Gluten: what you don't know might kill you

SOMETHING YOU’RE EATING may be killing you, and you probably don’t even know it! If you eat cheeseburgers or French fries all the time or drink six sodas a day, you likely know you are shortening your life. But eating a nice dark, crunchy slice of whole wheat bread–how could that be bad for you? Well, bread contains gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, and oats. It is hidden in pizza, pasta, bread, wraps, rolls, and most processed foods. Clearly, gluten is a staple of the American diet. What most people don’t know is that gluten can cause serious health complications for many. You may be at risk even if you don’t have full blown celiac disease. I want to reveal the truth about gluten, explain the dangers, and provide you with a simple system that will help you determine whether or not gluten is a problem for you.

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Thank you for posting this. I am gluten-sensitive, and my brother is full-blown celiac. One of the problems with gluten is that it is very difficult to break down. Allergic-type reactions generally occur when we have some degree of leaky gut, allowing partially-digested proteins into the bloodstream, where they are attacked as foreign invaders. Gluten is one of the hardest proteins to digest, which is why so many people develop allergies or sensitivities to it.

For those who want to know if they have a sensitivity to gluten but don't want to spend the money for expensive laboratory testing, here's a simple test you can do yourself: First, avoid all gluten containing products for several days. After you have done this, sit in a comfortable chair until you are nice and relaxed. Take your pulse for a full minute and write it down. Now, place a sample of gluten-containing food in your mouth, chew and taste it thoroughly, but do not swallow. You need to taste it for at least 30 seconds. This test will be much more accurate if you use a simple food like some cooked wheat berries rather than bread, which could contain other ingredients that could confound the test. Once you have tasted the food for 30 seconds, retake your pulse for another full minute with the food still in your mouth. If your pulse has gone up by 6 or more beats per minute, this is considered the result of a stressful reaction. The more it went up, the worse the reaction. This does NOT mean that you necessarily have a full-blown allergy to the food, although you might; it does mean that your body finds the consumption of that food stressful, for whatever reason, and it should be avoided for at least a few months, at which point you could retest again to see if there has been improvement.