Transcript:

Episode 5: The Gluten Myth

Warren:

Welcome to Heath Hunters, everyone. We’ve got a pretty sexy topic today, Dr. Pompa, don’t we?

Dr. Pompa:

Oh, man. This is one where there’s a lot of confusion. There’s a lot of myths and a lot of false beliefs. We’re going to bust them out.

Warren:

Let’s walk into the gluten myth today. A lot of people have found a lot of relief by removing gluten from their diet, and there’s some reasons why that’s the case. Is that really the magic bullet to health? As Dr. Pompa and I as health hunters dig into this topic, this is one that we’ve delved into deeply over the years.

There’s even some new research coming out on this as it moves into the autoimmune side, which many people experience with gluten sensitivities and gluten allergies. There’s a difference there. There’s a gluten sensitivity, gluten allergy, there’s autoimmune things that go on. This topic today, the gluten myth is going to be really powerful for all of our listeners today, Dr. Pompa.

Let’s launch it with this initial thing. Let’s start at ground level. What is gluten and why is it considered evil? What’s the history of this stuff, and why do our bodies react to it?

Dr. Pompa:

I think that most people have heard the word. Five years ago we’d bring up the word, and no one was paying attention. It’s a protein and food. It really has always been in many of the grains that we eat including wheat is where it’s most famous. When we look at the history of wheat, we would say gluten has always been there. What’s changed? A few things changed.

I think if you listen to this show, you’re going to see that it’s not just gluten. There’s other problems, which explains why some of us react to gluten and some of us don’t. Then the question is it good for you? Hopefully you’ll get that question answered in this show and what you can do about it if you feel gluten is a problem. If you look at the history, Warren, why in the world before even the 1970s people weren’t reacting to gluten, a lot has happened.

Warren:

We ate all kinds of sandwiches back in the day, white bread, wheat bread back in the early 70s. Then something happened.

Dr. Pompa:

Norman Borlaug won a Nobel prize, bright scientist. He set out to solve the problem of world hunger. The problem is Norm did some things that may have caused part of the obesity problem, so we’ll see. Norm did really set off on a very noble venture and deserved his Nobel prize. Unknowingly he created something that our bodies don’t recognize, that is about 14 different strands of gluten, this protein, that are in modern day wheat.

What happened? Norman started hybridizing wheat. It used to be four to six feet tall, known as [ine] corn, was one of the ancient wheats. He started changing it to try to develop a wheat that was number one, easier to harvest; that would have been good for world hunger. Number two, dealt with drought better; that would be good for world hunger. Number three, environmental stressors; wind because you have this four to six foot tall plant that gets knocked down.

Warren:

Especially in the plain states where all the wheat is grown today, the short wheat back in the day. If it was six, seven feet tall, there’s no way. There’s no wind break. It would just blow it all down. Now it’s the wheat capital of the world.

Dr. Pompa:

What do they do?

Warren:

What is that, hybridization?

Dr. Pompa:

Not to be confused with genetic modification. Hybridization, they would hit it with gamma rays, different things to alter the DNA. GMO, they take one DNA from something and plant it into it. That’s genetic modification. Hybridization is more altering the DNA by hitting it with different stressors like gamma rays, x-rays, things like that.

David:

The Incredible Hulk, if you will. He’s not GMO, but he’s hybridized.

Dr. Pompa:

Through this process in the 70s, he was able to develop what is known today as dwarf wheat. It’s about two feet tall, definitely handles drought better, definitely environmental stressors, easier to harvest. Norman deserved his Nobel prize.

He really did feed more people with dwarf wheat, but here’s the problem. In that process he created about 14 different strains of gluten. I don’t know if he was responsible for all 14, but the point is gluten changed. It altered this protein. Now our bodies do not recognize this protein.

Warren:

How many strains were there?

Dr. Pompa:

I think three or four back then.

Warren:

Now we have 17 or so.

Dr. Pompa:

Our bodies recognize those. It wasn’t a problem. Our body can break that protein down and now all of a sudden we hit it with this new strain and it looks foreign to the body. Then it creates an antibody reaction and creates inflammation, all kinds of symptoms that people get. That’s the modern wheat that we have.

Is wheat bad or is what man has done to it? Arguably it’s what man has done to it. It’s similar to dairy, by the way. I think most people listening to this have heard dairy causes all these problems. Why does it now and not before? Same argument as wheat, they changed something in a cow. They made it produce more milk.

In doing so, they altered the DNA and cows produce more milk. Awesome; however, it changed a protein, and that protein is a protein that people react to. Beta A1 casein was the protein they created when they altered the cows. Beta A2 casein is what was meant to be in dairy originally, which is a protein our bodies are used to. The beta A1 casein is one that man created and is why dairy is altered and so damaging. The question remains, Warren, why can some people deal with it and others can’t? I think most people ask that question. I sure did.

Warren:

I want to know why. Just to lay a platform, it’s pretty crystal clear. As you were speaking on this and talking about A2, what man has done to it, what man has done to wheat to create these problems, it seems like that’s across everything that man messes with and thinks we can make it better, things adapt over time. Depending on your belief system, how God created it or over a million years of adaptation, if you introduce a fish into an environment it’s not supposed to be in, it causes all kinds of problems in our waterways.

If we introduce a weed because we think it looks pretty into the Northwest — I remember Penn State developed a flower called crown vetch. When we mess with things, knapweed in Montana for eight years, it messes with us. If we mess with wheat and we have these new strains that your body doesn’t recognize, it’s going to throw up the alarm and say please help. Sometimes that please help is in the form of inflammation and pain. You’ve got brain fog and many other symptoms. Let’s figure out why gluten causes all these symptoms and problem in some people and not others when we come back from a word from our sponsors.

We’re bringing it back to the gluten myth. We talked about in last segment how this happened, where these different strains of gluten, these new proteins that were created through hybridization have now led to what we believe is the gluten epidemic and causing all kinds of symptoms from inflammatory bowel conditions, colitis, even to IBS is a very common new diagnosis that has been created in the recent years. What is this gluten and why do some people react and some people don’t? There’s even some people who really don’t have gluten sensitivity but because they have leaky gut, they react even more strongly to it because the body throws up antibodies. Dr. Pompa, you’re the expert here. Tell me and our listeners what’s going on here.

Dr. Pompa:

There’s a couple factors here of why some people react, some people don’t. One factor is simply some people’s immune system figures it out, looking at the protein, and they don’t create the excitement, they don’t create the attack. They look at it and figure it out and move on. There’s some theories, depending on how our culture has been introduced to grain and how long they’ve looked at these different proteins, people from different countries that were introduced to grain many years ago have a better immune system to figure it out.

People from cultures that were more recently introduced to grain in their diet, they don’t figure it out. That’s a theory. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but maybe there’s some truth to it. This one we definitely know is true. We know that leaky gut is a big problem, especially in the last 15 to 20 years.

What has changed? Let me explain before I say that. People have heard the word, but they still don’t know what it is. Think about a pipe with holes in it, and you’re putting water through it, and things are leaking out. Think of your intestines as that pipe. Leaky intestines is a problem because proteins cross over the gut, enter into our bloodstream, and that’s where we make these antibodies and create the inflammation.

If you didn’t have leaky gut, arguably the gluten is digested. It’s broken down. The problem is that it leaks across the gut before your digestion has a chance to break it down. It leaks across, then you form antibodies. Therefore, people who have leaky gut are going to react more negatively towards the gluten. Considering, it’s estimated that 95% of America has some sort of leaky gut because this is a major, major issue.

The next question is why have we seen this explosion of leaky gut in the last 15, 20 years? Believe it or not, there’s one major culprit when we look at the studies. It’s a chemical called glyphosate, which we’ve been using on our food supply since the mid 80s, through the 90s, into the early 2000s until now. It’s produced by a company called Monsanto that is the number one producer of Roundup, which is the number one herbicide, pesticide on the planet. That is the active ingredient, glyphosate.

We know that there’s major problems, and we have for years. Monsanto has a lot of money. They have been producing their own studies showing it’s safe, but every independent study comes back and says this stuff is not safe. They just had to admit that it does cause cancer recently after years of battle. Most countries in the world have banned this stuff except for right here in the United States.

We know that it creates leaky gut. I’ve interviewed on some past shows Stephanie Seneff. She the senior scientist at MIT, and many of her studies have shown this early on that it creates leaky gut, holes in the gut, opens up something called tight junction, which stays open. It’s like a freeway right into the bloodstream. I wrote an article, Warren, called “Is It Just Gluten?”

In the article I showed the evidence showing that it’s really not the gluten that’s the big problem. It’s the glyphosate that opens up the gut in so many people today. This chemical is really driving this problem of gluten. Yet, everyone’s avoiding gluten, Warren, but the problem is they’re not avoiding the big problem, and that’s glyphosate. Glyphosate is opening up the gut, so even if you’re avoiding gluten, which is hard to avoid, there’s many other proteins from nuts, other grains that are also crossing over your gut because you’re not avoiding this chemical and creating inflammation and a lot of symptoms that you just don’t know.

As a matter of fact, here’s the problem. You eat a meal, and then it really is hours later if not days later that you don’t feel well. You don’t associate it with the meal, but that’s what this chemical is doing. It’s opening up our gut, it’s causing these undigested proteins, foreign chemicals to cross into our bloodstream, driving inflammation. It’s not just gluten. This chemical is really the bigger issue

Warren:

From some previous shows, things I’ve read, the wheat is actually the carrier of the glyphosate because they spray the wheat with glyphosate, with Roundup Ready crops, and it doesn’t kill the wheat. It will kill other weeds, but it desiccates it. They use it to dry out the wheat to make it for better harvest. Now that is ground up, delivered to us, so it’s full of gluten. It has a bunch of foreign proteins in there, and it has moderate levels of glyphosate for human consumption. That’s going into our bodies.

How does it cause leaky gut at this point? The glyphosate opens up the tight junctions, opens up the door that was closed into your gut to your bloodstream. Other proteins, things that you’re eating that you normally would eat everyday and never have a symptom, even lemonade and whatever’s in lemons could start causing issues, meats, eggs. Eggs is a big one. The proteins in eggs come across there. It’s a carrier, so this glyphosate, what is it doing in the gut that causes leaky gut?

Dr. Pompa:

I’ll make it really simple. It has an effect on your good gut bacteria. It’s a chemical that kills bacteria. In doing so it creates a dysbiosis, meaning too many bad guys and not enough good guys. Just think of it as disrupting the normal system of bacteria

These tight junctions that are in your gut are there for a reason. They’re meant to let certain antibodies into your gut if you need them and certain nutrients out of the gut. These tight junctions open and close. It’s a very [18:17] system that’s controlled by bacteria. Imagine if you disrupted the bacteria, these gates are left wide open. That’s what’s happening without getting into the science. When we get back, I’m going to talk about something even more shocking. You better listen in.

Warren:

I love it. Dr. Pompa, you left us hanging a bit. You said that you had something even more shocking for us than this glyphosate issue, potentially this gluten issue and why it’s making so many people sick.

Dr. Pompa:

Here’s what it is. We know that the glyphosate is the bigger issue than gluten. Believe me, it is. There’s a pathway that all of us have. It’s a called a shikimate pathway in our gut. You don’t have to remember that.

Just know this; this pathway makes certain amino acids that we need to make our brains work normally, think clearly, feel good, not be depressed, be happy. Literally those are all chemicals that we call neurotransmitters. Here’s the point. I spoke a little bit about Stephanie Seneff, the MIT scientist. Many of her studies and now many others show that when this chemical glyphosate disrupts this pathway, it basically effects these bacteria that make these brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine.

These are the things that people are taking drugs for to try to make those things normal again so they’re not depressed. They feel normal. They’re motivated. This is a billion dollar industry of giving people psychotropic drug, brain drugs, happy drugs. Is it working? Arguably not, but nobody is getting to the big cause.

We know that this chemical is disrupting this pathway where we make certain amino acids needed to make certain brain chemicals. This is disrupting our society and how we feel and think. This is a massive disruption in children today. In the first time in history we have kids on these types of drugs. My son said in a show that we did on Cellular Healing TV, he estimated that 40% of the kids in his high school are taking Adderall. They’re taking it just to focus so they can study.

This is an epidemic that’s happening in our colleges today because kids can’t focus, they can’t think, they’re depressed, we have more and more kids on psychotropic drugs. Instead of understanding what’s really going on upstream, we’re just drugging the children. By the way, many of them end up on other drugs, street drugs. The point is that this chemical is causing brain disruption, especially in our children today. We better wake up as a country.

I know gluten is very in vogue right now, but wake up to the real cause, the real problem, that is this chemical that is being sprayed on our food supply. Warren, you kind of slid something in. If you’re eating non 100% organic grain, whether it’s oatmeal, rice, wheat, you are getting exposed to dangerous levels of this chemical. They use it to harvest it, not just kill the pests or the weeds. It’s called desiccation. It shrivels it up and makes it easier to harvest, and it even increases the seed.

Profits go through the roof, but the problem is that we’re being exposed to massive levels of this, not to mention we’re genetically modifying plants to be able to use more of this chemical. The levels of exposure in the last ten years have gone through the roof. This is why gluten has become even more toxic.

Warren:

It’s back to the hybridization of wheat, and it caused problems with gluten. It made some gluten sensitivities because of foreign protein, which isn’t the bigger problem. Now Monsanto comes along maybe originally with great intentions besides monopolizing and cornering the food market in the world, which there’s been some movies done on that that are pretty scary. However, they messed with it again.

They brought that science, which has its place, comes in, created GMO type crops that can take on more of this glyphosate and mess with the environment again. We start eating that stuff into our internal environment, jacking us up even more, causing scientifically proven through Stephanie Seneff’s work problems with the shikimate pathway, which leads to issues that you were talking to with brain chemicals, feelings, thoughts, and emotions. We screwed it up again.

It just keeps running this pattern when you mess with something. We’ve literally come into symbiosis, which mean synergy versus dys, which is disrupt. We go from synergy to disruption in our bodies, and we lead to major health challenges that we kind of mask with drugs and even sometimes supplements.

Dr. Pompa:

It even gets worse. We talked about hybridization. Genetic modification is where we’re taking DNA from something else and putting it into the plants. Let me give you an example. There’s something called Bt corn. Bt corn was genetically modified by Monsanto, who makes the chemical glyphosate, the herbicide Roundup, to basically be able to withstand more — Bt corn was actually created for it to produce its own chemical. They put a gene in there so Bt corn can produce its own chemical and withstand pests.

It sounds brilliant, right? Here’s the problem. There was a study that showed that Bt corn is sharing that DNA with our gut bacteria. Now our bacteria are producing the chemical that it was designed to produce. Now we’ve become our own pesticide factories, literally. We’re producing a chemical that creates more inflammation in the gut, more leaky gut. Bt corn has backfired.

It can definitely withstand more pests and not have the attack from the pests and maybe we need less pesticide on it, but it’s creating pesticide in our own gut. Here’s another problem. We take a gene and get these plants to be able to withstand more of our chemical glyphosate. We can spray ten times the amount of this stuff, and it doesn’t affect the plant. They genetically modify corn and soy to be able to do that as well.

The problem there is that now we are ingesting ten times more glyphosate because we’re able to spray more on it. Here’s the other problem. They’ve actually created at least on average 131 new strains of weeds that are basically resistant to glyphosate. These super weeds are cropping up, and now farmers can’t deal with it.

They’ve created a mess in our bodies, and it’s created a mess in the ecosystems on the planet. This is a big problem, yet who’s talking about it. Everyone knows the word gluten, but how few know the word glyphosate, which is really the big issue here?

Warren:

Gluten kind of is the myth and maybe even the front runner or the mask over the major issue. Everyone’s running away from gluten and not realizing the real cause underlying it is the leaky gut. The cause underlying the leaky gut, the most major player besides toxicity; mercury can cause that as well. It kills off bacteria, things like that. One of the major if not the major cause of leaky gut that we’re seeing in science is this glyphosate, the hidden danger.

Now they’re jacking up the amounts of glyphosate through genetic modification into our grain supply like soy, corn, and wheat. It’s hammering our health and our life. It’s a truth. It’s a health hunter discovery, but we’ve got to figure out what we can do as we move forward living a life like this.

Dr. Pompa:

Here’s another problem. Every menu you see is gluten free. This is gluten free and that. It’s become the low fat where we can look at low-fat products and know that they’re more unhealthy than regular products. If it says low fat on it, there’s man made fats, and it’s more unhealthy.

We’ve crossed into the same thing with gluten. Gluten-free products typically are what we call super sugars. They have things like tapioca flour, starches that raise glucose more than regular grain or sugar. These things are super sugars. People are flocking to gluten-free products, and arguably they’re actually more unhealthy than the regular product. How about that?

Warren:

That is another scary thought. I didn’t think about that. We’ll come right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Dr. Pompa:

We’re wrapping up here. Last segment already. That’s what a topic like this does. It makes time go really fast.

Warren:

It goes really fast. You have me in my head, Dr. Pompa. My little marketing mind was on there. This fear comes up with gluten. The major food producers, Nabisco, you can go down the line, they tap into this. Of course, they’re not looking at public health and awareness. They’re looking at driving numbers for their stockholders, and that’s what they do. I’m not going to go there.

They take this fear of gluten and turn it into something where individuals think they’re buying something healthy, as you said, because it’s gluten free, low fat, and we know that myth has been debunked. We can do a show on that. Now they’re taking advantage of people who are literally trying to make better health choices, and now they’re eating massive amounts of sugar instead of gluten. They’re causing more inflammation and more problems. Some of these things could still have glyphosate in them because they’re organic.

If they’re not organic, any grain that they’re using, any soy flour that they’re putting into the gluten-free pancake bread pizza could be loaded with more glyphosate, causing more problems and more food sensitivities, more hormone disruption, more brain function disruption from the gut, as everybody may or may not know. This is kind of scary. It’s going down a road that’s not good, but that’s why we have this show, and we’re educating folks out there listening to this so they can tell their friends and be one of the crazy ones like us speaking the truth.

Dr. Pompa:

I think at this point in the show, you have to offer people some solutions. What do you do? I think it’s unavoidable to some extent. They’re finding glyphosate in 60 to 70% of rainfall. This stuff is everywhere. There was just a recent study out with Napa Wines that even in the organic wines they’re finding glyphosate. That’s because they irrigate.

Warren:
Not my wine, Dr. Pompa.

Dr. Pompa:

We’re attacking that.

Warren:

Don’t burst that bubble.

Dr. Pompa:

The glyphosate is in the surface water, some of the ground water. It’s being transferred. Therein lies a problem. Obviously, it’s getting in everything that we’re eating. That doesn’t mean that all organic isn’t good. Organic is the only way to go.

Eating 100% organic is the best avoidance you could possibly have. There can be some cross contamination via air or water, but most of the time you’re massively dropping your load of glyphosate. Avoiding things like corn, soy, those are the big ones. Those are the genetically modified plants. If you’re not buying 100% organic, it’s GMO. If you’re not buying 100% organic soy, it’s GMO.

That’s most of the stuff that’s on the market. Therefore, you’re consuming massive amounts of glyphosate. Avoiding those, getting 100% organic — if you say I can’t get all organic, things like avocados they really don’t spray. If you just Google the dirty dozen, you’ll see the 12 top sprayed foods. You avoid those, you avoid the GMO. You’re going to lessen your load.

I’m telling you, it’s almost impossible to avoid 100%. That’s what we talk about detox. There’s a product called CytoDetox that we all use and doctors around the country. They use these types of things in nature to bind up chemicals like glyphosate.

There’s a product called Restore that closes tight junctions that all of our doctors use. There’s some absolute products that are needed. One hundred percent organic is more important today than ever to avoid this chemical. Yet, I’m still making the argument that it’s slightly still unavoidable.

Warren:

The organic thing is also another marketing ploy that if you buy something organic and it’s gluten-free organic, you’re not going to get glyphosate. It’s still a sugar. What you’re saying, Dr. Pompa, is if you’re getting non-organic meat, they can have a ton of glyphosate that builds it up into the fats of the cow. However, a grass-fed cow that’s bread out and raised in Colorado plains never see glyphosate, they never ingest it.

That may be safe, but now we’re looking at the bioaccumulation issues of glyphosate in the meats that we eat because they’re eating grass in areas and GMO corn that’s being loaded up. The organic meat side is another great solution to avoid not only glyphosate but potentially this GMO. We just don’t know, and it’s not safe.

Dr. Pompa:

You brought up a whole other topic. We talked about what man’s done to food. We talked a little bit about dairy. We talked a lot about grain. Studies show that eating meat is bad. No, it’s not the meat. Just like the milk, it’s what man has done to it.

Cows are not meant to eat grain, especially grains sprayed with these chemicals. Eating 100% grass fed, we don’t spray grass with glyphosate. You’re going to lower your exposure. Not to mention, cows that eat grain, it throws the fat off, the fatty acid ratios.

Major issues, it’s a whole other show of why grain-fed meat is so devastating to our health. Grass-fed meat is so absolutely amazing for our health. We’re avoiding massive levels of this chemical as well, a lot of reasons.

Warren:

There is a lot of reasons to go organic, to go grass fed. Where are some of the places you can go? The good news, guys, is because of shows like this, because of good friends and neighbors like Dr. Mercola and Dr. Oz and all these front runners that are pulling back the current quite a bit, David Wolfe. Wolfe, I say it wrong. I want to woof instead wolf all the time. It depends on where you’re from and whether your wife’s going to correct you or not. She corrects me all the time.

Dr. Pompa:

Oh, my God.

Warren:

You love my rabbits, don’t you? The rabbit’s going back down the hole, and here’s what I’m saying. The market, who is us, who we are; we are the tribe, we are the health hunters. Some would call it the crowd.

As we become more educated, even these millennials, who there’s some videos on millennials on Facebook, they’re waking up to this. The baby boomers are starting to as well. Our dollars are influencing markets and shopping behaviors. Organic is definitely moving and taking over market shares where even low-end grocery stores like Aldi are banning certain produce if they contain a laundry list of pesticides. They’re doing a lot of organic produce and things that wouldn’t normally be there.

These corporate farms that are doing the spraying and big chemical warehouses, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one of those. I’ve worked at those back in my environmental cleanup days. They just have tons of chemicals and chemical co-ops where they come in and buy the chemicals at a local farmer’s co-op and go out and spray them all over their grains and fields. This awakening that’s happening with local farmers and organic is a great movement. These grocery stores are finding these people, and these local farms are popping up and doing organic.

There’s some more corporate organic or industrial organic farms that are popping up as well. You’ll be able to find these at a reasonable price. There’s industrial organic, and then there’s local organic. There’s differences there, but even the industrial organic is far less toxic than what you would normally get. It’s at a price that most of America can afford, and we are the wealthiest country in the world.

Even Costco is loaded up with all kinds of grass fed and even organic meats and organic options. Aldi, another one, even your local grocery stores, and then there’s natural health food stores and, of course, Whole Foods. This is obtainable. All it takes is a little bit of digging deep into what Dr. Pompa said what are the things that I can buy that are non-organic? I can go grab those big bag of avocados at Costco and know that I’m getting them for 50 cents apiece, and these are high fat, high delivery nutrients to my body. You don’t have to buy them organic.

You can research those things, and there’s every single website on the planet that has that. I’m sure that we even have one on your website, DrPompa.com. We’ll put some resources down below on the resource section here on HealthHuntersRadio.com to point you guys in the right direction. We will deliver that in the resource section. Thank you, Dr. Pompa. This was a powerful topic.

Dr. Pompa:

Absolutely. Stay tuned for the next powerful topic.

Warren:

All right, health hunters. Thanks for spending some time with Dr. Pompa and I today. Until we bring you the next Health Hunter topic, we appreciate you guys. Share this with your friends. We are on iTunes. Go to HealthHuntersRadio.com and connect with us there.