Food Alert ! Gluten and your Thyroid. What you don't know, but should.

Every now and then we come across something that we think the whole world should know about, kind of like GMO foods.  Gluten is another. Today, more than 1 in 133 Americans suffer from gluten related health problems while an even higher percentage of the population goes undiagnosed with an emerging condition called ‘gluten sensitivity.’ From a website doctorauer.com we discovered, but have not yet fact checked this following historical mention:

“In 1843, a physician named Stanislas Tanchou spoke at the Paris Medical Society Conference. He claimed that he could predict the cancer rates in major European cities over the next 50 years. He based his predictions on the percentage of grains being consumed in each major city. What is astonishing is that, over time, his predictions turned out to be correct. In the cities that had the highest grain consumption, cancer rates were the highest. This is in stark contrast to the fact that in populations who did not consume grains, cancer did not exist."  - article link

Here at The Gait Guys, being doctors who treat athletes and non-athletes, we have written about gluten in previous blog posts on "Gluten Ataxia” (Link)  and Running yourself into Hormone Trouble (link) because we felt it was important to spread the wisdom. We even recently talked about gluten and how it can damage your thyroid profile and gut via one of the gluten subfractions called gliadin on podcast #12 (link).

These dialogues seemed to spur one of our brilliant and engaged readers and listeners.  Jim sent us a series of emails which you will find below.  We obtained his permission to reproduce the emails (thx Jim !). We will also welcome him to chime in further on Facebook when this post cross-links if he has further input.

We are building a wonderful and brilliant readership and fast growing podcast following. We have smart folks joining the brethren here at The Gait Guys ! And we are blessed to have Jim, and celebrate his homework and knowledge here. 

Everyone should read this, especially if you have tested gluten insensitive but still have gut issues or immune issues. You may have your eyes opened ! 

PS * at the very bottom of this blog post you will find a link to a wonderful video youtube lecture by Dr Osborne. If you watch the first 4 minutes you will learn that corn, millet, oats, rice, rye, sorgum and barley all have their own types of gluten in them.  You will clearly understand why a sensitive person MIGHT get away with rice but not wheat. Hence why this is a very difficult problem for the average consumer. 

Thanks Jim !

_______________________________

 Greetings Gait Guys!

   I met Dr. Allen at the May NSCA conference at CSU. I remember him mentioning endurance athletes being prone to hypothyroidism. I’ve been researching hypothyroid issues since 2007, so of course that piqued my interest. Recently I came across the book “Mastering Leptin” by Byron Richards, CCN. I was familiar with Mr. Richards expertise in thyroid issues from some You Tube videos of his, but I wasn’t prepared for the paradigm changing information in this book. As it turns out, leptin is the master controller of our metabolism.

   Leptin is produced in white adipose tissue, and is supposed to signal satiety when one has had enough to eat. If body fat gets too low for too long with not enough leptin getting to the brain, the brain will signal the endocrine system to go into a starvation/hibernation metabolic reduction as it thinks one is starving, and is trying to save energy until food is found. On the other hand, if there is too much leptin from too much fat for too long, the brain goes into leptin resistance, and the end results are the same, as the brain isn’t getting enough leptin and thinks one is starving (this is a major cause of obesity, besides of our toxic "food" supply, and explains why most calorie restriction diets ultimately fail).

   So, it may well be that endurance athletes may actually just need to put on a couple of pounds of fat to get leptin back up to normal. 

   I cannot recommend strongly enough getting a copy of this book and getting the full story. There’s also a trick involving calcium to re-activate the liver’s conversion of T-4 to T-3, thus re-activating proper thyroid metabolism. I know it works, as it’s worked for me. I had no idea such a thing was possible.

 

I forgot to emphasize that the thyroid is the first endocrine gland to be targeted along with the adrenals. Mr. Richards also emphasizes that there is what he calls the leptin/insulin/adrenal resistance triad. Any problem with one will eventually result in problems with the others. Seeing as this book was first published in 2002, I can’t believe that this hasn’t caught on. It was updated in 2005 (or 6) and again in 2009 (I personally prefer the 2nd edition).

In Nora Gedgadaus’ book “Primal Body, Primal Mind”, she explains that there are actually 12 subfractions of the gliadin protein (gliadin is a biproduct of gluten metabolism). According to her, at least at the time she wrote the book (2012 or 2011) there was only one lab in existence that could test for all 12 subfractions: Cyrex Labs. Most of the other labs only test for the “alpha” subfraction. This is why there are so many false negatives. But the best way is just to go by how one reacts individually to it. For some reason, science doesn’t trump nature as some would have us believe…

Keep up the pursuit of excellence.

 

A Steve Martin Reference:  “Oh no! I’ve got happy feet!”

 

Good Gaiting To You! - Jim C

* Doctorauer’s article concludes with (and many other experts in the field agree ) the following:

“Grains are truly humanity’s double edged sword. They enabled us to leave behind our hunter gatherer lifestyle and created the foundation for the modern societies as we know them today. On the other hand, there is growing evidence that they are one of the major culprits for our health problems.

We must remember that evolutionarily speaking, we have been around for almost two million years, but we have only been eating grains for a few thousand. As such, our bodies have not had the time to adapt to this “new” food in our diet. Furthermore, modern farming, harvesting, and processing methods have stripped grains of their nutritional integrity, decreasing their digestibility, and making them highly toxic and inflammatory food to our bodies. With no doubt, today’s grains are proving to be one of the major underlying contributors to the development of degenerative diseases as we known them today.”

Byron Richards websites are http://www.wellnessresources.com/ and http://www.byronrichards.com/ .

Dr. Osborne’s video youtube lecture:    http://youtu.be/cv5RwxYW8yA