MY DEFINITIVE GUIDE ON CELIAC – SUMMARY VERSION

Summary of the “My Definitive Guide on Celiac” videos for the reading oriented. In bite-sized thoughts.

Link to this in video form, if you’re more of a video/audio kind of person: link (*Rumble because youtube censors it haha)

Part I: Part I: Diagnosis and Introduction: shortcut link

Part II: What Celiac Autoimmunity Means and How It Works: shortcut link

Part III: After the Fact, Now What: shortcut link

If you’d like to read a fascinating article on gluten/wheat that gives a great overview and some thought-provoking arguments, read this article before diving in.

Part I: Diagnosis and Introduction

You can’t do it alone. Rather, you can, but you’ll learn the hard way, or never.

You need those you live with to get on board, 100%. You’ll never heal otherwise. Get your spouse involved and educated; get your kids educated too.

We love gluten. This is normal. But it’s not the end of the world that you now have to avoid it like the plague. Life goes on.

You’ll be told by the “experts” that you can’t heal. Ignore them. You can. Following the advice of these highly-credentialed “experts,” especially their nutritional and dietary advice, is the absolute worst thing you can do for your health. “Eat whole grains, low fat, high fiber, colorful meals!” etc. Absolute wretched nonsense.  

You’re told your injury is that you can’t eat gluten. But that’s not your injury. Your gluten reaction is a result of some prior injury. Probably a lifelong injury that’s suddenly been exacerbated by something (could be a lab created virus, artificial toxins, hybrid foods, etc.) Your priority isn’t “going gluten free.” Your priority is to stop injuring yourself, and heal. “Gluten free” is only prerequisite for that.

It took years of self-injury to get to this point. It’ll probably take years to recover.

You’ll be told you’re obsessing. You’ll be told you can’t heal. You’ll be told we don’t really understand this condition, and that there’s nothing you can do except go gluten free and eat plants. All garbage. Listening to this garbage advice will only result in continued injury.

The problem isn’t – and never was – “gluten.” The problem is and was gut injury that was driving by, among other things, the way you ate gluten. People have been eating gluten for thousands of years – but not like we do. In season and out. Farmed from factory farms, full of mold. Full of agrotoxins and preservative toxins. Hybrid to augment its plant-toxic properties. Etc.

You don’t run on a broken leg; you don’t injure yourself on purpose. That’s not God’s calling for you; that’s not a responsible way to be a steward of your temple of the Holy Spirit. It’s not obsessive to use a wheelchair after surgery; it’s not obsessive to stringently avoid gluten and do what’s necessary to heal.

IF you tackle this, you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you finally crack the code. You’ll realize the secret, why “all the healthy people have health problems.” It’s not that everyone else is fine, rather, the unhealthy people aren’t self-aware enough to realize that they had these problems. They think it’s normal to have brain fog, low energy, trouble sleeping, bloating, aches, blurred vision, back pain, etc. etc. the list goes on. It’s not. It’s YOU, hurting yourself. And you’ll figure it out – those things will vanish, and you’ll be kicking yourself for not figuring this out sooner, while you enjoy your newly found clarity and freshness.

If you’re not crazy hyper-celiac, congrats. I am. [edit as of 7/24 – was, at the time of writing this! Not glad I found out – but no longer get 3-week crushed by getting glutened] The danger of that is complacency: you may be tempted to think that you’re not getting injured because you’re not getting a massive reaction. Wrong.

The good news here is that if I can heal, you can too. And I can. And so can you.

Part II: What Celiac Autoimmunity Means and How It Works

Yes, it’s important to reframe your mind once you’ve been diagnosed. You have a big hill to climb to get back to the top.

But now, more importantly, you need to understand what you’re doing. Flying blind just won’t cut it here. And worse, you’ll be gaslit at every turn, by “experts” telling you that you can never heal and the best you can do is to eat gluten free super-sugars for the rest of your life and oh well.

Baloney. I know celiacs who have healed. And I will too.

But it took years to get here; it’ll take years to heal. But there’s benefits: my big crash took 20 years off my life; I added 40 years back. So screw you Long Covid.

I get it: I’m putting my n=1 (i.e. personal experience) against a literal world of credentialed experts. So be it. They’re wrong; they’re ignorant. I can’t mince words, because it’s too high of stakes: I have to get it right, or I’d have been dead a long time ago.

Right off the bat: you’ll be told that autoimmunity is a malfunction of you immune system. This is only half true. Yes it’s “malfunctioning” from your perspective. But it’s actually protecting you; YOU are the problem. You are trying to harm yourself; your “malfunctioning” system is protecting you. 80% of your immune system is located in your gut – you’ve been injuring your gut, and your immune system was there to save you from yourself.

Leaky gut: this is where it all began.

Ten or so years ago I remember researching leaky gut. Back then, Harvard, Mayo, and all the health “experts” were consistently scoffing at this untenable and whacky debunked health conspiracy theory. You won’t find those articles anymore; instead they’ve pretty much all been replaced by shiny new articles about how leaky gut is a proven fact and we’ve all known it since Adam. Go figure.

Let’s start with the path of food. Think about what digestion is. It’s taking a large chunk of food, and breaking it up into smaller, smaller, smaller pieces – eventually, splitting off individual molecules or molecule chains.

To begin with, you put something in your mouth, and chew. Saliva begins slicing things up.

The food goes down the pipe. Stomach acid churns out (hopefully) and begins chemically burning the chewed food. (Don’t ever take stomach acid blockers, unless you’re fasting).

Once it’s done in the stomach, the food (called “chyme”) gets dumped into your small intestine. The very first part of your small intestine we call the “Duodenum.” This is the most important part of your small intestine; it absorbs a vast majority of the nutrients, and absorbs the most crucial nutrients that can’t be absorbed well later.

This absorption happens through tiny microscopic hairs on the walls of your intestine called “villi.” Additionally, each villa has hair-like structures on them called “microvilli” – essentially, structures that dramatically increase the surface area of the duodenal wall. More surface area = more absorption, and most absorption happens here.

The chyme continues, and more absorption happens. As the intestine goes on, there are less and less villi (surface area) and more and more bacteria. That’s important, but not for this topic.

Once done in the small intestine, the chyme gets dumped into the large intestine (aka the Colon). Basically, the colon holds your poop – it can play cleanup and absorb a little bit of nutrients, but almost nothing. From there, the remainder passeth on.

Step back, perspective. Eating food is a risky proposition. You’re taking something from the wild blue world and literally stuffing it inside yourself, with all its unknowns. Thankfully, God gave us a killer system for gatekeeping – bringing the good stuff in, keeping the bad stuff out. Called our digestive system. The intestinal wall is our gatekeeper.

But just imagine if it’s not working right. Imagine it’s letting things in that shouldn’t be let in. Especially incompletely-digested plant particles.

You might think that the plants you eat are healthy, great, good for you, etc. They are – sort of. They’re only “healthy” because you can process them. But plants are very different than you. You’re not a plant. Materially speaking, you’re meat. Undigested corn in your bloodstream is toxic, foreign invader, not cool. If you injure your gut, it may “leak” and let these particles in – problem.

Let’s follow that problem particle. Your body knows that corn particle is problem. It needs to keep it away from your vital organs, or you might die. What does your body do? Inflammation – to gum up the works, slow this thing down, to let your immune system attack it and break it apart like should have happened in the gut. (Your body may also shove it into fat as a holding cell; hence why toxins are directly related to fat buildup).

Happens a little bit, you get a little inflammation. But if it happens more and more, a lot, your body will start to build more fat (to buffer) and initiate more inflammation. How and why and what areas are effected by this reaction will more or less be random; depend on your genetics, etc. Who knows.

The cause could be pretty identifiable: a GI bug attacks, high stress, lack of sleep, too much booze, eating harsh foods without a seasonal break, eating GMO/hybrid plants, eating chemicals, etc. Pretty obvious we’re super rough on our guts these days in ‘Murka; hence leaky gut.

“But how is this celiac?” You might ask. Wait for it.

One of those causes, those factors, could be the character of the food itself. Foods are not equivalent. Focusing on “calories” is about as meaningless as one can get, nutritionally. Certain plant components have a tendency to irritate the gut more than others. Especially if someone is genetically disposed to be unable to break down certain proteins well (although it could just be a stomach bug or something that precipitated), stuff might hit the fan.

Think about plants. Plants don’t “want” to be eaten. They can’t run. They have “defense” mechanisms to help them not get eaten into extinction. Often, part of their strategy is to partially sacrifice themselves in exchange for propagation – the animal gets to eat them, but 10% of them gets pooped out. But to ensure that they get passed, they irritate the gut – to make sure the tough get going. And they have special components that are dedicated to doing just that – to irritate the animal’s gut to get out asap.

One component that’s particularly irritating to the gut is a sub-component of a protein that should be familiar to you by now: gluten. This component is called “gliadin.” (Glee-a-din).  

Gliadin is one of those molecules that is particularly good at worming its way through the gut wall junctions. In other words, if your gut wall is leaky, or maybe leakier than usual for whatever reason (GI bug or whatnot), and you down a beer or pasta, there’s a good chance that gliadin is going to sneak through before it’s been chopped up to a small enough particle (for the record; to be innocuous, it needs to be chopped at a minimum 10 times, it’s usually chopped ~30x). Gliadan is a problem molecule; it has a special propensity to sneak undigested into your bloodstream.

Note again: yes, people have eaten gluten for thousands of years – but nothing like we eat it: hybrid, with max lectins, full of toxins, mold, grocer-chemicals, processed to remove necessary minerals and oils, concentrated, combined with other toxins or harsh sugars, eaten year-round without a seasonal break.

So, back to Gliadin. It sneaks through. A little = just inflammation. But do that often enough, or aggressively enough, and your immune system is forced to escalate.

YOU are the problem. Not gluten. YOU.

Think about it: you need to block this dangerous foreign particle before it gets to your vital organs and kills you. NOW. The only option is to generate a lot of inflammation, quickly – enter autoantibodies (antibodies that attack yourself), created to attack the tissue that the immune system thinks is related to the harmful particles. Your immune system is opting for the nuclear option to prevent bumbling you from killing yourself. Depending on how the immune system’s dice rolls, your immune system might precipitate a self-attack if it determines that gluten is the culprit that needs to be quashed.

But it’s not just inflammation anymore; not just irritation. It’s destruction. Inflammation can be caused lots of ways. But autoantibodies are antibodies that latch on and kill YOUR tissue. Once they’re locked on to something, it’s dead.

And, if you initiate a celiac autoimmune reaction via an attack on gliadin (or some other component adjacent to the gluten) you’ve now created autoantibodies that attack pretty much the most important component of your digestive system: the villi.

Whenever those autoantibodies are created, once activated, they lock onto your villi and destroy it. Why did you do that? Because your body needed to stop a BUNCH of gliadin, fast. YOU injured yourself, your body rescued you. But it had to torch your villi tissue to do it.

Where are most of those villi located (not all, but most concentrated)? Your duodenum. Your whole small intestine has them, but they’re most dense in your duodenum. Hence, duodenum is the most common pain-point for a celiac.

Side note: what about other kinds of autoimmunity? It’s a side note so I’m not going to talk about it, but it’s a super interesting question, and it directly relates on what you’re learning here. It’s all part of the same package; different result, same process.

But back to celiac specifically. Once your immune system has created autoimmune cells, those cells now serve as a “template” for future autoimmune cells. From now on, every single time a single gluten molecule comes down the pipe, two things happen: (1) the existing autoimmune cells reactivate, and destroy tissue, razing any involved villi, and (2) more autoantibodies are created.

Again, unlike a “sensitivity,” where you eat something and you get gas, or temporary inflammation (histamine release or other inflammatory factor), etc., an autoimmune attack involves tissue destruction. Much worse than something temporary – tissue damage is much harder to come back from than just tissue irritation.

Think about that: if you cheat with mere inflammation, you get temporary discomfort, and assuming it’s not too crazy, basically a headache for your gut. Hurting, but it can mostly function. Not autoimmunity: you cheat to level 3, you get level 3 tissue destruction; you cheat to level 7, you get level 7 tissue destruction. It’s not temporary. It’s dead.

And you’re already hurting. You’re already inflamed AND have injured gut.

But tissue destruction is not the end of the destruction that’s happening here. Let’s imagine you have a population of various birds that require forest habitat. Destroy that forest, and there will be no more bird population. Re-growing that forest doesn’t automatically mean that bird population magically comes back – once that native population is gone, the bird population that comes back to the new forest could be completely different, and crowd out the prior population.

Your gut microbiome is your digestion. No gut microbiome = no digestion. I can’t understate the important of gut microbiome – it’s even been shown that mice with different microbiome fed the exact same diets had completely different outcomes – healthy vs grossly obese.

But all that is to say that your gut microbiome has been absolutely torched. And now it’s a catch-22: you can’t rebuild your villi without healthy absorption enabled by good gut microbiome; but you can’t build a good gut microbiome without the “forest,” i.e. the terrain that allows that microbiome to embed and thrive.

So that’s the basic idea: gloom and doom to be sure. But then you ask: now what?

Part III: After the Fact

The Million Dollar question: ok fine, so how do I heal?

Recap – not all, but the most important parts:

1. We need to eliminate all of our autoantibodies so that there are no more “templates,” and the immune system can “forget” that response; and the immune system needs to “forget” its response

• We need to regrow our villi, and our microvilli, and of course prevent incidents of damage to the villi

• We need to rebalance our gut microbiome so that we can properly slice up gluten in the future

In order to do any of that, we need to do two other “housekeeping” maintenance things:

• We need to stop our leaky gut – reduce our zonulin levels (gut junction regulation protein)
• We need to prevent subsequent inflammation to our small intestine, to enable villi to begin regrowth – your gut can’t regrow if it’s battling irritation and inflammation.

The more I think about this, the more I think it would probably be good to kill off the half-dead or full-dead tissue that’s in your gut. Don’t know exactly how to do this other than wait, but I have two ideas:

1. Honey promotes apoptosis (cell death), helping gimpy cells die like they should
2. Autophagy fasting – you should be doing that anyways

So there’s that. Anyways. Let’s move through the above point-by-point:

1. Eliminating all autoantibodies and stop torching your villi

There’s nothing you (as the average non-billionaire citizen) can do to eliminate autoantibodies, so you just have to wait.

BUT. DON’T MAKE MORE OF THEM! Every time you “cheat” and eat gluten, even if you don’t feel it, you’re creating more autoantibodies (and therefor extending the length of your healing time). Don’t create more wolves!

Not only that, but everytime you cheat, even if you don’t feel it, you activate your autoantibodies, and they latch on – they destroy your villi. You may not feel it, but it’s happening. That’s the absolute last thing you want.

I thought of a great analogy here for perspective: I’d rather eat at a table where dead mice had been handled than with gluten. Dead mouse is gross (and I don’t plan on eating around them), but honestly dead mouse is far less damaging to me than gluten. So, ask yourself, if you wouldn’t eat on a plate/table/countertop with dead mouse; if you wouldn’t allow dead mouse in your cupboards; if you wouldn’t handle dead mice before eating… why on earth would you do that with gluten?

Think dead mouse thoughts when evaluating your risk threshold for gluten.

Another analogy/perspective: if you had to pay $500 every time you were wrong and accidentally got micro-glutened, how careful would you be? Assess risk accordingly.

So, let’s talk practical “Gluten Freak” points:

Bad news: you’re almost certainly going to get glutened. My protocol is to STOP eating everything for two days; activated charcoal (or multi-spectrum binder); homeopathics (Apis 1M). Get it ready now.

DO NOT buy or use gluten enzymes. They don’t work, and a vast majority of them actually have gluten (because they’re derived from microbes that lived on… wait for it…)

Eliminate all gluten in the house. Do it. Otherwise you WILL get micro glutened.

Corollary: be nice. But think in advance how to politely tell visitors that they can’t bring gluten into the house. You have to draw the line. No easy way to explain. I say I have an “allergy” so people understand. Relax, the REAL fun part is when people who had a gluten sensitive friend once try to explain to you how you’re just imagining it all!

Eliminate anything (in YOUR diet) that has gluten cross-contamination. (Note: we have non-gluten-containing items that have been x-contaminated in our house; I just know which ones and avoid them. So far so good I think?).

Here’s where it gets tricky. Literally. They often try to trick you.

By law now – thank the Lord! – they have to label allergens if they’re in the ingredients. Don’t rely on that, but they’re supposed to.

If it says, “made in a facility where [wheat/gluten] is processed,” consider it contaminated. That’s basically code for, “yeah we use the same machinery.”

Just because a product says “gluten free” doesn’t mean it is. Sorry.

Even worse, if a product says, “gluten free ingredients,” run for the hills (usually).

Big or Sneaky Offenders: chocolate powder, beans, grains, rice, oils (wheat germ oil), wine (wheat paste to seal barrels/clarifying – and yes, I’ve contacted the vineyards and confirmed), other allergens (bc they stick all the allergens in the same plant), spices (ugh, seriously!?)

Good news: If it’s CERTIFIED gluten free, you’re good to go.

Also good news: ALDI (Aldi BRAND, not just anything at Aldi) has been two-thumbs up in my experience. Unless it says “processed with wheat”, I’ve never had a problem with anything Aldi brand. I’ve contacted them, and they said they always state if it’s processed in the same facilities as wheat; it’s been true to my experience (as far as I can tell, and I’m pretty dang sensitive; I’ve blacked out from eating x-contaminated stuff before).

Get used to doing one of two things:

1. First, do an online search. Usually, food sites don’t care if search engines can find them, so look at the web URL on the packaging. What you’re looking for is their “allergen statement.” That’ll usually tell you what you need. Sometimes. Occasionally. But if it doesn’t, then…
2. Get used to calling. Ugh. Note: don’t say you’re celiac. Here’s your script:

Hi! I’m [name]; I was just calling today because I have a pretty severe gluten allergy,  where even slight cross contamination can give me a nasty reaction. I didn’t see anything on the package, so I’m calling to see if [product] is processed in the same facility as wheat or gluten-containing ingredients – I know maybe you can’t necessarily guarantee that [note: they usually won’t because they don’t want to be liable], but it’s helpful to me if you can just tell me to the best of your knowledge whether that’s the case or not.

Note that you’re not lying when you say “allergy,” it’s a very similarly-related reaction (different kind of immune cell is all) and ultimately you’re communicating to them in language they understand using a commonly-recognized term that almost nobody understands anyway. You’re not trying to be technical; you’re trying to communicate the truth.

DO NOT LET THEM PAWN YOU OFF WHEN THEY SAY, “Oh yeah, [product] doesn’t have any gluten.” Press them. It’s not worth eating dead mouse, so to speak. One time I called a bean elevator: “Oh yeah, beans are gluten free don’t you know?” Thanks pal. Would you say that the trucks or machinery that are used to transport the beans might also have been used for wheat? “Oh yeah, but hardly any of that would have gotten into the beans!” That’s all I need to know, thanks!

“Gluten removed” products: DO NOT use them!!! Non-celiacs will scoff at you; “don’t you know that [some government somewhere in Europe usually] says XYZ product is ok for celiacs?” I refrain from using bad language here. Don’t.

Don’t forget that barley and spelt have gluten too. You may or may not be reactive to them: remember, TECHNICALLY you’re not reactive to gluten per se. You’re reactive to a part of gluten that you ate that triggered it all. Might be a part that’s shared in an ancient grain, or the wheat in Europe. Might not. I won’t be finding out for myself, up to you if you want to find out.

You can’t eat out, sorry. The lone exception I’ve found is Chipotle. You have to tell them you’re allergic to gluten; they’ll swap the spoons. Not perfect, but seems to work since they only have one gluten source (wheat tortilla; although now their red salsa also has gluten ingredients apparently, heads up). I can’t eat at Dead Mouse facilities.

Also, I’m pleased to tell you that Costco Rotisserie Chicken is GF. Yeah baby. (I know, I know, plastic)

Traveling: was a tough one for me; learned the hard way. Now you don’t have to. Bring your own:

• Pan
• Fork/Spoon/Knife
• Potholder (big one)
• Dish scrubber (big one!)
• Salt/Spices
• Drinking mug & water bottle
• Grill tongs if grilling

I also bought a countertop induction stove; I don’t cook my stuff in the kitchen usually, just to minimize risk (but where I visit there’s always a lot of traffic – ergo risks – from kids). Also, you can grill, as long as you get the grill past 450 to prep it (denatures gluten – risk, but hey, so far so good).

I don’t drink out of anyone else’s glasses; for all I know it had beer.

Might seem crazy, but think about back when you were normal and you tried to clean out a bowl with dough. Soap + water and there was still bits of dough everywhere. Just because something was “washed” or “never used for gluten” (in a normal gluten household) doesn’t mean it’s clear. Dead mouse; $500.

So much for that – I call it, not just “gluten free,” but “Gluten FREAK.” Yep. Own it.

Quick note: if you’re naïve enough to go to a GI specialist (I was) and mention any of this, he’ll triumphantly crow, “antibodies don’t CAUSE the reaction! They’re just a result of it!” High five, Sherlock. But that doesn’t change anything. As long as you have autoantibodies, or increase the levels, you have (a) more antibodies (b) more autoantibody blueprints (c) and I personally suspect that even if they’re not fully activated, they still cause harm. But I won’t get into that here. You need them all gone.

Speaking of experts. Ignore Google. Going “gluten free” isn’t going to heal you. So, HOW do you heal your leaky gut? You’ve been whacking your face with a hammer; throwing away the hammer doesn’t heal your face.

1. Avoid carbs, minimize them aggressively. DO NOT swap gluten for super-sugars. Resist the marketing! And stop being fooled into thinking that carbs and sugar are different – they aren’t. Sugar = carbs; carbs = sugar. With minor nuances, sugar = sugar = sugar. (Big fan of honey, but not for the sugar properties, btw).
   1. If and WHEN you eat too much sugar (guilty), you have options (at least for your bloodstream; still ouch for your gut oh well). Cinnamon. ACV. Berberine (goldenseal root). Bitters (Wormwood, dandelion leaf, gentian root). Fat (ANIMAL only; which you should be eating copious amounts of anyway).
2. Caffeine. Don’t know; I avoid it. I just don’t like being dependent on things if I have a choice. But if I did, I’d study and figure out how it works, and go from there. I’ve found magnesium sometimes (not always) helps chocolate caffeine headaches, go figure.
3. If and when you hurt your gut (see earlier for if you get glutened), here’s my strategy:
   1. I don’t eat for a day or two
   1. I eat liver when I start eating again. If I eat liver, there’s no limit, I can eat however much I want. If it’s ANYTHING else, (I only start with meat), then it’s slow: a little bit at a time; wait an hour, again, wait, etc.
   1. I ruthlessly avoid carbs.
   1. After I’ve gotten back to eating (e.g. at least 4-6 hours after I build back up) I OVERDOSE on meat. I mean overdose. 2-4 lbs of burger; 5-15 oz of liver. Heal WAY faster. My experience; and found +++ animal studies with the same results. Pretty self-evident when you think it through; you’re made of meat gee I wonder what you need.
   1. Note: I tried doing the green-leafy-and-or-smoothie thing. It would take me 1-3 weeks to stabilize. Switched to meat overdose; BAM, back to normal in 2 days, everytime; Doesn’t matter what. Never going back; plants are severely overrated (except as chemical/enzyme/Medicinals; they’re essentially zippo for nutritional value, sorry to any plant lovers).

Ok let’s talk plants for a second because now you’re interested in my opinionations. Depending on the nutrient in question, you typically absorb 10-20% of said nutrient from a plant. So, if plant A has 10 grams of nutrient Y, you get 1 gram of nutrient Y. Not so the meat, however: you pretty much get 95-100%. AND, meat typically has WAY more of whatever it is in question; it’s not even a comparison if it’s organ meats. AND, plants typically don’t actually have useable nutrients; quite often they have “precursors” – so, for example, you’ve heard carrots have Vitamin A. They don’t. They have a precursor (beta-carotene) that your body can then use to make Vitamin A – typically at about 1-10% efficiency. So, if your carrot has 1 gram of beta-carotene, you’re only able to absorb 10% of that (0.1g), of which only 10% max gets turned into actual Vitamin A (0.01g). Don’t overdose on Vitamin A there Tiger.

And speaking of that, you’ll read that you shouldn’t eat more than 4oz of liver a week. That’s nonsense, from everything I’ve studied or experienced. I can’t find a single case of Vitamin A poisoning from food in a healthy person. I’ve also eaten 5-10oz of liver every day for about three weeks straight, and the only side effect was I had more energy than the Manhattan Project. So there’s that.

Strongly recommend either AIP or Carnivore. Watch some vids on them if you’re not familiar. I used to do AIP; now I pretty much usually do Carnivore if I need. Because it’s awesome, and better than AIP. IF you’ve never done them, you’ll (hopefully) feel lousy at first; you’ll herx (i.e. your body’s dumping toxins). Good. That’s good. If you’re still exhausted, you’re probably not getting enough salt (you need A LOT on a healthy diet; 5+grams/day). You can also use AIP to self-diagnose food sensitivities, which helps.

Homeopathics are awesome. Don’t know how, but they work. Mother Theresa used them; they’re good enough for me. But for celiac, my understanding is that there’s two “go to” remedies: Bovista 200 if your celiac manifested as more of a rash-presentation, and Ipicac 30/Merc Sol 6 for non-rash presentation. I take’em twice daily, avoid placing them near sunlight, cell phones, or taking them next to strong-tasting things (e.g. peppermint etc.). But if you use them, you’ll want to at least learn the basics; it’s an art. Flub it, it’s not the fault of the remedy.

DAO: Diamine Oxidase.

Yes, I keep saying, “this is a big one.” That’s the nature of the beast. But. This is a big one.

DAO = Diamine Oxidase. The enzyme that binds/slices histamine. Histamine = (one of the most common) compound that signals inflammation. E.g. throat closing from bee sting allergy; that’s because excessive histamine is being released.

If you google “low histamine diet,” (and why would you, unless you know this!) the results will make it sound like histamine is randomly produced in certain kinds of food. It’s helpful to know: this isn’t the case.

Histamine comes from two main sources. (a) your body makes it when it needs to initiate inflammation (via (often via “Mast cell activation”) (b) it’s also made as a by-product of bacterial activity. The second is the most important here: food that sits around and has a lot of bacterial activity of the type of bacteria that tends to produce histamine may have high histamine. “May” because it’s a dice roll – certain foods tend to foster types of bacteria that produce histamine; if those bacteria colonize and get to work, then you get high histamine. Those same foods might have very little histamine if other bacteria colonized instead – you have no way of knowing (before eating at least).

DAO, on the other hand (again, required to neutralize histamine and control or stop histamine-induced inflammation), is produced in two places in your body: (a) your kidneys, and (b) your gut – specifically in the micro-villi. This is because you have two “compartments” where you need to neutralize histamine: (a) your bloodstream (neutralized by the DAO from your kidneys) and (b) your gut (neutralized by the DAO from your villi).

Here’s your problem, as a celiac: you have injury, and therefor inflammation (therefor histamine). Your celiac has torched your villa. Problem is, your villa (specifically your microvilli) are in no shape to produce DAO, or anything else. They’re torched. Thus, if you’re celiac is bad enough, if you happen to (again, randomly) eat food that happens to have high histamine, you’ll have a bunch of histamine hanging around in your gut, with no way to neutralize that histamine. You won’t get classic allergy symptoms (headache, sore throat, stuffy nose, etc.) because if said histamine gets into your bloodstream, your kidney-produced DAO is there to neutralize, no problem. But in your gut, there’s insufficient DAO.

You have a catch 22: you need to neutralize histamine in your gut to eliminate inflammation and heal. But you can’t eliminate inflammation and neutralize histamine until you heal your villi and enable DAO production. But you can’t heal until you neutralize that histamine… etc.

You have three options, two of which stink:

1. You can give up and continue injuring yourself indefinitely and never heal, presumably dying of pancreatic cancer or whatnot at a relatively young age.
2. You can follow a low-histamine diet, and give up a vast majority of foods, and hope that most of your foods don’t have high-histamine-producing bacteria (and some will; again, it’s virtually random, even with “likely” or “not likely” foods).
3. You can eat animal kidneys every day, which naturally have DAO.

Animal kidneys are hard to get. You may have to tell the butcher you want them “basically for your animals.” It’s not a lie. You changed your mind and decided to eat it yourself! Or whatever. (and besides, you are technically a rational animal). I find that eating animal kidneys is the best way to break the Catch 22.

Side note: even if you go nuts and do a low histamine diet: bad news. You have a native gut bacteria, and, like it or not, some of those bacteria produce histamine. It’s random: but especially if you have health problems, it’s likely that you’ve populated your gut with “bad” histamine-producing bacteria. That means you can be as assiduous as the comment section, and the instant something gets in your gut, your native bacteria start producing histamine, and there’s no way to avoid it. Eat animal kidneys; way simpler.

On that note: honey. Honey is sugar. Don’t kid yourself. There’s no such thing as “good” or “bad” sugar, in my opinion. Any claim that they’re hugely different originated in marketing (go look at continuous blood glucose monitoring graphs if you’re interested). But, there is a reasonable place for sugar (I love me my sug), and similar to many plants, honey is great not because of the nutritional value, but because there are things built-in that come with it. In honey’s case, it’s pretty simple: raw honey contains it’s own microbiome that, for whatever reason, is radically compatible and helpful with what we need. I’ve read research, for example, showing that raw honey’s microbiome seems to outcompete above-mentioned histamine-producing bacteria, or at least prevent it from producing it somehow (probably not 100%). But: I just feel better (usually) when I eat honey: I can distinctly tell often that I feel better from eating it.

Honey is absolute GOLD for wounds – it promotes cell death, which counterintuitively helps heal, because the half-baked or injured cells die, and only the good cells remain. It’s a miracle healer on the outside; I can only presume it’s a miracle healer on the inside.

Fasting: Do it.

By “fasting” I just mean not eating for a large window of time – you’ll figure out what works best, most people are somewhere between 8-16 hours (“intermittent fasting”).

On occasion (like, say, Fridays. Odd how that works, those religious crazies were right after all) I’d skip eating for a day, or eat only one time (and no carbs; an egg or whatnot).

You can hurt yourself fasting if it’s not gradual. Specifically, you’ll get “villous atrophy” – i.e. hurt your villi. You can counteract this by drinking green tea for 2 weeks in advance. But study up on it if you plan on doing a more-than-one-day fast: you need to take electrolytes too. And yes, you can do a multi-day fast; it is indeed humanly possible to fast for 40 days.

Viruses: You’ll need to be aggressive about stopping stomach viruses. For simplicity, the best thing I’ve found is drinking ground-up bitters: wormwood, gentian, calamus, dandelion. I have a whole recipe I do now for the kids, and it’s magic – I call it “NasTea.”

Cocoa Powder: Cocoa powder has been shown to increase stem cell activity, and I definitely concur that when I took chocolate every day, it seemed to help (I took without sugar, sadly)

Milk thistle seed: is a phenomenal friend – if I had only one supplement, that would be it. I buy the seeds in bulk and grind them down, fantastic. The one thing to note is that it might make you wake up at 3am and not get back to sleep – strangely enough, you’ll feel refreshed, but you just can’t sleep. Go figure.

Your stool: sorry for the TMI, but always look at your stool. If it’s light colored, floating, or sticking to the toilet bowl, those are all undesirable signs: it should be dark, sink, and not stick to the toilet bowl. If it’s light or floating, it means malabsorption (clay-white or white-yellow means really not good; get started on carnivore asap); sticking to the toilet bowl means your pancreatic enzymes didn’t get in on the action enough. I occasionally take pancreatic enzymes, but I don’t want to get dependent on them.

Black pepper: as noted, you probably have malabsorption issues, so when you eat liver, be sure and use black pepper: black pepper basically slows down your liver’s clearance system, and therefor you absorb stuff better. Caveat here – you also absorb toxins more as well; so don’t eat black pepper with anti-food or with alcohol. To increase your absorption of liver, you can also add dairy:

I’ m a huge fan of dairy. This is a recent re-addition of mine – still a work in progress. People hate on dairy for all sorts of reasons: raw or cultured dairy is phenomenal; sterilized, homogenized, factory dairy is gross, harsh, and turns all the benefits of dairy against you. Dairy is fantastic for two reasons: first, it increases absorption by (temporarily) loosening your tight junction cells (which is why harsh dairy is bad – too much and you get leaky gut). Second, it increases and enhances mucous, which is massively beneficial to you as a celiac – mucuous is a much-needed layer of protection for you. Note: I’m 99% sure have an autoimmune reaction to the lactose in dairy (long story, simplified); real dairy is great but doesn’t mean everyone can roll with it. I’m in the process of getting it back; just had a whole block of blue cheese the night before writing this.

Final Thoughts: You can’t be in a hurry here. This took years to injure; it’ll take years to heal. The older you are, the slower you heal – your external skin, etc., is designed to heal quickly, not so your internals. You’ve got a fine-tuned balancing act going on: you need to bring back the microbiome, but you can’t do that until your tissue is rebuilt, but you can’t do that until your stem cell activity increases, but you can’t do that until your microbiome is rebuilt…etc.

There’s a lot here. You can heal. Most of the objections I encounter to healing aren’t, “I have XYZ important mission in life and I just can’t be bothered to prioritize healing!” Rather, most objections are some variant on: “healing is hard, and I love the convenience and taste of the foods that are injuring me, so I’m going to put pleasure and convenience above healing. Thanks, bye.” To some extent, yeah, that’s all of us. But hopefully this article opens a door: not only is it not impossible to heal, its eminently doable. And I’m doing it; I firmly believe you can too.

SUMMARY OF THE SUMMARY:

Summary:
-eliminate ALL gluten in your diet. 100%. No if’s, ands, buts, or hopefullys. STOP INJURING YOURSELF (even if you might not feel it!)
-no gluten in the house; ruthless
-either certified GF, confirmed via allergen statement, or personally verified – merely labeled “gluten free” doesn’t cut it.
-eliminate anything that says, “manufactured in the same facility as wheat.” If it doesn’t say anything, verify before eating. Call companies.
-clean up your diet: less carbs, less supermarket food, less plants, more red meat and vitals, more bitters, more fruit, more salt, more fasting.
-avoid balsamic vinegar. If your stomach constantly hurts, consider eating animal kidneys to mop up histamine.
-Ruthlessly protect yourself against viral infections.
-once you’ve been functionally restored, your celiac panel is zero, and you feel healthy, and you’ve given it a year or two AFTER 100% health: reintroduce (NOT gluten, yet) things SIMILAR to wheat that are GF – sprouted oats, etc. Continue taking homeopathics.
-THEN, after about 6 months of that, start with ancient grains – start with spelt, barley, etc. Then… *shudder* it’s time, to eventually reintroduce the toxin-drenched ultra-hybrid organism that supposedly descended from wheat, which we flippantly call “wheat” to help alleviate consumer concerns and sell it. Good luck.
-you’re playing the long game – think in terms of decades. And, you’re either playing this game, or on the trajectory to die much younger due to cancer from constant self-injury.