In the past century we have greatly changed how we process foods. Look at wheat. We started farming wheat about 10,000 years ago. It began because it was an advantage in creating civilisation to be able to store foods like grains. Even as little as 150 years ago, farms were still small, 50 or 60 acres. Since the industrial revolution, they are now thousands of acres and farmed with large scale machinery. Up until 150 years ago the grains we were eating we course forms of wheat. We discovered how to make fine white flour in 1872 – it was John Stevens the Wisconsin inventor who created this process for us. In 1950 we then began genetically modifying wheat. We made it a hardier, higher yielding crop by changing wheat from having 14 chromosomes to 42 chromosomes. This doubles the crop yield and also greatly increased the lectins in wheat. It’s lectin that causes havoc on your body’s digestive system. I didn’t realise this but our gut barrier is only one layer of cells thick. That’s nuts! To put this in perspective, our skin is 21 layers of cells thick. This makes me realise how delicate the gut barrier is. The issues is that gluten is able to bypass the gut barrier and then big antigens can get into your system and create inflammation and a host of issues. We were designed to really only eat the original course wheat for about the 2 weeks it was naturally ripe in the autumn. I was a daily wheat eater. Cereal or a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and sometimes may favourite french baguette for dinner. Yikes! No wonder I started to have such issues with gluten. It took me a while to figure it out because I only had one gut symptom, bloating, but I also had lots of more seemingly unrelated signs including dry skin, itchy skin, eczema, stuttering to name a few. These were signs that my immune system was overloaded and my gut-brain barrier was compromised. I used to put face cream on everyday so I wouldn’t gross people out by how flaky my skin was. Yuk. That was 7 years ago. I eat almost zero grains today. I have the odd bit of oatmeal occationally but even that doesn’t sit great with me. Maybe there is a good healthy paleo version of an english muffin I can make because I do love those. Cauliflower, eggs,.. hmmmm .. might work. I shall have to experiment! You can learn more in this talk by Dr. John Whitcomb. And of cause there is the well know book “Grain Brain” by David Perlmutter who is an expert on the subject and can explain it much better than I can.
Gluten, the Gut-barrier Bridge, Lectins and Immune System Signs
