Non-celiac gluten sensitivity or gluten intolerance comes with a wide range of symptoms from rashes to digestive issues. Medicating all these disparate afflictions will soon have you popping pills like a Pez dispenser. Luckily, there are some natural ways in which you can beat the gluten blues without negative side effects.
Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) is also known as gluten-intolerance and is estimated to affect as many as 1 in 10 people. Little is known about NCGS but it has been linked to the excessive amounts of gluten in the modern diet.
So you’ve given up your pizza crusts, hamburger buns and bread and for this monumental sacrifice, you are assured that you are living a healthier lifestyle. If you have stilled your carb cravings with fruit, whole grains, sprouted grains and veggies then congratulations; you really are on your way to a long and healthy life.
From Atkins to Paleo, low-carb diets are all the rage. Touted as the best thing since sliced bread, low-carb diets are credited with everything from weight loss to curing acne, but are these high fat, high protein diets really the answer? Carbohydrates do cause high blood sugar and modern baking methods flood the body with gluten, but cutting carbs out completely is probably not the long-term answer to weight loss and other health issues.
Gluten, gluten everywhere and the effect it’s having on our bodies is astronomical. The increase in hamburger buns, pizza dough, unhealthy snacks and processed bread in our diets has introduced more gluten than our poor digestive tracts can manage. You see, modern baking methods don’t leave enough time for the gluten to convert into digestible sugars and this causes a negative reaction in the immune systems of those who are gluten-intolerant leading to a number of unpleasant, and often debilitating symptoms.
Traditionally, a gluten-free diet was reserved for sufferers of celiac disease; a genetic autoimmune disorder in which abnormal antibodies are triggered by the presence of gluten. These antibodies attack and damage the walls of the small intestine. Celiac disease can be diagnosed through testing, although about 80-90% of cases go undiagnosed. Now evidence exists for a new kind of intolerance for gluten called gluten insensitivity.
