Is Wheat Killing You?

Wheat may be killing us gradually and insidiously.

Also, wheat intolerance and/or other food sensitivity may have put many folks in mental institutions. And what do they get fed while in those mental institutions? Right, lots of wheat.

Many years ago one of my patients sat across from me in my office and told me her story. As a child she had been abused and by age 12 she wound up in a mental institution. Her learning skills were severely limited and she was quite deficient in math.

She languished in that mental institution for years until her compassionate sister learned of the accomplishments of Dr. Jonathan Wright in helping folks overcome severe health problems through nutritional expertise and uncovering their food sensitivities or intolerances.

When this patient, now in her fifties, stopped eating the food that her body could not tolerate, she began to recover. Her foggy thinking began to clear up. She felt much better, lost weight and had more energy.

Best of all she was able to function in society again. She lived with her sister and took care of running the household including mastering math well enough to take care of the family checkbook and finances.

Her story brought tears to my eyes then and still does today. But her victory as an over comer still thrills me today. Her story should give us all encouragement to look for those hidden sources of substances that damage our health.

One of those sources may be a food or foods that we eat constantly day in and day out, even believing that those foods are really good for us.

Food can damage our bodies via several different mechanisms. We easily recognize acute allergic reactions like eating shell fish and immediately developing a rash or throat swelling or other life threatening or irritating symptoms.

If our reaction to a food occurs one to two days after eating it, it becomes more difficult to recognize. That reaction may still be mediated through the immune system and so be labeled a delayed allergic response.

But food can damage our tissues via non-allergic responses as well and some interesting, fairly recent research has revealed that lectins in wheat can induce severe tissue damage to our intestines, brain and other tissues.

For years I have noticed that wheat may profoundly affect the functioning of the brain in some people, causing irritability, grouchiness, negativity, depression and even severe reactions like tantrums and angry reactions. At that time I thought that the brain was the target organ of an allergic reaction.

Now I am realizing that the lectins in wheat or other grains from the grass family (oats, barley, rye, spelt, kamut and even rice) may be the greater problem since lectins can cross the blood-brain barrier and attach to the nervous tissue causing damage.  Could avoiding food containing lectins prevent such disorders as mental illness and senile dementia and other degenerative conditions?

It seems to me it’s worth a trial off of the high lectin food to see if we notice any changes. Wouldn’t it be a shame to suffer so much from simply eating a food that doesn’t agree with our bodies?

The majority of us have great difficulty digesting and breaking down these extremely small tough substances in wheat.

Then they slip into the tissues and accumulate there inducing inflammation, a reaction of our bodies to foreign substances. This chronic inflammation leads to damage to tissues which manifests as a painful, debilitating disease process.

Do you have an “itis” problem, like arthritis, tendonitis or bursitis? Any disease label that ends in “itis” refers to inflammation. Could that “itis” be due to constantly ingesting those damaging lectins in wheat and other grains? Possibly.

Other disease processes may also be linked to lectins including: atherosclerosis, hypertension, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, adult onset diabetes and obesity.

To help understand the lectin problem better, read these articles too:

What Are Lectins?

Do Lectins Affect you?

Blessings,

Dr. Jo