Good Food, Good Diet, Good Life: Starches
The first week of my detox program was rough but this week I am picking up strength. I am sleeping better and most of the achyness is gone. The first week I had a gnawing hunger that would not go away no matter how much I ate. This week I am satisfied with my purification shake, salad and veggies three times per day. In the last couple days I have noticed my energy increasing, my skin clearing, and I have lost six pounds!)
One of the important aspects to this detox program is the elimination of grains. Most of my patients do much better when they eliminate much of the starches associated with grains from their diet, especially wheat. We actually do testing at the office to determine how your body handles different grains.
Some estimates are as high as 25% of the population has some sort of sensitivity to wheat. Most people do not realize they are sensitive to wheat until they eliminate it completely from their diet for four weeks and then add it back in. At the end of four weeks, when you add the wheat back to your diet, you will know it if you are sensitive. You might experience headaches, rashes, diarrhea, fatigue, brain fog, achy joints, etc.
Wheat (and other grains for that matter) is stored in silos and sprayed with a fungicide that contains mercury…mercury is deadly to mold but also deadly to us. Many people that have problems with the wheat are actually responding to the mercury sprayed on the wheat.
When grains are processed and made into flour, bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, etc., they are usually refined. The bran and germ is separated out (which is where most of the good nutrition is) from the starch and fed to farm animals. What is left is 86% carbohydrate 14% protein, no vitamins and no minerals. EMPTY CALORIES!!!
The flour is then bleached (chlorine is used to bleach the flour and reacts with the protein to form alloxan which is VERY TOXIC and known to cause diabetes). Synthetic vitamins and minerals (toxic) are then added to the flour and sold to us in various forms.
I will admit, it does taste good!
Whole grains have the bran and germ but this causes more problems. The oil in the germ goes rancid (VERY TOXIC) in few days. Food manufacturers have solved this problem by bleaching whole grain flour (alloxan) up to 2oo times more than white flour.
To do grains like wheat correctly, you would have to buy organic grain that was not sprayed with mercury gas, grind it and consume it within a few days of grinding. No easy feat.
At health food stores you can find some good organic grain based products that are refrigerated, which keeps the oil from going rancid.
The other obvious problem with grains is that we eat way too much. If you want to fatten up a cow fast you take them off their natural diet of grass and feed them grains!!
But we have been told that whole grains are a diet food! The reality is that most grains turn to sugar as soon as you chew them up. That sugar causes insulin to be released (stressing out your pancreas). Insulin drives the sugar into fat cells for storage, drives up cholesterol levels, causes hormone imbalances and many other degenerative health issues.
Most people can handle about 75 grams of starchy carbohydrate each day…about three slices of bread.
I know, I know, I know. I’m Italian. I feel your pain. There is nothing like a big plate of pasta with sausage and sauce, pizza or a Big Al’s Italian Beef with the bun dipped in the juice. My personal experience is this: I have gone years without wheat because of how it affected my digestion. One slice of pizza and I was in the bathroom ten times the next day. The good news is that after a few weeks most of the cravings for wheat were gone. But after being off wheat for a long time I can now tolerate it without symptoms. Sure it will still make me fat, and when I eat too much as I have over the last four months it will start to make me sick (probably why I am having such a hard time with this detox) but its possible to end your addiction to grains. I know you can do it. You might not do it perfectly, but when you realize what you are doing to your self every time you eat grain you will get back up and try again……….