Whats Wrong With Wheat?

What's wrong with wheat? In a word: gluten. For many, gluten is an intestinal abrasive that effectively "sandpapers" your insides. Wheat, along with rye and barley, contain a family of gluten proteins that create long-term digestive problems for nearly everyone. And the problems don't stop there. Allergies, light-sensitivity, and even auto-immune reactions can be traced to gluten, not to mention "beer belly" and chronic fatigue. Gluten-senstivity is the most prevalent food reaction there is. To make matters worse, gluten tends to be addictive. A simple blood test is all you need to find out if you're at risk. If you suffer from psoriasis, migraines, depression, or fatique, you might want to get one.

• Why Gluten is Bad For You:

Gluten is a family of proteins, including gliaden and glutenin (which have been the most widely studied). They are thick, gooey proteins that make things stick together when baked, instead of falling apart. Since there is so much of it in wheat, wheat is practically the foundation of the baking industry. Good for them. Bad for you. The problem is, it can slowly wreaks havoc on your insides.
Gluten causes problems for people who lack the genetic ability to break it down into smaller amino acids that can be absorbed. Because it doesn't get broken down, the immune system recognizes it as a "foreign protein", and attacks it. In the process, the intestinal wall is damaged. That's why gluten acts as an intestinal abrasive.

• How Many People Are Affected?
  

In the latest study, one in three people were found to be gluten sensitive, even though they were showing no symptoms at all. They were pre-symptomatic. Of people with any kind of digestive disorder (gas, heart burn, diarrhea, consitpation, or what have you) one in two were found to be gluten senstive. And if any blood relative was gluten senstive, the chances were a near certainty that they were, too.

So let's say that half the people in the country have some kind of digestive problem (a very conservative estimate). If the studies are accurate, then half of those folks are gluten sensitive (25%), as are a third of the remainder (17%). That would mean that something like 42% of the population has a problem with gluten.

So as much as half the population could be affected--but we don't know how big the problem really is, because doctors don't typically test for it. But in the DVD, Unlocking the Mystery of Wheat and Gluten Intolerance, Dr. O'Bryan gives a lecture that consists entirely of quotes from medical journals. There is no excuse for the fact that doctors are by and large ignornant of this material, and no excuse for failing to test for gluten sensitivity in every medical checkup. If they did that, we would have precise numbers in very short order.

For more info go to: http://www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/Wheat.html