For about two years now, I have been following the Paleo Diet. I wish I could say perfectly, but I haven't (my wife's homemade chocolate chip cookies are hard to resist). If you're not familiar with it you can read about it here. But one of the key components is no grains.
Rob Wolf, the author of The Paleo Solution, argues that everyone is gluten intolerant.
Generally, I try to stay away from gluten. But, those cookies!
Recently, though, I was reading an article on the relationship between gluten intolerance and glyphosate. Glyphosate, if you don't know, is one of the primary weedkillers used in large-scale grain farming and more recently in GMO sweet corn. This is the chemical sprayed on GMO crops to kill weeds.
The way, that Glyphosate (Round-Up) works, is that it causes an antibiotic like reaction with the bacteria in the soil. These bacteria are essential to delivering important amino acids to the plants. By killing the bacteria, the weeds essentially starve to death.
Rob Wolf, the author of The Paleo Solution, argues that everyone is gluten intolerant.
Generally, I try to stay away from gluten. But, those cookies!
Recently, though, I was reading an article on the relationship between gluten intolerance and glyphosate. Glyphosate, if you don't know, is one of the primary weedkillers used in large-scale grain farming and more recently in GMO sweet corn. This is the chemical sprayed on GMO crops to kill weeds.
The way, that Glyphosate (Round-Up) works, is that it causes an antibiotic like reaction with the bacteria in the soil. These bacteria are essential to delivering important amino acids to the plants. By killing the bacteria, the weeds essentially starve to death.
The article, Gluten Intolerance and the Herbicide Glyphosate: A National Epidemic, asked some really good questions about this process that I have never heard asked:
1. How does glyphosate in food affect our normal gut flora – bacteria which keep us healthy? If it kills so many microorganisms, what is it doing to the flora we depend on for digestion and for the synthesis of the amino acids we cannot make ourselves. 2. How does glyphosate on crop plants prevent essential minerals and nutrients from being made, thus reducing the nutrition we obtain from eating them? 3. What other reactions does glyphosate have which might affect our health?
In the past few years, my understanding of the importance of gut flora has grown. Although many in the alternative medicine world have been preaching about the importance of gut flora for year, modern medicine has just recently began paying attention.
So what did the researchers find as they tried to answer those questions?
So what did the researchers find as they tried to answer those questions?
Not only does glyphosate prevent the manufacture of the amino acids, but it causes our bacteria to create very toxic alternatives, which have an effect on our intestines “like a wrecking-ball.” The new toxins might normally be made less toxic by a healthy liver, but glyphosate ALSO inactivates the liver’s defense system (called cytochrome P450 enzymes, CYP)....
These new toxins (e.g. m-cresol) kill off normal gut bacteria, but favor the very damaging overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria (Clostridium, C. diff.), causing massive disruption, diarrhea, cramps and even systemic illness....
In extreme situations, agricultural workers exposed to higher glyphosate levels have died from kidney failure.
As if that was not bad enough, they also found a link between glyphosate and aluminum.
But now, along comes glyphosate, thirty years ago, in food. We have already discussed how it may make our intestines leak some large molecules into our blood. But the story with aluminum may be worse: glyphosate latches onto aluminum (“chelates it”) and then bypasses all the defense systems designed for keeping it out and tested for thousands of years.
In other words, glyphosate grabs ahold of aluminum in your gut and carries it through your intestinal wall and into your blood stream (if I'm not mistaken this is referred to as leaky gut). What is bad about this is that your body tends to deposit aluminum in your brain.
Aluminum passing through your digestive tract is not a problem as long as it stays there. But there are studies that seem to link aluminum with Alzheimer's and dementia.
And to add gasoline to the fire, there is a growing trend among grain farmers to spray their fields with glyphosate at harvest time to kill the grain (this would be non-GMO grains) to aid in the harvest.
Aluminum passing through your digestive tract is not a problem as long as it stays there. But there are studies that seem to link aluminum with Alzheimer's and dementia.
And to add gasoline to the fire, there is a growing trend among grain farmers to spray their fields with glyphosate at harvest time to kill the grain (this would be non-GMO grains) to aid in the harvest.
Dr. Huber has explained that farmers now use glyphosate at harvest time to directly kill their grain crops. This unlicensed practice leaves large residues actually in the edible grains. Flour made from USA grown barley, wheat and rye may be heavily contaminated.
So, even though, that box of Cheerios may be GMO-free that doesn't mean its glyphosate free. My recommendation, just go Paleo and leave the grains alone.
You can read the full article here.
You can read the full article here.
