"Nutrition Coach" Soap Box...

As someone who loves exercise - both personally and professionally - and also as someone who especially loves food, I have a preoccupation with eating healthy and learning what I can about what I'm consuming.  That has become a priority even more so now that we are in charge of feeding a little person.  I can be a slacker about what I put in my own body but I will not slack when it comes to the health of someone I care about. It is SO important to me that I give LC as good of a foundation as I possibly can...not only developing her "taste buds" for good, healthy foods, but also the types of foods that I give her.  I want to make sure her body has all the things that it does need and that I carefully avoid the things that it shouldn't have. 

 

For instance, it is so important to me that we only eat meat and dairy from sources that have not been given or exposed to growth hormones.  Does it surprise anyone that if our cows are given growth hormones, the milk we give our kids will have some of those hormones, too?  Is it any wonder why little girls are getting breasts and starting their periods at 7 years old now and boys are growing facial hair at crazy early ages?  Or that cancer and tumors are rampant?  Growth hormones cause bad things in our bodies to grow, too! 

 

I don't know about you, but that frightens me!  Food was not made to be messed with or genetically modified!  We are a gluten free, high fructose corn syrup free, organic, non-GMO, fresh food family as much as possible.  And speaking of Gluten Free, I have gotten the question, "Can going gluten free give me a gluten sensitivity? a lot.  So I thought I'd post my personal thoughts on why the answer to that question is leaning heavily toward "No, it can't."  

 

Let me start by asking you a question: If you were to stop eating a certain food (for example you cut out all nuts in your diet from Monday through Friday) and then you ate that food on the weekends, do you think you would have an adverse reaction in that short amount of time?  Would you suddenly become allergic to peanut butter if you cut it out of your diet completely for two weeks?  Unless you have a sensitivity already that's easy to answer: No, you wouldn't. 

 

You can't create a food allergy by removing foods for a season from your diet...you discover them.  

 

Let me use my own personal experience for example...when DW removed gluten from his diet several years ago now for health reasons, I also did because it just made it easier to grocery shop and cook.  Plus, I didn't want to tempt him by eating stuff he missed right there in front of him.  Lifestyle changes are always more successful when people embark on them as a team.  It's hard to have willpower when the person sitting across from you is crushing a piece of pizza while you pick at your grilled chicken and steamed broccoli. 

 

Even though I was eating gluten free with DW, when I was away from him, I would eat "normal". And I can honestly say I didn't notice any difference between eating gluten free and eating foods with gluten until we went on this month long stretch where I ate gluten free the whole time. We weren't traveling, weren't eating out, etc...and then I went to TX to visit my family, ate gluten like it was going out of style and WHOA.

 

I was nauseated, had headaches, felt super lethargic, I noticed my body even felt achy...like, a food hangover is a good way to describe it.  Flu-ish even.  Anyway, I just decided it must be that I just personally didn't like the way foods with gluten made me feel.  I'd gone my whole life eating gluten and I was foine....surely I hadn't had a problem with it all along? Right? 

The truth is, I wasn't willing to believe it...mostly because I thought being gluten free would mean the end of ever eating good food again.  Quite the opposite, actually.

But it was undeniable: the longer I was off of gluten, the more things in my body started changing in positive ways...an eczema-like rash I'd had on my arms my whole life went away, I noticed my hands weren't hurting as bad (I have rheumatoid arthritis and lupus) and my general muscle aches decreased (because there was less inflammation in my body).  One of the best things I noticed was that the texture of my new hair growing in was less course and (tmi warning) I even started having cycles sometimes on my own...something my body had NEVER done before. I changed NOTHING else in my lifestyle except this one dietary change. So I couldn't even chalk the change up to coincidence.  I had no choice but to acknowledge this gluten free thing had value for me.

Now-a-days, if I eat gluten, my stomach actually gets sour and I'm generally miserable.  My body is able to identify and recognize gluten quickly because its no longer in survival mode. 

  

SO. Here's my theory on why someone could survive with  a gluten intolerance or even allergy and not know it...

 

If you eat something inflammatory to your body - maybe even from birth - over time your body either a) has to build up a tolerance to it or b) respond dramatically (which manifests in an allergic reaction).  The way the body does this tolerance thing is that the lining of a person's intestines over time often get covered in scar tissue from the constant inflammatory foods that are consumed.  This scarring allows the person to consume the food without a huge allergic response...but the scarring also doesn't allow the body to absorb the nutrients from the foods they eat.   

 

Later in life, due to these nutrient deficiencies, there are often issues that happen.  Just a few of the issues that are thought to be directly related to - or at least aggravated by - a gluten intolerance: joint pain, infertility, headaches, acid reflux, chronic fatigue, muscle aches, fibromyalgia-type symptoms, IBS, constipation,  osteoporosis, and auto immune diseases  (digestive colitis, anemia, cancer, fatigue, canker sores, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis).  There are even some studies showing this may be a cause of or exacerbate autism, etc...  Our unique body chooses to "manifest" its issues uniquely. 

 

Every person is different in responding to "stress" which is why it makes diagnosing a gluten intolerance so hard...the symptoms are so unspecific and the gluten sensitivity tests are still not great. The only true way to tell if you have a food allergy is to remove it completely from your diet for a time and then put it back. If you feel badly when you eat it again, you might have to consider the allergy was already there in the first place.  Simply, you just didn't know you felt bad until you started feeling so good. Make sense?

 

If you have doubts, take some other food out of your diet for comparison.  Remove nuts out during the week and eat them on weekends. See how you feel. Try it with dairy...see how you feel. If it happens most noticeably - or only - happens with gluten, you have your answer.

 

BUT!!!!!!!!! I need to put a disclaimer in here...

 

Gluten sensitivity is a tough one to diagnose with short term removal.  Scarring takes time to undo...the body has to heal and its not instant.  So, in my personal experience, it was about 6 weeks before I could really see changes...4 of those 6 weeks were straight up gluten free (no cheating, no ifs ands or buts).  Honestly, being gluten free five years ago was difficult.  Three years ago it was inconvenient.  Saying gluten free is too hard now a days is just plain ignorant.  The gluten free band wagon has shown up and almost everything is labeled as GF now and there are a ton of Gluten Free companies out there now that specialize in making all the processed things we Americans love.  Processed isn't my fav but at least you've taken one "issue" out by removing gluten.

 

Here is a daunting fact: 1 in at least every 133 people have a gluten intolerance of some kind and don't even know it.  (Waving hand here)  There is a lot of negative feedback about gluten free being a fad or people questioning why all these allergies suddenly showed up.  That's fair...people feel like doctors are just over-diagnosing it and making a big deal out of something, much like the way doctors are thought to over-diagnose ADD and ADHD.

 

HOWEVER, the food industry has increased the gluten content in food by a SIGNIFICANT percentage since the 70s.  I could look up the exact percentage for you but, sorry, I'm lazy.  Google it.  Keep in mind, gluten is a "binder" and a "filler"... so food companies can make more "food" at less cost to them and increase their profit. What has happened is that our bodies have hit the wall. People are getting so much gluten in their diets (and causing the intestinal damage among other issues) that there has been a wide-spread recognition of the negative effects and doctors are having to acknowledge it.   

 

Just a thought: if ADD and ADHD have been diagnosed like crazy since the 80s....I personally HAVE to look at the fact that High Fructose Corn Syrup and Gluten have been added to the food in mass amounts since that time.  One is a sugar and one robs your body of its much needed nutrients. Hmmmmmm, how can you NOT wonder if there is a correlation? Which is why our family has chosen to feed LC sans gluten. I give her some regular gluten foods but its less than 10% of her diet.

Last soapbox thing:  often, instead of trying to figure out the "root" or "core" cause of symptoms we experience (like figuring out if its a food allergy), people look to medicine to right what's wrong instead of healing the body from the inside out. Does medicine have its place? Yes! But if you can heal your body by making healthy, smart, educated decisions about what you consume...should you? Well, obviously I personally say YES. Medications often fix one thing but end up creating something else! Or worse...is it actually fixing the problem or just covering it up? How do you know?

 

Oh, and if you need some suggestions for gluten free meals, I keep a "record" of some of the gluten free foods DW and I eat on an instagram account for who knows what reason.   It is truly nothing special, I just do.  Accountability?  Motivation?  Anyway, taking appetizing pictures of food is a LOT harder than I thought but if you need some general ideas, my user name is "chickfooddiaries".  Why yes, yes I am a total nerd.   Actually, maybe even better, just look up the hashtag #glutenfree or even #paleo and I'm sure you'll come across tons of IG accounts with great ideas!

 

 

 

So there you go...my two cents for you to chew on.