Some researchers suggest that less minerals (like anti-inflammatory magnesium) and more glutens (which are thought to be pro-inflammatory) leads to an inflammatory response in the body — impacting your gastrointestinal system, cardiovascular system, and immune system to name a few. That might explain why my husband doesn’t have my GI issues when eating wheat but does find his arthritis goes away when he follows a gluten-free diet with me.

“Comparing blood samples from the 1950s to the 1990s, Murray found that young people today are nearly five times as likely to have celiac disease, for reasons he and others researchers cannot explain.”

I’m still doing my own research as to why gluten-free works for me (I don’t think it’s officially celiac that is my problem — there is a whole spectrum of gluten intolerance), but the above paragraph stands out to me because my initial research suggests that one contributing factor may be dwarf wheat. It’s the type of wheat everyone eats nowadays, and it’s only been around for the last half a century. We’re eating a different wheat than our grandparents ate, we’re eating it differently than our ancestors ate it (fermented or sprouted), so it’s no big wonder to me that our bodies don’t know what to do with this wheat and are being damaged by it.

I used to think that modifying crops to have bigger yields or have more vitamins to help children in a struggling country was a noble and good thing to do, but I’ve come to the conclusion that changing the makeup of the things we eat either by engineering or focused breeding as in the case of the dwarf wheat is playing with fire. We don’t know how our bodies will react to the changed proteins, and I’m becoming ever more convinced that our modern eating habits are to blame for most of our ills.

Unfortunately, my personal experience with the medical community has shown me that they are not likely to help us prevent these diseases and sometimes tell us to do things that increase them (like admonish you to eat more whole grains after you tell them they make you sick, for example). For the time being, some of us are having to “go it alone” in regards to gluten issues, but I’m happy to do that because the results have been so fantastic in my case.

Very interesting article, indeed!