Left Nostril Breathing (or Back-to-Sleep Breathing)
CHAPTER 7 Grain Free
THYROID RESET: Days 13 to 15
I
have an important announcement to make, so kindly pay attention. Nearly every person who struggles with weight has an issue with grains, particularly those that contain gluten. When your goal is getting lean, eating grains is like throwing gas on a fire; it’s an explosive combination that may thwart your weight-loss goals.Most grains have a fairly high-glycemic index, meaning that after one to two hours, your blood sugar surges. Unfortunately, foods that spike your blood sugar are chemically addictive. They spur inflammation in your body and keep you in a downward spiral of craving and a growing waistline. Grains are low in nutrient density compared with plants or animals. Grains do more than make you fat:
there’s a newly discovered link between grains and your hormone levels of leptin, thyroid, and insulin. So, what to do? My recommendation is to remove grains and delight in the effects over the three-day Grain Free reset.
Self-Assessment
If life without bread seems like a life not worth living, take a deep breath. Your first step is to complete the following self-assessment to determine the extent of your grain-related issues. Do you have or have you experienced in the past six months …
Recurring abdominal bloating and/or pain? Frequent or smelly gas? Food poisoning? (Food poisoning puts you at greater risk of problems with gluten.) Constipation or diarrhea? Diagnosis of irritable bowel disease or acid reflux (GERD)?
A first-or second-degree relative with celiac disease?
Anxiety, depression, and/or schizophrenia?
Migraines or other headaches?
Unexplained weight gain? Difficulty losing weight?
Short stature? As a child, did you have low birth weight (i.e., less than 5 pounds)? Attention deficit? Autism?
Joint pain or aches? Bone pain?
Brain fog? Chronic fatigue?
Hair loss? Chronic eczema or acne? Unexplained skin rashes?
Vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies? Iron-deficient anemia?
Unexplained infertility? Menstrual disorders? Repeated miscarriages (three or more)?
□ A loss of balance and coordination? Difficulty walking or walking with a wide gait?
Restless legs syndrome?
Thyroid antibodies, also known as autoimmune thyroiditis or Hashimoto’s disease, or another autoimmune condition?
Interpret Your Results
• If you have five or more of these symptoms, you very likely have a problem with grains, particularly gluten. You have the hallmark symptoms that show inflammatory, allergic, digestive, autoimmune, mood, or cognitive
problems. Go grain free and consider asking your doctor for a blood
(serum) test of your response to gluten (see the Test Yourself section, page 169).
• If you have fewer than five of these symptoms or are unsure, you might have a problem with grains, and I urge you to perform the three-day Grain Free reset.
Meet Gena
Gena Lee Nolin, a star of the 1990s hit TV series Baywatch, seemed like the picture of perfect health at forty-one. With bronze skin, shining eyes, and a killer bod, she was the woman we all wanted to be. But internally she suffered.
Over a short period of time, she developed a baffling array of symptoms:
exhaustion, brain fog, bloating, depression, and hair loss. When she got pregnant, her symptoms worsened. Soon, she developed a life-threatening heart condition (due to a thyroid issue that was misdiagnosed), which required medications with many serious side effects. And then there was the weight she simply couldn’t lose. After each of her pregnancies, it took Herculean efforts to fit into her skimpy red bathing suit. Gena ate perfectly and exercised hard with a trainer nearly every day—and her weight would barely budge.
Like millions of American women, Gena was struggling with undiagnosed thyroid disease. Thyroid problems leave women feeling anything but beautiful.
After they describe their debilitating symptoms, they often find themselves stigmatized by friends, family, and doctors, and they blame themselves for not being able to get their act together. Gena was finally diagnosed by one astute doctor as having autoimmune thyroiditis, a disease in which the thyroid gland is attacked by the body’s own cells. Approximately 90 percent of Americans with low thyroid function have autoimmune thyroiditis, which means that one in every one thousand people are affected. But many people have experiences similar to Gena’s; it took ten years for her to get the correct diagnosis, and she was told more than fifty times by doctors that there was nothing wrong. Gena isn’t alone.
After finally receiving the correct diagnosis in 2009, Gena went on an aggressive campaign to heal her body. She kicked grains to the curb and has been gluten free for more than three years. She began thyroid medication. And within seventy-two hours, Gena was a new woman. “I was almost symptom free,” she told me in amazement. When she fixed her low thyroid function through cutting out grains and augmenting her thyroid hormone levels, Gena lost weight and felt great, and life became a walk on the beach—and she published a superb book about it, called Beautiful Inside and Out: Conquering Thyroid Disease with a Healthy, Happy, “Thyroid Sexy” Life.1 I was so inspired by Gena’s powerful story and her happy ending, I even wrote the foreword to her book!
Check out Gena’s awesome website, www.officialgenaleenolin.com, where she answers questions and offers an authentic conversation between women around the world, and conference calls with top doctors. Gena truly found the grace of hormonal reset and is applying her newfound vitality to spread the word!