Not all bread is created equal!
My bread saga and deep dive into the land of gluten is finally HERE!⬇️
If you've kept up with my Instagram stories since my trip to Europe this past May, you know I've been doing my own experimenting with the infamous regular bread with real gluten!😱 I know, wild stuff around here!
Before we get into my juicy discoveries, rabbit holes of research, and my own personal experimentation, let me give you some back story on my journey with this topic so you know where I'm coming from.
I'VE BEEN GLUTEN FREE SINCE 2015
I was in my Junior year of college, living in a house off-campus with my sorority roommates. Every day, rushing out of the house, late for class, and making sure to lock the door to my bedroom. It was one of those doorknobs with a special key lock I intentionally installed on my bedroom door so no one could snoop around my room while I was gone (yes this actually happened which is why it was a legit concern). My 21st birthday was coming up and I was planning a big pre-game bash to flood my body with more alcohol than necessary while in the midst of an on-again off-again relationship with a toxic ex.
Most days I was more concerned about the duties of my Panhellenic sorority executive board role than my school work and the parties I had planned Monday through Sunday each week! As I dragged myself to the gym after a night of too much jungle juice, I felt a recognizable stomach pain that had been lingering for some time. One of the first things that was recommended to me in response to this stomach pain was to cut gluten out of my diet. The only connection I could make when I heard this was all of the gluten-free gelato I guided customers towards for their allergenic kids when I worked at a gelato shop in high school. But I was familiar enough with elimination diets as a common solution to symptoms where you blame the food, stop eating it, and move on with life!
So in the midst of studying for finals, learning new coding languages for my Computer Information Systems degree, and keeping my social calendar going strong, I added “figure out how to avoid eating gluten while loving bread and all things carbs but also not wanting to eat food that taste like cardboard” to the list. You should have seen me at the bar googling ”is there gluten in vodka?"🤦🏼♀️
This change took some serious education on my part, but with lots of trial and error as a college student, I eventually figured it out and have been riding that gluten free train ever since! Since going gluten free almost 10 years ago, this change certainly allowed me to feel better in my body and some of my symptoms dissipated with this diet change. It's not the root cause of the problem, but it was the band-aid fix I needed to lower my body's stress load that was clearly overflowing at this time.
GLUTEN FREE DOESN'T MEAN HEALTHY
Even before I started eating gluten free I always considered myself a healthy person. This wasn't always a valid belief, especially when I was knee deep in my partying days and my liver was hanging on for dear life! Come to think of it though, my personal belief of me being a healthy person most likely kept me out of some actual unhealthy ditches because my beliefs never let me go down that road! But I've always been active, played sports, and was lucky enough to grow up in a house with an amazing mom who cooked delicious meals filled with nutrient-dense whole foods!
But as someone who has read MANY MANY MANY nutrition labels of items that claim to be gluten free to attract those of us that have been slapped with that “gluten free intolerance or allergy” label, gluten free does NOT mean healthy! When I first started eating gluten free (even though I was resistant to changing my diet at first) I immediately attached this new diet to the belief of “being healthier”. But the sad fact of life is that the food industry started to see this trend of people avoiding gluten for health reasons, so they did what they do best and created new versions of packaged products that were gluten free so all of us gluten free eaters could feel “normal” again. You know, the gluten free pretzels at the grocery store that they purposely put in the “health food” section, but the nutrition label has a longer list of “ingredients” (aka chemicals) than any one item should ever have!
That gluten free label started to become synonymous with “healthy”. Even if there's more chemicals than actual food in the box… “yeah but it's gluten free so it's healthy”… No it's not! Avoiding gluten but then eating a cookie full of food dyes, chemicals, and starches your body can't process isn't healthy! It's a sad confusing manipulation that the food industry has used to keep people in the belief that they're doing something good for their body as they inhale chemicals created in a lab!
Now I'm really talking about packaged and processed goods here because that's where they over-use gluten free labels for marketing. Eating gluten free can absolutely help people feel better in their bodies, no doubt, but just switching your regular crackers for gluten free crackers is not the way to do it!
BREAD/GLUTEN/WHEAT OUTSIDE THE U.S.
Not all bread is created equal🙃
If you've ever head of good ‘ol Monsanto, they’re responsible for bringing Round Up aka Glyphosate (the chemical) into our crops. It's marketed as “making crops bug resistant” but really it just f**ks with the quality of your food and ruins your gut (to put things simply).
Trying to avoid Glyphosate and many other harmful chemicals (especially in the U.S.) is borderline impossible. And if you think too much about it, you'll create more unnecessary stress than the actual chemicals will create! So, have awareness, but the tail spin isn't worth your sanity.
This is usually why so many Americans that avoid gluten in the U.S. are able to eat bread in places like Europe. The quality of their bread meets higher standards and is not covered in toxic chemicals. This isn't always the case for everyone, but it's certainly been my experience.
LET'S TALK SOURDOUGH
The type of bread also plays a huge role in this crazy equation. Whether you're eating your morning toast in the Austrian Alps, enjoying the gorgeous mountainous views, or you're sitting at your own dinner table enjoying a piece of fresh baked sourdough from your local baker… if it's sourdough, your body has a better chance of digesting and processing this type of bread better than any others.
Even as I was testing the waters in Europe with all different kinds of bread, pastries, pretzels, and cake, I personally found that I was able to digest sourdough and fresh pretzel breads better than any other types of bread.
This is due to the process of how these different types of bread are made. Sourdough in particular is made in a way (when done properly and slowly) where much of the gluten is broken down and digested naturally by the rising process. The live starter that you use to make sourdough acts as a digestive enzyme for the gluten in the bread. If you're confused why this is important… I gotchu! Our bodies were NOT designed to process high levels of gluten. It can be a very taxing process for our digestive system to break down high levels of gluten. So when eating a piece of sourdough, much of the gluten has already been digested and broken down during the process of making the bread, so it has a lower content of gluten for your body to actually process once you finally take a bite of freshly baked sourdough!
Highly processed breads (mostly found in the U.S.) have HUGE amounts of gluten because they've sped up the bread making process and there's no live starter to break down anything. So now there's chemicals (from the glyphosate) AND high levels of gluten in highly processed breads! Those types of bread are going to be challenging for anyone's body to process and breakdown. Some people are just more in-tune with their body than others and actually notice their digestion is raising red flags. Or they've become accustomed to how sluggish they feel after eating these highly processed breads and don't know it's their body's way of telling them it's struggling.
BUT… not all sourdough is created equal either! I recently saw the ingredients list for a loaf of sourdough bread that came from our local grocery store. And blatantly on that label was canola oil and a bunch of other weird gums and additives. Aka, NOT FOOD! So if you're going to go the sourdough route, make sure it's made with organic (clean as possible) flour, water, and starter. No extra oils, gums, or additives! Making it yourself is also definitely an option, I just haven't ventured down this path quite yet (but never say never right!)
In my personal experience, I have been eating one piece of sourdough bread, fresh from our local farmer's market/local baker, every morning with my breakfast and I feel great! How I know this is a testament to the sourdough itself is because there's a local Thai restaurant my husband and I frequent for dinner. But I was starting to avoid it because I noticed my stomach hurt after eating their food. It was mild but noticeable. I thought maybe it had something to do with oils they cooked with or the quality of their meat. Well, I recently found out every dish they offer contains gluten with the soy sauce they use for all their cooking! I had no idea until I started asking more questions when ordering recently. The waiter taking my order informed me that I had to request my dish be made gluten free if needed. So the next time I ordered, I made sure to request my dish be made gluten free, and wa la… no stomach pains!
WHAT'S REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR GLUTEN INTOLERANCE
Okay so now let's get into the REAL reason why you're experiencing this intolerance to gluten which just really causes stress and irritation for waiters and waitresses at every restaurant! Which, their stress about this is their own problem! I always see this as an opportunity to educate them on something they never asked to know about🙃
From my experience and research it comes down to two things at the core (both toxin related).
Glyphosate
Lyme co-infections/bacteria/parasites
Okay before you start diagnosing yourself… hold up! Disclaimer: nothing shared in this blog post is medical advice. And everything is based on energetics.
Okay now that I have my CYA out of the way… let's start with the glyphosate.
If you've been eating your way through American breads since you were born, you've absolutely eaten considerable amounts of glyphosate (I'm just being honest!). And if your drainage pathways have been open and you're detoxing like a champ, you most likely don't notice this because your body has kicked out these chemicals and toxins and said goodbye faster than they said hello.
But everyone ELSE (if you have a gluten intolerance, I'm looking at you👀) there's been such a build-up of chemicals and toxins, that your glyphosate bucket is full. The fact that this is even “a thing” to be said is sad enough in itself, but this is where we're at in life. So now, every time you come in contact with anything containing chemicals, pesticides, glyphosate, or any other toxins, your body's stress bells go off! But now you've blamed this feeling on the food itself, when really it's the chemicals that have been using these foods as their own personal vehicles into your gut!
Now for the Lyme co-infections/bacteria/parasites talk. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE LYME OR PARASITES!!!!!! I just really need to make that abundantly clear! We don't diagnose or label around here! This explanation has to do with energetic resonance of these toxins. (For understanding, lyme co-infections can be bacteria or parasites which is why I included those all together.) And the reason I figured this out was from my own notes (which I clearly overlooked the first time) from my own bioresonance scan I recently reviewed (this is something I do with my coaching clients).
Borrelia (specifically) is the bacteria that causes Lyme. And when the energy of Borrelia resonates with the energy of your body, it could be correlated to gluten, grain, and flax sensitivities. So when I saw my bioresonance scan report where Borrelia came up on the energetic toxins section AND gluten, grains, and flax came up in the energetic sensitivities section on the same scan, this pattern became clear!
We always want to look at the root cause of why you are reacting to anything and calling it a sensitivity. Most root causes come back to an overload of toxins in your body. So when I see both of these show up on the same scan, there's two ways someone could look at this:
The band-aid viewpoint
Avoid gluten, grains, and flax because it came up as a sensitivity
The REAL root cause perspective that's going to allow you to heal
Detox the Borrelia (the toxin, it isn't Borrelia for everyone, it could be another Lyme co-infection because they have similar resonance) because as soon as you release the trigger toxin, your body won't react to gluten, grains, and flax anymore!
The energetic resonance of Borrelia (or any Lyme co-infections which can be bacteria or parasites) is triggering a stress response in the body when gluten, grains, and flax and introduced.
If you wanna get real quantum and energy nerdy with me, I'll leave this here for you too… it's not always the physical toxin that's in your body. Yup I'm not kidding! There have been clients of mine who have detoxed the physical toxin out of their body, but their energy body is still hanging on to the frequency of that toxin in their energy field. So their body is responding as-if the physical toxin is still there, but really what they needed was an energetic release (I talk all about this in my program Body Language which is relaunching this week!) And if your next question is “how do I know this”… muscle testing🎤 ← that's me mic dropping🤣
Either way, I see this as a big invitation to “open your drainage pathways and detox the toxins so that your body isn't being overburdened by exogenous toxins every day of your life!” Instead of always blaming the food. And yes, energetic toxins are toxins too!
EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS TO FOOD INTOLERANCES
By now your brain is probably spinning in 500 new directions from all the truth bombs I've dropped in this post! BUT… hang on because I have ONE more!
Let's bring it back to my lovely college days that I so artfully painted the picture of at the beginning of this post. I intentionally wanted to make it abundantly clear that I was stressed out, a huge people pleaser, and was looking for a lot of external validation from others all the time. So emotionally speaking, I wasn't exactly in tip top shape. In fact, I pushed down pretty much every emotion and thought I had because I was SOO damn afraid of what others would say or think if I was just an honest human! I walked on egg shells most days! But you know what, that time in my life was the kick-starter to learning some super important lessons and I am eternally grateful!
And here's why (besides the toxin convo we just had) I don't believe you can sit here and just blame the actual food for all your problems. When I began dealing with severe stomach pains and digestive issues in college, the first thing someone recommended I do was to cut gluten out of my diet. This was at the same time I was in a toxic relationship and stressed the f**k out in college, not doing so hot grade wise, getting MICs (yes multiple, two to be exact) for underage drinking, and stressing out about getting a job after college, also fearing I wouldn't pass a background check for said MICs.
So now as I take a step back and really look at this picture in it entirety, I just wonder if someone had asked me “How are you feeling about life? What are you most stressed about?” Would I have answered most people honestly if they asked me those questions? Definitely not! But the point is, I just find it humorous that as soon as I started experiencing any health issues, the first answer was “just take this food out of your diet” and completely ignore these real life things that I was dealing with by myself in my head!
Now am I going to sit here and say “the answer to everyone's gluten intolerance is releasing emotions”, no. But do I think that should be the first place to start, especially if you're dealing with any type of stress in your life? Absolutely!
Your body can also begin to associate certain foods with stress if you are eating them in a situation where you are wanting to feel an emotion but then you stop it mid-feeling, and stuff it down somewhere in your body. Leading to a stuck emotion and a body that now associates that food you were eating with the stuck emotion that's now wreaking havoc in your body.
It has been my intention in this entire gluten exposé to open up your mind to new perspectives in ways that many of us are rarely invited to see. If you're reading this and thinking, “what the heck do I do now??”… This is your invitation to feel your emotions, express yourself truthfully, avoid the processed crap bread, avoid all bread/gluten if that's what you need to do right now to lower your stress load, open your drainage pathways (both physical and energetic), and detox the toxins.
If this feels overwhelming and you're looking for support, send me email or a DM @iamlindseywalker so we can chat about the best options I have available for you!
