433 The Low-Lectin Diet [14 August 2017]

After looking at last week’s list of all the things that lectins do to us you might suspect that everyone would benefit from a low lectin diet. And you would be right. But I don’t recommend a low-lectin diet for everyone for two reasons: 1) it eliminates many very nutritious foods, and 2) since lectins are in almost all plant foods and some animal foods it is very difficult to follow a low-lectin diet. But there are some people for whom it would be worth trying:

• Food allergies - if you have one or more severe food allergies, it could be the lectins that are the culprit
• Celiac disease or gluten intolerance – if you follow a gluten free diet but still have some symptoms, other lectins may be involved
• Auto-immune diseases – the potential benefits are huge for sufferers of these conditions so it is worth considering a low-lectin trial

There are three phases to a low-lectin diet:

1. Healing Phase: eat only foods from the low-lectin list until your symptoms clear. This may take a few weeks, months, or even a year.
2. Experimental Phase: add foods from the moderate list, a few at a time, eating in moderation those you can tolerate and eliminating any that cause symptoms to recur. Then see if you can tolerate the occasional high lectin food.
3. Maintenance Phase: Follow your customized diet for as long as you want to stay healthy and symptom free, reintroducing foods as your health improves.

Besides avoiding the high lectin foods completely, there are a few strategies we can all use to reduce the lectin content of foods.

• Peel and remove seeds of high lectin foods like tomatoes and peppers – lectins are concentrated in the skins, root hairs and seeds
• soak beans and legumes for 8 hours, changing water every 2 hours
• cook beans with a pressure cooker – the higher heat destroys more lectins
• sprout grains and seeds – sprouting reduces the lectins in the seed coat
• white rice is safer albeit not as nutritious as brown rice
• take a lectin-blocking supplement with each meal

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.

432 What Lectins Do [7 August 2017]

Lectins are proteins in plants designed to protect them from being eaten. Gluten is the best known lectin, but there are hundreds of them found in most plants, including many that we humans use for food. Lectins are not broken down in digestion and only partially destroyed by cooking.

In #430 I explained how lectins cause leaky gut syndrome which leads to inflammation and auto-immune diseases. But that’s not all they do. Lectins also:

• bind to the epithelial cells in the lining of the gut and damage the microvilli where nutrient absorption occurs. This significantly interferes with the absorption of nutrients, especially protein, and can lead to loss of muscle mass.
• bind to the surface of beneficial bacteria in our gut, wiping them out while allowing pathogenic bacteria to proliferate
• interfere with the digestive enzymes in the gut preventing proper digestion of food
• bind to glycoproteins on the surface of cells throughout the body including joints, brain, liver, heart, kidneys; the immune system responds by attacking the organs and tissues affected leading to a variety of auto-immune diseases
• create hyper-sensitivity to foods leading to food allergies; people have found that after being on a low-lectin diet for a year or so their food allergies improve or disappear
• stimulate the release of histamine from mast cells causing an inflammatory response
• suppress the production of T and B lymphocytes reducing the immune system’s ability to protect us from foreign invaders
• cause blood cells to stick together destroying the blood cells and causing blood clots
• block the satiety hormone leptin, resulting in food cravings, over-eating, and obesity [see #327 Leptin Resistance]
• interfere with the body’s ability to regulate insulin and blood sugar levels.
• cause enlargement of the pancreas and atrophy of the thymus
• bind to neurons damaging the nervous system including eyesight
• interfere with the cell nucleus preventing normal reproduction of the cell and accelerating the aging process
• in summary, contribute to most of the chronic conditions that plague mankind!

Sources:
Gregory Barton, Cure Your Autoimmune and Inflammatory Disease, 2010
Evelyn Carmichael, The Essential Handbook to Lectin, 2017

Next week: who would most benefit from a low lectin diet.

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.

431 More on Lectins [31 July 2017]

The lectin theory of disease, while new to me, has been around for a few years now. I just bought two more e-books on the topic (Amazon’s “Buy with 1-Click” feature is too handy!) The first is Cure Your Autoimmune and Inflammatory Disease by Gregory Barton, July 2010, which, according to the author, was the only book on the subject at the time. Barton’s book has a more detailed scientific explanation of lectins than Steven Gundry’s The Plant Paradox.

Barton is an environmental and agricultural historian and devotes much of the book to the effect agriculture has had on human health. While recognizing that agriculture was responsible for the development of civilization – including the amazing advances of science – it is also responsible for much of our chronic modern diseases. And vested commercial interests plus our own reluctance to change – particularly when it comes to our food – prevent scientists from investigating dietary cures for disease and the rest of us from implementing them.

Optimistically Barton proposes that with the new knowledge of lectins we can still enjoy our modern lifestyle while avoiding the diseases of civilization. He developed the first low-lectin food list and then cured his own health problems which had started with a nagging backache and progressed from there. Here are the results in his own words: “Within a few weeks I cleared up entirely, 100%. The arthritis went away, the sore muscles disappeared. I began to gain muscle weight again, felt stronger, looked better, and had boundless energy… I was a new man…”

So, if lectins are in almost all our foods, how are any of us still healthy? Well we all have a certain tolerance for low to moderate amounts of lectins. And some of us appear to have a greater tolerance to lectins than others. If we discover foods that we are particularly intolerant (or even allergic) to, we try to avoid them. Too often however we fail to make the connection, keep eating the foods, and take antacid pills for our indigestion, pain relievers for our headaches, massage treatments for our muscle pain, and drugs or supplements for our many autoimmune diseases.

Next week I’ll discuss how lectins affect our health and who could most benefit from a low lectin diet.

By the way, this book is only $1.03 at Amazon.ca for the Kindle edition. Even if you don’t have an e-book reader, you can still read it on your computer.

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.

430 Lectins [24 July 2017]

Are you eating healthy foods and still can’t lose weight or have a few nagging little (or big) health problems? A recent book called “The Plant Paradox: the Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods that Cause Disease and Weight Gain” by Steven R. Gundry, MD, might explain why.

The culprit, according to Gundry, is a group of proteins in plants called lectins. These lectins, of which glutens are the most well-known but not the worst, are the plants’ defense against being eaten. They are designed to attack the digestive tract of animals that eat them and make them sick so they will learn not to eat that plant again. The paradox in the title comes from the fact that lectins occur in many of the plant foods that we promote as being healthful for the nutrients they contain – vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and protein. Examples are legumes, nuts, grains, most fruits, nightshades, and squashes.

One of the effects of lectins is to create holes in the gut wall. The wall of our intestines is only one cell thick to facilitate nutrient absorption. These cells, called enterocytes, are bound together by “tight junctions”, separating the contents of the gut from the rest of the body. Lectins release a compound called zenulin which breaks the tight junction bonds, creating what is known as “leaky gut”. These holes allow the lectins, lipo-polysaccharides (tiny particles of bacteria) and partially digested proteins to enter the blood stream. This triggers a strong immune reaction which can lead to auto-immune disease as I have previously described.

Lectins also bind to a sugar called sialic acid in the gut, in joints, blood vessel walls, and between nerve endings, where they promote inflammation and disrupt cell communication (brain fog). Gundry believes that lectins are the root cause of almost all allergies, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes and auto-immune diseases.

So what can we do to protect ourselves from lectins? First Gundry recommends removing all lectin containing foods for a month or more to give the gut a chance to heal (I have the list of foods to avoid and foods that are lectin-free). Then re-introduce the milder lectin foods one at a time. The lectins in beans and some other foods can be neutralized by cooking with a pressure cooker. The worst foods he recommends avoiding completely. Finally, Gundry formulated a lectin-blocking supplement to be taken with meals which binds the lectins before they can do damage.

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.