The other side of eating wheat

Wheat is popularly viewed as the sick man’s safe food. From diabetics, to those watching their weight and varied health conditions, a lot of our staple foods such as yam flour and other carbohydrates are often dumped for it. However, do you know that eating wheat has its down sides, and that not all curative […]

Wheat is popularly viewed as the sick man’s safe food. From diabetics, to those watching their weight and varied health conditions, a lot of our staple foods such as yam flour and other carbohydrates are often dumped for it.
However, do you know that eating wheat has its down sides, and that not all curative properties attributed to it are true?
Several recent research studies have been discouraging people from foods containing gluten which is mostly wheat and its products.
Gluten is a protein found in grains like wheat, rye and barley and their various cross breeds. Wheat contains gluten – protein that causes inflammation, a systematic process that has harmful effects across  all the organ systems in the body including the brain, heart, joints, eyes, and digestive tract.
A nutritionist and lecturer  in the  Department of  Nutrition & Dietetics at the Federal Polytechnic, Bida, Niger State, Mr Nwenze  Godfrey said the gluten level found in wheat is indigestible and poses dangers to digestive enzymes.  
He said this can cause indigestion and constipation. “When the immune  system of  the body sees  gluten,  it sees it as some foreign body and invades it, the process of invading the gluten causes a lot of other dangers to the body system. So when you eat wheat there are dangers of indigestion, leakage of nutrients as well as dangers of even mental problems,” he said.
A consultant physician , at the Federal Polytechnic Bida Medical Centre , Dr. Tosin  Felix said there are not much  dangers associated with wheat, it is  just that sometimes some people or some  patients say  they tend to lose weight when they are on wheat diet.
He said wheat is a low carbohydrate diet, and the implication of this is that people could lose so much weight over a long period of time, adding that if so much weight is lost in men or women ,it could  cause menstrual irregularity, infertility and a number of other medical conditions.
Also a review paper in the  New England Journal of Medicine listed  55 diseases that can be caused by eating gluten-containing foods. These diseases include  anemia ,fatigue, osteoporosis, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and so on.
Similarly a joint report by the American Cancer Society and the American Die bêtes Association noted that many people do not know that wheat, which is being promoted as a “healthy”  food,  is  one of the  most acid forming foods.
If wheat causes low PH that triggers diseases, eating wheat and its products is akin to adding fuel to fire for the people battling with one health challenge or the other.
Nurudeen, Federal Polytechnic Bida, Niger State