Gut health, gluten and osteoporosis

How many people do you know that are gluten intolerant? Lots I bet! How many are coeliac? Not many I bet! Why is it that so many people can't seem to tolerate what should be a perfectly harmless protein? Why can some tolerate it easily and others not? Are we perhaps looking in the wrong places to try to solve this? Ayurveda says we are.

So take two people eating exactly the same bread. If one has a problem with bloating and other symptoms after eating bread, why doesn't the other? It's the same food in each case, but not the same gut. There lies the problem. Not the food, the gut.

You might ask, "Well what's so bad in just giving gluten up then?". Probably not that much harm in simply cutting out gluten; gluten's neither good nor bad. What is very harmful is oversimplifying what is a real problem. Your digestive system delivers nutrients and removes toxic matter from your body, or at least that's what it's supposed to do. If your digestion is weak then this all becomes a problem. Simply cutting out the offending foods, commonly gluten and dairy, is not getting to the root of the problem. That's a massive problem!

My client came to me with osteoporosis and as always I started off by asking her about her digestion. She has had trouble with constipation over the years and tongue diagnosis shows high levels of toxic matter and malabsorption. Her tongue is coated, fat and the sides crinkled at the edges, these crinkly edges being teeth marks. She can no longer eat wheat without suffering with severe bloating and occasional diarrhoea.

Could there be a link then, between her digestion and osteoporosis? Osteoporosis can be caused by poor diet and other factors such as certain medications, but although this lady could improve her diet, as most of us could really, it's not too bad. She's eating a healthy amount of vitamins, minerals, healthy fats and protein but with such poor digestion she isn't absorbing the vital nutrients needed for bone health and she is also holding on to harmful toxic waste.

So my job is to help her through correct diet and lifestyle to strengthen and boost her digestion and to heal her gut.

A couple of years ago I saw a client who couldn't tolerate wheat at all and after taking on board some of the Ayurvedic principles I gave her, she healed her gut and with that was able to eat pretty much whatever she wanted. Saying that, I don't advise we eat rubbish white bread but we should all be able to do so without suffering afterwards. The state of your digestion, your appetite, your lack of cravings, your well maintained weight, your love and tolerance of all foods; this indicates the state of your health.

I'd love to hear from you if you can relate to this.