34: Why You Should Ditch Gluten And Eat These Foods Instead with Jackie Bowker

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We know that the gut and the brain were one organ, just one grew up and one grew down. Because of that there is a lot of clinical evidence that shows neurological imbalances and dysregulation from eating gluten. So we’re seeing a lot of attention deficit, especially in children, we’re seeing a lot of hyperactivity, anxiety, overwhelm depression. So these symptoms can be coming from the environment. And they are very much related to the food that you eat. But there’s two things, it’s not necessarily just the food, it is in combination with what is going on with your gut lining. Because if you just eliminate the wheat products, and you don’t address the quality of your gut lining, or any imbalance in good bacteria to bad bacteria, then you aren’t able to heal properly, like from a root cause specifically, and we want you to heal for good.

00:58

Hi, there, welcome to the feel better now, podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Bowker. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future, in your health, in your career, in your relationships for both yourself. And for those around you just one small action step at a time.

01:21

With so much love and gratitude to be your guide. Let’s get started.

01:33

I’m Jackie back. How do I know if I’m allergic to gluten. I love sharing the research around gluten. And I’ll talk specifically about wheat and the protein that’s in there. So to break this down, the latest research that we have around wheat is that humans are not able to tolerate it. That means that when we eat something and it passes through the esophagus, and then into the stomach, and then through our organs, and it lands in the small intestine, what happens when we eat wheat products is that we know we’ve got microscopic evidence from clinical research studies that show that the gut lining of all humans is damaged from wheat, it’s just in the size of the protein molecule is simply too big for us to be able to tolerate. And what it does is it irritates the gut lining. So imagine the gut, the intestines being like a tube like a really long doughnut, or a sausage. So we want that lining to remain really nice and healed and sealed. And what happens is that it’s got, you may have heard me use this analogy before, imagine a coffee filter that has tiny, tiny holes in it. And what that wheat protein does that protein that’s too big for us to be able to tolerate is it just aggravates it aggravates those, the lining and those little tiny porous holes just become bigger. What happens when they become bigger is that the things that are inside this tube that are supposed to stay inside the tube and make their way out of the body as waste product, the things inside the tube are able to make their way through that gaping hole that should have been just a tiny perforation. And now it’s a larger hole into the bloodstream. And that’s why I tell people that no amount of healthy eating, you know, no amount of broccoli or raspberries or chicken breast is supposed to make its way into the bloodstream. What happens then is the body goes into high alert, the Army is ready to defend itself because its job is to keep you alive. So the Army goes and goes that raspberry is not supposed to be there, I’m gonna put all my armed forces around it. And I am going to essentially create a immune storm. And what happens is you are sent your body essentially determines raspberries as foreign. And the next time you eat raspberries and the next time and the next time you become very sensitive to raspberries. And you shouldn’t be because it all starts in the gut and keeping that gut lining. Beautiful and healed and sealed and what to do that we need to remove inflammatory foods we remove foods that irritate the gut lining wheat is one sugar is another we know the top inflammatory foods, gluten, dairy, soy peanuts, and I always forget so you know legumes say because they can be very irritating to the gut lining that I mentioned sugar I think I do. So in specifically the question around I want to get to the second part of the group. How do you know if you’re gluten intolerant? So that’s the first part I want people to understand that humans in with wheat, the protein in wheat in its current form, no human is able to tolerate it. Now whether my intestine lining cells regenerate in a few hours and my gut lining is all nice and healed and sealed again, or whether yours don’t heal and seal for eight months. We don’t know because we’re not in there with a microscope looking at what

05:00

happens when you ingest this food? I mean, there’s no, there’s no study that exists that has done that. I mean, that would be very, that would be a very intense study, I would, I would love to know that on that.

05:10

One day, I would love to do that study. So the point is, what usually happens with people that are eating wheat products is that they are having them on a more regular basis. So you might have your toast in the morning. And then you might have some Acosta for dinner. And the next morning, you might have some cereal. And so there’s this there’s this chronic assault where it’s just irritating, irritating, irritating, irritated, and there’s no chance for it to heal. So we don’t want that. So how do you know if you’re gluten intolerant? So this is a bit of a trick question, Jane. So the first thing is, I always say this, some people have a digestive reaction, they might get bloated, they might have tummy pains. I know when my son eats gluten, he’s really severely intolerant to it. And he knows he knows straight now he tells me, Oh, I had mom, I had an Oreo, and I’ve got really bad stomach pain. And you know what, sometimes it’s good to let that happen. Because then they connect, they have a heightened awareness of their body. And it’s really, really important for us to be aware of the messages that our bodies is sending us. So I always advise if you have a digestive reaction to food, notice what that reaction was, it may or may not be because of that food, because there may be other you know, the perfect storm going on in your gut. But it’s always great to to just note to yourself at the moment, until I’ve done some sort of gut work, I am not really I don’t do well off, you know, this food or that food or wheat. So if you have a digestive reaction from wheat, that’s one of the most common things that we see so many pain, bloating, or some sort of change in your stools like diarrhea or constipation. The thing is, there are other reactions that are seemingly unrelated. So we know that the gut and the brain were one organ, just one grew up and one grew down. Because of that there is a lot of clinical evidence that shows neurological imbalances and dysregulation from eating gluten. So we’re seeing a lot of attention deficit, especially in children, we’re seeing a lot of hyperactivity, anxiety, overwhelm depression. So these symptoms can be coming from the environment. And they are very much related to the food that you eat. So but there’s two things, it’s not necessarily just the food, it is in combination with what is going on with your gut lining, because if you just eliminate the wheat products, and you don’t address the quality of your gut lining, or any imbalance in good bacteria, bad bacteria, then you aren’t able to heal properly, like from a root cause specific, effective and we want you healed for good. So they’re probably the main symptoms that you will see, I see a lot in the clinic, I see a lot of joint pain from gluten, and from wheat products. And what is happening there. And you have to be especially careful of this, if you’ve got any autoimmune markers at all, is that the gluten is so inflammatory, it actually goes and attacks your joints. So often, you know, we’re seeing things that you know, when we put the person on an anti inflammatory diet, one of the biggest anti inflammatory foods is Wait, is that that joint pain just goes away. And so that person isn’t really thinking, Oh, I’ve got this joint pain, you know, or, you know, I’m unable to extend and contract my fingers very well, it must be the wheat. But we unfortunately, that’s not mainstream thinking we’re not thinking like that. So that’s my view on the impact of eating an inflammatory food. One of the things about wheat products that is really good to know is that so there’s a school of thought that we know that the protein is too big.

08:59

What we also know is that there’s a lot of glyphosate and pesticides that are on these products. So it’s sort of part that it’s too big, but it’s also part that we’re ingesting all of the these chemicals that the human body simply wasn’t designed to deal with. So it’s just adding more and more stress or toxic load on the body that we then have to deal with. That’s a reason that if you’re eating rice, I always recommend like a basmati rice because when it rains, it’s the only rice where the air will wash off the pesticides of the other Rice’s they actually absorb the pesticides into the rice when they’re growing in the rice fields. Great way to eat rice is to buy organic basmati rice and to cook it and then eat it the next day because it actually changes from a carbohydrate very high in sugars is going to create a blood sugar response in the body to more of a fiber what we call a

10:00

Resistance start where the body, the bowel is it beats becoming food for the bowel instead. So thank you, Jane for such a fabulous question. So a follow up question from Jane. So we’ll just go back to the wheat gluten rice question. Can the rice you mentioned be reheated the next day or do you have to eat it cold, I was literally having this conversation with somebody about potato this morning. So it can absolutely be reheated resistant starch to things like white potato, rice, green bananas, as in firm bananas, and what happens is, so obviously, you don’t need to heat a banana. But if you’re eating the firm bananas, they act much differently in the body to the soft ones. With the brown speckles that you’re often just making banana bread with as as we are. If you are eating banana, pie it as firm as possible because it’s going to feed the microbes in your bowel. If you’re eating a soft banana, you are going to want to make sure you’ve got good blood sugar control or to pair it with something it’s going to buffer that sugar so you might want to have it like after you’ve eaten a protein and a fat so that because you’re going to get a big sugar hit from a soft banana. So I would always make sure that it’s paired with other food protein and fiber fiber by way of like you know veggies so that you can buffer out that blood sugar response but my best advice is to eat firm bananas and get to like them like train yourself to like a firm banana the ones with the more green on the skin with rice and white potato cook and call and then reheating is fine so that if you’re eating them if you’re making a batch rice, wash all the starch off you’ll see that the creamy opaque white liquid wash as much of that off and always wash your rice really well my mom taught me this. It’s very very important you know I then learned it 40 years later in functional medicine school. So it’s really important to wash the rice thoroughly because you are you know you’re washing off contaminants that the body doesn’t why give your body extra load if you don’t need it. Then what once you’ve washed the rice and cooked it wash all the starch off and then I would wait till it completely cools. So the reason I say overnight and then have it again is because often like you don’t really want to wait like four hours or something for it to completely cool. So wait for it to completely cool and then reheat it again that will not change it once it’s a resistant starch it will stay a resistant starch so it’s acting more like a fiber it’s still going to have a small blood sugar response but it’s changed from a carbohydrate to a fiber. Yay we love that. And it’s great because right and have you potatoes and eat them too. So I always say if you’re going to eat white potato, why not have a potato salad, make the potato and then have the next day or what we do is we make a huge batch of roast veggies and I just love it then I eat dinner quite early. I have a long gap overnight to just help my body reset and then often will make a huge batch of roast veggies and then I have mine the next day for my lunch so I have my beets and my love the Hawaiian sweet potatoes the one the sweet potato with the purple on the inside they go crunchy in the airfryer carrots, sweet all our broccolini cauliflower all of those a big bowl of those with a salmon or a lean piece of protein is just one of my favorite lunches ever and I get so excited because my husband makes a huge batch of beetroot for me beetroot chips and I get to eat them the next day.

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It’s funny the kids don’t like beetroot so a lot of Patriot It was so good for the gallbladder.

13:40

If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career in your relationships, and I am so proud of you. And if you want more of the feeling better now so tune in every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Bowker for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered at feel better institute.com/sign up that’s feel better institute.com/sign up but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good. So you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, See you soon here’s to feeling better. Now.

14:40

Jackie