Why I Went Paleo
Me and big, yet tiny, Sis
Many of my patients ask me why I’m on the Paleo diet. I have a lot of good reasons. Crohn’s disease runs in my family. My grandmother had it, and spent the last half of her life with a colostomy bag, and my sister was diagnosed with it when she was 19. After having severe abdominal pain for several months, doctors could not figure out what was wrong. After incorrectly diagnosing her with an ovarian cyst, and being told to “wait it out”, the pain got worse. At the ER they thought it was an appendicitis, and ended up doing emergency surgery, only to find out, there was massive intestinal inflammation in her small and large intestine. She had half her digestive tract removed that night, and woke up from surgery with a giant angry scar and a new disease.
Watching my older sister go through that certainly left an impression on me. I didn’t immediately give up gluten, at the time I was 15 and didn’t know any better. It wasn’t until I was 25, had moved across the country, started a business, was working 60-hour weeks and dealing with a stressful relationship that I started to feel something was off. I had some tests done, and my gluten antibodies were high. That was all I needed to seal the deal. Which was too bad, because I was living in microbrewery heaven, and had just discovered the coconut stout on nitro at Bend Brewing Company.
Initially, when I cut out gluten, I continued to eat oats and gluten free flours. In fact I became quite the gluten free baker. I still didn’t feel good, however. I actually gained weight. So, I make the decision to quit baking my delicious GF muffins and cookies, and instead, baked dog treats when I needed my muck-around-the-kitchen baking fix. I persisted for another year with indulging my addiction to granola. It was the last holdout. Every time I ate it, I’d get a heavy feeling in my stomach, feel tired, and have stomach pains. I knew a cross-sensitivity to oats was common for people with gluten issues, so finally I gave it up and went full Paleo.
Why I Stay Paleo
These days, I rarely tempt fate. I’m a solid 95% Paleo. If I cheat, it’s for a little rice with sushi, or my once a month gluten free thin crust pizza. And even though I feel pretty decent after I eat them, I choose to keep it at 5% because that’s about all I can handle, before I don’t feel so great anymore. More importantly, the main reasons I stay Paleo, are to avoid gluten and all the herbicides that are sprayed on crops these days.
The important thing to understand is that more than ever before, our food supply is compromised. Farmers are using a technique called crop dessication on rice, oats, wheat, corn, soy, beans, and sweet potatoes. Seven to ten days before harvesting, they spray the crops with herbicides one last time to kill of any last weeds before harvest. This practice has increased the amount of herbicide residues found in the food supply, so much so, that the Environmental Protection Agency increased the allowable amount of glyphosate residue in a variety of foods, and animal feed. Just this year, however, the World Health Organization has re-categorized glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” because there is enough research that shows it breaks DNA strands, disrupts the endocrine system, affects liver function, and impairs clearance of arsenic, leading to kidney disease.
I cut grains out of my diet to avoid all the chemicals that come with them. A lot of people who eliminate gluten, but substitute it with oats, rice, and other GF flours often continue to feel less than optimal. I believe a large part of that is from glyphosate-based herbicide residues in the food. It also can take a very long time for the gut to heal after removing inflammatory foods. Digestive enzymes, probiotics, aloe, and bentonite clay can be very useful in speeding up the process.
If you are suffering from ongoing digestive complaints, send me an e-mail to amymoll@HRAclinics.com and we can come up with a game plan for you to start feeling better.
