Many people are choosing to avoid gluten, , even though they are not gluten sensitive.
Gluten is a family of proteins found in grains like wheat, rye, spelt and barley.
To our digestive system, gluten is as hard as a rock and usurps our body’s resources just to digest it. Your stomach acids can dissolve meat proteins in minutes but gluten passes through the stomach unscathed to your upper intestines where it can cause havoc.
6% of the U.S. population is gluten sensitive and most don’t even know it. Full blown celiac disease is often misdiagnosed as lactose intolerance, or worse yet, not diagnosed properly until their later years.
At the very worst gluten causes an autoimmune reaction such as celiac or gluten sensitivity. But in all cases, it draws resources from your body in order to digest it. That is why elite athletes, that aren’t necessarily gluten sensitive are omitting gluten from their diet to help build their endurance. They don’t want blood traveling from their extremities to their intestines just to digest gluten and sap them of their endurance.
When we evolved as cave people to the diet which to our body is most optimal, there was no wheat in our diet. Then about 10,000 years ago when we started to grow food and consume more grains, most notably wheat. And it has stayed with us as a food source ever since, although our body was never programmed for it.
If you’re gluten sensitive you have to avoid it; but even if you just want to physically perform better, lay off gluten products such as wheat, barley and rye, and substitute bananas, rice, polenta and sweet potatoes.