The Problem With Wheat

Aren't whole grains good for you? They can be, when they are cracked, but there’s an enormous difference between cracked whole grains and whole grains that have been pulverized into flour for bread. This difference has to do with glycemic impact, and how quickly the starch is absorbed into your system as sugar. Wheat flour, whether it’s in Wonderbread or sprouted 100% whole wheat bread from Whole Foods, spikes blood sugar like nobody’s business and wreaks havoc on your metabolism.

When wheat is pulverized into flour, it doesn’t matter if it is “whole grain” or “white”. The starch is rapidly absorbed into your system. It’s rapid conversion into sugar leads to a spike in your blood sugar and insulin levels. When your blood sugar and insulin levels stay high, or cycle up and down rapidly, your body has trouble responding and over time could contribute to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is associated with many health problems, including:

• Type-2 diabetes 
• Obesity 
• High blood pressure 
• Stroke 
• Heart disease 

So lots of blood sugar is bad. Got it. If that’s not enough to convince you to reduce or cut out wheat, this information about gluten will get your head spinning:

Gluten is a digestive toxin that wheat produces in its seeds to protect them from being eaten by animals in the wild. It’s also the glue that’s used to stick wallpaper onto walls. Not surprisingly it is not very good for you. A small portion of all people are celiacs (about 1%) although many have this condition and are undiagnosed. For them gluten is literally a life and death situation. If a celiac's eats any gluten it causes a severe immune reaction that, over time, destroys the digestive tract. Many of these people are already on gluten-free diets. 

It is estimated that roughly 30% of all people have a negative reaction to gluten, but are not celiacs. This can show itself in many ways - poor digestion, obesity, auto-immune disease, and heart disease to name a few, and most of these people probably don’t even know the chronic low-level stress that gluten has caused their systems. 

There's a chance you suffer from gluten intolerance of some kind and don't know it. Chances are you've been eating wheat your whole life, so you don’t know any other way of being. There's really no way of knowing if being gluten-free will make a positive difference without eliminating it from your diet. We can help you reconfigure your diet with less or no wheat, our Custom Menu Plan is perfect for this and includes a full consultation. BUY HERE

We encourage you to experiment with a gluten-free, wheat-free diet for a while and then reintroduce it after a period of time, and notice how you feel. Do not, however, start eating a bunch of processed, purchased gluten-free breads, crackers, cookies, pasta, and other stuff. Why not? Because it’s still loaded with blood-sugar spiking carbs. Generally this stuff is made with rice flour, potato starch, corn starch, and other refined carbs. It’s gluten-free, but it will still cause big, nasty blood sugar swings, and the health problems and obesity that come with them. As a better source of carbs try eating unprocessed gluten free whole grains such as:

• Quinoa 
• Gluten Free Oats 
• Brown Rice 
• Amaranth 
• Buckwheat 
• Alternative Flours (coconut,garbanzo,quinoa) 

For more information on eliminating wheat and other harmful carbohydrates from your diet join our Slow Burn Challenge starting January 16th, in which we will explain how to eliminate these things in a healthy, natural way.