My struggle with gluten
There is also the ‘I’ who loves the intoxicating smell of freshly baked pastries and could eat through a mountain of baked goods given half the chance. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- You see, when you mix flour and water together, it forms a sort-of-glue and this can wreak havoc on your gut. Your coiled up intestines slowly become caked on the insides with this almost impossible-to-shift gunk, which not only slows down gut transit time (hello constipation), but impairs the absorption of vitamins and minerals too (fatigue, mental fogginess).
- The problem came when I found that Baby Number 2 was reacting to the undigested gluten particles in my breastmilk. The gluten had to go. That was a little over three years ago and now I’m starting to flounder somewhat.
The inspiration for today’s column came from an unlikely source: a study I read about hypocrites. In a paper written by Yale psychologist Jillian Jordan and her colleagues, it was argued that when we don’t practice what we preach, we mess up our signal to others about who we really are – and that’s why people despise hypocrites. Apparently it something to do with evolution. The solution? For us to tell people what we think, but while highlighting our own foibles.
And with that, I come to my own struggle with gluten.
As regular readers of this column will know, I am not a fan of gluten. By ‘I’, I mean the rational human being with the background in nutritional medicine. However, there is also the ‘I’ who loves the intoxicating smell of freshly baked pastries and could eat through a mountain of baked goods given half the chance (yes, I was a fat kid).
Striking a balance was hard at best, but I did, indulging a couple of times a week at best – a practice I suggest to my patients, when complete elimination isn’t necessary.
You see, when you mix flour and water together, it forms a sort-of-glue and this can wreak havoc on your gut. Your coiled up intestines slowly become caked on the insides with this almost impossible-to-shift gunk, which not only slows down gut transit time (hello constipation), but impairs the absorption of vitamins and minerals too (fatigue, mental fogginess).
The problem came when I found that Baby Number 2 was reacting to the undigested gluten particles in my breastmilk. The gluten had to go. That was a little over three years ago and now I’m starting to flounder somewhat.
I now have three children aged five and under, and while I know the importance of regular, healthy meals better than anyone, when it gets to 8pm and the easiest thing to whip up is a sandwich, even I have started to fall short on occasion. Two weeks on, Baby Number 3 is waking up more even more than she used to and I’ve developed a little rash on my forearm. I know it’s the wheat and exactly what I need to do, but it somehow seems to be even more elusive than the eight glasses of water that we all know we need to be drinking.
So today I’ve come up with a strategy: to plan my meals (down to when I’ll be eating them), to eat dinner with the kids and have some hummus or porridge on standby if things really go down the pan. It’s not cool, but it is easy. What simple change could you make today?
