Why have we decided to go Grain Free? It started with gluten intolerance and grew into a total health makeover. This is designed to help those with a newly diagnosed gluten sensitivity or intolerance or celiac disease, easily access multiple sites on the benefits of removing wheat and other grains from your diet. Grain free foods help eliminate inflammation, which brings the immune system toward balance. Gluten free Diets have also proved beneficial for autism and schizophrenia.
Thousands of people have been diagnosed with the inability to Digest Gluten, a protein found in wheat and other grains. As awareness grows, more and more people are discovering that their health problems stem from their diet. In a safer and more natural attempt to be disease free, people are limiting or completely removing Gluten from their Diets.
There are different levels of Gluten Intolerance. The most severe is Celiac Disease. Celiac Sprue, the immune deficiency that can lead to cancer, can be cured by removing wheat and gluten from the Diet. Over 3% of the population is estimated to have Celiac Disease. That’s 1 in every 100 Americans living with an inability to eat any wheat or gluten containing products. 97% of people with Celiac Disease are undiagnosed at this time. Gluten Sensitivity or Intolerance can also haunt millions more people. These people do not have the diagnosis of celiac, or sprue cell, but they cannot digest wheat or the protein gluten in wheat that regularly causes most digestive problems. 29% of the population suffers from Gluten sensitivity, most unaware of what is compromising their health and making them feel ill.
Gluten is found in Rye, Barley, Spelt, and other grains in addition to wheat. People can have allergies to both wheat and gluten. Those who are allergic to gluten cannot eat wheat, but those allergic to wheat may or may not be able to handle gluten in other grains. Oats have been a topic of debate in gluten free circles. Oats themselves are fine for most people on gluten free diets, but cross-contamination can cause problems. Gluten free oats are safe for most Celiacs and gluten-intolerant individuals because they are made in fields dedicated only to gluten free grains. They do not mix with other gluten containing crops.
Celiac disease and Gluten intolerance are becoming more widely known and accommodated. A farely large variety of gluten free foods can be found in grocery stores and a select amount of restaurants. However, many people are still unaware of the many other possible side effects and health ailments that can be improved or eliminated by not eating wheat and gluten.
For the gluten-intolerant, wheat consumption can lead to many problems with the digestive tract, along with headaches, sore joints, weakened immune systems, and a clouded mentality. Several conditions, such as autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD), and hypertension require a gluten-free casein-free diet. Furthermore, gluten and wheat have been linked to autism and Shizophrenia. 65% of children with Autism show dramatic improvement on a Gluten & Casein free diet, which means no wheat or dairy. (http://www.goglutenfreenow.com/id16.htm). Interestingly, they also found that people with Schizophrenia benefited from cutting out cereals completely from their diets. (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/6045.php) Studies have shown that gluten free diets help control Type 1 Diabetes and prevent rheumatoid arthritis.
You may be wondering: if wheat and gluten can be linked to so many common ailments, why is it so prevalent in our society and inn our cuisine? You also might be wondering how we didn’t notice this sooner. Well to answer the latter, the effects of wheat can vary and can linger for days and up to weeks. This makes it hard to pinpoint the exact cause of the symptoms (which is also leads to under diagnosis). Also, since wheat is so prevalent in our over processed commercial lives, it is hard to escape.
As for the Former, our bodies did not evolve on a grain-based diet. Grain consumption, in fact, stretches back only 1-500 generations (20-10,000 years), depending on how far from the bread basket of civilization, i.e. the Fertile Crescent, one's ancestors happened to have wandered, or how fortunate they were in fending off invading agrarian societies, such as the Romans, whose moniker as the "Wheat Empire" was earned to it by the fact that that Roman forts were actually granaries, designed to hold a year supply of wheat in case of siege. Still today, the Irish, Scottish and Finns have some of the world's highest levels of celiac disease, as their resilient ancestors managed - for the most part - to fend off the Roman invaders, while at the same time preventing them from adapting adequately to the radically different fair of a grain based diet.(http://ezinearticles.com/?Grains---Health-Food-Or-Health-Folly?&id=1606130)
