Natural Cures For Dummies. Joe Kraynak

are responsible for triggering most cases of inflammation and numerous autoimmune disorders in humans: wheat, soy, dairy, sugar, corn, eggs, peanuts, artificial sweeteners, and trans fats. To find out whether any of the items on this list ails you, I encourage you to get tested for food allergies and sensitivities, as explained in Chapter 13, or perform a modified elimination diet. Table 2-1 lists the most common culprits to test.

      You can do an elimination diet in a couple of different ways.

      ✔ Remove a suspect food from your diet for 28 days. If you feel better without it, you can eliminate that food from your diet for good, reintroduce it to see whether it really does cause problems, or get tested to confirm or rule out your suspicions. If you notice no difference whether you eat or abstain from eating the food, you can add it back into your diet.

      ✔ Eliminate for 28 days foods that are most likely to cause problems and then slowly re-introduce them, one every two to three weeks, until your symptoms return. Then eliminate any food(s) that triggered symptoms.

      

Don’t eat even a small amount of the food you’re testing for the entire duration of the 28-day period. If you’re allergic to that food and you eat even a small amount, the antibodies to that food remain elevated in your system, and you may not notice an improvement in symptoms, defeating the purpose of the elimination diet.

Table 2-1 Performing a Modified Elimination Diet

      Read on to discover more about the foods that commonly trigger inflammation, autoimmune illnesses, and other disorders and why each one is a trigger for illness in a large portion of the population.

       Wheat and gluten

      Today’s wheat isn’t the wheat your ancestors ate. It doesn’t even resemble the wheat consumed during the 1980s. Modern wheat is grown and processed in ways that strip out vital nutrients and produce a high-starch flour that spikes blood sugar and insulin levels and triggers inflammation and immune reactions in many people.

      Although you may be immune to the nasty side effects of consuming modern wheat, people with celiac disease can’t consume a single morsel of wheat without experiencing a severe reaction resulting in abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea, cramps, malabsorption of nutrients, and weight loss. And for every person who has celiac disease, at least eight others suffer from nonceliac gluten sensitivity, which is often linked to inflammation, migraines, allergic reactions, eczema, cardiovascular events, and neurological disorders.

      Regardless of whether you’re experiencing symptoms, eliminate wheat/gluten from your diet for the next 28 days and take note of how you feel. I’d bet dollars to those donuts you’re no longer eating that you’ll feel better, eat less, and achieve a healthier, stable weight with lower body fat.

      

Here’s a way to cut 400 calories from your diet: Eliminate wheat. Approximately 25 years ago, scientists discovered that wheat stimulates appetite. In fact, eating wheat makes the average person consume an additional 400 calories a day. Eliminate wheat from your diet, and you won’t feel as hungry. You’ll drop weight without even trying.

      

Don’t simply go gluten-free. Many gluten-free products are nothing more than junk food, using various starches and guar gum as substitutes for white flour. These white-flour substitutes may spike blood sugar and insulin levels even more than does white flour. Go gluten-free, but at the same time avoid loading up on gluten-free starches, such as breads and pastas. These items should be a very small portion of your diet; eat a small serving only once or twice a week.

       Soy

      Soy is so abundant in “health foods” that most people actually think it’s healthy. However, 90 percent of all soy in the United States is derived from genetically modified organism (GMO) crops and is overly processed. Soy messes with your hormones and often triggers thyroid disorders. If your thyroid antibodies are high, eliminating soy from your diet can bring them down into normal range. Soy is also rich in phytic acid, which blocks absorption of key minerals, including calcium, magnesium, and zinc. It also blocks trypsin, an important enzyme for digesting protein.

      

If you choose to consume soy, make sure it’s verified organic (non-GMO) and eat soy only in the form of fermented products, such as tempeh, tofu, and miso. Unless you’re born in a culture raised on soy products, eat it only once or twice a week. Soy lecithin is permitted, because it doesn’t contain the allergenic protein.

       Dairy

      Regardless of how they’re manufactured, all dairy products contain hormones and other potentially harmful substances, such as D-galactose, a carbohydrate associated with inflammation, oxidative stress, and neurodegeneration. Dairy can make you fat and may contribute to insulin resistance and osteoporosis (weak, porous bones). In addition, dairy is highly allergenic and addictive. Contrary to the ads, it doesn’t do a body good.

      Replace dairy with high-calcium foods that are actually good for you: Brazil nuts, broccoli, flaxseeds, kale, sardines, spinach, walnuts, and wild Alaskan salmon. Replace cow milk with unsweetened, fortified oat, almond, hemp, or rice milk. Try dairy-free coconut yogurt and kefir; look for products with less sugar and additives. Switch to vegan-style rice milk cheeses as substitutes.

       Eggs

      Eggs may be good or bad for you. To find out, take a break from eggs for 28 days and then start eating them again once or twice a week. (Be sure to read labels carefully, because many food products contain eggs.) Journal how well you feel on and off eggs. If you feel better without eggs, you may have an egg allergy or sensitivity and may want to avoid them entirely.

      However, don’t be too eager to eliminate eggs altogether from your diet. Eggs are a super food. The yolks, which many anti-egg people suggest you throw away, are a nutritional gold mine. And contrary to popular belief, eggs aren’t the prime culprit in raising serum cholesterol or increasing the risk of heart disease.

      

If you can eat eggs, buy eggs collected from pastured chickens that haven’t been fed a diet of corn and soy. Don’t be fooled by eggs labeled “free-range” or “organic,” because these labels are part of a marketing ploy by big agricultural producers. Although they might be allowed a small space to range and may be fed organic grain-based feed, these chickens are not pastured as nature intended. They’re better than conventional in that they don’t contain GMO-feed and hormones, but eggs from farm-raised pastured chickens are best.

       Corn

      Nearly 90 percent of all corn is genetically modified. The DNA in the corn marries the DNA of gut flora, contributing to microbial imbalance and leaky gut (see Chapter 13).

      Corn also contains aflatoxin, a known carcinogen (cancer-causing agent); lectins, which can cause inflammation and interfere with absorption of nutrients; and zein, a kind of gluten that is okay for people with celiac disease but is still inflammatory to many and may also contribute to autoimmune and gut-related health issues.

      

Replace corn with healthier alternatives, including organic beets, green peas, snow peas, sweet potato, and winter roots or squashes (acorn or butternut squashes, parsnips, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and turnips). If you do eat corn, eat it sparingly, and eat only non-GMO varieties. Eliminate from your diet high-fructose corn syrup, a known toxin that raises triglyceride levels and blood pressure; fails to stimulate insulin production, resulting in overeating and contributing to obesity; increases intestinal permeability, enabling food particles and other large molecules that are supposed to stay inside the intestines to leak out