the intestinal tract.
As we will see in Chapter 2 and 3, the science alone is confusing. The more we learn about how we digest wheat it seems, the less we know.
The unfortunate fact is that there are toxins in the environment, and thus in our food supply, that are extremely difficult to avoid. Studies tell us that these toxins can change the proteins in wheat60, 61 and wreak havoc on the helpful enzymes in our bodies that break down gluten and other hard-to-digest proteins.62
The good news: We have the ability to detoxify the toxins in foods, but it requires a strong digestive system.63 Remember, the very same channels that help us digest foods like wheat and dairy are used by the body to detoxify environmental toxins.
So, while you may do your best to eat healthy, non-processed foods, it is my mission to help you learn how to boost your digestive and detoxification potential. It is your birthright to live a long, healthy, happy life, break bread and enjoy a freshly baked slice of bread with butter.
Imagine not washing the grease off of your stove for the past 20 years. Most store-bought breads, unlike traditional artisan breads, are cooked with preservatives and oils that are difficult to digest and can congest the liver. This is because most oils oxidize or become damaged when heated, rendering them very difficult to digest. The result, over time, is thick or sluggish bile in the digestive process. This matters because bile regulates the hydrochloric acid (HCl) in the stomach, the digestive enzymes of the pancreas and duodenum, and the ability to process fats. To properly digest gluten, we need the coordinated effort of all these digestive processes and microbes working optimally to finish the job.
Tip: Check the labels on your bread to avoid breads with oils, or ask your local bakery for an ingredient list of their unlabeled bread.
Part of the problem is that we, as a culture, have overshot the wheat and gluten runway. The typical American diet has included eating wheat with every meal for the past 40–50 years. We have overeaten wheat in a major way.
Wheat is a cool climate grain that used to be harvested only once a year— in the fall, to be eaten in the winter. Wheat is not a crop that is naturally available year-round. And yet, we’ve been eating it for every meal, year-round, for decades!
For example, the original einkorn wheat became fully ripe in October, right before the winter rains. The ripe grain would fall to the ground and lie dormant all winter until spring, when the warmer temperatures and rain would help germinate and sprout the grain. Because of the ability for wheat to store well, it’s a grain that can be gathered in the fall and last through the winter as a sustainable food. Nature always seems to deliver the foods we need most, at the right time of year.64
Eating wheat, a grain designed by nature to be eaten in the fall to help prepare for winter, was simply never meant to be eaten 3 times a day for 12 months of the year, every year, for a lifetime.
To make matters worse, in 1980, the Reagan administration subsidized the growth of wheat and corn (another hard-to-digest food) for pennies on the dollar, to keep prices down.65 With such artificially low prices, the result was a dangerous shift in the American diet towards eating our “daily bread,” 3–4 times a day, something very new for humans. To keep up with the demand, bread was processed and preserved in such a way that rendered it virtually indigestible. Today, instead of bread going bad in a few days, it can sit on a shelf for weeks without spoiling.
We know that microbes are what cause food to spoil, and that traditional artisan breads had a very short shelf life. When preservative-laden store-bought bread lasts weeks before spoiling, that means the microbes aren’t eating it. 90 percent of the cells in the human body are microbial cells and these microbes do the heavy lifting for all our digestive processes including breaking down gluten.66 If the microbes won’t eat the bread that’s been in your cupboard for weeks, we can’t expect the same microbes to digest that bread inside your belly.
On top of that, with the subsidization of corn, high-fructose corn syrup was then incorporated into popular bread company’s recipes, either replacing or in addition to sugar, making bread sweeter, but more toxic, addictive and even harder to digest.
According to our circadian rhythms—and thousands of years of ancient wisdom—eating and living in sync with the changing seasons is of utmost importance for supporting optimal health and well-being. After all, we humans are part of nature and are not exempt from its cycles.
For instance, in nature, diet changes dramatically from season to season and, like an artist’s palette, the microbes needed to digest each season’s harvest thrive with each seasonal cue; the woody brown branches and barks of winter are a prelude to the bright greens of spring and the golden acorns of fall.
Microbes suited to digest the soft leaves and bitter roots abounding in springtime vanish by summer, while a new population of microbes that digest the tough wood fibers and heavier foods of winter replaces microbes that feed on the juicy fruits and flavorful greens of summer.
Certain digestive enzymes like amylase increase during the winter months in humans, making the fall-harvested wheat much easier to digest in the winter months.85 A lack of amylase (which is required to digest wheat) is linked to wheat allergies and baker’s asthma.67 This happens when we eat wheat out of season, say in the spring or summer.
As we will see, nature harvests heavier, denser and harder-to-digest foods like wheat, dairy, roots, nuts and seeds in the winter, which require more digestive strength than the light, leafy greens of the summer do.
Speaking of living in harmony with the cycles of nature, it is common knowledge that our ancestors figured out how to ferment their vegetables to help preserve them through the winter. Not only does fermenting preserve the food, it creates digestive-boosting microbes needed to digest the heavy and dense foods of the fall—the benefits of the winter harvest!
Fermented vegetables are very acidic and thus heat the body, which helped our relatives endure many long, cold winters.
In addition, the process for fermenting veggies is called lactic acid fermentation, which releases a host of Lactobacillus bacteria that have been shown to break down the hard-to-digest gliadin portions of the gluten protein molecule—the proline-rich epitopes that I mentioned earlier.68, 69
It’s interesting how nature gave us gluten in the winter, and to make sure we digested it well, fermentation gave our digestive systems a naturally-occurring boost in wheat-digesting enzymes.70
Today, many people are convinced that probiotics are the answer to all kinds of health woes. When I first went into practice in 1984, I used probiotics regularly with my patients. It didn’t take long before I realized that I was only offering symptomatic relief. People felt better while on them and then quickly became dependent. As soon as they stopped taking them, the symptoms returned. The vast majority of the probiotics on the market today are made with fragile, lactic-based organisms, making them transient in nature. According to current knowledge, we will need to take a probiotic every day for the rest of our lives. This kind of dependency on a pill never sat well with me, and I hope makes no sense to you either.
The reality is that your ability to digest wheat properly is totally dependent upon the efficiency of your digestion, a healthy intestinal tract, and the right gluten-digesting microbes. Once these three problems are solved, the right kind of probiotic, taken short-term, can help you digest wheat and dairy once again. The key to probiotics, or any supplement for that matter, is self-sufficiency: You get on them, get better, and then get off them. For years I have sought to bring the digestive system back into balance rather than just give symptomatic relief, and to that end, I have been in search of strains of probiotics that were colonizing rather than transient in nature. I’m happy to report that researchers have recently discovered strains of colonizing probiotics that actually adhere to the gut wall and become permanent residents, setting the stage to rebuild a microbiome that has adapted over millions of years to digest wheat.
New studies show that there are beneficiail bacteria in the gut that help us digest gluten. There are also certain probiotic supplements (such as Lactobacillus plantarum and Bifidobacterium lactis) that help break down and digest the gliadin proline-rich epitopes, which are the hard-to-digest part of the gluten protein molecule.68, 69, 71 Probiotics have also been shown to protect the intestinal wall by disallowing the undigested gluten molecule to penetrate the gut wall, thus protecting against leaky gut syndrome.72
Note: See Chapter 8 for the best colonizing strains of gluten-digesting probiotics for optimal gut health.
Let’s recap with 6 quick tips to get you started on your path to good digestion.
• Tip 1: Begin by taking a cue from our ancestors and adding a quality probiotic with the strains mentioned above to your diet, which you can get through fermented foods, or in capsulated probiotic form.
• Tip 2: Eat gluten and dairy seasonally. Consider reducing or avoiding these foods in the spring, have a small amount of them in the summer, and enjoy them a bit more in the fall and winter. The cold months are when these foods become naturally available with the season’s harvest, just as nature intended.
• Tip 3: Eat your largest meal at mid-day with heavy foods like wheat and dairy when the digestive fire is stronger. It is best to avoid heavy meals, wheat, dairy and starchy carbs at night, as the digestive fire is less strong in the evening.
• Tip 4: Grow your own food if you are able. If not, buy from local farmer’s markets or join a Community Supported Farm (CSA). Many small companies are popping up, such as Door to Door Organics, who deliver fresh organic veggies to your door. Eat as much organic and non-processed foods as you can. Conventional foods that have been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides not only contain toxins, but also lack the beneficial microbes required to digest wheat and dairy. This could be the reason the Western microbiome is so lacking in microbial diversity compared to the rest of the world,73-75 and reason enough why many are experiencing gluten sensitivity. Think of seasonal organic foods as your connection to the seasonal changes of the digestive microbes that make up 90 percent of the cells in the human body and do the heavy lifting for just about every function in the human body.66
Tip: To learn more about CSAs and to locate one near you, go to http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
• Tip 5: Eating organic, slow fermented sourdough bread with no preservatives or oils is a great option over other breads. The fermented culture of lactic acid and probiotic strains used to make sourdough actually help to break down gluten and, according to some studies, even render the bread gluten-free.49, 68, 76, 77 (More in Chapter 7.)
• Tip 6: Even better, try your hand at baking your own bread. Use fermented wheat and bake it by hand or use a bread maker. It’s fun, satisfying, and easy! (Learn how to make your own healthy, homemade sourdough bread with 2 traditional recipes found in Appendix B.) Kids love the alchemy of baking, so make it a family affair!
Note: If you are gluten and diary intolerant then avoid these foods until we reboot your digestive strength in Part II.
When I was a child, my dad used to take me to a local bakery. Before even making it inside, the irresistible scent of freshly baked bread would hit our noses. He’d grab a fresh baguette and rip it in half to split it with me as we drove away. Still warm from the oven, I remember holding it to my cheeks between bites. This was a special time for us, and a memory I’ll never forget. I’m sure many of you have memories of delicious bakery items or pastas that have stuck with you because it was a precious shared life experience.
Breaking bread with someone is fundamental human experience of trust, sharing and love. This is something I feel strongly that we shouldn’t give up on without a fight. And for those of you who have gone gluten-free, I’m not trying to marginalize the effort it takes to make that transition—I know it’s difficult. Rather, what I’m trying to say is, let’s not be satisfied with the Band-Aid diagnosis of a food elimination diet when you may truly be able to have your bread and eat it too!
In Chapter 2, I will explore the science on both sides of the gluten aisle. You will be surprised to see how much unsung science there is touting the health benefits of wheat.