The Trouble with Wheat Part V, or “The Closer – Food Allergy Wise”

October 22, 2010

The Trouble with Wheat Part V, or “The Closer – Food Allergy Wise” 


Reference: Your Hidden Food Allergies are Making You Fat, Rudy Rivera 2002 Date:  Oct 19th, 2010 


 Food allergies, huh!  Is that it?  Food allergies?  How on earth did they develop? Looking back at human evolution, it’s actually pretty easy to see how this slipped by.  We only started drinking cow’s milk and eating wheat 10,000 years ago.  Long ago, we only lived till age 28-35.  We didn’t have time to develop allergies.  We were dodging spears and arrows, or fangs and claws.  


It’s only been the last 150 years in which our bodies have had another whole layer of inflammatory insults thrown at them.  We ground up flour into talcum powder, making fine white bread and losing all the precious fiber.  We added trans-fats to our food because they were so creamy and made food last without spoiling.  We learned how to grow cheap vegetable oils, not knowing that they were the precursors to inflammatory signaling hormones.  We ate sugar and fructose with wild enthusiasm.  Add feedlot animals with their saturated fats, and you have a perfect culinary storm of inflammation.  


This comes on top of the mild, persistent gnawing away in your gut your intolerance to wheat causes.  Add to that our penchant for taking antibiotics that kill many of our beneficial bacteria and injure our guts a little more.  No wonder we are in trouble. So, how to escape? 


The Four R’s.  Most of our immune trouble starts in our guts, where we have 70% of our immune system.  The Four R’s stand for “Remove, Repair, Restore and Replace”.  Without much ado, this is something anyone can do.   It’s how to fix the allergic vicious cycle in your gut.  The most common food allergies by far are wheat, dairy and soy.   Don’t eat those at all.  If you are going to that much trouble, throw in caffeine, sugar and alcohol too.  


REMOVE those.  Then, start your 


REPAIR by adding back some foods that guts like for healing.  Good fish oil, turmeric, quercetin and GLA (gamma-linoleic acid) are good gut healing supplements to bathe your irritated GI tract with.  And while you are at it, 


RESTORE at the same time by buying some probiotics.  Every drug store has them. Go for the good quality ones that have 30 billion or so per capsule of their bacteria mix.  Take two capsules three times a day for a month.  I really mean a month.  Get good healthy bacteria like lactobacillus and bifidobacteria back in your gut.  Finally, 


REPLACE with good food, and maybe some bile acids or digestive enzymes.   Try not to take antiacids, antibiotics or anti-inflammatories like NSAIDS.  But do all that, and your gut will heal.  What will freak you out is that your asthma and your thyroid will too. The real challenge is learning new foods.  Discover how to make delicious sweet potato recipes.  Find gluten-free pizza dough and bread.  Have quinoa for breakfast instead of wheat cereals.  The first two or three recipes are hard, but it doesn’t take long to find yummy new foods.  Focus on whole foods, lots of color, fiber and flavor. 


 WWW. What will work for me?  I make my own turmeric capsules.  We have found delicious red rice as a new grain that’s yummy.  I’m using almond milk on cooked quinoa.   Next week: three delicious recipes with no wheat, no milk and really delicious.


Column written by Dr. John E. Whitcomb, MD, Brookfield Longevity, Brookfield, WI 53045.  (262-784-5300)

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