Then you may be gluten intolerant or have a gluten allergy!
About 3 million Americans have a gluten allergy, which is about 1 in 133 people. Another large portion of the population is sensitive to gluten, meaning that they are not able to digest gluten properly and experience some of the negative effects of gluten without having an allergic reaction.
When you’re trying to determine whether you are gluten intolerant, it’s important to understand what gluten is and how it affects you.
What is Gluten?
Gluten is the common name for proteins found in wheat, rye, and barley. These proteins include wheatberries, durum, emmer, semolina, spelt, farina, farro, graham, khorasan wheat and einkorn. Gluten acts like glue and is used as a binding agent in many foods, and recipes, even ones you may not expect. Anything from salad dressings, to baked goods, to certain vitamins and supplements can contain gluten.
How Does Gluten Affect You?
Gluten affects everyone differently. Your reaction to gluten will depend largely on whether you are allergic to gluten or simply sensitive to it.
Allergic to Gluten:
When you are allergic to gluten, you are considered to be diagnosed with Celiac’s disease. Celiac’s disease is an autoimmune disorder that affects genetically predisposed people by damaging their intestines when they ingest gluten and gluten-containing foods. Essentially, when you eat gluten, your immune system responds by attacking the tiny villi that line your intestines and help you digest foods. If those villi are damaged, they are not able to absorb nutrients properly into your body.
If it goes untreated, Celiac’s disease can lead to other autoimmune disorders and even more serious health conditions in the future, like Type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, dermatitis, anemia, osteoporosis, infertility, neurological disorders like epilepsy and migraines, and intestinal cancers.
Sensitive to Gluten:
If you are sensitive to gluten, your body responds in a similar way to gluten, but causes less damage, meaning your intestines will likely become irritated or inflamed instead of being damaged.
Gluten sensitivity can cause headaches, anxiety, depression, brain fog, ADHD, low immunity, dental issues, skin blemishes, hormonal imbalances and adrenal issues, sore and achy joints, and fatigue.
Benefits of Going Gluten-Free
The only cure for Celiac’s disease and gluten sensitivity is following a gluten-free diet. Fortunately, in addition to eliminating the symptoms of gluten intolerance, going gluten-free is very beneficial for your health.
Overall Diet Improves
Coincidently, many foods that contain gluten are also highly processed, and contain other chemicals and additives that aren’t doing your body any good. Just by reducing your consumption of these foods, you are improving your health on multiple levels.
Many people that cut out gluten begin to focus on more whole foods, especially fruits and vegetables. This increases your fiber intake, your vitamin and mineral content and your consumption of lower calorie foods, which can lead to healthy weight loss.
Mental Clarity and Improved Focus
One of the biggest reasons people who are gluten intolerant experience neurological issues is that there is a protein commonly found in gluten-containing foods called gliadin that is very similar to protein found in your brain. When your immune system attacks this protein, it is not able to distinguish between gliadin and the protein found in your brain and it ends up attacking your brain proteins as well. Eliminating foods that contain gliadin therefore improves the overall health of your brain.
Most foods that contain gluten are also high in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates not the ideal food for improved brain function, fats are. When you reduce high-carbohydrate foods and swap them for fresh foods and good fats, you’re feeding your brain what it really needs to grow and function properly.
Increased Energy and Endurance
As we talked earlier, gluten intolerance can cause fatigue, adrenal issues, hormonal imbalances and achy joints. When you reduce gluten, it can lead to increased energy, and reduced pain in your joints, improving your overall feeling of well-being. You can imagine the effects that increased energy and stamina can have on just about every aspect of your life.
Tips for Going Gluten-Free
Many of you know that I have been following a gluten-free diet for about 6 years now because of my own gluten sensitivity. When I talk to people about all the foods that contain gluten, I often get the question,
“What CAN you eat?”
And the answer is actually, a lot. The easiest way to look at eating gluten-free is not to focus on what you can’t have, but rather, focus on what you can eat. Modify your thinking to know what foods are safe and how you can expand your meal plans around those dishes.
For example, I know I can’t eat regular pasta, and I could make gluten-free pasta and essentially have the same meal, but instead, I’ll make vegetable noodles. That way, I still enjoy a delicious meal and get the added benefits of getting more vegetables. Check out 3 Pastas, 3 Ways for more ideas about how to transform your meals.
Another way to look at gluten-free eating is substitution. Essentially, all you have to do is consider what meal you want to eat, and dissect the ingredients to figure out if everything included is safe to eat. Narrow down the gluten-containing ingredients and replace them with gluten-free ingredients. Going back to the pasta example, instead of making vegetable noodles, you can replace them with gluten-free noodles. These are most easily found at grocery stores and are made with other grains that are considered gluten-free.
I used this method a lot when I want to make a meal that really can’t easily be replaced by another food altogether. For example, if I wanted to make sloppy joes, or grilled cheese sandwiches, it would be very difficult to replace the bread with another food or to eat the meal without bread. In this case, I try to find the best gluten-free bread I can for a reasonable price. My favorite breads are Schar’s Multigrain Gluten-Free Bread and Rudi’s Multi-Grain Gluten-Free Bread.
CAUTION: A word of caution when buying “gluten-free” foods…Many companies that want to promote their foods as ‘gluten-free’ want to gain the benefits of interest in this market, but don’t want to spend extra time, effort, and money necessary to produce a quality product. What they do is replace gluten with another binding agent that, unfortunately, is often genetically modified or artificial. Just be careful when buying foods that are promoted as gluten-free, especially ones that are cheap, to make sure you’re not trading gluten for even less nutritious foods.
To Go Gluten-Free or To Not Go Gluten-Free, That Is The Question…
Whether or not you choose to go gluten-free is up to you and strongly dependent on whether your body can handle digesting gluten. There are those that will say that everyone can benefit from going gluten-free, and that may be the case. I think that there are some great benefits you can get from whole foods that do include gluten if you can tolerate it, so cutting it out may not be the best decision for everyone.
The best way to tell if you are gluten intolerant is to try it. Try cutting out gluten for a short period of time and see if any of the common symptoms you experience go away. You may find that you feel amazing and don’t want to go back to eating gluten, or you may find that you feel no different. Personally, I started to just reduce the amount of gluten I ate and started feeling amazing! I wasn’t sick anymore and my stomach didn’t hurt every time I ate. I felt more energetic and focused and knew it’s what my body needed.
I eventually got tested for allergies and found that I am intolerant to gluten but I don’t have Celiac’s Disease. Though for me, that doesn’t change my decision to cut out gluten entirely. The only time I become lax on this rule is if I am eating out and something I eat is breaded or made with gluten in a way that isn’t obvious and every time I eat it anyway, I regret it. I do try to remove the breading or reduce the gluten as much as possible, but it’s not always an option in every situation.
Now, there are some foods I can eat like spelt or more natural forms of gluten-containing foods that I don’t seem to have as much trouble digesting, but whether or not you feel it, it can still be affecting your body in the less obvious ways we discussed earlier.
Going gluten-free is a totally personal choice and it’s something you can easily try to see if it makes a difference for you. I recommend at least trying it because it can have a huge impact on your health and your daily life. If you try it, let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you!