Tag Archives: leaky gut

Starting Food Changes

June 21, 2014 Deidre Leave a comment

Did you know that the mental approach we take when starting a change can actually predict our level of success? A wise proverb that is proven time after time: “If you think you can you can; if you think you can’t you can’t.” Shut out the negative voices by understanding that YOU ARE in control of what you eat. YOU have total control of what food you put into your mouth! The past is the past. You are learning about an eating lifestyle that will leave you satisfied day in and day out. Stoke yourself with positive testimonials of others (Check out Marksdailyapple.com for the testimonials of those who have totally changed their lives through changing food choices). Learn more about the advantages of certain foods over others, and how some foods could be derailing your health by reading posts in this blog and the others that I share with you.

Be kind to yourself! Dumping negative self-talk into your head is not what is needed. Rome was not built in a day, and the re-creative process happens one mouthful of delicious, healthy food at a time! Did you guzzle a glass of sweet iced tea? Don’t beat yourself up about it! Make sure you are prepared with other choices next time and, by all means, share your successes with others. Be joyful for yourself; you are doing a good job!

Now, how hard would it be to stop eating say, ice cream, when you still had a freezer full of your favorite Homemade Turtle Sundae, and everyone in your family was in the habit of having a nighttime bowl full AND you were the one dishing it up? Or how hard would it be to change from junk food snacks to eating healthier snacks such as avocado, nuts, veggies, or a handful of blueberries when every cupboard in your kitchen was bursting with chips, dips, pretzels, candy, pop tarts, sweetened popcorn, pizza bites, and the like?

Studies have proven that changing behavior is easier and more successful if our environment reinforces our goals. The idea of controlling environment for success is not new. Parents always tell their children to associate with “good” kids; when those children get into trouble with their friends, parents insist they hang out with a “better” crowd. Similarly, do you want to be more positive about your job? If everyone in the lunch room spends most of their time bashing the boss or complaining about the customers, find somewhere else to eat lunch; seek those who are positive and who try to solve problems rather than just complain! So, to re-create your health, you will need to first re-create your food preparation environment.

If you are serious about ridding your body of gluten, clean out your kitchen! Clue your family and friends into your reasons and goals for changing what you eat. Maybe they will join you! At least they should support your efforts if they truly care about you. Connect with others doing the same. Follow this and other blogs that support and edify your choice for change.

When I switched over to being gluten free, I gathered up a lot of pasta (whole wheat, mind you, because I was good—not!), flour, and various mixes for a donation to the local food bank. There were definitely mixed feelings about doing that—giving others what I considered poison—so you may struggle with that as well. The more I learn about gluten, I can definitely see how disadvantaged individuals are especially vulnerable as they fill their hungry bellies with cheap starchy products and end up smack in the middle of the “Diabesity” explosion. Thoughts for a different post….

Then to further control your food environment, plan for being away from home: bring your own snacks, order only the part of a restaurant meal that aligns with the changes you have made, eat before leaving home, or plan to eat when you get back.

So, you have cleaned out the kitchen from the offending products and have stocked your shelves with real food that is as close to its original form as possible (not highly processed). You have the support of family and friends who accept your choices and do not try to dissuade you from your goal. Best case scenario, you family joins you! Things have gone great for a whole week. You feel better, have a brighter outlook, and have even lost a couple of pounds.

Congratulations! Time to celebrate!

Time for “an indulgence?” Time to go off your “diet?” First of all, what I have been describing in these posts is not a temporary “diet,” it’s a way of life. Does a former addict celebrate being clean with just a little “hit?” Certainly not! With food, this is especially true with gluten. I learned just yesterday so much more about gluten that I am wanting to share with you in a future post, but one thing I can share now is that if you are sensitive to gluten, the smallest exposure (a few crumbs) can set you back with reactions not just 10-14 days as I thought, but a full 3-6 months! This is very serious stuff!

So plan ahead for your well-deserved celebrations! Plan for a trip to the beach, picnic in the park, a massage, a mani-pedi, a movie, a bubble bath, a good book, or a new item of clothing that better fits your new, smaller self! But “rewarding” your sugar-free self with an ice cream sundae every “cheat day” is just re-creating the environment that made your body so unhappy in the first place! Keep to an environment that will support your continued success and reward your efforts without undermining your progress.

Eating smarter should in no way leave you feeling hungry or deprived. We have all experienced going on a temporary diet, we keep an eye on the end for a return to “normal.” In the meantime, we are always anxious for the next “allowable” food. Normal should always be good for you. Normal should always be bolstering your health: body and mind. This is a grand adventure in getting more out of life by eliminating foods that were never designed for our health!

To summarize:

Stay positive!
Be kind to yourself
Learn more about your food changes
Create the environment that will support your change. Clean out the kitchen and garner support from family and friends
Plan for when you are away from home
Plan rewards that reflect and support your change
Surround your mind with success stories and share your successes with others!
I love your comments! Please share your thoughts and suggestions; this will always be a work in progress to better serve you!

Please join our community by subscribing to this blog.

Until next time-
Deidre

Blogging for good health!

Clean Eating

June 17, 2014 Deidre Leave a comment

So many terms are being bantered around in the food world that one could get lost. Maybe I can be sort of a weather vane in a storm of terminology.

There is the Standard American Diet (SAD) which is loosely based on the old Food Pyramid laced with the effects of highly commercialized food “products.” The Food Pyramid boasts whole grain goodness as its broad “eat mostly this” base and vilifies fats as sure killers. It is interesting to note that since the inception of the Food Pyramid model, obesity and diabetes began to skyrocket.

Mere coincidence?

Well, think about it. Grains are broken down and processed as the carbohydrates they are. Carbs are broken down by the digestive system into simple sugars. All carbs are broken down into sugar (glucose or fructose molecules). So, be it a whole wheat bagel or a piece of frosted birthday cake, the end result is sugar. To transport that sugar to body cells, insulin is needed. Any of that sugar fuel not needed at that time is stored as fat. While eating the carb-centric diet as outlined in the Food Pyramid, Americans were requiring their bodies to produce more and more insulin. After a while, being awash in insulin, our bodies become resistant to the effect of insulin—sort of ignoring it. However, our cells were starving for the sugar fuel and we were still hungry; so, we ate more whole grains. Can you see the vicious cycle this was, and is, making? Gaining weight and becoming diabetic. There’s a term for that: diabesity.

Insulin is known as the hormone of fat storage; and eating carbohydrates causes a need, not only for insulin production, but receptivity to its effects. As one who often suffered from frequent low blood sugar crashes, I mistakenly tried to “fix” things by eating carbs. True enough, my blood sugar would go up, but as all of that insulin took effect, my blood sugar crashed again. Little did I know at the time, cutting back on the (starchy) whole grain carbs with each meal would have normalized my blood sugar. I certainly know that now. I can return to low blood sugar crashes quite easily if I re-introduce starchy carbs- even gluten-free ones- heavily into my meals. Instead, I rely on protein and good quality fats along with low-glycemic colorful veggies and fruits to keep me on an even blood sugar keel.

A word or two about “food products.” You know them. If given the long list of their ingredients, you could never guess what they were. A LOT of money goes not only into the production of those items, but extensive money and research goes into selling of them to us. It’s all about money; making money; making more money. Our health is not even on their list of concerns. Making a profit is the list.

Eating Clean or Clean Foods is all about eating unprocessed food, as close to the original source or form as possible. This type of eating eliminates the highly processed oils, “food products,” and “Frankenfoods” such as pre-packaged meals, junk food (chips, cookies, frozen pizza, Pop-Tarts) in favor of real, identifiable food (apples, carrots, steak, tomatoes, kale….you get the idea). This might also be referred to as Whole Foods. Mind you, this also contains whole grains……

Gluten Free eating eliminates the inflammatory proteins found in wheat, barley, and rye. Using simple gluten-free alternatives for common starchy foods such as bread, crackers, cookies will address the gluten sensitivity but not necessarily address maintaining balanced blood sugars or weight loss. Certainly, I have mentioned in other posts, gluten is also found in condiments; thus label reading is needed.

Paleo, Paleolithic, Ancestral Eating or the “Caveman Diet” are all terms used to describe how our ancient ancestors ate prior to the advent of agriculture. It could be described as “Clean Eating” or “Whole Foods” but generally without any grains, legumes, dairy, or soy. Refined sugar is out! The elimination of all grains (in addition to those with gluten) would mean no rice or corn because of other elements- phytates- that can cause inflammatory processes. I promise a future post on that.

So, do we obsess about what we eat? Does it become our 24/7 demon?

I don’t think so. To me, just looking at the ingredient list of an Oreo cookie sends shivers down my spine. Talk about “edible food-like substances!” Isn’t it a natural instinct to protect ourselves? Turning away from poison should not be difficult.

It seems to be a no brainer, looking at the terrible upswing of obesity, diabetes, ADHD, auto-immune diseases and the like, that something has changed. We just haven’t gotten cleverer at diagnosing patients; we are creating those patients by how we have changed eating. Cleaner eating is certainly a part of the picture. We were not designed to eat food dyes, chemicals, or pesticides. But I also agree with the Paleo proponents who cite that our digestive systems just have not generally evolved to eat most grains. Eliminate them and you will feel a difference. Put them back after a month or two and you will return to feeling and looking sub-par. After cleansing your body from the effects of all grains, you could reintroduce non-gluten grains on a limited basis to see how you tolerate them.

If you are just getting started in cleaning up what you eat, ditch the sugar first. It is so liberating to not pine for another sugar “hit.” So many people trying to do this simply switch to non-caloric sweeteners, but that seems wrong on multiple levels. How natural is it? Ok, there’s Stevia and the like, but to me, that’s like getting off of heroine by going on Methadone. So many never get off of the Methadone. Additionally, there are many studies showing those using artificial sweeteners actually eat more. See, the artificial sweetener is telling the brain that sugar is on the way; when blood sugar levels don’t go up; the brain sends the signal to eat in order to raise the blood sugar.

Guess you can’t fool Mother Nature!

The next post will be about how to optimize your success at making positive changes in your eating and exercise habits.

If you find these posts useful, please subscribe by clicking on the green button at the left of the screen to join our growing community of those seeking to renew their health one meal at a time.

Thanks-

Deidre

Blogging for good health!, Recipes

It’s Sweet Basil Pesto!

June 13, 2014 Deidre Leave a comment

Pesto can be such a versatile thing to have around, and making it at home is such an easy and rewarding project. I always plant some sweet basil plants each spring in anticipation of their abundant growth and distinctive fragrance. With a tendency to over plant these prolific growers, I limited myself to just two plants this year and have churned out my first batch already after just a month of growth. Now that we are seriously in the growing season, there should be another batch in 2-3 weeks! Fortunately, you can also purchase fresh basil from the local farmers’ market or grocery store as well if you lack any from your garden.

There are several varieties of basil, each with its own signature flavor. The kind served with a luscious bowl of hot Pho in Asian restaurants is so spicy, and a wonderful flavor enhancer of that steamy noodle soup. The noodles are gluten-free, made from rice, and a part of the 20 in 80/20, Paleo eating described last week. Going to your local nursery, gently touching the leaves of the different basil varieties, and smelling your fingertips, will clue you into how they taste.

Recipes abound for pesto but they pretty much look the same to me. I can’t claim authorship of this universal combination of just a few ingredients. So here’s what to do with your harvest or purchase:

Sweet Basil Pesto

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups fresh sweet basil leaves, packed

1/2 cup Parmesan, Parmesan-Reggiano, or Romano cheese, grated

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup walnuts or pine nuts

3 cloves garlic

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste – (I used not quite a ½ tsp. of Kosher Salt and about the same amount of black pepper)

HERE’S WHAT YOU DO:

• Using a food processor, pulse the nuts a few times.

• Add the garlic cloves and pulse some more.

• Add the basil and pulse until it looks like this.

•With the food processor fully on, slowly pour the olive oil through the shoot.

• Stop to scrape the sides down and add the grated cheese. Pulse until combined.

• Add salt and pepper and pulse to combine.

• Float some extra olive oil on top to seal in the vibrant color

This should yield over a cup of fresh pesto for you to enjoy, give away, or both!

What to do with pesto? Well…..add your fresh pesto sauce to:

– some zoodles (See Post) for a tasty side dish

– sautéed shrimp

– cooked chicken

– dip a piece of GF (gluten-free) bread into

– enhance GF sandwiches or deli meat roll-ups

– spread onto salmon before baking

– top any cooked veggie

Fresh pesto is a great thank you gift to your kind neighbor who watered your basil plants for you while you were on vacation!

Deidre

Blogging for good health!, Recipes

It’s Called Paleo!

June 3, 2014 Deidre Leave a comment

While I actually prefer to describe what I eat or don’t eat, some people feel more comfortable with a name, a title, a moniker, if you will. Okay. It’s called Paleo – “Pay-leo.” Paleolithic eating. Caveman diet, perhaps. Well, not if that conjures up images of a big club, saber-toothed tigers, and eating raw meat! Please! I am sitting here wearing pearls and sporting sandals with heels!

No, Paleo is a descriptive of how mankind ate eons ago, before the advent of cultivated grains, and certainly before the advent of today’s “Frankenfoods” that are unidentifiable from their long lists of chemical ingredients. You could call it whole foods without the gluten and lectin from grains, and legumes to kick-start unhappy bellies, inflammation, or leaky gut. A time without added sugar.

Why would anyone like to eat like that? Well, judging from the robust health and physical structure of the Paleolithic peoples, we could learn a thing or two. Such as… the Paleolithic people were taller, stronger boned, had better teeth, lived longer, and had no precursors to modern day aliments or diseases compared with the Neolithic peoples who followed them to become the first farmers. The poor farmers who had all the cultivated grains and corn to add to their diets lived shorter lives, were shorter, had weaker bones, really needed to see a dentist for cavities, had higher child mortality, and showed many precursors to modern diseases such as heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancers. (1)

Hmmmm. But those Paleo people didn’t live as long as we do! Right on! They also did not have the benefits of modern medicine, emergency departments, or hand hygiene. Taking a bad fall could spell the end of the Paleo man, woman, or child, without clean dressings, antibiotics, or an x-ray machine! Clearly there would have been little opportunity to be careless in everyday life, lest the family unit become jeopardized upon the death or injury of one member.

So- life without Pop Tarts, Hostess Twinkies, Frosted Flakes, Oreos, Coke, frozen pizza…”Egad!” What’s left, you may ask? Try (free range and pasture raised/never corn fed) meat, poultry, eggs; fresh fish and sea food; vegetables; roots; fruit in season; nuts; seeds. With our amazing cooking methods, equipment, spices, and flavorings, you are looking at totally wonderful food with endless variety!

More-over, such a diet plan will never leave you hungry or feeling deprived. Such a diet is high in protein, good fats, (as opposed to the “Frankenfats” of today which are highly processed), lots of fiber, and is not dependent on starchy carbohydrates which cause blood sugar, (read: insulin), problems.

It’s a process. Is all of my meat pasture raised? Not yet; some, not all. But I buy the best I can; a local market is carrying pasture raised ground beef. That’s a beginning, but I am not sure it is “pasture finished” meaning they did not add a bunch of corn to the animal’s diet before market. Remember, corn is used to fatten animals, not to make better protein. We have to look for animals raised outside of the feedlot conditions of massive production facilities so they are more humanly treated and not given hormones and unnecessary antibiotics. The day-to-day stress hormones of the feedlot life are transferred to the meat we eat along with the injected hormones and antibiotics. That is one link to some of the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, and crazy hormone imbalances in people.

But, still; what do I eat? Okay, here is what my plate looked like a couple nights ago:

Lamb shoulder chop, bone-in

Avocado oil (used in the pan)

Salt and pepper

Curried coconut carrots

Coconut oil (used in the pan)

Sliced carrots (4 medium)- I used my food processor to make even, thin slices

Sea salt

Curry powder to taste

Unsweetened coconut flakes

1-2 Tbsp. water to help steam with lid on after stir-cooking on medium heat

Brussels sprouts with cranberries and prosciutto:

Prosciutto – 2 to 3 slices torn into small pieces

Sliced Brussels sprouts (1 bag)

Ghee (used in the pan)

¼ cup dried cranberries

Sea salt

1-2 Tbsp. water to help steam with lid on after stir-cooking on medium

What about special events? Parties happen, folks, and I’ll be there! Always gluten-free, though.

Let’s see; the party this past weekend featured some of North Carolina’s finest pork BBQ, (I passed on the hush puppies), and there were salads, veggies, deviled eggs (that’s what I brought), and fruit. It was great! But I really wanted to “par-tay” so I whipped up a gluten-free cake (thank you Betty Crocker), sliced some strawberries with a pinch of sugar, and whipped coconut cream to top it off! Yum! Was there sugar? Yes. But a minimal amount. Were there some chemicals in that cake mix? Yes. But it was gluten-free.
“Ya gotta’ live!” Life is about balance, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! I came with a happy belly and I left with one; gluten-free does not mean deprivation. Paleo is not limiting.

My dinner on the grounds of Tryon Palace last night while waiting for the NC Symphony to play for us consisted of left-over deviled eggs, some tuna salad, and- ta-da- some of my strawberry shortcake. Pretty good eats for me. I passed on the cookies that were offered; not a problem. I was full!

• Mark Sisson, The Primal Blueprint and Robb Wolf, The Paleo Solution

Deidre

Blogging for good health!

Gluten, Grains, and You

May 24, 2014 Deidre Leave a comment

After giving a general introduction to the sometimes shadowy world of symptoms for gluten sensitivity, you must certainly be asking yourself: So what is all this stuff about gluten? What does it actually do? Are other foods causing similar responses in my body?

Well, it’s all about the gut and the ripple effects of what is happening there that can cause either health and homeostasis (the proper balance mechanisms working in harmony) or various levels of disease (“dis-ease” = feeling not right, something wrong) and chaos in the balancing mechanisms.

Sit back and enjoy a brief lesson in anatomy and physiology:

The best way to go from point A to point B is a straight or smooth line if the function is, say, covering an organ or the body. Our skin is smooth; our heart, lungs, and intestines are covered with smooth tissue to protect and enhance their motile functioning. But if surface area is needed, say in our brain, a straight or smooth line of brain matter would not give us enough cerebral cortex or gray matter to have much tissue with which to think. Hense the wavy, folded surface of our brain which allows for increased surface area. Little known fact that could help you in a quiz show: if we could “iron out” the surface area of our brains, we would end up with the area of a pillow case! Now that’s brain power!

Now consider the digestive system.

Mouth: smooth with teeth and tongue for chewing and swallowing functions.

Throat and esophagus: smooth for transport of mushy swallowed food.

Stomach: smooth but folded to allow for stretching out and churning action of the now soup-constency food.

Small intestine where most of the absorption of nutrients occurs:

Not smooth. Much surface area is needed for exposing the soup-like foodstuffs to the intestinal wall. I have heard the small intestine described as a shag carpet surface. The shag carpet projections are called villi and the fuzzy parts of each villi are called microvilli. And this is where our focus will be today.

Gluten and other grains can effect a couple factors here. The shag carpet structures that need to be maintained for proper absorption of nutrients become damaged, bent, crushed even, rendering them useless in nutrient absorption. To keep the carpet analogy going, we now have Berber carpet.

And if that’s not disastrous enough, the integrity of the junctions holding the individual cells of the small intestine together is compromised and the intestine becomes “leaky”. This is where systemic inflammation and auto-immune issues start.

Imagine molecules of protein escaping from being absorbed for use and, instead, are floating around and being seen as foreign invaders. Our bodies will naturally mount an immune response which is what starts the inflammatory response I have mentioned before. Where ever this immune response happens is where trouble happens: pick an organ, any organ; pick a body system, any body system.

Researchers are saying more and more that the bedrock of most all disease is auto-immune in nature. The gluten found in wheat, barley, and rye (and the lectin found in other grains) are what serve as a launching pad for auto-immune and inflammatory diseases. This is why the signs and symptoms of any level of gluten sensitivity are so broad.

To quote Dr. Tom O’Bryan’s article, “The Gut-Disease Connection” from May 8, 2014, in “Dr. Allessio Fasano’s “Leaky Gut Theory of Autoimmunity” he found that the 1st step in the development of autoimmune disease is leaky gut…and in the event we can reverse the leaky gut, the possibility of shutting off the autoimmune response becomes real.”

There are Celiacs who have no digestive issues; there are non-Celiacs who have plenty of digestive issues. I have read recent articles stating that there are some on the gluten sensitivity spectrum who are only reactive to wheat.

So what is one to do? Give being gluten free a real try for 30-60 days. If your symptoms improve, great. If you improve somewhat but still have some level of “dis-ease”, then expand your eliminations to include all grains (rice, corn, oats, etc.). Then, once you are normalized, try reintroducing non-wheat grains one at a time and note your body response. Everyone is unique; maybe you can eat a bowl of oatmeal or a serving of rice.

Today’s Sign Post= check out radicatamedicine.com for more information about gluten and gluten-free eating.

Other grains and gluten-containing grains contain lectins and phytates which also disrupt proper nutrient absorption; they will be discussed in a future post.

Thanks!

Deidre

Disclaimer:

The information being discussed in these blogs is NOT intended to replace a relationship with a qualified health care professional. Foodtalk4you blogs endeavor to empower people through the exploration of publicly available resources of information about human anatomy and physiology, and how different foods affect the human body. Readers should seek the advice of their qualified health care providers with any questions about their medical conditions or health status before attempting any dietary, exercise, or lifestyle changes.

Food Talk 4 You

Tag Archives: leaky gut

Starting Food Changes

Clean Eating

It’s Sweet Basil Pesto!

It’s Called Paleo!

Gluten, Grains, and You

Reclaim your health one meal at a time

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