I once had a conversation with a man who said he had suffered from migraines for decades before he eliminated wheat from his diet. I’m sure that many of you have tried this, yet your migraine persist despite your gluten-free diet.
When you see pictures of the long and sticky glutenous fibers in wheat it’s easy to think about how that would negatively affect your gut, preventing absorption of nutrients and contributing to acidic congestion and inflammation. But what if there’s another culprit (or multiple culprits) lurking in wheat and grains, contributing to our illness? What if a lot of the negative symptoms people get from eating wheat have little to do with the wheat’s gluten content?
I realize that some people ARE seriously sensitive to gluten itself, such as celiacs for example. But in this post, I want to explore some of the additional reasons why some people may react to wheat beyond the gluten content. Some of this information, such as the likelihood that glyphosate contamination in wheat may also be contributing to people’s sensitivity, is becoming more and more widely recognized. But there are other factors that I believe contribute to people’s sensitivity around wheat, that have little to do with wheat per se.
Glyphosate in Wheat Products
The fact that so many wheat products are contaminated with glyphosate is one major reason to eat less wheat, and/or only eat organic wheat. Although wheat isn’t an officially genetically engineered crop (unlike corn and soy), glyphosate is often sprayed on it as a desiccant.
“Most glyphosate is sprayed on ‘Roundup ready’ corn and soybeans genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide. [But] increasingly, glyphosate is also sprayed just before harvest on wheat, barley, oats and beans that are not genetically engineered. Glyphosate kills the crop, drying it out so it can be harvested sooner than if the plant were allowed to die naturally.” (source)
There are a few reasons why glyphosate is so poisonous, but the top two reasons I will outline here have to do with 1) the fact that it depletes glycine, and a very important amino acid, and 2) the fact that glyphosate steals (chelates) important minerals needed by your body.
“Glycine is a very special amino acid because, unlike all the others, it has no side chains. This makes it tiny and flexible, and proteins have taken advantage by putting glycine residues where flexibility is needed. Substitution of glyphosate for any of the glycines in this region is likely to impair enzyme function.” (source)
The fact that glyphosate blocks glycine is actually a really big deal, especially for migraineurs. Glycine, being the smallest amino acid, is also the most versatile. It is needed for bile flow, to make copper bioavailable to break down histamine, to quell excitotoxicity in the brain from excessive glutamate buildup (to name just a few of its many functions). Half of the inhibitory synapses in the spinal cord use glycine.
Glyphosate is a known chelator of minerals, and this chelation happens in the soil long before the glyphosate gets into your body. What this means is that the use of glyphosate on food crops is robbing you of your nutrition from two places – first, robbing the plants you will eat of the minerals that the plants need from the soil, and then later, preventing your body from absorbing and utilizing minerals by blocking absorption in the intestinal tract.
The primary minerals the glyphosate binds to and “steals” are cobalt (needed to make B12), zinc, and manganese (source). There may be other minerals as of yet not studied that are also chelated by glyphosate.
Beyond this chelating effect, glyphosate does a lot of additional damage:
- Kills beneficial gut bacteria and allows pathogens to overgrow
- Leads to inflammatory bowel disease and leaky gut
- Interferes with function of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes in the liver
- These enzymes serve many important roles, including making bile acids, activating
vitamin D, detoxifying many toxic chemicals and breaking down prescription drugs - Interferes with the synthesis of aromatic amino acids and methionine
- Depletes glutathione in the liver (important antioxidant)
(source)
It’s important to realize that glyphosate is used on many different grain products as a dessicant (not just as an herbicide). For example, very high levels have been found in beans and chickpeas, with lower but still detectable levels in organic beans and chickpeas. The Environmental Health Working Group has done a few studies on glyphosate and has found that people who eat organic have much lower levels of glyphosate in their bodies.
So what can you do to to minimize glyphosate contamination? First, always purchase organic wheat and grain products. Eat them at reasonable and not excessive amounts. And, there is a a specific supplement that I recommend in my Repattern Migraine coursework that will not only help to remove glyphosate but will also help with reducing brain fog and headaches.
Bromide & Other Bleaching Agents in Wheat Products
Why did my friend who told me that he used to get migraines before eliminating wheat have the results that he did if it weren’t for the gluten or the glyphosate – since eliminating wheat certainly doesn’t eliminate glyphosate, given how many grains glyphosate is sprayed with? The reason and explanation that I’m about to provide will also answer the question of why a client of mine noticed that her cystic breast tissue went back to normal after cutting out wheat. I am proposing that it could be that these people lessened their load of bromide without knowing it – because they probably didn’t realize that a lot of wheat flour is brominated in the first place. Bromide contamination is one cause for the connection between wheat and migraines.
The existence of bromine/bromide in non-organic wheat products is a huge and largely overlooked problem. Bromine is a halide, and as such it competes with iodine for absorption, and therefore interferes with thyroid function. Iodine is also needed to prevent cystic breast tissue, so brominated flour, especially combined with a diet low in iodine, will contribute to cystic breasts and ALL cystic conditions (acne, cystic fibrosis, interstitial cystitis, and fibromyalgia are all cystic conditions). I believe the presence of bromine/bromide in many wheat products explains why my client’s cystic breast tissue went away once she eliminated wheat from her diet.
Both glandular hypothyroidism (type 1) and cellular hypothyroidism (type 2) play a big role in migraine symptoms (you can read more about the thyroid gland and migraine here and here and here). So brominated flour is definitely a problem for migraineurs. But that doesn’t mean that the wheat plant is the problem – it’s how it’s treated that’s causing the issues.
“Like fluoride, the most serious side effect [caused by brominated flour] is what it can do to your thyroid function. As a halide, [bromine] will compete with the same cellular receptor sites in your body that iodine will. This includes the thyroid and also the mammary glands and other places along the endocrine trail, making it a risk factor for breast cancer and other cancers of the reproductive and endocrine system. Because of its ability to deplete the body of iodine, it can also lead to hypothyroidism. It is estimated that approximately one-third of the world’s population is iodine deficient (U.S numbers are thought to be higher than this). Bromide exposure could be one of the culprits.” (source)
When people take higher dose iodine to dump bromide (and fluoride), they often develop a typical bromide rash on their legs. I experienced a very small bromine rash on my calves when I did my iodine flush to remove fluoride and bromide (see photo of bromide rash below).
While flour used to be fortified with iodine, this was replaced with bromide back in the 60s. (Bromide was also used in sedatives, but that was halted because of its neurotoxic effects. However, it still exists in many medications).
If you’ve ever wondered why some people report being able to handle wheat products when they go abroad, but feel terrible on wheat when they return to the US, it is very likely because so many other countries have banned potassium bromate in wheat.
Bromide, which has a half-life of 9-12 days in the body, is used as a bleaching agent, along with many other toxic chemicals in bleached flour:
“Before looking at potassium bromate itself, one must keep in mind just how many harmful agents are used in the processing of bleached flour. There’s Azodicarbonamide, Chlorine Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, and the dread Potassium Bromate which has become illegal in the European Union, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Nigeria, South Korea, and Peru. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies potassium bromate as a category 2B carcinogen which means that there is some evidence connecting the compound to causing cancer in humans. . . Unfortunately, even though most bleaching agents are eliminated by the time you get your all-purpose flour, a few toxic compounds still remain. One of these toxic bleaching agents is potassium bromate. . . In addition, this harsh oxidizer can lead to kidney damage, lung irritation, shortness of breath, and nervous system irritation, causing headaches, anger issues, mental fog, and general confusion.“ (source)
You can read more about toxic halides like fluoride and bromine/bromide in my article “How and Why to Avoid Toxic Halides.” Like fluorine and flouride, bromine and potassium bromate used in flour is utilized as a recycled waste byproduct leftover from other industries. They’ve gotta put it somewhere. For example, bromine can be harvested from bromine gasses released from the recycling of e-waste, similar to how fluoride is harvested from organo-phosphate fertilizer industries and added to the water supply, toothpastes, and medications so it doesn’t have to be disposed of, but rather can become a profit-making compound in the “circular” economy. While the recycling of wastes is “good” on an environmental level, the dumping of industrial waste products into food, water, and medications as a means to profit while using humans as a waste disposal system is decidedly not good for public health.
To avoid brominated flour, be sure to consume wheat and foods made with wheat using organic flour exclusively. And if you want to learn more about fluoride and bromide toxicity, how to deal with it, how to prevent it, and how to rehabilitate your thyroid health to heal your migraines, check out my coursework.
Mycotoxins in Wheat Products
Fungi give off toxins that are not easily denatured by heat or cooking. These toxins are called mycotoxins. Fungi and their mycotoxins can also form as part of elaborate biofilm formations in the body, working in concert with other pathogens and evolving to adapt with the host’s own DNA. Mycotoxin contamination is also one often overlooked cause in the connection between wheat and migraines.
Awhile back, in a post titled “Yeasts, Fungi, and Mycotoxins: Hidden Culprits in Migraine Pain“, I asked: to what degree could migraine symptoms be a side-effect of systemic fungal infection? And as part of my answer to that inquiry, I listed a few of the symptoms of fungal infection, many of which will sound very familiar to those with migraine:
- Cognitive difficulties (e.g. brain fog, poor memory/concentration, anxiety)
- Pain (especially abdominal pain, but can include muscle pain similar to fibromyalgia)
- Unexplained weight gain or weight loss
- Numbness and tingling in extremities or other areas of the body
- Metallic taste in the mouth
- Vertigo or dizziness
- Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
- Digestive issues (especially limited tolerance to food, persistent bloating)
- Significant fatigue which often interferes with daily activities
- Changes in mood (anxiety, manic depression/“bipolar”, ADHD/ADD)
- Excessive thirst and dehydration, bed-wetting in children
- Symptoms that resemble hormone imbalances (hair loss, rashes, weight changes, etc) (Source)
Please read that article linked to above if you would like to explore the topic of mycotoxins and how they relate to chronic migraine. For now, we’re going to stick with the issue of mycotoxins in wheat. Mycotoxins tend to accumulate in all grains, especially highly processed and refined grains that have been stored for a long time. The main mycotoxins in wheat products are Deoxynivalenol, Zearalenone, and Aspergillus flavus Aspergillus parasiticus.
To avoid a high mycotoxin load in wheat or any grain products you use, try to get access to locally-milled flour (I always get my flour freshly-milled the same day that it is milled from Tabor Bread in Portland Oregon).
Of course, some degree of mold and mycotoxins will always be present in grains, but the load will be much lower with freshly milled flour, especially if it is milled from whole grains with the hull intact. The hull of the grain in whole wheat contains b-vitamins (B1) and other protective antioxidants like vitamin E that help the kernel to be protected from mold.
Some people avoid unhulled grains because the hulls contain more phytic acid, but this is not a concern that I personally share. The amount of vitamins in the hull is important (on the downside, glyphosate residues are higher in the germ, so again, organic grain is a must).
I believe that there are many historical examples that we can see that demonstrate that people’s health goes downhill when they eat overly processed grains (ie, with the hull removed). The beri-beri epidemics, which killed thousands of people in Japan when they switched to polished rice, is one example of this. The disease was so prevalent that they thought it came from a pathogen and were in the process of trying to create a vaccine (for a nutritional deficiency!). This happened with pellagra and niacin deficiency during the Great Depression as well, when people were consuming too much un-nixtamalized corn.
If the phytic acid in grain hulls were truly such a serious anti-nutrient, historically we would have seen people’s nutrition IMPROVE on polished rice. Instead, we see the opposite – rampant and life-threatening malnutrition when people take the hull off of grains that they heavily rely on for their daily nourishment. It is also worth noting here that vitamin B1, or thiamine, which is present in the hull of rice (and wheat as well), is a potent antifungal. Therefore, flour that has been denatured and turned white will, like rice, mold more easily.
Rancidity of Wheat Flour
Many people’s sensitivity to wheat products may be coming from the fact that the flour they are using is rancid. Whole wheat flour goes rancid faster than white flour because of the oils in the bran. Although there are important nutrients in the bran including nutrients that combat mold, the oils themselves oxidize when exposed to oxygen.
The symptoms from eating rancid flour include: “gastrointestinal issues like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. You may also experience headaches, dizziness, and fatigue. In severe cases, eating old flour can lead to food poisoning.” (source)
Extremely rancid flour will have a stale, musty, or almost sour odour, while non rancid flour will have a mild and nutty aroma.
To avoid rancid flour, buy flour from a local mill if you can find one, or instead simply be sure to store your flour in the freezer until use, so that its process of oxidation and rancidity will be slowed down.
So Should You Avoid Wheat if You Have Migraines?
My general answer to whether wheat should be OK to eat if you have migraines is YES, in moderation, so long as it is organic, and so long as you do not have leaky gut, celiac, or a mold hypersensitivity.
I also want to add that eating sourdough wheat is better for your body, as the fermentation helps to break down the glutinous strands somewhat. Although migraineurs are generally more sensitive to fermented foods, in the case of sourdough, the bacteria that were used to ferment the dough have been killed by heat. However, it can be very difficult to find organic sourdough bread, unless you take the time to make your own.
If you know for sure that you feel worse on wheat, by all means avoid it – just as long as you don’t replace it with a bunch of “gluten free” grains that are also full of mold and glyphosate. It seems to be a common occurrence that people shift away from eating wheat and very often the gluten free products they replace it with are not organic, but are seen as healthy because they don’t contain gluten.
My key point is that avoiding wheat shouldn’t be an ideological thing. See how you really feel on it and off it, and consider some of the other reasons besides gluten that wheat may be compromising your body. Then, mitigate for those factors by eating high quality wheat in moderation, and enjoy your life!
