Nope, Just How You Feel... by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!
Hi Molly,
Yes, all my info on the site is VERY up to date. I work on it every day and constantly update. So, there is no bloodwork to go by as to whether you are going to benefit from going gluten free. Diagnosing Gluten Sensitivity is extremely inaccurate and doesn't give you any good information about whether a gluten free diet will benefit you.
You say that you don't feel bad, but you have an autoimmune disease and 2 chronic health problems- hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's. So, you may not 'feel' bad, but your body is saying something entirely different. It's telling you that you have Increased Intestinal Permeability and inflammation enough to allow food proteins to be getting into your bloodstream and cause an inappropriate immune response.
If you feel good, you either:
a) Have REALLY strong adrenals and have compensated well
OR
b) You've become used to not feeling so great- and since no one else feels great either, you've determined that it feels 'normal' to feel 75% instead of 95%
Also, the only reason that a gluten free diet should feel restrictive is if you were eating a processed foods to begin with. It's REALLY REALLY easy to eat a gluten free diet if you just don't eat from packages.
So that tells me that your vegetarian diet may not be as healthy as you think that it is and may be what is contributing to your Hashimoto's!
Gluten, in ALL cases, causes inflammation. It's simply an inflammatory food- and at this point in time, your gut is inflamed. If it weren't, you wouldn't have Hashi's. So, it's ideal to get rid of all inflammatory foods like gluten and other foods in packages.
I hope that I didn't overstep what you wanted to hear but I have a tendency to be blunt and not mince words.... Hope that this helps...
Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune System Queen Functional Medicine Practitioner Immune System
Gluten and then some ... by: Monika
Hi Kerri,
I also have Hashi's (diagnosed about a year ago). I have not been taking any thyroid meds as of yet. I am trying to battle this thing naturally. I was vegan for about four years and recently have been told to re-incorporate meat back into my diet to build my blood and strength. Also, by my TCM doc that my digestion is weak.
I have read a lot about the gluten and autoimmune connection, so I decided to give it a try. As you mentioned to your previous "guest", I don't eat any processed foods, so gluten free is not a big stretch. I just have to moderate which grains I include or not. I have also read some suggestions to go completely grain and refined sugar free (see Dr. Mercola's No Grain Diet book). Do you think that is important, or simply Gluten free might do the trick? what has been your experience with that?
Also, aside from being Gluten free, what other main recommendations would you give to a non medical, natural cure chasing person :)
Thanks for your insights, All the best and happy holidays to you!
Monika
Refined ANYTHING is OUT by: Kerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen!
Hi Monika,
So, those are all really good questions. I am glad that you have begun incorporating animal proteins back in your diet. Since you have 'weak' digestion and got diagnosed with Hashi's despite being on a vegan diet, I would have to conclude that a vegan diet is not 'optimal' for you and it's a good time to consider other options.
Certainly eliminating refined ANYTHING, processed ANYTHING, artificial ANYTHING is essential (I consider refined sugar a 'processed' food already)- and making sure that any animal protein that you eat is organic and ideally pasture-raised. But whether to eliminate grains entirely or not is up to you. I have run the spectrum of diets and did raw vegan for close to a year and HATED it. I gained 15 unwanted pounds and craved sugar all day long.
Since then, I have drifted more and more towards a Paleolithic diet using the Weston A. Price diet as my guide to eating- heavy on animal proteins and fats, lots of fermented foods, raw and/or fermented dairy, lots of vegetables and minimal to moderate use of grains.
While my health was better and I felt good doing that, I've drifted even further towards the almost completely paleo diet of mostly meats, fats, nuts and seeds with minimal vegetables (and almost always fermented when I do have them) and minimal dairy. While this may sound CRAZY and completely unhealthy, I feel far better on this 'unhealthy' diet than I ever did on any other 'healthy' diet (and many many of our ancestors ate like this- most northern people's had no vegetables or fruits except fermented ones for 6 to 8 months out of the year!).
The sugar cravings are gone, I can eat 2 meals a day with a small snack in between and feel better than I ever have.
So, the point of this story is that everyone has to find their own 'optimal' diet and listening to what the 'establishment' has determined to be a 'healthy' diet has probably hurt most of us more than it has helped anyone.
So, you've been the vegan route (one entire end of the scale) and it apparently doesn't suit you as an 'optimal' diet. So, now you know that there is a healthy 'other end of the scale' that is the 'Orthodox Paleo' as one website puts it. Your job is to find out where, exactly, on that scale you feel your best and in which you heal the most and have the best thyroid function.
This will take some time and experimentation, but really you are the only one who will be able to determine whether and how much grains you can eat, whether and how much dairy and animal protein you can eat. But until you begin experimenting, you'll never know!
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is the IDEAL book to help you with that and to help you to rebuild your digestive tract flora and get rid of the Leaky Gut and inflammation. 
