Home made bread, hot out of the oven, with butter and honey. Mmm...
I used to make bread every week with home ground, organic whole wheat.
Sounds healthy, right?
It was killing me.
In my late 20's to early 30's I had a health crisis. I was constantly sick. I had a sore throat that literally lasted for 10 years. There was a rash on my chest and back that wouldn't go away.
In desperation I started eliminating things from my diet. For sure, when I stopped eating bread I felt better, but when I tried it again, I felt awful.
Isn't bread the staff of life? Why have people been able to eat bread for thousands of years, yet in my lifetime gluten intolerance is suddenly becoming common?
I have heard theories about GMO wheat and pesticides causing this pandemic of gluten intolerance. But the organic wheat I was eating should not have had either GMO or pesticides in it.
It's All About Your Gut
As a kid, I ate the typical junk food that all kids of the 80's ate--in other words, my gut was inflamed, damaged and full of the wrong microbes. My leaky gut syndrome led to a toxic liver and other wide spread problems.
Plus, like most people I ate lots of bread. If that bread had been prepared in a way to make it gut friendly (naturally leavened with sourdough), that might have been ok. All the bread I ate was quick rise. My body didn't like it.
I tried going to my regular doctor, but despite her best efforts she was clueless about how to help me.
I went to a number of holistic healers. The one who helped me the most, and finally made that 10 year sore throat go away (it lingered after I gave up bread), was a nutritional doctor/chiropractor who gave me supplements made out of herbs and animal products that healed my liver and mostly healed my gut.
After working with her for a few years, I finally felt healthy. 95% of my problems were gone.
But if I tried to eat any bread--even organic, naturally leavened (sourdough) bread--I had a bad reaction to it. The glands in my mouth swelled up, and I just didn't feel good. My gut had not fully healed, and I was still gluten intolerant.
The Critical Last Step
I could have skipped the last three paragraphs and made this more concise. But I decided to include them because I want to stress the importance of what is coming next. If I could have been healed by any outside source, it would have been that doctor. She got me so close, but I was still not fully healed.
In April of 2023, I discovered fasting: intentionally going without food for a set amount of time.
Let me be clear: I had tried fasting before and hated it. My church practices fasting one day a month, and it was miserable to me, as it is to a lot of people. I found every excuse to not fast, and the few times I did, I always ended it early because my brain and body were dysfunctional.
I had a new health issue crop up, and I was willing to do whatever it took to fix it. This time, I wanted my body to heal itself from within.
I heard that fasting allows your body to do deep healing. So I bought a book about fasting and eagerly read it. The more I read about how fasting
rids your body of zombie cells,
increases human growth hormone production,
renews old T cells,
keeps blood sugar levels healthy,
balances hormones,
prevents dementia,
soothes inflammation,
and HEALS YOUR GUT,
I couldn't wait to try it.
I did a few shorter fasts to get my body used to switching from burning blood sugar to burning fat. I found, as my book suggested, that sugar free electrolytes helps get through that yucky fog that comes when you aren't used to having low blood sugar.
Before long, I did a 9 day fast.
Did it do anything good?
YES. A ligament in my wrist which had torn several years before healed.
My back fixed itself from a misalignment without going to a chiropractor.
I lost weight. (And regular intermittent fasting, plus occasional longer fasts, has kept it off.)
Fasting made my brain clear and focused. I hadn't realized that I was foggy prior to it.
It helped me feel good even after being in a car all day, which used to make me miserable.
Most of all, fasting helped my gut FINISH HEALING. All the way.
Even with all the good holistic things I had done for my body, having food constantly in me didn't give my poor gut a chance to heal. It can fix itself when it is empty for a few days, especially because your body goes into intensive healing mode during fasting. Bad microbes starve, while good microbes hang on. Inflammation stops. Damaged lining heals.
It worked.
Bread Again
There were so many good things that came from adopting a fasting lifestyle.
My most enjoyable benefit is that... drum roll please... I can eat bread again!!
I make sure it's naturally leavened bread because I believe that wheat needs to be fermented to make it gut friendly.
Plus, naturally leavened bread has a lower glycemic index value than quick rise bread, so it doesn't spike your blood sugar.
In my mind, the two pillars of returning to eating bread after being gluten intolerant are:
get and maintain a healthy gut, which includes eating only healthy food and possibly fasting to heal past damage
eat only naturally leavened bread, which has fermented slowly (it should not include quick rise ingredients like baking powder or yeast)
I hope that this can help other people find their way back to eating bread again. Good quality, old fashioned bread deserves a place in our diet.
All photos courtesy of Elizabeth Paashaus of Raising Betsy Lee, my family's favorite naturally leavened bread, made locally in Montgomery, Vermont.
Here are some other blog posts which address topics touched on here that go into more detail and will help you on your healing journey:
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Have you had bad health issues? What have you found that helped you heal?
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