for their individual biology. Nutrition is essential not only for Super Human biology but also for Super Human success.
GRAINS, GLUTEN, GLUCOSE, AND GLYPHOSATE (OH MY)
In my mid-twenties, I figured out how to lose fifty pounds of fat, decrease inflammation, gain energy, and gain positive changes to my personality using multiple versions of a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet. I was happier and less angry, and had more friends and more energy. It was clear that something in my diet had caused these drastic changes. As I experimented with different types of carbs, I realized that for me, gluten was the number one culprit. Even though I do not have celiac disease, a condition that makes the small intestine hypersensitive to gluten, my body did not tolerate gluten well, and responded with chronic inflammation and changes to my personality that were far from positive.
Chances are you’ve already heard about the damaging effects of gluten, along with strident, shrill misinformation about how only people with celiac disease should avoid it. The sad truth is there is plenty of research to show that eating wheat—not just gluten, the protein found in wheat—is aging for the rest of us, too. Wheat causes inflammation and gastrointestinal distress and contributes to autoimmune disease and a host of other issues by stimulating an over-release of zonulin, a protein that controls the permeability of the tight junctions between the cells lining your gut. It does that whether or not you tell yourself that you tolerate wheat just fine.
With excess zonulin, the gaps between your intestinal cells open, allowing bacteria, undigested food, and bacterial toxins to flood into your bloodstream. Those toxins, called lipopolysaccharides, or LPSs, lead to inflammation throughout your body. They make you old,1 and as you get older, the accumulation of hits from LPSs impacts your health more and more.2 They do this no matter what you think about gluten.
Gluten also reduces blood flow to the brain, interferes with thyroid function,3 and depletes your vitamin D stores.4 As you read earlier, vitamin D deficiency can cause proteins to lose their shape and clump together, forming dangerous and aging plaque deposits.
If you’ve been following the latest news about gluten, you’re probably confused. On one hand, the Big Food industry says to eat it, but if you’re listening to the frontline anti-aging doctors on Bulletproof Radio, you hear clear advice to avoid gluten. You may have even switched to other grains besides wheat to avoid gluten. Unfortunately, most grains contain plant compounds designed to weaken animals like us who eat them. They also commonly contain storage toxins and field toxins from mold that grows on crops, and grains are commonly sprayed with glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.
In May 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on animal studies showing that glyphosate caused tumor growth and higher incidents of cancer. The WHO investigation also found that glyphosate is probably genotoxic (meaning it causes mutations in DNA) and increases oxidative stress, which triggers inflammation and speeds up aging. Glyphosate also mimics estrogen, which might explain why it causes human breast cancer cells to grow in vitro.5 Roundup itself is directly toxic to mitochondria6 and even more toxic to human placental cells than glyphosate7 alone.
Even more worrisome, the gly- in glyphosate stands for glycine, an amino acid prevalent in collagen, the protein in your skin’s connective tissue. Glyphosate is actually a glycine molecule attached to a methylphosphonyl group (which happens to be a precursor to chemical weapons). This means that when you consume glyphosate it can be incorporated into your collagen matrix just like glycine. In 2017, the Boston University School of Public Health released research showing that glyphosate substituting for glycine disrupts multiple proteins necessary for kidney health and may contribute to kidney disease.8 Plus, your skin is made of collagen. Extra wrinkles won’t necessarily keep you from living longer … but it’s always nice to look as young as you feel.
Before we spread another 18.9 billion pounds of glyphosate on our planet, we simply must conduct more research on how glyphosate contributes to other diseases when the body uses it as a substitute for glycine. For now, suffice it to say that if you want to avoid the painful, slow decline we now associate with aging, avoid glyphosate, which means avoid grains (at least in the United States). That’s not as easy as it may seem. Not only are the vast majority of conventionally grown grains sprayed with Roundup, but so is much of our conventionally grown produce and the grains that are fed to conventionally raised animals. This means glyphosate is hiding in most products containing corn and other grains, industrial feedlot meat, and animal products like nonorganic milk, yogurt, cheese, and so on.
Many parents were rightfully horrified when a 2018 report showed small but meaningful amounts of glyphosate in name brand breakfast cereals and other products marketed as healthy choices for families. I am equally horrified when I see advertisements for bone broth made from nonorganic industrial chickens. While bone broth is a great source of collagen, when it is made from the bones of conventionally raised chickens, it is a glyphosate land mine.
The good news is that the executives running Big Food companies will change how they make food when you demand it. After all, they have kids and don’t want to get old, just like the rest of us. This is simply about getting the science into the hands of decision-makers and getting them to believe it. Having had the opportunity to sit down with the heads of many of the largest food companies, I can attest that they feel a moral and personal obligation to feed you the healthiest food that you will actually eat at the lowest possible cost. They are good people who want to do the right thing. That is real. These are not evil people (except the people still making glyphosate … there must be a special place in hell for them). It’s just that we haven’t shown Big Food companies that we will actually pay a tiny amount more to get food that keeps us young. It’s okay. They’re coming over to our side as the data becomes clearer.
Glyphosate is just one reason that where you get your food really matters. After years of thinking about it, I decided to make the difficult move to an organic farm where my family can grow our own produce and even raise our own animals (and trade with neighbors who raise animals we don’t). But even before I made the move, my health improved tremendously when I simply eliminated grains and switched to organic, grass-fed animal products from the grocery store and farmers’ markets.
Despite these changes, I still had to learn how to control my blood sugar. More to the point, given how aging high blood sugar is, I learned how to kick its ass. On so many of the diets I’d tried in the past, I ate a low-fat, low-calorie, high-carb breakfast. My body secreted insulin to transport sugar to my cells so they could create energy. This caused a spike in blood sugar, then a quick drop until my base instincts yelled at me to eat something quick to get more energy. Sound familiar? Sugar cravings are how our biology evolved to keep us from starving to death, but they certainly weren’t helping me live longer! Even short spikes in blood sugar cause damage to the inside of your arteries, contributing to cardiovascular disease.
Another common scenario was that I’d unknowingly eat something that contained toxins, requiring my liver to use extra energy to filter toxins out. This of course led to more sugar cravings as my liver struggled to make enough energy to oxidize the toxins. My entire life was ruled by sugar cravings! It had been for as long as I could remember. And when I gave in and ate the darn sugar (or refined carbs), of course it made things worse: More blood sugar means bigger energy crashes, more oxidative stress,9 and the constant formation of AGEs when all that sugar links up with protein in tissues. You already know that sugar ages you, but you may not know how to stop eating it or about the deadly combination of too much sugar and too much protein …
THE VEGAN TRAP
Then I read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II, one of the first popular books that made the connection between eating animal products and many common diseases, including the Four Killers. According to an uncritical
