vhHealth
Wheat & Gluten Disorders
I am a Certified Gluten-Free Practitioner (CGP). I graduated from the world's top CGP program of Dr. Tom O’Bryan. And I redid my certification a second time at the request of Dr. O’Bryan, based on new research that has emerged in the last 7 years. He is the leading expert in the world on gluten research and gluten-related disorders. So I am twice certified!
I began studying gluten-related disorders in 1985 due to life-long problems with eating wheat (something I did daily in my Dutch-American family the first 29 years of my life). In 2010, research led me to the work of world -renowned gluten specialist, Dr.Tom O’Bryan. Thankfully, Dr. Tom (www.thedr.com) developed a practitioner course to teach doctors and other health practitioners about gluten/wheat sensitivity, celiac disease, and related autoimmune disorders. In this course I learned that many gluten symptoms remain silent for years, that gluten KILLS people, and that gluten is the basis for at least 300 autoimmune diseases.
As a CGP, I can provide you the newest state-of-the-art blood testing to give you definitive answers to these questions: Am I celiac? Am I non-celiac but still gluten sensitive? I am allergic to wheat but not to gluten? Can I eat wheat? If I cannot eat wheat, can I still eat barley and rye? What is the difference between being allergic to wheat or sensitive to gluten? Can I eat wheat once in a while without harming my body? Do I have intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”)?
Gluten sensitivity is a systemic autoimmune disease with diverse manifestations. Celiac disease is only one manifestation of gluten sensitivity. It is gluten SENSITIVITY that is the real danger, and a celiac diagnosis may be only a small part of this. Gluten sensitivity is PERMANENT and if you test positive for it, then wheat, barley, rye and all of their derivatives must be fully eliminated from your diet. Sadly, patients today are not getting the guidance they need… it takes them an average of 8-11 years to get a correct autoimmune diagnosis!
An autoimmune cascade is set into motion by gluten sensitivity. What happens when you have a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and a side-dish of pasta for dinner, maybe with a sip of beer? This increases permeability in the gut in just 36 hours, preceding the onset of an autoimmune process by just 3-4 weeks. Gluten causes critical tight junctions in your intestinal wall to open. Gluten floats through these openings into the blood stream instead of being digested through the intestines. Your own body attacks the gluten in the blood stream because now, in the blood stream where it does not belong, gluten is seen as an invader, an enemy, just as if it were a bacteria or a virus. Worn out from these gluten invaders, the body’s immune defense gets confused and also begins to attack its own good tissue, setting into motion an autoimmune response. For example, your immune system cannot tell the difference between a gluten protein molecule floating out of the intestines into your blood stream and your thyroid tissue…so when it attacks your gluten in the blood stream, it continues on to attack your thyroid tissue and one of several thyroid autoimmune conditions begins.
Proper testing and treatment is essential. Going on a gluten free diet is the FIRST step, but this will not rebuild the intestinal damage that has already occurred. Research shows that gluten can either cause or contribute significantly to several hundred autoimmune diseases! And for 10-20 years these symptoms may remain SILENT. Symptoms are often neither gastrointestinal nor stomach-related. Inside the intestines of a gluten sensitive person is a roaring fire! Gluten sensitive individuals, full of inflammation in the gut, need not only a gluten-free diet for life (yes, permanent), but they also need careful supplementation and foods that rebuild the intestines and close the critical junctions that have opened in the intestinal wall to create a leaky gut.
If you are gluten sensitive, after years of eating wheat, barley, or rye, gluten has caused so much tissue damage that your gut has been partially destroyed. A big problem, since 70% of our entire immune defense is in our gut! Why aren’t we taught that gluten sensitivity is one of the most common lifelong disorders in the country? Why aren’t our doctors testing us for gluten sensitivity when we come to them with osteoporosis, miscarriages, ALS, autism, psoriasis, neuropathy, liver cancer, severe muscle pain, brain lesions, auditory hallucinations, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, seizures, migraines, acne, depression, vitamin D deficiency or any number of other autoimmune conditions or dysfunctions? Why aren’t they using proper and accurate testing? For example, no one gets psoriasis when the lesions pop up on the skin. The precursors have been under the skin for many many years. And you don’t get Alzheimer’s in your 60s and 70s, it starts in your teens and in your 20s. At the base of all of these conditions is inflammation. And all inflammatory disease responds to gluten reactions like fire responds to gasoline. Gluten sensitivity, which is the MOST common food sensitivity, helps to create every one of these conditions. Did you know that if you are gluten sensitive you can either greatly reduce or eliminate the aforementioned conditions by going gluten free and rebuilding your gut through careful supplementation and diet? You can even rebuild the brain. You can reverse white matter brain lesions just by going gluten free! The brain has a completely independent immune system which can be invaded by gluten sensitivity. The integrity of the blood brain barrier can be lost, but it also can recover with proper testing, diet, and supplements.
If you have gluten sensitivity it is PERMANENT. Here’s what you need to do:
1 - Find out through PROPER TESTING. Sadly, the blood tests we do with our M.D.s test for only 2 gluten peptides. The microchip blood tests I can now offer through Vibrant Laboratories test for 26 peptides! If your allopathic MD says you are not gluten sensitive or celiac, he may be wrong. My doctor was wrong. Yours, too? It is not your doctor’s fault. That is the system he is a part of. That’s why many M.D.s are becoming CGP, too, as they have never been educated in medical school with this information. Much of it has only emerged in the last 15 years. Harvard Medical School invited Dr. O’Bryan to teach this material only a few years ago. Doctors do not learn that gluten KILLS people. Many patients slip through the cracks of inadequate out-of-date blood testing and diagnosis.
2 - Eat a GLUTEN FREE DIET -- it's a must. This is non-negotiable and PERMANENT. But even with the gluten free diet the body remains under attack by bacteria that are not supposed to be there. These bacteria have gotten the upper hand while the gluten relentlessly bombed the intestines for years and years. Bad bacteria do not just disappear on a gluten free diet. The intestinal tract must be rebuilt so that it can eliminate those large patches of bad bacteria. Immune homeostasis has been severely dysregulated by the bad bacteria that have flourished for years as a result of gluten quietly bombarding the gut. Some of these bacteria are so strange, so bad, that they have never been identified in history…as many as 18 different types of unidentified bad bacteria eating away at your gut! These unknown species, with their own force field surrounding them, thrive! They do not go away when on the gluten free diet. Gluten free is only the first step. The normal flora that are supposed to be there to protect the gut have been destroyed. So what happens when these bad bacteria silently get into your brain, your liver, your heart through your leaky gut? Tumors, liver cancer, heart attacks, miscarriages, diabetes…and then, when we quit the gluten, some of us crash. Because the gluten was a stimulant to which we became addicted. So we need help to carefully rebuild the body and support it through the true fatigue that comes from breaking the addiction. And when we reestablish your intestinal barrier function after it’s been ravaged by gluten, we can prevent autoimmune symptoms and other disorders!
3 - REBUILD the gut with proper supplementation and lifestyle. The body is so depleted from trying to put out all of the inflammatory fires with its increasingly worn out defenses that it is in desperate need of rebuilding. And the bad-bacteria bullies have to be eliminated now that they can no longer hide behind and thrive on the gluten. Your body is so depleted from trying to put out all of the inflammatory fires with its increasingly worn out defenses that it is in desperate need of rebuilding. The bad-bacteria have to be eliminated. I’d like to help you put out the fire and rebuild your gut with proper testing, diet, supplementation and lifestyle adjustments.
There is finally a test to help you get back on track! This essential test is a Vibrant Laboratories microchip blood test called the Wheat Zoomer. Accuracy is 99.9%! Mayo Clinic has written 5 papers about this test, how it is ushering a new era of medicine. How does it work? Purchase the lab test from me for $1,550, carefully fill out the requisition form, and then the laboratory will send a medical phlebotomist to your home for a fee of $95 (phlebotomy fees may vary from state to state and are higher in Puerto Rico and Hawaii) in the morning, from Monday-Thursday (in the USA). Your blood is sent to the lab and about three weeks later, results are sent to me in a private online portal.
I then send you these results and, with a Vibrant lab clinician, interpret these results for you, letting you know once and for all if gluten is okay for you… or if gluten is sending a slow drip-drip of toxic poison into your gut, if you have intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”), and if gluten is creating a basis for autoimmune disease and premature death.
There are other tests we can do for you, too, with this brilliant FDA-approved microchip technology. But the foundational test, the most important one for all of us, is the Vibrant Labs Wheat Zoomer. You do not need to be my Nutritional Balancing client to benefit from this amazing new test. It changed my life and it will change yours, too.
Need more information or want footnotes to some of the statements I made in this post? Ready to get started? Email me: abvanhalsema@gmail.com
All Vibrant Wellness laboratory testing is done in a CLIA-certified, and CAP-accredited laboratory in California.
