More of What I Learned from the Gluten Summit
Before the Christmas holidays, I shared some of the points I learned from Dr. Daniel Amen talk at the Gluten Summit (read the previous post)
In case you did not hear about The Gluten Summit …..
29 experts and opinion leaders gathered to prove to the world that it MUST ask, “Could health issues be caused by gluten?”
So, I am going through the talks one by one and plan to share with you some of the highlights.
First talks I have read are about Gluten and it’s affect on the brain. Here are some of the things I learned:
A Grain of Truth: The Gluten Summit — Presenter: Erica Kasuli, MS, RD, CDN Designing a Brain-Optimizing Gluten-Free Diet the Whole Family Will Enjoy
- Many health symptoms are just a sign that something is not right in your body. Simple statement, but often we just want symptoms to go away without thinking about what they are telling us!
And, we probably feel sick but because we live in this society of go, go, go, we just keep going even though we feel sick, and we keep pushing our bodies….
But if we don’t listen to these different symptoms, and we just go “Oh, my heart’s fine,” then we might not get that wakeup call. And, so the same thing with all these symptoms is that the depression, the ADD, the bloating, the asthma, the skin rashes, the arthritis, these are all symptoms. These are your body’s way of trying to get your attention, of saying, “Something that you’re feeding me is not working right,” or “Something that’s going on is not working right.” Because if food is fuel, after each meal you should feel energized and happy and confident and full of ready to take on the day.
And, what happens is we’ve been eating gluten our whole lives since we’ve been born. And, we’ve been having gluten or dairy and sugar and these foods that are not foods that are fuel for our body. And, what happens is as we get older, we start to think that these symptoms are normal signs of aging. Well, these are not normal signs of aging. These are your bodies now finally breaking down because it can’t take so many years of something that is a toxin to it.
- Our brains are mostly water and fat — so sugar is the bigger problem in our diet than fat!
One thing I wanted to say is that your brain is 80% water. Of that 20% that’s left, 60% of it is fat. So, it’s really important that people understand that it’s sugar that’s causing a lot of our symptoms, not fat. And, there’s many kinds and forms of sugar. Sugar, we typically think, is just candy. You know, sucrose sugar. But, lactose–dairy–is a sugar. Fructose, drinking high amounts of juice. Fresh fruit is okay, but high juice is a sugar. Anything that ends in -ose. So, sucrose, lactose, fructose, and glucose. So, that’s why when we eat a lot of gluten, the gluten glucose has the same sugar response.
- Too much sugar and Alzheimer’s is related
And, researchers are now linking a sugar-laden diet to Alzheimer’s. And, they’re even calling Alzheimer’s type three diabetes because insulin is made in the brain. It’s not made in the pancreas. And, our national sweet tooth is leading to what we call brain decay. And, Dr. Amen has coined the term of “psycho diabetes” because sugar really is not our friend.
- Lowing inflammation in our bodies will help with weight control
But, we want to, in a sense, mimic calorie restriction without eating less calories because we don’t lose weight by eating less calories. It’s not about calories in, calories out. It’s about lowering inflammation. And, gluten and dairy and sugar increase inflammation in your body. And, when that happens, they’re trig-gering a symptom which makes it harder, then, to lose weight. When you take out these triggers, then the weight and such just falls off.
Plan to share more information as I work through the written transcripts of the Gluten Summit!
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