Body of Fire

Over the past few decades my family’s relationship with food has been a frustrating, ill-informed battle, where we have developed a healthy disregard for outdated medical opinion.

The connection to inflammation and serious illness was profound for my family. Watching my father’s mother die from Alzheimer’s, we really didn’t understand the deep complexity of this condition and how food played a major part to my family’s genetic makeup.

My father’s chronic mystery illness created a Russian roulette with food intolerance, where each day would bring a nervous wait to see what effect a meal would take. This susceptibility has been genetically gifted to me and diagnosed as an autoimmune disease called Leaky Gut.

My autoimmune symptoms have been:

Hair loss
Digestive issues

Weight gain

Water retention

Migraines

Memory loss

Skin break outs

Bloating

Candida

Depression

Anxiety

Dizziness

Fatigue

Vitamin B12 deficiency

This was compounded by the intolerance to dairy and now with addition of egg whites. My food journey had become more challenging.

So why was food making us so sick?

Our immune system was responding to an attack. An attack not only found in our engineered environment of chemicals and pesticides but hidden in our foods natural molecules.

I stumbled across a documentary called Cereal Killer by Donal O’Neill where he found success in reducing inflammation and other conditions with a high fat, protein and low carbohydrate sugar diet (LCHF). This was something we as a family had loosely followed. Living on a cattle station where our meals were considered fresh and wholesome, including bread, pasta, rice, porridge, afternoon tea cakes and biscuits were all part of our culture.

It was plain to see that preservatives were a major catalyst but we had over looked the consequences the carbohydrates and sugars had on our illnesses.

I made the decision to cut grains, refined sugars, preservatives and alcohol. I increased my fat, protein, vegetables, nuts, fruits and added fermented probiotic supplements.The results were noticed almost immediately.

I implemented the new diet and under 3 weeks I had lost 4 kilos with barely any exercise. My symptoms had cleared. How could increasing fat drop weight so quickly and cutting cereal grains sooth my inflammation?

To many people a high carbohydrate diet paired with the highly addictive and toxic sugars can be the main cause of an inflammority response.

Inflammation is a body response with activation of certain parts of your immune system. This can contribute to significant health problems, including:

Heart disease

Diabetes

Rheumatoid arthritis

Crohn’s disease

Cancer

Schizophrenia

Depression

Asthma

Eczema

Infertility

Autoimmune conditions
Irritable Bowel Syndrome 

Leaky gut syndrome

Hashimoto’s thyroiditis

Celiac disease

Tim Noakes is a South African professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town. He has run more than 70 marathons and ultramarathons, and is the author of several books on exercise and diet. Noakes explains how carbohydrates work in the body explaining that when carbohydrates enter the body they are eventually broken down into glucose. Any extra glucose that’s not immediately used in replenishing glycogen stores is stored as fat. If consumption is excessive the body will add cortisol and adrenaline production to handle the extra load and plays on the endocrine and immune system which creates inflammation in the body.

As an internationally respected researcher, Prof. Noakes has reviewed the scientific literature and come to fresh conclusions on what constitutes a balanced diet. His advice is a ketogenic diet, but not a high protein diet.  Classified as a low carb diet, users are guided in setting carbohydrate levels appropriate to their own needs.

Unfortunately, grains do not have the nutritional profile that the wholesome TV advertisements make out to have. It makes sense to source your nutrients from foods like fresh vegetables, fruits, proteins and healthy fats, which offer much higher nutrient profiles without the side effects.

To me the grains are toxic to my body, gluten free or not. My intestinal barrier was disrupted allowing microbial antigens to interact with my immune system and preventing the uptake of important nutrients. I had no good bacteria left in my body and my digestive system was struggling. My body was literally on fire.

Increasing fats in a diet seemed absurd? But fat does not make you fat and here's why.

Let’s go back to the history of our evolution. First humans lived on coastal areas with a diet high in fish containing essential fats. This had a major impact on the size of our brains.

The cells in the brain have a protective layer called Myelin, which is made from these important fats. Myelination, is the ability to insulate nerves in the brain providing the raw building block to insulate the nerve, which increased our ability to learn. This was an enormous shift in human evolution. We have been eating fat for 2.5 million years and have adapted perfectly to this diet.

How fat works in the body

The anti-fat movement has had a catastrophic effect on societies view and the outlook on nutrition in general, made worse by the refusal to research the new data.

In 1958 American scientist Ancel Keys began a study on the cause of heart disease. He concluded that saturated fat was the main factor. Meanwhile a British scientist John Yudkin identified sugar as a killer. So here we had two schools of thought in a nutritional war.

Sadly, Keys anti-fat movement won. 

Worldwide guidelines were implemented and they introduced the carb rich “Food Pyramid or Circle” as we know it today.

Today, we found that Key’s had manipulated the data, deleting 16 countries where there was no evidence that fat was the primary cause of ill health.

Countries in red the only data submitted to research 

Because of this damning study a whole generation welcomed the age of Lipophobia and developed the “fear of fat”.

So why do we continue to believe that cereals hold more nutrition, since now Key’s work had been disproven and the food pyramid is shown to be inaccurate? 

The reason is the food industry is a big business. Just like any other product they work on your triggers, lulling you into false sense of security with the list of healthy foods you should be eating.

Misleading food labelling:

Low fat

Fat free

Antioxidant rich

Rich source

Daily requirement

Scientifically proven

Less sugar

Low carb

More healthy whole grain

Weight control

This is also the case in the knowledge that high fat diets increase your cholesterol and will increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Noakes also explains that Cholesterol is a very important biochemical in the body. There are two types of cholesterol, one has large particles and the other small particles. Small particles are the ones that invade into the arteries and become inflamed causing multiple health problems. So if you have high cholesterol but the particle size is large your body will remain within the healthy spectrum. You cannot treat high cholesterol without knowing this particle size.

Eat good fats:

Avocados

Nuts- walnuts, almonds, pecan, macadamia

Seeds- chia, pumpkin, hemp, sesame

Fatty fish- Salmon, herring, mackerel, sardines

Extra virgin olive oil

Grass fed animal products

Coconut butter

A diet with fat is essential but when I had carbohydrate rich diet my body was extremely inflamed. If you take a look at a common breakfast menu for example, it would consist of cereal, toast and fruit juice. What does this give you? Sugar. Because those starches are changed into sugar molecules.

Converts to

The current medical consensus states that this large intake of carbohydrates will release a lot of sugar into the blood stream. The Pancreas in response secretes a hormone called insulin. Insulin drives the sugar out of the blood stream into the cells where it can be burnt for fuel. Over time you can than become unresponsive to the effects of insulin. The body is unable to completely process the nutrient carbohydrate. Which can then lead to type 2 diabetes.

If something was considered medically current 30years ago, doesn’t mean it's valid today. In the medical field where the information and knowledge frequently changes why hasn't this wealth of data been accepted? The simple answer is that it has become a core belief.

The belief that whole wheat and other cereal grains are considered a healthy food but also considered the foundation to a healthy diet is misleading. Even more unfortunate, our federal agencies that decide what is fit for human consumption, advocate that we cannot survive without it. Cereal grains are a serious concern as both a source of carbohydrates (eaten in excess) and as a source of toxic protein compounds.

Cereal grains are:

Wheat
Corn
Rice
Barley
Sorghum
Oats
Rye
Millet

Other inflammatory triggers could be:

Sugar
Gluten
Alcohol
Smoking
Sulphur Dioxide/ preservatives
Chemicals and pesticides
Lack of good bacteria and digestive enzymes 
Stress
Soft drinks
Packet shakes and powdered supplements
Coffee
Dairy

Side note: New research has shown green tea can effect autoimmune sufferers

We have been taken down this dark path where the reality is we are all on our own. We have to listen to our bodies and make our own informed decisions. There is a movement where we are now becoming more aware and accountable of our own health.

This awareness has helped me and my family correct our food imbalances by understanding how our genetic history plays a large part in identifying them. This LCHF diet plan works for me because of my own "biological needs" where I'm now on the brink of curing my disease.

I advise before embarking on and diet changes, you research your own health and consult with an open minded physician.

References 

The Dietary intake of Wheat and other Cereal Grains and their Role in Inflammation http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705319/

Documentary Cereal Killers by Donal O'Neill https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/835313616/cereal-killers-the-movie

Professor Tim Noakes. Successful sportsman and author  
http://originaleating.org/the-noakes-foundation/prof-tim-noakes
http://www.decarbdiet.com/TimNoakes.aspx

Movie Origins. Shines a much-needed spotlight on the root cause of our health crisis and, most importantly, empowers us with simple ways we can make a real difference

http://origins.well.org/explore/

How Grains are Killing you Slowly
http://wellnessmama.com/575/how-grains-are-killing-you-slowly/

How Fat Does Not Make You Fat
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/fat-health_b_4343798.html

Probiotics The most Important Supplements you can Take to Improve your Health
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/24/one-of-the-most-important-steps-you-can-take-to-improve-your-health.aspx

Atkins Low Carb Diet
http://au.atkins.com/

Ditch The Carbs. Recipe ideas and General Information
http://www.ditchthecarbs.com/

Autoimmune Paleo
http://autoimmune-paleo.com/resources-2/

Autoimmune Disease
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease

Green Tea and Autoimmune Diseases
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/rr-green-tea-hazards