In follow up to my last article on the benefits of a gluten-free diet, I want to go a little deeper into gut health with you now by talking about an elimination diet. While gluten is a hot topic in the health & wellness industry, for some of us gluten intolerance may only be half the picture.Say you remove gluten from your diet and you are feeling great. But a few weeks later you start feeling blah again: chronic fatigue, joint pain, stomach upset, headaches or even migraines. Well it could be that in addition to gluten, you also have food intolerance to dairy, soy, egg, yeast or corn.
According to Tom Malterre, Nutritionist and Fonder of Whole Life Nutrition, practitioners around the globe have found that taking potentially irritating foods out of the diet for a period of weeks and then adding them back in can cause changes in a person’s body that will clue them in to what is working and what is not. When people eliminate potentially problematic foods for three or more weeks using the elimination diet some pretty amazing things can happen when your gut is allowed to heal: rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, headaches, stubborn belly fat, unexplained diarrhea, nausea, and constipation all can be resolved.
Really? Yes.
Because everything comes from the gut – nutrition, immune health, brain health. Remember when your mother told you – just listen to what your gut tells you. Well, she was right. Scientists are now starting to look at the importance of gut health as it relates to brain health (here’s a great article from SA on this subject, if you really want to nerd out on this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gut-second-brain). The net, net here is that if your gut is not healthy and happy, neither are you!
So if you are game for trying an elimination diet – it can literally change your life and I highly recommend it! It can be a little time intensive because you really have to be careful of what you are eating and going to a restaurant is pretty much a no-go. The elimination diet is a 28-day process and you can read more about it on Mr. Malterre’s blog to see if it’s right for you: http://www.nourishingmeals.com/2010/01/elimination-and-detoxification-diet-its.html.
I hope you are encouraged to learn more – if this seems at all overwhelming, you know who to call for help/advice ;)
According to Tom Malterre, Nutritionist and Fonder of Whole Life Nutrition, practitioners around the globe have found that taking potentially irritating foods out of the diet for a period of weeks and then adding them back in can cause changes in a person’s body that will clue them in to what is working and what is not. When people eliminate potentially problematic foods for three or more weeks using the elimination diet some pretty amazing things can happen when your gut is allowed to heal: rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, headaches, stubborn belly fat, unexplained diarrhea, nausea, and constipation all can be resolved.
Really? Yes.
Because everything comes from the gut – nutrition, immune health, brain health. Remember when your mother told you – just listen to what your gut tells you. Well, she was right. Scientists are now starting to look at the importance of gut health as it relates to brain health (here’s a great article from SA on this subject, if you really want to nerd out on this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gut-second-brain). The net, net here is that if your gut is not healthy and happy, neither are you!
So if you are game for trying an elimination diet – it can literally change your life and I highly recommend it! It can be a little time intensive because you really have to be careful of what you are eating and going to a restaurant is pretty much a no-go. The elimination diet is a 28-day process and you can read more about it on Mr. Malterre’s blog to see if it’s right for you: http://www.nourishingmeals.com/2010/01/elimination-and-detoxification-diet-its.html.
I hope you are encouraged to learn more – if this seems at all overwhelming, you know who to call for help/advice ;)
RSS Feed