Wheat's Dirty Little Secret Makes It Hard To Go Gluten-Free

Have you ever tried to go wheat-free or gluten-free, only to give up after a few days? Did you blame yourself? Call yourself a wimp with no will-power? Give in to that one little piece of birthday cake that sent you back to eating other wheat products again?

Well, take heart. If you have had trouble giving up wheat, it’s not because you’re a wimp. It’s because wheat and other gluten grains contain a little-known ingredient that makes you crave them, just like a drug.

That’s right. Wheat’s dirty little secret is…it actually is addictive!

According to James Braly MD, and Ron Hoggan MA, authors of Dangerous Grains, wheat and cereal grains contain small amounts of opioids, a substance that makes them addictive.

Opioids have a calming effect, they relieve pain, and they produce euphoria, as do the endorphins our bodies produce. They’re not the same as opium, which comes from the opium poppy and is used to make morphine and codeine. (Opium is a type of opioid.)

Because the opioids in wheat products are addictive, when you don’t get your regular dose of bread or pasta or whatever, you start craving. That’s the real reason wheat is so hard to give up.

As with all addictive substances, when you give up wheat, there are definitely withdrawal symptoms! After I read Dangerous Grains and its terrifying list of gluten-related diseases and chronic conditions—and recognized several of my blood relatives’ health problems on that list—I decided to go completely gluten-free. No grains at all.

Let’s face it. The opioids in wheat and grains are pretty mild. So you’d think coming off them would be nothing compared to what people go through when they quit famously addictive drugs like morphine or heroin. Or even coffee. HA! Little did I know. (Not that I had anything to compare it to, since I don’t even drink coffee.)

Coming off grains was brutal. I had a headache for two weeks and I felt exhausted, depressed, and irritated the whole time. I was shocked to find that the withdrawal symptoms were so bad. If I hadn’t known that my body was going through a process of detoxification, I would have thought there was something REALLY wrong with me. Or maybe that I was going crazy.

But here’s the weird part…

Once the withdrawal symptoms were over, I pretty much lost interest in wheat and grains completely. I didn’t miss them—I didn’t even think about them. I also lost my food cravings. It was very interesting. Now when I see wheat products, they don’t even seem like food any more.

And yes, my emotions balanced out, the headache went away, and I got my energy back. In fact I ended up with more energy than before, probably because my body no longer had to deal with grains it couldn’t digest properly.

So the best thing to do when going gluten-free is to be prepared. Get all your grain substitutes in place before you start and choose a couple of weeks when you don’t have a lot of other pressures in your life.

Now that you know about wheat’s dirty little secret, you can use it to take control when you go gluten-free. When you go through those uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms and negative emotions, make sure you lay the blame fully on the opioids instead of yourself. Detoxing from wheat and grains isn’t fun, but once it’s over, it’s over forever, along with all the other problems gluten causes.