Gluten Free: The Complete Guide With 50+ Recipes: Gluten Free For Beginners (Gluten, Gluten Free, Gluten Free Cookbook, Gluten Free Recipe, Gluten Free Diet, Clean Eating, Gluten Free Paleo) (2 page)

The average person’s daily diet contains between 10 and 40 grams of gluten. This includes gluten found in whole wheat bread and pasta.

Gluten causes problems for people with Celiac disease, as well as for people who have a milder intolerance for gluten. Gluten intolerance has the potential to lead to Chrohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. It can cause other symptoms, including headaches, skin rashes and irritable bowel syndrome. Avoiding foods that contain gluten will help alleviate most symptoms.

Giving up gluten is not easy. Wheat is the flour most often used for commercial cereals, baked goods and pastas. Staying away from it may seem overwhelming and challenging, at first. There are many gluten-free products available today, as bakeries and food manufacturers respond to the increase in demand. Another important idea here – Gluten free junk food is still junk food. For example a gluten free chocolate muffin is still unhealthy, plenty of people assume the gluten free label means the product must be healthy. This is not true!

Grains

You must avoid some grains, so that you do not experience gluten reactions. This includes all of these foods:

Bread, pasta, muffins, cereals, cookies, bagels, gravies, cakes, bread crumbs, croutons, rolls, biscuits, pita bread, noodles, batter-fried foods, ice cream cones, wheat tortillas, wheat germ, bran, pancake mixes, dumplings, pies, pancake mixes, rye and pumpernickel bread, vermicelli, cornbread, buns, doughnuts, spaghetti, pretzels, pastries and waffles.

You can eat these products if they are labeled as gluten-free. Many grocery stores carry gluten-free versions of the foods above. You should leave many of these foods out of a diet simply because they are junk food.

Processed Meats

Physicians who deal with patients who have Celiac disease recommend eliminating processed meats from your diet, even if you are not highly symptomatic. Processed meats to avoid include pate, salami, pepperoni, bologna, sausages, hot dogs, liverwurst and cold cuts. Various grains with gluten may be used when they are made.

Alcoholic Beverages

A good gluten-free diet will include the elimination of alcoholic drinks, like light beer, ale and beer. You should also avoid hard liquors that are made with grains containing gluten. If you have been diagnosed with intolerance to gluten, you should proceed with caution to determine the level of your tolerance for alcoholic drinks. These include whiskey, some vodkas and most gin. There is a plethora of further benefits to cutting toxic Alcohol from your diet, but there is plenty of information out there regarding that! To see a great list of gluten free alcoholic brands click
here
.

Seasonings and Condiments

Many seasonings and condiments do contain gluten and can cause issues for you if you are intolerant to gluten. Unless the labels say gluten-free, eliminate MSG, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, barley malt, bouillon, malt products, modified food starch and any gravy or salad dressings that are thickened with flour that is wheat or otherwise gluten-based.

Sweets

This may be one of the hardest categories from which to stay away. Many treats include flour and other gluten sources. The sweets to avoid include malt products, chocolate candy that contains malt, candies with malt extract, ice cream, root beer, sherbets and commercial cake products. Check your labels carefully to ensure that you are choosing gluten-free foods.

Don’t get too upset!

I remember when I was first researching which products contain gluten. I was so upset about all the foods that I thought were so great at the time. My disappointed was short lived you’ll be glad to hear. The gluten free industry is exploding at the moment, tons of new businesses are creating really innovative and delicious products for us. Supermarket gluten free sections are growing and every day we are seeing more and more options to diversify our gluten free diets.

Cross Contamination

Even if you choose only gluten-free foods for your healthy diet, what if they are made in factories that also make products that contain gluten? Cross-contamination can also occur in your kitchen, when you are preparing meals for yourself and others. If you can use separate cutting boards and cooking utensils, this will help you from inadvertently adding gluten to your otherwise-healthy, gluten-free diet.

There are nearly 20,000 medical literature articles about sensitivity to gluten and how this affects your body. Thousands of research teams have looked at these issues and determined that they are indeed problems even for people without celiac disease.

Researchers feel that the problems caused by gluten may extend to juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. They have also touched on a connection between gluten and liver cancer and intestinal permeability.

Not only are researchers linking gluten to health issues, but more family and general practitioners are finding that between three and six people out of every 10 who visit with medical issues have elevated antibodies due to a gluten reaction. This means that the immune systems of these patients are telling physicians that there is, indeed, a problem.

There is no vast amount of money in conducting research on gluten sensitivity. No one is looking for a wonder drug that will profit companies. They are just discovering that the links between gluten and many body symptoms are real.

Just because a food does not contain gluten doesn’t mean that it is not junk food. Working with a dietician or nutritionist will be helpful in setting up a healthy diet that is also gluten-free.

Many general practitioners are not trained in the links between gluten and physical issues. When your immune system reacts to gluten, it works in much the same way as a vaccine. The body recognizes that gluten is not good for it, and takes steps to counter the effects.

The active part of the immune system is the memory-B cell. It does not go away. If your body reacts negatively to gluten, this means that your body has memory-B cells related to gluten. Any gluten can cause reactions, even small amounts. The antibodies can work for months after your body reacts to gluten. That is why is essential to cut gluten out fully, even one small bit after a month of being free can set of the body’s reaction system all over again.

The human digestive system cannot digest gluten. The proteins found in wheat, rye and barley are not digestible by the human body. They are not broken down into dipeptides or triteptides like most foods are.

If your body has gluteomorphins in the bloodstream, they affect the brain receptors that stimulate feel-good hormones. Eating too much gluten in your diet deregulates your receptors, and they no longer work.

This mechanism develops into type 2 diabetes. From your early life, you probably eat a lot of sugar, which deregulates the receptors for insulin, and they work less efficiently.

Similar effects are found when the peptides from poorly digested gluten hit your opiate receptors. The opiate receptors in your brain are downgraded. This is associated with anxiety, depression, autism and attention deficit disorder. This is also a reason why the main cognitive complaint with celiac disease is depression.

Many brain disorders have a link to gluten, and patients often see dramatic improvement if they go on a gluten-free diet. Even though gluten primarily affects the gut, it can affect the brain as well. Neurological illnesses may be brought about or exacerbated by the intake of gluten. This field is known as gluten sensitive idiopathic neuropathy (GSIN).

In a study following patients with neurological illnesses of unknown causes, more than half of the 53 patients had antibodies in the blood against gluten. This is according to a 1996 study: Does cryptic gluten sensitivity play a part in neurological illness? As reported in the National Institutes of Health.

Gluten is believed to be at least partially to blame for cerebellar ataxia, in which patients cannot coordinate speech, movements and balance. Many ataxia cases are linked directly to the consumption of gluten. It leads to irreversible damage in the cerebellum.

Studies have shown associations, at least statistically, between the consumption of gluten and cerebellar ataxia. These patients often improve on gluten-free diets.

Schizophrenia and epilepsy patients sometimes see impressive improvements when they remove gluten from their diet. 

Extensive Research in Finland About Underachievement Links to Gluten

Researchers in Finland have an ongoing study that ties in with cardiovascular disease. This is the top cause of death in Finland. They sent letters to 5000 adults with families, asking if they might follow the children to identify what mechanisms make them more vulnerable to the development of cardiovascular disease.

That research started 20 years ago. Nearly 2,500 young adults are still in this study. They kept in touch and were tested every year. Gathering information, researchers searched for patterns for any of these younger adults who might develop cardiovascular disease.

Other researchers used the blood drawn from these study patients and discovered that many had silent celiac disease. If they haven’t yet experienced stomach symptoms, they don’t know how the gluten is affecting them.

As it turned out, 50 of the nearly 2,500 people in the study had silent celiac. This means that the immune system was active with antibodies for gluten. Patients who were diagnosed with Celiac had half the number of people attending collage than those without Celiac.

In addition, patients in this study who have silent celiac are only promoted in their job about 20% of the time. Those who did not have silent celiac were promoted at a rate close to 50%.

This study was titled “Silent Celiac Disease: A Cause of Underachievement.” Those who did not go on to higher education and promotions don’t necessarily feel dissatisfied with their lives. But how much more could they have done if they hadn’t been suffering the silent symptoms of celiac disease?

These 50 people had silent celiac. How many more people had gluten sensitivity that was not serious enough to be considered celiac disease? One more recent study shows that sensitivity to gluten is over 30 times as common as celiac disease itself.

These studies just began several years ago. Researchers finally recognize, due to these studies, that sensitivity to gluten can affect your health even if you’re not suffering from celiac disease.

Some of the afflictions that are associated with gluten sensitivity include psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, GI upset, fatigue and depression. Scientifically, the links are not fully supported, but physicians who understand the causes for the signs see them all the time. Once patients go gluten-free, even if they did not have diagnosed Celiac disease, their brains begin to function better. They feel fully alive, like someone finally hit the switch on the light and brightened things up.

It was an awakening for many physicians to learn that if people have celiac or simply gluten sensitivity that they are not able to live the same life they could live if they adopted gluten-free diets. It is helpful to choose amaranth, brown rice and quinoa, since they do not have the gluten that may cause you problems.

Using Biomarkers as Signals

There is a discourse among researchers about grains and lectins and their offensive nature. By observing symptoms, physicians can learn how serious the sensitivity to gluten is for their patients. A grain free diet may be required for some patients who have intestinal permeability.

The individuals are studied in stages by their physicians. The diet has to be a manageable one, or the patient will not stay with it. The goal is to get to a point where there is no inflammation in the gut. Gluten sensitivity is still considered dangerous when you don’t show celiac in your blood work, but you do have stomach inflammation.

Once the gut is healed, the diet is as manageable as it can be for patients. As long as they do not suffer from Chrohn’s disease, colitis or inflammatory bowel disease, they may go back to non-gluten containing grains. If they still develop inflammation, then the physician may pull all the grains from their diet.

Patient Compliance is Vital

If your physician recommends that you go on a gluten-free diet, it is likely that he or she has plenty of information gathered that brings about this decision. Your physician can instruct you to pull all grains from your diet. If you don’t adhere to the diet, the symptoms will continue to trouble you. 

High performance athletes and others who place their health above all else will usually do what their physicians tell them to do. A gluten-free diet may work well for them. But for everyone with gluten sensitivity to reach their full potential, the masses need to comply.

The gluten-free diet you and your physician choose must be workable. For instance, replacing bread is not something that is easily done. Bakers and brewer’s yeast have profound effects on the stomach. This is separate even from the effects of gluten.

It is important for you, as a patient, to understand that you are not giving up gluten just so you won’t have stomach problems. You are giving it up so that you will not be more vulnerable to accelerated development of diseases of the immune system.

A recent, published study has shown that if your body is making elevated levels of antibodies to fight the effects of gluten that you will likely develop Chrohn’s disease within several years. These are called predictive antibodies. So, if you eat foods with gluten and yeast, your chances of disease are greater.

Beer is also something to be eliminated with a gluten-free diet. It’s not enough to cut back on your intake of gluten. You need to cut it out entirely. Otherwise, you may face health issues in the future. This is addressed in “Predictors of Disease” by Abner Notkins at UCLA. It can be found in the March 2006 issue of Scientific American. This can be downloaded at
scientificamerican.com
.

This article will help you to understand that the mechanisms of disease start much earlier than the symptoms. The mechanisms can be identified and addressed now, in a field known as predictive autoimmunity. This is the issue with sensitivity to gluten.