March 2015 Meeting Summary

The Prescott Area Celiac and Gluten Free Support group met at Prescott Public Library on tuesday, March 17th, 2015, from 12-2PM.

The group discussed Breyers Ice Cream. Breyers now has 30 gluten free flavors as denoted by the green gluten free label on the side of the carton next the nutrition info. They are easy to read as they give the pictures of the cartons on their website. 

The group also discussed a new product called "Gluten Cutter" that Linda C. had seen advertised in a drug store ad. The label says: "Eat gluten without the bloat". The website supposedly has a test to determine: "How sensitive to gluten are you?"!

Linda C. commented that she feels like GF awareness is going backwards in a way. Will other people start saying, "Why can't you just take one of those pills to cut gluten and eat it anyway?" Will the world just see this the same as lactose intolerance and consume gluten all the while damaging their bodies and immune systems?

We have come so far in diagnosis and recognition of Celiac and non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity. Linda feels that this attitude may be moving things in the wrong direction. http://glutencutter.com/

(See below for Linda's entire presentation from the meeting...)

Our immune system comes from several places in our bodies but, more than 70% in our gut! As Hypocrates said more than 2000 years ago, “All disease begins in the gut”.

"I have been reading a book by Dr. Susan Blum MD called, “The Immune System Recovery Plan”. Susan is a leading authority on the immune system and autoimmune diseases, and a functional medicine Dr. She says, “Functional medicine first looks at the gut when it comes to any chronic disease”. Much like during Hypocrites’ time, except we have testing tools that basically spell out what disorders we have. Dr. Blum healed herself from Hashimotos Thyroiditis with the protocol she outlines in her book.

She clearly spells out what your immune system does and what causes autoimmune disease. She says, “Antibodies are molecules normally made by your immune cells to attack and destroy foreign invaders, but in autoimmune diseases, these antibodies are misdirected and attack and damage your own tissue. Many of these conditions are chronic, debilitating, and potentially life-threatening. In fact, autoimmune diseases are one of the top ten leading causes of death in girls and in women up to sixty-four years of age.

She says, “the immune system in your gut is faced with the task of clearing out the bad agents while keeping what your body requires to stay nourished and healthy. It also has the job of repairing any damage caused by these foreign substances and any reactions they’ve caused in your body, such as inflammation or infection.”

She lists the potential triggers of Autoimmune disease as: Gluten, Chronic Stress, Hormone Imbalance, Imbalance of good bacteria in your gut, Food allergies, Toxins and infections. Many of you remember the talk I gave last year on food allergies and testing. In chapter 2, Dr. Blum tells us that you must make sure you get the right tests. She states that most Allergy specialists will only test for the IGE allergic reactions. Positive IgE tests are only for hives, swelling of the tongue, or difficulty breathing. But, the other kind of allergy testing involves IgG antibodies, which play a role in causing immune-complex disease. This is when the food gets into your bloodstream and your immune system makes antibodies that attach to the food, making something called an antigen-antibody complex. It can settle out into your tissues and cause local inflammation and damage, which then results in an even bigger immune attack to this inflamed tissue. Your joints are very susceptible to deposits of immune complexes, and this is believed to be one of the Main mechanisms behind the development of rheumatoid arthritis.

Because evidence suggests that all people with autoimmune diseases have leaky gut syndrome, it is likely you are having immune reactions to the food you eat.

On the topic of,  balance of good bacteria, I was stunned to learn in an e-summit on gut health that we are only 10% human and the rest is bacteria! For a Healthy Immune system, your body is dependent on a good relationship with the beneficial bacteria that live in your digestive tract.

Dr. Blum states that we are fighting germs by sterilizing our environment too much, which has caused us to lose our good gut bacteria.Several years ago I went to a meeting where the Arizona Department of water quality stated that they are now finding Triclosan in our drinking water!!! Triclosan is the most popular chemical that is in our antibacterial hand soaps. This was probably 8 to 10 years ago, imagine how much of the toxic stuff is in our water now! Think about this when you go to wash your hands in a public bathroom, how much dangerous chemicals are you washing down the drain. Some studies have shown that it takes at least 20 minutes for the chemicals to kill some of the bacteria.

What do we do anyway, rub it on our hands and immediately wash it down the drain, where the only bacteria it is killing is the good bacteria in our guts, when the water gets recycled and put back into our drinking water supply! What did our ancestors do to wash their hands; they had lye soap that they made from all natural ingredients. And they used plenty of clear water to clean up. I myself just wash with water for 2 choruses of “Happy Birthday to you.”

In a side note of interest, in the Living Without magazine a couple of years ago in an article on food allergies in children, when they were tested they found that the kids who had the most food allergies had the highest levels of Triclosan in their blood! Anytime you see “antibacterial” on any household product, beware of Triclosan.

Now, I realize that we have a lot more dangerous and potentially fatal germs than our ancestors did, but what does the hospital use to kill germs? Mostly alcohol as in the rubbing or 70% kind! Alcohol is much more earth friendly than toxic chemicals and it kills most germs on contact. My family and I buy the baby wipes from Costco in bulk and I put ¼ cup of alcohol into the bags when I open it. I store it in the car and when I come out of a store I wipe my hands with an alcohol wipe EVERY TIME I come back to my car. Don’t forget your steering wheel and all levers and buttons you touch in your car once in a while. 

Auto Immune diseases affect 24 million Americans with many names such as; Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, MS, IBD or Colitis, diabetes, hypothyroidism, Hashimotos Thyroiditis, and psoriasis to name a few. There are more than 100 autoimmune diseases, and they can affect our bodies at almost every level. If you have Celiac you have an auto immune condition. Chances are that you either have or will have in the future another autoimmune condition on top of your celiac.

This book is really unique in that on page 24 she tells you the step by step actions to discover if you have an autoimmune disease and then if those tests come back positive she has charts that list the symptoms of each disease like lupus or Hashimotos. Then according to which disease you have the most symptoms of, you can then be tested for that specific disease. A much more cost effective and timely way to go about finding what is ailing you!

To make sure you have a healthy immune system, our bodies are dependent on a good relationship with the beneficial bacteria that live in your digestive tract. Many of you remember a couple of months ago I talked about the Probiotic I take called Colon Care from Garden of Life, I have felt so much better since taking it. I have less allergy symptoms, more regularity, and better digestion even in my stomach. Dr. Tom says those with gluten intolerance should take a probiotic and also prebiotics every day.

We need to make sure we replenish the good bacteria in our gut that gets depleted from antibacterials in our water, to antibiotics in our meat and milk, to antibiotics we take for illness and the many chemicals we are exposed to in our world every day. Dr. Blum also has a Healing Your Gut Workbook in this book, along with lots of recipes and also what foods to eat and which ones not to eat.   With her protocol you can eat to heal and reset your immune system.

I highly recommend this book and really respect Dr. Blum when she says she wrote this book because there is only one of her and so many of us. She is giving us insider information for free, ( her secrets if you will) so we can be healed from our autoimmunity like she was.

 I also would like to give you a website to watch a revolutionary video that changed the way I look at food, and also makes me not feel quite so deprived when I can’t eat most foods. It is called “FAT, SICK, AND NEARLY DEAD”, the website is: rebootwithjoe.com/watch-fat-sick-and-nearly-dead.

LC