How Do You Know If You Have Gluten Sensitivity – and What Can You Do About It?

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson. In this episode, we're going to be talking about gluten. What it is, the symptoms that it can cause, and how it may be involved in other health issues, how to know if it's an issue for your health, and then what to do about it. So there's a lot to cover, and it's interesting to me because gluten has been something that I've been researching and learning about and helping people with for more than 20 years. In fact, when I was in my training at Bastyr University, it was really not well known as much about gluten. And I myself was dealing with health issues, including severe allergies and migraines. Then I was trying to figure out the cause, and I really wanted to understand how diet and the food I was eating was influencing my health. And so I tried all different allergy testing and trying to figure out was whether gluten was an issue for me or not. And it was when I had then graduated from Nature Batholic Medical School and completed a residency and was in practice that I finally was able to do a test that was able to identify that gluten was an issue for me. I. I'm going to be sharing about that in this episode so that you also can have access to that test, because to me, I had searched far and wide to finally find a test that could identify gluten as an issue. And then I started avoiding gluten. So I have been avoiding gluten for over 20 years for my own health, and in that process, I learned so much more about the trouble that gluten can cause. And I've found how to help my patients not only to identify gluten as an issue for themselves, but also, and this is really important, how to recover from gluten exposure, because I talked to so many people who are already avoiding gluten, but they have not yet started to do a full recovery from gluten exposure. And I find that that's a key difference that's often missed. So I don't want you to miss that information. I want you to have everything you need in order to reset your health and to heal. So let's get started. What is gluten in the first place? Gluten is a protein. Gluten is the protein in several different grains. The one we think of most often is wheat. So anything that's made from the grain, wheat. So if you think of it from the plant that's growing in the ground as Wheat. The protein in the wheat is called gluten. It's also in several other grains, including barley, rye, and spelt. Barley, rye, spelt, and wheat all contain gluten, but other grains have different proteins and do not contain gluten. For example, rice, R, I, C, E. Rice does not contain gluten. Millet does not contain gluten. Oat does not contain gluten unless it's been contaminated with gluten in the processing plant. Now, some of those grains may have a protein that looks similar to gluten and may be an issue for some people. But what I want to make clear is that actual gluten is only in barley, rice, spelt, and wheat. Now, I want to take it to another level of specificity and say that gluten is actually two different molecules. Gliadin and glutenin. These are two proteins that make up the bigger protein that we call gluten. And so sometimes a person might be more reactive to gliadin than glutenin or both. And another distinction is a person might be more reactive to wheat, which is a much bigger molecule than gluten or gliadin, for example. You see? And so it's important to know that there's a whole spectrum of possible reactivities to everything from the wheat to the gluten to the gliadin or the glutenin. And so this is important distinction and important in terms of understanding why some people react differently than other people.

I also find that it's really helpful to understand that. So these are protein molecules, which means they're made up of amino acids. All protein that in our. In our food is made up of amino acids. And so the same as every other kind of protein, gluten is made above amino acids. And those amino acids are broken down when we digest them, when we swallow them. And then our digestive enzymes digest them. Those are our pancreatic enzymes, which are proteases. Also, our intestinal cells make proteases as well to help make sure that those proteins are getting digested. The issue is that humans in general, all humans, not just someone with a specific gluten issue, but all humans are not able to completely digest gliadin. Remember, gliadin is one of the tiny protein molecules in gluten. And so basically, what I'm saying is all humans, all of us, are not able to fully digest gluten. And that's the issue, because anytime we have a food that we don't digest well, it has the potential of being a larger, larger amino acid chain or a larger protein molecule. And if that larger protein molecule gets exposed to our immune system, Our immune system is meant to and built to protect us from proteins. That's what viruses are. Right? Our immune system is built to protect us from viruses, which are also chains of amino acids. So if our immune system comes in contact with a chain of amino acids, it thinks it needs to protect us from it. And that's why we think that a lot of us start having an immune response to gluten is because we don't digest it well, and our immune system thinks it needs to protect us from it.

So I'm hoping already you're like, oh, now this makes much more sense. But I have even more details for you that I think is going to help you understand why it's worth it to reconsider gluten in your diet. If you're still having gluten in your diet, or for those of you who are already avoiding gluten, hopefully this helps you validate why you're avoiding gluten. So what happens is this. Gliadin and glutenin come through our digestion. They're not getting well digested. And what they do is they end up triggering inflammatory responses. We've heard about cytokines. Now, a lot of times cytokines are these inflammatory molecules that just tell our immune system to try to protect us. And to some degree, cytokines are important because they help us heal also. But if our intestines are being constantly bombarded by gluten and then followed by cytokines and inflammation, it's that constant damage from inflammation that causes the damage associated with exposure to gluten. And. And it's not a problem if we have gluten most times, if we have gluten here and there. But I think the issue is that we're exposed to gluten all the time. If we're not paying attention, we could even be exposed to gluten every meal. Some people were having gluten for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, for snacks. Gluten is showing up even when we don't realize it. Gluten is added to condiments. It's added to recipes. It's added to packaged foods that we wouldn't even think would have gluten in them, have gluten added. And breads and other foods that we would think are made with wheat. What they're doing is they're adding sometimes 10 times more gluten, because what gluten does in a recipe is it helps to make bread nice and fluffy and chewy. And so when they add more gluten, it makes the bread more fluffy and more chewy and yummy. So they're adding 10 times more gluten because then they can sell more of that food product. But that means we're getting exposed to 10 times more gluten every time we consume that bread or whatever other packaged food that was made with extra gluten. In fact, in the United States, we're more exposed to gluten than anywhere else in the world. Other places in the world may be still making products from. From wheat and gluten, but they're likely not adding as much extra gluten to the recipe. They might be just using standard wheat and not this additional high level of gluten. So if some of you are thinking, well, why is it an issue now more than ever? That's one of the thoughts, is that it's because we're getting so, so much more exposed to it than ever before. There's other concerns too, in that a lot of wheat, especially in the United States, is produced with a pesticide called glyphosate. And when you combine wheat or gluten with glyphosate, then you have even more damage to the intestinal cells and more risk to your health. So that's just to give you a sense of why has it become such an issue. I actually also think that it was under recognized for so many years. In fact, celiac disease for a long time was considered such a rare condition, and a lot of people went a long time without being diagnosed. So I want to explain to you, what is celiac disease? What's the difference between celiac disease and gluten sensitivity? As well as there's something called a wheat allergy. A wheat allergy is when you simply have your immune system creating IgE antibodies to wheat, similar to when someone is allergic to peanuts. They could be allergic to wheat. Now, that's an allergy difference with celiac disease is a celiac disease is an autoimmune condition, meaning your immune system is not only trying to protect you from gluten, but the immune system also starts trying to protect you from your own intestinal cells. It starts attacking your own self. That's why it's autoimmune. And so what happens is the gluten is coming through, it's triggering an immune inflammatory response. And for some people, they're more likely that their immune system is going to then try to protect them so much from the gluten but then it starts to also try to protect them from the surrounding area. And one of the key things with celiac disease is the body tries to protect us from something called transglutaminase enzyme, or ttg. This is just an enzyme, a normal, healthy enzyme in our cells, in our intestinal cells and other cells in our body. But because the immune system is trying to attack the gluten, it ends up trying to attack the TTG that's right near the gluten and ends up damaging the intestinal cells. So also with celiac disease, there's antibodies to gliadin, which is the protein in gluten. So you see, it becomes even more dramatic and severe damage to the intestinal cells. And so often with celiac disease, there's even more severe symptoms and health issues associated with it. It's considered, for a long time, it was considered 1% of the population to have celiac disease. Now it's considered to be more like 2% of the population to will have celiac disease again, as an autoimmune condition where the immune system starts attacking not only gluten, but your intestinal cells as well. And there is a genetic correlation we have been able to identify that people who have the genes that are called HLA DQ2 and HLA DQ8 have a increased risk of celiac disease, but those people with those genes also have increased risk of non celiac gluten sensitivity. What non celiac gluten sensitivity means is a person has a reaction to gluten but doesn't have the autoimmunity. So the immune system isn't attacking their own cells, but is still attacking the gluten. And both of those, both celiac and non celiac gluten sensitivity both have a lot of health issues associated with them. So let's go through that. What are the common symptoms? So you might imagine that one of the common things is literally just starting with a stomachache. In fact, one of the most common symptoms I find in children who are reacting to gluten is they will talk about getting stomach aches of some shape or form. Also headaches. So if you just even go, oh, yeah, I get stomach aches a lot, or I get headaches a lot. Already, though, you should be thinking, oh, is gluten part of this? Some people will even go to having diarrhea, vomiting, or more severe digestive symptoms. But here's really an important point I want you to know is that only 50% of people with celiac disease have digestive symptoms. So it's not only going to cause digestive issues. And many people could say to me, hey, my digestion feels fine. I don't have vomiting. I don't have diarrhea. My digestion feels great. And still, in 50% of cases, they could have a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease. So it's not a requirement to have digestive symptoms. Even though it's a food that's affecting your intestines, it doesn't always cause digestive symptoms. In fact, what's more common, which is much more likely with a gluten issue, is to have neurological symptoms. Isn't that interesting? So it's going from your digestion straight to the nervous system and is very likely to cause anxiety, depression. I mentioned headaches already, other types of mood changes and neuropathies and neurological symptoms. So this is really important to know, including brain fog, decreased focus, and memory and sleep issues. So now we are really broadening to a lot of different symptoms. Not only that, but gluten can cause aches and pains, whether that's joint pain, muscle pain, what might be considered fibromyalgia, and also can cause nutrient deficiencies. Because we're going to be talking about the damage that the gluten is causing to the intestinal cells. If we have damage to our intestinal cells, we're not going to absorb our nutrients from our food, so we become more likely to have nutrient deficiencies. Highest likelihood is iron deficiency, including, as far as having anemia. So if you have anemia or iron deficiency, definitely need to be thinking about gluten. Also other nutrients like vitamin D and other B vitamins. So if you know you're having symptoms or issues related to nutrient absorption, we need to be thinking about gluten. Not only that, but when we become deficient in nutrients that leads to other things like bone loss. It's. Gluten is very much associated with bone loss and osteoporosis. This happens over time, so you might not notice it at first. Right. It's happening over long periods of time. And for children, it can actually result in a low growth. So I've worked with children who their parents came in and said, you know, I think my child is not growing as fast as I think they would be. And we find out that gluten was the issue. We take gluten out of their diet, and sometimes within a year, their child has grown inches. So gluten can decrease growth. It also can cause canker sores, skin rashes, menstrual issues, including fertility issues. I've had patients over the years where we figured out that they were reacting to gluten, took gluten out of their diet and they were pregnant within, within one or two months. So. So it can influence ovary function and fertility as well as menstrual symptoms and perimenopausal symptoms. And one of the most common things I find is that gluten increases our risk of infections of all different types. Viral infections, bacterial infections, yeast infections. So if you're getting recurrent infections, whether that's sinus infections or bladder infections, vaginitis, skin infections, eye infections, and another one that I've identified is HPV infections. So if you are testing positive for HPV with a Pap smear and you're been trying to fend it off and you're like, how do I get this HPV to leave me alone? You need to be thinking about gluten. And I'm going to be explaining how all of these things fit in with gluten. But I want you to get a sense of like is if you're wondering, is gluten an issue for me, I'm hoping this helps you to think about all of your symptoms, including I would say one of the biggest ones is simply fatigue. Just simply having not enough energy can be the effect of gluten. So you see it has broad reaching effects, not just in the digestion. And I mentioned before, the celiac disease is about 2% of the population. Non celiac gluten sensitivity is thought to be 6% of the population. And so it's much more common than we would think. For a long time, we would say at least one in four people have some degree of gluten sensitivity. And the thing is. So then the next question becomes how do we test for it? Right? How do you find out when you have an issue with gluten and celiac disease? The standard, at least in the United States, for the longest time, the standard for diagnosing celiac disease is with an intestinal biopsy. So you would need to go into the gastroenterologist, have an endoscopy, and in the endoscopy they can do a biopsy. And what they're doing is they're taking a biopsy of your small intestinal cells because they're looking for damage to the small intestinal cells caused by the auto antibodies, right? And they that under a microscope. So that's how they can identify the pattern associated with celiac disease or autoimmunity caused by gluten. Now they can't see Leaky God, which I'm going to be talking about, and they can't see this. That's the only way we would know it. Now, there is a blood test that show anti gliadin antibodies and there are blood tests for antibodies to the TTG that I mentioned. So you can do a blood test, what's called a celiac panel or comprehensive celiac panel, which will look for anti gliadin, anti ttg, and they should also measure your total antibodies to make sure you're making enough antibodies to even mount a response and make the testing accurate. So you can also do that type of testing. But officially, if you want to diagnose celiac disease, you would need to also do the biopsy. Are you ready to discover your unique stress type? We're all affected by stress, but why fight it when you can master it? Take my free online stress type quiz today and conquer your burnout. We'll measure your energy, sleep, mood, focus and body to determine how you your body is built to deal with stress. Then we'll work together to take precise action to help you get out of stress mode and become resilient to it. It's time to master your health. Let's go. How do we then identify non celiac gluten sensitivity? Well, the standard in the research at this point in time and has been probably for the last decade, is to just try avoiding it. They literally encourage people to avoid gluten for a period of time, at least, I would say at least three weeks, because you need to get the inflammation out of your system and then you observe. Do you feel better? You know, do you feel better when you eliminate gluten fully from your diet? And if you feel better and then you, if you, you could always do a challenge and try to reintroduce it and see if you feel worse. So it's a classic elimination and challenge diet of gluten to determine whether you're having a reaction to it. What I find is that still a lot for patients to try and go through. I do hear a lot of people who come in to see me and say, hey, I tried eliminating gluten and I feel better and they continue to avoid it. What I find really helps is a test that I now use and it's a test that I mentioned that I did on myself to identify gluten sensitivity, which is an igg and IGA food panel. And not all labs are as accurate or giving you the. The information you need. So there's a specific lab. I'll put a link to it in the show notes because you can order it through my office. It's a finger poke. So you can do it from home, anywhere in the world really, and mail it in. And we can then check for IGA and IgG2 gluten and as well as the other gluten containing grains like barley, Ryan's belt. Right. So we can see if your body is making these delayed response antibodies. So this is not the ige type associated with an allergy. These are the delayed antibody responses or IgA and IgG antibodies to gluten, wheat and gluten contraining grains. And when we see even a low response to gluten on that test, then we know that your body is making antibodies to gluten and that gluten is likely playing a role in your health issues. There is also a way you can test for gliadin antibodies in a stool test. In fact, in the stool test that I recommend called the, the GI map from Diagnostic Solutions, they can test for gliadin antibodies in the stool. And that's another way to identify that your immune system is trying to protect you from gluten. Even for someone who's been avoiding gluten, it can be helpful to do these tests so that you can see if you're, if your body's still trying to protect you based on your current diet. So you think you're avoiding gluten, but maybe it's sneaking in somehow or maybe you need to be more careful than you realized by checking, even based on a gluten free diet, are you still having an immune response to gluten? So these are ways that I help people to identify that they have gluten. As a, as an issue, I would say a gluten sensitivity or what's known as non celiac gluten sensitivity. If we wonder whether celiac exists, then we need to do the blood panel that I mentioned and potentially go for an endoscopy and biopsy. So that's how we do testing to find out if gluten is an issue. I also find that by doing the food sensitivity panel that I mentioned that I'm able to get an assessment of the degree of leaky gut. So let's dive into talking a little bit more about leaky gut. Leaky gut is a sort of a short way of saying intestinal permeability. Intestinal permeability is well established in science and research. You can find thousands of research studies that talk about leaky gut. It's essentially when the intestinal cells have spaces between them you see, our intestinal cells should be right up next to each other, and they have microscopic space between them, but only essentially water can get through there. Our food needs to be digested down to the smallest, smallest they can go in order to get through the cells. But what can happen is we can get spaces in between the cells. And that can happen for a number of different reasons. It can happen when we're under a lot of stress and our body isn't able to reproduce new, healthy intestinal cells. You see, we make new intestinal cells every day, all the time. Just like we make new skin, we make a new intestinal cells. But when we're under stress, our body is not as able to keep up with those intestinal cells. And so that's one of the ways that leaky gut develops, is from just being under chronic stress. Also getting injured, any kind of injury, surgery, even physical stress, lack of sleep, Also exposure to toxins, including any pesticides in your food. So if you're eating non organic food and you're exposed to pesticide, that can cause it. Alcohol, caffeine, a lot of things can be damaging to our intestinal cells as well as gluten itself. So gluten causes damage to these cells by triggering the inflammation that we mentioned. But also, gluten is known to increase a substance called zonulin. And this is true for all humans.

But more so for some people than others. What zonulin does is it's a protein that signals to open up the spaces between the cells. So gluten is literally signaling through zonulin to cause leaky gut. It's literally saying, open up the spaces between the cells, and that allows the gluten through. So this is like, oh, my gosh, gluten is like, has this ability to just sneak right through our intestinal lining that's supposed to be protecting us. Once the gluten gets through to the other side of the intestinal lining, that's where our immune system's hanging out, waiting to protect us. So the immune system pounces on this gluten right away and triggers even more inflammation. And that inflammation doesn't just stay in the intestinal area. That inflammation can go anywhere in the body, which is why it can cause such broad symptoms that we talked about, is because that inflammation goes to our nervous system, to our joints, to our skin, everywhere. And that inflammation then overwhelms our system, and it's actually sending more stress signals. So not only does the stress from our external world make us more likely to have leaky gut in reaction to gluten. But the gluten and inflammatory response causes more stress. And so it becomes this vicious cycle or snowball effect where it compounds and you end up with more and more health issues.

I'll be putting references below, so in case you would like to read more of the research on that, I find it so interesting to see that the studies that show that gluten, and specifically gliadin, can increase intestinal permeability because of this zonulin response and because of the inflammatory response. Not only that, but we also see in research that gluten disrupts our biome. We've been talking about in prior episodes about how important our gut biome, our microbiome, that the bacteria and other microbes living in our intestines, how important they are for maintaining our health of our intestines, for helping maintain our immune system, healthy immune system, healthy nutrient and neurotransmitter production. Gluten comes in and it disrupts and decreases certain bacteria. And they've showed this over and over again by testing patients who have celiac disease and other forms of gluten sensitivity. And they see specifically a decrease in bifidobacteria. We know the bifidobacteria are very protective microbes. And so when gluten is disrupting the bifidobacteria and other bacteria, then it's also increasing our health risks. It's also increasing inflammation. It's also increasing the likelihood of an autoimmunity developing. And not only that, but affecting our nervous system, our hormones, our immune system's ability to protect us from infections. Right. You start to see, oh, no wonder gluten was causing all that trouble. It's disrupting our biome. And they've also showed that when people go on a gluten free diet that they have an improvement in their gut biome. So they've actually researched this to say, hey, well, what if we avoid gluten? Does the biome go back to healthy? And they've showed that it does. So it just proves that it's like worth it to identify this as an issue and, and make the changes because then you're going to get your biome working for you instead of again to do again. And when the biome is disrupted, we know that also causes more leaky gut. You see how it just snowballs on itself and gets worse and worse and worse. And no wonder, you know, if you're wondering, why do I keep feeling worse every year that goes by, well, it's because these Issues are going on, and you may not even realize it, and you might not even be having digestive symptoms. You might not even realize that all this is going on inside your intestines. And that's why I find it so important to do the food sensitivity panel. And in some cases, especially if you are having gas and bloating and digestive issues, we need to do a stool panel so we can look at your gut microbiome and help you get it back on track again.

Let me just. I want to talk through a couple of these examples of health issues so you can really connect the dots here. So, for example, let's talk about the risk of hpv, because I. So many of the people that I help have a positive hpv, and maybe they have abnormal cells on the cervix or vaginal cells and risk of higher risk of cancer. And my goal is to help you decrease your risk of cancer and get that HPV to leave you alone. And I've seen that by identifying gluten as a susceptibility, as a risk factor, and helping people to not only eliminate gluten from their diet, but also do the recovery from gluten, then they've been able to prevent abnormal cells and get HPV to negative. And this is not something that I've heard from a lot of other practitioners. It just is, because I happen to research both HPV and gluten. And so I've been able to connect the dots and see, oh, these two are related now. Okay, well, what's the connection? Well, we know now that gluten causes leaky gut. We know it disrupts the biome, the gut biome. We know that leaky gut. Both leaky gut and a disrupted gut biome lead to a disrupted vaginal biome and vaginal inflammation. And we know that vaginal inflammation and a disrupted vaginal biome increase the risk of hpv. We also know that gluten and the leaky gut that it causes result in nutrient deficiencies. And we know that nutrient deficiencies increase risk of HPV and abnormal cells or cancer from hpv. We also know that gluten disrupts immune function in general, decreasing your ability to protect yourself from infections. And it becomes a stress signal which disrupts cortisol levels. And when you have disrupted cortisol, whether too high or too low, that also makes you more susceptible to hpv. You see how we can connect the dots? And we can see. Oh, okay. Yes, we can work on healing leaky gut. Yes, we can work on healing your biome. Yes, we can address nutrient deficiencies, yes, we can help your immune system protect you from hpv. But if we don't take gluten out of your diet, it's just going to recur, it's going to repeat, it's going to just happen again and again. And that's why I spend so much time in my programs and working with patients to help them successfully eliminate gluten from their diet and fully recover from gluten so that this doesn't become a recurrent problem. Let's look at another example which is autoimmunity. Not just celiac disease, but I'm thinking of Hashimoto's, which is autoimmunity to the thyroid, which is in research established to be connected to gluten. The thinking is that when the gluten comes in and the immune system starts to try to protect the person from gluten, just like in celiac disease, it triggers antibodies to the intestinal transglutaminase. In the case of Hashimoto's, the immune system starts to try to protect the person from their own thyroid cells. And that's what's known as Hashimoto's. And again, you can find research on that. I'll. I'll try to put a reference for you. So how does that happening? That's one of the ways. But we also know that other types of autoimmunity, you name it, from B. Sheps to rheumatoid arthritis to psoriasis, all different types of autoimmunity are re related in research studies. They've associated with leaky gut, chronic inflammation, disrupted microbiome leading to and disrupted cortisol levels, all leading to a likelihood of developing autoimmunity of various different types. So if you're dealing with an autoimmune condition, any autoimmune condition, then I would say it's important for you to take a look at gluten as an underlying cause. Again, we need to also address the intestinal health and the microbiome. But we need to be considering whether gluten is part of this and helping you to eliminate it from your diet so that you can stay ahead of this and not re trigger the autoimmunity. You see what I mean? That's how I think about things. So let's talk about how to fully recover from gluten. Because again, as I mentioned, step one is avoiding gluten. And that's an important step. And I have so many resources on helping you avoid gluten, by the way, because over the Past couple decades, that's what I've been doing. I written in all of my books about gluten and how to avoid it. I've written recipes and menu plans because I want you to have support. It doesn't have to be a difficult thing if you have the right support. I also always like to emphasize that it doesn't need to be overnight. You don't have to be stressing yourself. Right. It doesn't make sense to stress yourself and try to avoid all gluten by tomorrow. I wouldn't try to do that. I would look at it as a learning opportunity, something you, you need to go and start to learn replacements in your diet. You need to start going to restaurants and looking for different things on the menu and getting finding new favorites for you, finding ways for you to navigate where you're eating and what you're eating so that you, we need to make sure you're still getting good food to eat. A lot of people worry because of course now there's so many amazing gluten free products and options out there. But it's important to know that most gluten free products still contain carbs and sometimes more carbs and more sugar. So then it becomes more of an issue of managing your carbs and blood sugar. Right. So you don't want to just switch from a gluten filled product to a gluten free product and end up disrupting your blood sugar levels. That's not a good idea either. What we want to do is use this as an opportunity to go more toward a balanced diet where you're having adequate protein, adequate healthy fats, a nice balance of healthy fruits and vegetables, which by the way, fruits and vegetables are already gluten free and healthy fats are gluten free and proteins are gluten free. So if you think of animal protein, chicken, turkey, fish, beef, as well as, you know, most plant based proteins, if you're thinking of nuts and seeds, these are all gluten free. So you have a lot of food options available that don't have gluten in them. We just need to remind ourselves, oh, let me choose the foods that are already gluten free, including grains like quinoa and millet, and you can get gluten free oats. And so you want to start to look for how do I choose the foods that, that I enjoy and that are good for me that happen to already be gluten free. And then you can start to learn the hidden sources of gluten and I can put a link to some of the blogs that I've written on these topics. Hidden sources of gluten are usually in condiments and packaged foods where you might not even realize. Like soy sauce, for example, has gluten added, but tamari sauce does not. So you can still have.

Sauce with your sushi, but you want to get tamari that doesn't have gluten in it, for example. And so I can help you to navigate that and I can help you to navigate shifting your diet. That's why the stress Remedy diet, one of the first diets that I designed is a 21 day has a 21 day meal plan and all the recipes in it to guide you over 21 days to figure out what are you going to eat, how are you going to survive without gluten? And you know what you find out in the end is that it's very easy. And actually you're going to be feeling so much better that you're not just going to survive, you're going to be thriving without gluten because now you're eliminating all these symptoms off the list. And so you feel good and you're enjoying your food without gluten having to be involved.

Let's see. So that's one of the first steps is how do you successfully take gluten out of your diet without feeling like you're, you know, having to live, you know, be missing it all the time. Right. And so, and to learn like how, how strict do you need to be? Some people will say to me, can I go 80%? And I would say, you know, you want to work your way up to 100%. Avoidance is what I recommend. And some people, especially if you have celiac disease, need to be extra careful. Even in restaurants and in sometimes even people will react to gluten, even if it's in your kitchen, but you're not eating it. But you might be cooking for someone else and you might be breathing it in or come in contact with your hands. You, there's some people who even react to gluten, even if you're not swallowing it. And so you may even need to be considering is there gluten in your shampoo or in your skincare products? Sometimes that is your immune system can even pick up on those minor, minor, tiny sources of gluten, in which case it's important to avoid them because it's affecting your health. The next thing, and this is where most people stop right there. But what I find is if you stop right there, you're not going to get the full benefit of avoiding gluten. So to me, you really want to take the next steps because you want to get the most benefit out of avoiding it. Right? So the next step is you really need to get into healing leaky gut. You need to help your body recover those intestinal cells. Yes, our body grows new intestinal cells every day. But when your body has been being bombarded with gluten and you've developed sometimes severely gut and disrupted biome, then it's going to take a long time for those intestinal cells to heal. And, and I've seen patients, sometimes they say, they come to me after avoiding gluten for several years and they say, but I still don't feel good. And I say, well, did you ever take the steps to heal leaky gut? And they say, no. And I then I start them down the path, less heal leaky gut according to my protocol that I've found effective over the years, and they finally start to feel better. So I can tell you that it's worth it and it's not a complicated protocol and in fact, you can even learn it. I talk about this in a masterclass that I taught, the leaky gut masterclass. And then I have a leaky gut program that's a three to four week program you can even do online. I'll put a link to it. So in case you're like, yes, I need to heal leaky gut, you can go do my online leaky gut healing program and get yourself headed in that direction. So what it involves is getting the right enzymes, nutrients and herbs to help your body actually digest your food better and grow back new healthy cells and decrease inflammation and re establish a healthy microbiome. Again, the microbiome, if, if your microbiome may have been disrupted by gluten and other factors. But by the way, one of the other things that causes leaky gut that I didn't mention before is medications. Many different types of medications, including PPIs, which are acid blockers that are used to treat reflux as well as antibiotics, all cause leaky gut undisrupted microbiome. So if, you know, oh my gosh, I've had to take these medications and I'm having digestive symptoms. We may need to do a stool test and help get your biome back on track, because if the, if the bacteria are out of balance, they're going to be working against you. No, Matt, you could be avoiding gluten, but if you have imbalanced biome, you're not getting anywhere. So we need to avoid a gluten, heal the leaky gut, get your biome back on track. Now we're actually getting somewhere. But the other piece of this is we need to address the nutrient deficiencies. And a lot of practitioners are not doing the right testing to even identify the nutrient deficiencies. So it's important to me that you're getting the right blood tests to identify if you have iron deficiency, B, vitamin deficiency, vitamin D, and other nutrients. And so that's something where you're going to want to work with me one on one so that I can order the blood test for you to get the right information so we can get the right nutrients back into your body, into your cells, so they can be healthy and fully recover from gluten exposure. And the last step of gluten recovery is to fully reduce inflammation that, remember, the gluten is triggering so much a big cloud of inflammation through your whole system. And even if you're avoiding gluten, that inflammation may still be there, especially if what can happen is gluten causes leaky gut, and then other types of foods start leaking through, and now other foods are also causing inflammation. So we need to look in the food panel and see, are there other foods in addition to gluten that now are part of this whole situation. Maybe dairy products are also, or egg or almonds or bananas or some common ones that I see. But I wouldn't want to just make everybody avoid all the same foods. We want to do the accurate test that can show us, oh, these are the foods that got involved in leaky gut in your case. Let's take those foods out so that we can drop the inflammation. Let's heal the leaky gut, heal the biome, get the nutrients back on board, drop inflammation in your body so that you can fully recover from. From this gluten exposure and this whole snowball of effects that it causes.

I hope that helps you to really get a bigger sense, a bigger understanding of gluten, the issues it can cause, and also to feel motivated and inspired that it's possible to not only eliminate it, but also to still enjoy your food and to feel better and to prevent health issues. I mean, actually, gluten and the effects of gluten are associated with also chronic conditions and causes of death, including heart disease risk, diabetes, dementia, and cancer risk, too. So this is really important to consider. Now, I wouldn't say that everybody needs to avoid gluten 100%. Even after everything I've said, I would still want to take a case by case. I would still want to understand your health issues. I would still want to test you you for the food sensitivity panel at least, and find out how your body is responding to gluten and then think about the severity of leaky gut and the effects it may have had in your body. And to determine maybe in your case, you need to avoid gluten only for a period of time. For some people, we need to only avoid it long enough to heal the leaky gut and drop inflammation. And then sometimes they can bring small amounts of gluten back into their diet. For me, I've mainly still eliminated fully from my diet. I no longer get the migraines. I my allergies are mostly gone. And there's one other factor that I'm going to mention here and I can put a link for more information. For those of you who have more severe reactions to gluten, including celiac disease, and you really feel restricted by having to avoid gluten so strictly you and if you have potentially other types of autoimmunity, you may want to consider something called Helman therapy. And that's something that I can talk with you about and help you with as well. But I think it's interesting and I want to mention it here because helminth therapy has been shown to reduce the reactivity to gluten, including for people with celiac disease. And it is something that's a possibility for you to use. Maybe you already heard about it. And I would want to make sure that you have expert guidance if you're thinking about using Hellman therapy to help you navigate a gluten reaction. So please reach out to me for more information about that. But what I want to emphasize is that not everyone has to avoid gluten 100% and not everyone has to avoid it forever. We really have to take it on a case by case basis and to understand how gluten is reacting in your body and how it has affected your health and then help you recover. I'm all about how do we recover from from our exposures and be able to maintain over time. And so some people then are able to have some gluten in their diet without it re creating the same whole big issue over again. And that's the goal, right? If we can have a small amount of gluten exposure, our body can handle it. It doesn't have to be an issue, but you have to know your body, your susceptibilities and and then make a decision from there. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I hope this was helpful for you. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about gluten or anything else. Feel free to reach out to me. Please be sure to subscribe, including to my newsletter, so that you can hear about the next episode of How Humans Heal, and I look forward to connecting with you again soon. Take care.

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