Gluten

Hello guys,

first and foremost, I really enjoy the program and now, that we (my girlfriend and I) have finally gotten over the worst hunger after starch-free breakfast, its getting even better.

My question and topic I would like to get an answer for is gluten, as the title suggests. I would like to say, I am no advocate of gluten-free or gluten-pro. I am merely curious as to WHY is gluten so evil, if one is not Gluten-intolerant or having Celiac Disease. If anyone is willing to respond, I would be most happy . However, in that case, please attach relevant scientific articles supporting such claims.

Why do I ask ? I have been searching for "adverse effects" of gluten on PubMed (scientific paper database with sufficiently high impact factor) for a while but I cannot seem to find any good sources of information. I do not consider case-studies or studies of small groups of individuals as relevant as for instance cohort studies with, if possible, longitudinal follow-up.

By no means do I wish to offend anybody or endanger anyone's system of belief - I was just wondering as to why avoiding it.

Hopefully the abovewritten makes sense :). Thanks for your time.

Marek

Hi Marek,

Disclaimer: My opinion is not based on Thrive, but on my own personal research and experimentation. (Thrive didn't have references to research.)

Gluten isn't the problem (except, as you mentioned, Celiac or other diseases). However, gluten comes most commonly in the form of baked goods or breading on fried foods. So, in foods that have other reasons to be questionable in our daily regime. Baked goods have added sugars (including just a simple sandwich wrap or english muffin) and fried foods... well, I don't really need to explain that one! So for the sake of healthier choices (without sugar), some level of gluten avoidance makes sense, intentional or not.

30 minutes ago, Jennifer Marie said:

Hi Marek,

Disclaimer: My opinion is not based on Thrive, but on my own personal research and experimentation. (Thrive didn't have references to research.)

Gluten isn't the problem (except, as you mentioned, Celiac or other diseases). However, gluten comes most commonly in the form of baked goods or breading on fried foods. So, in foods that have other reasons to be questionable in our daily regime. Baked goods have added sugars (including just a simple sandwich wrap or english muffin) and fried foods... well, I don't really need to explain that one! So for the sake of healthier choices (without sugar), some level of gluten avoidance makes sense, intentional or not.

 

Hi Jennifer,

thank you for your reply. This kind of reasoning as to why take it out of daily life in the context of Thrive makes sense to me =). And is pretty logical. It may be I was overthininking it a bit =D.

For it is really difficult to avoid gluten alltogether - meaning even the trace amounts (it can be found in some medicaments, for instance).

Oh I was also wondering - gluten is neither starch nor sugar - it is a glycoprotein - why list it with those sources of  sacharides. (Again, could have been just a reminder to avoid gluten-containing sources of starches, then it would make sense...)

Have a nice day,

Marek. 

I agree. Trace amounts in everything. I would say don't obsess about it too much, but definitely keep an eye out for it. I say watch for those trace amounts not because you have to be perfect in what you eat, but because you'll learn a ton about the things you love to eat. For example, when I went on a no-sugar challenge, I was shocked at how hard it was to find a salad dressing that didn't add sugar! But, there are always options if you look hard enough too.

Good luck with it Marek! Dropping sugars from my diet has been the best change I've made, and avoiding gluten helps a lot with that.

Hi @Marek Dibusz Gluten itself is the problem. Gluten is a very hard thing to digest for everyone. Many grains are avoided in Thrive, as well as in many other diets, because of their antinutrient content. It s true that there is no info on the course and you need to read all posts on the forum to just find about the antinutrient content and not explained at all. 

Gluten is the winner of the bad grains. Even if you don t have celiac disease, it s suspected that 25% of the population has gluten sensitivity, like myself. And even if you don t have gluten sensitivity and it doesn t cause you any kind of illness it won t provide a good and sustainable energy for your workouts. Science is proving everyday more how sugar, gluten and refined oils are ruining our life. Nowadays bread has a higher gluten content (specially bad bread and sweets) because it makes it easy to work with. And wheat has been modified making it worse.

Here you have some articles you may read:

https://www.gutinstinct.clinic/blog/is-gluten-bad-for-everyone

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-gluten-bad-everyone

However i d say don t worry about eating gluten sometimes, as well as sugar or refined oils, it s not gonna kill you.

Hello guys,

I'll give you perspective; my youngest daughter has celiac disease and I have spent a lot of time thinking about gluten. I've also experimented on myself both extremely gluten rich diets (I'm Italian after all), zero gluten, and everything in between.

My conclusion is twofold: (1) Gluten is not harmful, unless you are specifically intolerant to it and (2) it is better to limit consumption of grains

This is why:

1) You can examine your stomach and small intestine through a gastroscopy to see if gluten (or something else) is damaging it. The damage is clearly visible in a person with celiac disease (like in my daughter's gastroscopy) just as you can observe no damages otherwise (like in mine gastroscopy).

Of course you could be gluten-sensitive without being celiac or having visible damage, so if you are feeling bloated or unwell after eating you should try a gluten free diet to see if you feel better. My advice would be to do this switching to rice/non gluten grains otherwise you could indeed feel better and assume it was the gluten when it is simply stopping overeating grains that helps (more on this below at (2).

Finally there is the argument of the paleo advocates that gluten is bad for everyone, creating undetectable low-level inflammation that will shorten lifespan promoting all sorts of illness in the future. While a seducing (and scary!) argument there is simply no scientific evidence whatsoever for this. But there is more: we have already conducted a 100+ years experiment feeding 50+ million people with extreme daily doses of gluten in the form of pasta, pizza, bread and all sorts of baked goodies to see what it does to their lifespan. This is experiment is called Italy

The results: Italians have one of the longest lifespan on earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

One last point about gluten being hard to digest: it is, like an infinity of other elements of many other foods. If you don't have a specific issue with gluten your body is equipped to digest it

2) Grains have two issues: they are empty calories and easy to overeat. Eating a lot of grains is robbing you of the vitamins/minerals/etc. you would get from the foods you could eat in their place. Moreover for some reasons you can gorge on them very easily either getting insufficient protein/fats from foods you would have eaten instead or simply getting a lot of excess calories and a huge belly

So my conclusion is: limit grains but don't care about gluten