Skip to content

Why Being Gluten Free Can Change Your Life [E009]

little girl choosing breadWe tackle the subject of gluten, being gluten free and how it plays a factor in a lot of Americans health today. Discover why gluten is not the same as it was 100 years ago. Dr. Olivia Joseph shares why you may need to be concerned about the link of gluten and chronic disease.

An introduction to the Gluten Free debate

Dr. Bryan: Welcome everybody to The Wellness Connection podcast with Dr. Bryan Joseph with my wife, Dr. Olivia Joseph.

Dr. Olivia: Hello everyone.

Dr. Bryan: Today we are going to record a fun podcast for you because it’s been a topic in our own house for many, many years. Actually more than a topic, I’d say a debate as to whether or not I believed there was substance here or not. So this will be really fun and I’ve learned over the years that there is a lot of substance, but it’ll be fun to share some of that dialogue with other people. So we’re going to talk about the controversial topic that started years ago about whether or not being gluten free makes any sense, and why there’s been such a huge trend in the direction of starting to remove gluten from people’s diet.

What is Gluten, and why all the brouhaha?

Dr. Bryan: So, Olivia, why don’t you please start off by sharing with our listeners:

What is gluten and where is the background of all this mess of being gluten free coming from?

Dr. Olivia: Okay, so gluten is one of two proteins that you’ll find in wheat products, so gluten and gliadin both exist in pretty high quantities in wheat. Now there are other grains that have gluten that are not wheat, such as barley for example, spelt for example. So, I think we should make our emphasis for today primarily on wheat, taking into consideration that there are other sources of gluten.

All Gluten is not created equally, and it has changed over the years

Dr. Bryan: So they’re all not created equally is what you’re saying.

Dr. Olivia: They are not created equally. And that’s what we’re gonna cover. We’re gonna cover what these grains look like today compared to what they looked like 100 years ago, because people always have the excuse, well I ate it fine 10, 20 years ago, or my grandma used to make her own bread and all these people ate wheat and it never caused problems. We’re not eating the same wheat our ancestors ate. We’re not even eating the same wheat that existed 20 years ago.

Being Gluten Free is getting easier

Dr. Olivia: All right. So on that, even in the society, what we see now is kinda … I cannot remember years ago going to many restaurants and having gluten free options or even having anybody actually go to the restaurant and ask do you have a gluten free items? In addition to that, we go to the grocery stores and there used to be like a super, super small section in the grocery store that would say, oh, here’s for the health Nazis. Right? And this is the gluten free section, or for the people that are struggling with significant digestive issues, but it’s no longer like that.

You see gluten free aisles that are expanding and you see the labels of gluten free almost everywhere. So what caused that? Like where did this momentum build from? What was wrong with this product or this ingredient or this grain gluten that start making all of us aware that we had to start removing it?

Healthcare trends in Chronic Disease

Dr. Olivia: I think if you look at the healthcare trends in chronic disease over the last 20 years, you’re going to see why these diets have been born, why these menus have been born, why these gluten free aisles exist in grocery stores. I mean, no matter how you look at it, chronic disease is on the rise and gluten definitely plays a part in that.

Dr. Bryan: You say chronic disease. So this is my limited background on different types of digestive concerns, but I know some of the people with chronic disease like celiac as an example, are people that have been forced to remove grains and glutens from their diet.

What are other conditions that you’re aware of that should be removing this gluten from their diet?

Digestive issues

Dr. Olivia: Absolutely. I love that question. I knew it was coming. Okay. So if we just talk about digestive issues, and there are so many more reasons to remove gluten from your diet other than just digestive issues. But if we just talk about digestive issues, it is estimated that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the American population suffers with digestive issues. That’s one in four people, or one in five, that’s a lot of people.

Dr. Bryan: But when you say digestive issues, and this is where I had a misunderstanding in our earlier conversations at home, not today, but in the past, is just because somebody has a digestive issue, doesn’t necessarily mean that you will feel bloating, constipation, diarrhea or gas. It doesn’t mean you’re going to feel pain. There still could be a problem in the digestive track, even without the symptoms.

Beyond digestive issues

Dr. Olivia: There can be. There can be. But if you’re talking about chronic digestive diseases, acid reflux is one. Chronic constipation is one. Gallbladder removal, gallstones, IBS, IBD, Crohn’s, colitis, celiac. Now when you say celiac, that’s another chronic disease that’s on the rise, not celiac specifically, but autoimmune disease. So autoimmune disease is on the rise. Autism is on the rise. Dementia is on the rise, or Alzheimer’s. Digestive diseases are on the rise. Skin conditions are on the rise.

Dr. Bryan: Yeah, but you can’t say that all of those are simply because of gluten.

Gluten is an aggravator

Dr. Olivia: No, they’re not caused by gluten. Gluten may not be the cause, but gluten is definitely an aggravating factor. Right? So if you have a fire in your house, you’re not going to sit there and say it was caused because you have gas in your house, right? Every house has gas, but if you do have a gas leak, if you do have a fire that starts close to a gas tank, that gas is going to make that fire out of control. That’s what happens when people choose to eat gluten when they have chronic disease, chronic inflammation, autoimmune disease, neurological disorders, digestive disorders.

Dr. Bryan: So that’s a lot of disorders. And I think that that speaks to a lot of people in society that we all tend to find ourselves finding some form of ailment or disorder as we age or go through this journey of life, whether we’re conscious about it or not. So, so many people from what I’m hearing would benefit from just the idea of removing gluten.

Does gluten have hidden benefits? (Hint: No.)

Dr. Olivia: Let me put it this way. Nobody benefits from eating gluten. I put gluten in the same category as like soda or Splenda. Tell me one thing good about it. Let’s just have that conversation. I cannot justify anything good about wheat products. Nothing.

Dr. Bryan: Well for a long time-

Dr. Olivia: Other than it tastes good. Other than it tastes good.

Dr. Bryan: I was going to say for a long time, that was the debate. My gosh, can somebody please make a product that’s gluten free that tastes better than a rice cake. Right? And now, remember years ago when we’d be like, can we just have a piece of bread because we want to eat a sandwich.

And I was like, I don’t want to eat gluten free bread because it tastes like styrofoam.

Where is Gluten used in our modern diets?

Dr. Bryan: That is no longer the case. So I want you to share two things because I know you’ve done your homework on this. Number one is, like typically if you’re thinking like, okay, where do I find gluten? I used to think it was only in bread. Like, okay, you’re going to find gluten in bread and then obviously some pasta, but you’ve made me aware that gluten’s in a lot of things, from our drinks to our lunch meats too. It’s all over the place. So where do we need to look?

Dr. Olivia: Sure. Good question. You’re not as likely to find it in drinks. You’ll find it …

Dr. Bryan: Beer.

Dr. Olivia: Oh yeah, of course. Beer absolutely. Beer is a major source of gluten. Thank you. I wasn’t thinking of that. You’re right. Soy sauce contains wheat. Soups that are like cream based soups, often wheat is a thickening agent in those soups. Anything that you would make with flour. So bread, pasta, cookies, crackers, flour tortillas, cereals. So anything made with a grain could potentially contain gluten.

Dr. Bryan: Yeah. But I’ve also seen you look closer over the time. I brought home, I believe it was like that imitation crab or crab sticks before, and I was thinking, oh, you know, years ago as I was learning about health and what is healthy food and what’s not healthy food …

The imitation crab story

Dr. Olivia: Bryan, can I just give you one tip? If it says imitation-

Dr. Bryan: No, I get it.

Dr. Olivia: Probably not going to be the most natural healthy choice out there.

Dr. Bryan: I understand. But I grew up in a family very similar to probably how a majority of the world did, which was a transition from processed foods to trying to make this journey of healthier foods. And you know, when you read about the idea that seafood is better. Yeah, maybe I was grabbing the wrong seafood because it was imitation, but it was a step in the right direction. Right? Going from Captain Crunch to imitation crab. But my point that I was trying to make is, here I am grabbing like crab sticks, and I bring them home and then one of the first things you say is, “Gosh, number one, that has gluten in it. And number two, that’s not even real crab.”

Dr. Olivia: No, it’s not. It’s some funky fish with wheat in it.

Dr. Bryan: Why would they put wheat in a product like that? Like why? Why do we have to look into spots like our imitation crab or lunch meats to try to identify whether or not there’s gluten?

Uses of wheat products in imitation foods

Dr. Olivia: Because at the end of the day those foods are processed and wheat can be used as a good … So what’s one thing that’s good about bread made with gluten? It’s got a great texture. It doesn’t even have much flavor, it’s got a great texture. So wheat is often used as a texturizing agent in a lot of foods. So that imitation crab meat that you bought, if you look at the expiration, it’s got like a six to nine months shelf life. So gluten can act as a pretty darn good preservative to allow something to keep its texture. You buy a good loaf of nice processed bread at the grocery store, you open that bag a month, month and a half later, and it feels like fresh baked bread.

Dr. Olivia: So it’s not just used as a food, it’s also used as a stabilizer, an emulsifier, a thickening agent. So it’s used for other things. But here’s the easy thing with reading a label, right? You don’t have to have a PhD in label reading. Because so many people are anaphylactic to gluten or so many people have celiac. The amount of people with Celiac is on the rise and going up. We can talk about that if you want. But, you don’t have to even read it in the ingredients. Right below the ingredients it will say “contains wheat.” So it’s easier to spot wheat or gluten now than ever.

Celiac disease and allergic reactions beyond that

Dr. Bryan: So you used a big word, anaphylactic, right? And so, when we hear that, I just want to make this real clear for people, is there’s different types of reactions when people, when we talk about having like a gluten sensitivity or gluten allergy, most people aren’t going to break out in full body hives.

Dr. Olivia: No. That’s such a … The people with celiac, those are the ones who have to watch out. Gluten can kill them.

Dr. Bryan: So talk on that for a second because if majority of people are not experiencing what’s called an anaphylactic reaction, which means they’re going to break out with like poison ivy all over their body because they had a quick reaction and they can’t breathe, what will other people potentially experience in terms of how gluten can negatively affect their body?

Inflammatory conditions

Dr. Olivia: Sure. Any inflammatory condition. So if you’re talking about the one-fourth of the population with digestive symptoms, if you’re talking about skin conditions, joint pain, brain fog, neurological conditions like autism and Alzheimer’s, anything in the autoimmune family.

Dr. Bryan: So let’s break that down a little bit because when you say skin conditions, what are some skin conditions?

Dr. Olivia: Eczema, psoriasis.

Dr. Bryan: So in your clinical practice, have you seen people when they remove gluten from their diet, have you seen some of those skin conditions improve?

Dr. Olivia: Absolutely. But you know I dig deeper. I don’t just look gluten. If I’m working with somebody clinically, I look at a lot more than just a gluten sensitivity, because at the end of the day, by the time that person gets to me, they want significant results. So I do a significant amount of testing. So I’m not just saying, hey, go gluten free. You know how many people come to me and they’ve already been gluten free and they still … And almost everybody who says to me, not everybody, but almost everybody says to me, “I cut gluten and I was doing so much better and my life changed, but I got stuck. That’s why I’m here.” I see that a lot.

Dr. Bryan: Well, I can see that, and I think that we both know there’s so many different causes as to why peoples’ health break down. Gluten’s not the only one.

Dr. Olivia: No.

Dr. Bryan: But it’s interesting that it is really a damaging ingredient in our society, kind of like sugar is.

Is this a U.S. centric phenomenon?

Dr. Olivia: Well and I want to be specific. In our society. These issues are definitely outside of the U.S., but not in the rates in the U.S. You have to understand, I have patients all the time that for work or fun or travel, are all over Europe and they say, “Oh, I was in Belgium and I ate wheat and I had no reaction, and as soon as I came back to the U.S. I ate something and I was sick for days.” And I just kind of smirk like, yep, we did that. We did that.

How to best go Gluten Free

Dr. Bryan: So here’s something that I felt when I first started to make the transition being gluten free, and you’re like, you just got to stop eating gluten. And I was like, well, what am I going to eat? You know? So you’ve met with so many patients over the years, and I would imagine that when you have that discussion of, okay, we reviewed your testing and you gotta remove gluten, you probably get like eyes wide open sometimes, like, oh no, like how do I do this? Right. And you’ve studied different food brands and different companies, but what are you noticing in terms of patients making a transition to try to go gluten free? Like are there some steps or some things to look for? Or ways to approach a menu or maybe some brands at the grocery store that you tend to look for?

Dr. Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. So I think I’m 10, 12, 15 years ago, Right? We’ve been in practice together for 15 years. Yeah, people were definitely deer in headlights. Not Anymore. People are very educated. People are very savvy and they’re very conscious and aware that they have gluten free options almost anywhere they go. I’m not saying anywhere. I am gluten free, I get the challenges. I totally, totally get the challenges, but in a majority of places you have these options available to you.

You can still attend Super Bowl parties

Dr. Bryan: But Friday night. Super bowl. Football experiences, everybody’s sitting around and wanting to order pizza. How do you do it?

Dr. Olivia: You just say, “Hey, do you mind making one of those pizzas gluten free? Because Pizza Hut and Domino’s and all these places you’re going to order pizza from have gluten free options for you. You have to speak up and you have to make a choice. Now when you say, oh, how about on Friday nights? This is so important for people to understand. When they study the effects of gluten, you can have a reaction up to three weeks later, three weeks, so it’s not one of …

Consider the delayed response

Dr. Olivia: And think about why, right? When you have a reaction to egg, egg is full of protein, so you’re going to eat eggs and you’re going to have a reaction pretty quickly because what we react to in a food is the protein. What is gluten? It’s a protein found in wheat, right? So wheat products are not high protein foods, so it tends to be a very delayed response. Some people say it happens a day or two or three later, but the studies show you can have inflammatory responses up to three weeks later. You’re never going to trace it back to that food. That’s why gluten is probably the trickiest sensitivity or inflammatory reaction that there is.

Start to recognize potential symptoms

Dr. Bryan: So I wanna take that and let’s break that down even further. Inflammatory conditions, a lot of people, they’re not going to wait three weeks or three years to know whether or not this is really harming them or not. And so when we say inflammatory conditions, I know what you mean, but I want to make sure it’s real clear, is you may not experience a symptom that you’re aware of in that short period of time, but fatigue is a symptom.

Dr. Olivia: So is brain fog.

Dr. Bryan: Brain fog is a symptom. Feeling joint pain is a form of inflammation.

Dr. Olivia: Absolutely.

Dr. Bryan: So there’s all these small little signals that the body starts to give off. Even the clarity in your own eye, like in your eyes, or when you’re breathing, those things can be reflective of the inflammatory response within the body, and gluten can be one of things that’s creating some of that inflammation.

Dr. Olivia: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Bryan: Wow, I’m learning, right?

Commit to being Gluten Free in terms of months, not days

Dr. Olivia: I think too, if anybody’s approaching this, you can’t, “Oh, I’m going to give it up for a week, two.” No, you cannot do that. You really have to commit to a minimum, a minimum of 30 days or a month, 100 percent free before you try to reintroduce it, and if you’re really committed to your health, if you’re really suffering with chronic inflammation, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, brain fog, autism, Alzheimer’s, all that fun stuff, digestive issues, skin issues, then I would suggest you cut it for a full 90 days and then reintroduce. And why 90? Because your intestinal cells tissue starts to regenerate after about 60 to 90 days. So if you reintroduce it 60 to 90 days later, you’re introducing it back into a healthier system, one that may be able to handle it or tolerate a little bit better.

Dr. Bryan: Did you tell me one time before, it’s not about being gluten free for a period of time, like what you just said, is not the same as like one day on one day off, one day on, one day off, one day on, one day off. Right?

Dr. Olivia: Are you talking about like a rotation diet?

Gluten Free cannot be a rotation diet

Dr. Bryan: Well, meaning like when I said, “Look, I used to eat gluten every day. Now I only now I will need it like two, three times a week.”

Dr. Olivia: Woo-hoo.

Dr. Bryan: Is that the same? I mean, is that going in the right direction for most people?

Dr. Olivia: No. It’s not.

Dr. Bryan: You still haven’t cleared the inflammatory response.

Dr. Olivia: It’s not. With gluten, I can tell you that is not going in the right direction. It’s not. If you want to follow a rotation diet, which is eating a food once every three to four days, definitely not back to back days, if you want to follow a rotation diet with any food out there, I would encourage it.

But when we are talking gluten, uh-uh. It’s got to be completely eliminated, as I said, for a minimum of 30 days. Anybody can give something up for 30 days.

I’m not asking you to give up all grains or gluten and dairy or gluten, dairy and egg. If you’re just getting started, just cut gluten.

Innovative substitutions to Gluten

Dr. Bryan: So, we were talking about pizza. All right? I know that you’ve brought home to our home, was it cauliflower crust pizzas?

Dr. Olivia: Yeah. That’s just the favorite in our house right now.

Dr. Bryan: And they’re really, really, really delicious. And you wouldn’t taste, you wouldn’t even think … If I didn’t tell somebody, they would have no idea that that’s not a regular pizza.

Dr. Bryan: Secondarily. You know, we talk about Friday and the Super Bowl events and these types of scenarios, and I referenced beer because I’m thinking like people are going to be like, “Gosh, all or none. I got to go 30 days, 60 days with like a perfect diet with gluten?” Well, does that mean I can’t go out for a beer? No. You can still get gluten free beer.

Dr. Bryan: You can get gluten free pizza. You can get gluten free pasta. There are so many substitutes that are now available for all of us to use and eat and benefit from that actually taste good.

Dr. Bryan: That will pretty much purify or eliminate a lot of that gluten from your system.

Dr. Olivia: Absolutely. Absolutely. There are some great brands out there and I’m just going to name a few because you asked me to. Right?

Some brands to look for

Dr. Olivia: So, I would say in the family of breads, Udi’s makes a great texture, great tasting bread. Schar is a really nice one out of Europe too, that I’m a big fan of. Those are two. As far as even just a pizza, there’s this one brand of frozen pizza that’s gluten free that I love. It’s called Against the Grain, but there are many cauliflower crust pizza options out there that I really like. I have bought for our house, other Paleo pizza crust. So, Paleo’s grain free. It’s not just gluten free, like technically corn flour, rice flour, those are grain based flours, but they are gluten free. So we’ve tested … I mean, I’ve been gluten free for almost 20 years.

Dr. Olivia’s Journey

Dr. Olivia: Let me give this disclaimer. I’ve been 90 percent gluten free for almost 20 years. I have been a hundred percent gluten free, as you know, for a year to two years, because for me I would eat gluten and it wasn’t even digestive for me anymore. I mean, I hate the digestive symptoms I experience, but gluten’s not the only food that will do that to me. So at the end of the day for me, I would have wicked brain fog and I would actually see pictures of myself where my face was swollen and I would be like, why does my face look so fat? And it was always … It was swelling. My rings wouldn’t fit.

Dr. Olivia: Sometimes it would affect my sleep. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and have what felt like a heart palpitation. And I would sit there and dissect everything I did. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I got gluten, I got gluten. And I figured out there were other things going on within my gut and within my thyroid, it wasn’t just gluten, but gluten was making those problems worse.

Lactose and Gluten

Dr. Bryan: And it’s not just you, it’s so many, so many people as I’ve learned. And a lot of it, like I was very, very open to the idea of saying, okay, no lactose. You know, get rid of the milk because you could feel that, right?

Dr. Olivia: You can. You can, right? But not everybody.

Dr. Bryan: Well, but yeah, I’m trying to speak on everyone’s behalf in the sense of there are certain things that you cannot feel that are still making you worse.

Dr. Bryan: And as you just said earlier in this discussion is, you know, you might not necessarily be super sensitive, where you have an anaphylactic reaction to the gluten, but there’s really no nutritional value to, any reason to have gluten in your body.

A book for learning more: “Grain Brain”

Dr. Olivia: Right. Right. So here’s the one thing I would say, if you guys are looking for a great read out there, and I’ve told you this 500,000 times, [crosstalk 00:22:12] It feels like it. You know it’s coming. I really cannot encourage you enough to read the book Grain Brain. And before I read

Dr. Bryan: Maybe we could put a link directly to that book for people.rand still to this day, the neurologist, Dr. David Perlmutter, he without a doubt does more research than anybody in the U.S. about the effects of gluten and its effect on your brain. Right?

Dr. Bryan: Maybe we could put a link directly to that book for people.

Dr. Olivia: Absolutely. Because people at the end of the day, they want science. Right?

Dr. Bryan: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t know that I’d totally agree. People want science or they just want to feel healthy?

Dr. Olivia: No. I do think that there is a good amount of the population that wants proof. That wants proof that this is actually an issue. You’re somebody who just wants to feel better. I’m somebody who, show me the research, show me the science.

Dr. Bryan: All right. I’m glad you brought that up. So I was gonna actually mention that idea of the Grain Brain book, because I have heard you say it so many times, and it does affect people, you said neurologically, and causes brain fog. And it sounds like this book does a wonderful job of explaining some of the science behind that.

Testing for sensitivities

Dr. Bryan: But speaking of science, when people want proof and you referenced testing, what are some ways that somebody could really be tested to try to figure out if they are sensitive to this?

Dr. Olivia: I’m so glad you asked me that. I wanted you to ask me that. I knew you would. I’m going to offer several different tests because they test different things. Like I’ve had people come to me and say, “Oh, I’ve been tested for celiac, I don’t have it.” I’m like, “Yeah, well you don’t have celiac until you do.”

Meaning you will not test positive for celiac until it wakes up. That’s like any autoimmune disease. Oh, I tested negative to rheumatoid arthritis. And then two, three years later they have it. I tested negative to Hashimoto’s, two, three years later they have it. You’ll test negative until the autoimmune disease is alive, awake, and destroying parts of your body.

So yeah, you can test for celiac. That’s not what we do. Sometimes we’ll go deeper and we’ll test for what’s called an HLA-DQ gene to see if you’re a genetic carrier for celiac.

Different test types

Dr. Bryan: Is that a blood test?

Dr. Olivia: Yeah, you can do that. Absolutely done through blood. You could do it through blood or biopsy. So if you’re working with a gastro, they can do all sorts of biopsies. We do that one through blood. In stool, you can measure different immunoglobulins to gluten through stool. The best test out there … I love a food sensitivity test. I love, love, love food sensitivity testing, but gluten can cause problems in your body even if you don’t test positive on a food sensitivity test.

The Wheat Zoomer test

Dr. Olivia: So the best test out there right now is done by a lab called Vibrant Health. There’s another company called Cyrex, but I’m going to give you the name of the test are Vibrant Health. It’s called a wheat zoomer, so it tests you to see if when you eat gluten, if you have a reaction, but it also tests to see what the reaction is or what tissue in your body gluten is attacking when you eat it.

Last but not least, it tests you for leaky gut and it also tests you to see if you have cross-reactivity happening to other grains, meaning sometimes your immune system gets, especially in autoimmune disease, it gets so angry, irritated, you eat something gluten free like corn and your body goes, wait, this isn’t gluten, but it looks like gluten, I think I’m just going to react just because, just because I’m overworked and I’m stressed out. So I think that that is probably one of the most valuable tests out there to see what gluten is doing to you and it’s really cost effective.

Dr. Bryan: So, not to generalize this, but it seems like you’ve mentioned digestive issues, hormone issues, neurologic issues. So those three categories, if you’re already experiencing any issues in any of those categories, it’s a must to consider one of these tests. Because you got to start getting the answers.

Dr. Olivia: Yes, you do have.

Gluten Free Cookbooks

Dr. Bryan: One final thing as we come to a conclusion in this podcast is, if you’re making the jump to start transitioning into a gluten free lifestyle, there’s tons of cookbooks out there, right? There’s tons of resources to help you transition.

Dr. Olivia’s own cookbook for being Gluten Free with Keto and Paleo friendly recipes

I know you yourself, Dr. Olivia, have put together a cookbook that’s got Paleo friendly and Keto friendly and gluten free options and all sorts of different things, but in addition to that there’s a ton of other cookbooks out there that can help somebody go from knowing nothing about how to prepare a meal with some of these options, or without some of these options, at home, right?

Dr. Olivia’s other favorite cookbooks

Dr. Olivia: Yep. So are you asking me what my favorite cookbooks are?

Dr. Bryan: No, but you can share.

Dr. Olivia: Okay. Okay. I would say my top two favorite are these:

Those are my two favorite ones. And those are going to be completely grain free. They’re not going to be just gluten free, they’re going to be completely grain free. In a Paleo cookbook you’re also gonna find everything’s dairy free. No refined sugars. The one thing I do want to mention before we wrap up is one pushback I get from a lot of people who are educated in regards to gluten or who know they should try gluten free but really are looking for reasons and excuses not to, is they say, “Well, gluten free products aren’t necessarily healthier. I’ve read that people who go gluten free or on gluten free diets can actually gain weight or can actually end up eating more refined foods.”

It’s about processed foods

Dr. Olivia: Yeah, I get it. We’re not sitting here saying that gluten free cookies are healthy. I’m not even sitting here saying gluten free bread and pasta is healthy. Those are still refined foods, they’re still processed foods. They’re still going to be high in carbohydrates. I’m not suggesting that.

I’m saying as far as the inflammation that gluten causes, that’s one of the big, big reasons to go gluten free for your health, not because gluten free foods are a good healthy source of calories and fat and all that stuff. I mean, be careful. The goal is to remove refined foods. Nobody needs bread, right? Bread tastes good. It’s great. It’s great for a sandwich or for a pizza or for a beer, but eating sandwiches, pizza and beer, you’re not going to see the healthiest people out there and see them eating a lot of these foods. Because they’re not healthy, whether they’re gluten free or not.

Wrapping up this episode

Dr. Bryan: I get it. And now a lot of people listening are fully aware of what our conversations are at home, around the dinner table. It’s been a journey.

You know, we’re happy that you tuned in today to be able to hear some of the reasons why gluten may not benefit you and why you may want to consider being gluten free yourself. And the reason that we really are beginning to take these discussions away from our home or our office and actually share them with you, is because more and more people just need the right information to help make better decisions and be able to influence their own behavior and the behavior of those around them that they love, and their family.

Dr. Bryan: And sometimes just getting the right message or the right information can make all the difference. There’s nothing better than helping more people get well, and that’s kinda why we feel we’re put on this earth and we hope that you’re willing to help us with that mission.

Final thoughts: Our own testing is coming soon

Dr. Olivia: Can I add one final thought, final comment?

Dr. Bryan: Sure.

Dr. Olivia: One thing people reach out to us a lot about is getting access to this testing. And at the end of the day, the way we operate our practice is we are a practice, right? So, we are in the process, thank you very much for all of your help behind the scenes, to setting up direct-to-consumer labs.

Because one thing I firmly believe, and I hope we believe, is that everybody deserves to have access to this testing, and I have people that live in rural areas or I have people who come to me and say, “My doctor won’t do this testing.” Or I have people who come to me and say, “I don’t have access to this testing.” We have heard that thousands of times and that’s not okay. It’s not okay.

So we are literally working so hard to connect you to these labs so you can be the advocate for your own health. And so you can order your own testing.

Dr. Bryan: Well, when we get more information on that and that becomes fully available, we’ll do our best to share that with you, so that you can share that with other people. So thank you as always for joining us. And if you want more information or to learn more about other ways that we may be will help you or that you can help yourself, go ahead and just go to thewellnessconnection.com/podcast or browse around the website, and any way we can help, we’re here for you.

Check out our page for more of our podcasts.

Add Your Comment (Get a Gravatar)

Your Name

*

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *.