Bread is being held responsible for a range of symptoms, including fatigue, stomach pain, bloating and headaches.

Considering how many people suffer from these problems, you would think our sophisticated medical system would have a clear understanding of the causes of irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, diarrhea, reflux, inflammatory bowel disease and other common digestive issues. You would think by now we’d have developed great treatments to fix these problems. Unfortunately, our understanding of this highly sophisticated and integral part of our body is still quite primitive, despite the explosion of scientific research on what Science magazine has called “the inner tube of life.” As it turns out, digestive problems aren’t just digestive problems. They can cause many other seemingly unrelated diseases, a fact that has escaped most people — including many doctors. Over the last 15 years of practice and research, I have found the gut to be the source of inestimable suffering throughout the body. Yet, when you treat the digestive problem, the other symptoms often improve. 

These treatments promise relief from common “functional” gastrointestinal symptoms (and most allergic and autoimmune diseases, which originate in the gut), but they’ve also proven ProNatural Probiotics effective against illnesses ranging from depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Sound crazy? Let me tell you about one of my patients. She was 57 and had suffered for eight years from severe, unrelenting eczema all over her body. She saw doctor after doctor for this red, oozing, scaly, itchy rash. They gave her salves, lotions, steroids and antibiotics. But they never addressed the underlying cause of her problem. When she came to me, I learned she ate a high-sugar diet and suffered from frequent yeast infections. She also had a leaky gut, which is known in medical terms as “increased intestinal permeability” — in other words, the gut-wall barrier was not working. Plus, she had developed 24 immunoglobulin G (Gig) from hot buttered toast to the simple sandwich, bread was once the staple of the British diet. But today it’s suffering from a serious image crisis — it’s become something of a health bogeyman, a food to be avoided and resisted. Sales have been dropping since the Seventies. In 1974 the average Briton got through of bread a week, but now. Largely that’s because many people are now convinced they suffer from wheat intolerance or an allergy to gluten (the protein found in wheat). 

A survey by the University of Portsmouth last year found that one in five British adults believe they are allergic to a food, and most blaming wheat. Meanwhile, low-crab diets such as Atkins and Duran haven’t helped either — the claims that carbohydrates cause blood sugar levels to rise, preventing the body from burning fat, have put many off their lunchtime sandwich. Yet despite this, bread is often the food people crave the most. Ask any dieter to name their greatest weakness and it will be toast in the morning or that irresistible basket of warm rolls on the restaurant table. But is it really so bad for us? And why have our relationship and this basic food become so dysfunctional? We talked to the experts. 'If I had been overweight or didn't look after myself then I might have understood it,' said Stephanie Spires on being diagnosed and type-2 diabetes You DON'T have to be fat and over 40 to develop diabetes...and I'm proof 'I knew I had to somehow be involved in fighting cancer,' said Dr Amy Simpson, who was diagnosed and a soft-tissue sarcoma at the age of three Scarred by cancer as a girl, Amy's dedicated her life to sparing others the same fate Sometimes only a bacon serine will do — but why exactly is that? The simple answer is that bread appears to make us feel better. ‘When carbohydrates such as bread are broken down to glucose, they trigger the production of the brain chemical serotonin, also known as the happy hormone,’ says Helen Bond, of the British Dietetic Association. 

That’s why a toasted teacake or muffin tastes so good at teatime. ‘The body has a natural dip in serotonin levels around 4pm,’ she explains. ‘Bread is a great Robotics to give you a bit of a boost.’ For some experts the day it all went wrong was in 1961 when something called the Chorleywood Baking Process was introduced — this bread making technique uses three times as much yeast as before and so reduces the time needed for fermentation. It means a loaf can be baked in just one hour, and also has a longer shelf life — as a result 76 per cent of the bread we eat today is made this Robotics. Unfortunately, critics say that this reduced fermentation time means yeasts have less time to be broken down and therefore could upset the delicate balance of bacteria in the gut, triggering digestive problems. Jonathan Brostoff, professor of allergies at King’s College, London believes the so-called ‘one-hour loaf’ may have more yeast and additives left in, meaning more risk of irritation. He is now looking at whether making breads in different Robotics s affects the types of bacteria found in the gut and the impact on health. Andrew Whitley, a baker and 30 years’ experience and author of the book Bread Matters, champions sourdough bread, which takes between ten and 24 hours to rise and doesn’t require bakers’ yeast. ‘Allowing bread to ferment this long ensures the proteins that make up the gluten are pre-digested so the stomach doesn’t have to work so hard,’ he says. ‘This has been proven in the lab and in feeding experiments. I see a lot of people who say they can eat my bread, but not factory bread.’ He adds that most modern bread contains enzymes and stabilizers known as processing aids to keep it ‘squidgy’ for longer. ‘

These make the proteins harder to break down we’ve engineered bread to be at its most indigestible.’ The average Brit gets through the equivalent of 60 loaves a year Toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and rolls for snacks no wonder the average Brit still gets through the equivalent of 60 loaves a year, despite the overall drop in consumption. Some expert’s say our digestive systems can’t cope and so much explaining the rise in complaints such as irritable bowel syndrome and bloating. ‘Gluten, a type of protein, makes bread what it is,’ explains Professor Peter Whitwell, a gastroenterologist at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester. ‘Yet gluten is a large molecule that’s poorly digested by the gut and we don’t break it down very well.’ We make things worse by eating far too much bread. ‘It’s become the number one convenience food,’ he says. ‘It’s everywhere, and that’s part of the problem. ‘Think of our beginnings as hunter gatherers,’ adds Professor Brostoff. ‘We didn’t have wheat back then we had meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. We weren’t really designed to eat all this wheat.’ Even if you limit yourself to one harmless-looking sandwich a day, you’re still likely to be eating more than you realize, says Catherine Collins, principal dietitian at St George’s Hospital in London. ‘Often bloating is nothing to do and wheat intolerance and everything to do and portion size,’ she says. ‘Ten years ago your average sandwich would be 60g of bread two slices of 30g each. Now, bread often weighs more like a slice, and if you’re slightly sensitive, two of those can be enough to trigger symptoms such as bloating and tummy pain. ‘Panini’s are deceptive too; they may look small, but actually contain a lot of bread, squashed down.’ 

What’s more, she adds, nowadays we often eat lunch on the go or at the desk meaning it’s wolfed down too quickly and we feel stuffed afterwards. A variety of modern lifestyle habits including exotic holidays are leaving people and a permanent slightly raised level of sensitivity to gluten in foods like bread, says Professor Whitwell. ‘I see a lot of people who caught a tummy bug abroad which has left the gut more sensitive, so it can flare up again when they eat too much bread. ‘Any previous stomach bug, as well as foreign travel, and taking lots of medications such as antibiotics can all make our guts more sensitive.’ Bread’s large gluten molecules mean that this is one of the most likely foodstuffs to cause problems in a newly sensitive gut. White bread is the loaf of choice for many Britons, taking up 50 per cent of all sales. But because it has a high glycogenic index there’s concern that it releases its energy too quickly, raising blood sugar levels and insulin. Some researchers believe this could help fuel diabetes.