Gluten-free diet saved my life

I was now hooked on a journey that had grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go.

The German studies I had stumbled across on line as well as my own chemistry change had given me the confidence that I needed to forge ahead.

Going gluten and wheat free, to the extent that I understood what that meant, had already so dramatically changed my body chemistry just a few weeks into it that I was astounded.

My blood sugars had just about normalized, without diabetic medicine- and at this point I hadn’t noticed or even given any thought to it causing a weight loss.

Just having a normal blood sugar range without medication was enough to get my attention.

I determined right then and there to find out everything I possibly could about the food that I had been ingesting for most of my adult life, in order to understand how not eating it could have such a life altering affect on me.

It meant hours of reading labels and Googling the strange sounding words for definitions of the additives, preservatives, flavor enhancers, emulsifiers and fortifiers and trying to understand why they were put in my food and how they could affect my body.

At this point, all I had done was to stop eating the obvious forms of gluten- breads, pasta, any form of baked goods, breaded fried foods, etc.

But I still had to do further research to do and went about it with a passion. No label went unread or unscrutinized. 

That is when my journey took an amazing twist-the analyst within me finally became outraged at seeing product after product labeled with long, and sometimes unpronounceable chemicals, sugars of every form and glutens and corn on almost every conceivable type of food or drink-boxed, canned, bottled, cartoned, and frozen and often misleading or actually fictitious labeling.

I dug deeper, working far into the nights, trying to ferret out what else might have been introduced into my “food” through processing, that the manufacturers might not have told me about. I found out things about our food processing, handling and preserving that terrified me- not just for myself, but for my family and my country and I was beginning to understand what may well have caused America’s obesity epidemic and the alarming increase in type 2 diabetes cases.

I discovered the widespread use of GMO’s (genetically altered food) grown and sold by our largest growers in the U.S. with BT, which had built in insect repellent that we ingest and ruptures the intestines of the insects that try to eat the GMO plants.

I also discovered that many first, second and third world countries have banned GMO’s ( as of late 2012 over 62 countries had reportedly banned the use of GMO seeds or required mandatory labels, including, Japan, Poland, Russia, Cuba, France, Germany, Ireland, Brazil, Hungary, Luxembourg, Syria, Greece, Australia, New Zealand and Peru.

Transglutamates are widely used to transform scrap meat into what appears to be large pieces of solid meat, like steaks, roasts, reformed turkey thighs and chicken breasts. To be safe, I no longer buy meat without the bone.

And then there are the grain and dairy products that are often fortified with synthetic vitamin A isolates that can encourage fast growth tumors, cancer and kidney damage.

Red food coloring that is usually made up of ground up beetles.

Castoreum — An extract made from dried, ground-up “sacs located by the anal glands of beavers.” It can be added to foods (“especially as vanilla flavoring,” says Wikipedia.

And of course there is the ammoniated- beef or pink slime used to extend ground beef and sawdust (cellulose) used as an anti caking agent in breads and other foods.

I learned about the process and the dangers of hydrogenating and partially hydrogenating our foods and how the FDA has allowed MSG to call itself “Natural Flavors” or “Natural Salts” which further misleads the public.

The effect of poly(glutamic acid) (PGA) and hydrolysed wheat gluten (HG), and the difference between Gluten, found in wheat and Gliaden- which leads to a whole new discussion on why people wheat gluten sensitive may also have mild to severe problems with MSG and possible neurological issues.

And how fish can be farmed in their own feces, given antibiotics to keep them alive and injected with dye to turn them from grey to pink. And that Obama passed a bill allowing the creation and selling of genetically modified salmon.

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg and completely sanctioned by the FDA, the same FDA that allegedly would not allow doctors to share with their diabetes patients that gluten might possibly be the cause of their type 2 diabetes so that they could be tested early on.

I was now about five weeks into my life style change and I refused to eat anything with a label on it until I knew more, a lot more, about what I suspected was the deliberate adulteration of our food in general, by the major food corporations and I started searching for the purist, freshest, organic, fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, poultry and wild caught fresh fish that I could find.

I hopped on the scale one morning just to be sure my weight was in check- I wanted to be sure that I hadn’t gained weight by eating a healthier diet.

I was astonished to see that I had dropped 12 pounds! Just from eating a lot of  “real” food. No exercise. No low fat foods – just real healthy food.

Cynthia Lynn

Cynthia Lynn is married and a mother of four. She is a retired financial analyst and consultant. She is the architect and designer of her home, which is the award-winning, Columbia Inn at Peralynna in Maryland. She spent most of her childhood overseas between Saipan, Germany and Taiwan and designed Peralynna after her home in Germany. Her current occupation is Creative Director. She creates and innovates on a regular basis to keep the business of the Inn fresh, enticing and relevant to today’s travelers. Website: www.peralynnainn.com

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