We are What We Eat

This may not come as a shock to some, but I’m just figuring it out: It’s not your doctor’s job to keep you healthy.

A few months ago, I got a raging case of canker sores (not cold sores, those are outside the mouth, these were inside), something that happens every 15 or so years. To make a long story shorter, I have celiac disease and as I found out, this can be a byproduct of that.

Celiacs can’t absorb gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye, it flattens out the villi in our small intestines which is there to pluck out nutrients from passing food. Without villi, the food just whooshes through, to put it politely.

I got diagnosed six years ago. I stuck to a gluten-free diet awhile, felt much better. Then I’d cheat, go off diet, and feel lousy. Off again, on again, so it went for years, me paying the intestinal price for eating wrong, figuring what the hell, so food whooshes through me. Big deal.

Turns out, it’s a huge deal, it compromises the autoimmune system and the entire body, not just the part that goes whoosh.

Get all of the not so whooshy details in the July issue of the South Coast Insider