Functional Solutions For Living

Welcome back everyone.  I hope you all made it a great weekend.  I definitely did!

Again, please forgive the mess.  The site is under construction and not looking it’s best, but when the new format is unleashed, look out!

Okay, so let’s get right into it…

As many of you know, there can be many different causes for one “disease.”

In the past, I used the example of depression, which could be caused by one’s thyroid, a deficiency in folic acid, blood sugar disturbances, hidden infections, deficiency of omega-3 fats, low testosterone and so on.

Today,  I’d like to flip the coin and turn to gluten in order to illustrate how one thing can be the cause of many problems and so called “diseases.”

Of course, this is if one is sensitive to gluten…which more of you are than you may think.

I was doing some research for a client awhile back and found a review in the New England Journal of Medicine that listed over 50 diseases that can be caused by eating gluten.

That was not a typo!

Many of the diseases are neurological and psychiatric.  Among them are depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, migraines, neuropathy, anxiety, dementia, and autism.

I know this first hand.

Before I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and food allergies, I had seizures and was actually diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, depression, peripheral neuropathy and ADD (I’m still a bit of space cadet!).

There were times when I definitely didn’t feel or act like I was right in the head but when I identified the food allergies and removed them along with the gluten the seizures stopped, the depression lifted and I slowly but surely became me again and then some.

Back then, we didn’t know what we know now, so it was no easy task and took many years.

It often takes a very long time – up to 10 years for a person in the U.S to get diagnosed with Celiac disesase as opposed to the three years it takes in Europe and Japan – to get an accurate diagnosis.

It can be a tough one to pinpoint if we or our doctors are uninformed and in that time, much damage…physical, mental, emotional and financial can and usually does occur.

That is why I have such a passion for helping others in the same boat.  I know what it is like to feel like you are losing control of your body, mind and as a consequence, your life.

I know what it is like to go to doctor after doctor getting misdiagnosed or put on unnecessary medications that only make things more complicated and confusing.

I know what it is like to be completely misunderstood and viewed as a little weird or crazy by friends, family and uninformed health care providers only later to have them apologize or say that they knew it all along!

I also know what it is like to take matters into my own hands, do the research, figure it out and reclaim my health and life.

Many others share a similar story…

What is gluten?

Gluten is a protein found in wheat and other grains such as oats, rye, spelt, kamut, barely, triticale.

Why is gluten so bad for so many of us?

There are numerous reasons.  For starters, we have not genetically adapted to the  grasses, mainly gluten, that were introduced to our diets in the Middle Ages.

Thirty percent of people of European descent carry the gene for celiacs disease.  This greatly increases their likelihood of having health problems from eating gluten.

In what ways can gluten negatively affect the brain?

First, gluten can inflame the brain by causing an autoimmune response.  Autoimmunity is an abnormal response to the body’s own tissues.

In other words, something comes into the body and the body goes on alert but somehow mistakes its own tissues as a foreign invader and declares war mistakenly upon itself.

Allergies are a prime example.  In this case, antibodies meant to fight gluten also attack your body.

Secondly, during the digestion process, gluten can be broken down into into strange proteins that are a lot like psychedelic drugs.  These are opium-like proteins called gluteomorophins.

As you can probably imagine, these can drastically change brain function and behavior.  When is the last time someone dropped acid and smoked some opium and maintained their mental homeostasis?

So does this mean gluten can make music sound better and colors more vivid?

Hell yeah man!

I love eating bread, putting on some music, turning on my strobe light and tripping out on my old Jimmy Hendrix and Pink Floyd posters!

All bad jokes aside, I don’t think that is the type of psychedelic experience anyone is looking for.

I don’t foresee a high (pun intended) gluten bread coming out bearing the Grateful Dead’s logo anytime soon.  Cherry Garcia was pushing it!

But I digress…

The third way gluten can affect the brain is due to its high content of glutamate (think MSG), a molecule that accelerates, activates, irritates and damages brain cells through a special “docking station” called the NMDA receptor.

Excessive activity in this receptor due to glutamate has been linked to many psychiatric disorders.  Glutamate is an excitotoxin (a substance that agitates and kills or damages brain cells).

So to summarize, these are the three ways gluten can harm the brain:

• Through inflammation
• As psychedelic, opiate-like proteins
• As an excitotoxin

Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg with gluten.

It can also cause arthritis and other autoimmune and inflammatory diseases/conditions.

However, I just wanted to stick mainly with the brain stuff for todays post.

I’d love to hear what you have to say so please feel free to leave a comment below.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

Anthony

Greetings everyone!

Please excuse the mess.  I am in the process of remodeling the entire site but still wanted to respond to an important question I received via email the other day.

A reader was a bit upset about the price of organic food in her area and was wondering exactly which foods were the the dirtiest and therefore an absolute must to eat organic and which ones were safe to buy in their commercial, less expensive form.

I can completely relate!  I just had this conversation with my girlfriend at Wholefoods yesterday while briefly holding and then setting down a small bunch of organic asparagus that cost about seven dollars!

Obviously, growing your own is ideal, but many of us cannot or do not for various reasons.

So, for those of us who cannot or do not grow our our own, here is a list of the dirtiest commercial foods that should only be eaten in their organic forms when possible.

The dirtiest foods that should always be purchased organic:

• Strawberries – At 302 lbs of pesticide per acre, they are the worst fruit.
• Peaches
• Dates
• Pears
• Cherries
• Cabbage
• Lemons
• Apples
• Cucumbers
• Cantaloupe
• Celery
• Spinach
• Peppers of all kinds
• Root vegetables of all kinds
• All meat -Beef should be grass-fed; chicken and eggs should be organic and free-range; fish should be wild-caught; pork and lunch meat should be completely avoided.
• Dairy – Those of you who know me, know I am not down with dairy.  If you want to know why then click  here.  If you are going to consume dairy, make sure it is raw, unpasteurized and comes from grass-fed cows that are not treated with hormones and antibiotics.  Finding raw cheese from grass-fed cows is not difficult but finding the milk may be somewhat of a challenge depending on where you live.

For some of us, going organic seems hard to fit into the budget and I completely understand.  However, I would also say that our health should be our most important investment.

Without our health we have nothing!

That being said, there is surely some way to adjust the budget in order to add more clean and healthy foods to our diet and increase the quality of our lives.

Seriously… many of us don’t think twice about spending money on frivolous things or on things that are not necessary, useful or important.

Think cable TV, eating out, expensive vacations when we have all these amazing state parks, driving your car when you can walk or take public transportation.

We also just flat out waste our money.  Think leaving lights or other appliances on while not at home or in the room (MLO would bust me on that!) or blasting heat when we can put on an extra layer of clothing or the air conditioning when a fan will do or windows can be opened.

I’d even take things a step further and venture to say that many of us spend our money on things that are flat out harmful.  Think fast food, junk food, cola, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, tanning beds…

Hell, I’m currently in South Florida and see people every day who spend thousands on plastic surgery to look better but turn around and party, eat garbage food and get fake tans!

It’s really a matter of examining and getting back in touch with our deeper values and adjusting our priorities…

Do you consider your health to be the largest piece of your wealth?

I’d love your feedback on this one so please leave a comment!

Be on the lookout in the next couple of days for a list of the foods that are the cleanest and okay to eat in their non-organic, commercial form.

Until then…

Kind Regards,

A