Great Blogs of Gluten... and more

Of course with my passion for collecting information on the evils of gluten and other foods, I always enjoy a good read. I'd like to share some of them with you that I thought were particularly exceptional either because of the wit, the content, the argument... or just because it has a catchy title.

REGULAR FOLKS WHO LIVE THE LIFE

Nov 2008

GFCF Poop by Tori

Great site! Long time in coming. I've often thought of doing this same exact blog but could never figure out how to do so in a tasteful, yet informative matter.

Tori has done what I could not. Very well done!


Feb 2008


Five Minds by Julie Meyer

I love this article about non-being (wu) and gluten intolerance. I've had many of the same thoughts myself regarding how it might be related on a more global level.

And what she says about yu and wu have been very true in my life. I'm constantly talking about what I'm working through. Once I've worked through it and feel like I have attained an excellent understanding, it becomes passe, something taken for granted... and in a way, I lose interest.

Fortunately, since trying to help people with gluten intolerance (and other food issues) is a constantly evolving project with new things to learn all the time, I've no worries about losing interest due to lack of new knowledge that I'd like to acquire. (Isn't that why we've all been to at least five medical specialists... often more... and take an average of 11 years to get a diagnosis?)

Cosmetic Gluten Ingredient List

Erika has compiled a great list of ingredients to watch out for in personal care products. I've noticed recently that some companies have come out with organic lines of makeup (read: easy to understand ingredient lists... as well as being organic). I passed on the note and look forward to seeing what she ends up finding.


Up to the end of 2007

Jeena's Kitchen

Love the look of her buckwheat pastry!

Brian's Place

Wonderful information in general, Brian was around when I first came to the gluten free world. I'm not sure if he was new too or had been around for a while. Great info. about the Toronto area and he posts at the Toronto Celiac blog when he travels. He keeps great notes and the gluten free community would suffer a great loss if he was suddenly able to consume gluten!

Cindalous Kitchen

Beautiful recipes, beautiful layout, beautiful photos... catering to multiple sensitivities.

Obviously we were sisters in another life... but *she* was the beautiful one who did everything perfectly! :)


Cosmetics Blog: Gluten Free Cosmetic Counter

My latest find... and I'm thrilled that someone out there is thinking the same way I am! (As I continue to work on my lip balm recipes and deoderants for people who cannot tolerate petroleum products or gluten.)

She's just starting out so give her some time to build. My hat's off to her though. - It really is a daunting task!

For those who want a wee bit of a start on cosmetics, I've found that mineral makeup (make sure there's no talc in them - in the high end ones there usually isn't) is a great starting place.

Clinique has gf mascara, lipstick and eyeliner - again - you're paying top dollar but it's worth it not to become ill (or have a loved one become ill) because you want to be 'pretty'. They will call their headoffice right from the makeup counter at Sears. This has been the most helpful company I've found so far.

MAC also has some gluten free lipsticks but you have to know which colour you want them to give you feedback on first (at least that's how they used to operate).

I have found the cheaper makeup companies to be fairly useless about giving out information. Revlon, Maybelline, etc. give no answers at all - IF you can get hold of them. Mind you, I haven't tried to contact them for a few years because I just eventually gave up. But I still miss my Great Lash! (I wonder, is it still in that green and pink container?)

Burt's Bees will tell you that they're gluten free but can't seem to tell you what the source of their vitamin E is - so we steer clear until they can answer the question. At this point I've given up calling them. I like their line but I have to be able to be sure about sources!

Gluten Free Goodness by Lizzie Vegas

This is a photo group with discussion. Here you can see other photos and post your own.

She's also listed a thread where you can post a link to your blog.

Fabulous!!

Karina - The Gluten Free Goddess

I'm sure that on some other realm this lady and I are somehow related. When we first met it was unbelievable how our lives parallelled eachother. We were both rather amazed.

That's where the similarities end though... perhaps in a decade we will be able to re-examine things and see if we continued on in similar patterns. For now though, suffice it to say that if you want a new recipe every day - and I *mean* e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y... her blog is the place to go. Even with a broken hip, she's going strong!

Things that we do not share in common: She is a vegan. I am a *big* meat eater. She eats nightshades. I try and avoid them.

So, she fills an important informational gap in my blog. She covers the vegan aspect of a gf diet and for people who love tomatoes and potatoes, she's the queen.

Laura's Blog

I love her blog because Laura is a force of nature who is determined to make the gf life work... not just for her own family but for everyone else's family... and she's trying to do it and not sound crazy when she does... right...

She also has an awesome lunch kit section to show what kids can go to school with... something that I, as a homeschool Mom, don't have to think about but is still enormously applicable and helpful to the majority of Moms and kids in our gf land.

Med Nauseum - Alix's Blog

Love her site. Never met her but we obviously come from the same planet.

Shannon and Laura's Site

I love this site because these two fabulous ladies share their very personal stories and together, they really illustrate the fact that symptoms can really look so very different from one child to the next.

They've got some great lunch box menus and mix reviews that are extremely helpful for people who don't want to make up their own gf flour mixes.



FOOD SCIENCE

You have to know that this is my favourite section! I am continually learning new tricks for cooking better, more nutritious meals. Some, I learn on my own and try to pass on to others. Some, I learn from others who have the same passion as I do. So, when that happens, not only do I feel a certain amount of cooking freedom that comes with the new knowledge but I also feel connected within a community that is as passionate as I am about getting 'the word' out to everyone who will take the time to listen or read... and continue learning.

The first is a blog that I came across completely by mistake and made a favourite during the 2007 winter holidays. I have placed the connection at their science of sauces article because I could never have said it as well as is done there.

Since sauce lends tremendous flexibility to every recipe in your repetoire (you can make ten different sauces for the same recipe and it will seem a whole new 'kettle of fish' simply because you're putting a different sauce on your 'fish'.)

I'm often telling people who e-mail me about sauce trouble, that they are boiling their starches. Straight starches (arrowroot, tapioca, etc.) go gummy (or snotty - sorry) when they are boiled and this article explains why:

Food Lorists


DOCS

Kalle Reichelt, M.D.


CARDIOS

Dr. Davis

GASTROS

The Food Doc Blog - Scott Lewey


NEUROS

Renegade Neurologist: David Perlmutter, MD, FACN

I don't know what the letters behind his name mean, but I do know someone who writes important information down for others to read is worth following. This is one of the few doctors that I've actually seen put in writing that seizures can be related to food ingestion (gluten).

Pecking Apart Chicken Soup: Part 1: Use D'em Bones!!

(As always, if you have a food sensitivity, think about what you could substitute: chicken? beef? sheep? fish? Go with it...)


Anyone who has known me for any length of time, knows that I am a *huge* advocate of chicken soup and chicken soup fasting a couple of times a year (or when the immune system is obviously being challenged - like with what appears to be a cold or allergy attack).

As most of my food studies, this one was motivated primarily because I began noticing a difference when I played with our diet. This one is, perhaps, my first discovery because it was our 'start up' food for our Total Elimination Diet (TED), over five years ago.

We experienced such vastly improved health (all four of us, who are, health-wise, fairly different pictures) that I have kept this soup as my main dish in our 'healing protocol' and use it regularly, whether it be a 'recovery protocol' or a 'prep protocol' for something like surgery.

How did it pay off for us in our healing protocol? Well, one example would be two years ago:

I had a c-section and was ready to go home the next day. This astounded all the hospital staff. They didn't let me go because it was unheard of but even the doctor said she had never seen anyone sail through such major surgery the way I did. As most women in their 3rd labour experience, I knew about 24 hours beforehand that my time was coming and began replacing my heavy food with nutrient rich but easily processed chicken soup. My main staple in the hospital was chicken soup that I brought from home. Though I did also eat some steamed fish, eggs, rice biscuits and tea (I'm always starving after delivering a baby.), I tried to put about 8 hours between those heavy foods and fill up on the soup in between.

I don't suggest this for other people as a healing protocol because it's just not my place. But people often ask me what I do and why I do it, so I thought I'd finally get to writing it down and figuring out the science behind it. So, I've been collecting for a while... such a long while that I've lost a fair bit and will have to come back in to add my references as I find them... but here are a few for starters:

First of all, back in the beginning when I was first figuring out how to grow a hesitantly growing boy, I began to research bones and what makes them grow. Calcium is of course first on the list. So, everyone thinks 'dairy' right away, of course. The problem was, I needed calcium right away and dairy was not included in the first four days of our TED.

Calcium:

Being completely panicked about four days of soup for my son, I reassured myself with an article I read about North Americans, for all the dairy they eat, being severely deficient (generally speaking - considering how much dairy they consume) as compared to Asians who consume little dairy but seem to have better bone health.

So, I began looking at international diets, trying to discover what the differences were. How, do people in 'starving' countries even survive? How do people with severe dairy allergies survive and grow?... etcetera...

One thing I found out was that, historically speaking, we used to make much better use of the bones and skin of our food, than we do now. Now we either buy it boneless and skinless or we throw those 'useless things' in the garbage. However, I found out that they are far from useless.

Bones have quite a lot of calcium in them. Other cultures are still boiling them and using them, though North American culture seems to have lost this vital health practise. So, I checked out some studies and found that using *all* of your *kill* is essential to good/great health of both ourselves and our planet.

According to a Pubmed abstract (1994) I found, calcium content of chicken soup increases with duration of cooking. So simmering your bones for 3 hours will leach the most calcium into the soup (with acid!).


***Edit (091116)  I went and checked my reference today and the wording has changed to say 24 hours with only mention of the water added being acidic... but it doesn't say how to make it so.  I specifically remember wording about 3 hours and cabbage from years ago so will now try to find my printout from back then.  Until I can find it though, I'll be telling people 24 hours from now on.  Kind regards,
Kim)

Note: a beef bone was used in this particular experiment but common sense would say that any bones would be helpful. Also, the study was performed in mind of people who could not use dairy for a calcium source. The leaching of calcium from the bones into the soup maxed out at three hours. There was no improvement in calcium content of the soup after three hours of simmering.

There are caveats though, the broth needs to be acidic. That means plenty of acidic vegetables need to be in there with the bones and water. So, if you don't add the cabbage, you will never get the same leaching of calcium, no matter how long you boil those bones. Grandpa was right, it's just not the same without the cabbage.

A crock pot is perfect for this: Just throw in the bones, throw in half a head of chopped cabbage and simmer it. (I have also used lemon, to make avgolemono - Greek, chicken rice soup, or lime for a broth to cook rice in that will be served with fish.) Put it through a strainer, into glass canning jars (not too full) and throw it in the freezer for multiple uses.

I am often asked about using vinegar as the acid. Some people seem to do this effectively. However, I suggest that there is more room for error and the ruination of a perfectly good broth (not to mention that many candida diets don't allow for vinegar). It's hard to over-lemon or over-cabbage your broth.

Magnesium:

On to other bone issues that are often forgotten about, magnesium and vitamin C.

Magnesium is very important, not just to bones but to health in general, especially for someone who is going to be confined. Even cows who are raised in a confined environment have to have specially supplemented diets or the possibility of death from hypomagnesemia lurks. These same results were reflected when looking at older, homebound women.

According to NIH (National Institute of Health in the U.S.):

(bolding is mine)

....Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the body and is essential to good health. Approximately 50% of total body magnesium is found in bone. The other half is found predominantly inside cells of body tissues and organs. Only 1% of magnesium is found in blood, but the body works very hard to keep blood levels of magnesium constant [1]....

Magnesium and osteoporosis
Bone health is supported by many factors, most notably calcium and vitamin D. However, some evidence suggests that magnesium deficiency may be an additional risk factor for postmenopausal osteoporosis [4]. This may be due to the fact that magnesium deficiency alters calcium metabolism and the hormones that regulate calcium (20). Several human studies have suggested that magnesium supplementation may improve bone mineral density [4]. In a study of older adults, a greater magnesium intake maintained bone mineral density to a greater degree than a lower magnesium intake [56]. Diets that provide recommended levels of magnesium are beneficial for bone health, but further investigation on the role of magnesium in bone metabolism and osteoporosis is needed.

I read these kinds of things about magnesium again and again (there are loads of case studies about bone density and magnesium management) and wonder why everyone in North America seems to be so 'stuck' on calcium when it comes to bone health. The bottom line is that without sufficient magnesium, no amount of calcium is going to help you!

As an additional benefit, magnesium has been shown to aid asthmatics... so pump up the magnesium in that chicken soup!

In my case, I know when I'm magnesium low, especially after drinking coffee, because I will get chilled and (if I drink coffee for long enough through the day) sometimes my heart starts doing funny things and my breathing becomes a little laboured.

If I supplement my magnesium citrate (and stop ingesting the coffee), I can clear these issues usually in about an hour. Again, I do not suggest that anyone else try these 'experiments'. I tell my stories only as a matter of interest because they are usually blind reactions with solutions that I happen upon by chance. As an after-thought, I go and try to find out if I'm some type of medical oddity. Usually though, I can find something scientific that backs my 'blind findings'. Like anything though, too much of anything isn't good either, so I don't supplement every day (generally only on my coffee days) but I do try to maximize it in my diet by not consuming coffee every day and boiling my bones and using that broth as general cooking water rather than throwing out the skin and bones and receiving no benefit.

As far as food sources go, it really aggravates me to always see 'wholegrains' near the top of the list for magnesium.

Wholegrains make me malabsorb... whether they're gluten or not. Again, how can I tell? After eating a plate of wholegrains (especially if I add cheese sauce), I get all headachey, low in energy, cold and shivery and my heart/lungs start doing funny things. So, I have found that *I* do better to minimize my grains and keep them white but cook them in a well-rounded soup broth.

My reactions are pretty much non-existent if I do it this way. I've been practising this new way of eating for about a year now and have, again, experienced a general increase in my overall health and quality of life.

So, though I cannot find any broth abstracts to back up my personal findings or instincts, because calcium and magnesium are both alkaline earth metals (according to the periodic table) there's no reason to think that I'm not getting as much magnesium benefit from my bone and cabbage soup broth as I am getting calcium benefit.

Aside from my bone broth being a major source of magnesium, I began looking for other sources of magnesium to grow my boy. Aside from eliminating foods that were harming his gut (gluten, refined sugar, nightshades and lily families), I began searching for magnesium superfoods.

Another abstract about Arctic Canadian Indigenous adults and children and their cultural diet seems to reflect my finding that magnesium levels can be optimized easily via the implementation of animal meat, bones and organs in our diets. (I have more about organs and iron and soup but this is already getting too long, so I will have to save that for another day.)

Almonds were at the top of the list with a mere ounce providing 20% of the dv% for adults. The problem was, my son's gut was pretty messed up when we first started and nuts were just too hard for him to digest. Eventually, after some healing, he seemed to tolerate a very well ground almond flour that was cooked into the Squashbread Tea Cake recipe.

He loved raisins though and would 'fast' with them when he had a sore tummy before we knew what was creating his ill health. So, though he's now doing well five years later, I still buy raisins in bulk and let him have at it.... and of course we have lots of soup broth foods (rice, grain-free-gravy, etc.) throughout the week.

Early on in our tailored diet plan, the result of this practise was that his bones grew one year's worth in sixteen weeks. At this point in time I was not supplementing him at all because I was too afraid of a negative reaction to unknowns (as I was coming to realized that I truly knew nothing about the food we ate or biological vitamin and mineral impacts).

I maintain this 'broth' schedule because it continues to work well for him and I feel that it maximizes his nutrient levels. Also, when I become lax in this practise - as parents sometimes do tend to let things go sometimes, he seems to complain more about his tummy, which then spurs me back to making sure the broth is once again resumes a bigger role in our diet.

Another supportive abstract about the mechanisms involved in healing canine bones shows that serum calcium levels were reduced suggesting that the calcium may have been pulled from the blood to be delivered to the bone for healing. Calcium regulating hormones also changed (Remember the NIH quote above? Magnesium is required for this process.) in response to bone injury.

My conclusions:

As usual, my conclusions are mine, and mine alone... but they do dictate some of the more 'particular' instructions for some recipes. The pickiest recipe by far (according to length of time and ingredients), so far, is chicken soup. But the reasoning is clear, it is the most heavily depended upon recipe for healing the gut, the body and the mind in our household.

Kind regards to all as always,
KimS

-----------------------------

See you next time for Part II of the benefits of chicken soup.

Vitamin C, cabbage details and making the most of oregano to kill bacteria, viruses and fungi.

Presently considering Part III covering fasting with chicken soup, why, why not, how, how not and other pontifications of mine that are backed up with scientific references.

References:

Docguide.com:

Chicken soup revisited: calcium content of soup increases with duration of cooking.
Calcif Tissue Int. 1994 Jun;54(6):486-8.

Severe bone deformities in young children from vitamin D deficiency and flourosis in Bihar-India.
Calcif Tissue Int. 2005 Jun;76(6):412-8. Epub 2005 May 19

Hypomagnesemia among cows in a confinement-housed dairy herd.

J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2004 Jan 1;224(1):96-9, 54.

Complementary therapies in the treatment of bronchial asthma.

Rev Med Chir Soc Med Nat Iasi. 2005 Jul-Sep;109(3):478-82.

Risk and presence of food insufficiency are associated with low nutrient intakes and multimorbidity among homebound older women who receive home-delivered meals.

J Nutr. 2003 Nov;133(11):3485-91

Local cultural animal food contributes high levels of nutrients for Arctic Canadian Indigenous adults and children.

J Nutr. 2007 Apr;137(4):1110-4

Mineral and endocrine metabolism during fracture healing in dogs.

Clin Orthop Relat Res. 1984 Jul-Aug;(187):289-95

NIH:

Magnesium
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/magnesium.asp#h9