GFDOTW

Also Known As: Gluten-Free Discoveries of the Week.

I recently had a conversation with the new Fitness GA at Baylor, Pam. I fell in love with her instantly. Pam has a child living the GFCF (gluten/casein free) lifestyle, and she knows her stuff. She asked if I had noticed with the gluten now out of my system a heightened intolerance to lactose. Pam then went on to explain that both gluten and dairy are made up of six amino acids, and when placed by one another you can clearly see three of the amino acids in both gluten and dairy are identical to one another. Thus, most people who are allergic to gluten are allergic to dairy. Although my body has been asking me to part ways with dairy for awhile I just can't walk away from cheese! Not yet at least.

We have begun reading two books this week that I highly recommend: Going Against the Grain, by Melissa Diane Smith and Wheat-Free Worry-Free, by Danna Korn.

In Melissa's Going Against the Grain, she presents some of the most insightful and simultaneously terrifying information I have read in all my personal research.

"Kenneth Fine, M.D., director and founder of the Intestinal Health Institute in Dallas, Texas, an internationally renowned gastrointestinal researcher and a pioneer in our understanding of gluten sensitivity . . . Fine has developed a much more sensitive test that can detect cases of gluten sensitivity that aren't picked up with standard blood screens" (76-77). "Here are the shocking results of his reserach so far: The genes that seem to make a person susceptible to developnig gluten sensitiveity are exceedingly common: They're present in 60 to 70 precent of the population. At least 50% of the population is gluten sensitive; that's 140 million Americans" (77).

In Danna's book Wheat-Free Worry-Free, she gives one of the best compiled lists of common misdiagnoses I have seen thus far:

-Anemia

-IBS

-Psychological Dysfunction

-Diarrhea

-IBD

-Diabetes

-Spastic Colon

-Ulcers

-Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

-Weight Loss

-Allergies

-Gallbladder Disease

-Thyroid Disease

-Colitis

-Cystic Fibrosis

-Lactose Intolerance

-Reflux

"Additionally, people are often misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia, carbohydrate malabsorption, recurrent abdominal pain, and other conditions" (37).