If you are following a strict gluten-free lifestyle, yet you still suffer from symptoms seemingly related to gluten, you could be eating foods that do not contain gluten but your body reacts to them as if they do. This process is called cross-reactivity.

Unfortunately, some gluten-free foods such as cheese, chocolate, non-GMO corn, nuts, grains, and coffee contain proteins so similar to gluten that the immune system may confuse these proteins with gluten and react as if you just ate a bowl of whole-wheat pasta!

It's estimated at least half of those who are gluten-intolerant are also sensitive to cross-reactive foods.

Below is a list of common foods that cross-react with gluten:

• Amaranth
• Barley
• Buckwheat
• White and milk chocolate (not dark chocolate)
• Coffee, except air-roasted coffee (offered by Optimal Health Network)
• Non-GMO corn
• Milk, cheese, and other dairy (alpha-casein, beta-casein, casomorphin, butyrophilin, whey protein)
• Eggs, except soy-free eggs
• Hemp
• Millet
• Oats
• Polish wheat
• Potato, except sweet potato
• Rye
• Rice, except black rice and wild rice
• Sesame
• Spelt
• Sorghum
• Soy
• Tapioca
• Teff
• Yeast
• Lentils, except black
• Beans, except black
• Nuts, especially almonds, but not coconut, pecan, chestnut, walnut, pine, pistachio, and Brazilian

If you are gluten-intolerant and still having health issues even after removing gluten from your diet, eliminate the above foods for at least two months and see if your symptoms improve. Make sure you've healed your gut as well. Then, after two months you may reintroduce the above foods one at a time to determine which ones are causing cross-reactions.

If you determine that there are foods that are cross-reactive for you, the treatment is to permanently remove these foods from your diet in addition to eliminating gluten.

Even though the cross-reactive foods do not actually contain gluten, your body thinks they do and therefore the inflammation and damage to your body can ultimately be equal to gluten. If you need support, consider a health consultation with me.

Labels: celiac disease, cross-reactivity, gluten sensitivity

A Big Leap!

Hi! Firstly, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting the Optimal Health Network and me over these past 18 years. Optimal Health Network is a healing resource to thousands of people.

Now I’ve decided to take a big leap in growing the resources of the Optimal Health Network. I am about to embark on a Wisdom Exchange on Transformational Leadership program in Ecuador. I will join health and wellness experts from five countries to explore behaviors and ideas that inspire greater professional and personal fulfillment through innovative approaches to well-being and positive social impact. As part of the experience, I will teach three classes at the Universidad de Cuenca and give a TED-like talk exploring diverse issues such as how health begins in the gut, spiritual healing, and entrepreneurship. To take this journey, I need your help and support. You can directly participate in making this a reality for me, and for the Optimal Health Network, by entering our FUNDRAISING RAFFLE [fundraiser now finished]. But first, let me give you a little background on how this all came about.

Throughout the world, a remarkable process of merging different ways of knowing and healing is unfolding. One story from my life illustrates what I mean. I spent a morning recently in prayer and study with His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, the head of the 900-year-old Karma Kagyu Lineage and guide to millions of Buddhists around the world. I am not a part of a Buddhist community, but the opportunity arose, and something within told me to join in.

Outside, every crabapple tree opened its pink, white, and red blossoms to a heavy spring rain. Inside, we pulled off our wet raincoats and took our seats. Monks, yoga instructors, professors of medicine, colon hydrotherapists, writers, neuroscientists, stay-at-home moms, security guards, translators, college students, retirees, and researchers prayed and then explored the fascinating conversation between science and spirituality, medicine and meditation.

This evolutionary conversation matters. It matters to all of us.

Twenty years ago, when I found myself in daily and wrenching gut pain, not able to leave my house because of my multiple chemical sensitivities, a medical doctor at the University of Wisconsin Hospital told me that I wasn’t eating according to the USDA food pyramid and that was why I was sick. He told me I needed to see a nutritionist. However, I did not feel that this advice spoke to my needs.

We are all aware of gluten-free foods; they are commonly available in most restaurants and grocery stores. Having celiac disease can be a blessing, a path to one’s own healing as well as a path to planetary healing. For instance, I’ve recently started including cricket flour in my diet (see video below) because it is healthy for my gut; it is gluten-free, tastes great, and is beneficial for the planet. I don’t know if I would so easily be able to choose to eat edible insects without the life experiences of eating different foods like bone broth soup, raw liver, and green vegetable juices, or exploring different healing modalities like the coffee enema, fecal transplants, and essential oil suppositories.


Change is difficult. We are all growing and learning every moment of every day on this beautiful and crazy human journey. And we have a long, long way to go.

Through working with clients and supporting my own body, I am confronted with the need for merging different ways of knowing and healing every day. Again, on a personal note, my daughter fell off a trapeze over three years ago and now hardly ever leaves the house due to tremendous headaches. Since her injury, we've explored both mainstream medicine and alternative therapies to heal her body. Her head pain is greater than ever.

It is from the core of my being that I continue to deepen my knowledge of the healing arts. Just a few days ago, I was gardening. Over the past couple of years, I’ve created a spiritual hermitage for myself, a space to grow in my writing skills, in my relationship to God, in understanding how my history of trauma and abuse are still profoundly affecting my relationship to my body. As I smoothed over the dirt around my newly planted magnolia tree, I found myself standing up, looking to the dry blue spring sky, and saying out loud: I’m ready to take a next step, a step that takes me more fully into helping people. Please help guide me.

A few minutes later, I sprayed the dirt off of my bare knees and came into the house to check my email. The first message I opened was an invitation to join a group of healers on a Wisdom Exchange on Transformational Leadership in Ecuador, the exchange I described above. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I emailed back with a resounding YES! Within 24 hours, I was interviewed by the producer of the documentary which we will be making about healing and seeking. Within a few minutes of talking, he invited me to join the team.

My business goals around this wisdom exchange are to increase the amount of scientific data that supports the reality that health DOES begin in the gut and to build a rich whole body/mind/soul healing library that will focus on spiritual healing, how stored trauma affects your health, and how your microbiome drives your mental and emotional well-being.

This is such a big deal! I ask for your support through this time of tremendous growth and outreach by participating in our FUNDRAISING RAFFLE [fundraiser now finished]. The money raised through the raffle will help to pay my expenses for the trip. Also, please join me on Facebook and Pinterest as I post new photos, healing resources, and stories around this unfolding journey. I would love you to take this trip with me!

In gratitude and healing,
Kristina Amelong

More About the Ecuador Trip

No Regrets Productions in partnership with Spryte Loriano Global is hosting the trip, which will take place June 2 through June 11. The great majority of the people traveling on this trip are transformational leaders, messengers, and teachers who have been recognized for making a difference around the world through their endeavors. During the trip, the entire group will be filmed for a television documentary called Life-List Ecuador: Making a Difference from the Amazon to the Andes.

• Watch Life-List Ecuador Introductory Video
• Read about 2-Day Wisdom Share Event during Trip

Each team will provide empowerment / leadership / motivational training to Ecuadorian teachers and students to support the advancement and transformation of our global society. Participants will speak on stage in front of teachers and/or students, and also work with them one-on-one in workshop settings.

Each participant will receive a 15-minute professionally produced personal film documentary on his or her experience in Ecuador, and will be included in the web/television series. This is certainly a high-value offer for participants, as it highlights them doing meaningful work across the world and puts a spotlight on the unique message that each shares.

During the trip, the entire group will have a number of different experiences, including delivering clean water systems to rural villages, camping overnight at one of the villages after arriving there on horseback, visiting schools, learning about local humanitarian programs, and relaxing and connecting at eco-lodges in the Andes mountains and Amazon rainforest.

Learn more about the team
Kristina will be a part of:

• Vision 2020
• Stephen Dinan: Welcome to the Shift

Learn more about Ecuador:

• What We Owe Ecuador
  By former Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.)

If you have any questions or just want to talk, please call us at the Optimal Health Network at 608-242-0200.

If you'd rather support the people of the Kichwa community directly by purchasing a water filter, click here to learn more.

Labels: alternative health, celiac disease, Ecuador, entrepreneurship, fundraiser, health begins in the gut, leadership, multiple chemical sensitivities, raffle, spiritual healing

Today is a great day. It is a great day for many reasons, not the least of which are the warmer weather I took a walk in this hazy afternoon, the splendidly effervescent cranberry kombucha I am now drinking, the extra two hours of sleep I snuggled into this spring morning, the eight minutes I lay in the Optimal Health Center's Vitamin D Therapy Bed, and the stairs I climbed as I rid my apartment of unworn winter clothes, toys my daughter has outgrown, and dusty books we no longer read.

It is also a great day because for the first time, I received an e-mail in which I learned that we now have scientific evidence that indeed, gluten sensitivity not only exists, but is very different from celiac disease.

I published my book, Ten Days to Optimal Health, in January 2006, in which I stated, "Gluten, unfortunately, is central to many health problems: more and more people are finding that consuming gluten does not promote optimal health."

Many of us have lived with the troubling and confusing symptoms of gluten sensitivity, but have failed to find doctors who agree. We have been told that if it wasn't celiac disease, there was nothing wrong with us, that possibly we had emotional problems that caused our unexplained gut pains, mood swings, chemical sensitivities, and constant muscle aches and pains.

Some experts think as many as 1 in 20 Americans have some form of gluten sensitivity, but there is no defined set of symptoms.

Although scientific exploration of gluten sensitivity and its myriad symptoms -- stomach problems, headaches, fatigue, numbness, depression, and more than 100 other disturbing symptoms -- is still in its infancy, it is clear that gluten triggers an immune response of an enemy invader similar to a response to parasites, viruses, and bacteria.

Even though scientifically gluten sensitivity today is roughly where celiac disease was 30 years ago, it is a great day. It is a great day because at least the scientific community now recognizes that this affliction is real and that these 1 in 20 people aren't crazy.

Divergence of gut permeability and mucosal immune gene expression
in two gluten-associated conditions: celiac disease and gluten sensitivity

BMC Medicine 2011, 9:23doi:10.1186/1741-7015-9-23
Published: 9 March 2001

Labels: adrenal stress index, celiac disease, gluten sensitivity