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