posted on September 10, 2012 by Joey

The Good Rice, The Bad Almond, and Why I’m Going 100% Paleo

Filed underautoimmune, celiac, crohns, dairy-free, Gastrointestinal, gluten-free, healthy food, IBS, Paleo, sugar-free

Welcome to the 2012th time I’ve been thrown for a loop by the mysteries of Leaky Gut Syndrome (LGS). I’ve written a few posts about Paleo in the past, but I’ll admit: I’ve never gone 100% paleo for a few reasons: I knew what being reactive to foods like gluten, dairy, and sugar felt like, and other anti-paleo foods like grains/legumes just never overtly “felt” the same. That was until this week, when I realized the devil’s in the dosage.

5 nights ago I stocked up on my favorite non-dairy yogurt:

Amande Yogurt making sweet culinary love with Guatemalan coffee

Mind you, I’ve had one 24oz jar of these on consecutive days in the past no prob, but this time I revved up to a “therapeutic” (read: more enjoyable) dose for gut dysbiosis by eating two 24 oz jars/day. What ensued was 5 straight nights of not sleeping, but for the 6 hrs of benzo-induced “fake sleep”, along with joint pain that I haven’t had in a year. Yesterday, I serendipitously ran out of yogurt and guess what? Finally got a solid night of sleep. So what, almonds are bad now? But hold up mister dramatic, I’ve been eating large doses of Tahini (sesame seed butter) without issue for 4 months.

Before I proceed to potentially strangle your joy in life with restrictive Paleo principles, remember that villains often win wars, and your girlfriend might leave even when you’re the perfect boyfriend. Similarly, if you have LGS, there’s very little fairness involved when figuring out what you can eat. It doesn’t matter that 99% of your friends can eat something without issue if it gives you an immune reaction. With that said, to those whom insist on eating whatever’s on your table right now, you may want to close your eyes and go “lalala” now.

White Rice Better Than Brown?

To understand why almonds might be inflammatory, let’s backtrack to rice. Many LGS patients have issues with grains & legumes besides those that contain gluten. Grains & legumes are full of anti-nutrients, which can do anything from impair proper digestion to cause a full-fledged autoimmune response:

So why is it that many LGS patients tell me they have trouble digesting brown rice, yet do better with white? Paleo principles have a good explanation for this: the hull, husk, and bran are all removed from it, and that’s where these anti-nutrients are found. – http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-rice-unhealthy/#axzz265NLuTpi. That doesn’t mean white rice should be considered a good source of nutrition (it’s really just starch), just that it may be digested easier.

The Inflammatory Side of Nuts

Lectins, protease inhibitors, and phytic acid are abundant in the bran and/or hull of both grains and nuts. Check out why some of these can be highly inflammatory:

Lectins: Lectins cause discharge of histamine from gastric mast cells http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1115436/ . Lectins can cause increased intestinal permeability, as shown in Dr. Cordain’s paper.

Protease Inhibitors: Here is a great illustration by PaleoParents.com on how protease inhibitors such as trypsin can lead to leaky gut.

Phytic Acid: Phyticacid.org says phytic acid is “a substance that reduces our absorption of minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, and magnesium.” It happens to be even higher in nuts than in rice. According to Chris Kresser, the safe amount of phytic acid is in the range of 100 mg to 400 mg per day. To put that in perspective, a large handful of almonds contains 1,200 – 1,400 mg of phytic acid. Phytic acid can also reduce the digestibility of protein, exacerbating leaky gut.

But there’s another reason to keep your nuts where no one can see: the high omega-6 content in nuts. Paleo experts advocate a 1:1 ratio of O3/O6, which can quickly go out of balance when you start eating almonds by the handful. Notice a trend? All these inflammatory triggers are dose-dependent. These antinutrients are all present in plants, so no one would tell you to avoid them completely, but they just happen to be much, much higher in nuts.

Tahini butter. That brings me back to this: why can I inhale Tahini in large quantities without suffering? One possible reason is because they’re hulled, and that’s where these antinutrients are centralized. Compare that to almond butter and almond milk, where you’re ~~basically getting the entire almond, hull and all~~. still have the seedcoat after the outer hull is removed (Updated 10.27.12)

The Antinutrient Super Soaker

If you’re still nuts about nuts, the Weston A Price folks started a trend of soaking, dehydrating, and even fermenting nuts to reduce phytic acid. (Note: The Weston A Price site is giving me a warning on google, so click on the link to the article at your own risk -> Living With Phytic Acid). Although there isn’t conclusive evidence on whether this preparation process lowers phytic acid, we do know that each step of soy preparation lowers phytic acid:

phytic acid in soy decreases with proper prep

Final Thoughts

Despite the title, the last thing I want anyone to take away from this post is that nuts are bad and a simple starch is good. One: it’s never that simple. Two: if you have a healthy digestive system, you may digest the antinutrients listed above like a champ. However, if you have LGS, the rules of human adaption don’t necessarily apply, and the pecking order looks something like this: avoid the wrecking ball of immune attack first, then worry about optimizing nutrition. To this end, I plan on doing a full elimination diet: 30 days of pure paleo (meat, veggies, low-dose simple starches like white rice & sweet potatoes) before reintroducing even tahini again to see what type of effect seeds would have. I might even get to try SCD legal goat milk kefir in a few years. Sigh!

Disclaimer: The information in this blog is not advice, and should not be treated as such. You must not rely on the information on this website as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about any medical matter you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Tony Mach

Good to see other people have some success with Paleo. A properly done n-1 experiment, with removing a food and then challenging (while keeping other things constant) can do wonders for ones knowledge.

I haven’t formed my opinion on nuts. I think they might be OK for me. Some of my health problems went away, some have persisted on a Paleo diet – so I am not 100% sure I have hit the nutrition thing on the head (for me at least). Might be traces of milk proteins in what I eat – might be the nut I eat from time to time.

One residual problem I have is with acne (small and seldom, but its there). I traced my acne down to dairy (it took me quite some time and as I didn’t fully went dairy free for the first months of my Paleo, or rather Atkins diet back then). Dairy causes for me with certainty acne, a little bit dairy and my acne comes back.

I tried raw-milk cheese recently and had no such reaction, but I need to retest my reaction to raw-milk to be more sure. In case you miss dairy, give raw-milk dairy products a try. (BTW ghee/clarified butter is OK for me).

I have written (a little bit) on blog at parakoch.blogspot.com

Joey Chang

Properly done n=1 experiment is hugely underrated! And truth be told, it’s due to laziness & a beastly appetite that it’s taken me this long to consider “low carbs”.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions on nuts either. I don’t believe they’re all bad, especially w/proper preparation. Certainly there’s a wide range of literature clearly stating the health benefits, esp. for heart disease, but whether they’re a net net positive for LGS is a different matter.

I’m of asian descent so have always had some trouble with lactose, but I really would like to give raw goat milk a try, esp. in the form of SCD legal goat milk kefir. I plan on doing that soon.

thanks for sharing your blog Tony.

http://www.facebook.com/lauren.grettagoslin Lauren Gretta Goslin

Interesting article. I have also found that I react stronger to nutrient-dense foods, than say something like white bread. I haven’t come up with a solution other than perhaps I’m highly sensitive. I recently started wondering where the nutrients come from in milk that isn’t whole milk. They are all enriched with vitamins A and D, but where are these vitamins derived from? Genetically-modified corn, perhaps? Try buying unpasteurized almonds, make almond milk and see if that bothers you. Check out this disturbing article on almonds….http://www.anh-usa.org/raw-and-organic-almonds-lawsuit-scores-its-first-major-victory/

Joey Chang

These are great questions Lauren. I’ll do some research on unpasteurized almonds & see if I can find any near me. I absolutely think it would make at least some difference making it myself, if only because it doesn’t contain all the additives & fillers. Amande isn’t even made w/organic.

But whether the digestibility would be better is suspect, since the rawness of it doesn’t resolve the issues with the antinutrients (in theory). Perhaps the enzymes which would’ve been pasteurized away would cancel out some of the antinutrients?

Read your link: the battle that small scale farmers have to go through to sell foods in their natural state is just preposterous.

According to http://renegadehealth.com/blog/2011/03/30/yes-raw-almonds-still-arent-raw:

“One of the biggest questions that we get in our Helpdesk and on the blog is this… “Are raw almonds really raw?”

In 99% of the cases, the answer is “no.”

leela

Having been severely lactose intolerant for years, I eventually discovered (on my own, before it became A Thing) that is was pasteurized cow dairy that was so problematic.

There is info now about how the milk proteins in specific breeds of cow, (esp those poor non-grass-fed cows) that even when raw, wreaks havoc on human digestion.

For me, even raw Jersey/Guernsey grass-fed raw dairy doesn’t go down well. But raw goatmilk homemade Kefir was pretty much the number one magic wand for my digestive woes. Sad to have moved away from my little local happy vegetarian goat! ( I suspect some part of the therapeutic effect was being able to occasionally scratch her cute little head and thank her

As for nuts, Ayurvedic tradition (which is all about maximizing digestion, not just of food, but of all experience) would have you soak overnight 6-10 almonds, push them out of their little skins and Voila! Increased digestive happiness.

The Other Problem with most nuts/seeds is that they go rancid fairly quickly once picked and shelled. Unless you know they are locally sourced, in season, and you are refrigerating them, there is a high chance you are ingesting rancid oils…which is not good for anyone, least of all those of us who are already dealing with inflammation

Good on ya for trying the elimination approach! Not easy, but I think worthwhile to determine what to avoid, for now at least, until the gut can get happy again.

Joey Chang

Sorry to hear the raw Jersey/Guernsey grass fed didn’t go down well. I’ve heard that grassfed butter is much better tolerated than the milk (since it’s pretty much all fat w/very little casein) so I’m curious to try that.

I’m chompin at the bits to get on the goat milk kefir. I hope i can find myself a local 4-footed friend w/a beard as well.

magnesium

Try magnesium chloride (not other forms of mag) 400-500 mg per day. This will help with gut tremendously. Give it a week and you’ll notice!

Joey

Thanks! Do you recommend this for gut motility or inflammation (or both?)
Joey Chang

Thanks! do you rec this for gut motility or inflammation (or both?) And what is it about Cl that makes it better than the other forms?

magnesium

Just read this, mag chloride seems to be the most bio available. You can find this as trace minerals on iherb. This would be great for both conditions.

Other things that might help you would be molybdenum amino acid chelate – which helps tremendously lightening the load of acetyldehyde.

I am in class right now otherwise I would spend more time on here. But please do some research on mag chloride and molybdenum.

Other things that would be great would be slippery elm (alkanizing), fulvic acid (helps you absorb nutrients better).

Good luck man, leaky gut sucks I’ve been battling it for about a year and a half and im almost 100% better – I never stopped drinking alcohol either.

magnesium

Another thing to look at would be a good probiotic supplement. I would look into raw sauerkraut. – great for digestion!

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sam

Seriously you said “Tahini butter. That brings me back to this: why can I inhale Tahini in large quantities without suffering? One possible reason is because they’re unhulled, and that’s where these antinutrients are centralized. Compare that to almond butter and almond milk, where you’re basically getting the entire almond, hull and all.”

Surely you jest? Almond hulls are basically hard crunchy inedible things, you don’t get any in Almond butter unless someone screwed up. In fact most nuts I can think of have the hulls removed prior to eating. People are soaking nuts for the wrong reasons .

http://blog.healclick.com/ Joey Chang

Sam,

Thanks for bringing this up. I made an edit above:

“Compare that to almond butter and almond milk, where you’rebasically getting the entire almond, hull and all. still have the seedcoat after the outer hull is removed (Updated 10.27.12)

I believe that sesame seeds only have a hull, whereas almonds have hulls and seedcoats, so the fact that the almond is dehulled doesn’t mean that it’s stripped to the same level as sesame seeds.

However, there’s also evidence that even dehulled sesame seeds are high in phytic acid, so I think this “hull vs dehull” topic is definitely inconclusive. Hopefully we’ll see more research on antinutrient levels besides phytic acid though. It’s far from the worst offender IMO, as it’s even inconclusive whether it’s a net-net positive or damaging substance.