Corn Starch Is Even More Evil Than Corn

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If you have been reading this blog, you will know that we have cleaned out our pantry three times.

First we removed anything that contained gluten, and this included stuff you would not expect, such as ketchup and soy sauce. We quickly became world-class experts on how to avoid gluten.

Next we removed anything containing caseins, the protein found in dairy. This includes butter and yogurt. I loved cheese but I said good-bye to it as it is not worth feeling like I have the flu for a week if I get caseined.

Next came corn. Anything and everything that had corn in it was given away. Corn seems harder to avoid than the above two toxins (they are toxic to me and to as many as 144 million other Americans) because high fructose corn syrup and corn starch are added to anything that the preservative-loving food industry can think of to put it in. If they could inject into fruit and vegetables, they would have already done so.

Well I was feeling quite good, the best I had felt for years. Maybe even in a decade. Maybe even in two decades.

Then I started to feel like crap again. I was tired, grumpy, stinky and I had a very upset digestive tract. I looked again at every single thing I had been eating or drinking over the past few days. At first I suspected it could be rice, but I have been eating rice once or twice a week for months and never felt any reaction to it.

So I kept looking and finally got to my vitamins and minerals that I take every day. I am or was low in some very important vitamin levels so I am sure to take my vitamins and minerals every day. One pill I have to have is an iron pill but I had not been taking it for the past few weeks/months as the store ran out of the one brand I can tolerate well. I am hypothyroid, and that condition keeps trying to make me become anemic again. I believe that gluten and its good friends corn and dairy caused so much havoc in my body that I became hypothyroid. I get my blood tested every few months and if I don't take as many as 5 iron pills a day, my ferratin levels can slip below 20. A healthy woman should have a MINIMUM ferratin level of 70. Feeling anemic to me is the same as feeling hypothyroid and that feeling is much like being a slug with zero energy and just about as much interest in life.

I was feeling so sick today that I looked again at every single supplement I take . . . and there I found the cause of my sickness. The iron pills contain corn starch. The grocery store where I buy them had a new supply last week so I brought home three bottles and started taking iron pills again.

I threw them away, even though each bottle costs $9.

This long learning curve is literally killing me at a gut level. Now my body has to take the time it needs to heal my guts, yet again, thanks to the damage done by the iron pills that contain corn starch.

Some days I am really pissed off that so very much JUNK is put into our food supply. Today is one of those pissed off days.

Corn Is Evil

Image by . SantiMB . via Flickr

We stopped trying to eat gluten in our house 10 months ago. We made many mistakes since the gluten-loving food industry sneaks gluten into products you would never expect to find gluten in, such as soy sauce. Just last night I ate a delicious gluten-free meal at P.F. Chang's and they brought me out some gluten-free soy sauce and it tasted so much better than the "normal" gluten-rich soy sauce. Why oh why would someone even think to add gluten to soy sauce?
After I started gaining a small measure of my energy back sans gluten, my husband and I decided to remove all caseins (the protein source in dairy) from our diets. I have learned the hard way that if you have an issue with gluten, you are very likely to have an issue with caseins as well. We did. Good-bye dairy.

We both slowly started feeling healthier than we had in years but still we both felt bloaty and still tired, especially in the afternoons. I happened to gain a significant and life-changing chunk of wisdom from an Austin pharmacist whom I called when I became concerned that my adrenal medicine might have dairy in it.

The pharmacist listened to my concerns and then asked me about corn. Was I still eating corn, he asked? I wasn't just eating corn, I was shoving in it as fast as I got my hands on it since it was serving as the one source I used to replace bread. I was eating corn tortillas like they were going out of production the very next minute.

The kindly pharmacist told me that corn is mostly genetically modified these days and most people have trouble digesting it. He recommended that I stop ingesting corn immediately. We did, and that meant another clearing out of the pantry. My God, what doesn't have corn starch in it????

We removed all the corn and corn-like products from our house and from our menus.

And then something miraculous started happening. It happened to my husband first. He was downright jolly in the afternoons, when we would normally be sagging and tired. He was singing and dancing in the kitchen and he started going on long walks again with our dogs. I noticed his increase in energy and I was very happy for him, but I wasn't there yet.

Weeks went by before I sat up one day and realized that I am never tired in the afternoons anymore. I even started singing and dancing and while fun, I am tone deaf so my apologies to anyone who has to listen to me sing. Next thing I knew, I was working out with a DVD I months ago with a trainer deemed "the toughest trainer in America." I haven't had the physical strength to work out for a decade.

Your energy level fades away slowly and you don't really notice it leaving, especially if you do what I did, and that is to prop yourself up with caffeine and sugar in the afternoons. Just as my energy level sagged over the past 10 years, it is now slowly creeping back in. I would do anything to feel vibrantly healthy again and to reclaim my long ago status as that of an athlete. Adding corn to the "will never eat again" column was easy.

Good-bye corn. I do not even miss you.

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