Wheat (Gluten) and Thyroid and Fertility

This will really take the fun out of your pizza.

Besides milk (see below), WHEAT is also not a part of the rice-based Korean diet. I took wheat out of my diet as it kept coming up time and again as bad for fertility, inflammatory, a common allergen, etc. etc. It's made me very sad and limited my diet drastically, although I recently had a spirited conversation with a Celiac Disease sufferer (people who produce antibodies to gliadin, a wheat/oat/etc. protein) and then I found THIS on the Celiac.com site, an article on how most people with autoimmune thyroid disease (check!) also may have undiagnosed celiac disease. Sigh!!!! The GOOD news is that taking wheat out of the diet seems to make your body stop producing those ridiculous organ-attacking antibodies:

"A relatively high percentage of patients with autoimmune thyroiditis also have...a connection between untreated celiac disease, gluten consumption, and autoimmune disorders. The researchers believe that undiagnosed celiac disease can cause other disorders by "switching on some as yet unknown immunological mechanism."

The good news:

"By following these subjects longitudinally, it has been seen that not only do the anti-gliadin antibodies and anti-endomysium antibodies disappear after 3 to 6 months of a gluten-free diet, but so do the organ-specific autoantibodies."

I.e., give your body a break--cut the stuff out of your diet and feel better.
Hint: how do you know you may have these food sensitivities? There are all sorts of ELISA allergy tests you can take, but if you feel particularly "addicted" to something, it may actually suggest you are sensitive to it. When we took our kid off milk, he acted like he was coming off heroin for the first few days, he kept screaming for milk and cheese. If you're intrigued, take yourself off these things for a few weeks and introduce them back in, and then see how you feel. This is what I did inadvertently by living in Korea for a year.