How to Make Your Diet Gluten Free
by MIHealthCoach

Introduction
What gluten is, why people should avoid it, and how to avoid it.

Instructions
Difficulty: Easy

Things You'll Need

• a list of gluten containing foods
• a list of non-gluten foods
• this article

Steps

1. Step One - Gluten is the protein part of wheat, spelt, rye, barley, most oats, and other related grains. Gluten intolerance is the inability to digest or break down gluten. This condition can range from a mild sensitivity to full blown celiac disease. The skin disorder called dermatitis herpetiformis, which causes a chronic itchy rash of bumps and blisters, is also linked to gluten allergies. The gluten-free diet must be strictly followed by sufferers of celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis.
2. Step Two - Around ½% of the world's population is Celiac. This means ~1 in 200 people. Some people are not celiac, but have intolerance to gluten. Some studies show gluten intolerance to be around 30 times more prevalent than celiac disease. Up to 15% of people or 1 in 7 are gluten sensitive and suffer the same symptoms. These are people who test negative or inconclusive for celiac disease. They are known as Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitive (NCGS). Symptoms include gastro-intestinal issues, headaches, mouth ulcers, weight gain or weight loss, poor immunity to disease, and skin problems like dermatitis and eczema.
3. Step Three - According to some celiac specialist researchers, everyone has some reaction to gluten, but non-celiacs recover quickly. Many people report feeling better on a gluten free diet. Many studies have found that a gluten free diet significantly decreases allergy symptoms among children. Some medical practitioners believe that gluten-free diets benefit other conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, ADD/ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, thyroid disease and other autoimmune disorders.
4. Step Four - Sticking to a gluten-free diet is not easy. Grains are used in many foods, especially processed foods, which everyone should avoid despite gluten intolerances. It is often difficult to determine by an ingredient’s name what may be in it, so it is easy to eat gluten despite the best of intentions. Gluten is used in unexpected ways, so be wary of the following:
5. Step Five - Stabilizing agents or thickeners in foods
6. Step Six - Over-the-counter or prescription medications
7. Step Seven - Vitamins
8. 8Step Eight - Cosmetics such as lipstick
9. 9Step NineLip balm, and chapsticks may contain gluten.

Overall Tips & Warnings

• Be cautious of shredded cheese as well, it's often tossed with a little flour to keep the cheese from sticking together.
• A diagnosis of celiac disease, or even gluten intolerance, requires careful changes in your routine, but you can still live your life.
• Many of the diet guidelines are ones that everyone should adhere to for a healthy lifestyle.
• Sticking to a diet of whole, fresh, unprocessed foods eliminates any worry about confusing and hidden ingredients and offers a healthy way of life.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2288815_diet-gluten-free.html

Fructose Converts to Fat Faster Than Other Sugars

By MedHeadlines • Jul 28th, 2008 • Category: Diet, Lifestyle, Medical Research, Obesity


A general assumption is that fructose means fruit and most of us don’t worry about getting too much sugar from our fruits because we just don’t eat them very often. We may be getting an overload of fructose without even being aware of it, though. And what’s even worse is that a researcher from the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas has just discovered that fructose in the diet converts to fat faster than any other sweeteners available today.

Dr. Elizabeth Parks, an associate professor of clinical nutrition, says the kinds of foods we eat, especially the carbohydrates, influence fat synthesis and may have as big an effect in a weight-loss diet as counting calories. Traces of sugar occur naturally in many proteins (it’s the reason meats and pastries turn brown when cooked) but fruits and vegetables have the highest concentration of naturally occurring fructose. To test her theory, Parks and her colleagues recruited six healthy people for a three-part study using glucose- and fructose-sweetened breakfast drinks.

Sucrose is the complex form of sugar, meaning it’s made from two simpler sugars - glucose and fructose. The liver, working like a traffic cop, separates the glucose and fructose from the sucrose and sends each component, the glucose or the fructose, onto different routes, where one path leads to energy, to be burned as fuel as soon as possible, and the other path leads to long-term storage. As fat.

When the traffic cops in the liver (the triglycerides) encounter fructose, they send it into storage to become fat more quickly than they route the glucose to fat storage. Glucose is the preferred sugary fuel. The higher the concentration of fructose in the diet, the more fructose available to be converted into stored fat.

Parks’ six study participants drank a specially prepared fruit drink for breakfast. They ate a typical lunch four hours later. Their glucose levels were monitored throughout and the rate of lipogenesis was watched. Lipogenesis is the name of the process that converts the foods we eat into the fat we store, in all the places we’d rather not be storing it.

In blind and random order, each participant consumed a breakfast drink in one of three formulations. One drink was 100% glucose, mimicking the formula used in glucose-tolerance tests instrumental in diagnosing diabetes. A second drink was a 50:50 mixture of glucose to fructose. The third was 75% fructose.

When comparing the 100% glucose breakfast to the 50:50 formula, lipogenic activity became quickly apparent and more vigorous after ingesting the fructose in the 50:50 formula. The fat-building process was also activated when the 75% fructose mixture was consumed.

When the two high-fructose breakfast drinks were consumed, the build-up of stored fat continued into the afternoon, when the quick conversion of fructose to fat remained active during digestion of the lunch meal. The higher the concentration of fructose in the diet, the higher the rate of fat conversion.

All study participants were thin, in good health, with no known medical conditions that would impair sugar digestion and assimilation. Researchers suggest the fat-building result of a high-fructose diet may be different, perhaps exaggerated, in people with impaired digestive functions, such as diabetics, the obese, and people suffering from food allergies.

A very large percentage of pre-sweetened beverages and mass-produced food products on the American food market are processed with a specially formulated 55%-fructose version of corn syrup. It is listed in the ingredients list of most ready-to-eat food products and pre-sweetened beverages as “high fructose corn syrup” or simply HFCS. The manufactured food industry embraces HFCS because it is easier to blend and sweeter than table sugar. It’s also cheaper, too. Ingredients are listed on food labels according to the proportional amount of an individual ingredient to the others, with the first item being the most abundant. The closer to the beginning of the ingredients list, the more HFCS in the container.

Parks urges dieters to include a healthy amount of fruits in the daily diet while being mindful of fats, proteins, and all forms of added sugar. She feels a diet high in HFCS thwarts most efforts to lose weight, since it converts to fat for storage quicker than other sugars.

The Parks study was funded by The Sugar Association, the Cargill Higher Education Fund, and the National Institutes of Health. The Journal of Nutrition carries the full report in its current issue.

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center

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As many as 75 percent of overweight and obese people in the U.S. may be addicted -- through poor eating habits - to either carbohydrates or the protein called gluten, which is found in all wheat, rye, barley and oat products.

Like any addiction, these cravings are unhealthy and problematic. They take the form of either an irresistible craving for carbohydrate-rich foods such as desserts, candies and junk food, or gluten products like breakfast cereals, breads and pasta.


"Addiction and obesity both run in families, and...research also suggests that the environment – mainly, how often you're exposed to an addictive substance – can shift brain neurochemistry, increasing the likelihood of addiction."
- Addicted to food? How to break your habit, Daryn Eller, Prevention.com


Carbohydrate-rich foods make up a large part of the modern-day diet and include bagels, cakes, chocolate, cookies, crackers, pastry, fruit and fruit juice, ice cream, potato chips, potatoes, pretzels, rice, pie, popcorn and sugar-sweetened beverages. In addition, carbohydrate "act-a-likes" such as sugar substitutes, alcoholic beverages and monosodium glutamate may trigger intense, recurring carbohydrate cravings, which can lead to excess weight and obesity.

Proteins such as gluten result in the production of substances that can have addictive, narcotic-like effects. These substances are called "exorphins." Hydrolyzed wheat gluten, for example, has been found to prolong intestinal transit time and may contribute to weight gain. The effects of exorphins on the brain tell a person to keep eating gluten products, which, in turn, could contribute to the mental disturbances and appetite disorders that routinely accompany food-related illnesses.

Many food "addicts" are right to suspect there is a physical reason that makes them crave carbohydrates and put weight on easily. But the underlying cause of their struggles often goes undiagnosed and untreated by the medical profession.

Carbohydrate Addiction

Carbohydrate addiction is, in fact, caused by excess insulin, which is released by the pancreas into the blood stream when carb-rich foods are eaten. Insulin signals the body to take in food and, once the food is consumed, orders the resulting energy to be stored in the form of fat. Too much insulin results in an irresistible and frequent desire to eat.

The scientific term for this condition is post-prandial reactive hyperinsulinemia, which means too much insulin is released after eating. Hyperinsulinemia stems from Insulin Resistance, an imbalance of blood glucose and insulin levels. If left unchecked, Insulin Resistance can result in excess weight and obesity, increasing the risk of developing a variety of damaging disorders such as:

• The cluster of cardiovascular risk factors called Metabolic Syndrome (Syndrome X), which can lead to a heart attack or stroke
  
  
• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), a leading cause of female infertility as well as skin conditions, excess body and facial hair and male pattern baldness in women
  
• Reversible Pre-Diabetes, which, if left untreated, can lead to irreversible Type 2 Diabetes - which significantly increases the risk for blindness, amputation and kidney disease

Gluten Intolerance

Gluten intolerance can manifest in many ways. You may have heard of Celiac Disease, an extreme reaction to any product containing gluten, a protein found in wheat. The symptoms are chronic watery and bloody stools. The immune systems of those with Celiac Disease are reacting severely to this protein, however there are thousands of people who suffer milder reactions to gluten and are unaware of the underlying cause.

Eating gluten can cause inflammation in the sensitive mucous membranes of the intestinal lining which can trigger an immune response. Because of this immune reaction, individuals experience wide variations in symptoms such as rashes, fatigue, mental fog, behavioral disorders like hyperactivity in children, gastrointestinal symptoms such as constipation or diarrhea, chronic headaches and more.

Many individuals have increased food cravings as a reaction to consuming gluten, but are unaware of the reason for their desire to eat continuously or even out of control. Some medical practitioners are challenged to pinpoint this condition and, as a result, their patients are often left to treat the symptoms rather than the cause - ingesting glutens. Due to the lack of specificity in identifying their disorder, many people continue to eat gluten for decades and struggle constantly with their food cravings.

Insulin Resistance

Insulin receptor sites allow the absorption of blood glucose into the cell for energy. A normal, healthy person can have 20,000 of these sites or "doors" on each cell. But a person suffering from Insulin Resistance may have as few as 5,000 per cell. Insulin Resistance has the effect of closing these "doors" in the cell walls of muscles, organs and the nervous systems, which prevent blood sugar or glucose from food from entering and being converted into energy. Glucose "bounces" off the cell walls after being denied entry and "free floats" to the liver, which stores the sugar in fat cells throughout the body via the blood stream.

Common symptoms of energy starvation caused by low-blood sugar levels (hypoglycemia) including irritability, shakiness, tiredness, intense cravings, confusion and headaches. As high insulin levels continue, glucose gets trapped in the blood stream and can bring on Diabetes.

Pre-Diabetics, who have blood sugar levels higher than normal but not yet in the range of Type 2 Diabetes, can reverse their condition with a balanced, nutritious diet and regular exercise. But if Type 2 Diabetes is allowed to develop, this condition must be managed for the rest of your life and may require daily insulin injections.

There is currently no accepted blood test to determine definitively whether you are carb-addicted. Fasting insulin levels do not necessarily predict how your body will react after eating carbohydrate-rich foods and glucose tolerance tests use highly sweetened drinks that are not the equivalent of typical carbohydrate-rich meals.

But if you are overweight or obese, there is a good chance you are carbohydrate or gluten-addicted. However, it's not necessarily true that you over-eat, just that you are trapped in the bad habit of eating the wrong diet i.e. carb or gluten- rich food, while leading a sedentary lifestyle.

Changing those habits is a key factor in the Insulite System's approach to improved health through weight loss via a balanced nutritious diet, regular exercise and ongoing support.

A crucial aim is to address the impact that food makes on neuro-transmitters in the brain. By changing your lifestyle and "re-training" the way your brain perceives food, you can reverse Insulin Resistance and achieve lasting weight loss and a greater sense of well-being in ways that may not have occurred to you.

What does a treatment program entail?
It is estimated that up to 40% of our population is gluten intolerant and celiac disease afflicts about 1% of our population.

Many thousands of Americans are suffering from digestive problems, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, hormonal imbalances, arthritis, migraines and more. The approach to dealing with these conditions varies but the common thread is that patients are given some palliative, though temporary, medication usually.

We have discovered that undiagnosed celiac disease and gluten intolerance creates symptoms well beyond digestive problems. Why? Because gluten is a toxin to many of us. And as a toxin it slowly erodes and destroys our small intestine. As the small intestine is responsible for turning our food into fuel which in turn feeds all our cells (we have trillions of cells, by the way), you can imagine what problems might be created when we are unable to adequately and efficiently turn food into fuel. A damaged small intestine is unable to perform that job adequately, our cells don't get fed well and thereby are unable to do their job. Different bodies have different reactions to this. One person may have irritable bowel syndrome, another may feel exhausted or stressed, and another may develop thyroid problems or an autoimmune disease like arthritis or lupus. Symptoms truly are all over the map. And therein lies the problem. We live in a medical community which likes to take individual symptoms and give them drugs to mask them. That not only does nothing to address the root cause but it negates the whole concept that there IS a root cause.

We specialize in getting to the root cause of health problems. And while we're not saying that all health problems are a result of gluten intolerance, so many are and it is missed 99% of the time. This is why we specialize in the area of gluten intolerance.

Now add to the lack of awareness of the problem the fact that once patients are diagnosed they aren't very happy about the change they need to make in their diet.