The Benefits of going Flour-Free

White and wheat flours are refined products that offer very little in terms of vitamins, nutrients, and/or minerals. They are complex carbohydrates and therefore are made up of simple glucose units and thereby can increase in your blood glucose level. An elevated blood glucose level stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin. An elevated insulin level is the underlying factor in many health problems, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and cancer. The key to preventing these health conditions is keeping blood glucose levels stable and insulin levels low.

Metabolic Burnout

Your adrenals or pancreas or both can’t keep overproducing hormones, so they eventually hit a zero balance (or are in the red). Your adrenals may run out of funds first, then your pancreas. When the adrenals don’t secrete enough cortisol, you feel tired. When the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, you have official diabetes, although you’ve been developing it for years. Other parts of the body start to break down during this stage. Yeast will more easily colonize the digestive tract and the thyroid begins to break down.

Metabolic Resistance

High cortisol levels cause fat to be deposited in your abdomen, and insulin and cortisol rise and stay elevated. In the case of insulin, your muscle cells now don’t recognize its signal. Once your cells stop responding to insulin (called insulin resistance), your pancreas must produce 10 times as much of the hormone to shuttle sugar into cells, Your brain doesn’t recognize increases in insulin either, so it never responds by turning off your appetite. As a result, blood glucose is even more erratic than during metabolic overdrive, alternating from very high highs to very low lows, and you’re constantly hungry. High insulin levels tend to lower levels of other important hormones too, which can erode health in many additional ways.
Your sleep is probably starting to become erratic. You may feel okay when you are at work and under stress, but you crash when you get home or go on vacation. Elevated levels of cortisol during the overspending stage have now taken a toll on various bodily tissues, slowing metabolism through a loss of muscle mass, impairing digestion, and weakening immunity.