from your skin, to your sleep, your mood, and your hormone levels. That’s because your immune system becomes overly stressed as the inflammation just keeps on coming with each bite of bagel, pretzel, or even whole wheat pasta. It can begin to malfunction! The result is that your immune system begins to misfire. It begins attacking your body’s own tissues as it tries desperately to combat the sources of inflammation. However, gluten doesn’t just cause inflammation from its own proteins, it adds fuel to the fire by opening the door for other inflammatory agents to wreck your health as well by damaging your intestines, causing leaky gut, and allowing particles that should have been excreted to invade your bloodstream. On top of causing leaky gut, which itself contributes to autoimmunity, gluten is particularly dangerous because of a phenomenon known as molecular mimicry. This is when a foreign invader (such as the gluten proteins now flooding your bloodstream due to leaky gut) shares sequence or structural similarities with your body’s own tissues. Your immune system memorizes the structure of invaders. Then it develops a customized defense and recognizes it in the future. However, your immune system is not always perfect. If the invader looks enough like your own cells, your immune system ends up attacking your own tissues along with the invader by mistake, in an autoimmune reaction.
Gluten happens to be structurally similar to a number of your body’s tissues, particularly the thyroid gland. This is why gluten is one of the leading causes of autoimmunity, especially in those with a thyroid condition. And if there is a recipe from your cookbook that you’d like to share, feel free to do so! My cookbook, The Autoimmune Solution Cookbook, is packed with delicious, healthy recipes. One of the best ones for supporting hormone balance is my Mardi Gras Salad because it’s packed with cabbage, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, which are powerful detoxifiers. My grandmother lived right on the parade route in New Orleans, which meant our family hosted a party almost every night during the season. A Mardi Gras salad is anything that contains Mardi Gras colors: purple, green, and gold. The vegetables in this adaptation of my grandmother’s crowd pleasing salad caramelize beautifully with high-temperature roasting. Tangy pomegranate seeds add a bit of sweetness.
amymyersmd.com happyhormonesmagazine.com 27
