238: No Grain No Pain

Episode 238: No Grain No Pain

With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Dr. Peter Osborne

Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV; I’m Ashley Smith. In this episode, Dr. Pompa welcomes gluten-free warrior Dr. Peter Osborne. They will discuss why autoimmunity is on the rise and how making the wrong food choices can set a person on a path towards chronic health problems. They will also dive deep into the complex relationship between longevity and body composition, generational toxicity, and non-celiac gluten sensitivity and how they are all things to consider when looking at your own health. This is an all things gluten-free episode you won’t want to miss.

Before we get started, I’d like to share a bit more about Dr. Peter Osborne. Dr. Osborne is one of the most sought-after, functional medicine doctors in the country. He is the clinical director of Origins Healthcare in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a Doctor of Chiropractic, Doctor of Functional Medicine, Doctor of Pastoral Science, and a Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist. His practice is centered on helping those with painful, chronic, degenerative and autoimmune diseases, with a primary focus on gluten sensitivity and food allergies. He is the founder of the Gluten-Free Society, the creator of the gluten-free health solution, and is the author of the best-selling book, No Grain, No Pain.

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Let’s get started and welcome Dr. Pompa and Dr. Osborne to this show. This is Cellular Healing TV.

Dr. Pompa:
Welcome to the show. I’m here with the gluten-free warrior. That’s what they call you, right, doc?

Dr. Osborne:
Yeah, well, that’s my nickname for sure. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. Well look, No Grain, No Pain is your book. As a matter of fact, it’s right behind you on your left there, alright, great book. I’ve had many people read it, ask questions. My first book was A Cellular Healing Diet. One of the first things I said is, “Hey, look, you get rid of grains in your diet, it actually takes more pain away than getting rid of sugar in your diet, believe it or not.” I think there’s many reasons for that. We hang strong on that. I want to start here because you’re also known for autoimmunity which is a passion of mine. We both know that gluten grains play a big role in autoimmunity. We are seeing more and more autoimmunity.

I think the scary part for me is that most of it’s even going undiagnosed. Even what’s diagnosed is rising dramatically, but even more is going undiagnosed, meaning we don’t even have good tests for it. So many people are in a state of autoimmunity. By the way, folks, that may be why you don’t feel well and why nothing’s working. You could be autoimmune. Let’s hear what you have to say about that. Why is it on the rise and what can we do about it?

Dr. Osborne:
That’s a great question. Autoimmune disease is definitely on the rise. A lot of what we’re learning in science is that many of the diseases that we didn’t know were autoimmune are actually autoimmune. There are forms of autoimmune heart disease. Even type 2 diabetes has an autoimmune underpinning whereas before, the CDC estimates 23 million or so autoimmune cases just in the US alone. Some people estimate it’s actually 46 million, and some people say it’s even higher, as much as 100 million. I don’t think anybody really truly knows what the actual number is because autoimmune disease is this kind of amorphous thing. A person can go in and out of it. You could feel better for a month and then you could crash back into it for a month. A lot of that has to do with choices, decisions, behaviors.

There are four predominant chemical triggers, in my experience, for autoimmune disease. I always start in my office under that premise. I’m a tester, not a guesser, so I really like to go in with science and say and justify, this is what we need to do for this person, because everybody can have an autoimmune disease for a different reason. You can take a thousand people, for example, with multiple sclerosis and they’re not all going to have it for the exact same reasons. You can take another thousand with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, and they’re not going to have it for the exact same reasons.

Dr. Pompa:
I agree.

Dr. Osborne:
These categorical triggers that I have found to be present pretty much 100 percent of the time. One is nutritional deficiency, when a person just doesn’t have adequate vitamins and minerals in their diet for their body to respond appropriately, heal properly, and do what it needs to do. One of the categories of triggers is chemical exposures, whether that’s coming from pesticides, heavy metals, whether that’s coming from food additives or preservatives. There are a lot of different chemicals that we’re exposed to and knowing where your problem is or what chemicals you need to really focus on, not that anyone should be eating glyphosate, for example. Most people who are sick need to be able to justify huge diet changes, huge lifestyle changes. They need to be able to have a reason why they’re doing it, not just do it stepping off in this I hope this works.” They need to say, you are having a problem with this. We can say that it’s true because we measured it in your biochemistry. Therefore, this is what you need to do as a unique person. Chemicals need to be measured.

Then we also see as a categorical, we see food; we mentioned gluten earlier. Gluten is one of the biggest triggers of autoimmune disease. As a matter of fact, gluten is what got me into autoimmune disease. When I was a young intern rotating through the VA hospital in the rheumatology department, the ultimate was that everybody would get a steroid; everybody would get methotrexate. That was the standard of care and I just kept asking. None of these people coming in for their follow-ups, none of them get better. Their pain’s managed but their joints are still destroyed. They still end up needing surgery and joint replacement after it’s all said and done. I just said, look, celiac disease is an autoimmune disease. We actually know what causes it. Why are we not at least taking a portion of these people and running a test And at our trial, say, let’s take ten people and take them on a gluten-free diet and see what happens with their autoimmune rheumatic disease. They laughed me out of the hospital. They basically said we don’t want anything to do with that diet. It has nothing to do with autoimmune disease. When I brought the research and showed them the research on fasting, and how fasting within days could eliminate autoimmune pain and non-celiac pain—I’m talking about rheumatoid pain, or lupus, or scleroderma, or dermatomyositis, these really painful autoimmune conditions. They ignored their own research and said no, we’re not going to do this. Diet has to be looked at as a major trigger. Food has to be looked at as a major trigger.

Then the fourth category is infection, things like Lyme disease, pseudomonas, different types of parasitic infections, yeast overgrowth. These are very prevalent in our society today and they’re very rarely measured by doctors that specialize in autoimmune disease. In my experience, like I said, in 100 percent of cases of autoimmune disease, I always find some varying within those four categorical triggers, meaning there’s always food that’s a problem, there’s always going to be some type of chemical present, there’s often times heavy metals as part of the issue, and there is always nutritional deficit within the person that is suffering with autoimmune disease. These are the fundamental, scientific, objective measurements that we can take that can allow us to personalize a person’s road to recovery from autoimmune disease.

Now, if we’re talking about other triggers, there certainly are stressor triggers. Some people go through very stressful events in their life, losing a loved one. Some people go through abuse; some people go through horrific things. Certainly, stress can be a trigger, as well. Stress can only be measured by the person’s subjective recollection of the stress. There’s not a lab test that we say, oh, your stress level is this high, although we can measure adrenal output; we can measure adrenal hormones, which gives us an indicator about a person’s current stress load. It’s also important, in cases of autoimmune disease, to isolate and identify whether or not a person is in an environment that is so stressfully overwhelming that they can’t recover from their illness.

Dr. Pompa:
I agree with everything you just said. We see it all the time. The stress bucket gets full of physical, chemical, or emotional triggers, the gene of autoimmune, which we all have these susceptibilities, but it turns it on. You mentioned testing. The testing right now, as I said at the top of the show, it’s in the Stone Ages for a lot of testing for the autoimmune and, therefore, a lot of people watching this. I’ve been tested for autoimmune and it doesn’t appear I have it. Maybe you know some better tests. What are some of the best tests that people can get done that would say, hey, I do, in fact, have autoimmune?

Dr. Osborne:
You’re right. The testing to diagnose autoimmune disease predominantly is antibody testing. The fundamental problem with antibody testing is—well, let’s just use the thyroid as an example. You can have your levels for antibodies checked. Most endocrinologists, if they’re going to measure for Hashimoto’s as low thyroid autoimmune disease, they’re going to measure an antibody called TPO, thyroid peroxidase.

If a person is—they’re autoimmune, but at the same time, they’re immunosuppressed. Their IGG levels or their IGA levels are on the floor, so when you measure their antibody levels for an autoimmune disease, they come back falsely negative even though that person has an autoimmune disease. That is one of the fundamental problems. Where we can use information is we can test IGG and IGA total. We can run labs that measure a person’s capacity to even produce antibodies at all before we go running labs to measure whether or not they have antibodies for autoimmune disease and potentially give us a false negative and a false answer.

Measuring the fundamental status of the immune system really, in my opinion, as it is of today is probably one of the most important things you can do go validate whether or not those autoimmune antibody tests are even going to be accurate.

Dr. Pompa:
Can they ask their doctor for that, the IGA and the IGI—IGG—

Dr. Osborne:
They can ask for total IGG, total IGA, total IGM as a starting point if the doctor is measuring an antibody test that is measuring those three classes of antibodies to a particular body tissue. That, to me, is important to do because one percent of the population is IGA-deficient. If you happen to be that one percent, and you’re running an antibody test for your thyroid, and it’s an IGA-dependent test, and it comes back negative, it doesn’t mean you don’t have autoimmune disease. It means that you have a test that was inaccurate because the doctor didn’t do a comprehensive evaluation.

Dr. Pompa:
You’re saying run those totals. If they’re deficient, then your test—you can’t look at the test as being a true negative test because they’re already low, so it’s not going to show a positive when, in fact, -inaudible-. That’s your point.

Dr. Osborne:
Exactly, now, if a test comes back positive, it’s definitely positive minus one caveat, which is this field in immunology called cross reactivity where, for example, certain antibodies can look like other certain antibodies. Lyme antibodies can look like rheumatalogical antibodies. Sometimes a person can test positive for rheumatoid arthritis. They get told they have rheumatoid arthritis, but what they actually have is a Lyme infection because the antibodies look like each other.

This is just where experience—the doctor’s experience in dealing with autoimmune disease and knowing about cross reactivity, and molecular mimicry, and those other phenomena that can occur in autoimmune disease is important to be able to really get to an accurate—what is wrong with this person?

Dr. Pompa:
I agree with you. These hidden infections are problematic. What about some of the testing there that people can do? Typically, doctors are looking at white blood cells. Oh, you’re fine. You don’t have an infection. What else can they do?

Dr. Osborne:
I like to look at infection in the gut because a lot of autoimmune disease starts from the premise of an intestinal permeability. Understand that the presence of abnormal bacteria—for example, pseudomonas aeruginosa is a very common bacteria that I see with autoimmune disease. The presence of pseudomonas does not dictate that a person will have autoimmune disease, but if a person has an overgrowth of pseudomonas and they also have an intestinal permeability or leaky gut, that’s when the problem occurs.

It’s not the bacteria that’s actually evil, but it’s when the gut is damaged and they have an overgrowth of a bacteria where we get these bacterial proteins that leak into the blood stream, look like our tissues. Our immune system initially will attack the bacterial proteins, but because those proteins look like our skin, or look like our joints, or look like our thyroid, the immune system will then start attacking our own tissues thinking it’s attacking that bacterial protein that’s leaking through.

Dr. Pompa:
What are some of your favorite gut tests? What companies do you like to do?

Dr. Osborne:
We like to look at the microbiome through Maldi TOF testing, which is a laser-assisted mass spectrometry. A lot of doctors are using the DNA technology, the PCR. I, personally, don’t like it because I’ve double blinded it enough times to see too much variance on the result. I’ve double blinded PCRs on the exact same patient’s stool samples and gotten back 50% variability within the same sampling. I can’t—

Dr. Pompa:
Me, too. I’ve moved away from it because of that. Explain to our viewers and listeners what the test is. Where would they get the test that you just recommended?

Dr. Osborne:
I would recommend they go to their functional medicine practitioner and ask them to run a Maldi TOF test. To my knowledge, it’s not a commercially available one. It’s not one of those where you can run down to the any lab tests now place and run this type of test. You have to have a practitioner who understands it and who’s willing to run it for you.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, better test, for sure. The question with gluten—we know that gluten can play havoc with this. It’s a very hard to digest protein. The question I always get is the million-dollar question. Is it the gluten? Is it what man has done to the gluten? Is it the leaky gut, or is it the glyphosate, the chemical that creates the leaky gut? There’s theories from people that we know, love, and respect that are very different along this. What’s your theory?

Dr. Osborne:
They’re all right. Everybody’s different. Look, I test for gluten sensitivity genetically. If you’ve got genetic markers that are going to show gluten sensitivity meaning when your immune system comes into contact with gluten, then your normal genetic upregulatory response is to produce an inflammatory mediator to destroy the gluten so that it doesn’t harm you, then that’s who you are genetically. That gene is activated by exposure, so the more exposure you get, the more you activate the gene, the more you create the inflammation, the more the inflammation accumulates, the more the disease starts to show up.

There are other component to grain, so there’s gluten, but there’s a family of proteins in grains called ATIs, amylase trypsin inhibitors, that have been shown to activate what are called toll-like receptors in the human gut which blow holes in the human gut. They just blow it wide open. It creates leaky gut, and it has nothing to do with gluten. It’s a completely separate family of proteins. There are proteins called lectins in grain that can do the same thing. There are proteins called serpinins that can do the same thing. In a lot of people, they don’t measure these things. They don’t even know they exist. Doctors very rarely talk about them.

There are classes of proteins in grains that are non-gluten-based proteins that are still potential problematic proteins for humans, and here’s why: Grains, by definition, are the seed of grass. Seeds are designed by God and Mother Nature to protect and preserve their own species. They do not want to be your food. They want to get in your poo, and come out on the other end, and to have fertilizer intact so they can continue to perpetuate their own species. In so doing, they’ve developed protective mechanisms that shut down your digestion, alter your gut lining so that you won’t want to continue to eat them into extinction. We have to respect that component of all foods, really, but seed particularly.

Grains are specifically the seeds of grass, which is why a lot of people with autoimmune disease don’t do well with grain, but also don’t do well with other seeds. For many people, if you look at autoimmune Paleo diets, which are even more restrictive than a grain-free diet, they’re eliminating seeds. They’re eliminating legumes, which are a form of seed. They’re eliminating grains because those things have the ability to shut down human digestion. When the digestive tract is already compromised because of autoimmunity, you have to remove those things for a time to regain the resiliency within the GI tract and to restore the health of the GI tract.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt about it. When someone’s digestive system’s compromised, these—like you said, beyond gluten, there’s many hard to digest proteins there. When you take them away, people feel better. That was the premise even of my -inaudible-. Now, when I was sick, I took every bit of grain seed away. When I got my health back, I can eat gluten now. I don’t eat a lot of it, but I definitely can. Do you eat any gluten, and is there anybody—I know Celiac people, they literally can’t have it the rest of their life. Do you eat any, and can some people eat some?

Dr. Osborne:
I don’t eat any, but I’m gluten-sensitive. Through testing, I know that for me, it’s the wrong move. Not everybody’s that way. I don’t think we can make the claim that everyone is gluten-sensitive. I think the most recent estimates in research are 30 to 40 percent—it’s estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the population has some degree of gluten sensitivity. Even that science is not set in stone. I think I’m open minded enough to know that not everybody is not going to be gluten sensitive.

We have some people that evolve. People evolve all the time to be able to digest things better. We have research on the microbiome where certain cultures have different species of bacteria. It’s not their gut; it’s the bacteria that are in their gut that actually digests -inaudible- for them. Part of it is we’re exposed to antibiotics through our meats. We’re exposed to antibiotics through our water. We’re exposed to antibiotics through medications. We’re exposed to things like vaccines. We’re exposed to a number of different medications that can disrupt the gut.

Beyond the medications, what’s on the grain? You’ve got glyphosate. You’ve at atrazine, which are herbicides, pesticides that are known to disrupt the gut junctions, known to create damage to the GI tract. You also have mold. One of the biggest problems in mass farming is mold and mycotoxins. These mycotoxins are highly poisonous to the human gut. People that over-consume grain, maybe that don’t have a gluten sensitivity, but maybe they’re reacting to the mycotoxin quantity within the grain.

There have been studies that show that in refractory Celiac disease where people with Celiac disease go completely gluten-free, but they’re still eating foods that are high in mycotoxins, they have recurring problems. Their issues don’t go away because of the mycotoxins. You got mycotoxins. Then you’ve got the omega-3/omega-6 ratio of grains. If your diet is a staple of grain, you’re getting very little omega-3 fats. A lack of omega-3 fat produces or leads to an easier road toward inflammation. Basically, it disrupts a person’s ability to control inflammation within their own body.

There are a lot of factors about grain that are completely non-gluten related. For each individual, it may be different. Some people are gluten-sensitive, but they’re also reacting to the mycotoxins. Some people are not gluten-sensitive, but it is the glyphosate, or it’s the genetic hybridization of the grain. That hybridization process has led to more things like wheat germ agglutinin, which is not the same thing as gluten. They don’t tolerate wheat germ agglutinin very well, so when they eat a sandwich, it sends them into a spiral. It’s very different for different people.

Again, part of what I like to do is differentiate what those differences are so that we know. If a person needs to be gluten-free, let’s don’t beat around the bush. Let’s take that person gluten-free, and let them know they need to learn about the diet, adopt the diet, and maintain the diet indefinitely. If a person doesn’t need to do that, let’s not put them through the pain indefinitely of a restriction that they may not need.

Dr. Pompa:
I agree. You start there. When we start adding some grain back in, my gosh, let’s start with ancient grains, organic grains, and even sprouted grains all of which make these hard to digest proteins more digestible. They won’t have the molds, the chemical that regular store-bought grains do. You’re right. Conventional grains, they’re deadly things beyond gluten. That’s for sure. Now, I’ve heard you use the word grainbesity, meaning grains can be the reason why you may not be able to lose weight or become obese. Explain that to our viewers.

Dr. Osborne:
The carbohydrate content of grain is extremely high. Rice is highly glycemic. Corn is highly glycemic. The amylopectin, which is a carbohydrate-based substance in wheat, is extremely glycemic. It’s actually more dangerous for diabetics than sugar. If you’re diabetic and you’re not grain-free to control your blood sugars, then you may need to have another talk with your endocrinologist or find another doctor. The concentration of sugar or carbohydrate load in grain is very high.

Now, some people would argue, well, not whole grain. Whole grain, it’s a different story because you have the fiber. To an extent, it’s true. Most studies show that whole grains won’t raise the blood sugar in the same fashion, although people with gluten sensitivity, I have seen that be the opposite where again, going back to knowing whether or not a person is gluten-sensitive or whether or not a person is not gluten-sensitive.

If the grain for that person is creating a gluten reaction that is inflammatory in nature, that shifts the hormones. That shifts the hormones in favor of excessive cortisol, which can upregulate insulin, which make it easier to store central fat. That person’s going to gain weight. They’re going to gain the type of weight, though, the more dangerous type of weight. It’s the fat around the heart, the fat around the viscera, the abdomen. This type of fat is known to be related to increased risk for mortality from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etcetera.

Grainbesity has to do with the fact that many grains, especially processed grains, are highly, highly glycemic and going to trigger a blood sugar response that alters hormones. If the grain for that person is causing an inflammatory response, it’s going to lead to a shift in those same hormones to try to deal and combat that inflammation, which is also going to lead to elevations in blood sugar. Every time your cortisol drives up to fight inflammation, it tells the liver to dump sugar into your blood stream, and then you have to make more insulin to compensate for that sugar. It just puts you in that vicious hormonal cycle, and that’s what we’re trying to stop.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. I think some people watching this are saying, “Hey, I’m going to go grain-free.” I bet most people watching this have, went off, and now we’re motivating them to go back because they’re going, “Okay, I get some of these things.” What are some of the pitfalls? I know you discuss some of that in your book. What are some of the pitfalls that people need to look for when they go grain-free?

Dr. Osborne:
I think the biggest one—it’s not so much that it’s dangerous. That’s a big myth that’s out there. Some dieticians say, “If you go grain-free, you’re going to not get enough of this nutrient. You’re not going to get enough of that nutrient.” The biggest issue is just maintaining enough fiber. If you cut grains out—whole grain out, most people—here’s the thing: Most people aren’t cutting whole grains out. Already, they don’t eat them. They’re eating what the FDA is labeling as whole grain, which is a far different thing from an actual, true whole grain.

Most of what people are eating are highly, highly processed grains. Know this. I think it’s important to know the history. In 1943, the United States government banned the sale of processed grain, banned it. The reason why, it was responsible for killing more than 8,000 people a year. Their diseases called pellagra and beriberi were so rampant as a result of processed grain because processed grain didn’t have adequate quantities of B vitamins. These people were eating these processed grains, not getting their B vitamins, and developing beriberi and pellagra. You can die from those diseases.

The government stepped in and said, “From now on, if you’re selling processed grain in this country, you have to fortify it.” This is actually where part of our food fortification law came from. That’s why when you flip over a loaf of bread or a box of cereal, it says fortified with, and you’ll always see thiamine. You’ll always see niacin, which is Vitamin B3, among some other nutrients. By law, they have to put them in there because if they don’t, they will create disease.

When you’re going grain-free, you’re actually avoiding a food that was banned because it was causing disease. There’s really not a huge risk of becoming nutritionally deficient when you’re going on a grain-free diet. You do want to watch your fiber intake. Some people go grain-free, and they switch more to this Paleo, and so it’s all fat, and all protein, and very little fiber. Fiber’s an important constituent in the human diet. I would just say make sure you’re getting adequate fiber. Twenty-five grams plus a day is a pretty good place to try to start.

Beyond that, one of the things—again, I like to test. I don’t like to guess. Any time you’re changing your diet from one situation and you’re going in a radical different direction, have your doctor run testing to measure your vitamin and mineral status. If you are going to become deficient, you can measure that, and you can accommodate that. You can alter your diet a little bit more. You can incorporate more foods that contain more of the nutrients that you’re deficient in, or you can supplement if you want to supplement and get more of that nutrient through a vitamin or a mineral complex.

Dr. Pompa:
As we age, something—for me, I’m in my 50s. My goal is to live long healthy. You’ve talked about even maybe perhaps more important, eliminating more grain and gluten in our diet as we age. Why is that?

Dr. Osborne:
As we age, generally, it’s not aging that’s the enemy as much as it is accumulated damage over time. We call aging time. Doctors refer to—they say, “Oh, you’re just getting older.” They’re not talking about the accumulation of bad behavior over time. You look great for 50 because you do great things. People can age gracefully, or they can do the wrong things, and they can have advanced aging.

Doing some of the wrong things—in my opinion, when you’re eating grain, unless you’re taking the painstaking effort of testing yourself to first determine whether or not you should or shouldn’t. Secondly, if you’re not gluten-sensitive, and you’re eating grain, it should be organic. It should be heirloom. You should be soaking and sprouting it. Most people are not going to do that. Eating less of it as you age, because we’re trying to reduce that accumulation, and bad choices, and bad behavior over time, is going to preserve your longevity, and it’s going to preserve your health.

Dr. Pompa:
I know that it even has an effect on muscle, muscle loss, which becomes an issue as you age. We want to keep our muscle. For the very reasons you’re stating, obviously, it has an effect on our muscle, musculoskeletal system, the joints, and the muscles themselves.

Dr. Osborne:
I call it the gluten muscle-wasting cycle because one of the side effects of gluten exposure for those with gluten sensitivity—the chronic inflammation, when it activates cortisol—cortisol is a hormone, destroys muscle tissue. It breaks it down. It’s a catabolic steroid. That’s why people that are on corticosteroids or prednisone—when you go, and you’ve got pain, and your doctor’s giving you the oral pills or injecting you. These people gain a lot of weight, central weight. They retain a lot of water, and they start—their muscles start deteriorating.

Matter of fact, a lot of research shows that chronic steroid use deteriorates muscle mass, so we really want—chronic steroid use from an external steroid is one thing, but chronic steroid production because you’re doing things that cause your body to have inflammation so that you’re making your own steroid chronically at too high of a level can also reduce your muscle mass.

That’s why people that are under chronic stress, even if it’s not food-related, gain weight. They gain weight because that cortisol is eating into their muscles, slowing down their basic metabolic rate. They’re eating the same amount of calories, but because their muscle tissue is diminished, their total caloric burning in a day is reduced. Even the same amount of calories will actually lead to calorie storage and fat storage.

Dr. Pompa:
What’s the best way—if someone’s watching this for the first time, and they’ve never been grain-free—and I’m sure your book goes into this, but what’s the best way to do this? Do people evolve into it? Do you recommend they just stop it all at once? What’s your recommendation for these people watching and say, “I want to go grain-free. What do I do today?”

Dr. Osborne:
I’d say, one, do it. Nike, just do it. Get with a good support group. Get with a good support system. Where most people fail is they don’t have a support system in place. For example, at home, if you’re doing this diet and your husband or wife is not doing it with you, your kids aren’t doing it with you, and you’re cooking this meal and that meal, that gets really onerous and burdensome. You want to have a good support system around you. That’s the best way to do it.

I’d say make sure that you’re doing it right, too. A lot of people, when they go gluten-free, what they do is they go to the gluten-free food aisle and buy all the cookies, and the cereal, and the bread. That is the absolute, wrong way to go about doing it. If you want to learn more about that, read No Grain, No Pain because I dive into the science behind why corn is really technically not gluten-free. Neither is rice, or sorghum, or any of these other “gluten-free grains.”

Do it right because if you’re going to take the effort to do something, you want to get a result. If you’re going to take the time to do it, you want to get a result or an outcome. If you do it wrong and you get a bad outcome, but you put the work and the effort into it, you’re going to get frustrated and quit. Then you’re going to move on in life and say, “That didn’t work for me.” The reality is, in my experience, if you’ve got autoimmune disease, I’ve not yet seen the patient with autoimmune disease who didn’t have gluten sensitivity. I’ve just not seen it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That’s just my experience.

Dr. Pompa:
I’d go beyond that. I think even, like you said, the best way to do it is just take all grains out of your system. It does go beyond gluten. When someone can’t break gluten down, they’re having trouble with other things and other grains beyond gluten. I think just going grain-free—your book, No Grain, No Pain. It doesn’t say no gluten. I think you’re right, though. I think gluten’s the fad. People are evolving into these super-sugars and all these other products that are gluten-free. It’s a buzzword. I think they’re ending up in greater trouble oftentimes, definitely increasing their food bill, and definitely not decreasing their pain, necessarily, or their inflammation.

Dr. Osborne:
We want an expensive food bill and a low-cost medical bill. That’s where the real tradeoff is. I once had a person come in. She’d been to the ER four times that year. Eighty thousand dollars later, that was the bill, we took gluten out of her diet, and she never had a migraine again. That’s a real inexpensive way to save money on your medical -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
I think this is a perfect storm. People would say, “Look, it wasn’t that many years ago we were eating gluten, and people didn’t have a problem,” but it’s a perfect storm. You said it. All the people are right. We have the glyphosate, which we know opens up the gut barriers, and now these undigested, hard-to-digest proteins like gluten and others are going right across, making antibodies. That’s a big issue.

We’re spraying the grain. The grain is different. We have other chemicals, molds. All of it is creating this perfect storm of gluten sensitivity. You know what? Not to mention the other amount of toxins that we’re being exposed to. You put all of it together, and it’s an absolute disaster today. You’re right. This is driving autoimmune beyond belief. It is why so many people don’t feel well today.

I think you said something, and I have to ask you the question about your own family. It’s very difficult when you have one person in a home that is grain-free, gluten-free. What’s going on in your home? You said you’re extremely sensitive. You could be easily exposed if you’re really sensitive to something that had gluten on it, and get exposed to it in a pan that was cooked with something gluten, or whatever, a knife, etcetera.

Dr. Osborne:
Our house is grain-free. Part of the reason why is, again, -inaudible- sons. Actually, I’ve got one son left at home. He’s 16. It’s been grain-free for 15 years. The reason why is I’m—again, testing. I go back to testing. It wasn’t a fad. It wasn’t a trend. It was, look, this is necessary to not only get healthy, but necessary to maintain health. My kids are gluten-sensitive, and my wife is gluten-sensitive, so the fact that we all are makes it a lot easier.

Dr. Pompa:
Man, you’re blessed over there. It’s when one of your kids goes, “I can eat this stuff.” Then he’s bringing it home, and then you’re getting exposed. Talk about that. Exposure’s a big deal when you’re at the level of sensitivity that you are.

Dr. Osborne:
Research shows that 20 parts per million, which is the size of a bread crumb or the equivalent of a drop of water in a gallon of water, not very much, can cause an inflammatory response for up to two months. Now, look, it’s dose-dependent. A lot of the people that hyper-react—and I say hyper-react. It’s not just Celiac disease because there’s non-Celiac gluten sensitivity, as well. Some people get a 20 part per million dose, and their joints will flare on them for several weeks, and it has nothing to do with Celiac disease. I want to be clear that it’s not—some people say, “Well, I don’t have Celiac disease. Therefore, I can cheat on the weekends.” No, it’s not true. If you’re gluten-sensitive, you shouldn’t cheat.

Now, some people are—here’s the thing: Health is an accumulation of behaviors. It’s your genes expressing themselves based on your choices. If you make a lot of really great choices and every once in a while make a bad choice—I’ve seen people who are gluten-sensitive. Once a year, they’ll go out, and they’ll have something, and they don’t have this horrific response. One of the reason why is they’ve done everything right for so long, they have resiliency built into their health, so they don’t just drop over from the exposure. Was it a good idea? No, but it didn’t kill them at the same time. That’s something they’re willing to do. That’s the cost, and that’s something they’re willing to do with their health and with themselves.

I think ultimately what we know about gluten exposure is that 20 parts per million can create an inflammatory response for up to two months, and it’s not always an inflammatory response that you feel outwardly. Remember, autoimmune disease is a silent creeper. That’s the whole thing with autoimmune disease. You don’t just wake up one day feeling like garbage, and go to the doctor, and you have autoimmune disease. You’ve been developing that disease for many, many years. Most autoimmune diseases, for women, take the third to fourth decade of life to start to manifest. For men, it’s more in the 50s.

That’s average, not 100% of the time because there certainly are juvenile cases like juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and dermatitis, etcetera. There are cases that take a short period of time to manifest, but there—generally, when we see it in kids, it’s because they’ve had 20 vaccines that week, and they’ve had some kind of major, aggressive stressor, or medication, or illness, and it hit them really early whereas in adults, generally, again, like I said, in women, three to four decades, and men, the fifth decade of life is usually when we see it show up.

What we’re starting to see is we’re starting to see the Pottenger cat effect. I don’t know if you’ve read the book, Pottenger’s Cats. In my opinion, it’s one of the best medical texts ever written. It’s a study done by Francis Pottenger on different groups of cats. In essence, what he did with these cats is took one group, and he fed them all raw food, what cats are supposed to eat, raw meat, etcetera. He took another group, and he fed them all processed food. He took another group, and he fed them a mixture of raw and processed food.

Within three generations, the all-processed food group of cats had autoimmune disease, had bone structure changes. The males looked like females, and the females looked like males. They had an inability to reproduce. They were completely infertile. In the mixed group, he found the same problems only to a lesser degree. In the all-raw food group, he didn’t find any problems. The lesson in this is—I know humans aren’t cats. The lesson in this is our generation is the second generation. Our children are the third generation of cats, so to speak. This is why we’re seeing diseases showing up earlier and earlier. This is the first time in human history that we are predicting that our children will have shorter life spans than we do.

It’s because when we grew up, we had more exposure to real food. You didn’t have quite as many chemicals. Our kids, when they were born, when they grew up, they were exposed to it from the very beginning, and so they had a greater bulk exposure over time than we did. Our parents and grandparents didn’t really have much of it at all. What we’re seeing in them is, yes, they’re getting sick now, too. We’re seeing a lot of autoimmune disease hit 60-year-olds and 70-year-olds as a result of this kind of continued accumulation.

In my opinion as well as in my experience, we’re seeing that accumulative effect as a result of kids being born today don’t have the advantage that our grandparents had of eating real food. Restaurants are relatively brand new to human history. They’re only about three decades old. Before that, you had a garden in your backyard, and a lot of the food that you had either was grown from your neighbor’s garden or was grown from your own.

Dr. Pompa:
Peter, think about it this way, too. The amount of lead and mercury inherited in this generation is huge because our parents, they grew up in the lead generation. In 1978, we weaned it out, but that is inherited in utero. Then all of the fillings that they had, the silver fillings, tests show—studies show that that’s inherited in utero to that generation. Then there’s glyphosate, which started really being spread 80s, especially in the 90s, 2000s. That’s this generation.

Glyphosate, nothing like it. It’s destroying the microbiome, opening up the gut barriers. My gosh. It is literally a perfect storm. This generational toxicity, just add the fire. You add these proteins that you can’t digest, and they go into the blood, driving this autoimmune. I’m telling you, this is a great threat to society right now. It really is, Peter. I thank you for exposing it, and your book’s great. Where can they get the book and find out more?

Dr. Osborne:
They can pick it up at major bookstores across the country. You can also pick it up on Amazon. I’ve got a free bonus. It’s a really lengthy—couple hours long. It’s a video on leaky gut, and it comes with the book, as well, a side book. If you go pick up your book and send us the receipt—you can go to NoGrainNoPainBook.com and enter the receipt. We’ll send you that as a free gift for purchasing.

Dr. Pompa:
Dr. Peter, man, fan of yours. Just love what you’re doing. Thanks for being on the show. People, take the grain out. That’ll take the pain out, and a lot more than that, inflammation being the number one cause of disease. Most likely, this is part of the problem. Thanks, Peter. Appreciate you, man.

Dr. Osborne:
Thank you. Appreciate all you’re doing, as well.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Ashley:
We hope you enjoyed today’s episode of CHTV. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern. You may also subscribe to us on iTunes or find us at Podcast.DrPompa.com. Thanks for listening.