Is Gluten Really That Bad For My Health?

While one food group, macronutrient, or variable can rarely ever be singled out and demonized, some of the research around gluten is awfully intriguing when it comes to keeping people fat, sick, and stressed.

As a health coach and functional medicine practitioner, I rarely point to one single issue that is causing the person's illness or chronically poor health, aside from smoking, drinking too much, or being glued to a couch or office chair.

But looking at some of the research in humans and animals in regard to gluten and other processed foods, it is hard to look away from what it does to their blood sugar, inflammation, and overall gut health the longer they consume and the more of it they eat.

I rarely, if ever, don't see a client or patient improve in regard to overall wellbeing, energy levels, sleep, hormone improvement, or lab markers when removing processed foods, or gluten containing foods for some inflammatory diagnoses.

This article is a very interesting one where researchers looked at mice and what happened to their glucose, insulin levels, and inflammatory markers when being fed a gluten-containing and gluten-free diet.

(It is important to note that gluten issues should not simply be attributed to "gaining weight" or "increasing fat mass". Most of the time, obese individuals exhibit a mysterious layer of protection from chronic disease because of their fat accumulation. Often, the patients taken off guard with their cancer, heart disease, or autoimmune diagnosis are the ones who "have never been fat in their life.")

Stop looking at "body fat" to gauge health.

The answers are in specific lab markers, not necessarily in the mirror.

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