(Photo via Livesimp.ly – Paleo Diet Beginner’s Guide)

What if you found out one of your favourite foods was punching holes in your stomach?  What would you do? (Scary thought, eh?)

Well when you eat wheat, rice, corn and oats you’re actually eating the children of plants.  Imagine what you would do to protect your own.  Plants have added protection using chemical poisons that slowly damage your stomach and gut.  Surprise – you thought they were defenceless right?

Over time, all that damage affects your mood and your productivity adding on to other diseases like diabetes, obesity and cancer.  Going on a gluten free diet (free of wheat, rice and even corn) can improve your thinking, seriously boost your confidence and help you be more productive overall.

Tough?  One biochemist named Robb Wolf says you should try it for 30 days and see how much better you feel.

Helping You Think Better

When you’re able to think clearly you’re able to get things done.  You’ll be surprised at the increased confidence and positive mood you’ll feel.  Stress practically vanishes.  I’m dead serious.

I should know – I’ve been going gluten free for the last little while and I’m amazed at how much better I feel and think.  How does going gluten free (and/or grain, bean or dairy free) do this?  Those chemical poisons are hurting your gut remember and they’re also causing “inflammation” – a fancy term for a kind of swelling.

If you’ve ever suffered an allergy attack that “swelling” effect can cause pain and weakness, making it hard for you to even think.  Well you can have a constant, really weak allergy attack every day thanks to gluten.  That’s why you may feel rotten inside more than you’d like.

Give Your Brain the Right Lego Pieces

Your brain needs several important things to work nicely:  fatty acids, vitamins and minerals.  Add on top of that some energy from fruits and you’re doing great.  The problem with today’s gluten filled, processed food diets is that they often use a lot of oil with omega-6, which messes up a special “happy mood” balance in your brain.

You need a balance of 2 to 1 of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (or lower) to feel great and work at your best.  Today’s food industry pumps chemically poisoned, super cheap soya bean oil (that’s destroyed the Mississippi River area) into nearly everything especially breads.  People are getting a balance of 5-10 times more omega-6 than they should (that’s 10-20 to 1).

Then you have to deal with the gluten in wheat or gluten-wannabes in oats, rice, corn and barley (rice and corn not so bad if you eat it maybe 1-3 times per week).  Gluten and its family can hurt your gall bladder causing several things:

• Your body can’t get enough fats (your body is almost 20% fat)
• Your body can’t get enough fat friendly vitamins like A, D, K

Vitamins are like the locks, keys and joints that help make your body work.  If you lose those you’re going to be less than stellar when you get up in the morning.

Ready to feel extra rotten anyone?

Cut Down the Brain Poisons

Gluten and its gluten-wannabes in oats, barley (and rice and corn to a lesser level) as you already know slowly hurts your gut eventually punching holes in it.  Since a lot of our foods including bread and other processed foods have chemicals you can guess that that will eventually leak into your blood – never a good thing since pesticides in food are usually special “brain poisons“.

If you love allergies then you can guess you’ll become more allergic or sensitive to those same chemicals (sensitive = worse).  Doctors usually think “chemical sensitivity syndrome” is a mental problem and not a real medical issue – big mistake, one that could cost you your happiness.

Stop Being Addicted to Wheat and Grain

You can actually become addicted to the taste of food with gluten.  It’s almost like using the super addictive drug made from poppies called “opium“.  You could call gluten a relative of heroin, morphine and Dr. House’s favourite drug, Vicodin.

Is it far off the mark?  Have you ever tried to tell someone not to eat bread or pasta and succeeded?  In fact I myself was quite addicted to wheat and bread – it was almost impossible to stop eating it except it was starting to really kill me mood wise and work wise.

The high amount of sugar carbs in grains also releases the “happy” chemical in your brain seratonin.  That’s where the “sugar” high comes from – which is also related to the addiction power.  Of course with any high you eventually crash and when that happens you’ll feel super depressed or extra rotten.

Frankly that’s a bad way to get things done.  Crashing and burning over and over again…

Stop Being Distracted by Hunger

Since gluten literally train wrecks your gall bladder, which helps you digest food, you are unable to get enough fat and protein to heal, rebuild your body and boost your brain.  If you want to be sharp and productive that’s a bad thing.  Very bad.

Suddenly you’re going to be always hungry.  And then you reach for the wheat and grains or the junk food sugar.  And it only gets worse.

About 3 years ago, I was in a terrible place.  I was hooked on bread and bagels and no matter how much I ate, I was always hungry, tired, sleepy and unable to concentrate on my work – I was well on my way to failure.  I tried under exercising, over exercising and more.  Finally I moved away by cutting down bread and eating more quinoa and eggs (high in protein) to stop the sugar highs and the hunger thanks to a book I read at Indigo on glycemic load (I’ve forgotten the book’s name though not the lesson).

 

It worked.  And then I found it recently that it was the gluten all along.  I just stopped eating wheat (after reading Robb Wolf’s article on Tim Ferris’ blog) and suddenly my mind was clear – crystal clear.  What else was I eating that was killing my brain, my productivity and my health?

Become Healthy in Body, Avoid Feeling Rotten

To do that, stop destroying your stomach with gluten (and gluten-wannabes).  I’m dead serious.  If your body is terrible shape how likely are you going to feel like doing anything or feel great?  Even if you think you’re fine now it might be an illusion – try going gluten free for a week or more as a test.  See for yourself.

Here are the reasons why.

Avoid Allergies

If you’re suffering allergy attacks you’re in no shape to do anything.  As I said before, you’re going to either have headaches, feel like your joints are aching, you could be sneezing constantly or suffer an outbreak of itchy hives.  And I’ve suffered all of those things in fact – monosodium glutamate for headaches, red cabbage for aches, hay fever for sneezing and corn for hives.

You are not only in a position to create antibodies against WGA, which leads to autoimmunity, but you now have the potential to develop multiple allergies due to a permeable gut lining (aka your gut has holes) and inadequately digested food (aka you’re losing food out the holes). This is how you can develop allergies to chicken, beef, apples, or other normally benign (aka okay) foods. (Via Robb Wolf on Tim Ferris’ Blog)

All the while I’ve been eating gluten filled wheat and bread that has been punching holes and making things worse (chemicals remember).  The only way I survived was cutting down “inflammation” or “swelling” (think bruises – remember how ugly those are) by using things like vitamin E and D.

What if you could cut it all down at the source?

Avoid Cancer

This one is an obvious thing to avoid – if you have cancer your life is literally in danger.  When your own immune system (body defence) starts to attack you because your gut has these micro-holes in them you’re at a high risk of getting diseases like:

• Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
• non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• other cancers like those

You could also get pancreatic cancer and “swelling of the pancreas” (pancreatitis) according to biochemist Robb Wolf.  As a former food and environmental researcher, I’ve seen the news of rising asthma and cancer (think prostate cancer and breast cancer for example) over the last 5-8 years.  One of the biggest causes is the food we’re eating and the chemicals in them.

The sad part is that all these runs to cure cancer are illusions – if you don’t stop the source of the problem you can never really cure it.  There’ll always be another cancer.

Avoid Weak Bones (Osteoporosis)

Grains like wheat have a chemical called “phytate” that steals your magnesium, zinc, iron, calcium and copper from the foods you’ve eaten.  All of these are important to your body (remember vitamins and minerals are locks and keys).  Add on the gut damage and other chemicals and humans actually got 6 inches shorter than our ancestors according to Robb Wolf.

You’ve also learned that a gut full of holes costs you vitamin D, which is important in building bones too.  If you’ve been following the whole grain, beans and low fat dairy as today’s doctor’s recommend you’ve probably been following the wrong road (and your bones are paying for it).

Avoid Gall Stones

Since gluten has been wrecking the gall bladder and the pancreas, cholesterol crystals or “gall stones” actually start to appear in the bladder.  The problem is, according to Robb Wolf, cutting out the gall bladder doesn’t stop the real problems – the gluten and other problems that you’ve already read about.

Gall stones are a symptom of a problem, an alarm. Instead of treating the cause (remove grains) we cut out the gall bladder. People who have had gall bladder removal are almost certainly undiagnosed celiacs and likely have a number of other progressive diseases. In my experience, these individuals are plagued with digestive problems, culminating in dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing. 

 

(Via Robb Wolf on Tim Ferris’ Blog)

In Summary

As you’ve just learned gluten and its relatives can be dangerous for your mind and your health.  By cutting it out completely (at least 16 days) you can help yourself think and feel better.  Try it out – that’s what experiments are for!

What do you think about gluten free diets or the Paleo Diet?  Have you tried it out before and what has your experience been?  Feel free to leave your comments below!

Additional Resources

Paleo Diet

The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet

Paleo Diet Foods

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