Lectin-Free Diet

To Reduce Inflammation, Try This!

Lectins are microscopic proteins that plants evolved to defend themselves from predators, including insects and animals (that includes humans!). They are essentially indigestible and have the unique ability to increase the permeability of your intestines which eventually can cause a leaky gut or more intense situations.

That means that lectins and other small particles of food can pass through the wall of your gut, and will be treated as foreign invaders by your immune system. This causes an inflammatory response, which can set the stage for a host of diseases, as well as weight gain. 

Dr. Steven Gundry popularized the lectin-free diet. He is a former heart surgeon who switched his focus to food and supplement-based medicine. Dr. Gundry describes lectins as the main danger found in the American diet. In response, he has written a book that provides information on how to avoid lectins, alternative food choices, and recipes, The Plant Paradox. 

According to the book when lectins are harmful, leaking through the gut and causing inflammation, the auto- immune diseases that can be created are celiac disease, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, cancer, and depression.
Following a lectin-free diet could be a way to lower inflammation in the body. The best way to know if avoiding lectins would make a difference in your health is to get muscle tested to see how your body responds to lectins.  

According to Dr. Gundry, people should limit the following foods when trying to avoid lectins:
    •    legumes, such as beans, peas, soy, lentils, and peanuts
    •    squash
    •    nightshade vegetables, such as eggplant, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes
    •    fruit, although in-season fruit is allowed in moderation
    •    all grains
    •    corn
    •    meat from corn-fed animals
    •    A1 milk


Soaking beans overnight in water and some baking soda, then draining them and thoroughly boiling or pressure cooking them, can eradicate nearly all lectins. In fact, pressure cooking vegetables and legumes is also an excellent way to decrease lectin content in those plant foods.  But, using a pressure cooker doesn’t get rid of all lectins – it won’t even touch the lectins in wheat, oats, rye, barley, or spelt.
Likewise, sprouting grains, seeds, and beans releases enzymes that reduce lectins, and the process of fermentation can cut the lectins in dairy and vegetables.
Peel and Deseed your fruits and veggies – If you’re going to use lectin-rich plant foods, make sure to peel and deseed them. Often, the most harmful part of a plant is it’s lectin-filled hull, peel, or rind. To reiterate, the peels and the seeds are often where lectins are hiding, so you can significantly cut down on your intake by eliminating that part of the plant.
Finally, if in fact you must eat grains, opt for white over brown. So, instead of brown rice, eat white rice. Instead of whole wheat bread, find a healthier version of white bread.
Turns out, though many believe brown rice is healthier than it’s white counterpart, those who eat rice as their staple grain have always stripped the hull off of brown rice before they eat it. That’s because the hull contains all the dangerous lectins.

A lectin-free diet is not easy to follow but the science is there to back up why lectins would cause inflammation in the body and lead to certain diseases.  If you think it may help you and you can’t get muscle tested then try not eating lectins for 2 weeks and then add them back in and if you notice a difference then maybe avoiding lectins is the best thing you can do for your body. 

got Milk? Drink This!

got milk?  Drink This!

When it comes to drinking milk, specifically cow milk, there is a lot of controversy.  Is it good for us?  Don't we need the calcium from it?  Is whole milk really the best with a higher concentration of fat?  What about raw milk?  The questions can go on and on.

So let's take it step by step.  Is cow milk healthy for us?  My answer, which is my answer for everything, is it depends on how you muscle test for it.  So to all my patients who do test well for milk this blog is for you!  The best cow milk to drink is A2 milk.  A2 milk is cow's milk that mostly lacks a form of β-casein proteins called A1 and instead has mostly the A2 form. Beta-casein makes up about 30 percent of the protein in cow's milk. A1 and A2 are two variants of beta-casein. Historically, cows produced milk that contained only the A2 form of beta-casein. So the genetic change that makes A1 protein is harder for us to digest.

The percentage of the A1 and A2 beta-casein protein varies between herds of cattle, and also between countries. While African and Asian cattle continue to produce only A2 beta-casein, the A1 version of the protein is common among cattle in the western world. Goat, sheep, water buffalo and human breast milks all contain only A2-like proteins, and thousands of years ago, cow’s milk also had only A2.

During the breakdown of A1 in the gut, a peptide fragment (a chain of amino acids) called BCM-7 is formed. This fragment can slow down digestion, trigger inflammation and cause symptoms such as bloating, gas, abdominal pain, diarrhea and constipation (http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/7/9/5339/htm). No such fragment is formed with A2 digestion. If those symptoms sound similar to those of lactose intolerance, it’s because they are. And many people may be misdiagnosing themselves when it is really A1 they need to avoid.

Milk that contains only A2 milk was brought to market by The a2 Milk Company from New Zealand in 2000 and is sold mostly in Australia, New Zealand, China, United States and the United Kingdom. I just recently found it at a local grocery store called Shop Rite.  A genetic test, developed by the a2 Milk Company, determines whether a cow produces A2 or A1 type protein in its milk. The test allows the company to certify milk producers as producing A2 milk.
Whole fat A2 milk is the best type to drink because the extra fat content is how Mother Nature made it so your body can digest it better.  Research even shows that among adult women, higher intake of high-fat dairy was actually linked to less weight gain than intake of low-fat dairy. And a recent study of children ages 1-6 years old found that those who drank whole milk had higher vitamin D levels and lower BMI (body mass index) than those who drank low-fat fat. 
For those of you who don't drink milk but have read this much and now are worried about not getting enough calcium in your diet here are other calcium sources.