Gluten Free Diet Mistakes

Here is the transcript for Gluten Free Diet: Pitfalls and Mistakes.

Click here to go back to the video <<==

Today, I’m going to be talking about gluten-free diet mistakes before we take questions. If you’ve got questions about the gluten-free diet or the grain-free diet, No Grain, No Pain protocols, I want you to go ahead and type them in or chime them in as well because I’m going to make sure that I get as many as those answered today as I can, but I want to talk about some of the strategies and some of the pitfalls in and downfalls of why people go on gluten-free diets and say, “Hey, this doesn’t work for me,” or, “Hey, this diet is not the right diet for me,” why it fails for them. Let’s go through that.

The first, probably the biggest mistake that I see people making is they shop the gluten-free food isle, and let’s talk about why that is. The gluten-free food isle itself is probably the most toxic section in the grocery store. What I mean by that is, what are we left with? What is on the gluten-free food isle? 99% of those products, yes, they are gluten-free if we look at the old 1952 definition of what gluten is, but most of those products are highly, highly processed, highly refined foods with added hydrogenated fats, which are unhealthy, with added sugars, which are unhealthy, but many of them also contain grains, grains like oats, which are classically considered a gluten-free grain.

Some of them contain grains like corn or rice. Again, classically considered gluten-free, but technically not gluten-free at all. When we’re looking at somebody going down that isle and buying the gluten-free corn-based spaghetti or rice-based spaghetti or they’re going down isle and buying that Corn Pop cereal or they’re buying the bread products that are primarily predominately made from corn and rice or other grain-based items, and they’re eating these now as staple foods, you gotta understand why those things are problematic, why is corn, why is rice, why are oats problematic?

Well, oats, one of the problems with oats is they do contain a type of gluten that, although hasn’t been studied as well as the gliadins, the type of gluten found in wheat, barley, and rye, has been studied well enough to know that we do see people eating oats where there is damage, even the certified gluten-free oats, even the ones that are being claimed to not be cross-contaminated, even the ones that have on the labels, “Certified Gluten-Free. No gluten ever touched this product from wheat, barley, rye. Not processed in a facility where we also process wheat, barley, and rye,” so even those grains can create severe inflammatory damage.

I’ve seen this happen in countless patients, and so if you’re going on this gluten-free diet and you’re eating oatmeal, for example, certified gluten-free oatmeal every morning or you’re eating some type of oat-based product on a daily or regular basis, you’re going to continue to struggle as a result of that exposure.

Now, then you also have corn and rice. Now, corn has a form of gluten in it called zein and that, it’s … You’ve heard the term, maybe you’ve heard the term corn gluten, and somebody will say, “Well, they’re not the same thing.” Well, understand what gluten is. Gluten, by definition is, it is a family of proteins found in grains, in the seeds of grass, which are what grains are.

If we are consuming corn, yes it is technically alpha-gliadin free, which is the type of gluten that a lot of doctors refer to as it relates to celiac disease, but if you’re consuming grains on a regular basis, what tends to end up happening is, especially with the corn, is you’re getting that corn exposure, and that corn exposure with the zein oftentimes will trigger the same type of inflammatory response in the GI tract. We’re seeing people with these corn-based exposures having just as bad of a chronic inflammatory process when they’re eating corn, things like popcorn, things like cornbread, things like the different, again, the different types of corn-based products. You have to be super careful, and in my experience and in my advice, you’ve got to avoid the corn, you’ve got to avoid the grain.

The other problem with corn is it’s doused in glyphosate, which is an herbicide, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that here shortly.

Then you’ve got rice, rice-based products. Now, rice-based products do contain a form of gluten. Rice contains a form of gluten. It is the lowest, by concentration, rice has the lowest quantity of gluten of all the grains, but it still has a form of gluten in it. Now, that’s called [inaudible 00:04:34], and this particular type of gluten, again, there have been studies that show that it can be detrimental to those with gluten sensitivities, especially there been a number of studies showing that rice protein causes something called FPIES, F-P-I-E-S. That stands for food protein-induced enterocolitis.

Now, enterocolitis is just a fancy way of saying inflammation in the colon, so we know rice protein can do this, and we know it can do this in a very big way. There have been a number studies showing that rice is nowhere near as hypoallergenic as what we once thought it was, so rice can be a very big problem for many of you as well.

Now, rice is also, oftentimes, a problem as it relates to its ability to pull heavy toxic metals from the soil, so rice can be high in lead, it can be high in arsenic, it can be high in cadmium, and these heavy metals can cause disruption of your biochemistry. Many of these heavy metals can cause iron deficiency anemia that can cause calcium and magnesium and zinc problems, so you end up in state where your body is behaving as if its calcium-deficient, or zinc or magnesium or iron-deficient. Those can be, again, major problems associated with rice consumption.

If you’re … Again, the biggest mistake we’ll see people making when they’re going on a gluten-free diet is they go shop the gluten-free isle, and they’re just replacing the breads, pastas, cereals that are wheat, barley, or rye-derived with rice, pastas, or cereals that are rice-derived and that’s, again, that’s a huge mistake because all grains, by definition, contain a form of gluten, and remember, gluten is not just alpha-gliadin.

Again, doctors refer to celiac disease and gluten as only one type of gluten protein called alpha-gliadin, and this protein was discovered in 1952. If you’ve seen my PBS special, I talk all about the history of grain and how this happened, and if you’ve read my book No Grain, No Pain, I go into even more detail and list the references within that book. If you haven’t read No Grain, No Pain, definitely you need to go make sure you go back and read that as well to get reinforcement of what we’re talking about in this video today.

Let’s go on to the next segment, which is gluten-mimicking foods. This is one of the other big mistakes or big problems that people have. One of the biggest gluten-mimicking foods is dairy.

Now, dairy. Why dairy? Because dairy, it’s, one, it’s the way the cows milk itself is being processed. Understand that a lot of our cows today, especially the Holstein variety of cows, there’s agenetic manipulation in these cows and there’s breeds of cows, so when they’re producing milk, the protein in the milk is called casein, one of the main proteins, C-A-S-E-I-N, casein, and this, from a genetically modified cow perspective, the casein in this dairy tends to look a lot like gluten. A lot of people have a cross-reactivity, meaning they react to the dairy the same way they might react to the gluten because the casein and the gluten are so similar, and they both incite the immune system’s response, creating an inflammatory cascade of problems.

Dairy can be a major, major trigger, so if you’re going gluten-free and you’re consuming a lot of cheese, a lot of butter, a lot of dairy products, this is where you might be getting in trouble.

My advice, when someone’s initially going gluten-free, this is just generalized advice, if you’re in my clinic, I’d give you very specific advice, but my generalized advice on this is if you’re going to gluten free, you really need to go dairy-free for at least the first six months before you can really truly get a handle on whether or not dairy is going to be a major problem for you.

Remember, most of the cows, most of the dairy is coming from genetically modified cows. Much of the dairy has recombinant bovine growth hormone or other hormones or other chemicals added to it that are not healthy, that are not good for humans. Remember, why is the person going gluten free? Most people don’t go gluten-free because they’re trying to … Well, let me rephrase that.

Most people don’t go gluten free because they just want to join the fad. Most people go gluten free because they have major health issue they’re trying to overcome, and the pain of that health issue is greater than pain or the need to take the change the diet. If you’re changing your diet already, I mean, I might be saying, you might be hearing me say, “Go dairy-free too,” and that might be mind-blowing to you, like how in the heck am I going to possibly do this, but it’s necessary if you want to get better. If you’re really struggling, and you’re on a gluten-free diet already, and you’re, again, and you’re eating a lot of dairy, this could be one of the major culprits as to why you’re not making the recovery or why you’re not making the improvements that you want to make.

The other thing about dairy is much of the dairy that’s produced in the US especially, is processed with something called meat glue, or MTG. MTG. Now, what MTG stands for is it stands for microbial transglutaminase, MTG. I’m just going to pop that up on the screen, microbial transglutaminase. This is an industrial enzyme, and what this industrial enzyme does is it interacts, so we use it as a thickening agent. We use it as an agent to preserve the shelf life of food, and so many of the dairy products have this added as a thickening agent, like your ice creams and sometimes your yogurts and other products.

I’m going to put a little link up here for you. Give me just a second here because I want to put this link up so you can read a little bit more about this topic because to me, it’s extremely important that you have information that you can make valid decisions on, but microbial transglutaminase, so again, it’s one of those things that dairy can be highly processed with MTG.

Here we go. I’m just going to plug this into the comment box for you. There’s an article all about meat glue or MTG so that you can go back, and you can read a little bit more on, but again, what it does, what it tends to do, there have been a number of research studies showing this is that products that are processed with meat glue tend to create a reaction in those with gluten sensitivity. In other words, it damages the gut, it can create a leaky gut-like response, it can create an inflammatory response.

Again, maybe you’re gluten-free, but you’re not dairy-free. You’re eating a lot of dairy products that are processed with MTG or you’re eating a lot of genetically-modified dairy products that are, the casein protein mimics the gluten protein, and so you’re cross-reacting to the casein. Again, these are big problems that we commonly see in people going on an gluten-free diet.

Now, let’s talk another really, one that’s going to make a lot of you mad. Again, I’m not here to make you mad. I’m here to inform you, and if that makes you mad, I apologize. No, I really don’t want to apologize. Get mad, but then get over it, and then make change. I’m going to put another link up here for you on coffee because coffee is the next one.

I’m not saying that everybody needs to drop their coffee and never have coffee again. What I’m saying is that some coffees, particularity the instant coffees, the ones that you can put the powder in the glass and stir it up, and it mixes in the hot water, those instant coffees are one of the worst things that you can do, and one of the reasons why, much of them are, the problem with them is they contain wheat. They have a wheat-based filler or a gluten-based filler.

Now, that’s easy to identify. You can look on the label of the product, and you can avoid getting exposure to that wheat-based filler, but there’s some more compelling research that’s come out here recently on how coffee can actually contribute to a cross-reactivity, meaning some of the things in coffee can actually be, the proteins can mimic gluten, and there’s this scientific term called cross-reactivity where the structures in coffee are similar enough to gluten that some people actually also react to coffee.

Some people drinking their cup every morning, they’ve gone gluten-free, maybe they’ve even gone dairy-free, and they’re putting coconut milk or something like that in their coffee, which we’re going to talk about the problem with that in just a minute, so I’m going to take away one more thing from you. No, not really. Just information.

But coffee, in and of itself, can sometimes be the holdup. Now, coffee can do other things, too. Remember, coffee’s a gastric irritant, so some people that need go gluten-free or that are gone gluten-free, their guts are mess, they’re wrecked, they’re leaking, they’re inflamed. When you already have an inflamed gut and you put a food in your mouth that has the potential to be an irritant, that can be a problem. Remember, coffee’s very acidic.

One of the things you can do to reduce the acidity of coffee is you can put citrus peel in your coffee that combines to the acids in the coffee, and it will suppress some of the acid nature of coffee and make it much more tolerable for some people who have that gastric irritation toward it, but remember, if you’re still struggling and you’re drinking coffee every day, this could be one of the problems.

The other one, the other issue with coffee is with the caffeine intake. The caffeine, in and of itself, can be an overstimulater for the adrenal output, and if your adrenal glands are already fatigue or already shot, coffee can be the thing that sends you cover the edge, so you’ve got to me intelligent as you move forward, but coffee is definitely one of the big factors, one of the big, big factors that can mimic the gluten or that can create an irritation on an already irritated GI tract. It can perpetuate problems. Keep that in mind.

Let’s talk about coconut milk for just a second. I mentioned a minute ago that I was going to take away one more thing, and I promise I’m not really taking it away. I just want you to be aware.

There is a compound called carrageenan, carrageenan gum. Oftentimes, the coconut milks, the almond milks are, basically, they’re processed with carrageenan. Carrageenan is a gum that it’s generally harvested from a red seaweed. I’ll put a link up for you on carrageenan gum as well because again, I want you to just have some great information where you can be educated and get informed, but you’ve gotta keep in mind that carrageenan gum has been shown for many to irritate the gut lining.

It’s not, again, it’s not that carrageenan is gluten. It’s not that it looks like gluten or contains gluten. It’s that it’s a gut irritant for many people, and again, if you’re taking coffee with a milk, like a milk substitute like an almond or a coconut milk and it’s sweetened with carrageenan gum, you can really, really run into some major problems if you’re doing that. It can slow you down, and it can really create a problem.

Looks like my links aren’t coming through so I am going to plug that link in right there and see if it comes through this time. There’s the carrageenan link, we’re going to throw that coffee link up there for you as well in the feed. We’re having a slow Internet connection day. I’m actually, I’m vising San Jose right now. I got out of the hurricane weather in Texas, and anyway, so I’m visiting, and so I have a really slow Internet connection, so if you’re not seeing those links come through, that may be why that’s happening, so at any rate.

Now, let’s talk about the next big mistake, and that’s the hard-to-digest foods. The hard-to-digest foods, the big problem with these is that, remember, we gotta go back and we have to say, “Why are we going gluten-free in the first place?” What is the fundamental premise for going gluten-free? Is it for the trend or the fad? No, it’s to improve health, and generally, again, it’s someone who’s very sick, trying to improve their health and their pain of their illness is greater than the pain of their diet change or their desire to not want to change their diet, and so it’s not a trend, and it’s not a fad, and it’s not something that they’re just trying to jump on the bandwagon. They’re actually concerned about their health, but many of these people with chronic illness who are struggling, what happens? Their gut is a mess. It’s, again, I’ve said this before, their gut is already broken.

Remember, the act of eating in our country today has been socialized. We’ve taken eating and we’ve made it a social grace, and we’ve taken it away from what it actually is. Remember, mother nature is cruel. All you have to do is watch the Discovery Channel and see how the lions eat the zebras and how mother nature works. Mother nature’s cruel, and just because we live in a civilized society, doesn’t mean that we can ignore the laws of nature or what mother nature brings to us.

Eating. Eating is not a social grace. Now, we’ve made it into that, and many people, they have social paradigms wrapped around their eating, and they’ve created a culture around eating. I’m not saying that you can’t do that to a certain extent, but you have to go back and remember what eating is. Eating is your gut versus your food. That’s, in the most simplistic common denominator terms is your gut versus the food. The food, depending on what it is, the food is designed to resist you in a certain sense, again depending on what it is.

For example, many of the plants, and we’re talking about grains, grains are seeds. Seeds are designed to protect themselves and perpetuate their own species. A seed is not designed to be your food. A seed is really designed to harbor the embryo of its life form so that it can get back into the ground and re-sprout and regrow and perpetuate its own species. It doesn’t want to be your food. You have to understand that. That’s mother nature. The seed is designed to shut your digestion down. It’s designed, the chemicals within the seed are designed to irritate your gut lining, they’re designed to shut down your digestion.

Now, if you have a really super healthy digestive tract, you’re going to win the war. Your gut is going to beat that seed up, it’s going to win that war, and you’re going to go on, and you’re not really going to harbor such a great problem, but if your gut is already wrecked, if your gut is already compromised, if it’s already inflamed, if you’re already chronically sick, and you’re putting foods that are hard to digest in your gut like a lot of these seeds … Remember, all grains are seeds, but then there are other seeds as well, and this is part of that family of hard-to-digest foods.

You’ve got a number seeds, chia seed, flaxseed, these are things that people are like, “Hey, put it in the smoothie, put it on a salad,” and they struggle to get better because they’re pounding down these seeds that are hard to digest, and their guts are already compromised, and it doesn’t have that capacity to overcome that. Those seeds can just continue to beat up their gut and to dismantle it and to continue to allow for the chronic and consistent inflammation and permeability in the gut wall go on. That perpetuates our immunity.

Sometimes, we have to look at the foods that are harder to digest and we have to get them out of the diet for a time. I’m not saying indefinitely. In my experience, for most people being relatively seed-free for the first six months while they’re going ton a gluten-free diet along with dairy-free is a very smart idea. It’s a very, very good strategy because your gut has to have recovery time, and if you don’t give it recover time and you just trade one seed for another, trade one grain for another, you’re not going to see the recovery or the desire as the gluten-free diet that you want. You might feel better for a time, but ultimately, what will happen is something called gluten-free whiplash.

Now, gluten-free whiplash is when you take wheat, barley, and rye out of your diet, and then you put in the corn, the rice, and all the other grain-based foods that are being based as gluten-free and you put those into your diet, usually, what happens is you might go a couple of months just removing the wheat and the barley and the rye, you might feel better, You might actually have some improvements, and that’s real common, but then what happens is gluten-free whiplash. I just put an article link up for you so that you could go read more about gluten-free whiplash.

The gluten-free whiplash is when you go gluten-free but not true gluten-free. True gluten-free means no grain. It means no wheat, no barley, no rye, but it also means no oats, no corn, no rice, no sorghum, no spelt, no teff, no triticale, no grain whatsoever. If you are only wheat, barley, and rye-free, you’re going to feel better for the first few months, but then you’re going to start backpedaling again, and your symptoms are going to start coming back, and many of your problems are going to come back, or you’re going to develop a new problem. That’s gluten-free whiplash. I want you to go read about it because it’s one of the biggest mistakes, again, one of the big mistakes I see people make.

The same thing happens with the seeds. Again, the seeds are hard to digest, and that can create a major, major issue.

Now, legumes are similar in that sense, too. Legumes can be very, very hard to digest, and so a lot of people struggle, really struggle hard if they’re trying to eat a lot of beans their first several months. Again, beans are seeds, and so they contain lectins, and they contain other proteins that are designed, mother nature designed them to inhibit your digestion on purpose. That’s how the seeds survive your digestive tract and gets back in the ground with your poop around it as fertilizer. Remember, that’s mother nature. Mother nature is not looking out for you. Mother nature is designed so that the seed itself has designed the seed for survival, and that includes survival of your gut.

Now, when you take into consideration that we’ve GMO-ed, or genetically engineered a lot of these seeds and a lot of these foods that are out there to survive even better, if you’re eating those products, you’re going to struggle even more, so again, the legumes and the seeds, those hard-to-digest things, you might want to consider keeping them out of your diet aggressively for the first six months as your gut’s trying to heal and make a recovery if you’re going grain-free.

The other food group that’s, can be or relatively hard to digest are the FODMAPs, F-O-D-M-A-P-S. That stands for fermentable fructo oligo, [diamonate 00:23:20], monosaccharides, and polyols. What those basically are is those are agents, they’re carbohydrate-based agents that can be very hard to break down.

Again, one of the problems with somebody who’s got chronic gut dysfunction or gut disruption is they have a weakened gut and they have an altered microbiome because when you’re eating gluten, gluten can disrupt the microbiome, and when you’ve disrupted the microbiome, part of the disruption of the microbiome is you can have preferential destruction of certain types of bacteria that live in you, that normally live in your gut.

Those bacteria, remember what they do, they help you digest your food, so if you’ve destroyed certain species of those bacteria that are really good at digesting the FODMAPs, then you become FODMAP-intolerant, and so a lot of people end up going on a FODMAP diet because they feel better not eating foods with high FODMAPs.

Now, if you just Google search FODMAP diet, you’ll see there’s a whole laundry list of different types of FODMAPs. Now, I want you to understand, not all FODMAPs are the same. FODMAPs is a family of carbohydrates that are difficult to digest, and some people have hard times digesting certain elements of FODMAPs, and some people don’t have a hard time digesting certain elements of FODMAPs.

Let me give you an example. Garlic is high in FODMAP. Avocado is a high-FODMAP food. Some people do just fine, they have problems garlic, don’t have problems with avocado, and vice versa. In other words, if you’re looking at the FODMAP diet as a tool to say, “Hey, I’m going to see if removing some of these foods is helpful for me,” don’t look at all of them, think you have to necessarily have to avoid every single one of them because you’re going to be slim-pickings in your food if that’s the case, but you might just start paying attention to the ones that are higher in FODMAP and see if you don’t notice some improvement or relief if you do eliminate them for a time.

In my experience in helping clients and patients, it’s very much, FODMAP is not something we have to do indefinitely. It’s usually something we have to do for the first 6 to 12 months, and that’s not with everyone. That’s with select people who really have a strong history of antibiotic use and have wiped out their gut flora. They’ve got a lot of their gluten exposure, it’s gut-damaging, and so they’ve got a combination of gluten damage to the gut combined with processed-food damage to the gut combined with high level of antibiotic use, and their gut’s just a mess, and their microbiome’s just a mess, and they’re just not good digesters. They’ve just lost their capacity to digest. Again, FODMAPs can be one of those things you can look at and sometimes struggle with, so knowing that can be very helpful.

Now, what are some strategies coming back, if we think about the microbiome’s disrupted, well, what are some really good strategies where we can come in and say what needs to happen strategically to improve your gut microbiome?

One of the things that I really, really like to do, and this is what I do with people that come to see me is I use a very high dose, very strong dose probiotic. Now, you have to be careful with probiotics, and here’s why: Some probiotics are grown on dairy. Some probiotics are grown on GMO corn. You don’t want to use those types of products, and so it becomes very, very important to not use those types of agents.

The one I recommend for high doses is called Ultra Biotic Defense. I’m just going to plug that link in for you into the feed so you can see that. Ultra Biotic Defense is a high dose, it’s over 200 billion colony-forming units of very, very vigorous bifido and lactobacillus species bacteria, not grown on any kind of GMO culture, not grown on any kind of grain, not grown on any kind of dairy.

Very, very important that if you’re choosing your probiotic, because I’ve seen a lot of people go … There’s one particular company that makes a probiotic for, they make it for patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, and the problem with this brand is it’s got corn in it. Not only it’s got corn in it, it’s got corn as maltodextrin. Oftentimes, maltodextrin is a corn derivative and so this product has corn in it, so the very thing that patients trying to do, which is improve their microbiome through the use of a probiotic, but they’re corn-sensitive or gluten-sensitive, and so they’re getting the thing that creates the damage, at the same thing, they’re getting a good level of probiotic, but they’re getting the thing that creates the damage, so they get stuck in a vicious cycle.

Don’t use a probiotic if you can’t clarify whether or not it’s absolutely grain-free, GMO-free. You don’t want … Remember, probiotics are bacteria, and just like you look for grass-fed beef and you look for free-range organic chicken when you’re finding your meats, you don’t want your bacteria that are being fed GMO garbage. You want bacteria that are being fed healthy so that they can be healthy, so that if you’re using them as a source to improve upon or support your microbiome that you’re getting the quality that’s there and not the potential for the glyphosate and the other kinds of pesticides.

That brings me to the next element here, which is the pesticides, The pesticides are the other big, big player in prevention of somebody recovering or making a comeback, and the reason why the pesticides themselves, if … There are a couple of main ones that we’ll see. One is called glyphosate. Glyphosate, which you’ve all probably heard of Roundup, the government tells you that it’s safe. The company who makes it, Monsanto, tells you that it’s safe, but the reality is we see an epidemic rise in autoimmune disease that coincides with the introduction of high levels of glyphosate in our farming.

Now, I know that correlation is not causation, so those of you who are science buffs that are saying, “You can’t make the claim, GMO is perfectly safe.” Look, the reality is this, and this is my experience. In every patient I’ve ever seen who continued to use glyphosate-loaded food products, I saw a lack of recovery or an inability to recover. Take it for what you will. I’ve treated over 5,000 people in my office in the last 16 years, so I’ve seen that correlate to a 100% degree. We’ve got to get the pesticide masses out of the diet.

One of the problems with glyphosate is that it can kill your microbiome. It can kill off certain types of preferential bacteria that help you digest your food. One of the other problems with glyphosate is it disrupts something called the shikimate pathway.

Now, I’m going to post another link for you because I recently interviewed Dr. [Sineth 00:30:16] at MIT on this very topic, topic on glyphosate because there’s a lot of articles, there’s a lot of things going on right now out there that talk about is it really gluten sensitivity the problem or is it really just the glyphosate?

I want to be very, very clear here. It is not just the glyphosate. It is both. Don’t go thinking that you can go buy a bunch of organic grain if you’ve been going gluten-free and feeling better, and that you’re going to somehow not react to that organic grain. I see this all the time. My patients test me to nth degree. Some of them travel, they go to Europe, and they say, “I ate the grain in Europe, and I didn’t feel as bad,” but then they’re still feeling bad because they’re still in my office.

It is both, it is not just the glyphosate. Is the glyphosate a problem? Yes. The glyphosate is a major problem, but is the gluten a problem, too? Yes, the gluten is a problem. Is the grain a problem? Yes. That’s the sole reason I wrote No Grain, No Pain. It’s not a book about gluten sensitivity. It’s a book about the dangers and the detriment of grain as a staple food in the human diet, from heavy metals to molds to micro toxins to proteins that shut down your pancreas and inhibit your digestion to proteins that create molecular mimicry causing autoimmune disease to the gluten itself to the pesticides that are being used to the genetic mutilation.

It all is important, so don’t try to bargain with it. In essence, don’t just go find something that’s glyphosate-free and then say because it’s glyphosate-free, all of a sudden, it’s healthy again for me and I can eat it.

I’m just posted a link to an interview. It’s an interview that you can listen to with myself and Dr. Sineth, and I broke down glyphosate. Again. I want to walk about one of the agents in glyphosate, it disrupts the shikimate pathway, which is very, very critical because this a biochemical pathway in your gut, well, actually, in your body, but it starts in the gut, part of it starts in the gut, and that it disrupts your ability to make serotonin.

Serotonin is the primary neurotransmitter in the GI tract. 90% of your serotonin is in your gut, and it helps with gut motility, and it helps communicate messages back to your brain so your gut-brain uses serotonin to talk to your brain-brain, to your noggin. If you disrupt that pathway, you can create depression, you can create gastrointestinal problems associated with serotonin deficiency.

I mean, look around. How many people do you know that are taking Pax or a Prozac or one of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications, the SSRI? It’s one of the most prolifically prescribed medications. Think about that. It’s gotten more popular the longer glyphosate has been in our diets. It’s another one of those correlations.

Again, I know causation and correlation aren’t the same thing, but look, we have to think intelligently. We can’t ignore the facts around it, and so understand that that glyphosate can disrupt this pathway that disrupts your body’s ability to produce serotonin, and that serotonin, remember, what does serotonin do? It’s a primary neurotransmitter in the gut, it’s a mood hormone in your brain, it helps to stave off depression, it helps to create sensations of happiness, it helps in mood.

Serotonin also converts to melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone, it’s the neurohormone that allows you to sleep through the night. Many people are struggling with sleep problems or sleep disorders, and this can be part of the reason why. This is, sometimes, one of the reasons why is that they’re not producing enough serotonin because they got so much glyphosate coming into their diet, they’re disrupting their capacity to make serotonin.

Remember, when you go outside and the light hits your eyes, it’s the serotonin when it is exposed to light through your eyes that is converted to melatonin, so over the course of the day, the more sunshine and more outdoor activity you get, you’re making melatonin, so that when the sun goes down, you built up enough melatonin in your brain to put your brain to sleep. If you find yourself and you’re wide awake and it’s 10:00 at night, and you’re wide awake, this is a possibility, especially if you’re eating nonorganic foods so the foods that are not organic that have the potential for mass exposure, mass dosing of glyphosates. You’ve gotta keep that in mind that glyphosate-based pesticide can be a major disrupter.

The other thing that glyphosate does is it disrupts selenium and it disrupts cobalt and it disrupts molybdenum. These are minerals. Selenium is necessary for thyroid function. Molybdenum is necessary for sulfites. If you drink wine, if you used to drink wine and you were okay, but if you drink wine today and it just completely destroys you? You could very well have molybdenum deficiency because the glyphosate you’re eating is chelating or grabbing on to the molybdenum from your diet and preventing you from absorbing it. Is a very common problem, so molybdenum is necessary for sulfite conversion, meaning it helps us to detoxify the sulphites in the foods that we’re eating or in the things that we’re being exposed to.

Then you have cobalt. Cobalt is a necessary mineral for the formation of vitamin B-12 or cobalamin. You can develop anemias, you can develop all kinds of problems if you have hyper exposure to glyphosate, and it’s creating a chelative effect in your diet causing mineral deficiency.

There are a lot of different mechanisms that theoretically, glyphosate could contribute to. Some of them have been studied and some of them haven’t been, so what I’m sharing with you is just what I experienced in patients. It’s just what I’ve experienced with people who have come to see me.

Again, I want to be clear. These are potential possibilities if you’re getting exposure, and you need to be aware of it, and you need to be educated about it, and you need to take proactive steps in your diet and in the way that you’re eating if you want to restore your health. If you’re not willing to do those things, that’s the price. IF you’re not willing to do those things, then you are willing to pay the price of poor health, and that’s your faith.

At any rate, there’s another pesticide I wanted to talk about called atrazine, A-T-R-A-Z-I-N-E. Atrazine is a, it’s what we oftentimes refer to as a xenoestrogen. Estrogen-like compound. I’m going to put that up there.

Atrazine, if we look at where farming, a lot of farmers use atrazine as a weed killer, and so what happens is we get a lot of it in the water. There’s a lot of it in our rivers, that flow in to our rivers from the farming communities. In atrazine, what, and this, if you Google this, you’ll find it very easily in the research is that where there’s too much atrazine in rivers and lakes, the fish, the frogs, the salamanders, the male ones actually turn into females.

Atrazine is so estrogenic, it actually creates a chemical sex change in frogs, fish, and salamanders. We think about that in terms of humans. If you’re overexposed to lots of atrazine as a young child, let’s just say you’re a young boy, and you’re getting a formula-fed product, and it’s basically been harvested and grown, and then there’s a lot potential atrazine residue in it that is estrogen-mimicking chemical, how is that going to affect your sex? How is that going to affect the way you develop? How is that going to affect your testosterone level as you start to develop? Is that one of the reasons why we see an increased rise in homosexuality. I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows, but we do see it in animals, and I think it’s intelligent to look at it in humans. We do know it has estrogen-like effects in humans. You’ve got to keep that as a consideration.

Atrazine is highly estrogenic, and so for men, what are we seeing? What we seeing more and more of? We see low testosterone centers popping up all over the country. For women, we see more breast cancers, we see more ovarian cancers, why? They’re estrogen-related cancers because we’re getting more exposure to environmental estrogens, chemical-toxic estrogens, or what are called xenoestrogens. These are from things like pesticides, things like plastics, things that are in your cosmetics. These are these xenoestrogens. We’re being overexposed, and that overexposure can create big problems in and of itself.

One of the ways we get rid of xenoestrogen is we avoid grain. One of the ways we get rid of xenoestrogens is we avoid eating or drinking out of plastics where at all possible. Again, it’s important that you understand.

The things that I’ve talked about today, in summary, we’ve got shopping the gluten-free isle. You’ve gone gluten-free, but it didn’t help you very much, or you’ve gone gluten-free and it helps you initially, and then you hit gluten-free whiplash where you started to rebound, and part of that is because you’re shopping the gluten-free isle, you’re still eating the corn, you’re still eating the rice, you’re still buying the oats, you’re buying the products that say gluten-free. That’s a bad move. It’s a foolish move. Get off that isle and quit shopping in it.

Number two, you’re eating foods that can potentially mimic gluten, the dairies, the way dairy is processed with meat glue, the microbial transglutaminase; coffee that’s cross-contaminated or coffee that, again, for some people, there’s a molecular mimicry component.

Three, you’re eating foods that are hard to digest. There are nuts and seeds and legumes. Nuts aren’t quite as bad as the seeds and the legumes, especially initially those can be very hard for many of you to digest, and so they can hold up, they can create a potential plateauing in your recovery. Again, it’s not because they contain gluten, it’s because they contain proteins that inhibit digestion, and they’re very hard to digest.

You’ve got seeds, and you’ve got legumes, and then you’ve got difficult-to-digest fermentable carbohydrates, the FODMAPs. Many of you struggle because you don’t have a microbiome that has the strength and the potential to be able to properly digest food, and then that crates, again, that creates, every time you eat, that creates a war that you can’t win. When you’re not winning the war of eating, you’re not getting nourished, and when you’re not getting nourished, your body can’t receive the nutrition to help you heal and recover and repair. Those are critical, fundamental, foundational things that need to be looked at.

Those are the big things. If you want to learn more, I’d really recommend that you read No Grain, No Pain because I talk about all these things and more in much greater detail.

Now, I’m going to open the floor for questions, and let’s see of my slow Internet connection is feeding your questions in appropriately here.

Great question coming in from Xavier. “Do you think that ‘herbal antibiotics’ are enough to get rid of SIBO with, of course, a specific diet, or do we need to combine it with antibiotics?”

SIBO. What is that? SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth for those of you who don’t know SIBO.

Yes. “Herbal antibiotics,” in quotes, “herbal antibiotics” are enough. They can be. One of the most effective ones is berberine. Berberine can be extremely effective. One of the other things that can be very helpful, in my experience with SIBO, is taking a spore-based probiotic can be quite helpful, making sure that you have adequate … One of the things I like to measure is something called secretory IgA, which is an antibody that we produce in our gut lining. It’s the first line of defense, and oftentimes, if we, you’ll see it in SIBO patients, they won’t have enough secretory IGA, and that’s one of the things that allows bacterial overgrowth to occur.

I use a product, it’s actually one of my own formulations. I created it out of need because a lot of the products that are out there that are similar are dairy-based, so like with colostrum-based products, and some people are just super, super sensitive to colostrum-based products, and … Here we go. I’m going to pull this up for you so that you can see what I’m talking about here, but because I do use, there are good colostrum-based products, but some people are super, super sensitive to … Let’s see. Sorry. I’m just pulling this up for you.

… are super sensitive to the dairy. If you’re using the dairy-based product, the colostrum dairy-based product and you’re sensitive to it and you’re actually struggling, this is actually one of the real common reasons why that can happen.

Let’s see here. I recommend that you move away from that if you’re super dairy-sensitive. You’ve got to move away from that, and you’ve got to use a, it’s a serum-derived formula. In essence, it’s not derived from dairy at all, it’s derived from serum in its bovine, meaning it’s cow-based but it’s called Ultra Immune IgG. I’m going to have somebody put that up for you, let’s see here, because I want you to differentiate, because again, most of them that are called IgG support or immune-support products that are IgG-based, they’re colostrum-based. It’s not what you want. Now, go buy one of those if you’re dairy-sensitive, it’s going to create a problem, and that problem can be the thing that prevents you from getting better. Let’s see here if I can find it for you.

I’m going to have to come back and post it for you because my Internet connection’s just running a little bit too slow to get that up for you, but good question from Xavier. Yes, berberine, one of the best things to use.

I have a product that I really like, a formulation that is called Ultra Berberine if you go to glutenfreesociety.org. For those of you who don’t know, glutenfreesociety.org is my foundation. One of the missions of our foundation is to provide high-quality pharmaceutical, grain-free, gluten-free based products for people who are really struggling and trying to get a good product and know that they’re getting something that’s not contaminated. That’s part of our mission is to provide that for you guys, so if you haven’t been there, go sign up for our gluten-free survival kit. Real easy to do. Just go to glutenfreesociety.org and sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll send you a gluten-free survival kit.

Let’s see here. Moving on through the questions. “How do you know if your gut is healthy again?” Kornelia, a healthy gut is one that digest well. You have regular bowel movements, one to two bowel movements a day. Bowel flatulence should not be extremely foul. You shouldn’t see any blood. You should see a nice, dark brown and a nice solid stool. In essence, when you go to the bathroom, you shouldn’t have to use up two rolls of toilet paper to clean up. Those are healthy bowel movements. That’s a healthy bowel function.

There are other markers and other measures to determine that, but how do you feel? I mean, are you bloated? Do you feel like your food is digesting well? Do you feel well nourished? A lot of that is very subjective in just in the way that you feel. There are parameters that functional medicine docs are trained to measure that can help determine gut-health, and that might be an angle that you want to take is have a good functional medicine doctor run a gastrointestinal stool sampling on you to look at the parameters of your digestion, to see if there’s any chronic inflammation, to see if you have a healthy microbiome, to see if you have any overgrowth of abnormal bacteria or other microorganisms like yeast. Those are some of the things that you can do to really help to determine that.

JaNein, “Last Friday, I went to ER, scan showed a small bowel loop fluid and ileus in the appendicolith,” I’m not sure if that’s what you meant to say, “I did nothing. I had no symptoms. I went for swollen lymph nodes in the groin.”

I don’t see the question in that, but if you’ve got a loop, a small bowel loop, that’s something, I mean that can be dangerous. I’ve seen people have to have emergency surgery where they had bowel loops, and what can happen is something called intussusception, which is a process where the intestines telescopes over a part of the other intestine, and it can create a life-threatening scenario, so you might just follow up with a doc and have that looked at a little bit closer.

Brandon, “Thoughts on Dr. John Douillard’s Ayurvedic approach to seeing gluten sensitivity as an issue with lymphatic congestion, liver, and gallbladder health? He advocates that if we have sensitivity, not an allergy, then it is due to congestive GALT tissue … ” GALT is gas-associated lymphoid tissue, ” … and by clearing lymph tissue, improving bile flow, you can return to select grains, non-enriched, non-GMO, organic, et cetera.”

Yeah, I respect Dr. John’s work. I think there’s some truth to some of the things that he says; however, I go back and look at it as why is the congestion there in the first place? Here’s the way I look at grain in general. Grains as a good are not designed for human consumption in mass. They never were. If you read No Grain, No Pain, I talk about all the history of that and going back in time and in the midst of having perpetuated in our society about how we’ve always eaten grain.

Even in the Bible, Jesus refers to himself as the bread, but it was a symbolic reference. It wasn’t a literal reference that, eat bread to survive, it was a symbolic reference that, “Partake of me, of my body and my message,” and know, “Hey, I want you to act as a human, and you’ll never need sustenance, you’ll never want for sustenance.” Again, that was not a literal meaning, it was a symbolic meaning. You taketh the body of Christ, involve yourself in the body, and that you’ll never hunger again. It’s not, don’t take that as a literal translation, those of you who are Christian. I am, and if you’re not, you know …

At any rate, this isn’t about that, but going back to Dr. John Douillard’s approach, I don’t disagree with him 100%, but I disagree that grains should ever have been a staple food in the human diet because when you ask yourself what creates the gastro-associated lymphoid congestion in the first place, it’s food that are hard to digest. It’s foods that aren’t designed to be digested.

Now, some might argue that you could ferment the grain, some might argue that you can sprout the grain, making sure that it’s predigested, in a sense, and I would say yeah, you probably could do that, and it probably would be less problematic; however, when you sprout grain, there’s more wheat germ and gluten, and wheat germ and gluten is one of the most toxic substances to our joints, so I can’t say that I fully agree with Dr. John, but absolutely respect his word.

I respect what he’s teaching out there in a sense that, look, Ayurvedic is a great principle. It’s a 5,000-year-old science of self-doctoring, and I think a lot of the principles of Ayurvedic medicine are fantastic because they put the power in control of you, paying attention to what you eat, paying attention to how you feel, paying attention to how you digest is the big message. It’s self-doctoring because nobody can doctor you better than you because nobody has the distinctive advantage of knowing what you feel like and knowing what your symptoms are when you do certain things in your environment. Good question.

Let’s see. Going down the list. “Hard to get gluten-free products here in Jordan.” Mais, don’t aim for gluten-free products. Go back and re-listen to the first 15, 20 minutes of this video when you get a chance, and don’t go looking for the products. It’s the products that are creating the problems.

Kate is asking for clarity for coffee, “Coffee, even decaf?”

Yeah, decaf, just because it’s decaf doesn’t mean it’s good for you too. It can still create a molecular mimicry response or not a molecular mimicry but a cross-reactivity type of response, so even the decafs can be problematic.

Remember, decaf doesn’t mean decaf, it means 97% decaffeinated. Some people who are hypersensitive to caffeine, even with 3% caffeine in the coffee still have very, very big problems, especially if they’re dealing with adrenal fatigue, especially if they’re dealing with gastric irritation already, even that 3% caffeine can create a problem.

Misty’s chiming in, “I’ve read that whole food vitamin C is preferable over ascorbic acid. Thoughts?”

No, I mean, yes and no. Is whole food preferable? Absolutely, it is. Should you eat whole food? Yes, absolutely, you should; however, you take as somebody who’s got a major condition and you need to get high-dose vitamin C in them, cancers for example, severe gastrointestinal chronic, severe gastrointestinal inflammation chronic pain problems, but whole food is not going to cut it. You’ve got to get to the medicinal effects of vitamin C, and for that, that requires high dose pure ascorbate.

Now, you gotta remember too that a lot of the vitamin Cs that are produced here in the US, again, corn is one of the things that is used. I don’t recommend corn-based vitamin C products. If you’re going to use vitamin C in ascorbic acid form, and I recommend them, and I use them with clients on a regular, regular basis because they’re extremely effective, this is what I recommend. I’m just going to plug in, I’m going to plug in the name of, it’s called Detox C, and I’m going to just put a link up for you. That one is non-corn derived, and you definitely don’t want to go with a corn-derived version. It’s important that you look for one that is non-corn derived. That link may be showing up now.

“What about buffalo dairy?”

Same thing. I don’t recommend going … Look, if you’re going gluten-free, go grain-free, dairy-free. Keep the dairy out for the first six months. Don’t … Here’s the problem: Psychologically, a lot of you may be going grain-free or gluten-free. As you get better, but not fully better, but the diet, and you’re finding it’s hard, and you’re struggling because it’s new. You’re not fully committed because you don’t know whether it’s the right move or a guess, and so you’re playing with dairy and you’re adding more dairy in because you’re taking away one food, but you’re adding in another food, and you still continue to struggle. Then you get to a point where you’re like, “To heck with this. It’s too hard,” and then you quit, and then you tell everyone, “Hey, the diet didn’t work for me.”

I’m not just saying you as in you, Andrea, I’m just simply saying you as in the people that are out there that, where it’s failing them. They’re not really, they’re not committing in the appropriate way, and they don’t have a full understanding of some of the nuance of literally going at it and doing it properly.

Keep the dairy out for the first six months. If you’re really, really heartfelt on bringing in some kind of a dairy back in, go at least six months without it, and when you do bring it back it, bring it back in from cows that are non-GMO, that are purely grass-fed where you can verify that the milk is pure and clean, and there’s no recombinant bovine growth hormone and there’s no microbial transglutaminase product added to the dairy.

What that really means is finding a local dairy farmer and picking it up very, very fresh, but even that, even, now understand this, dairy is a very, even if you’re healthy, dairy is mucogenic, meaning it tells your body to make more mucus so it can clog up your lungs, it can clog up your gut. Dairy, in and of itself, the epidemiological data, meaning all the research, epidemiological research points at dairy as being a major contributing factor for cancers.

It’s just not food group that I recommend that you eat as a staple, regardless, for that reason. If you want to read more about that, you can look at Loren Cordain. Dr. Loren Cordain published a book on the paleo diet. He’s actually the founder of the paleo diet, and you can read more about his work and read more about why you should keep dairy out or why you should consider keeping dairy down to a very, very low minimum at the very least.

The same thing, Natalie, I’m answering, I think I just answered your question. The same thing applies to goats. Goat milk is not really any healthier. Remember, humans lose the ability, genetically, to break down dairy and digest dairy around the age of three when they wean from breastfeeding. It’s a genetic reduction, the capacity to break down lactose, the sugar in dairy, and that’s why so many people are lactose-intolerant.

Kelly’s asking can I touch on vitamin C and corn?

Here’s the thing. A lot of your vitamin C is produced from corn, so it’s just they use corn as the grain to produce the vitamin C, and that’s why I recommend avoiding it. If the product doesn’t tell you that it’s corn free, then it isn’t, so don’t buy it. Again, I’ve put a link up to Detox C, which is definitely corn-free. We actually use a wild African yam to source our vitamin C.

Let’s see if have any more new questions rolling in.

Dean, I wanted to look at his comment. He’s, “Italy gives 125 Euro for only gluten-free foods. For me that has celiac, is a terrible thing. It makes me want to buy these foods because it’s free for me.”

Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, to me, produce is gluten-free. I don’t know if you can use that 125 Euro to go buy just some meat or to just go buy some vegetables. To me, that would seem like you should be able to do that as well, but again, I don’t live in Italy. I’m not quite sure how that works, but thanks for chiming in and tuning in today.

“Which probiotics shouldn’t you use?”

Polly. Good question. Look. I’m very particular. The brands … I don’t want to talk bad about anyone else’s brands because, one, I don’t have an intrinsic knowledge of the exact manufacturing process of every company out there that produces a probiotic, and two, I don’t want to say that every probiotic that’s out there is horrible for everyone. I just, I can’t make that claim because I don’t have time in my life to analyze every single product on the shelf out there, but I will say this: The brands that I use, and I have a couple that I use that I offer for people through Gluten-Free Society.

That’s Biotic Defense, and Ultra Biotic Defense. Those are the brands I recommend for the reasons I stated earlier, is that I can confirm that they’re not grown on GMO, I can confirm that they’re grain-free. To me, that’s very important. I can also confirm that they have, the way we use our labeling, we don’t label the way other people label, so understand that when I say that Ultra Biotic Defense has 225 live viable bacteria that you’re getting when you take it, what I mean is that when that product is expired, on the day that that product expires, I can guarantee that you’re going to get 225 billion.

The way a lot of other people label is they don’t label based on the expiration date. They label based on the born-on date, so they may say you’re getting 200 billion units, but you’re getting 200 billion units on the date of production. You’re not getting 200 billion units on the date of expiration. Let’s say a product sat on the shelf for six months and lost 50% of its potency, you’re not getting what you think you’re getting, and so we label our probiotics based on expiration, not based on being born. Again, it’s … We just believe in transparency and clarity and labels.

Kayla’s, “Love the vitamin C and D therapy. My 13 year old and I did it last week.”

Awesome, awesome. Hopefully, it was really helpful for boosting your immune system. For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, you should’ve tuned in last week. No, just go back and watch last week’s replay.

Can I link to the research on glyphosate, please? I think I posted that? Let me check. I think I did, but I’ll post it again. I can. This was the interview I did with Dr. Sineth. Just plugging it in there now into the feed so you should see that popping up.

Oh, thank you, thank you, Tammy, for asking this question. “What type of drinks do you recommend? I need to replace iced tea and coffee with something healthy.”

I love recommending water. Your body is 65 to 70% water. What’s wrong with it? People say it doesn’t taste good or it doesn’t have taste. I’m a more stoic person when it comes to eating and drinking. Drink water. Yes, can you do herbal teas? Certainly, you could. There’s camomile teas, and there’s peppermint teas, there’s all different kinds of herbal teas that you could consume that are caffeine-free that aren’t going to create the irritation, so there’s certainly that option.

If you like a little more taste in your water, squeeze a lemon or lime or a piece of citrus, like a grapefruit citrus or something into the water as well for a little bit more taste, but whatever you do, don’t go buy those little drops, they sell them in the store that flavor your water grape or this or that because most of those are produced with genetically-modified corn. That’s how they make the natural flavor in most of those products now. I just don’t recommend them. You just don’t know what you’re getting.

What does that mean, natural flavor. I mean, if I’m producing something and I’m putting in natural flavor in it myself, I can verify the ingredient, and I can say yeah, that it’s not really natural flavor derived from this GMO corn, it’s actually natural blueberry flavor from blueberry. That’s really what we would want. We want water. If you want to flavor it, flavor it with some real food flavoring.

One of the things that we do in home is we chop up strawberries and cucumbers, and we put those in a pitcher and we fill that pitcher up with water. Then we let it sit in the fridge and get cold, and it infuses the water with the flavor that might be more palatable for you, Tammy. That’s what I really recommend. I recommend drinking more water, yeah, again, water infusions with herbal teas or water infusions with fruits can also be good. Good question.

Let’s see. I think, did I get them all? No. No. There’s a whole nother list. We’re running out of time here. Let’s see here.

“How about soy milk? Are there lectins in soy milk that are harmful to the gut?”

I don’t recommend soy, period. Soy is a, it contains high levels of phytoestrogen. It’s a plant-based estrogen. Going back to what I was saying before, we’re so overexposed to estrogens from the environment. Most petrochemicals are estrogen-based, your cosmetics are going to be estrogen-based, plastics are estrogen-based. You’re getting estrogen through accidental exposure because you’re probably eating organic, but you’re not eating not organic on purpose, but you’re getting accidental pesticide exposure through water contamination, even though organic contamination. We’re trying to minimize as much of that excess of estrogen as we can because we got too much and we don’t need it.

Soy milks are highly processed, most of them, not all, but most of them are GMO, but soy’s a legume. Going back to what I was saying earlier about legumes as being one of those hard-to-digest elements, the legumes are designed for survival. What happens with a lot of these soy milks is they’re a legume juice, just like coffee’s a legume. Coffee’s legume juice too, and that goes back to what I was saying earlier is that you take soy, which is a legume, you make juice out of it, and then you add a bunch of gum to it because that’s what most soys are.

They use carrageenan gum or they use xanthan gum or guar gum or acacia gum to thicken it, and these gums are really, really hard to digest. You ever put a piece of gum in your mouth, you start chewing it, it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s gum. Gums are harder to digest. They actually pull, and they pull a lot of water into them as well so they can cause a sluggish digestive tract. Again, if you’re already struggling with digestive issues, that’s where that can really come to be a problem, an additional problem.

I just don’t recommend soy milk. It’s not a healthy food. If you understand the history of why so much soy is being recommend, most of the soy is being recommended as a health food because the government subsidizes the growth of soy. It’s GMO, it’s easy, it’s cheap. Taxpayer dollars go to producing it, and soy can be made to taste like everything, and so soy is a very unique protein or food item that can be used to make fake hot dogs, fake chicken, fake everything, you name it, and it’s cheap.

They make something called textured vegetable protein with soy, even though soy’s not truly a vegetable, it’s a legume. That’s what they call it, textured vegetable protein. They add that, they add that to a lot of different products, they inject it into a lot of different products because it’s cheap. It’s just not my advice to go looking for soy as a food in the diet.

Now, those of you who were wanting to grow your own soybean or you had access to some really organic soy that was fermented like a tofu or miso, potentially yes on occasion, but again, if we’re going gluten-free initially and our guts are broken, I just don’t recommend soy as part of your initial workup. I recommend keeping all legumes out, really, for that first six month period of time. Good question.

JaNein, I’m not sure I understand your question. “How or can you treat high B-6?”

What does that mean? Are you B-6 toxic? If you’ve had a high vitamin B-6 toxicity, the way you treat it is you avoid eating vitamin B-6. I mean, you avoid taking any more supplements with vitamin B-6, but I’m not quite sure I understand your question. There are some genes that play a role in vitamin B-6 like MAO-A, monoaminoxidase mutations or CBS mutations, which are B-6-dependent genes. Their coenzymes are B-6, but I’m, maybe you could clarify your question because I’m not quite sure what you’re asking.

“Can gluten-free foods create high cholesterol?”

Sure, they can, but so can non-gluten-free foods. I mean, it’s not really gluten-free or not gluten-free foods that create high cholesterol, it’s the wrong foods that create high cholesterol, and really, the bigger question is, is high cholesterol is even a problem? I think the better question is, is high cholesterol a risk factor for heart disease, and if you follow me for any length of time, you know that my answer to that is absolutely not.

High cholesterol has really very little to do with heart disease unless your cholesterol is high to an extremely high level, and when we’re talking about diseases like hyperlipidemia, some disease where cholesterol’s going up over 300, over 350, yeah, that can be more of a problem, especially if there’s a high level of inflammation, but cholesterol, in and of itself, is a very helpful agent.

Cholesterol makes testosterone. Cholesterol is a precursor to vitamin D. Cholesterol is a precursor to estrogen and progesterone. Cholesterol won a Nobel Prize in medicine because it was discovered that you needed it to form brain synapses. That’s why all these people that are taking all these stat drugs to lower their cholesterol are ending up with dementia because they are inhibiting their cholesterol in such a low degree that their brain can’t continue to form synapses and the brain cells are not communicating with each other. Maybe a more important question would be, is looking at cholesterol as being high, is that really a risk, is that really a problem?

Can I recommend anything to assist with adrenal fatigue? Are there supplements that help more than others?

I have something called Ultra Adrenal, which is a product with certain vitamins and glandulars to help support the adrenal gland’s function. Melanie, what I would you encourage you to do is subscribe to my YouTube channel. It’s youtube.com/glutenology, and in that, what you will find is a recent video that I did all about the adrenal glands. It’s about an hour long. I would really encourage you to go back and watch that. You can also pick that up off of Gluten-Free Society, so if you go to glutenfreesociety.org, your web browser will ask you if you want to receive updates from Gluten-Free Society, hit the yes button because you’ll get all those updates from us about that information.

Anne Marie, “As a nursing mother with celiac disease and dairy sensitivity, what should I use a replacement for the extra calories and calcium?”

Bone broth is a great source calcium. Broccoli is a great source of calcium. Realize that you don’t need dairy for calcium. That’s one of those marketing myths that’s been perpetuated by the dairy industry. Extra calorie-wise? Look, eat real food. Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, those are all going to contain and should contain the adequate calories, even as a nursing mother for you. You don’t need to go gravitate toward empty calories from dairy.

What I would encourage you to do, Anne Marie, if you haven’t already, there is, in No Grain, No Pain, there’s a section in chapter seven and eight, and it lists out just all the different possibilities of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meats. A lot of people don’t realize, but you’ve got a few varieties of those things, and there’s a lot of choice and there’s a lot of option to choose from, but you just maybe haven’t thought about a number of those things. Go check that out, and there are going to be a lot of different foods that you can make sure that you’re getting adequate calories from.

You can also increase your fat intake. Fat is one of the easiest ways to increase calories, but again, healthy fats. I did an episode of Pick Dr. Osborne’s Brain a few weeks ago on fat, and you can go back and watch that one as well. That was a great episode where we talked about which kinds of fats were the healthiest.

Let’s see here. “For SIBO, you need something to move small bowels. Motility Pro is well known. I’m not sure of Dr. Osborne as a … ”

I use something called GI Restore to help push the bowels when we need to, but I also like vitamin C. That’s one of the reasons I like vitamin C because it’s helpful in so many different ways. Vitamin C is like human duct tape, but it also helps push the bowels, so oftentimes, taking medium doses of vitamin C will keep your bowels moving as you’re going through a SIBO process.

Are my products geared towards adults or can children use them?”

Yes, children can use them. If you have a question, look, we’re here to help support you. Chime in and send your email questions to glutenology@gmail. I have somebody full time there answering questions about our supplements just to make sure that you guys understand what they are and how they can be used to support your health.

Let’s see here. I don’t know what you mean, Russell Cho, “People are dying in Texas, and you’re selling this stuff?” Shame on me?

Shame on you for shaming on me. I’m on the Internet helping people, and if you don’t like that, you can leave. You can get off my feed. People are not dying in Texas. The hurricane hasn’t even hit yet. I’ve lived through a number of hurricanes much bigger than this one that’s coming.

“Should you go gluten-free with Hashimoto’s, even if you don’t have a sensitivity?”

Yes. As a matter of fact, I’ve never met a person with Hashimoto’s that didn’t have a sensitivity, so I would question, Vicki, how you actually tested for sensitivity. If you weren’t genetically tested appropriately, then you weren’t properly tested, and so really, that’s the only real great way to discern whether you’re going to react to gluten is to have the appropriate genetic testing done. I’m going to put a link in there for you where you can read more about genetic testing for gluten sensitivity. Hopefully, that’s helpful for answering your question.

“I find it hard to … ” Jeanie Lamb is chiming in, “I find it hard to go without meat, potatoes, rice, ice tea, and chocolate. What can I eat?”

Again, Jeanie, there are a lot of different foods that are out there. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, not eat meat. I mean, mean is a healthy food. There are people that don’t do as well with certain kinds of meat, but remember, the health of the meat is also dependent on the way the animal was treated, so when you’re buying and looking for meat, look for wild-caught, grass-fed, free-range, organic, ethically-treated animals. You can still eat meat.

I’m not a vegetarian, and I do not advocate just broad-spectrum veganism for everyone just because. There are a lot of people that do that, I’m not one of them, but as far as rice, it’s very easy to get rice out of the diet. You just have to put in the right amount of vegetables and nuts and other things that they can be helpful. There’s plenty to eat. Again, go through chapters seven and eight and look at the lists of foods that we’ve documented out for you.

Gosh, the questions just aren’t stopping, and I’m running out of time. Let’s see here. “Aren’t there concerns that the probiotic will be destroyed by stomach acid?”

Yes, there are those concerns, and that’s a good question to bring up. That’s why with probiotics, you do want something that has a coating on it, a gastric coating on it that will get it through the stomach acid. Again, that’s why, again, I didn’t talk about that, but that’s one of the reasons why I like to control which probiotics I’m using and where they’re coming from because I need to know that they will survive gastric acid.

Do I recommend almond milk?

No, not really. I recommend water. Going back to what I was recommending for beverages. Now, some people are going to use almond milk, and they’re going to use coconut milks to make smoothies and things of that nature. That’s fine. Go ahead and use that. You just, again, be careful of the gums that are added to some of these products, and be careful of some of the other ingredients. A lot these almond milks are sweetened with sugar or flavored with unnatural flavors that are corn-derived. You just have to make sure you’re reading what you’re using and make sure that it’s clean.

Prioshka is, “But Dr. Soy is good for menopausal women, right?”

No, not necessarily. If you’re just taking in soy, high doses of soy because you’re menopausal, because you think you need more estrogen to build your bone strength because that’s one of the myths that’s been perpetuated out there, don’t do that. If you really are struggling, or if you’re struggling with bone loss, or if you’re having a problem, have your hormone levels measured to discern whether or not your estrogen is high enough because soy is not going to be the solution for this. It wouldn’t be what I would recommend.

Again, there are unique situations where you can use organic-based soy, soy product, or soy elements in some situations where it can be medicinal, but again, I’m not going to say that you should do that as a broad-spectrum for anyone who’s menopausal.

Question, good question, I’m going to answer it. “How can Lyme cause high cholesterol?”

Any infection can cause high cholesterol. One of the functions of cholesterol is that it’s an antibiotic, and it helps to fight bad bacteria, it helps to fight infections. Oftentimes, people with chronic infection will have high cholesterol, and that’s another reason why just taking a drug to push it down is, oftentimes, a very bad idea because if you’ve got an infection and you’re suppressing cholesterol because you’re scared of heart disease, you’re actually suppressing your body’s immune system’s capacity to fight the infection.

Good question, good comment. “My doctor wants me to take statins, but I refuse. Are there options?”

Again, go back … Maybe we’ll do a bit one day on statins, but I’ve done several videos on statin drugs. You need to go into my archive, and you need to look up cholesterol, high cholesterol, cholesterol a problem, because you need to get educated about why cholesterol may not be the problem that you’ve been told that it is. That’s the first step. I mean, get educated about the myth of high cholesterol creating a problem.

I’m going to post one article I did awhile back with a video in it, and it’s, this one might be helpful for those of you who are worried about cholesterol and getting educated about cholesterol. Here it comes right now.

I got a feeling you would keep me on here all weekend. I really, I’m going to answer one more question before we wrap it up.

Nora, “What vitamins could I be lacking since being diagnosed GF in December … ” Maybe you’re, maybe, does GF mean gluten-free because you don’t get diagnosed as gluten-free. You, maybe, you get diagnosed with gluten sensitivity, but I’m not sure if you mean something else by that abbreviation, so I’m going to assume you mean gluten sensitivity. ” … I take a multi-vitamin, B complex, B-12, B-1, B-2, biotin, and probiotics.”

That’s a lot of vitamins, unless you’ve been tested. What I would recommend, Nora, is, there are different types of tests. The one I like, one of the best tests for evaluating nutritional status is called a SpectraCell. I recommend doing that test because it will tell you whether or not you have the deficiency in all those different things because you may not be need to be taking quite as many pills are you are taking.

Again, if your diet is dialed in and you’re eating a lot of really solid, real food, that’s going to be your best bet, but then beyond that, it just depends on what you’re deficient in. That’s what I would do. I would have my doc run a vitamin and mineral analysis tests on me to help me discern what that is so that I can help supplement with whatever my body needed as opposed to just generalizing. Again, generalization can sometimes be helpful, but it can also sometimes be not so helpful.

You can overdose on vitamin B-6. It’s actually one of the few vitamins, the B vitamins that you can actually overdose on. It can cause neuropathy. You [inaudible 01:20:08] take, for example, somebody who’s gluten-sensitive, and the gluten was causing a neuropathy, and then they start taking high doses of vitamin B-6 to help, and then the neuropathy goes away, but then the neuropathy comes back because over time, they were taking too much B-6, and they actually became B-6 toxic, and they didn’t even realize it. That’s just a scenario I’ve seen play out a few times with different people.

Taking vitamins in high doses without knowing whether or not you need them, it may not be the best thing to do. A multi’s fine, but adding a B complex and then adding all these other side arms, again, it just may be an expensive urine for you, it may be not necessary, and again, maybe it was very helpful for you. Again, testing is where I like to see people come in. It’s, let’s test it, let’s be very objective about it so that we know what we need. Good questions.

I’m going to wrap it up. This was a great, great episode. For those of you who aren’t yet subscribed, make sure you go visit glutenfreesociety.org, sign up for our Gluten-Free Survival Kit. It’s free. You just gotta type in your name and an email address, and we’ll send it directly to you.

Those of you who aren’t subscribed to our YouTube channel and to our blog, you can go over to Glutenology, YouTube Glutenology, and you can also go visit drpeterosborne.com. If you haven’t picked up your copy of No Grain, No Pain, please do. If you haven’t picked it up, follow chapter seven and eight, get dialed in with your diet, that way, when you come back, you’ll be more educated on how to ask the next sets of questions. We’ll be back, again, next week with another episode of Pick Dr. Osborne’s Brain. Have a great weekend.

Those of you here in the Houston area, stay safe, read the post I put out today on surviving the hurricane. I put out a very long post on tips that you need to know about before the thing actually hits, so you still have time to get these tips implemented, and we will see you next week. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye.