I’m not going to be one of those who promises a cure, but I am going to offer you a thought to see if maybe, just maybe you can actually get those bumps to go away. ‘Cuz it ain’t normal to have bumpy skin – I don’t care what doctor tells you, “that’s just the way you are,” that’s NOT just the way you are and you may be able to do something about it. After trying to get rid of the bumps on my arms for as many years as I’ve been alive and aware that I had weird bumps on me, I finally got mine to go away – so who knows – this just may work for you too. But maybe not, because there’s waaaay more to optimal health than just 1 cure-all ‘fix’, so don’t hate on me if you still have bumps after trying what I did.

First let me tell you what I did that didn’t work: I scrubbed w/ a hard brush in the shower, I used one of those soaps that has “acne medicine” in it, I switched my sunscreen, I tried laying in the sun more(in case I wasn’t getting ENOUGH vitD), I tried picking them (for the love of all things holy, do not do this!!!), I tried using alpha-hydroxy pads meant for peeling layers of dead skin off your aged-face on the backs of my arms, I switched to an all-natural soap (like seriously all-natural, practically make-it-yourself all-natural, castile soap w/ no fragrances), I switched my lotion from the pretty-smelling ones to a plain lotion (again, all-natural, no gluten, no parabens, etc), I switched my detergent to an all-natural, unscented one, I tried just about every do-it-yourself scrub routine listed in whatever glossy mag landed on my doorstep each month.

So when I tell you I tried a lot of things, I really did. Maybe I can spare you the time I wasted…none of them worked.

Could It Really Be ALL About Diet?

When we (Drew and I) first began considering the pros of switching from a gluten-free diet to a paleo diet, one of the things Robb Wolf talked a lot about in his podcasts (which are free ya’ll and you’re crazy if you don’t download them, those things are science-as-told-by-your-smart-ass-best-friend-who-when-half-drunk-is-still-smarter-than-you-solid-gold) was skin irritations from eczema to acne that were cured after going on a paleo diet, specifically, an auto-immune protocol of the diet. **Also get Robb’s podcasts via your smartphone in iTunes by searching “Robb Wolf”**

First off, a paleo diet is essentially an anti-inflammatory diet – as in – you eat foods that are rich in ANTI-inflammatory properties, and you avoid foods that are PRO-inflammatory. Foods that are anti-inflammatory are high-quality meats/fish, veggies & fruits, and certain fats (especially coconut oil, which is anti-bacterial, sort of ‘scrubbing you out’ from the inside when consumed, and thus why some homeopathic cancer diets recommend consuming daily Tbsp’s of straight coconut oil).

Foods that are PRO-inflammatory are grains (highly acidic AND contain a large protein called lectin, which wiggles its way through the gut lining of the majority of humans, essentially leaving the barn door open for the lectins and all the other food particles to get out & begin circulating in your body. This sets off your immune response to attack anything that looks like the food particles, and unfortunately in the process, it ends up attacking your human cells too. Some people think they have no issues with grains, but most actually are having symptoms that have become ‘normal’ parts of aging & will become noticeable once a person goes without grains for 30 days to see how “normal” begins to change for them.), dairy (which also contains gut irritants, especially casein, which is similar in size and function to gluten), legumes (peanuts & beans, which also contain lectins), sugar, processed foods, and soy.

This allows the gut lining to begin to heal and close itself so that food particles are no longer escaping into the bloodstream and setting off an immune reaction in other areas of your body, like the organs, tissues, joints, and brain. I figured I had nothing to lose by giving it a shot – because really – what’s 30 days if it means I start to see some results. I think even the most skeptical person can grant that 30 days is not that long when it could mean your health and life take a turn for the better. And if giving up those addictive grains & cheese is just too much for you, then you’re just not sick enough to try. ‘Cuz when people are searching, really searching, for an answer..they’re willing to try even the “craziest” of ideas, like giving up grains. The symptoms are THAT BAD that giving up grains holds enough potential to give it a shot….and for me, bumps on my arms were a symptom that something was going on “under the hood” that may become a much more serious issue down the road. For instance, what if the bloat or bumps or GERD is a symptom of your immune system saying “hey! the check engine light is ON! achtung!” And you’re all “m’eh, that’s just the way I am.” So your body 1o years from now is all “ok, told ya so, I can’t take it anymore…insert disease HERE.”

I digress…my point is that I was willing to try because what did I have to lose? Nothing else had made the bumps on my arms go away, may as well try. So I followed a paleo diet for 30 days. And I haven’t stopped following a paleo diet since then. And it’s been 13 months now, and shocker of shockers, I am almost bump-free!

Be Your Own Science Experiment

My arms started clearing after I seriously reduced my egg consumption, as well as my nut consumption. Some folks who lean more into the auto-immune condition camp also have cross-reactions to compounds in nuts, eggs, and nightshades (tomatoes/potatoes). So I eliminated them 1 by 1 from my diet for a period of time, and then re-introduced them to see what happened. Eggs & nuts seemed to have the biggest response for me in arm bumpy-ness. Eat them a lot (several times per week), and I have bumps. Eat eggs 2-3x/month and stick mainly to macadamia nuts (which are lowest in n-6 fatty acids as compared to other nuts, which are quite high in the not-so-awesome n-6 fatty acids) & my body does well. My conclusion is that large doses of egg proteins and excessive n-6, especially from nuts, seems to flare up my immune system by raising little pilaris kerastosis bumps on my arms.

And it wasn’t just my backs of my arms that began changing for the better. Within 30 days of going paleo, my face became much brighter and clearer. I never had acne on my face (thank GOD!) but my skin was dull and I had dark circles under my eyes, for which I used every under-eye concealer and lotion out there. I started getting asked what I was doing for my skin. I stopped wearing any under-eye concealer, I stopped wearing any kind of base/bronzer, except when I was doing night-out make-up when bronzer is an obvious must.

Stick It Out – This is Not Miracle-ville

While I hoped my bumps would be gone after 30, 60, or even 90 days – I saw modest improvements in the overall bumpy-ness  over that time period – it was really closer to 6 months when my arms started more fully clearing.

(Side note: I had LOTS of other things I was hoping would improve on an anti-inflammatory/paleo-style diet, and they did improve – DRAMATICALLY – which is why I stuck with this way of eating. I also stuck with it because, having taken numerous nutrition courses in college and having tried the low-fat/carb-based diet that is recommended by the USDA & having looked into vegetarianism – there simply isn’t another way of eating that makes this much sense. The science is there. I can’t say the same for the USDA rec’s and while I appreciate vegetarians’ approach to ‘love all things on Earth’, they’re wrong about meat being the problem when it comes to long-term health. The fact is, eating an anti-inflammatory diet is easy to do for the rest of your life. It’s not a “diet”, it’s not super restrictive, and it re-directs our intuition back to hearing our body’s real signals of hunger, satiety, “feeling good”, and overall health.)

And being able to do this for the long-haul is important…because as I found with my own Kerastosis Pilaris, it takes a while for the body to truly begin healing YEARS of improper nutrition. Did you know it can take 5 years for a gluten-intolerant individual to heal their gut from the damage of eating gluten up to the point of diagnosis? 5 years to get back to restored health. Most people are far too impatient to go the long haul, but I encourage you to not be an impatient type & see what is really possible with a change to your diet and/or lifestyle. It’s not a death sentence to make changes to your diet and lifestyle if it means you actually get MORE years on your life and BETTER quality years from the changes you’ve made.

So for my fellow Kerastosis Pilaris friends out there, consider what a change to your diet could do for your skin. And for everyone who never had to hide the little bumps on their arms, what symptoms that you’ve grown to consider “normal” may be positively affected by changing some part of your diet/lifestyle? You’re the driver in this life, why settle for “that’s just the way it is” when there is massive potential for you to make it whatever you want it to be…

I attended an online summit recently centered around all things paleo & anti-inflammatory. It was nothing short of incredible – with many of the top industry leaders giving presentations on the latest evolutionary nutrition news, and doing so for free, it was like college but so much more awesome. I took notes on the gluten intolerance lecture that gluten intolerance expert, Dr. Tom O’Bryan gave so that I could share the latest info on gluten intolerance with you.

As many long-time readers know, I was diagnosed with non-Celiac gluten intolerance in May of 2009. That means that I’m not in the end-stages of gluten intolerance – Celiac Disease – which is the very last stage of devastation caused by continued ingestion of gluten when intolerant. (Full-blown Celiac Disease is diagnosed by a flattening of the finger-like surfaces within the gut, this occurs after someone has been eating gluten for long enough to wear down their gut lining, making absorption of nutrients extremely difficult from that point forward.)

Just because I do not have Celiac Disease does not mean my gluten intolerance is any less severe – I just caught my intolerance early enough to stop the breakdown of my gut before it got to that point. I cannot stress this enough: if you are diagnosed with gluten intolerance, there is NO more severe/less severe diagnosis – the only concern is how soon was it caught & what symptoms are associated with that stage of health breakdown due to gluten. And as you’ll discover in Dr. O’Bryans’ talk, just because you had some test done for gluten and it came back as ‘not a problem for you’ doesn’t tell the entire story!

As a reminder to folks diagnosed with any level of gluten intolerance: THERE IS NO SAFE EFFECTIVE DOSE OF GLUTEN for someone intolerant to it. Consuming gluten when you know you have a sensitivity to it equates to speeding up the day you’ll meet your Maker. Gluten intolerant individuals die 20% earlier, mostly from cancer and heart disease, than any other person when they continue consuming gluten post-diagnosis. Why, oh why, would you do that to yourself?! Lest we digress into a full-blown discussion on the “why’s” behind people’s food and life choices, let’s get on with the notes that I took from Dr. Tom O’Bryan, leader in gluten intolerance, Celiac Disease, and the care for individuals with gluten intolerance.

Gluten & Gluten Intolerance:
Going Mainstream (or was it always here & just getting overlooked)

Presentation by Dr. Tom O’Bryan

“Let’s be clear about how gluten intolerance can manifest….it can manifest as Celiac Disease (in the gut), as myocarditis (in the heart), as autism or ADD (in the brain), as PCOS or infertility (in the reproductive organs)…gluten sensitivity can manifest anywhere that the immune reaction occurs. You see, gluten is a gnarly protein that loosens up the gut lining so it can slip through, taking other food particles with it to various places in the body. The immune system catches that & says, “woah, send immune responders over to the brain/ovaries/joints/pancreas/any place the food and gluten end up”, and the immune carries out its response on the cells in that area – including the cells of that organ or tissue. As those cells get broken down, strange things happen to that organ or tissue – it develops problems like ADD or autism, it stops working correctly thereby creating pain, dysfunction & disease in that area of the body. Gluten sensitivity is on a spectrum – you can be majorly reactive to it, or very minor-ly reactive to it. But make no mistake, everyone reacts to gluten. “

“Let’s back up a minute…there is something about calling it “gluten intolerance” or “gluten sensitivity” that makes it sound ‘less bad.’ In fact, people will say, ‘do you have a gluten allergy’ and it’s often easiest to say “yes!” even though that is actually not true. You see, when the skin-prick allergy testing first began, this was the very first method used for testing if someone had an immune-response to foods, environmental things, or chemicals. And so if you got a positive response from that skin-prick test, you were told you had an ‘ALLERGY’ to it. Even though, the skin-prick test is only testing for 1 FORM of immune-response…

Let’s back up again…think of your immune response as the Armed Forces. You’ve got the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and so on. In your body, you also have several divisions of armed force immune responders – they are called IgE, IgA, IgG, and so on – there are actually 5 types of immune response, and only ONE is measured by doing a skin-prick. Similarly, only  ONE type is measured when you do a blood-allergy test (thus why those tests are only 30% effective)……

So we’ve got these skin-prick immune responses as the 1st kind ever tested for & so the flag was struck in the ground naming those as “allergies.” It’s kind of like “Kleenex” ‘will you get me a Kleenex,’ we all know that it may not be an actual Kleenex-brand tissue that we are requesting, in fact, we’re just requesting a tissue, but it’s so tied into our lexicon, that getting everybody to change and call it by its’ correct name, ‘a tissue’ instead of saying ‘Kleenex’ and everyone knowing what you mean – it’s just not going to happen. Well, the same is true for “allergy”. Many scientific papers were written using the term ‘allergy’ & then later on, we discovered we could test for these other immune responders, the other divisions of the armed forces within us, and it was just too late to go back & change the lexicon, so discovering an immune-response that uses other divisions of the armed forces in our body had to be called something else, and so we got “intolerance” and “sensitivity”. They are no less worse than “allergy” but they simply must be called something different.”

“A food sensitivity is when you have an immune response to that food. A food intolerance is when you don’t have enough of that enzyme to break down that food i.e. ‘lactose intolerance.’ Far more people have food sensitivities than realize it. This is not a rare problem, and it is not exclusive to gluten, although that is one of the worst immune-producing responders out there.’

“Autoimmune disease is the #1 cause of morbidity(meaning; you die)/mortality(meaning: you get sick & it leads to death) in the industrial world. We thought it was heart disease for a long time, but we are now seeing a strong auto-immune connection in the progression of heart disease. Heart disease, remember, begins with inflammation in the heart walls.”

“Almost all of us have an autoimmune condition within us already, it’s just not bad enough to make us sick yet. No one gets Alzheimers’ in their 70s. It begins in their 30′s and 40′s & progresses….

There are 3 components to developing an autoimmune condition into something that produces major symptoms:
1) genetic variability – do you have the genes for it AND did you up-regulate those nasty genes by your lifestyle choices
2) environmental trigger – gluten is the most common trigger that leads to #3
3) intestinal permeability – we find in patients with end-stage autoimmune conditions, many have long-standing leaky gut syndrome”

“Every bit of food is either inflammatory or anti-inflammatory.”

“If gluten gets through your gut, your immune response goes after it. It becomes trained to fire bullets at the gluten wherever it finds it (blood vessels, thyroid, brain, etc.). Regularly consuming gluten brings a regular onslaught of bullets at the gluten floating around your body. You have then successfully developed your autoimmune condition.”

“In the Annals of Internal Medicine Journal in 2006, there was such a strong correlation found of osteoporosis patients that were ALSO carrying a gluten sensitivity that the researchers of the study confidently wrote in the Journal that ALL osteoporosis/osteopenia patients SHOULD be checked for Celiac/gluten sensitivity….when you ingest gluten, it binds to the minerals in your diet, and since your body needs those minerals to function correctly, in an effort to save itself, it leaches the minerals from your bones, thereby creating weak & brittle bones – osteoporosis. Interestingly, the greater the degree of osteoporosis, the greater the degree of improvement on a gluten-free diet!”

“Another very common symptom of patients with a gluten sensitivity is terrible muscle pain, aches, and weaknesses. The reason? Sometimes, when the body makes antibodies to gluten to fight it off, it also makes antibodies to actin, myosin & endomysium. Every muscle in your body is made of actin, myosin & is covered by a sheath of endomysium. Now you have created a system where the immune response thinks it should be attacking the very things that make-up your muscles! This not only can make a person sore, but it can make them feel overly fatigued because their muscles are being torn down continuously.”

“Fatigue is the #1 symptom of people with allergies/sensitivities.”

“Athletes on a non-inflammatory diet consistently improve their performance.”

“The gut biopsy is no longer the gold-standard for testing for a gluten sensitivity. Other tests are catching Celiac and gluten sensitivity much earlier. If you have damage in your intestines, it’s already gotten bad. You want to catch an immune response to gluten early – before your gut is permanently damaged.”

CYREX LABS {cyrexlabs (dot) com} offers the best early testing.

“There are 2 steps to addressing gluten sensitivity: 1) stop throwing gas on the fire. You must eliminate gluten from your diet. Entirely & forever. 2) Heal the damage caused to your body (rebuild the brain cells that have been damaged, heal the gut wall that has been torn apart, fix the adrenals from all the stress your body has dealt with from constantly fighting the foods you’re eating)…

Many people eliminate gluten and begin to feel better. But many miss the 2nd step – you’re going to need to supplement with natural vitamins, minerals, and possibly herbs & nutrients in order to repair the damage. This is where a well-qualified naturopath or integrative physician/functional medicine doc can help you. Unfortunately, conventional doctors are not well-trained in this arena, and are often of little help in diagnosing or recovering from this. It can take 1-2 years of work on this issue to begin to fully heal the body. But don’t give up, your life will get better & better as you look, feel, and perform better & better!”

And the Doc’s final words of the presentation, which I love:
“Just think rationally & ask the question: Are there things that could be keeping me from truly being optimally healthy?”

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What is “right” lies somewhere between those two extremes. While I cannot tell YOU which supplements are good/bad, needed/unnecessary (I have to tell you to talk to your doctor about that, although many docs are not trained in this & thus, won’t have much to tell you) I’d like to share with you an exchange I had with a client this weekend regarding supplements as it may be beneficial in helping you decide what’s best for you.

Again, I do not endorse or recommend any of the supplements I discuss below for you – they are just supplements that I’ve read plenty of research about, use myself, and were recommended to me by my naturopath. It’s my hope that you’ll use this as a jumping off point to look further into the food you’re eating to see if it’s fully fueling your nutrient needs, or if you need to add a little something to either your food, your supplements, or both.

As a reminder – the science of isolating 1 vitamin as having potential to ward off disease is flawed logic. In nature, vitamins and minerals are delivered to you in combination with all the other vitamins & minerals within that food. More than likely, it is the combination of the vitamins, minerals, & macronutrients (protein, carbs & fat) that aid in warding off disease. So bear in mind that a whole-food approach to health is really the best way to go after disease prevention & long-term health. Unfortunately, there are some variables that we aren’t in control of & that is where a supplement could be of-value in a persons’ health regimen.

Hey Kate -

I just finished my multi-vitamin & since you are knowledgeable…do you have any recommendations of brands or what multivitamins will suffice or complement a runner’s diet? Good quality natural stuff. I know you are very aware and informed. I used to take enzymes,probiotics, etc. Lost track of that.

Thanks,

Carmen

—————–

Hi Carmen!

Vitamins…ok, this category is 1 that I think can be beneficial but also can/should ebb and flow based on what’s currently happening in your fitness/wellness life. For instance, I’m doing a different kind of training for this next half marathon where I work out 2x/day – so my naturopath has significantly increased my electrolyte intake to help recovery/dehydration, but in previous training periods, he raised my ubiquinol/Co-Q10 intake and NOT my electrolytes..so if not careful, we can end up taking a ridiculous amount of supps as we try to “manage” all the things we need our body to do. So unless we’re using a naturopath or homeopathic doc/chiro/oriental med doc to help assign what is most needed – I like to keep it really simple. Because if you’re eating healthfully, there are only a few supps that make a really big impact that almost everyone could use in their line-up.

These supps are:
1)a good quality probiotic – I use one from “Orthomolecular” that my naturopath sells at his office – it doesn’t need to be refrigerated and contains 20billion strains per serving (a really good amt!). There are, of course, tons of options in the health food store for something like this, it’s good to find one w/ a broad-spectrum quantity of strains and a high # of strains per serving. Not needing refrigeration just makes it easier to have them and not need to worry about them going bad on the counter.

2)fish oil – I like Carlsons and I take their pill form, not their liquid form. They are high-quality purveyors of fish oil. I take 1 w/ each meal based on the amt in each pill.

3)a digestive enzyme that contains HCl (hydrochloric acid) to ensure you have enough acid in your stomach to breakdown and absorb the nutrients in your food. Most people do not have enough acid…even though the antacid commercials would like you to believe you have too much. NOW Brand has a few enzymes that contain HCl or ox bile which has the same effect as HCl.

4)vitamin D – there are sprays for under the tongue you can buy, as well as pill form versions. As long as the supp is vit D3 and not vit D2, which is unabsorbable by the body, you’re good to go. It’s always best to get your levels tested so you know just how much you need to take to get up to adequate levels (being at optimal vitD level is nearly impossible to do w/o a supplement if you live in the North as we do). There are many places you could get your levels tested if you wanted, I did an at-home test that you mail in through bioletics (bioletics.com)

5)glutamine – I use NOW brands tablet version. glutamine is a very helpful tool for recovery and muscle growth. guidelines I’ve read up on recommend taking it immediately post-workout when muscles are receptive to the amino acid, and at bedtime when repair is happening over night. this is how I take it. your window post-workout is approx 30-45mins to get your nutrition & supplements into your muscles.

There are, of course, a million other things you *could* take, but since most multivitamins are not high quality and do not get absorbed into your body, I prefer to encourage folks eat a balanced, nutritious diet full of vitamins and minerals. I do know though many frends and clients who use Juice Plus as a sort of ‘back-up’ since sometimes good veggie are hard to come by if forced to eat out. They have chewable gummies and pills I believe.

Hope this helps! Let me know any other ?s

-Kate

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A quick update before we decide today if being gluten-free is ‘enough’! Since last post – I moved! I didn’t kill Drew or anyone else, although they likely wanted to end me at a few points along the way – but I’d say it was a reasonable success! We now live about 20 mins drive from our gym & very close to amazing running paths (perfect timing since it’s now time to turn these legs back into ‘running legs’!)

Ok, so let’s figure this out – is there ‘enough’ benefit from just going gluten-free? Last post, we determined that the food journal I’d kept was showcasing insulin-spiking foods, a lower amount of protein & very little fat. Here’s the food journal again to refresh your memory:
Bfast: Oats (steel cut) with berries and honey
Snack: Apple with almond butter, nuts (probably almonds or cashews)
Lunch: Caprese salad, asparagus
Snack: Gluten free crackers

To recap why I could have been doing much better than that: insulin-spiking foods make you perpetually hungry, they certainly don’t help you to lose weight, and they increase inflammation in your body. Eat enough insulin-spiking foods for long enough, and you break your signaling system (hello, type-II diabetes & metabolic syndrome).

Reason #2 that my food journal looked less-than-optimal: It contained foods with pro-inflammatory compounds in them.

I just wasn’t tuned in to this a few years ago. I’d stumbled across an anti-inflammatory diet once or twice, but never really looked at it or understood what the purpose of it was. So let me save you the time and mistakes that I went through, & let’s get you applying this information to your life right away.

We’re all united by “fight or flight”. Except plants. They just fight.

Every thing on this earth is fighting for survival so that it can reproduce and its genes can carry on for generations to come. For instance: if you come across a tiger, it will either run away or kill you. It’s instinctual to that tiger that it must protect its’ survival somehow – either by fleeing or by fighting. Plants are no different. Except that plants can’t flee. So what does a plant do to ensure that you or some other animal doesn’t eat it into extinction? It fights.

To fight for survival, it creates chemical compounds that, inside you, act like the drunk jerk-off at your party. They break the lamp, they instigate bad behavior from other guests, & they leave their mark after the party’s over.

If you’re eating gluten free, you already know about how gluten is one of the biggest jerk-off’s there is – every person on the planet reacts to gluten, those who react more significantly are the ones who test positively for gluten intolerance or Celiacs’. But be clear!…gluten does not break down in anyone’s body well. It unlocks the tight junctures of your stomach lining, allowing for tiny food particles to slip through into your bloodstream. These food particles go places they shouldn’t – like your joints, your ovaries, your pancreas, etc. Your immune system goes after them because, well, they’re not supposed to be there. And there you have rheumatoid arthritis, PCOS/infertility, cancer, and so on.

I can’t stress it enough. You do not function your best with gluten in your life. Period. 

Now, looking beyond gluten – there’s another jerk-off who broke your lamp at your party.

Who Invited The Jerk-Off?

Grains contain chemical compounds aptly called “antinutrients” because they are just that – anti-nutritional/opposite of nutritional. These chemical defenses include gluten, but also include lectins & phytic acid, which disrupt your digestion, cause inflammation, and prevent you from absorbing vital nutrients and minerals.

Mark Sisson clarifies: Lectins’ stickiness allows them to bind with the lining, particularly the villi, of the small intestine. The result? Intestinal damage(with impaired cellular repair potential), cellular death as well as compromised intestinal villi, which means reduced absorption of other nutrients, including minerals and protein.

Add to this altered gut flora, which can allow certain harmful bacterial strains like E. coli to run rampant. Furthermore, because the body is now responding full-time to the needs of the injured gut lining, proteins and other resources are redirected from other basic growth and repair processes. In addition, lectins have been associated with leptin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition linked to obesity.

If  we lost you in there, know this…lectins eff things up in your gut. Why would you invite that jerk-off into your gut? Your immune system is mostly housed in your gut, which lectins are messing with. Lectins, like gluten, open up your gut a la ‘leaky gut syndrome’ – setting the stage for autoimmune mayhem<–es no bueno. Antinutrients take up your body’s attention so that it can’t do growth & repair – growth & repair applies to how you recover from workouts, but even more so, it applies to aging. You look & feel old when your cells are no longer regenerating at the rate they were in your very young youth.

Maybe you’ll never develop these serious conditions…but sadly, at the rate of development in the US (like obesity) it’s likely you’ll end up in the sick & fat camp if you don’t do something about it now. But let’s just say you don’t get really fat or really sick. How can lectins bug you? Maybe, like gluten, you’re less sensitive to lectins than others – the cold you hang on to for 3 months…the excessive soreness in your body…the head fog you can’t shake some days…the menstrual issues that are painfully irritating…the ADD-like attitude of you or your child…maybe that’s all that will happen to you. But what if eliminating or significantly reducing your antinutrient intake allowed you to experience none of those things?

And if none of that gets you, maybe there’s vanity in you that doesn’t want to look like an old fart even though you are one! People who live a healthy lifestyle look younger. Period. No cream or potion is better than the effects of a good diet on your skin. 

But here we go gang, we’re bringing it home, here’s my plea to you:

How awesome do you want your health, wellness & performance to be? Do you want your life to be ‘fine’ or ‘optimal’? Do you want to be pro-active in fending off disease potential? How fit & healthy do you want your later years to be?

If you want to be as awesome in your health as possible, if you want to rise above ‘fine’ to be ‘optimal’, if you want to fight like hell to have a body that disease simply can’t live in, if you want to be 90 and rockin’ out to the Foo Fighters while driving your car around town, then you need to keep striving to make your exercise & nutrition more healthy.

As you learn new things about achieving optimal wellness, you need to apply them, so that you continually step up to greater heights of optimal health. And if that means taking another look at exactly what those ‘heart healthy whole grains’ are (not) doing for you, you should do it. What have you got to lose? And if you absolutely hate what going grain-free does for you, you can always go back to them.

If Not Grains, Then What?

If you’re a sedentary to slightly active person, you’re capable of sustaining your energy almost entirely from protein, fat & vegetables. General carb needs are less than 70g of carbs/day.

If you’re a into mid-length endurance activities, you’ll also do fine mostly running on protein, fat & veggies – but you’ll also have the room and the need for some starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes, and a bit of fruit. General carb needs are 100-150g of carbs/day.

If you’re a marathoner or Ironman-type triathlete, you’ll absolutely need starchy vegetables as a big source of carb energy to fuel training and recover from the calorie depletion. There are athletes doing these distances entirely grain-free- if you still insist of some kind of grain, consider significantly limiting the amount of grains you eat in favor of a greater consumption of sweet potatoes and other starchy vegetables. General carb needs are 150-200g of carbs/day.

For ideas on how to create meals that do not include grains, search through the archives of my Paleo category, as I have 30 days of meals listed there as part of the 30-day challenge I did in May of this year (while training for & PRing a 10mile race totally grain-free). There may be days that are uncomfortable as you transition from insulin-dependent grains to protein, fat & vegetables but keep in mind. As you’re taking out the grains, you’ll need to add in more of the other stuff. Getting more protein, fat & vitamins from veggies & fruits is a good thing!!

I’d love to hear what hurdles you overcome as you figure out how to eat grain-free! Please share your experience so the rest of us can possibly get some new ideas on great meals for living grain-free!

In addition to the busy-ness of the gym, I’m moving! And yes…getting threatened with stiff $ penalties if my apartment walls are not back to builder-white has been prioritized by me as greater than blogging. But I’m here now! So let’s get talking!

I was organizing the office last week, and while I was organizing the notebooks we have, one had the papers flipped so the back page was facing out. And on it had been written the first half of a day’s food journal – my food journal, actually. When I found that food journal, I read it and laughed while simultaneously shaking my head. “No wonder…” I thought. Here’s what my journal listed:

Bfast: Oats (steel cut) with berries and honey
Snack: Apple with almond butter, nuts (probably almonds or cashews)
Lunch: Caprese salad, asparagus
Snack: Gluten free crackers

Why do you think I laughed at this list & thought ‘no wonder?’…It looks like pretty decent food, right? I mean, it’s definitely not McD’s!

We’ll explore several variables that are ‘less than optimal’ with that food journal over a few blog posts (because you’ll glaze over if we do this all in 1 go) & it’s my hope that you’ll learn from my early mistakes & make more optimal choices for your meals and snacks.

So what’s wrong with that list of food? It’s just one big insulin-spiking roller coaster that contains very little protein or fat and a whole lotta carbs. It has approx. 34g of protein, 35g of fat and 100g of carbs. Remember I still had dinner to get through (where there would have been another grain + protein) to add to these totals. Compare that to today, when I don’t eat 100g of carbs in an entire day, I eat 2.5x that amount of fat, and eat 3.5x that amount of protein. And I’ve gotten significantly healthier since changing how I eat from that early food journal when I’d just gone gluten free.

Whether you’re on the Paleo bandwagon, the gluten free band wagon, or no wagon at all – one thing you simply must understand if you are to understand how food/lifestyle plays into health/wellness.

Inflammation is at the root of almost* all disease.

*the scientific theory does not allow for a definitive statement unless every variable has been proven/disproven. Since new diseases are still emerging, we cannot say all, but for the top killers of humans- heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even cancer – look to inflammation first.

Here are 2 ways to create inflammation in your body. (There are other ways, but we’ll leave those for another time)

1. Eat foods that spike your blood sugar, causing lots of insulin to be released into your blood stream.

2. Eat foods that contain pro-inflammatory compounds in them.

Let’s take apart #1: When you eat a food, it breaks down into smaller components as you digest it. Eat a food that breaks down as a simple sugar (carbs do this) & your body has to send out insulin to deal with the spike in blood sugar. Because, you see, you no live long time if you have sugar for blood.

You don’t eat many sweets you say, eh? How about your whole wheat bread (2 slices raise blood sugar more than 2 Tbsp table sugar), your rolled oats (because you already know those ‘instant’ oats are not as healthy)…sorry, same deal- blood sugar spike, your side of fruit along with your yogurt (sigh…sorry Charlie, fruit is full of fructose & most yogurts have 8g of sugar or more)…and all those cheery little gluten-free goodies like gluten free pasta/crackers/bread/cookies/etc.? oh this is so not good, those spike your blood sugar even more than the whole wheat bread. Total bummer right? Initially, I agreed…yes, bummer.

But when I looked at what those silly little gluten free foods were doing for my wellness and performance, I was willing to try something different. What wasn’t working for me? Well, at the time I wrote that food journal, I was gluten free, but I was unknowingly relying on sugar to keep me going all day. No, I wasn’t eating sweets at every turn. I was eating grains at breakfast daily, as a small part of lunch or afternoon snack (usually tortilla chips or GF crackers) and a few nights a week quinoa would show up on the dinner plate.

Grains break down as glucose in your blood stream. Whole9 says it well in their Grain Manifesto: “When too much blood sugar is present in the system, your body quickly runs out of places to store it as useful energy, and will store any excess as body fat.

In addition, when too much insulin is present in the system, the cells in your body become desensitized to the hormonal “message” insulin is trying to send. Since the message isn’t getting through, your pancreas is prompted to release even more insulin when your body doesn’t need it.

Finally, chronically high insulin levels lead to a condition in which your body has trouble releasing the energy already stored in your cells. This is a bad place to be. If (via a diet high in carbohydrates) this pattern continues, insulin levels continue to rise, fat stores continue to grow and the body becomes completely incapable of responding to its own directions.”

Does that make you re-think that pre/post-long run bagel or your gluten free crackers and cheese afternoon snack? *For the record: I’ve leaned out more since cutting the grains in my diet way, way down. No, it’s not hard, you just have to learn what you’re doing. Vegetables and potatoes provide ample carbs for the diet of even an active person.

I’m also not “hangry” anymore. Hangry: ‘hungry’ + ‘angry’ = “hangry” <–not a good thing for all parties involved. Hangry-ness happens when your blood sugar is plummeting after a previous skyrocket. Now, I get hungry, but it’s a deep, real hunger of needing nutrients – not a response I’m feeling from my ‘here & then gone’ simple carb snacks. I can go several hours without eating, and am not wrecked from it. I used to eat literally every 90mins some bite, snack or meal would go in my mouth because of the blood sugar roller coaster I was on.

We’ll get to method #2 for creating inflammation in the next post. We’ll look at how you can limit the amount of pro-inflammatory compounds you eat & find more optimal foods that will fuel your body better. Till then, take a good look at what you’re eating – maybe do a food journal for a few days, and see what types of foods you’re eating most. If it’s a carb-heavy diet, take a serious look at how that’s making you feel, look, and perform & consider how a change to your diet could improve on those things.

First, I’ve been MIA lately because other priorities have kept me away…as I’m reminded at times, writing my blog doesn’t earn me money {YET…people who give out book deals, are you listening?} so I’ve been heavily involved in projects that are totally awesome, and do happen to make me money. Girl’s gotta pay the bills, right?

You may know that I’ve been working with Drew to open our first gym, if not, you do now! It’s called ProKine Performance, and is a performance training facility that caters to individuals who want to achieve optimal performance in their sport, in their life, and in their health. You can learn more about us here & here. We “grand open” on Sat. Nov 12th & our classes begin Nov. 14th, so suffice to say, from before the sun comes up till well after it goes down, my time has been tied up.

But I’ve missed writing. When I don’t write,  I try to tie up those around me (usually Drew) in what is essentially a verbal Op-Ed piece of why I think (x) is crazy or how I wish folks understood (y) so they could have a healthier/fitter life. It usually involves wild hand movements & elevated voices (mine). It’s entertaining, but is commentary that could be used far more constructively. So, let’s get to the topic I’ve chosen for today, you can read up, & if you live anywhere in IL, I hope we’ll see you at our grand open party on Sat! Contact me through the contact page of this blog, on Facebook, Twitter, or email if you’d like info.

Here we go! So, it would be logical to assume- if you want a crystal clear lake to swim in or fish in, you need to not let the local sewage line run into it, no one can be allowed to dump in the lake & you need a good ecosystem so you don’t get a layer of algae across the top of the lake.

Take that same analogy to your body & it’s performance (performance being ‘health’ ‘sport’ or ‘lifestyle’) & draw some parallels. Not letting the sewage line run into it your body means keeping to a minimum the toxins that enter your body. Think:

• cleaning products with harmful chemicals in them
• phthalates & sulfates in your moisturizer & soaps
• toxins on and IN your non-organic produce

Sure, you may only use the cleaning product with harmful chemicals in it once a week, but that exposure builds up over time, & your body must process it in some way.

And what about absorbing phthalates through your skin? Many chemicals in beauty care products are endocrine-disruptors, meaning they upset the balance of hormones, & they absolutely can interfere with your health. From something as minor as perpetual skin irritations from the chemicals, to cancer, phthalates & their synthetic chemical buddies really should be minimized to reduce potential risk to your health. Use this site to check out your beauty & body products to see if they’re safe.

As for organic vs. non-organic, sure sometimes, you may not be able to swing it cost-wise. But there are a Dirty Dozen that you should ALWAYS strive to buy organic, or buy extremely infrequently if buying non-organic. And you can’t just look at organic vs. not. You must also be educated about GMO produce – genetically modified food, the alteration of which, usually includes a pesticide growing within the fruit or vegetable. Did you know that if you’re not buying beets that are organic (which means they are non-GMO), you’re eating beets that have a pesticide growing from within them, which means you must ingest the pesticide, and that the pesticide can attach itself to your gut lining. FYI – your gut does not like having pesticides in it.

So you’re not going to let the sewage line run into your lake, then you must also not allow dumping in your like…that means your mouth is not a garbage can. Don’t stuff it like it is one.

• Obviously, junk food like fast-food, candy, and fried stuff should be out.
• Did you know some of those “healthy” foods you eat are actually filled with antinutrients? (yeah, ANTI-, meaning ‘AGAINST’)

Think of this analogy: If a tiger feels like you’re threatening it, it will either kill you or run away to save itself. Everything in nature has a defense system to ensure it reproduces. Plants system involves having toxins in them that irritate the annoying person or animal who ate them, to discourage them from continuing to eat them, and thus allowing the plant to continue to reproduce.

Apple seeds have cyanide in them & a hard protective shell, wheat (and other grains) have antinutrients called phytic acids, which binds to minerals and makes them unavailable to the body. Specifically, it binds to things like calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron. And lest you forget, gluten (found in all wheat-based products, also in wheat-related grains) unlocks the tight junctures of your gut – no matter who you are, no matter if you have an immune response to gluten or not – meaning you develop a ‘leaky gut’ when you consume gluten. So…you’ve got that going for you! Read a more detailed write-up of antinutrients here.

And once we’ve ensured we have addressed the ‘no sewage lines’ thing for our lake & we’re not dumping in our lake, we’ll make sure the ecosystem is spot-on so all the good stuff can flourish & the bad stuff doesn’t overtake it.

• Think probiotics, digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid to support digestion/absorption.
• Think fermented foods like sauerkraut to further support the probiotic culture in your gut
• Think fish oil for your omega-3′s & minimizing nuts & oils like canola, safflower, soybean & sunflower which are high in omega-6′s.

Because 99.995% of the country has had vaccines, antibiotics, birth control, recreational drug use, and/or excessive consumption of sugar and yeast in their lives – our guts ain’t what they should be – what they were when we were born (if we were breast fed….if we werent’…we’re up a creek from the get-go, so this is even more important).

A probiotic lays down the right bacteria in your gut so the food coming in can be absorbed properly. I take 1 with each meal. I also buy one that is shelf-stable, and that has 20 billion strains per capsule. You can read what I do, then decide what’s right for you.

A digestive enzyme does what it says, brings the right enzymes into your digestion so you can break down foods and get the nutrients out – because it does you no good if you just poop ‘em out! I take 1 with each meal, NOW Brand makes a ‘digestive super enzyme’ that is pretty spot-on.

HCl (Hydrochloric acid) is needed for most folks because we simply do not make enough HCl on our own to, again, breakdown and absorb food. I take 1 with each meal, and again, NOW Brands makes some enzymes that include HCl or ‘ox bile’ which is exactly what it sounds like.

Fermented foods were the probiotics your great-grandma used before we capsulized everything. Store-bought sauerkraut is fine, just make sure you read your label & it didn’t have any junk added to it. They last about 4 months in the fridge, once opened. There’s other fermented foods to eat, but why worry about them when you get to eat sauerkraut

It’s been found that most folks omega 3:omega 6 ratio is 1:100 or worse. *It should be 1:1 or 1:2 at the most.* When you eat food in restaurants that is always cooked an industrial seed oil high in omega-6, eat lots of nuts or nut flours (if you’re eating nuts every day, I’m talking to you), or eat processed foods that use these industrial seed oils – you’re getting way, way, way too much omega-6. A good omega-3 supplement (Carlson brand is a good one) is needed to combat this, as is minimization of omega-6 foods/oils. Why too much omega-6 is bad: omega-6 is pro-inflammatory, omega-3 is anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is at the root of most diseases. So you decide – nuts now but disease potential later? or a varied diet rich in oily fish and fish oil supplement now and reduced risk of disease via inflammation later?

So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff you can and should be doing to keep your health that relates to your gut. Without your gut, your immune system is compromised since most of it resides in your gut, as do most of your happy-hormones (i.e. serotonin). You can workout all you want, eat a reduced calorie diet or do hot-yoga till the cows come home – but if you don’t care for your “lake” that is your gut, you’re missing out on a key part of life-long health.

And the best part? It’s really not hard once you get in the habit of eating the truly healthy foods, supplementing correctly, and avoiding those toxic, pro-inflammatory, antinutrient filled foods.

Those are the facts that many people choose to ignore – you WILL increase your chances of early death if you continue to consume gluten if you are intolerant to it. Even if you only eat it “once in a while.” It takes 10-15 days for the gut lining to heal after an assault of an offending food like gluten – in those 15 days, you’ll be at increased risk for immune compromise & you will set off a reaction in your body that sends your immune system to attack your own cells in your heart, pancreas, intestines, ovaries…anywhere that has cells that those little gluten molecules copy themselves to look like.

Before receiving the positive test, I knew deep down that even though I am a health professional, there were some things that were keeping me from being as healthy & well as I could be, I just didn’t know what they were. Removing gluten from my life was the 1st answer to optimal health I’d ever gotten that took care of so many of my issues. And let me tell you, I had ISS-UES. I’ll outline the full of it someday, but suffice to say, I looked healthy but had major opportunities for improvement internally. So I made the changes, saw major improvements, and settled into my new gluten free life & all that comes with that… (If I had a dime for every time I heard, “no bread?? I could never do that!” I’d be a millionaire already. btw, you can do it.)

My mission for helping others is the same as it is for myself – to live the best, most optimally healthy & fit life I (& my clients) can. Which has brought me to the next challenge I’m going to undertake, and I have begun teaching others about. When this first came to me via Drew, here is exactly what I said,

“pfft, have fun with that.“
To which I promptly pulled up a few internet searches on why you don’t need to eat that way (because the internet is super for backing any argument you care to make. sky is green? I can back it up with my sources from the internet…yes, that totally proves how in-valid my research was.)

Let me preface by saying, I will post plenty more info as we go through May, so if you’re thinking “whatever, this isn’t for me”, or more likely, “Kate’s an idiot” I’ve read the research, I’ve reconciled it with what I learned in college to get that fancy piece of paper called a degree, it matches up. It’s just science. So nobody freak out just yet, ok? Stick around for May & I promise you’ll be smarter & maybe even healthier if you try it out too.

Here’s the skinny on this not-so-new way of eating:
- A way of eating, known as “Paleo”, has been getting more mainstream as dozens of high-profile athletes add this type of eating to their training regimen & seeing performance success from it; athletes in the fields of MMA, endurance sports, the NFL & more are seeing great success with this simple nutrition profile.

-I’m super hesitant about calling it ‘Paleo’, although that is exactly what it is - a way of eating that ensures the nutrients you take in are equal to that which our earliest ancestors did, when heart disease, ill-health & obesity did not exist. People tend to freak out (like I did) when someone brings up a new diet/eating plan. Let me be clear: this is not  a diet. It is scientifically-backed truth about how early humans ate and functioned VERY well while doing so. Look at any culture in the world that adopted a Western Diet & you’ll see a proliferation of heart disease, diabetes, stroke & cancer. Prior to adding Western foods, these cultures had very low incidence of these diseases.

- Paleo eating looks at the scientific truths about nutrients & the human body. This is not made up by some doctor in South Beach, nor is it pushed by some veggie-licious woman with no degree to speak of (Kathy Freston) – it is simply the study of what nutrients we absorb really well, which ones we do not, and how the bad ones absolutely are linked to disease & breakdown.

- Not only do we tend to lean toward the same 10-12 foods again & again (seriously, how many different kinds of protein do you eat? veg? I bet you can count each of those categories on 1 hand, 2 if you’re adventurous) but even those of us gung-ho healthy types rely too much on inflammatory foods, the top 3 offenders being : grains, dairy & legumes (beans, peanuts, lentils). When you consume the same few foods repeatedly, you miss out on nutrients that the rest of the edible things on planet earth offer. When you consume inflammatory foods on a regular basis, you create stress & breakdown in the lining of your gut. Did you read my articles on what’s going on in your gut? A whole heckuva lot actually - the majority of your immune system & 70+% of your serotonin creation is kickin’ it out in your gut. Want to be healthy & happy? Fix your gut. For those articles in full, go here & here.

So what do you eat when you go “PALEO”?
 - Protein (many sources, even bacon!, well, uncured bacon and not too much of it – all things in moderation, right?)

- Vegetables (duh…just lots more of them than you’re probably used to. I had jicama slices today for dipping in my guacamole, yum)

- Plenty of fat (I think I just heard a few gasps…much to mainstream media’s dismay, fat is not the enemy – guacamole? ok!)

- No grains, dairy or legumes- which includes lentils, peanuts & beans-(again, much to mainstream media’s dismay, a diet “rich in whole grains, dairy & beans is NOT the healthiest way to go, there’s plenty of science to prove it)

- No refined sugars (duh…if we took out grains & dairy, we sure as hell are taking out unnecessary sugars! you’ll see fruit in my diet rotation, but again, all things in moderation)

That’s the basic jist of it – all the foods that were present in the Paleolithic era are in the mix – we’re going hunter-gatherer style, Neolithic era foods are not – clearly not any packaged foods here. Once I read a few books about Paleo & listened to a whole bunch of podcasts about this stuff, it became clear to  me that there was a benefit to be gained by trying out this further cleaning up my food choices. So I’m going to do this for 30 days with Drew & we’ll blog about it.

I can tell you right now, it’s not going to be a walk in the park. But it’s not like it’s that difficult….building a space shuttle – that’s difficult. Remembering to buy enough swiss chard & sweet potatoes so I’m not starving at breakfast? That’s not difficult. I am confident I have some foods that are inflaming me, and the only way to know what they are, and to heal my gut from that inflammation is to quit them for 30 days. We’ll post the science behind this, some of our menus & thoughts on how we think it’s going here on the blog & on Twitter ( @kgalliett  & @DW431 ). We hope you’ll follow along as we embark on this little 30 day challenge!

1) It carries a compound that doesn’t break down all the way in a human gut, thus causing gut irritation, systemic inflammation, & potential for autoimmune disease.*

Answer: CEREAL GRAINS
(yep, all those grains you eat as part of your ‘diet rich in whole grains’ as prescribed by Biggest Loser and a whole bunch of other mainstream, misinformed people. Did you know cereal is a slurry of grains formed into a flake or shape depending on the cereal & was originally invented at a sanitarium for use on the patients staying there as a way to ‘calm their loins’, yeah, it’s what you’re thinking – seriously, read the story here.)

2) It has molecules called anti-nutrients in it that fight against what vitamins, minerals, amino acids & helpful molecules try to do in your body.*

Answer: WHOLE GRAINS
(foods in nature aim to survive, it’s built into their DNA – look at an apple, its seeds contain small amounts of poisons that are there by design. If an animal or human came along & ate the whole apple - seeds and all – then the apple would never reproduce & would eventually die off. Seeds can easily pass through stool & since pungent with the poison, can signal animals to avoid eating them, leaving them behind to mix into the soil and re-grow. Grains, while not full of cyanide like apples, have a hard endosperm there by design & when eaten, sets off molecules & chemicals that make it tough for your body to fully digest them – that grain is fighting for its life to make it out of your intestines & back to the earth for re-growth!)

3) It has a defense mechanism built into it similar to a soap molecule. Rather than attach itself to your carrier cells in the gut, it simply punches holes in the membranes of the gut lining cells*. <—It’s a bit barbaric don’t you think?

Answer: QUINOA. I know!! I know!  I was shocked when I learned this because I enjoyed quinoa & its complete profile of amino acids giving it a slightly higher protein content than other grains, but when I really looked at the science of it…well, read on…
(Quinoa is botanically NOT a grain, but it has evolved in a similar biological niche giving it similar properties to grains*. Grains essentially hitch a ride on your cells & generally wreak havoc on everyone through their chemical inflammation, regardless of if you are Celiac or non-Celiac gluten intolerant..but quinoa decides to skip that part & just punch a hole in your microvilli (hold your hand up with the fingers apart, that’s what your inside of your gut looks like with cells all over that surface area of finger-like folds). If you punch a hole in the microvilli, you’ve just opened the door for food particles to slip out of the gut…hello leaky-gut syndrome! And this is how people can become intolerant to seemingly innocuous things like chicken, garlic, and cinnamon.

4) Contains a molecule that makes the immune system mount a response to it (as a good little immune system should do) however also makes a close match to cells you already have in your body, like pancreas cells, and sets the scene for the immune system to mount that same attack it had against the molecule to the pancreas cells.*

Answer: ALL GRAINS.
“But I don’t have Celiac!” you say, I know, many people don’t have Celiac. You don’t have to have Celiac to have an immune response to grains*. All humans react similarly to grains, and those with Celiac or non-Celiac gluten intolerance (what I have) simply have a more intense reaction than non-Celiacs. But the reaction is still there in non-Celiacs: when grains are eaten regularly, the body is perpetually dealing with these inhospitable jerky molecules creating inflammation (the root of most diseases) and creates the possibility for your body to begin mounting an attack against its own cells creating auto-immune diseases that seem to pop out of nowhere but can be tied to leaky gut & the autoimmune response that creates. See list below:
-Infertility/PCOS
-Type 1 diabetes
- Multiple Sclerosis
-Rheumatoid Arthritis
-Lupus
-Vitiligo
-Narcolepsy
-Schizophrenia
-Autism
-Depression
- Huntington’s
- Non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma
- Hypothyroidism
- Porphyria

I’m not posting this to annoy you about your grain consumption, I’m doing this because the more I learn about food & nutrition, the more I can see the CLEAR LINK between what you eat & how sick or healthy you become. Since I was diagnosed with gluten intolerance 2 years ago, we’ve studied grains & how being gluten free positively impacts health, and now we’re studying the differences between Neolithic (post-agricultural revolution) and Paleolithic (pre-agricultural revolution) foods.

Those of you who know about Paleo diets & hate anything that takes away your beloved grains, don’t roll your eyes, there is some serious science around this. We are not studying it because we want this to be the next fad in diets. We are studying it because as students of human science, we are literally eating up all of these studies & scientific proof showing how foods we thought were healthy are negatively impacting our health & longevity.  

In the month of May, Drew & I are going to be doing a Nutritional Challenge – and blogging about it. If you’re so inclined to join us, super! We’ll be using scientific studies & the teachings of biochemist Robb Wolf & former professional marathoner/resident-smart-guy Mark Sisson. Check back this week for updates on what will be included in the Nutritional Challenge.

*Excerpts of Robb Wolf’s book, The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet were included in this post. Studies proving this data are listed in the back of Robb’s book.

The latest one you’ve probably seen is from yogurt maker Yoplait - they say if you eat one of their yogurts, a fruit, and a grain for breakfast for 2 weeks, along with some kind of sensible food elsewhere in your day, you’ll lose weight quickly. If all you know about nutrition is what the calorie label says, you’d think “yep! healthy!” But that’s not the case at all. When you break down the functional nutrients in each food item, you’ll see that the yogurt/grain/fruit combo is a DISASTER for your health & weight.

Here’s the problems with this plan:
Yogurt - 
1) If it’s not Greek Yogurt, it’s not worth your time. Regular yogurt has a high amount of sugar and very low protein. Greek Yogurt is the opposite of that – as long as you’re getting plain or vanilla – don’t ever get swayed into buying fruit already mixed in yogurt, add your own and save calories and sugar grams. Protein feeds muscles. Sugar feeds fat cells. If it does not have a solid amount of protein, 11g or more is good, you’re feeding your fat cells predominantly. Not what you want to do when trying to lose or keep fat off. 

I always recommend Stonyfield Farm Oikos Greek yogurt, because it’s organic, and I try to avoid non-organic dairy because of the extremely low quality of the milk produced by factory farmed cows. If you want a high quality Greek Yogurt, but don’t want to pay a little more for the Oikos quality, Chobani is another fine yogurt. I checked out the new Dannon and Yoplait Greek Yogrts for you – Dannon Plain is the only one I’d recommend. Even the Dannon Vanilla has fructose in it – and as you’ll see in our next segment, you want to avoid fructose at all costs!!

2) Yogurt contains casein – a protein found in dairy products (but not in whey protein powder). Casein has the same brutal effects that gluten has on the body to someone sensitive to it. You do NOT have to be diagnosed with a casein sensitivity to experience the effects of casein on the body. Casein is very difficult to breakdown, is highly addictive, and in the body, has an opiate-like effect on the brain. It raises the inflammation level in the body & high inflammation = fat storage. If your inflammation levels are high, you will have difficulty losing weight.

Fruit –
Fruit sugars, known as fructose, break down in the body differently than table sugar. Do not believe any commercial that tells you “sugar is sugar.” It is not!! Regular sugar breaks down in the bloodstream, and then is either used for energy or stored as fat. Fructose is a sugar that breaks down in the liver and forms triglycerides - the chemical form of some fat in the body – the fructose part of your fruit literally will break down as fat. Think your cholesterol levels are controlled by how much red meat you eat? You actually also need to take a look at how much fructose you eat if you’re watching your cholesterol.

Fruit is best kept to a minimum if you want to be lean and fit. My naturopath wants me steering clear of fruit unless I’m eating it with a protein, and then only occasionally. I eat berries, an occasional apple, and 1/2 a banana when I have a long run scheduled. That’s about it for me. Here’s a chart on fructose grams in fruit so you can make your own decision. (scroll down on the linked page for the chart)

Grains-
The Yoplait people want you eating some kind of grain along with your casein-opiod/yogurt & your fructose-triglycerides/fruit. If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know my stance on glutenous grains. I AM gluten intolerant – you may not be – but you definitely are better served to keep gluten to a minimum in your diet. Gluten, like casein, is highly addictive, raises inflammation in the body (making it easier to hang on to fat), & causes breakdowns in the intestinal lining of the gut (where the majority of your immunity is stored, and where 80% of your serotonin, the chemical in our body that makes us feel happy is stored).

Eating a diet rich in gluten serves little purpose. There are bountiful amounts of gluten free grains - I enjoy many of them and want you too as well! I eat Rudi’s Gluten Free toast with my eggs in the morning, gluten-free oats for pre-long distance run meals, corn tortillas for my mexican-style lunches, and quinoa along with my grass-fed beef burgers for dinner. So as you see, you can still eat grains and get enough carbs in your diet for energy, without dipping into the gluten-y grains that cause such problems. This excellent in-depth article outlines just how awful gluten is to anyone’s body.

The Bottom Line:
Yoplaits’ plan is for you to restrict your calories to see the weight loss. But calorie restriction without calorie quality will ultimately fail you. The number of calories you eat does matter. The TYPE of calories you eat matters as much or more than just meeting a certain calorie number at the end of the day. 

You could eat ‘x’ amount of calories all from 100-calorie pack snacks, instant oats, frozen meals, and Yoplait ‘Light!’ – but you’d be sacrificing a large amount of nutrients that your body needs while ingesting a large quantity of anti-nutrients. Your body requires certain nutrients every single day, multiple times per day. Your biological systems that regulate your weight NEED the proper nutrients – not getting them can have a disastrous effect on your weight loss efforts. I’ll say it again people, foods & drinks that inflame your body make it extremely difficult to lose fat. Inflammation = fat. Bottom line.

Sit down to each meal/snack in your day knowing that you’ve picked a solid protein as the foundation, have a food that looks just as it did when it was growing on a vine/in a tree, and are eating a bit of fat from a healthy source. It’s really not that hard, your weight loss results will be much more long-lasting, and you’ll have a much better chance of fending off much of the inflammatory diseases that are raging in this country today!

Glutamine is a non-essential amino acid, meaning your body can make it itself, whereas other amino acids you must take in through your diet because your body cannot produce it. Recently, it has been classified as a conditionally essential amino acid, which means that even though the body can produce it, if there is a time of extreme stress, the body’s demands exceed the rate at which the body can produce it & depletion occurs, requiring supplementation to support the body’s needs.

Glutamine is involved in more metabolic pathways than any other amino acid. It converts to glucose, which is required for energy. It helps to manage blood glucose levels as well as the correct pH level in the body (which is critical to health!). It serves as a fuel source for cells of the intestinal lining, that without it, those cells waste away making digestion & nutrient absorption challenging. It is also the base of the building blocks for DNA & RNA synthesis.

So to summarize that paragraph: Your body uses glutamine to *have energy for daily & workout function *control blood sugar spikes & drops, which affect how much fat you store & if you develop diabetes *keep your pH in a range that does not cause disease, breakdown & sickness *help your body use the nutrients from the food you eat & keep the place where 80% of your immune system is stored (in your gut) healthy & *to upkeep the very things that make up who you are.

Glutamine also plays a role in helping the body to secrete HGH (human growth hormone) – which helps the body metabolize fat & support new muscle growth. And supplementation of glutamine can help in the treatment of arthritis, autoimmune diseases, fibrosis, intestinal disorders – and can play a big role in helping people to not waste away when they are going through treatments for critical health issues like cancer & AIDS.

When you are in good health, your gut lining is strong & functioning as God intended it- absorbing nutrients, digesting & eliminating the foods we take in. When your gut health is compromised, which antibiotics, the Pill, poor nutrition, extreme stress, medical treatments, lack of breast milk received as a newborn, and many more things can cause – your body lacks a major player in the key to optimal health. Glutamine plays a big role in helping the gut to heal if it is damaged & remain strong, especially if you’re someone like me, who already has an altered gut due to almost 3 decades of gluten intolerance that I didn’t know about & ate a gluten-filled diet that was damaging my gut the entire time.

Glutamine has many benefits for optimal health, but, if you are hyper-sensitive to MSG, you should use glutamine supplementation with caution as glutamine metabolizes in the body into glutamate. So if you have physical reactions to MSG in food, give due diligence before starting to supplement with glutamine. MSG & glutamate as metabolized from glutamine are NOT the same thing – MSG is a chemical compound that scientists still don’t really understand other than that it can make any food taste more like that food. MSG is EXTREMELY dangerous to consume regularly. Glutamate as the metabolized form of glutamine is simply what the body does to this amino acid to make it readily available for use within the body.

Glutamine is just one supplement that may help you to move closer to optimal health. Our diets today are so nutrient deficient, even in fruits & vegetables if they are not organic, and we’ve done such damage to them from living an unhealthful life at some point in our lives or from taking antibiotics, that we all need to consider supplementation to help us return to optimal health. We should not rely on them as something we need forever, as your supplement profile should change as your health changes, but you should explore supplements as an added benefit to your health plan.

Consult with your naturopath before beginning a program (I’d say doctor, but to be honest, very few doctors understand supplements in a natural or holistic way so you’d probably be met with the answer “you don’t need that” if you talk to them).