It’s peculiar but instructive: phenomena triggered by re-exposure after being confidently wheat- and grain-free. The re-exposure can be intentional, as in “Just one can’t hurt!” or it can be inadvertent, as in “That gravy looks safe.”
Typically, someone will be wheat/grain-free for at least a week. Re-exposure from, say, salad dressing or seasoning mix then triggers re-exposure fireworks.
The most common re-exposure phenomena to are:
- Gastrointestinal distress, bloating, and diarrhea that can last hours to a couple of days. (People with celiac disease can have problems for months, however.) This response resembles food poisoning.
- Joint pain–characteristically in the fingers and/or wrists
- Upper airway phenomena such as asthma and sinus congestion
- Emotional effects such as anxiety in females, irritability or rage in males, depression, even suicidal thoughts
- Appetite stimulation–What I call the “I ate one cookie and gained 30 pounds” effect. Eating one cookie does not, of course, cause you to gain 30 pounds of weight. But just one exposure can set the appetite-stimulating machinery in motion and days or weeks of increased appetite for junk carbohydrates can result, thanks to the gliadin-derived opiates of wheat.
Symptoms and health conditions that initially went away with your wheat-free adventure can return in all their glory, such as migraine headaches, depression, mental “fog,” sleep disruption, seborrhea, psoriasis, the phenomena of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), the joint swelling and pain of rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, plantar fasciitis, sinusitis, etc.
The longer you are wheat-free, the more violent the re-exposure reaction. It is a fitting reminder of just how inappropriate modern wheat is for humans. It reflects our inability to consume the seeds of grasses even though chronic consumption can lead to partial—only partial, never total—tolerance to some of their effects. Some people, enduring the throes of their re-exposure, have asked if there is an antidote. I do not know of anything that will undo the immune, allergic, inflammatory, emotional, and brain effects of a wheat/grain re-exposure. Key is to therefore just not be re-exposed.
On again, off again; on again, off again: Like pushing a button, you can start or stop the process at will. This represents incontrovertible proof of your individual intolerance to Evil Grains.
Anyone want to share their re-exposure story?
Stan Burman
November 1, 2018 at 8:15 pmI made the mistake of having two very small pieces of Cassava Cake while eating breakfast at a hotel in Metro Manila in the Philippines back in July 2018.
Later that evening the chronic and widespread itching that had all but disappeared since I stopped eating wheat and other grains returned. Luckily for me it subsided within a day but I definitely learned my lesson.
Lorien Vidal
November 13, 2018 at 7:43 amCassava cake is gluten/grain free (traditional recipe is only grated cassava, coconut, condensed milk, eggs & spices). There’s really no reason to add flour to this. Maybe it was something else? Unless it was a different kind of cake…
Bob Niland
November 13, 2018 at 8:23 amLorien Vidal wrote: «Cassava cake is gluten/grain free (traditional recipe is only grated cassava, coconut, condensed milk, eggs & spices). There’s really no reason to add flour to this.»
That doesn’t stop formulators and restaurants from adding flour to random recipes (scrambled eggs, anyone?), particularly if they assume that GF is some sort of fad, and therefore no one will notice.
Cassava flour (aka Brazilian arrowroot, manioc, tapioca) is gluten-free, but is 36% net carbs, so it’s a matter of how much ends up in a portion size of whatever you make that includes it. The carbs, by the way, are amylopectin (70%) and amylose (20%), both glucose polymers, plus a small amount of actual sugar. Most, if not all of it ends up as blood glucose, and what doesn’t may encourage adverse gut bacteria.
It’s mainly a blood sugar provocation issue. As an ingredient in a recipe, so little of it would be allowed, in the final portion size, that you might as well replace all of it with whatever you replaced most of it with, such as almond flour or coconut flour. Cassava per se would not be expected to provoke itching. That would more likely due to wheat or some random contaminant.
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Lorien Vidal
November 13, 2018 at 9:14 pmI totally get that.
Cassava cake is a dessert made from grated, whole, raw root; grated fresh coconut, etc.. Would that have a different effect on BG as a dried, finely ground flour?
I’m not saying that it’s a super healthful treat; just that it’s (traditionally) grain & gluten free.
Lorien Vidal
November 13, 2018 at 9:19 pm*of course, I cannot speak for that particular restaurant in that particular country but flour added to that recipe would only make it dry and sticky. Of course I also can’t speak to whether that chef added a sauce of some kind to make it appealing to tourists (but he shouldn’t have)