Our society and culture promote eating grain foods. Foods made from wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, rice and corn are cultivated all over the world, are readily accessible, cheap and even considered by some nutritionists to be a key part of a healthy diet. This makes it challenging to consider grains could be linked to illness and disease—but the fact is they are.
Most plants don’t want to be eaten by animals, insects, fungi and bacteria. They protect themselves with woody tissue that is impossible to digest, poisons, and other chemical compounds such as lectins. These chemicals mimic and distort communication between cells in the human body.
When you eat grains your body has to work hard to neutralise the toxins and lectins. Most of this work falls on your immune system and liver. If your immune system is strong, your body can do this without too much disruption and there will be no symptoms of ill health. But if you have a weakened immune system, for example if you are suffering an autoimmune disease, your cells will not be able to communicate effectively to eliminate the lectins and toxins. In a weakened state, your immune system may miss cancer cells, attack healthy cells or simply let your body degenerate and age faster than normal. A single grain of rice or wheat can be enough to weaken the immune system and trigger symptoms of ill health in some people.
It is important to note here, that gluten-free and grain-free are not the same thing. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and oats and is linked to various intolerances and coeliac disease. Rice and corn are also grains but they do not contain gluten. Since the 1980s mainstream medicine has advised people with coeliac disease that it is okay to eat rice and corn because they are gluten-free. But it has now been found that both rice and corn still have specific lectins that use up precious immune reserves in a similar manner to grains containing gluten—they all come from the same family of grasses after all. So while people with coeliac disease may have fewer digestive problems on a gluten-free diet, rice and corn may still be contributing to other ongoing symptoms.
There are no comprehensive medical tests you can take to determine if chemicals in grains affect your immune health. There are tests to check your response to gluten which are used to diagnose coeliac disease. But even these tests are limited in scope and many people who are gluten intolerant do not test positive. The only accurate way to work out if grain lectins are weakening your immune system is to conduct your own personal food trials. This enables you to find Your Signature Diet that is unique to you so you can eat the right foods for your body.
Over the past 25 years I have developed a proven model to accurately map a person’s response to grains. I’ve helped thousands of people turn their health around by conducting their own food trials to uncover whether grains trigger their symptoms of ill-health. They can then eliminate those triggers to free up their immune system so it can get on with its job of looking after cells in the body.
My upcoming workshop, Your Signature Diet: What Foods are Right For You?, explains how grains can impact your health and how to conduct your own personal food trials. We support you every step of the way to ensure accurate results and are sure you will see a difference to your health once you uncover and follow Your Signature Diet.