Guest Blog Contributed by Chamber Member Olive Gallagher of The Inner Bottom Line^®

I’ve always found the act of communicating a miracle somewhat up there with the parting of the Red Sea and landing on the moon.
Each one of us is a private, walking world, filled with our own ideas, thoughts, opinions, and definitions.  To transmit these thoughts to another who acknowledges comprehension of any of it is no small accomplishment.  In fact, some have argued it’s a miracle.

Yet, every day, as professionals, particularly if you’re in the marketing/sales/management side of the business, you’re asked to translate and define the intentions and messages of other people to an audience you generally never meet.  And you do it. … Read the rest

Guest Blog Contributed by Chamber Member Dr. Liz Sedlak of Willamette Integrative Health

Humans have eaten wheat for about 8000 years. But until recently (within the last 100 years or so), nearly all bread was made sourdough-style, with starter cultures rich in lactobacilli as well as some other bacteria and yeasts. These bacteria pre-digested most of the gluten protein for us.

Our pancreatic enzymes digest proteins into small peptides or single amino acids. Gluten has a high content of the amino acid proline which puts many “kinks” in its structure and therefore prevents human digestive enzymes from cutting it into tiny pieces. The largest fragment of gluten left over is 33 amino acids long. There are at least 50 toxic fragments of gluten; these have been mapped to specific domains in α-gliadin: cytotoxic activity (aa 31-34), immunomodulatory activity (aa 57-89), zonulin release and gut-permeating activity (aa 111-130 and 151-170), and IL-8 release in celiac disease patients (aa 261-277).… Read the rest