Think You’re Gluten Sensitive? You’ll Want to Read This First.

The more studies that are done, the deeper we realize the problem with gluten is complex. Gluten sensitivity is simply the manifestation of a much deeper imbalance. The spectrum of being gluten sensitive ranges from Celiac disease where the body is attacking itself when gluten is eaten to developing health annoyances when gluten is eaten.

Since we are seeing a growing number of people who can’t tolerate eating gluten-full foods, we need to get to the bottom of what’s going wrong. I mean, why are gluten products causing problems but not rice or quinoa? What makes gluten so special?

In this article, here’s what we’re going to cover:

• What gluten is
• Which flours have gluten in them
• Other gluten-full products
• Potential symptoms of gluten sensitivity
• Theories of why you may be sensitive to gluten
• Why you should be careful with cutting out gluten
• What to do if you suspect you are sensitive to gluten

Sidenote: If you think you may sensitive to gluten, read to the end to hear about a tool for you to use to find out if you are.

If you prefer to listen to this article to give your eyes a break, you can listen to it here:

What is Gluten, Anyways?

Before we go any further, we first have to understand what gluten is.

Gluten is a naturally-occurring protein in wheat.

If you have ever baked homemade bread, you know you have to knead the dough several times. Kneading helps to stretch and build up the gluten in the dough so that when the bread is baking, the gluten holds the shape of the bread.

If you have had sourdough bread before, you can thank gluten for that tasty golden crust.

Since gluten is a protein, it is considered to be a nutrient.

For those of you who know what a protein is, bear with me for a sec. For those who don’t know, you can think of a protein as a bunch of connected Legos. Each Lego is an amino acid that pairs up with different amino acids to make a protein.

When we eat proteins, our bodies break down the proteins into amino acids so that the amino acids can help build muscles, skin, bone, parts of our blood, hormones, and even vitamins. Very similar to how Legos build up many things, amino acids build up many things in our bodies.

Gluten’s amino acids are not excluded from these roles.

Wheat, the source of gluten, has many other nutrients like:

• B vitamins (the vitamins commonly associated with energy)
• Minerals like calcium, potassium, phosphorous
• A little bit of healthy fat
• Fiber if you eat whole wheat

Too Many Flours – Which One’s Which?

If you buy whole wheat flour at the store, you are getting the whole wheat grounded up.

If you buy flour that is partial wheat, the fibrous outer layer of the wheat grain has been removed. This is because the fiber in whole wheat makes baking items more dry and crumbly. All-purpose flour is an example of partial wheat flour.

Also, if your flour says bleached on the label, then it has been bleached white with some kind of chemical agent. If it says unbleached flour, it has been bleached naturally and will have a yellow tint to it.

The reason why flour was bleached in the first place was for marketing purposes. White flour was more appealing to customers than yellowy or brown flour.

Lastly, you will also see variations of types of flours from bread flour to cake or pastry flour. The differences here are in the amount of gluten present in the flour. Bread flours have a lot of gluten present because the gluten has to be strong to keep the shape of baked bread.

Pastry and cake flours have the least amount of gluten in them because pastries and cakes are more delicate and fine. Too much gluten in the flour will make these delicacies more dense and hard instead of light and fluffy.

Enough Gluten to Go Around

Flour is not the only product that has gluten. There are several other products that contain gluten naturally. This includes barley (which also means beer), rye, triticale, farro, malt (heard of a malted milkshake?), Brewer’s Yeast, wheat starch, and semolina and durum (used to make pasta and noodles).

Other products that use gluten as an additive for thickening include sauces like soy sauce and gravies. Oats are not made with gluten, but they may be contaminated with gluten because many who process oats also process gluten cereals. Consider oats to have gluten unless the package specifically says gluten-free.

If you are curious about all the foods that may have gluten, check out the Celiac Disease Foundation’s list of gluten-containing foods.

The Rising Problem with Gluten

One of the reasons why a gluten-free diet is trending today is because more and more people believe they are sensitive to gluten.

Symptoms of gluten sensitivity are said to be:

• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Bloating
• Abdominal pain
• Nausea
• Headaches
• “Foggy mind”
• Rashes or eczema
• Inflamed skin
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Tiredness
• Arm and/or leg numbness
• Muscle and/or joint pain

As you can see, most of the symptoms above are symptoms that cannot be measured directly. And many times gluten sensitivity is self-diagnosed.

>>>> This is a tricky area because of two things. 1) There could be something else in someone’s diet that could be causing their symptoms. 2) The mind is a powerful organ, where if you truly believe something your mind can make it seem real. This is what we call the placebo effect.

So, there are those who are 100% right about their sensitivity to gluten and those who may not actually be sensitive to gluten. Instead, they may actually be sensitive to something else in wheat or their diet.

Sidenote: keep reading to hear about a tool that may help you find out if it is actually gluten causing you problems.

Why You Might Be Gluten Sensitive

There are a bunch of theories right now of why there is a growing problem with gluten. Unfortunately, none of the theories have been clearly proven yet. This might be because there are multiple causes of gluten sensitivities, or because we don’t quite understand yet what’s going on.

Here are a few of the potential causes of gluten sensitivities:

Theory One

The use of the herbicide Roundup on crops has risen over the past 40 years. There is an active ingredient in Roundup (glycophosate) that may be blocking gluten from doing what it needs to do to be digested well. As a result, an intolerance to gluten is developed.

Theory Two

Glycophosate may also be destroying your good gut bacteria. And as we talked about before, your gut bacteria is essential to being healthy.

So, after many attacks by antibiotics, stress, and chemicals (like Roundup) in your diet, your good gut bacteria weakens. As your bacteria weakens, gluten can be taken in by your body before it’s fully broken down. This causes your immune system to label gluten as a “bad guy” and will attack it every time gluten you eat gluten.

Theory Three

Wheat is highly processed to make white flour. During processing, many components of wheat are removed, and then some are added back to make better flour for baking and cooking. This processing makes flour imbalanced in nutrients and much different than it’s natural form. As a result, our body doesn’t recognize processed flour as wheat anymore, so it reacts every time you eat it.

Theory Four

To make bread products with flour, you normally have to ferment the bread dough with yeast for 12-24 hours. This is not an efficient process, so commercialized yeast that can ferment the dough in 30-60 minutes is now used to make bread products. As a consequence, the yeast may not be able to fully break down gluten in 30-60 minutes. Gluten that isn’t fully broken down, then, can cause your body to think it’s a “bad guy” and attack it.

Theory Five

Supposedly, gluten intolerance can be a consequence of a yeast infection. If you have a yeast infection, the yeast can take over your small intestine, which can weaken your good gut bacteria. And as we just talked about above, having weak gut bacteria can allow gluten to be taken into your body before it’s fully broken down.

Theory Six

Contrary to Theory Five, a gluten intolerance could be *confused for* a yeast infection. Often gluten products have yeast in them too, so you could be reacting to yeast instead of gluten. The baked products without yeast (i.e. cakes, pies, and cookies) have lots of simple sugars in them, and yeast feeds on simple sugars.

Sidenote: Between Theory Five and Six, no one really knows whether a gluten sensitivity can lead to yeast overgrowth, yeast overgrowth can lead to gluten sensitivity, or both. More research is needed here.

Theory Seven

Another lesser-known theory is based on a candida infection. Candida (a type of bacteria) has a similar protein to gliadin, which is a protein in wheat. So, when you have a candida infection, the body also attacks gliadin because it looks similar to candida.

What We Do Know

We are seeing a rise in people being sensitive to gluten. This is especially true in women more than men.

Doctors and researchers do not exactly know what is causing gluten sensitivities yet. But, research is showing that it has most likely something to do your gut bacteria.

Don’t Go Gluten-Free Just Because

If gluten in wheat wasn’t a source of necessary vitamins and minerals, it wouldn’t be so bad that many are going gluten-free.

But, many who go gluten-free miss out on nutrients that are hard to get from other foods. Remember those nutrients I listed above? Those are the nutrients I’m talking about missing out on.

This is why only those who are truly sensitive to gluten should remove gluten from their diet.

If you do remove gluten, you will need to plan ahead to make sure you are eating other sources of B vitamins and minerals. Not getting enough of these nutrients may be causing problems too.

If you need help finding a list of foods with these nutrients, feel free to jump over to the contact page and shoot me an email.

Are You Affected by Gluten?

Since there is a rise in gluten sensitivity, you may want to know for yourself if you are affected by gluten. So, I have put together a Gluten Email Challenge that you can do to see if your body responds negatively to gluten.

Now, I want to be clear here. The Gluten Email Challenge is in no way diagnosing you with gluten sensitivity. Go see a dietitian or doctor who works in this field if you want to be diagnosed.

This Gluten Email Challenge is to help you see if gluten is not allowing you to be and feel your best.

In a few days, I will be emailing out a guide to help you see if eating gluten is causing you to feel less than your best. 

If you join the challenge, here is what you’re signing up for with this challenge…

• 3 weeks of avoiding gluten & 1 week of reintroduction
• Guides on how to go gluten-free, eating out, reduce your symptoms, and how to reintroduce gluten correctly
• List of gluten-free sites you can find recipes on
• Journal to write down symptoms
• Support from me throughout the next 4 weeks
• Walk-through on how to interpret your Gluten Email Challenge results
• What you need to know if you need to go gluten-free

If this is something you are interested in, fill out your information below to join the Challenge.

***We will communicate via email for this challenge so if you join, make sure you confirm your entry via the email I send you after filling out the form below!

Remember that this is not to diagnose you, in any way, with a gluten sensitivity.

But, if your body is truly responding badly to gluten, you should not be eating it, whether you’ve been officially diagnosed or not.

I also want to say that it’s so, so, so important that you approach the Challenge without a bias against gluten.

If you believe gluten is evil and have strong negative feelings toward it, your body may respond negatively to gluten because of your negative thoughts and not because you actually have a problem with gluten. Again, the mind is very powerful.

So, to make sure that you take the Gluten Challenge with an open-mind and have unbiased results, take a moment to check your mind and heart on what you think about gluten. Reread this post if you need to remind yourself of the good parts of gluten.

And remember that it’s probably not gluten’s fault for the rise in negative reactions we are now seeing. Instead, it’s most likely the imbalance of our gut bacteria that is causing gluten to become the “bad guy”.

I hope you join me on the Gluten Email Challenge!

For those who have joined, I look forward to helping you find out if you’re sensitive to gluten.