The Autoimmune Kitchen: Strategies for Navigating Food Sensitivities

Hello and welcome to bonus episode 9. We're so pleased to have you. We just couldn't help ourselves. We thought this is such important information that didn't quite make it to the original 8 Plan series. But we're like, you know what? Food sensitivities probably needs to be included somewhere. And we wanted to include that bonus episode for you because we both know from personal experience and seeing people in our community, how important are food sensitivities? Like the One little food that can just like set you off, you know, on the wrong path. As someone who has battled with food sensitivities or my, actually my body was such a wreck, it was every, basically every type of food made me fall asleep. But there are a lot of, I would say, restrictive diets out there, right? So depending on whose protocol you're following, a lot will suggest that you eliminate. Lots of different types of foods. So what does the science say? Should you truly eliminate those foods or should you really eliminate them forever? So this episode will teach you what foods deserve to be on your plate, which ones not so much, and then navigating through the fact and fiction of food sensitivities. So often this journey of when you are navigating this food sensitivity journey can take a lot of time and a lot of people when they're getting started are like, oh, I'm not gonna eat this. Okay, so what what it's gonna set me up for the best chance of success because there's so many opinions out there so many different diets Are there certain food groups that I really should be targeting down? Is there others like what I do for this specific autoimmune disease or what do I do for? You know like something something else and we've thought of all that many of you've written in and given us this feedback So thank you for that. And so we have something called the quick start guide Sarah. So what is that? Hmm? So the Quick Start Breakthrough Guides are a collection of PDFs that we have as a bonus for our Platinum Package, where we tackle different subtopics of what we're discovering, what we're exploring in the gut autoimmune solution. So some of them are quick guides for people that need better sleep, quick guide for people that are attempting an elimination diet, or a quick guide for people looking for natural therapies for joint pain. But as Matt said, we have certain audience members writing and asking us for very specific, even more specific things or specific autoimmune diseases. So we have quick guides for rheumatoid arthritis or a quick guide for inflammatory bowel disease. So the cool thing is about these collections, you don't have to read them all, only select the ones that you need and use the protocols with it. I guess about saving time. So there's a lot of information. Yeah. Quick breakthrough. It's just like, okay, I'm sold on the entire concept of gut autoimmune, but I want an answer on this. And that's what we've put together for you. So you can just put you straight up the front of the start line. And by the time the series is ending, you're ready to go with an exact plan as to how you're going to get started. So Sarah, we are wrapping up. We have decided to include this bonus episode. Let us know in the comments if you're loving this bonus episode because yeah, we couldn't resist. But again, this is another opportunity to say thank you to everybody that has joined us from all different parts of the world. You know, it's interesting, Sarah, that... It's not just health advocates that are interested in this. It's not just people that are looking, that are in crisis and looking for information. It's actually even medical trained people all around the world also are watching this. And so it just goes to show you that, which is a massive privilege for us, is that part of making this information publicly available in the way that we do and making it free, it's a lot of work and everything. But I think, oh, wow, we can, we're part of also changing everything that we're being. doing together as a community, we're part of changing those conversations in doctors rooms, in medical clinics and all around the world which I think is just such an incredible privilege and the only way that that is possible is through you guys. There is no way from you guys sharing and you guys supporting us and owning the series, that sort of change can only happen because of you guys and so we just want to say thank you for that and maybe highlight something about it that you may not have seen before. So thank you for everyone who has joined. Sarah, so many comments. Like, as I said, it's so nice. It makes it all worthwhile. But it's sad. Here we go again. We always have this sad moment of saying goodbye. But thank you for everyone that's come in and joined, watching this series. We wish you all the best of health. And any final words, Sarah? Yes, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It's been an absolute privilege. And I hope you enjoy today's episode. Hello and welcome back to this special bonus episode of the Gut Autoimmune Solution. I'm your host, Sarah Otto. Today, we're diving into a topic that's at the heart of the gut. of autoimmune health, food sensitivities and dietary triggers. These hidden culprits are more than just digestive nuisances. They can be the spark that ignites the flame of autoimmune flare-ups and chronic inflammation. It's estimated that up to 20% of the population may have food sensitivities with the numbers potentially even higher among those with autoimmune conditions. In this episode We're going to dig into the essential strategies for identifying and managing food sensitivities and dietary triggers. If you're struggling with an autoimmune condition, dealing with mysterious symptoms, or simply want to optimize your diet for better health, you won't want to miss this episode. So let's embark on this journey to understand and conquer food sensitivities naturally. Recently, in the past year, we've had a young lady who came in to us who was fine all of her life. She's in her 40s until like last year, all of a sudden, her joints blew up. Her hands and wrists became extremely painful and swollen to the point where she couldn't even do her work anymore. And this occurred over a month. I went to the rheumatologist, was diagnosed with raging rheumatoid arthritis. Her markers were very high for rheumatoid arthritis in her blood. And over the past year, she's been extremely dedicated. She's lost like 40 to 50 pounds of weight because she was overweight. And now she's optimal weight. She has gotten her rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, her joint inflammation, about 90% under control. And... The interesting thing is, you know, the immune system is so mysterious and there's so many questions that we still don't know about it. But we go food by food in her over the years, over this past year, to try and figure out what foods may be triggering her symptoms and which are not. You know, for the average rheumatoid arthritis patient, when they come to us, As long as we give them plants, they're okay. You know, they just have to stop eating dairy products, meat, chicken, animal foods, and animal proteins, and processed junk foods. They'll be okay. They can eat any whole plant foods. They're asymptomatic and complete remission, but not always. And this is a young woman who's an example of that. We found out that eating most...... fruits, believe it or not, with fructose in it, gave her flares of her disease. With her eating whole plant foods, which are rich in very resistant starches, specific foods that we use to rebalance her gut ecosystem so that there's a healthy balance down there, and maybe staying away from many of those fruits. She's doing well and is 90 to 95% symptom-free. Her rheumatoid markers are going down. We would like her to be 100%. What we have her on a program now of is intermittent fasting as well. Every month, she fasts for about three days because fasting is known to also quiet the immune system. And we hope serially as she does this. One day she will be able to eat all of these whole plant foods, including the fruits, once her immune system has rejuvenated itself. When these cells are glued together with glue, these tight junctions, and as we break down food in the digestive tract, these food particles have to be broken down fully before they can pass through the cell and go out the other end of the cell into the bloodstream. When you damage the lining of the gut, and we talked about the... atrophy of the immune system and the atrophy of the microbiome and the biofilm as well and you cause inflammation in the gut you you have space open between the cells now food doesn't have to be adequately digested first to squake to go through the cell itself it can squeak through when it's not totally digested and it can squeak through into the bloodstream through the junctions in between the cells and then we have peptides which are sequences of proteins that are not all the way broken down into individual amino acids which would be transported through the cell right now we're getting amino acids still linked together that can go into the bloodstream and can be recognized by our immune system the bloodstream as a foreigner we build up antigens against these foreign peptides that came through the leaky gut and sometimes the sequence of amino acids on these peptides can mimic the sequence of amino acids on our own tissues So the body's own antibodies against these peptides can now cross-react because the peptide is the antigen and the immune system attaching to it is the antibody and these antibodies can now attack other things besides the foreign food substances. So we get cross-reaction, particularly with a lot of animal protein foods like dairy products because the sequence of amino acids on meat and dairy could be more resemble the sequence of amino acids on human tissue. whereas the sequence of amino acids on plant proteins are more unlike human tissue and less chance of across reactivity. But that doesn't mean there are some cases of people who are sensitive to plant antigens too. There are. So we have to sort of modify the diet accordingly to the foods that are most easily for this person to digest until we can clean up and heal the gut to not to allow peptides to pass through. One of the things that we see really commonly within the health practitioners that we work with, that we train, that we do research with is the increasing number of patients that they're working with that have significant food sensitivity issues. And these are. very common foods like legumes or nightshades and most plant materials, FODMAPs and so on, people are reacting in a really egregious manner to the presence of these foods. And so what tends to happen to people is they start to settle in that, ah, that's just my system. I just can't deal with this type of food, or I just can't deal with this entire class of food. And the consequence of that is that you have to eliminate that entire class of food. And what is really clear is when we reduce the number of foods we eat, we dramatically reduce the diversity in our microbiome, and that has huge health consequences. So avoidance of those foods is not a treatment of that food sensitivity. And having food sensitivity is not a normal thing to have. Food sensitivities indicate... that your system doesn't have the capability of building something called oral tolerance. Oral tolerance means all of the benign things that you're exposed to on a regular basis, your immune system is supposed to be trained to understand that those things do not require an immune response. You're supposed to tolerate them, as the term indicates. Now, the loss of oral tolerance is a very significant... indicator that the immune system is going down the wrong path, right? And the reason for that is loss of oral tolerance means there's an entire part of the immune system that's not functioning properly, and that's the T regulatory cells of the immune system. Those T regulatory cells are the cells that are supposed to help train the immune system that it should not react to certain types of proteins. It should not react to peanut protein. It should not react to FODMAPs and things that are in your diet. And so that Treg system is what is designed to build tolerance to the environment around you and not allow your immune system to overreact to anything. And if that Treg system is not working appropriately, food sensitivities is just the beginning. The downstream consequence of that is loss of tolerance to lots of things, including your own tissue. Every single minute of every single day, your immune system may accidentally... start targeting your own tissue due to the bystander effect of inflammatory damage of your own cells, accidental presentation of your own cell components to your adaptive immune response, or pathogens within your system that create something called molecular mimicry, where these pathogens can actually create compounds that look like your own cells to try to distract your immune system, right? So that your immune system gets focused on your own tissue versus looking at the pathogens. All of these things are happening all the time within your system, but you need your Treg system functioning to start dampening and eliminating all of those unwanted immune responses. And that's the Treg system. So the Treg system is not working. You end up with risk for your immune system to move down this path and end up building all of this autoimmunity and hypersensitivity to things. So food intolerance, even though it may seem a bit benign and the easy step is I'll just avoid those foods, is actually a canary in the coal mine screaming out to you, telling you that your immune system is absolutely dysfunctional. And your immune system is dysfunctional in a way that can lead to much more serious and much bigger problems. With autoimmune conditions, we also, just because some people could be sensitive to certain foods, like the gluten in certain grains, or nightshades, or sometimes the type of protein that's in beans. Sometimes with autoimmune diseases, we're reducing or eliminating those foods at the beginning and checking sensitivity to them to make sure people don't have too much of those at the start as they go in this reversal program with the juicing at the beginning. But we're moving them towards eventually being able to have more variety in their diet. But initially, we're watching for this. So some people are sensitive to grains, particularly wheat. But of course, there are a lot of healthy grains that are... that people are not sensitive to, like teft and amaranth and quinoa. But some people can get sensitive to saponins and quinoa, but that's relatively rare. So we do sometimes make individual adjustments to people who have certain types of food sensitivity or autoimmune conditions. For example, a person with Crohn's disease should not be eating nutritional yeast. They get flared up by even, it's not good for their digestive tract. So a person with lupus should eat alfalfa sprouts, for example. There are some individual... You know, differences in certain dietary tweaks we have to make for certain people. However, most people with time and with eating healthy can have their immune system be supported. In my experience, the best way to do that is actually with some kind of elimination, right? So doing a 30-day elimination where you get rid of either all of the allergies or all of the processed stuff or just really bringing your diet to a very, very simple place. 30 days should be more than enough time. And it does an interesting thing psychologically also. My first year I started doing it, I did what I called no sugar January, right? So I got rid of any of the processed sugar. What I realized, because you kind of watch your eating habits and you watch the psychological tie-in with food, is I was replacing all of the sugar with dried fruit. And, you know, dried fruit is basically just concentrated sugar with a little bit of fiber, right? Then I did no sugar September. And I was like, no sugar, no dried fruit. Okay, I was watching myself and I was like, okay, I'm relying a lot more on like grains. So then I took away all of the refined carbs, all of the sugars. And I like got really creative with like how I was making my breads. When you eat any diet, you need some things that you can just grab quickly. I got really creative with what I was doing. And it kind of gave me some new tools or tips. And so I took it all away for a month. And then the next thing that you do is you slowly and methodically reintroduce. And this is where a lot of people get a little caught. That. 30-day cleanse, you can't look at it as a 30-day cleanse. You have to look at it as like a two to three-month process because there's the cutting it out. 30 days is great for that. But then there's the methodical reintroduction. So I'm going to put in dairy. I'm going to put it in for one meal at first. Okay. Now the next day I'm going to put it in for two or three meals. Okay. The third day, I'm going to put it in a lot of it. How did I do? How am I feeling on day four as compared to how I was feeling on day one? Oh, I did okay. Okay, let me introduce the next thing that I'm missing. I'm going to put back in rice or a grain. Had a little bit, a little bit more, a lot. What am I noticing? Oh, wow, I had no idea that was making me feel that way. I just thought that's how I felt. And so the next two months is the slow methodical reintroduction. So you know exactly what's affecting you. And it can take three to five days for you to notice a symptom. You got to be slow. And it's so easy after you're done to be like, I'm going to eat all the things. You can't eat all the things because this is a three month process. Now, if you don't do a food sensitivity test, like that's okay. But if you are having any digestive symptoms, like that is one of my biggest things. Like that's my mantra test, don't guess. You need to start with a GI map, a stool sample test. And it's a DNA test that's not looking at your DNA. It's looking at the DNA of the pathogens that we're testing for. And the other one is that MRT food sensitivity test, right? So if you're having gut issues, they haven't gone away. Your doctors can't figure it out. That's what you got to do. Now, if you're not going to do that food sensitivity test, then you got to remove the biggest triggers. And the number one biggest trigger on the planet is gluten. All right. Gluten is a massive cause of leaky gut. When you eat gluten, it goes in partially undigested. So what it's going to do is going to trigger another protein in your gut called zonulin. All right. Zonulin is responsible for basically opening and closing those tight junctions in your gut, preventing leaky gut. And there's good things and bad things that can happen with the zonulin. So let's say I get salmonella poison because I ate some chicken that was exposed, or let's say I get E. coli. What happens is the zonulin triggers those tight junctions to open up and start to secrete water, starts basically diluting that gut. Why? To flush out the toxin, to flush out the pathogen. So it's like a tsunami coming in to get it all out. And once that pathogen is out of the body, right, the diarrhea is gone and we start to basically heal, then the zion will basically say, all right, let's close that again. But when you eat gluten or other gluten-containing grains, what happens is this keeps happening over and over and over. And those leaking, that leaky gut gets worse and worse and worse. So you've got to remove gluten. When I'm working with a client, that's the number one thing on my list. If they're not going to remove gluten. I'm just not going to work with them, right? I don't want to care more about their health than they do. And again, I want to see them get the results that these types of tests and the protocols are really famous for that most doctors aren't doing. But you've got to get rid of gluten. You've got to get rid of dairy. You've got to get rid of sugar. You've got to get rid of artificial sweeteners. And you've got to get rid of the seed oil. So you don't necessarily need to do the test. I recommend it. I decided to do the test, one, because this is what I do. But also, I want to be laser focused. I didn't want to guess about it because One of the challenges is when you do an elimination diet, which a lot of people are big fans of, it's better than nothing at all. But I can get a food sensitivity, like I could just have a meal right now. And all of a sudden, I could get bloating. But the problem is, is that the bloating that I'm getting right now doesn't necessarily have to be from something I ate from that meal. Because food sensitivities can actually be delayed in your gut by three days. 80% of the times, you won't get a trigger symptom like bloating, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea. So again, there are some major acidic inflammatory foods that we just know are bad. We want to eliminate them. That's the gluten. That's the dairy. That's the sugar. That's the seed oils. That's the artificial sweeteners. And if you do that, I promise you, you're going to feel a million times better. I'll never forget when my niece was four years old and she was having serious eczema. And this was like before I really became a gut specialist. But obviously, I still knew a lot about the gut at that time. So they came to me like, what should we do? So I had them do a food diary because I wanted to see what food she was eating and what food she wasn't eating because my goal was to eliminate any of these inflammatory acidic foods that could be triggering this and also start to add in foods that strengthen her body and her gut microbiome. So the first thing I did was got rid of gluten and dairy. And guess what? Within about a month and a half, I'm talking severe eczema breakouts all over her face, her neck, her body was completely gone. That is the power of your body to heal itself. But the thing is, we have to get rid of the trigger. So I did the food sensitivity test. What we're doing is basically looking at 170 different foods and chemicals. Again, I'm not looking at, is this specific food creating an allergy for me, right? That's an antibody test. That's something like an ALCAT test, which is better than nothing. At most, I say it's about 60% accurate. We're doing an MRT test, a mediator release test, which is not looking at, are you allergic to the food, like a peanut? It's looking at when I eat this food. Because I'm not creating enough hydrochloric acid in my stomach, or because I'm not secreting enough digestive enzymes, and or not making enough bile salt. So it's one, two, or all three, right? Or a combination of those, right? We're testing all three of those. Common allergies, you know, particularly, you know, eggs and soy and dairy and gluten, those are just common allergies that it makes sense to at least have a trial of eliminating that, particularly with rheumatoid arthritis. We also do a trial of eliminating nightshades as well, like potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. But it's not usually affecting people most often, but occasionally these things do affect people. So it's worthwhile considering those eliminations, particularly if you're not seeing a response to the intervention. In other words, put people on this healthy plant-based, high-green diet with the flax seeds and the walnuts and the oats and the greens and the, you know, put them on this and then If they're not doing well, consider the fact that there may be some allergens there they're sensitive to. And in some cases, not only do we eliminate glutens, but in some cases, we may have to look at the bean consumption or nut consumption, because sometimes that could be a sensitizer for some individuals, but not for most individuals. There's celiac disease, which you can test for, but we're talking about other people with more mild gluten sensitivities. And what we do is we use elimination and rotation diet. So let's say you have rheumatoid arthritis. and you're not feeling well and so you change your diet you feel better if you continue to make progress great if you're still not it's not working for you then we have to put you on an elimination diet and try to ascertain with a diet diary and with giving you rotating different foods to eat every few days to see where you feel better or feel worse so we can eliminate the foods by trial and error and we certainly would test those foods in part of your elimination rotation to see if you're sensitive to that but keep in mind My findings over the last, you know, 30, 40 years have been that even people with some food allergies or food sensitivities can recover from those food allergies. or food sensitivities as they build back a robust immune function and robust healthy bacterial milieu in their gut. In other words, as they build back the healthy microbiome and a healthy immune function and clean out the toxins and get rid of the inflammation, we see their allergies improve. I've seen so many people, asthmatics, who are no longer allergic to cats. They're no longer allergic to pollen. What fueled them and made them, you know, get full of mucus and made them get wheezing, they no longer are affected. So they can go into a house with cats anymore. So even though we're avoiding what might be allergically stimulating substances, environmental triggers and foods at the beginning, at the end, after they build back their health again, they most often are no longer sensitive to those substances. From the role of leaky gut in triggering reactions to the importance of identifying personal food triggers, it's clear that addressing food sensitivities can be a crucial step. in healing from autoimmune conditions. But of all the potential dietary culprits, there's one that stands out as particularly controversial and widely discussed. Gluten. This protein found in wheat, barley and rye has become a hot topic in health circles, with some hailing a gluten-free diet as a panacea for all ills, while others just dismiss it as a fad. So what's the truth about gluten and its impact on our health? Is it really as harmful as some claim or have its effects been exaggerated? And if you do decide to go gluten free, how can you do it in a way that truly supports your health rather than simply swapping one processed food for another? In our next segment, we'll dive deep into the science behind gluten sensitivity and its potential role in autoimmune disease. Our experts will share insights on how to determine if gluten might be a problem for you. and offer practical strategies for navigating gluten-free without falling into the common pitfalls. About 1-2% of the population has celiac disease, which means those folks should never eat gluten under any circumstances. Because for some it can actually be lethal, for others it can be just really, really unhealthy and dangerous and problematic. So if you're in that group, and that can be diagnosed with a blood test, then it's probably lifelong. There are a few documented cases of people who had been diagnosed with celiac, like no longer being diagnosed, but that's very rare and not well understood. For the most part, if you have celiac, don't eat gluten, period. Now, then there's the population that are gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant. And estimates vary widely on this, but it's widely thought that around 5 to 10% of the population falls into this group. And if you're gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant, then you may experience a whole range of different kinds of symptoms in response to gluten. Gluten, by the way, of course, is in wheat and barley and rye primarily, and wheat is the main source for most people today. So if you're gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant, then when you eat gluten, you may have gas or bloating, dizziness, headaches. It may trigger chronic inflammation. There's even other ways it could show up. So you want to make sure that... that if you're having any ongoing symptoms or dealing with an autoimmune condition, give it a try to go off it for three or six months and see how you do. But keep in mind that for 90% or more of the population, gluten is not a problem. So a lot of folks are going gluten-free these days. In one survey, almost half of all Americans are trying to eat less or no gluten because they just think it's bad for them. That's not necessarily the case. In fact, a lot of people who think that they are gluten intolerant, turns out upon further research, they're not. And gluten is a protein. It's a plant protein. And for folks who are not intolerant, it can actually be beneficial. to gut health. And also so can wheat, particularly wheat bran. There are compounds in wheat that are directly linked to positive health outcomes and reduced risk of cancer, particularly when eaten as a whole grain. So you want to move away from white flour almost no matter what. And flours in general can be problematic, especially from a blood sugar perspective, because they get absorbed into the body very very quickly and that can trigger dopamine hits and food addiction. So there's link. between flour and obesity that's quite strong. But if you're eating whole grains like bulgur or you know any form of wheat that's more wholesome or sprouted wheat breads even and you're not gluten sensitive these can actually be quite beneficial in the long run. There are some genetic issues that relate to gluten sensitivity that's for sure specifically as it relates to the perhaps two to three to four percent of the population that has full-on celiac disease. There are clearly genetic determinants that relate to that unique autoimmune condition in terms of risk for having it, which can be evaluated by a doctor who is suspicious that celiac disease may be happening in an individual person. But there's a very large nexus of individuals who are gluten sensitive. In other words, they don't have the straightforward autoimmune situation with the autoimmune degradation of the microvilli, etc. in the gut. But nonetheless, they do have issues related to consumption of gluten and specifically seem to react to a subpart of that gluten called alpha-gliadin that tends to lead to sensitivity issues, increases inflammation, and can manifest from stem to stern, can manifest from the skin to the brain to the joints to everything in between, a pretty large part of our population. Some have indicated that all humans have a degree of gluten sensitivity and specifically again dealing with that alpha-glied moiety. We know that being more sensitive to gluten is something that we see in people who are at higher risk for having leaky gut, something we talked about earlier. So that when the microbiome is threatened by things like antibiotics, being born via cesarean section as opposed to a vaginal birth in terms of how the microbiome is formed. taking various medications that can threaten the microbiome like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, acid blocking drugs, for example, drinking water that contains residual chlorine, a variety of things that threaten the gut bacteria can, through mechanisms that we talked about earlier, lead to increased permeability of the gut lining. And that can set the stage for individuals having sensitivity to gluten. So it's a much bigger issue than I think people recognize. Gluten is not only problematic for thyroid autoimmunity, it's also problematic for autoimmunity in general. The reason is because gluten has a protein sequence that's very similar to other tissues, such as brain tissue. For example, cerebellum tissue. Cerebellum is a part of the brain that controls balance and coordination. Gluten has protein sequence that looks very similar to the protein sequence of cerebellum. So you can have cross-reaction and molecular mimicry by ingesting gluten, causing your immune system to attack brain tissue, literally. And there's a condition called gluten ataxia. Ataxia means imbalance or drunken-like gait, where you walk like you're drunk, but you haven't drank any alcohol. And gluten can actually induce gluten ataxia, where you lose balance, you have dizziness. feel like you're rocking on a boat, you can have severe balance issue as a result of that. And then even some foods can cause issues. And so there's always a lot of talk and people always ask the question about gluten, which is found in wheat. Gluten has sort of this special quality that in some people, not everybody, but in some people, gluten can actually cause a leaky gut. scenario. And it does that by causing our own intestinal cells to increase this product or this chemical called zonulin. And when zonulin goes up, it's like a gatekeeper. So it can actually open up those tight junctions and keep them open. So for people who are eating a lot of gluten-containing foods, which is pretty much anything made with wheat, um, uh, if they're sensitive and they have these high zonulin levels, they're going to have this very leaky gut and things are going to be able to get through and, you know, sort of activate our immune system, even if we don't want them to. That's just sort of an idea of the multiple things that can do it. Not everybody has a gluten sensitivity, but certainly all of the other things that I mentioned before really should be, you know, we should be careful about not using or having a lot of that stuff in our bodies because that can be very damaging. I think that there is gluten that we have in the U.S. and that gluten is really just a ton of pesticides or Roundup. And I think that there is gluten that we eat in different countries that have different controls over their food supply chain that people can tolerate better. It seems like the gluten that's in the US, in my country, it seems to be very aggressively sprayed. So I think you need to think of it closer to an antibiotic or a pesticide and further away from food. And so if you're eating that type of highly sprayed, highly processed food. Also, the other thing about gluten that we have now is there's no fiber in gluten anymore. Like it's generally white bread. And so it's just like a refined carbohydrates that doesn't have any bacteria. It doesn't have any new nutrition. It doesn't have any nourishment. It just tastes amazing and fluffy and light, but it's not doing anything good. It's just taking up space. And on top of that, because there's no fiber and because there's tons of pesticides on it, it's also acting as an antibiotic and then food, the gluten part of it, or the bread part of it, actually. is then feeding a dysfunctional microbiome. So it's just going wrong in so many different places. That's why a lot of people tolerate the gluten in different countries better than they tolerate gluten in the US. Gluten sensitivity can manifest as almost anything. In my world, I was very taken many years ago, probably about 18 years ago, by the work of a researcher in England by the name of Marius Hadjavassilou. And he published research showing movement disorders, chronic headache, various types of cognitive issues related to being gluten sensitive, but unexplained joint pain, unexplained skin issues, fatigue, certainly digestive issues after its consumption. These are all pointing to the notion that perhaps gluten sensitivity could be a problem. Problem comes along when you're wanting to test for that. And there are, you know, ways of testing for Antibodies that relate to gluten sensitivity, like anti-glide and the antibody, can be tested. But by and large, I think the gold standard still remains choosing a diet in which gluten has been removed, a gluten-free diet, seeing how a patient responds to that over a period of time. Some people would follow that with a gluten challenge, whereby if a patient's improving, doing well, you would indicate, okay, time to have a couple of pieces of whole wheat toast, see how you feel. And if symptoms come back, That's pretty compelling. Certainly there's a placebo and nocebo considerations here, that's for sure. But if a patient's feeling better when he or she's gluten-free, I'm all in. There's always a symptom. If you choose to listen to it, that's different, but there's always a symptom. So fatigue, brain fog, all of a sudden you eat a sandwich and all you want to do is take a nap. That is your blood sugar crashing. That is not a good thing. Gas, bloating, distension, and pain. That is very, very common as a side effect of gluten. Oftentimes, it'll happen relatively quickly, but sometimes it can take three to five days for it to happen. The other thing that can happen is you feel foggy. There's all this brain fog that happens because of that inflammatory process. If we look a little bit more long acting, some people will develop skin rashes, eczema, itching, and that can take three to four days to present. And that one's a little bit more tricky. Mainly because you're like always eating it so you never get a break. So because if gluten is one of the staples in your diet, you just never get a break from it. And so you never know what's causing what. I can remember working with one woman and she had a lot of depression. And we tried an elimination diet and her depression totally lifted and she was starting to feel amazing. And about three months in, she was working on a big project with her church, and she rewarded herself at the end of this big event that she organized for her church with some cake and cookies. And the next three days, she couldn't get out of bed. because her depression was so intense. And I've seen over and over anxiety and depression really associated with gluten intolerance. We also have research on schizophrenia with celiac disease and gluten intolerance. I've seen people who have lupus. I've worked with people with lupus. And when we take gluten out, that seems to be the big culprit. Or even people with GERD. You never know what food it might be, but sometimes it's gluten that really affects GERD. So, you know, thinking about doing a gluten-free diet for two to three weeks, you might see remarkable changes overall in how you feel. If somebody's really missing bread or really missing, you know, their wheat, I'll say, okay, why don't you have some pasta and why don't you have some... shredded wheat with bran and why don't you have some some bread and let's just see how you feel and eat a lot of it for a couple days and see how you feel and sometimes people feel okay the first day but often by the second day they don't feel well and their symptoms are starting to come back because their body's immune system is starting to rev up and going i'm telling you i don't like this so i think when you're trying to work gluten out of your diet, it's best to start with the kind of comfort gluten-free foods in the sense where if you're already used to eating bread and tortillas and pasta, you simply switch to the gluten-free versions. Does that make that food healthier? No, not necessarily. It just makes it gluten-free before you start branching out to grain-free cassava tortillas, paleo bread, ancient grains that are gluten-free. So I think at first you just have to make the swap. I think bread's probably the hardest one because fresh baked gluten-free bread, really not bad. Gluten-free pizza, pretty darn good. It's that when it's pre-packaged, frozen, sitting on the shelf for a while, it's not going to taste as good as the gluten version because gluten is gluey. It's soft, right? When you remove that glue, and that glue is part of what really creates a lot of inflammation in the intestines. When you remove that glue, you don't have the same texture. So I say at first make the transition or just incorporate more gluten-free foods into your diet, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, which you can turn into a resistant starch and make very, very healthy for your gut. And then, of course, there's great things out now like grain-free tortillas made from almond flour, cassava flour. Lots of products out there made from garbanzo flour and chickpeas to give you a lot of variety. So a lot of people initially make that transition with rice and corn products. I'm not a huge fan of corn because it's still pretty inflammatory to the gut, although it is gluten free. But then you kind of transition to better options. So first, just replace it. Get your bearings on that before you start. really transitioning to healthier versions of those gluten-free foods. If you want to go off gluten and you want to eat pasta, I've got good news for you. There are these legume pastas coming out on the market now that are pretty delicious. They're loaded with protein and they're pretty healthy and they actually don't seem to trigger the glycemic impact that you get. from any other forms of flour, maybe because legumes are so high in protein. So those can be wonderful. They're a bit of an acquired taste. They don't taste exactly the same, but with good sauces, they have a good texture. It works. And, you know, slightly less healthy, but also an option is the brown rice pastas that you can find on the market. And I think those are delicious. In fact, I think they taste better even than gluten pastas. They have a nice, smooth, slippery kind of quality and they hold together well. So these are options, brown rice pastas, but then even healthier legume pastas, that can really work well and you won't be missing gluten much. If you like to have sandwiches and you're wondering, well what can I do without bread? Here's a few options. Rice cakes can be one good option. You can totally do like a peanut butter and jelly. By the way, make sure it's unsweetened jam, but real fruit is not a problem. peanut butter and jelly sandwich or put avocado in there make your own form of kind of avocado toast with those rice crackers there are other gluten-free crackers coming out loaded with seeds and gluten-free so that's an option and then you can also if you want to do more of a sandwichy experience classically some people like lettuce wraps or wrapping in a collard leaf it's not the same i'm not gonna lie but it can be super healthy right And then sushi, like some people use nori and a little rice and then get some vegetables in the middle and make kind of their own sushi roll wrappy kind of things. You don't need fish for that, by the way. Sushi just involves rice and seaweed and then lots of other things. Of course, some people classically use fish, but you don't have to. Vegetables is critical here. Avocado and maybe some umeboshi plum paste for some salt, which is also a fermented. food that can be quite lovely. So those are some options. A lot of people also like to get beyond the sandwich, beyond the buns, and think about other ways to have convenient foods that they can travel with. Hummus and vegetables can be great. Bring a little container of hummus and some vegetables that are pre-chopped and then dip them like that. Super delicious. I love hummus, by the way. Very, very tasty. If you're eating packaged goods, you run the risk of consuming gluten when gluten is used as a thickener and is added to so many products you really just don't know. You buy a bag of cookies and you could be in big trouble. So again, I think it's a real call to eat in a more simple fashion, to shop the periphery of the grocery store and to not be consuming foods that are packaged. It's very, very difficult, certainly for celiac patients, to find foods these days unless they're doing what I just mentioned, and that is making sure they're shopping the periphery of foods that are unpackaged. And by all means, read labels. There are apps these days that will look at products where product can be input, and then the app will tell you whether or not you're at risk for having gluten exposure based on the consumption of that particular product. Think about it not as, okay, I'm doing a gluten-free diet, but I'm moving towards a more whole foods-based diet. I'm taking the processed stuff, the stuff that's really easy to grab that doesn't have any nutritional value out of my diet, and I'm replacing it with real food. You know, real grains, real fruits, real vegetables. And it's tricky because one of the things that gluten offers often is just like very easy grab and go. You know, I don't have to think about what I'm eating. I don't have time. I'm stressed. I have a family. I work. I can just grab this thing and it's ready in five minutes. It's important to move away from that and to move into, okay, I need to think about my food as a whole food source that Maybe I can batch cook or maybe I can pressure cook. That makes it easy to have. And then you're thinking ahead of time. So you're not just eating garbage because the garbage is just garbage. Well, that was an enlightening look at the world of gluten sensitivity and its potential impact on gut health and autoimmune function. From celiac disease to non-celiac gluten sensitivity, it's clear that this protein can be a significant trigger for many individuals. But gluten isn't the only dietary component that can wreak havoc on our digestive systems and immune health. Another common culprit, one that's been a staple for many diets for generations is dairy. Dairy products have long been touted for their calcium content and supposed health benefits. But as our understanding of nutrition and its impact on the body has evolved, so too has our perspective on this food group. For the first decade of my life, I ate dairy products. I was raised as a lacto-ovo-vegetarian initially. When I was about 11 years old, my mom had heard that maybe if she went off dairy, it would be helpful with PMS symptoms that she was experiencing. And so she decided to give it a try and stop eating dairy products. And my dad and I decided to, in solidarity with her, go off dairy as well, just for a month to support her in making the transition. So we all went off dairy for a month and that meant I had to give up cheese and butter and cottage cheese and sour cream and I wasn't too happy about it as an 11 year old but I decided to give it a try because I love my mom and I knew that she had been experiencing a lot of painful periods for really my entire life and I wanted to see if we could help her out. So we all went off dairy and She did experience radical transformation. Her periods almost immediately started getting less painful. Her PMS symptoms went way down. She had less pain, less emotional distress, felt more balanced and at peace in her life. So that was awesome. Then for me, I found that suddenly I could breathe through my nose. And only then did I realize that I had had a stuffy nose for my entire life. And I thought it was normal to just not be able to breathe too much. through my nose. I didn't know anything else was possible, but suddenly my nose opened up and I could breathe through my nose at night, which was good for my dental health. I was no longer mouth breathing and I could smell things better and I had more pleasure in my life and in my eating life as well, by the way. And that's when I realized I had a mild dairy allergy. Since that time, I've noticed that anytime I consume dairy, even just a little bit, instantly my nose starts to clog up. So I can actually tell even if I can't taste it if there's dairy maybe a little butter in something or some dairy and some kind of food that I might get at a restaurant because instantly my nose is like clogging up which is a fascinating experience to tell me very clearly this food is not your friend don't eat it. So in my mom's case it was helpful for PMS in my case it was helpful with allergies. Dairy can be problematic for a number of reasons when it comes to autoimmune conditions and overall health. It is high in saturated fat. In fact, it's for many people the number one source of saturated fat in their diets. And dairy products bring that saturated fat. And saturated fat is directly linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and chronic inflammation in the human body. But dairy also delivers proteins that can be pro-inflammatory and may even trigger autoimmune responses in the human body. It seems that in some cases they are seen as a foreign invader and can trigger reactivity. So dairy protein can be problematic. And then dairy also delivers lactose. In fact, if you were to look at, remove the water from dairy, the number one compound in there is lactose, even more than protein or calcium or saturated fat. And so lactose is a form of sugar. About 80% of the human population on earth is actually lactose intolerant. So in order to digest lactose, your body has to produce lactase. which is an enzyme that breaks it down. And all of us pretty much produce lactase when we're babies. But as we get older, most of us around the world actually cease to do so. Now people who are Caucasian or often called white folks will tend to produce lactase past infancy. It's a European trait it seems. But folks from Asia, folks from Africa, folks with darker skin color around the world generally tend to not do so. And so this can create a lot of intestinal discomfort and distress. And it's called lactose intolerance as if it was a disease. But actually, it's the norm for most of humanity. So from a certain perspective, pushing dairy products on the world, which is done in the United States, where in our schools, for example, schools are forced to provide dairy to kids. And we actually have laws that make it illegal for them to do anything that could interfere with the consumption of dairy products, including giving kids water instead. So every kid has to be given dairy every day and they often need an actual note from a doctor in order to get plant milks instead, even if they're a person of color or 80% of people of color are lactose intolerant. It's critical to ask yourself, do you digest dairy properly? You may have some bloating, some discomfort, some distress, or some allergy symptoms that pop up when you eat dairy and you might not even know it if you've been eating dairy your whole life. So it's really helpful to try going off of it and seeing if that's helpful. And for a lot of folks, it's good to just go off it, period. Because whether or not you're lactose intolerant, dairy is still going to be delivering proteins that may be triggering an inflammatory response. And it's still going to be delivering high amounts of saturated fat. So there's some good reasons to go off dairy. But dairy is not the only culprit when it comes to autoimmune conditions, which is why all forms of saturated fat can be problematic, why gluten can be problematic, and of course added sugars can be problematic. When you try going away from all those things and moving towards more whole plant foods with lots and lots of fiber, you could be amazed at how rapidly you feel better. So dairy comes in a lot of different stages. Dairy comes with lactose at the sugar, and so there is a part of the population that literally lacks the enzyme to break down the sugar, right? So they lack lactase. You take in lactase exogenously, and that helps you break down the lactose. So that's one core issue. The other core issue is there's a subset of the population that can't break down casein. Casein is the protein. We have an enzyme that we can give you to break down the lactose, but we don't have an enzyme that we can really give you effectively that breaks down the casein. And so both of those can be relatively inflammatory, depending on if your body can break it down or not. So if you're intolerant to the sugar, if you don't have the enzyme to break down lactose, gas. bloating, distension, and pain. Those are like keynotes to you. Not, it literally is a digestive issue. Your bacteria in your GI cannot break it down. And so it's just making more and more and more gas and distension. That guy is real easy to spot just like with gluten. The problem, if you're having a casein deficiency is you can have symptoms that are that abundant or that clear, but also it can take longer to present. So skin stuff is oftentimes, or sometimes I should say, caused by inability to break down the casein. Other things that could be happening that we're seeing could be swelling, inflammation, joint pain. All of those could also present if you're having a hard time breaking down that protein. There are some really, really cool products that are out there that are actually nut-based that are replacing nuts for the dairy. The important thing that I'm gonna say is if you're eating dairy and then you wanna go dairy-free, you don't wanna jump onto like the dairy-free or the dairy-free. cheese replacement or the dairy-free replacement for whatever you're eating. It's not a replacement. You have to view it as like its own food. And just like gluten-free can be unhealthy, dairy-free can be unhealthy. The replacement cheese and all that, they're chock full of like gums and preservatives and coloring. So we don't want to replace dairy with some of these gummy imitation products. What we want to replace it with is like nuts and nutritional yeast and stuff like that. Nutritional yeast is one of like the best hacks. It's a yeast. That's high in B12. That makes everything taste cheesy and delicious. And it's a thing that we do a lot in the West Coast. Like nobody back East really knows nutritional yeast, but it is like such a delicious replacement for cheese in like pasta or like on popcorn. And it's nutritious too. In a lot of cases, people experience gastrointestinal improvements. So people who eat dairy often are having gas and bloating and these can often alleviate. when they go off dairy. So there's lots of different ways it can show up and this is the reality with a lot of allergens or inflammatory compounds that they affect each of us in different ways causing different symptoms but the underlying root cause may be the same antagonist. So dairy is one. We also find sometimes gluten can be an antagonist that can cause headaches for one person. It can cause gas or bloating for another person. It's worth giving it a try if you're experiencing any ongoing uncomfortable symptoms and seeing. if going gluten-free is helpful too. So dairy, gluten, and of course we know that sugar and saturated fat can be issues as well, maybe in a less acute way, but systemically and ongoingly the damage keeps adding up. If you're going off of dairy products then there are many options. There's alternatives now for pretty much everything in the marketplace. In terms of yogurts, you can make your own at home or buy an unsweetened plant-based yogurt. I recommend staying away from coconut if you can because those are high in saturated fat. I recommend staying away from the sweetened versions because some of those have loads of sugar which are not going to do your health any any favors. And of course making your own can be wonderful. In terms of cheeses, I love the nut cheeses. Cashew in particular seems great but there's also some good ones with almonds or other nuts. You can make your own if you want to save money or you can buy some fairly expensive but reasonably delicious and healthy options in a lot of stores nowadays. And then when it comes to butters, the healthiest thing is to switch over to olive oil or something like that. But if you want to use something that spreads, you know, you can make your own versions with healthier compounds. But if you're buying things, then you may want to buy one of the cultured plant butters. They're probably going to have coconut oil or another. saturated fat oil in them in order to make them thick at room temperature but they can be remarkably delicious and I think it's fine for most people especially in small quantities. If you're looking at like sour creams I love to make our own with tofu. Blend it up in a like a food processor or a Vitamix with some lemon juice, a little rice vinegar, some salt and onion powder and you can make this wonderful tofu sour cream that's great on potatoes. And actually, it's great on just about everything. So I love that. And you're getting all the benefits of soy, which is fabulous. And it's super delicious. I use macadamia milk now. You know, there are a lot of them, a lot of products out there. There's oat milk, there's almond milk, soy, as I told you, macadamia, which is my favorite coconut. The thing you got to be careful of is the amount of sugar in these products. So if you are out and asking for a non-dairy creamer for your coffee, for example, at a coffee place, a lot of times those products that they use have so much sugar in them. So you could be a little bit wonky and say, can I look at the label before you steam that and see what it contains? A lot of those non-dairy... milks, if they are actually milk, I'm fine with calling them milk, are really very, very sweet. And I mean, you know, they can have a lot of grams of sugar, even in the small amount that you might put in your coffee. So be careful of that. You can also make your own fermented plant cheeses, by the way. In our family, we sometimes make cashew cheeses and you leave those to ferment for a few days. after you get it all started and then you end up with this cheese that can even have like a kind of rind or you know shell around the outside it's more crusty and then a soft gooey inside and it's just delicious. So cashew cheeses can be made where you blend up some cashews with a little bit of water some lemon juice some salt and you add some beneficial bacteria like probiotics or a coconut kefir to the mix and then and there's recipes you can find them online or go to foodrevolution.org and type in nut cheeses and you can find recipes. And then essentially you let it sit, maybe with a little cheesecloth over the top in a nice little round shaped dish. And I think you probably put some kind of like lining around the outside so that you can remove it later or wrap it in cheesecloth. Let it sit for a couple of days or a few days at room temperature and then it gets this like slightly sour and more hardened kind of effect. And it's so delicious. When people come into our clinic and they're experiencing so much pain and fatigue and brain fog and other symptoms that go along with autoimmunity, they often feel so helpless. And when they come in and they're starting to make dietary changes, we introduce some herbs, maybe a few supplements that can help bring the inflammation down, improve their energy, work on those underlying imbalances that may be contributing. to the autoimmunity, they start to get their energy back. They start to feel themselves again. And it's a beautiful transformation because they're really starting to feel alive and feel like they used to. And this is a common thing I hear is that they say, I feel like I used to, I feel like myself again. And that transformation is amazing to watch. It's remarkable to see the body really starting to kick in and maintain this balance that. they once had and it brings about so much light in their life. We've taken an incredible journey through the complex world of food sensitivities and their profound impact on gut health and immune function. From the controversial topic of gluten to the surprising effects of dairy, we've uncovered how seemingly innocent foods can become triggers for inflammation and immune dysfunction. We've learned about the power of elimination diets, the importance of personalized nutrition, and the potential of healing foods to support our body's natural balance. It's about listening to your body and be willing to experiment and adjust as you find what works best for you. Thank you for joining us on this eye-opening exploration of the gut autoimmune solution. We hope the knowledge you've gained will empower you to take control of your health and live the vibrant, energetic life you deserve. Remember, every step you take towards better gut health is a step towards a healthier, happier life. you. Take care and here's to your continued journey of healing and discovery.

Food sensitivities probably needs to be included somewhere. And we wanted to include that bonus episode for you because we both know from personal experience and seeing people in our community, how important are food sensitivities? Like the One little food that can just like set you off, you know, on the wrong path. As someone who has battled with food sensitivities or my, actually my body was such a wreck, it was every, basically every type of food made me fall asleep.

But there are a lot of, I would say, restrictive diets out there, right? So depending on whose protocol you're following, a lot will suggest that you eliminate. Lots of different types of foods. So what does the science say? Should you truly eliminate those foods or should you really eliminate them forever?

So this episode will teach you what foods deserve to be on your plate, which ones not so much, and then navigating through the fact and fiction of food sensitivities. So often this journey of when you are navigating this food sensitivity journey can take a lot of time and a lot of people when they're getting started are like, oh, I'm not gonna eat this. Okay, so what what it's gonna set me up for the best chance of success because there's so many opinions out there so many different diets Are there certain food groups that I really should be targeting down? Is there others like what I do for this specific autoimmune disease or what do I do for?

You know like something something else and we've thought of all that many of you've written in and given us this feedback So thank you for that. And so we have something called the quick start guide Sarah. So what is that?

Hmm? So the Quick Start Breakthrough Guides are a collection of PDFs that we have as a bonus for our Platinum Package, where we tackle different subtopics of what we're discovering, what we're exploring in the gut autoimmune solution. So some of them are quick guides for people that need better sleep, quick guide for people that are attempting an elimination diet, or a quick guide for people looking for natural therapies for joint pain. But as Matt said, we have certain audience members writing and asking us for very specific, even more specific things or specific autoimmune diseases.

So we have quick guides for rheumatoid arthritis or a quick guide for inflammatory bowel disease. So the cool thing is about these collections, you don't have to read them all, only select the ones that you need and use the protocols with it. I guess about saving time.

So there's a lot of information. Yeah. Quick breakthrough. It's just like, okay, I'm sold on the entire concept of gut autoimmune, but I want an answer on this.

And that's what we've put together for you. So you can just put you straight up the front of the start line. And by the time the series is ending, you're ready to go with an exact plan as to how you're going to get started. So Sarah, we are wrapping up. We have decided to include this bonus episode.

Let us know in the comments if you're loving this bonus episode because yeah, we couldn't resist. But again, this is another opportunity to say thank you to everybody that has joined us from all different parts of the world. You know, it's interesting, Sarah, that... It's not just health advocates that are interested in this. It's not just people that are looking, that are in crisis and looking for information.

It's actually even medical trained people all around the world also are watching this. And so it just goes to show you that, which is a massive privilege for us, is that part of making this information publicly available in the way that we do and making it free, it's a lot of work and everything. But I think, oh, wow, we can, we're part of also changing everything that we're being.

doing together as a community, we're part of changing those conversations in doctors rooms, in medical clinics and all around the world which I think is just such an incredible privilege and the only way that that is possible is through you guys. There is no way from you guys sharing and you guys supporting us and owning the series, that sort of change can only happen because of you guys and so we just want to say thank you for that and maybe highlight something about it that you may not have seen before. So thank you for everyone who has joined. Sarah, so many comments. Like, as I said, it's so nice.

It makes it all worthwhile. But it's sad. Here we go again.

We always have this sad moment of saying goodbye. But thank you for everyone that's come in and joined, watching this series. We wish you all the best of health.

And any final words, Sarah? Yes, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It's been an absolute privilege.

And I hope you enjoy today's episode. Hello and welcome back to this special bonus episode of the Gut Autoimmune Solution. I'm your host, Sarah Otto.

Today, we're diving into a topic that's at the heart of the gut. of autoimmune health, food sensitivities and dietary triggers. These hidden culprits are more than just digestive nuisances. They can be the spark that ignites the flame of autoimmune flare-ups and chronic inflammation. It's estimated that up to 20% of the population may have food sensitivities with the numbers potentially even higher among those with autoimmune conditions.

In this episode We're going to dig into the essential strategies for identifying and managing food sensitivities and dietary triggers. If you're struggling with an autoimmune condition, dealing with mysterious symptoms, or simply want to optimize your diet for better health, you won't want to miss this episode. So let's embark on this journey to understand and conquer food sensitivities naturally. Recently, in the past year, we've had a young lady who came in to us who was fine all of her life. She's in her 40s until like last year, all of a sudden, her joints blew up.

Her hands and wrists became extremely painful and swollen to the point where she couldn't even do her work anymore. And this occurred over a month. I went to the rheumatologist, was diagnosed with raging rheumatoid arthritis. Her markers were very high for rheumatoid arthritis in her blood.

And over the past year, she's been extremely dedicated. She's lost like 40 to 50 pounds of weight because she was overweight. And now she's optimal weight.

She has gotten her rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, her joint inflammation, about 90% under control. And... The interesting thing is, you know, the immune system is so mysterious and there's so many questions that we still don't know about it. But we go food by food in her over the years, over this past year, to try and figure out what foods may be triggering her symptoms and which are not. You know, for the average rheumatoid arthritis patient, when they come to us, As long as we give them plants, they're okay.

You know, they just have to stop eating dairy products, meat, chicken, animal foods, and animal proteins, and processed junk foods. They'll be okay. They can eat any whole plant foods. They're asymptomatic and complete remission, but not always.

And this is a young woman who's an example of that. We found out that eating most...... fruits, believe it or not, with fructose in it, gave her flares of her disease. With her eating whole plant foods, which are rich in very resistant starches, specific foods that we use to rebalance her gut ecosystem so that there's a healthy balance down there, and maybe staying away from many of those fruits. She's doing well and is 90 to 95% symptom-free.

Her rheumatoid markers are going down. We would like her to be 100%. What we have her on a program now of is intermittent fasting as well. Every month, she fasts for about three days because fasting is known to also quiet the immune system.

And we hope serially as she does this. One day she will be able to eat all of these whole plant foods, including the fruits, once her immune system has rejuvenated itself. When these cells are glued together with glue, these tight junctions, and as we break down food in the digestive tract, these food particles have to be broken down fully before they can pass through the cell and go out the other end of the cell into the bloodstream. When you damage the lining of the gut, and we talked about the...

atrophy of the immune system and the atrophy of the microbiome and the biofilm as well and you cause inflammation in the gut you you have space open between the cells now food doesn't have to be adequately digested first to squake to go through the cell itself it can squeak through when it's not totally digested and it can squeak through into the bloodstream through the junctions in between the cells and then we have peptides which are sequences of proteins that are not all the way broken down into individual amino acids which would be transported through the cell right now we're getting amino acids still linked together that can go into the bloodstream and can be recognized by our immune system the bloodstream as a foreigner we build up antigens against these foreign peptides that came through the leaky gut and sometimes the sequence of amino acids on these peptides can mimic the sequence of amino acids on our own tissues So the body's own antibodies against these peptides can now cross-react because the peptide is the antigen and the immune system attaching to it is the antibody and these antibodies can now attack other things besides the foreign food substances. So we get cross-reaction, particularly with a lot of animal protein foods like dairy products because the sequence of amino acids on meat and dairy could be more resemble the sequence of amino acids on human tissue. whereas the sequence of amino acids on plant proteins are more unlike human tissue and less chance of across reactivity.

But that doesn't mean there are some cases of people who are sensitive to plant antigens too. There are. So we have to sort of modify the diet accordingly to the foods that are most easily for this person to digest until we can clean up and heal the gut to not to allow peptides to pass through. One of the things that we see really commonly within the health practitioners that we work with, that we train, that we do research with is the increasing number of patients that they're working with that have significant food sensitivity issues. And these are.

very common foods like legumes or nightshades and most plant materials, FODMAPs and so on, people are reacting in a really egregious manner to the presence of these foods. And so what tends to happen to people is they start to settle in that, ah, that's just my system. I just can't deal with this type of food, or I just can't deal with this entire class of food.

And the consequence of that is that you have to eliminate that entire class of food. And what is really clear is when we reduce the number of foods we eat, we dramatically reduce the diversity in our microbiome, and that has huge health consequences. So avoidance of those foods is not a treatment of that food sensitivity.

And having food sensitivity is not a normal thing to have. Food sensitivities indicate... that your system doesn't have the capability of building something called oral tolerance.

Oral tolerance means all of the benign things that you're exposed to on a regular basis, your immune system is supposed to be trained to understand that those things do not require an immune response. You're supposed to tolerate them, as the term indicates. Now, the loss of oral tolerance is a very significant... indicator that the immune system is going down the wrong path, right?

And the reason for that is loss of oral tolerance means there's an entire part of the immune system that's not functioning properly, and that's the T regulatory cells of the immune system. Those T regulatory cells are the cells that are supposed to help train the immune system that it should not react to certain types of proteins. It should not react to peanut protein.

It should not react to FODMAPs and things that are in your diet. And so that Treg system is what is designed to build tolerance to the environment around you and not allow your immune system to overreact to anything. And if that Treg system is not working appropriately, food sensitivities is just the beginning. The downstream consequence of that is loss of tolerance to lots of things, including your own tissue. Every single minute of every single day, your immune system may accidentally...

start targeting your own tissue due to the bystander effect of inflammatory damage of your own cells, accidental presentation of your own cell components to your adaptive immune response, or pathogens within your system that create something called molecular mimicry, where these pathogens can actually create compounds that look like your own cells to try to distract your immune system, right? So that your immune system gets focused on your own tissue versus looking at the pathogens. All of these things are happening all the time within your system, but you need your Treg system functioning to start dampening and eliminating all of those unwanted immune responses. And that's the Treg system.

So the Treg system is not working. You end up with risk for your immune system to move down this path and end up building all of this autoimmunity and hypersensitivity to things. So food intolerance, even though it may seem a bit benign and the easy step is I'll just avoid those foods, is actually a canary in the coal mine screaming out to you, telling you that your immune system is absolutely dysfunctional.

And your immune system is dysfunctional in a way that can lead to much more serious and much bigger problems. With autoimmune conditions, we also, just because some people could be sensitive to certain foods, like the gluten in certain grains, or nightshades, or sometimes the type of protein that's in beans. Sometimes with autoimmune diseases, we're reducing or eliminating those foods at the beginning and checking sensitivity to them to make sure people don't have too much of those at the start as they go in this reversal program with the juicing at the beginning.

But we're moving them towards eventually being able to have more variety in their diet. But initially, we're watching for this. So some people are sensitive to grains, particularly wheat. But of course, there are a lot of healthy grains that are... that people are not sensitive to, like teft and amaranth and quinoa.

But some people can get sensitive to saponins and quinoa, but that's relatively rare. So we do sometimes make individual adjustments to people who have certain types of food sensitivity or autoimmune conditions. For example, a person with Crohn's disease should not be eating nutritional yeast.

They get flared up by even, it's not good for their digestive tract. So a person with lupus should eat alfalfa sprouts, for example. There are some individual...

You know, differences in certain dietary tweaks we have to make for certain people. However, most people with time and with eating healthy can have their immune system be supported. In my experience, the best way to do that is actually with some kind of elimination, right?

So doing a 30-day elimination where you get rid of either all of the allergies or all of the processed stuff or just really bringing your diet to a very, very simple place. 30 days should be more than enough time. And it does an interesting thing psychologically also.

My first year I started doing it, I did what I called no sugar January, right? So I got rid of any of the processed sugar. What I realized, because you kind of watch your eating habits and you watch the psychological tie-in with food, is I was replacing all of the sugar with dried fruit. And, you know, dried fruit is basically just concentrated sugar with a little bit of fiber, right? Then I did no sugar September.

And I was like, no sugar, no dried fruit. Okay, I was watching myself and I was like, okay, I'm relying a lot more on like grains. So then I took away all of the refined carbs, all of the sugars.

And I like got really creative with like how I was making my breads. When you eat any diet, you need some things that you can just grab quickly. I got really creative with what I was doing.

And it kind of gave me some new tools or tips. And so I took it all away for a month. And then the next thing that you do is you slowly and methodically reintroduce. And this is where a lot of people get a little caught.

That. 30-day cleanse, you can't look at it as a 30-day cleanse. You have to look at it as like a two to three-month process because there's the cutting it out. 30 days is great for that. But then there's the methodical reintroduction.

So I'm going to put in dairy. I'm going to put it in for one meal at first. Okay.

Now the next day I'm going to put it in for two or three meals. Okay. The third day, I'm going to put it in a lot of it. How did I do? How am I feeling on day four as compared to how I was feeling on day one?

Oh, I did okay. Okay, let me introduce the next thing that I'm missing. I'm going to put back in rice or a grain. Had a little bit, a little bit more, a lot. What am I noticing?

Oh, wow, I had no idea that was making me feel that way. I just thought that's how I felt. And so the next two months is the slow methodical reintroduction.

So you know exactly what's affecting you. And it can take three to five days for you to notice a symptom. You got to be slow.

And it's so easy after you're done to be like, I'm going to eat all the things. You can't eat all the things because this is a three month process. Now, if you don't do a food sensitivity test, like that's okay.

But if you are having any digestive symptoms, like that is one of my biggest things. Like that's my mantra test, don't guess. You need to start with a GI map, a stool sample test. And it's a DNA test that's not looking at your DNA.

It's looking at the DNA of the pathogens that we're testing for. And the other one is that MRT food sensitivity test, right? So if you're having gut issues, they haven't gone away.

Your doctors can't figure it out. That's what you got to do. Now, if you're not going to do that food sensitivity test, then you got to remove the biggest triggers.

And the number one biggest trigger on the planet is gluten. All right. Gluten is a massive cause of leaky gut.

When you eat gluten, it goes in partially undigested. So what it's going to do is going to trigger another protein in your gut called zonulin. All right. Zonulin is responsible for basically opening and closing those tight junctions in your gut, preventing leaky gut.

And there's good things and bad things that can happen with the zonulin. So let's say I get salmonella poison because I ate some chicken that was exposed, or let's say I get E. coli. What happens is the zonulin triggers those tight junctions to open up and start to secrete water, starts basically diluting that gut.

Why? To flush out the toxin, to flush out the pathogen. So it's like a tsunami coming in to get it all out. And once that pathogen is out of the body, right, the diarrhea is gone and we start to basically heal, then the zion will basically say, all right, let's close that again.

But when you eat gluten or other gluten-containing grains, what happens is this keeps happening over and over and over. And those leaking, that leaky gut gets worse and worse and worse. So you've got to remove gluten. When I'm working with a client, that's the number one thing on my list. If they're not going to remove gluten.

I'm just not going to work with them, right? I don't want to care more about their health than they do. And again, I want to see them get the results that these types of tests and the protocols are really famous for that most doctors aren't doing. But you've got to get rid of gluten. You've got to get rid of dairy.

You've got to get rid of sugar. You've got to get rid of artificial sweeteners. And you've got to get rid of the seed oil.

So you don't necessarily need to do the test. I recommend it. I decided to do the test, one, because this is what I do.

But also, I want to be laser focused. I didn't want to guess about it because One of the challenges is when you do an elimination diet, which a lot of people are big fans of, it's better than nothing at all. But I can get a food sensitivity, like I could just have a meal right now.

And all of a sudden, I could get bloating. But the problem is, is that the bloating that I'm getting right now doesn't necessarily have to be from something I ate from that meal. Because food sensitivities can actually be delayed in your gut by three days. 80% of the times, you won't get a trigger symptom like bloating, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea.

So again, there are some major acidic inflammatory foods that we just know are bad. We want to eliminate them. That's the gluten. That's the dairy. That's the sugar.

That's the seed oils. That's the artificial sweeteners. And if you do that, I promise you, you're going to feel a million times better.

I'll never forget when my niece was four years old and she was having serious eczema. And this was like before I really became a gut specialist. But obviously, I still knew a lot about the gut at that time. So they came to me like, what should we do? So I had them do a food diary because I wanted to see what food she was eating and what food she wasn't eating because my goal was to eliminate any of these inflammatory acidic foods that could be triggering this and also start to add in foods that strengthen her body and her gut microbiome.

So the first thing I did was got rid of gluten and dairy. And guess what? Within about a month and a half, I'm talking severe eczema breakouts all over her face, her neck, her body was completely gone. That is the power of your body to heal itself. But the thing is, we have to get rid of the trigger.

So I did the food sensitivity test. What we're doing is basically looking at 170 different foods and chemicals. Again, I'm not looking at, is this specific food creating an allergy for me, right? That's an antibody test. That's something like an ALCAT test, which is better than nothing.

At most, I say it's about 60% accurate. We're doing an MRT test, a mediator release test, which is not looking at, are you allergic to the food, like a peanut? It's looking at when I eat this food.

Because I'm not creating enough hydrochloric acid in my stomach, or because I'm not secreting enough digestive enzymes, and or not making enough bile salt. So it's one, two, or all three, right? Or a combination of those, right? We're testing all three of those.

Common allergies, you know, particularly, you know, eggs and soy and dairy and gluten, those are just common allergies that it makes sense to at least have a trial of eliminating that, particularly with rheumatoid arthritis. We also do a trial of eliminating nightshades as well, like potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. But it's not usually affecting people most often, but occasionally these things do affect people. So it's worthwhile considering those eliminations, particularly if you're not seeing a response to the intervention. In other words, put people on this healthy plant-based, high-green diet with the flax seeds and the walnuts and the oats and the greens and the, you know, put them on this and then If they're not doing well, consider the fact that there may be some allergens there they're sensitive to.

And in some cases, not only do we eliminate glutens, but in some cases, we may have to look at the bean consumption or nut consumption, because sometimes that could be a sensitizer for some individuals, but not for most individuals. There's celiac disease, which you can test for, but we're talking about other people with more mild gluten sensitivities. And what we do is we use elimination and rotation diet. So let's say you have rheumatoid arthritis. and you're not feeling well and so you change your diet you feel better if you continue to make progress great if you're still not it's not working for you then we have to put you on an elimination diet and try to ascertain with a diet diary and with giving you rotating different foods to eat every few days to see where you feel better or feel worse so we can eliminate the foods by trial and error and we certainly would test those foods in part of your elimination rotation to see if you're sensitive to that but keep in mind My findings over the last, you know, 30, 40 years have been that even people with some food allergies or food sensitivities can recover from those food allergies.

or food sensitivities as they build back a robust immune function and robust healthy bacterial milieu in their gut. In other words, as they build back the healthy microbiome and a healthy immune function and clean out the toxins and get rid of the inflammation, we see their allergies improve. I've seen so many people, asthmatics, who are no longer allergic to cats. They're no longer allergic to pollen.

What fueled them and made them, you know, get full of mucus and made them get wheezing, they no longer are affected. So they can go into a house with cats anymore. So even though we're avoiding what might be allergically stimulating substances, environmental triggers and foods at the beginning, at the end, after they build back their health again, they most often are no longer sensitive to those substances.

From the role of leaky gut in triggering reactions to the importance of identifying personal food triggers, it's clear that addressing food sensitivities can be a crucial step. in healing from autoimmune conditions. But of all the potential dietary culprits, there's one that stands out as particularly controversial and widely discussed. Gluten. This protein found in wheat, barley and rye has become a hot topic in health circles, with some hailing a gluten-free diet as a panacea for all ills, while others just dismiss it as a fad.

So what's the truth about gluten and its impact on our health? Is it really as harmful as some claim or have its effects been exaggerated? And if you do decide to go gluten free, how can you do it in a way that truly supports your health rather than simply swapping one processed food for another?

In our next segment, we'll dive deep into the science behind gluten sensitivity and its potential role in autoimmune disease. Our experts will share insights on how to determine if gluten might be a problem for you. and offer practical strategies for navigating gluten-free without falling into the common pitfalls. About 1-2% of the population has celiac disease, which means those folks should never eat gluten under any circumstances.

Because for some it can actually be lethal, for others it can be just really, really unhealthy and dangerous and problematic. So if you're in that group, and that can be diagnosed with a blood test, then it's probably lifelong. There are a few documented cases of people who had been diagnosed with celiac, like no longer being diagnosed, but that's very rare and not well understood. For the most part, if you have celiac, don't eat gluten, period.

Now, then there's the population that are gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant. And estimates vary widely on this, but it's widely thought that around 5 to 10% of the population falls into this group. And if you're gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant, then you may experience a whole range of different kinds of symptoms in response to gluten. Gluten, by the way, of course, is in wheat and barley and rye primarily, and wheat is the main source for most people today. So if you're gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant, then when you eat gluten, you may have gas or bloating, dizziness, headaches.

It may trigger chronic inflammation. There's even other ways it could show up. So you want to make sure that... that if you're having any ongoing symptoms or dealing with an autoimmune condition, give it a try to go off it for three or six months and see how you do. But keep in mind that for 90% or more of the population, gluten is not a problem.

So a lot of folks are going gluten-free these days. In one survey, almost half of all Americans are trying to eat less or no gluten because they just think it's bad for them. That's not necessarily the case. In fact, a lot of people who think that they are gluten intolerant, turns out upon further research, they're not. And gluten is a protein.

It's a plant protein. And for folks who are not intolerant, it can actually be beneficial. to gut health. And also so can wheat, particularly wheat bran. There are compounds in wheat that are directly linked to positive health outcomes and reduced risk of cancer, particularly when eaten as a whole grain.

So you want to move away from white flour almost no matter what. And flours in general can be problematic, especially from a blood sugar perspective, because they get absorbed into the body very very quickly and that can trigger dopamine hits and food addiction. So there's link. between flour and obesity that's quite strong.

But if you're eating whole grains like bulgur or you know any form of wheat that's more wholesome or sprouted wheat breads even and you're not gluten sensitive these can actually be quite beneficial in the long run. There are some genetic issues that relate to gluten sensitivity that's for sure specifically as it relates to the perhaps two to three to four percent of the population that has full-on celiac disease. There are clearly genetic determinants that relate to that unique autoimmune condition in terms of risk for having it, which can be evaluated by a doctor who is suspicious that celiac disease may be happening in an individual person. But there's a very large nexus of individuals who are gluten sensitive. In other words, they don't have the straightforward autoimmune situation with the autoimmune degradation of the microvilli, etc. in the gut.

But nonetheless, they do have issues related to consumption of gluten and specifically seem to react to a subpart of that gluten called alpha-gliadin that tends to lead to sensitivity issues, increases inflammation, and can manifest from stem to stern, can manifest from the skin to the brain to the joints to everything in between, a pretty large part of our population. Some have indicated that all humans have a degree of gluten sensitivity and specifically again dealing with that alpha-glied moiety. We know that being more sensitive to gluten is something that we see in people who are at higher risk for having leaky gut, something we talked about earlier. So that when the microbiome is threatened by things like antibiotics, being born via cesarean section as opposed to a vaginal birth in terms of how the microbiome is formed. taking various medications that can threaten the microbiome like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, acid blocking drugs, for example, drinking water that contains residual chlorine, a variety of things that threaten the gut bacteria can, through mechanisms that we talked about earlier, lead to increased permeability of the gut lining.

And that can set the stage for individuals having sensitivity to gluten. So it's a much bigger issue than I think people recognize. Gluten is not only problematic for thyroid autoimmunity, it's also problematic for autoimmunity in general.

The reason is because gluten has a protein sequence that's very similar to other tissues, such as brain tissue. For example, cerebellum tissue. Cerebellum is a part of the brain that controls balance and coordination.

Gluten has protein sequence that looks very similar to the protein sequence of cerebellum. So you can have cross-reaction and molecular mimicry by ingesting gluten, causing your immune system to attack brain tissue, literally. And there's a condition called gluten ataxia.

Ataxia means imbalance or drunken-like gait, where you walk like you're drunk, but you haven't drank any alcohol. And gluten can actually induce gluten ataxia, where you lose balance, you have dizziness. feel like you're rocking on a boat, you can have severe balance issue as a result of that. And then even some foods can cause issues.

And so there's always a lot of talk and people always ask the question about gluten, which is found in wheat. Gluten has sort of this special quality that in some people, not everybody, but in some people, gluten can actually cause a leaky gut. scenario.

And it does that by causing our own intestinal cells to increase this product or this chemical called zonulin. And when zonulin goes up, it's like a gatekeeper. So it can actually open up those tight junctions and keep them open.

So for people who are eating a lot of gluten-containing foods, which is pretty much anything made with wheat, um, uh, if they're sensitive and they have these high zonulin levels, they're going to have this very leaky gut and things are going to be able to get through and, you know, sort of activate our immune system, even if we don't want them to. That's just sort of an idea of the multiple things that can do it. Not everybody has a gluten sensitivity, but certainly all of the other things that I mentioned before really should be, you know, we should be careful about not using or having a lot of that stuff in our bodies because that can be very damaging. I think that there is gluten that we have in the U.S. and that gluten is really just a ton of pesticides or Roundup.

And I think that there is gluten that we eat in different countries that have different controls over their food supply chain that people can tolerate better. It seems like the gluten that's in the US, in my country, it seems to be very aggressively sprayed. So I think you need to think of it closer to an antibiotic or a pesticide and further away from food.

And so if you're eating that type of highly sprayed, highly processed food. Also, the other thing about gluten that we have now is there's no fiber in gluten anymore. Like it's generally white bread.

And so it's just like a refined carbohydrates that doesn't have any bacteria. It doesn't have any new nutrition. It doesn't have any nourishment. It just tastes amazing and fluffy and light, but it's not doing anything good.

It's just taking up space. And on top of that, because there's no fiber and because there's tons of pesticides on it, it's also acting as an antibiotic and then food, the gluten part of it, or the bread part of it, actually. is then feeding a dysfunctional microbiome. So it's just going wrong in so many different places. That's why a lot of people tolerate the gluten in different countries better than they tolerate gluten in the US.

Gluten sensitivity can manifest as almost anything. In my world, I was very taken many years ago, probably about 18 years ago, by the work of a researcher in England by the name of Marius Hadjavassilou. And he published research showing movement disorders, chronic headache, various types of cognitive issues related to being gluten sensitive, but unexplained joint pain, unexplained skin issues, fatigue, certainly digestive issues after its consumption. These are all pointing to the notion that perhaps gluten sensitivity could be a problem.

Problem comes along when you're wanting to test for that. And there are, you know, ways of testing for Antibodies that relate to gluten sensitivity, like anti-glide and the antibody, can be tested. But by and large, I think the gold standard still remains choosing a diet in which gluten has been removed, a gluten-free diet, seeing how a patient responds to that over a period of time.

Some people would follow that with a gluten challenge, whereby if a patient's improving, doing well, you would indicate, okay, time to have a couple of pieces of whole wheat toast, see how you feel. And if symptoms come back, That's pretty compelling. Certainly there's a placebo and nocebo considerations here, that's for sure. But if a patient's feeling better when he or she's gluten-free, I'm all in.

There's always a symptom. If you choose to listen to it, that's different, but there's always a symptom. So fatigue, brain fog, all of a sudden you eat a sandwich and all you want to do is take a nap.

That is your blood sugar crashing. That is not a good thing. Gas, bloating, distension, and pain.

That is very, very common as a side effect of gluten. Oftentimes, it'll happen relatively quickly, but sometimes it can take three to five days for it to happen. The other thing that can happen is you feel foggy. There's all this brain fog that happens because of that inflammatory process.

If we look a little bit more long acting, some people will develop skin rashes, eczema, itching, and that can take three to four days to present. And that one's a little bit more tricky. Mainly because you're like always eating it so you never get a break.

So because if gluten is one of the staples in your diet, you just never get a break from it. And so you never know what's causing what. I can remember working with one woman and she had a lot of depression. And we tried an elimination diet and her depression totally lifted and she was starting to feel amazing.

And about three months in, she was working on a big project with her church, and she rewarded herself at the end of this big event that she organized for her church with some cake and cookies. And the next three days, she couldn't get out of bed. because her depression was so intense. And I've seen over and over anxiety and depression really associated with gluten intolerance. We also have research on schizophrenia with celiac disease and gluten intolerance.

I've seen people who have lupus. I've worked with people with lupus. And when we take gluten out, that seems to be the big culprit. Or even people with GERD.

You never know what food it might be, but sometimes it's gluten that really affects GERD. So, you know, thinking about doing a gluten-free diet for two to three weeks, you might see remarkable changes overall in how you feel. If somebody's really missing bread or really missing, you know, their wheat, I'll say, okay, why don't you have some pasta and why don't you have some...

shredded wheat with bran and why don't you have some some bread and let's just see how you feel and eat a lot of it for a couple days and see how you feel and sometimes people feel okay the first day but often by the second day they don't feel well and their symptoms are starting to come back because their body's immune system is starting to rev up and going i'm telling you i don't like this so i think when you're trying to work gluten out of your diet, it's best to start with the kind of comfort gluten-free foods in the sense where if you're already used to eating bread and tortillas and pasta, you simply switch to the gluten-free versions. Does that make that food healthier? No, not necessarily. It just makes it gluten-free before you start branching out to grain-free cassava tortillas, paleo bread, ancient grains that are gluten-free. So I think at first you just have to make the swap.

I think bread's probably the hardest one because fresh baked gluten-free bread, really not bad. Gluten-free pizza, pretty darn good. It's that when it's pre-packaged, frozen, sitting on the shelf for a while, it's not going to taste as good as the gluten version because gluten is gluey. It's soft, right?

When you remove that glue, and that glue is part of what really creates a lot of inflammation in the intestines. When you remove that glue, you don't have the same texture. So I say at first make the transition or just incorporate more gluten-free foods into your diet, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, which you can turn into a resistant starch and make very, very healthy for your gut. And then, of course, there's great things out now like grain-free tortillas made from almond flour, cassava flour.

Lots of products out there made from garbanzo flour and chickpeas to give you a lot of variety. So a lot of people initially make that transition with rice and corn products. I'm not a huge fan of corn because it's still pretty inflammatory to the gut, although it is gluten free.

But then you kind of transition to better options. So first, just replace it. Get your bearings on that before you start.

really transitioning to healthier versions of those gluten-free foods. If you want to go off gluten and you want to eat pasta, I've got good news for you. There are these legume pastas coming out on the market now that are pretty delicious.

They're loaded with protein and they're pretty healthy and they actually don't seem to trigger the glycemic impact that you get. from any other forms of flour, maybe because legumes are so high in protein. So those can be wonderful.

They're a bit of an acquired taste. They don't taste exactly the same, but with good sauces, they have a good texture. It works.

And, you know, slightly less healthy, but also an option is the brown rice pastas that you can find on the market. And I think those are delicious. In fact, I think they taste better even than gluten pastas. They have a nice, smooth, slippery kind of quality and they hold together well.

So these are options, brown rice pastas, but then even healthier legume pastas, that can really work well and you won't be missing gluten much. If you like to have sandwiches and you're wondering, well what can I do without bread? Here's a few options.

Rice cakes can be one good option. You can totally do like a peanut butter and jelly. By the way, make sure it's unsweetened jam, but real fruit is not a problem. peanut butter and jelly sandwich or put avocado in there make your own form of kind of avocado toast with those rice crackers there are other gluten-free crackers coming out loaded with seeds and gluten-free so that's an option and then you can also if you want to do more of a sandwichy experience classically some people like lettuce wraps or wrapping in a collard leaf it's not the same i'm not gonna lie but it can be super healthy right And then sushi, like some people use nori and a little rice and then get some vegetables in the middle and make kind of their own sushi roll wrappy kind of things. You don't need fish for that, by the way.

Sushi just involves rice and seaweed and then lots of other things. Of course, some people classically use fish, but you don't have to. Vegetables is critical here. Avocado and maybe some umeboshi plum paste for some salt, which is also a fermented.

food that can be quite lovely. So those are some options. A lot of people also like to get beyond the sandwich, beyond the buns, and think about other ways to have convenient foods that they can travel with.

Hummus and vegetables can be great. Bring a little container of hummus and some vegetables that are pre-chopped and then dip them like that. Super delicious. I love hummus, by the way. Very, very tasty.

If you're eating packaged goods, you run the risk of consuming gluten when gluten is used as a thickener and is added to so many products you really just don't know. You buy a bag of cookies and you could be in big trouble. So again, I think it's a real call to eat in a more simple fashion, to shop the periphery of the grocery store and to not be consuming foods that are packaged.

It's very, very difficult, certainly for celiac patients, to find foods these days unless they're doing what I just mentioned, and that is making sure they're shopping the periphery of foods that are unpackaged. And by all means, read labels. There are apps these days that will look at products where product can be input, and then the app will tell you whether or not you're at risk for having gluten exposure based on the consumption of that particular product. Think about it not as, okay, I'm doing a gluten-free diet, but I'm moving towards a more whole foods-based diet.

I'm taking the processed stuff, the stuff that's really easy to grab that doesn't have any nutritional value out of my diet, and I'm replacing it with real food. You know, real grains, real fruits, real vegetables. And it's tricky because one of the things that gluten offers often is just like very easy grab and go.

You know, I don't have to think about what I'm eating. I don't have time. I'm stressed. I have a family.

I work. I can just grab this thing and it's ready in five minutes. It's important to move away from that and to move into, okay, I need to think about my food as a whole food source that Maybe I can batch cook or maybe I can pressure cook. That makes it easy to have.

And then you're thinking ahead of time. So you're not just eating garbage because the garbage is just garbage. Well, that was an enlightening look at the world of gluten sensitivity and its potential impact on gut health and autoimmune function.

From celiac disease to non-celiac gluten sensitivity, it's clear that this protein can be a significant trigger for many individuals. But gluten isn't the only dietary component that can wreak havoc on our digestive systems and immune health. Another common culprit, one that's been a staple for many diets for generations is dairy.

Dairy products have long been touted for their calcium content and supposed health benefits. But as our understanding of nutrition and its impact on the body has evolved, so too has our perspective on this food group. For the first decade of my life, I ate dairy products. I was raised as a lacto-ovo-vegetarian initially. When I was about 11 years old, my mom had heard that maybe if she went off dairy, it would be helpful with PMS symptoms that she was experiencing.

And so she decided to give it a try and stop eating dairy products. And my dad and I decided to, in solidarity with her, go off dairy as well, just for a month to support her in making the transition. So we all went off dairy for a month and that meant I had to give up cheese and butter and cottage cheese and sour cream and I wasn't too happy about it as an 11 year old but I decided to give it a try because I love my mom and I knew that she had been experiencing a lot of painful periods for really my entire life and I wanted to see if we could help her out.

So we all went off dairy and She did experience radical transformation. Her periods almost immediately started getting less painful. Her PMS symptoms went way down.

She had less pain, less emotional distress, felt more balanced and at peace in her life. So that was awesome. Then for me, I found that suddenly I could breathe through my nose.

And only then did I realize that I had had a stuffy nose for my entire life. And I thought it was normal to just not be able to breathe too much. through my nose. I didn't know anything else was possible, but suddenly my nose opened up and I could breathe through my nose at night, which was good for my dental health.

I was no longer mouth breathing and I could smell things better and I had more pleasure in my life and in my eating life as well, by the way. And that's when I realized I had a mild dairy allergy. Since that time, I've noticed that anytime I consume dairy, even just a little bit, instantly my nose starts to clog up. So I can actually tell even if I can't taste it if there's dairy maybe a little butter in something or some dairy and some kind of food that I might get at a restaurant because instantly my nose is like clogging up which is a fascinating experience to tell me very clearly this food is not your friend don't eat it. So in my mom's case it was helpful for PMS in my case it was helpful with allergies.

Dairy can be problematic for a number of reasons when it comes to autoimmune conditions and overall health. It is high in saturated fat. In fact, it's for many people the number one source of saturated fat in their diets. And dairy products bring that saturated fat. And saturated fat is directly linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and chronic inflammation in the human body.

But dairy also delivers proteins that can be pro-inflammatory and may even trigger autoimmune responses in the human body. It seems that in some cases they are seen as a foreign invader and can trigger reactivity. So dairy protein can be problematic. And then dairy also delivers lactose. In fact, if you were to look at, remove the water from dairy, the number one compound in there is lactose, even more than protein or calcium or saturated fat.

And so lactose is a form of sugar. About 80% of the human population on earth is actually lactose intolerant. So in order to digest lactose, your body has to produce lactase. which is an enzyme that breaks it down.

And all of us pretty much produce lactase when we're babies. But as we get older, most of us around the world actually cease to do so. Now people who are Caucasian or often called white folks will tend to produce lactase past infancy.

It's a European trait it seems. But folks from Asia, folks from Africa, folks with darker skin color around the world generally tend to not do so. And so this can create a lot of intestinal discomfort and distress.

And it's called lactose intolerance as if it was a disease. But actually, it's the norm for most of humanity. So from a certain perspective, pushing dairy products on the world, which is done in the United States, where in our schools, for example, schools are forced to provide dairy to kids. And we actually have laws that make it illegal for them to do anything that could interfere with the consumption of dairy products, including giving kids water instead. So every kid has to be given dairy every day and they often need an actual note from a doctor in order to get plant milks instead, even if they're a person of color or 80% of people of color are lactose intolerant.

It's critical to ask yourself, do you digest dairy properly? You may have some bloating, some discomfort, some distress, or some allergy symptoms that pop up when you eat dairy and you might not even know it if you've been eating dairy your whole life. So it's really helpful to try going off of it and seeing if that's helpful.

And for a lot of folks, it's good to just go off it, period. Because whether or not you're lactose intolerant, dairy is still going to be delivering proteins that may be triggering an inflammatory response. And it's still going to be delivering high amounts of saturated fat.

So there's some good reasons to go off dairy. But dairy is not the only culprit when it comes to autoimmune conditions, which is why all forms of saturated fat can be problematic, why gluten can be problematic, and of course added sugars can be problematic. When you try going away from all those things and moving towards more whole plant foods with lots and lots of fiber, you could be amazed at how rapidly you feel better.

So dairy comes in a lot of different stages. Dairy comes with lactose at the sugar, and so there is a part of the population that literally lacks the enzyme to break down the sugar, right? So they lack lactase.

You take in lactase exogenously, and that helps you break down the lactose. So that's one core issue. The other core issue is there's a subset of the population that can't break down casein.

Casein is the protein. We have an enzyme that we can give you to break down the lactose, but we don't have an enzyme that we can really give you effectively that breaks down the casein. And so both of those can be relatively inflammatory, depending on if your body can break it down or not.

So if you're intolerant to the sugar, if you don't have the enzyme to break down lactose, gas. bloating, distension, and pain. Those are like keynotes to you.

Not, it literally is a digestive issue. Your bacteria in your GI cannot break it down. And so it's just making more and more and more gas and distension. That guy is real easy to spot just like with gluten. The problem, if you're having a casein deficiency is you can have symptoms that are that abundant or that clear, but also it can take longer to present.

So skin stuff is oftentimes, or sometimes I should say, caused by inability to break down the casein. Other things that could be happening that we're seeing could be swelling, inflammation, joint pain. All of those could also present if you're having a hard time breaking down that protein.

There are some really, really cool products that are out there that are actually nut-based that are replacing nuts for the dairy. The important thing that I'm gonna say is if you're eating dairy and then you wanna go dairy-free, you don't wanna jump onto like the dairy-free or the dairy-free. cheese replacement or the dairy-free replacement for whatever you're eating.

It's not a replacement. You have to view it as like its own food. And just like gluten-free can be unhealthy, dairy-free can be unhealthy.

The replacement cheese and all that, they're chock full of like gums and preservatives and coloring. So we don't want to replace dairy with some of these gummy imitation products. What we want to replace it with is like nuts and nutritional yeast and stuff like that. Nutritional yeast is one of like the best hacks. It's a yeast.

That's high in B12. That makes everything taste cheesy and delicious. And it's a thing that we do a lot in the West Coast.

Like nobody back East really knows nutritional yeast, but it is like such a delicious replacement for cheese in like pasta or like on popcorn. And it's nutritious too. In a lot of cases, people experience gastrointestinal improvements.

So people who eat dairy often are having gas and bloating and these can often alleviate. when they go off dairy. So there's lots of different ways it can show up and this is the reality with a lot of allergens or inflammatory compounds that they affect each of us in different ways causing different symptoms but the underlying root cause may be the same antagonist.

So dairy is one. We also find sometimes gluten can be an antagonist that can cause headaches for one person. It can cause gas or bloating for another person.

It's worth giving it a try if you're experiencing any ongoing uncomfortable symptoms and seeing. if going gluten-free is helpful too. So dairy, gluten, and of course we know that sugar and saturated fat can be issues as well, maybe in a less acute way, but systemically and ongoingly the damage keeps adding up. If you're going off of dairy products then there are many options.

There's alternatives now for pretty much everything in the marketplace. In terms of yogurts, you can make your own at home or buy an unsweetened plant-based yogurt. I recommend staying away from coconut if you can because those are high in saturated fat.

I recommend staying away from the sweetened versions because some of those have loads of sugar which are not going to do your health any any favors. And of course making your own can be wonderful. In terms of cheeses, I love the nut cheeses. Cashew in particular seems great but there's also some good ones with almonds or other nuts. You can make your own if you want to save money or you can buy some fairly expensive but reasonably delicious and healthy options in a lot of stores nowadays.

And then when it comes to butters, the healthiest thing is to switch over to olive oil or something like that. But if you want to use something that spreads, you know, you can make your own versions with healthier compounds. But if you're buying things, then you may want to buy one of the cultured plant butters. They're probably going to have coconut oil or another. saturated fat oil in them in order to make them thick at room temperature but they can be remarkably delicious and I think it's fine for most people especially in small quantities.

If you're looking at like sour creams I love to make our own with tofu. Blend it up in a like a food processor or a Vitamix with some lemon juice, a little rice vinegar, some salt and onion powder and you can make this wonderful tofu sour cream that's great on potatoes. And actually, it's great on just about everything.

So I love that. And you're getting all the benefits of soy, which is fabulous. And it's super delicious.

I use macadamia milk now. You know, there are a lot of them, a lot of products out there. There's oat milk, there's almond milk, soy, as I told you, macadamia, which is my favorite coconut.

The thing you got to be careful of is the amount of sugar in these products. So if you are out and asking for a non-dairy creamer for your coffee, for example, at a coffee place, a lot of times those products that they use have so much sugar in them. So you could be a little bit wonky and say, can I look at the label before you steam that and see what it contains? A lot of those non-dairy...

milks, if they are actually milk, I'm fine with calling them milk, are really very, very sweet. And I mean, you know, they can have a lot of grams of sugar, even in the small amount that you might put in your coffee. So be careful of that. You can also make your own fermented plant cheeses, by the way.

In our family, we sometimes make cashew cheeses and you leave those to ferment for a few days. after you get it all started and then you end up with this cheese that can even have like a kind of rind or you know shell around the outside it's more crusty and then a soft gooey inside and it's just delicious. So cashew cheeses can be made where you blend up some cashews with a little bit of water some lemon juice some salt and you add some beneficial bacteria like probiotics or a coconut kefir to the mix and then and there's recipes you can find them online or go to foodrevolution.org and type in nut cheeses and you can find recipes. And then essentially you let it sit, maybe with a little cheesecloth over the top in a nice little round shaped dish.

And I think you probably put some kind of like lining around the outside so that you can remove it later or wrap it in cheesecloth. Let it sit for a couple of days or a few days at room temperature and then it gets this like slightly sour and more hardened kind of effect. And it's so delicious.

When people come into our clinic and they're experiencing so much pain and fatigue and brain fog and other symptoms that go along with autoimmunity, they often feel so helpless. And when they come in and they're starting to make dietary changes, we introduce some herbs, maybe a few supplements that can help bring the inflammation down, improve their energy, work on those underlying imbalances that may be contributing. to the autoimmunity, they start to get their energy back. They start to feel themselves again.

And it's a beautiful transformation because they're really starting to feel alive and feel like they used to. And this is a common thing I hear is that they say, I feel like I used to, I feel like myself again. And that transformation is amazing to watch. It's remarkable to see the body really starting to kick in and maintain this balance that.

they once had and it brings about so much light in their life. We've taken an incredible journey through the complex world of food sensitivities and their profound impact on gut health and immune function. From the controversial topic of gluten to the surprising effects of dairy, we've uncovered how seemingly innocent foods can become triggers for inflammation and immune dysfunction.

We've learned about the power of elimination diets, the importance of personalized nutrition, and the potential of healing foods to support our body's natural balance. It's about listening to your body and be willing to experiment and adjust as you find what works best for you. Thank you for joining us on this eye-opening exploration of the gut autoimmune solution.

We hope the knowledge you've gained will empower you to take control of your health and live the vibrant, energetic life you deserve. Remember, every step you take towards better gut health is a step towards a healthier, happier life. you. Take care and here's to your continued journey of healing and discovery.

Transcript for:The Autoimmune Kitchen: Strategies for Navigating Food Sensitivities

Transcript for:
The Autoimmune Kitchen: Strategies for Navigating Food Sensitivities