PCOS Gluten free – It Doesn’t Hurt To Try [Podcast]

Dr. Tom O’Bryan is an internationally recognized expert on Celiac Disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity.  Inflammation due to gluten sensitivity is a central concern to women with PCOS, so I was thrilled to interview him for our latest podcast.  Most all of us suffer persistent symptoms when we have been “glutened,” including brain fog, headaches, fatigue, anxiety, rashes, asthma, general malaise, and more.  Dr. Tom stresses that eliminating gluten (gluten-free) is not an issue of simply addressing PCOS symptoms, rather it is a “foundational principle of how to address your health across the board.” During our interview, Dr. Tom discusses

• the difference between celiac and gluten sensitivity
• the latest research on celiac and gluten sensitivity
• how gluten translates into symptoms throughout the body (including fertility and brain)
• Are “cheat days” ok if you are gluten-free?
• why “gluten-free” foods are not always a good choice

Listen to the full audio here:

A complete transcript follows. 

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During the podcast, Dr. Tom refers to the following resources:

theDr.com

The Conundrum of Gluten Sensitivity, Why the Tests are Often Wrong

Differentiating Gluten Related Disorders

Complete Transcript:

Amy:                     Hello and welcome to another edition of the PCOS Diva podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about gluten sensitivity. My name is Amy Medling and I’m a certified health coach and founder of PCOS Diva and I’m thrilled to be speaking with Dr. Tom O’Bryan. Hi, Dr. Tom. Welcome to our podcast.

Tom:                      Thank you. Good day to you.

Amy:                     Why don’t you give our listeners a little bit of information about your background? You are an internationally recognized speaker and workshop leader specializing in the complications of non-celiac gluten sensitivity, celiac disease and autoimmune disease. You are the founder of thedr.com and you are the visionary behind the, really, paradigm shifting of Gluten Summit, “A Grain of Truth” which I highly recommend taking a look at that wonderful summit. It’s still available at the glutensummit.com. It brings together 29 of the world’s experts on gluten and its connection to diseases, disorders and the wide range of symptoms that can be caused by gluten sensitivity and celiac disease.

Let’s dive right in Dr. Tom. I wanted you to address what gluten sensitivity is and how that’s different from celiac disease.

Tom:                      You bet. Celiac disease is the condition that we all first became aware of that people may have a problem with the proteins in wheat, rye and barley. It’s the end stage of one of the mechanisms that a problem can occur. The end stage meaning when you got the diagnosed disease. It was children who were emaciated, looking like they were starving and they weren’t, but they look like they were and they had big, big bloated tummies. They look like when a woman is eight months pregnant. The disproportionate size of her belly compared to the rest of her body is what these kids look like. The disproportionate size of their belies compared to the rest of their bodies.

Doctors tried for many, many years to figure out what this was. Finally, it was during World War II when wheat was no longer available and these kids got better and then the war ended and now these kids got sick again that a very observant doc said, “It must be in the bread.” and started researching. They identify that, sure, that’s exactly what happens is for those that have that sensitivity and if they have the genes … Here’s a bottom line, that you pull a chain, the chain breaks at the weakest link. It could be at one end, the middle, the other end, it’s your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidneys, your reproductive system. Wherever the genetic weak link is. If you pull up the chain too hard, that’s where you’re likely to manifest a problem.

For these kids, their genetic weak link was in celiac disease. What is celiac disease? Your digestive tract is a tube. The tube is 20, 25 feet long. It starts at the mouth, goes to the other end. It’s a big long tube. Inside the tube is lined with shag carpeting, they’re called microvilli and this shag over here is where is calcium is absorbed, this shag over here, vitamin C, the shags over here, fats and good oils, the shags over here, proteins. All the shags absorb different nutrients.

Celiac disease is when your shags wear down and you’ve got berber. If you’ve got berber, you don’t absorb calcium. You get osteoporosis. It’s not rocket science. That’s why in the annals of internal medicine they say that every osteo product patient needs to be checked for celiac disease, as celiac disease could be the cause of their osteoporosis if you’re not absorbing calcium and vitamin D and vitamin K and the other nutrients necessary to build strong bone.

If the area of your intestines, it’s damaged by the sensitivity to wheat is where you absorb B vitamins, you may develop cardiovascular disease or you may develop hormone imbalances from the lack of B vitamins. If the area of the intestines that are damaged is where zinc is absorbed, you certainly will develop reproductive disorders and infertility and there’s 350 different enzymes that zinc is necessary for. Any of those symptoms may manifest.

The mechanism for these kids and these adults is that their shags wear down and they’ve got berber. That’s where most of the research was done until not that many years ago was looking at celiac disease which is the end stage, when your shags are all worn down.

There are many other manifestations of a gluten sensitivity that do not require the shags to be worn down and that falls into the category of non-celiac wheat sensitivity or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Their test for celiac will come back negative.

If your listeners were to go to their doctor and say, “I want to be checked for wheat sensitivity.” and they check you for celiac, it easily can come back negative because the instance of celiac disease is about 1 out of 100 depending on the group. If you have a family member with celiac it’s 1 out of 20. The incidence of non-celiac gluten sensitivity is somewhere between 6 to 20 out of 100 as supposed to 1 out of 100. It’s a much, much more prevalent condition out there that most doctors are just not that familiar with yet.

Amy:                     I think what you said in the beginning in the call about these children with these bloated bellies and I think women listening can probably relate with that. I know that for the longest time I always would have bloating after eating pizza or like a real gluten laden meal, pasta. I never made that connection. Once I decided that I was going to eliminate gluten, just because I kept reading more and more information about the connection with autoimmune disorders, it was amazing to me how life changing that was. It was like this veil was lifted, the fog cleared and the belly bloat went away.

I started eating a gluten free lifestyle. When I started PCOS Diva, I started meal plans and included gluten-free options. My meal plans are pretty much gluten-free and I started getting a lot of wonderful feedback from women experiencing that same sensation of the fog lifting, feeling better. No more joint pain and cycles were coming back too.

Maybe you can explain what maybe going on there in terms of the cycles coming back, the fog lifting. I was never diagnosed with celiac disease, but I think have some type of gluten sensitivity.

Tom:                      Yes. I would be happy to do that. At the same time I’m going to nail this discussion about this gluten sensitivity of fat. We’ll do both at the same time. I’ll start with the second part first on gluten sensitivity. It is a fad when you don’t have celiac disease? That all started last year and I won’t go into the long history behind it. There was a slam dunk article and I knew it was going to come out, and so I’m just waiting for it.

In Italy, the government will pay for your food. You get a credit for gluten free food if you’re diagnosed with a gluten sensitivity with or without celiac disease. If you’re diagnosed with a gluten related disorder, that’s the terminology. That includes celiac but it’s not limited to celiac. In order to qualify, you have to go to one of the 38 Italian centers all recognized as referral centers included in the register of the Italian health ministry for the diagnosis of gluten related disorders.

There are 27 gastroenterology clinics, five internal medicine clinics, four pediatric clinics, two allergy clinics that this is the go-to place where the whole country goes to one of these 38 centers around the country because you’ve got to be certified with a gluten related disorder. If you are, then you qualify to receive vouchers. I’m not sure how that system works. You’ve got to get the diagnosis.

They looked at 17,000 patients in these 38 centers. 17,000 patients and what did they find? They found that obviously people may have a sensitivity to gluten. Not everyone does, but some may. If they did, here are the symptoms that were reported once these people were confirmed with the diagnosis. 68% of the people just didn’t feel good. The terminology was lack of well-being. 64% had fatigue, 54% had headaches, 39% anxiety, 38% foggy brains, 32% numbness, 31% joint muscle pain and it kept going, skin rashes, weight loss, anemia, depression, skin issues, rhinitis, asthma. Of course, some people have a sensitivity to the food without having celiac disease. That study just slam dunk, nothing but net, nailed it down.

It’s not we’re spending time on these naysayers; it’s all fad, “Yeah right. Just go read the literature, buddy.” Excuse me for being direct, but this one really gets me. It upsets me because tens of thousands of people read these magazine articles and these newspaper articles from people who are writing sensational things: “It’s got to be a fad” or “It’s a fad. Science says it’s a fad.” No, it doesn’t. No, it doesn’t.

Yes, absolutely. Non-celiac wheat sensitivity, non-celiac gluten sensitivity occurs without celiac disease. If you have celiac disease, you absolutely have to take care of it because it’s a devastating disease. It has dramatic… it causes miscarriages.

I published a paper three or four years ago on reproductive disorders and celiac disease. By the way, all of your listeners are welcome to get that paper. It’s free. It’s on my website. You can just go to thedr.com and you have to search around. You’ll find it there. It’s jaw-dropping article about hormone imbalances. This was with celiacs because that’s where most of the research was done. Now, we know that that also occurs with non-celiac gluten sensitivity for some of the people. If there’s time we’ll go into some of the mechanisms by which it occurs.

If you suspect you have a sensitivity to a food or if you just know, you aren’t feeling good and you’re trying to do the best you can to be health, and you aren’t eating Ding Dongs and Ho Hos.

I gave a talk in Australia just a little over a year ago and I said that, “If you’re eating Ding Dongs and Ho Hos.” The whole place started roaring with laughter, 400 people. You just couldn’t stop and I thought, “It’s funny, but it wasn’t that funny.” I learned at the break that it’s another term for a penis. I said, “Oh my God!” I came back after the break. I said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” They started laughing again.

If you’re really trying to be health. If you really are putting the effort out and you’re being selective about your foods and you’re doing what you can to not eat junk and you’re just not feeling like the 68% of the people, lack of well-being. It doesn’t hurt to go on a nutrient dense gluten free diet. You learn so much about your body and if there’s only one thing people had walked away from this particular interview with, it’s give it a shot. Try gluten free, dairy free for two weeks. Just try it and see what happens and see if you don’t get an OMG from it about your body and about your vitality.

I went to the second part of the answer first and I forgot what the first part was of the question. What was the first part?

Amy:                     I think you answered it. What’s going on with all of those symptoms that are going away once you eliminated gluten? Before you go, I just wanted to emphasize a point where you said nutrient dense gluten free diet, to give that a try. Just because a box on the store shelves is gluten free, it doesn’t automatically mean that it’s healthy.

Tom:                      Listen to this. You’re absolutely right Amy. Listen to this one. You decide to go gluten free. Okay, you go gluten free. Normally, on your way to work every day, you stop at the local coffee shop, you get coffee and you get a blueberry muffin.

Now, you walk in and you say, “Wait a minute. I’m gluten free. I can’t have that.” You get your coffee, you feel a little deprived maybe, but you’re strong and you’re going to do it and you just know you start feeling better. Go in for a coffee the next day and you’re still feeling better because you’re going gluten free and dairy free. Now, there’s that habit, you like to have those carbs. I know that feeling. That goes along.

One day you go to your coffee shop and there’s a sign, “Gluten free blueberry muffins.” You say, “Oh! I could have one. It healthy for me. As a matter of fact, they are healthy for me. I can have two.” They’re not healthy for you. It’s garbage food, but there’s no reason why you can’t have a treat for yourself once in a while, a gluten free treat once in a while. It’s not healthy for you. The gluten free flours are not enriched with any nutrients, any vitamins. In our culture today, it’s really a travesty that they take grains and they take out 32 nutrients and they put four back in and they can marked it as enriched.

The gluten free market, they don’t add nutrients in there and it really is a paste. It’s just a paste that you’re throwing down into your digestive tract. There’s no reason why you can’t do that once in a while, just be conscious of it, that it’s not a health food for you. What’s healthy for you? Vegetables are healthy for you. Healthy meats, quality meats, quality fish. If you’re a meat eater, if you’re a vegetarian, you really have to work hard at it especially to be gluten free.

It’s a lot of work to do it, but you can’t do it, but you want to study what foods to eat. What foods you mix together so that you can have this machine working for you? Your body is a machine and if you put bad gas, bad oil in it, it’s going to run bad. If you put good gas and good oil in it, it’s going to run a lot better for you. Yes, nutrient dense is very important.

Amy:                     Let’s talk about putting the bad oil in and what does that cause? I think it leads to the inflammation that women with PCOS, we’re trying to tame the flames of inflammation because we often deal with this chronic low-level inflammation. I was just going to bring up to our listeners, I have another wonderful interview with Dr. Lara Briden where she’s talking about her new book, the Period Repair Manual. In her book she talks about different types of PCOS. This is her theory.

She has a theory that there is a type of PCOS that’s triggered by inflammation and whether that inflammation comes from maybe smoking or endocrine environmental disruptors or inflammatory foods like wheat and gluten. Maybe you could explain a little bit how gluten is contributing to this systemic inflammation.

Tom:                      You bet. It’s a big page concept that I’m going to give you now. It’s actually the reason why so many people are finding that they have value when they eliminate gluten from their diets.

You’re absolutely correct on this Amy, when you talk about inflammation. As far as I know, every degenerative disease, every disease whether it’s heart disease, cancer, brain disease, reproduction system disease, PCOS, every disease is a disease of inflammation at the cellular level.

The cell is always on fire. The question is, is it gasoline or kerosene and is it an ovarian cell or a Fallopian tube cell? Where is the problem and what’s fueling it? It’s always inflammation.

A big picture concept for you guys is stop throwing gasoline on the fire. That’s a first step in addressing whatever type of body dysfunction you have that is not from an acute trauma like you fell down and you broke an elbow or something, you scraped your skin, but something that’s developed overtime or you may have had since your cycles first began which means it could have come from in utero that mom may have been exposed to chemicals. There’s a lot of research out there now that would suggest that.

Whether it came on in your development stage or after your cycles began, it’s an inflammatory condition. It’s inflammation. You have to stop throwing gasoline on the fire. The question, is it kerosene or gasoline? Gluten, if you have a gluten sensitivity. If you have a recognized gluten sensitivity, here’s the visual for you.

For those of you that have ever started a charcoal fire for a barbecue. You spray charcoal lighter fluid on the coals and you throw a match on there. Sometimes it doesn’t catch. Then you have to take another match especially if you have the wood stick matches. You light the match, you lay down the coals and then you squirt some more charcoal fluid on the coals. You don’t squirt it on the flame of the match because it will put the flame out. You have to squirt it on the charcoals and the spray will catch the flame a little bit and then it will catch. That’s how you start a charcoal fire if you’re using charcoal lighter fluid.

What would have happened if you had poured gasoline on that charcoal and then threw a match on it? This huge flame would have happened. That’s gluten in your body if you have elevated antibodies already to gluten. If your immune system has determined that this is a problem for you, whether you get symptoms or not. If your immune systems says this is a problem, it’s gasoline on the fire.

Once again, you pull it a chain and it’s the inflammation that pulls on the chain. If the weak link on your chain is your reproductive system and you’re suffering from PCOS, that’s the weak link in your chain. You keep pulling on the chain and you’re trying to deal with the symptoms but you’re throwing gasoline on the fire. You have to stop throwing gasoline on the fire so then you can apply whatever principles you want to to put the fire out. You have to stop throwing gasoline on the fire.

Amy:                     Let me ask you, is going gluten free, is it something that you have to really be committed to for the long haul? Do you have to really go cold turkey or can we have cheat days?

Tom:                      You can transition. Some people do better by transitioning. There are many components to gluten. Gluten is not bad for you. Bad gluten is bad for you. There’s gluten in rice. There’s gluten in corn. There’s gluten in quinoa, but it’s the gluten in the family of grains of wheat, rye and barley. That family of glutens are ones humans can’t digest. They’re mild to moderate irritants until you cross the line. They’re mild to moderate irritants.

There are many components to these toxic glutens and wheat, rye and barley. If you have one of the antibodies elevated called gluteal morfitt which is a component of poorly digested wheat, then those people have a more difficult time weaning off and those people do well to transition slowly.

At the bottom line to the second part of your question, can you have cheat days? Here’s the rule. You can’t be a little pregnant. You can’t have a little gluten. Here is why, think of a vaccination for measles. They give you a shot of the bug measles, your brain sees this bug floating around in your bloodstream. It says, “Whoa! What’s this? This is not good for me. You, general.” In your immune system, you’ve got army, air force, marine corps generals sitting around with nothing to do. The brain says, “General. You now are General Gluten. Take care of this.”

General Gluten builds an assembly line. That assembly line starts producing soldiers. Those soldiers are trained as assassins to go after measles. They are called antibodies. You get measles antibodies circulating in your bloodstream and they’re like Arnold Schwarzenegger with his head out of a big humvee and those dark glasses on. In California, we call him The Governator.

You’ve got The Governator go, “Over there.” He’s firing these chemical bullets to destroy the measles. General Measles is watching all of these. When all of the measles bugs have been destroyed, General Measles say, “Okay. Turn off the assembly line. I don’t need any more measles antibodies out there right now.”

General Measles is vigilant now. The rest of his life, he’s called a memory B cell. For the rest of his life, if you’re ever exposed to measles, he just has to flip the switch to turn the assembly line on. He doesn’t have to rebuild the assembly line.

That’s why if you go to Africa, you need vaccinations months ahead of time for Yellow fever and dengue fever and all these strange diseases. If you go back to Africa 15 or 20 years later to visit again, you just need a booster shot two weeks before you go. You just have to turn General Yellow Fever back on again so you’ll have Yellow fever antibodies in your bloodstream.

The problem with gluten sensitivity, it is the only food that I am aware of. We produce memory B cells to gluten. If your immune system is making elevated antibodies to any of the peptides of gluten, then you have a memory B cell and it’s vigilant the rest of your life. If you cheat, if you have a cheat day and some doc say, “Oh! It’s okay, as long as you don’t feel bad. It’s okay.” Absolutely not, because if you have a cheat day and you activate the memory B cell for gluten, turns on the antibodies, turns on the assembly line, you’ll have elevated antibodies anywhere from 60 to 120 days- from one exposure.

If the weak link in your chain is your reproductive system, that’s where the inflammation is going to occur. If it’s your brain, that’s where the inflammation is going to occur, wherever the weak link is in your chain. Most people have more than one weak link also by the way. With PCOS, it’s maybe in the ovarian tissue. It’s also the insulin receptors, your insulin sensitivity goes down the toilet. You can’t maintain stable blood sugar. When you’re on a gluten free diet, your blood sugar stabilizes. Sometimes you reverse diabetes on a gluten free diet. It goes on and on the benefits to it.

That’s the big picture overview that if it takes you a year to transition to be fully gluten free, you take a year. If you have to cheat once in a while, you go ahead and cheat but you understand that you haven’t done it yet. You’re not there completely and you can’t expect to have outstanding results. If it takes you a while because you know yourself and the withdrawals are just really difficult. Fine, do it and then keep working on building a stronger foundation, taking the right nutrients to rebuild. You just keep working and learning more so that you can be successful.

It doesn’t have to be tomorrow unless you’re suffering with migraine so bad that you can’t function or a pain so bad you can’t function, then you are completely gluten free, dairy free immediately. If it’s, “It’s not that bad.” Then you need to transition. It’s fine to transition. Once you’ve transition, you do not want to turn on that memory B cell General Gluten again.

Amy:                     It’s a really good explanation. Now I’m going to think of Arnold Schwarzenegger every time I go to make a bad choice.

Tom:                      Yes, that’s good. That’s good.

Amy:                     Yeah. You had mentioned the brain. I know there are a lot of women with PCOS suffer from mood disorders, depression, anxiety, irritability, moodiness. I know my husband used to joke because he could usually tell if I’ve cheated because I’d be really snippy and he’d say, “What did you just eat?” Maybe you can explain to us what’s going on in our brain?

Tom:                      What’s it to you? What’s it to you? What did you just eat? What’s it to you? There are 14 different mechanisms by which a gluten sensitivity can impact on the brain. The most common one, and this helps to put it together for most people, is that if you have a gluten sensitivity, 73% of the people that have celiac disease, that’s where the research has been done. Remember, in the study from the 38 centers in Italy, the number two most common symptom was brain fog.

The study I’m going to tell you about now is specifically with celiac. We know that the mechanism or we suspect the mechanism is identical for what I’m about to tell you.

They took patients who had recently been diagnosed with celiac disease that not yet started a gluten free diet. They took the same number of patients who had been on a gluten free diet for a year and then they took twice as many controls, people that didn’t have a problem with wheat. All these people, they did SPECT scans.

A SPECT scan is they look at the brain to see how well saturated is your brain tissue with blood? I grew up in the mid-west and you know in the summer time, you do not water your lawn for five minutes a day. It’s a waste of time. You soak the loan once or twice a week. You really soak it because the water has to get down to the roots. The blades of grass do not absorb water. There has to be enough water to get down into the roots and the roots absorb the water to keep the grass healthy. You have to soak it.

A SPECT scan looks to see how well are you soaking your brain. Is there enough blood, an abundant amounts of blood in all of the brain tissue? What they found was that those who have a sensitivity gluten, 73% of them had a lack of blood flow into at least one-third of their brain, at least one-third of the brain. 73% of them. It varied between the 12 areas of the brain as to which area was not getting enough blood. It’s varied with the individual.

If it was in the back of the brain, probably occipital lobes, those are people that would be very sensitive to seizures. If it was in the middle of the brain, the parietal lobes. Those were people that were more sensitive to autism. If it was in the front … By the way, everyone has the front area with low blood flow of these 73%. They all had the frontal area but they also … Some of them had other areas. If it’s in the frontal, it’s depression and anxiety. Every one of them had that. 73% of them.

Now, those on a gluten free diet for a year or more, only 7% still had hypo perfusion, a lack of blood flow. Only 7%. Now, here’s how you put this in perspective. If everyone listening, if you could cross your legs right now. Please do that whether you’re sitting or standing. Just cross your legs for a moment. Leave them like that for three hours and stand up and run. You can’t. There’s no blood in your leg. You can’t run. Give your child toast for breakfast if he has a gluten sensitivity and send him to school to learn. He can’t. There’s just not enough blood in the brain. It’s not functioning properly.

When they do these studies on autistic kids, they find the autistic kids that all had the same mannerisms of autism whether … Let’s say repetitive behavior. They all have that same repetitive behavior. They all had hypo perfusion in the same area of the brain.

If they were autistic kids that don’t speak. They had no verbal skills. They all had hypo perfusion in a different area of the brain. That wherever the brain lack of blood flow, where it wasn’t getting soaked in there, that’s where the symptoms were manifesting. That’s what gluten does to you.

I’ll give you one more study about kids because it’s got my dander up whenever I start talking about this. They took 132 diagnosed with attention deficit. They put them on a gluten free diet. Within six months, every child or their parents reported a significant improvement in all DSM-IV markers of attention deficit. There are 12 markers. Every child, every marker fails to finish work, interrupts class, blurts out answers, unduly noisy. Every marker improved in every child on a gluten free diet.

If that were a drug, it would have been on the front page of every paper in the country and school districts would be mandating that children take it. There’s no profit in this, so there’s no drive behind this to disrupt the norm. There’s no profit here.

The politics of it keep it buried. That article should have been on the front page of every paper in the country. The authors of that article in their last paragraph said, “Every child diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder should be checked for celiac disease, as celiac disease could be the cause of their attention deficit.” They couldn’t say it any clearer.

The same with PCOS. If that’s the weak link in your chain … You read my paper on reproductive disorders and celiac disease and you see all of the different conditions that maybe associated with the sensitivity of gluten if that’s where the weak link into your chain is. The bottom line is you want to get well? Give this a shot. It’s not going to hurt you. There are tens and hundreds of thousands of people now, they’re saying, “OMG! This really works. I’m really surprised how this works.” It won’t harm you to try this and you maybe startled.

Amy:                     I think the point that you made about there’s really no money in this because this isn’t tied to another pharmaceutical. I think a lot of women with PCOS, they realize that because we’re often just given a couple therapies, Metformin or the birth control pill when there’s so many herbals and other remedies like eliminating gluten that really work but have not been specifically studied for PCOS because nobody is going to fund that.

Tom:                      That’s exactly right.

Amy:                     Yeah, having folks like you share your wisdom and spread your knowledge and women have to really become advocates for themselves. Thank you and I’m going to absolutely post the link underneath the interview to your article about hormonal balance and gluten. Do you have any other resources that you’d want to share with us?

Tom:                      Thank you. Yes, there are a couple. First, thanks for all your support Amy. It’s really great. I will just make one comment to your listening audience and that is the whole thing about protocols that help with symptom relief, they’re great. They’re absolutely great and they work. For some people, some work more than others. You look for sources like your website and you get really good quality information and you give it a shot.

What we’re talking about here is a foundational principle. This is not a treatment for PCOS. This is a foundational principle of how to address your body being healthier across the board, that when this one goes bad or goes imbalanced, wherever the weak link is, that’s where it’s going to show. If you keep trying to take the nutrients, the herbals, whatever the protocol is you’re deciding to use, they can be helpful, but if you’re still throwing gasoline on that fire causing the inflammation, then you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, you get some results but not great results.

Look at this discussion today. Perhaps listen to it again. Go to our website, just read all of the articles that are there. There’s a bunch of interviews also that are there that you could listen to and just get a big picture overview. I’m wanting to take everyone away from symptom relief, not to diminish the importance of symptom relief, but begin to think about where is all these coming from and address that underlying principle. Where is the inflammation coming from? I’ll say it differently? Where is the inflammation coming from? Where is the inflammation coming from? That’s the million dollar question. Now you’ve got a weak link in your chain … Thank you. Thank you.

You have a weak link in your chain, where did it come from? Who knows where it came from? Who knows? It might be a progesterone deficiency. You identify it. You work to build up your progesterone levels. It might be insulin resistance. You identify, you learn how to balance your food intake so that you reduce insulin resistance. You learn from those mechanisms of what triggers it, but what’s the foundational platform to address?

There’s a couple of other things specifically that I’d suggest that you take a look at. There’s a couple of articles that I’m suggesting to you. One is called Differentiating Gluten Related Disorders and the Conundrum of Gluten Sensitivity.

The first one, Differentiating Gluten Related Disorders. That’s going to address this whole thing about a fad. It’s a really nicely written article and it’s one that you can take to your doctor. I quote the research studies in there so that if he wants it, he’ll go look it up and he’ll get educated and find out also that, “Oh! Yeah, this thing does occur without celiac disease. Okay. That’s good to know.”

The second one is called The Conundrum of Gluten Sensitivity, Why The Test Are Often Wrong, so that you’ll learn what type of testing to do. There’s the common test that are done are very misleading because they give a lot of false negatives. They say there’s no problem when there is one. You have to do the right testing and that’s listed for you in that article, The Conundrum of Gluten Sensitivity.

If you go to my website thedr.com/favoritearticles. You’ll find in there. You can just go to thedr.com and go through, all the articles are there. You’re welcome to. To get these two, just /favoritearticles and they’ll be sitting there for you.

The last thing that I would recommend to this listening audience, please consider. If you want to learn about this, please consider listening to the Gluten Summit. I interviewed world leaders. I went to Oxford, England, Bologna, Italy, Tel Aviv, Israel and I brought the world leaders. These are not clinicians. These are the scientists. Then I brought in some clinicians, people on the cutting edge like my friend Mark Hyman, Mark Huston from Vanderbilt, University, Bill Davis who wrote Wheat Belly, Loren Cordain, the founder of the Paleo movement. I brought those clinicians in also.

You’re going to hear from the scientists who are going to explain to you how this thing occurs and why it occurs and it’s interpreted into everyday language. Keep a pen and paper because you’re still get a bunch of scrabble words that you can use and impress your friends. If I do say, it’s well done. I’m very proud of it. We’ve had over 200,000 people listen to it and we get testimonials every weak just saying thank you so much. Thank you.

That’s the glutensummit.com and I would suggest that everyone who has an interest, if you really want to know about gluten, that’s where you’re going to get the most grounded information in the science.

Amy:                     Yeah, and I can vouch for the Gluten Summit. I own the summit recordings and transcripts and I find myself often referring back to them. It’s really just was a fantastic production and a lot of work, I know. I applaud you.

I also just want to really encourage women that are listening to understand that knowledge is power and take full advantage of these resources. I will post all of the links so it will be easy for you to find them. I often say that we have to be divas at the doctor and it’s really helpful to know that especially that the testing that we need to be advocating for and to be able to understand results and to be able to bring the studies to your doctor, because that’s the language that they speak. Thank you Dr. Tom for putting all of these information together for us.

Tom:                      Thank you. Thank you so much.

Amy:                     I want to thank everyone for listening today and I also want to encourage you to please go to pcosdiva.com and take a peek at the other expert in interviews that we have. Until next time. This is Amy and goodbye.