Dogtor J

 

I’ve just had an e-mail from this vet, who is a coeliac.

Interesting. Especially for me as he’s going into equines.

Cholesterol and Testosterone

 

I was watching University Challenge last night. I should probably say I think as I was doing something else at the time. But one question was about cholesterol and how it becomes testosterone.

I had not realised this so I searched the Internet for information and the link between the two. I should also say at this point that I have slightly raised cholesterol and my doctor was worried for a time. I also have relatives with thyroid problems, which again is related. (I think she worries a bit more than me, which is probably good.)

This was a statement in an article at http://www.treelight.com/health/healing/Cholesterol.html.

“Cholesterol is very necessary stuff. It's converted into Vitamin D by sunlight, and it's the precursor for steroid hormones like the testosterone you need to grow, and the estrogen women need to be feminine.

The liver manufactures something like 1,000 mg of cholesterol per day, even if you consume no cholesterol at all. Of that amount, about 800 mg becomes bile salts, which is necessary for the digestion of fats.[Guyton, 885] That leaves about 200 available for other functions.”

Now I hadn’t realised this and it just shows how inter-related everything is. It could be an explanation, why I feel so much better with plenty of sunlight.

The article then goes on to describe how anti-cholesterol drugs work, why they are bad etc. and why one of the worst things you can consume is corn oil based fructose.

I’m not sure about the latter and would like any opinions. But I suspect that coeliacs like us consume a bit of the fructose and perhaps more than most.

But I will definitely say that I feel so much better after a few days in the sun and very miserable, if it’s rained continuously for several days, as it has for this summer.

Does anybody else have any thoughts?

Quack Science

 

The trouble is that there is so much quack science about that no-one believes the truth.

People will believe some wacky expert, who say believes that being fat is healthy, rather than look at the statistics which show that fat people will get diabetes, are more likely to get cancer and inevitably die younger.

Politicians and especially Blair and his lying hoard are to blame, as they have so besmirched the truth in all things, that when they get up and say what is good for us then we just raise two fingers.

Incidentally, I’m a coeliac. When I was diagnosed at 56, I switched to a gluten free diet immediately and felt better within a week. I know others, who have ignored the diagnosis and tried all sorts of quack remedies. None have worked.

So listen to and understand those with the real knowledge.

Motherhood and Alcohol

 

I used to work in a pub with a barmaid called Pat.

She had her baby just after the war and every night her husband sneaked a bottle of Guinness in for her to drink. Hers was the only baby that sleep through the night. I met him when he was thirty and he was a well rounded individual, who drank very sensibly.

On a more serious side, I moderate a list for coeliacs. We have had I think three women get pregnant soon after going on a gluten-free diet. Is this because you’re getting all those healthy folates again and this helps conception?

Maltodextrin

 

Maltodextrin comes up a lot, so I've been doing a bit of research.

In the US maltodextrin must be made from maize or rice, so it must be gluten-free. So if you eat a US made product with maltodextrin, that part must be gluten free.

I also found this Question and Answer on the Kettle site.

Q. Why is Salsa with Mesquite gluten free when the ingredients list says it contains Dextrose and Maltodextrin from wheat?

A. Dextrose and Maltodextrin are made from wheat grains by a process that separates all of the protein including gluten from the Dextrose or Maltodextrin. We can confirm that products such as Salsa with Mesquite contain less than two parts per million of gluten which means they can be classed as gluten free. Some people may need to avoid wheat products entirely and to help with this we always indicate the source of ingredients such as Starch or Maltodextrin that may come from wheat.

Myself, I tend to eat their low salt or undressed crisps, so it doesn't affect me.

If you want a laugh read what Pringles are made of.

PPM Contamination of Gluten in Food

 

With all the talk of gluten contamination I just thought I'd do a few calculations.

I weighed an 8-10 cm. potato and it weighed about 200 grams. So if you take a double adult portion of mashed potatoes then it is probably about 1 kilogram or 1000 grams.

Wheat flour contains between 8 and 14 percent gluten. (I got this from a site called www.cookingforengineers.com which appears very interesting if you want to find out things like this.) I'll use 13 percent as this is average for bread making flour.

So let's contaminate the mashed potato with different levels of gluten using wheat flour.

200 ppm would mean that 1.54 grams of flour had been added.

So how big is that amount of flour?

Now a cubic metre of wheat flour weighs 593 Kilograms or a cubic centimetre would weigh about 0.593 grams. (I got this from www.simetric.co.uk which gives the density of many materials. It actually lists gluten by itself, which is slightly heavier than flour.)

So that means that to get 200 ppm in the kilogram of mashed potato you would have to add about 2.5 cubic centimetres of flour. i.e. that would be 1 cm x 1 cm x 2.5 cm. or about half of a large heaped teaspoon. (A heaped teaspoon is about five cubic centimetres. But that seems a lot to me.) Interestingly, you would probably add less salt than that when you cook the potatoes.

So even a low level of 10 ppm still needs about 0.125 cubic centimetres of flour, which is probably a generous pinch.

I have checked this, but if anybody can find fault please let me know. Years ago I used to do these sort of calculations all the time as an instrument engineer, but I'm rather rusty these days.

Cambridge Nutriontal Sciences

 

This company has just been on the East Anglian news on the BBC. They now have a 93 food intolerance test.

OK, so it's probably biased, but they do put some interesting points about how good blood tests are for coeliac disease.