We all of us know of the many confusing symptoms that occur when a tiny morsel of gluten escapes past us and enters our system. We should, however, sometimes consider other potential problems that can make us ill. A few years ago, I developed the most dreadful palpitations - so fast and furious I became extremely frightened. I ended up in hospital, they subsided and the doctors could find nothing wrong. It took me a long time to work out the cause and it eventually had something to do with some pears I was eating. I always have washed fruit thoroughly and most of the time have peeled it too. I stopped eating pears .. I planted some pear trees in my garden and now eat my own.
This article brought back and re-inforced what happened to me. For the last few years I have found myself eating organic apples and potatoes moreso than any other vegetables and fruit. Mainly because I could always taste the difference.
I saw this article the other day and thought it worth passing on if you have a moment or two, then it might well be worth a read ..
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What have we done to the food chain? I have read that all root veg ought to be peeled by 1/4'' (6mm) to make sure that we do not ingest insecticides.
I know that we use 'Organophosphates' a lot as insecticides and this is also what we use for sheep dips.
And I was surprised when I read about these washed mixed salads that we can buy in the supermarkets, they are washed in chlorine and are allowed to contain 19X the amount of chlorine that is used in swimming pools. When asked about this the supermarkets retort was 'our customers want a disinfected product' I prefer mayo on my salad LOL
I think that you are making a very valid point here that just because 'we' are coeliac we must not blame everything on gluten or having been glutened.
Yes, like you I prefer everything to be properly nutritious. To know that whatever we put into our bodies feeds, repairs and embraces our every need.
Thanks for sharing about the 'supermarket salad' ... I had no idea. As you know I am not a salad fan but have been drawn in from time to time especially when they contain the red salad leaves which are always much easier to digest. On a further note - I do like watercress but I have found tiny minute wiggly worms in some packets. I was always warned about watercress as it does have dangerous parasites called 'fluke worms' which are abundant in the wild varieties and need a good dose of salts to kill them off. Perhaps that is why they have chosen to use a disinfectant .... I too, though would rather NOT eat disinfectant!!
AND - pear trees are worth growing - Conference can be grown as a single tree - they are quite compact - they do not need cross-polination and have very little disease ........... recommend anyone give them a try.
The 'Alar' organophosphate scare in the 70s is so deeply entrenched in memory I haven't eaten fruit without peeling but reactions to pears can also be from fructose intolerance as pears are the worst offender.
Much as I'd like to rant about the use of chlorine in bagged salads/veg, in 1992 Greenpeace did studies on industrial organochlorines and human health and found they posed no risk.
Hi Jacks, I can assure you that I do not have a fructose intolerance. I've never had a problem with organic pears and I have three pear trees of my own - two Williams and one Conference. I eat wild plums - they grow by the truck load and are free for the taking - both red and yellow. They also make magnificent compote. I pick elderberries and those too are made into compote. We have Bramley apple trees and eat fresh and also compote them. I eat between one and three bananas each and every day and I eat masses of honey. None of these cause palpitations or any other problems for me.
I think, although many organisatons may say all kinds of chemicals do not pose any health problems, they are wrong. For our bodies are not designed to break down chemicals - our bodies are living machines and they try to break down everything that we put inside them. We are but animals. If we put pure whole pure food inside ourselves then it is separated into protein, carbohydrate and fat .. we have the ability to break down these three main things and use them.
Have you ever read what happens when a person ingests transfats and how they get trapped in the fat cells thus causing the propensity towards obesity?
I wasn't suggesting you had fructose intolerance, it was a coeliac comment - others might have noted they shared the symptom after consuming high fructose foods - apples, pears. BTW bananas aren't high fructose. Fructose malabsorption can cause palpitations, it is also implicated in low folic acid status which, as we know, is important for cardiovascular health (and brain function).
Re the body breaking down chemicals - to be strictly correct, that's all it does, fructose itself is a polymer (as is wallpaper paste!). Unfortunately through CD damage many of us are unable to break down the simple galactose sugars lactose, fructose and palpitations is one insulin reaction.
Re the bagged vegetables/chlorine - Greenpeace would have definitely run with that if there had been any evidence of health depletion. People say they eat pure food then open cans for tomatoes, beans, etc. What side effects are there from bagged salad compared to consuming food from tin cans? Bisophenol A has been demonstrated to alter DNA whereas the amount of chlorine in bagged salad isn't gassing people. (I'd wash again anyway.)
Re transfats - most people are aware of hydrogenation of vegetable oils nowadays. It's the reason the palm oil industry is booming (along with the demise of tropical forests and native species), best not get me started on this ...
Re obesity and me - now you're having a laugh! Obviously not enough transfats ...
Hi Jacks, You obviously read a lot, like me - Lol!! I had never heard about the fructose and the B9 problem before. So thank you for that information - I will try and find some articles on the subject to find out more.
I re-read what I had written, which apologies, was quite late .. should have been in bed and realised that it made me sound like a positive fruitarian! Lol!!
There are still mountains of what are deemed as transfats around in the form of thickened vegetable fats found in low fat spreads.
I've read several Zoe Harcombe books and found the fat cell information very interesting .. I suppose it dependes upon whether you need to reduce weight or gain weight but the key appears to be eating or not eating fat and carbohydrates at the same mealtime. This I suppose is why milk is so very fattening as it comprises of 4% fat and 11.4% carbohydrate and what no-one tells anyone is that there is more carbohydrate in semi-skimmed milk!!
I can't take credit for that, my original gastroenterologist can, it was one of the numerous tests done after coeliac diagnosis. And as you said, you didn't need it so probably weren't offered it. Much of the other stuff is basic A level Biology. As I don't have a problem with fat I'm not worrying about it.
It's interesting you rubbish the scientific community and properly tested research yet subscribe to self-proclaimed 'experts' or tabloid journalists who cite no quantitive research methods. I suppose it depends who you want to believe.
I wasn't aware that I was rubbishing anyone. If you feel that I have then I apologise it was not my intention as I am always trying to increase my knowledge. I look at everyone's views, I don't believe in being blinkered but know that even science keeps changing. At one time everyone thought that stomach ulcers were caused through stress, poor diet and lifestyles - people were advised to have pap and milky puddings and light foodstuffs. Then more than a century later they found out about helicobacter pylori.
The majority of medical knowledge changes with every new generation and nothing is ever static - I took both biology and human biology but by the time that my daughter took the same subjects much of it had changed. I have compared her books and personal notes to my own.
I don't need an apology because I'm not offended. I was stating an observation - you said organisations (I'd cited Greenpeace) who engage in quantitive research "are wrong" but then produce a link to a tabloid paper or cite someone's blog as a more believable 'truth'. Which would be rather like someone citing your blog.
For info, not all stomach ulcers are caused by H.pylori. Not sure what you are trying to say about biology - I'd just noticed this year's paper.
MDF is also quite frightening Tony ... I often think this may turn out to be the next 'asbestos' type material to be banned. The thought of all of the dust that flies through the air when it is sawn does make you wonder about it!
Just to put this all into perspective... A list of the things that are more likely to give you cancer than the ridiculously small risk associated with formaldehyde (and believe me, I've been exposed to a hell of a lot more of that than anyone here- dissection once a week can do that for you) and trace insecticides you might find on fruit/veg:
-Combined oral contraceptive
-Alcohol
-EBV (the virus that causes glandular fever)
-Any kind of chemotherapy agent used for the treatment of cancer
-A high resolution chest/abdo CT
-Sunbed use (or actually, any Caucasian person spending their childhood in an equatorial country)
-Inhalation of solid wood dust
-Cured fish
-Barbecued meat
-Hot drinks
-Obesity
-Not breast feeding
-Menopause
-Living in a granite house
-Oral sex
-Leg ulcers
Maybe we should start avoiding these first? And these are a few that definitely definitely heftily increase your chance of developing certain kinds of cancer. If we want to start getting into the dubious minutae of epidemiological risk then that list can get a whole lot bigger. Everything gives you cancer.
On a slightly less factious note: one of my favourite health-related (and Daily Mail-bashing) websites: kill-or-cure.heroku.com/
Your list of items is quite interesting. One thing that I always wondered about was - around thirty years ago I read my first book on nutrition it was by Adelle Davis who opened my eyes regarding curing ailments by the use of vitamins and minerals. She condemmed sugar and if my memory serves me well said something in the lines that cancer and heart disease was only found in regions of the world where man had been introduced to sugar.
I tried to see the authors of the site that you mentioned but couldn't get to the home page heroku.com/ ...
Lol, my post was supposed to be humourous. Sugar itself does not give you cancer. The mild systemic inflammation associated with high blood sugar and insulin resistance does.
And there's very little that can be 'cured' by vitamins and minerals (unless it was caused by a deficiency of them in the first place, obviously). Here's an interesting article on your nutritionist from Quackwatch (an excellent website for checking up on bullshit-peddlers calling themselves scientists): quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEd... Recommending potassium supplements for colic is pretty spectacularly irresponsible...
Sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees, which is a great pity for we'd all be a lot healthier with clear vision, perhaps.
I find that it is wise to check out a series of both books and websites before drawing any kind of conclusions regarding anything. I am particularly suspicious of those who hide behind the titles and are not keen on either showing their names or sources and if you look you will find information about anyone who writes anything either on the web or in books ..
Here's a link that is not so complimentary about Quackwatch and also alledges that the owner/writer is apparently a retired psychiatrist not a medical doctor or a nutritionalist ...
I have been most grateful to pieces of information regarding nutrition .. my first dose of anything was when my ankles swelled up dreadfully with oedema whilst carrying my first child .. the doctor said to put feet up and rest .. but this is only possible for limited amount of time .. then delving into nutrition I found a simple cure .. a tablespoonful of salad oil before bed time ... I managed to purchase a bottle of Epicure salad oil (I had never heard of salad oil at this time and even more remarkable that I should find some in a local village shop) - I did as instructed and in the morning my ankles were the slimmest that they had ever been in my entire life. They never swelled up again during the rest of my pregnancy. The advice was in a book of nutrition written by Adelle Davis and I was very grateful for it.
Several years later a member of the family developed shingles .... which is not only a rash but comes with dreadful head pain. Doctors offered pain killers .. I turned to nutrition and found out that Vitamin B1 was alleged to be the cure as only people with low intake of the vitamin were believed to catch/develop shingles. I purchased brewer's yeast and after a few days of extra large doses of it the shingles were gone.
There are many other instances where I have been surprised and helped in this way but I am older and wiser now and know that I need to have more than one source before testing out a cure even if the cure is a natural one.
So ... I think sometimes - perhaps - we may disagree on a few points but it is always good to air differences for this is how we learn.
Lol, Jack got there before me with the psychiatrist comment. In fact, to reiterate, by the very nature of their field, psychiatrists probably have some of the best understanding of evidence-based medicine of all medical doctors.
As for your anedotes- they are just that. Not evidence. Salad oil does not cure ankle oedema. Ankle swelling in pregnancy is caused by compression of the inferior vena cava and pelvic veins. Unless salad oil magically reduces the size of your foetus, your relief was probably a combination of not aggravating it further (i.e. doing what your doctor told you to do) and a wonderful statistical phenomenon called regression to the mean that pseudo-medicine likes to take advantage of quite often. Temporal relation does not indicate causality.
As for shingles... B1 (or thiamine) is certainly not related to herpes zoster reactivation. That's caused by immunosuppression (e.g. aging). Deficiency can cause neurological conditions- beriberi and Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome. The former doesn't occur in this country except in the severely malnourished (and we're talking anorexics so malnourished they're doubly incontinent) and the latter mainly in chronic alcoholics. You do not need supplementation unless you're one of the above.
Sourcing your info from a reputable source is a good idea. Try Patient UK (which is properly referenced) or if you have a scientific background find original papers on PubMed and make the judgement for yourself.
And a final side-note. Adelle Davis' advice directly led to the death of at least one infant (not to mention a few more near-missed due to other 'cures'). Apparently because she was incapable of understanding very basic physiology. Even most lay people realise that giving a baby 3g of potassium chloride (half the dose given to a full grown man undergoing the lethal injection) is spectacularly stupid. I won't bother to go into the kid with brain swelling caused by hypervitaminosis A.
In Cuba the population receive large amounts of sugar in their rations. The cancers they suffer from are mouth and lung from smoking (cigars). Sugar and tobacco are their main crops - it is the latter causing the cancer.
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