Avoiding seeds, nuts, grains, and legumes may be beneficial due to their defense chemicals that humans process less effectively than other animals.

“about amylase and trypsin inhibitors these are intrinsic to many grains so one of the things I talk about in the book is that plant babies plant seeds especially do not want to get eaten and they have all sorts of these amylase and trypsin inhibitors we see this kind of across the the various plant species with some variation but and plant seeds broadly is seeds grains and nuts and legumes and we can talk about this nuts and seeds versus the grains and legumes which we made different opinion on but what we're talking about here is that plant babies I think most of us would agree go on the far end of the spectrum of plant toxicity these are pretty toxic things plants don't want these to get eaten and they put all sorts of things in them to kind of really mess with our guts would you guys agree with all that yeah sorry it was long done no go ahead mark I was going to jump in with one a case study story that is kind of a fascinating thing that we did as I said when we first started doing this we were doing it for autoimmune patients so there's a couple of things I think that you can look at clinically some people are going to have issues with a leaky gut and so that plays into it you've also got the epidermal growth factor thing there as well where you may have an intact gut but basically some of these lectins these dietary you know I will say to my my clients and patients kind of nutrition 101 or proteins you get digested in the stomach these leggings are resistant to the proteolytic enzymes in the gut and if it's a leaky gut or if in fact you combined that receptor and get it into your systemic system you've got something that shouldn't be there in its intact state and that's where all sorts of problems could arise so and obviously the dairy equation comes into it you know it points out you've got something like a 5,000 fold increase in epidermal growth factor which we have in our saliva to help repair the gut we're in small quantities but then someone consumes milk and it's meant for not for a human and you have a 5,000 fold increase it up regulates that receptor and all of a sudden you've got a lot more of these elections getting into the systemic system so I think we're gonna have a huge spectrum of genetics there of some people getting affected more than others but I wanted to just and I think this is important perhaps for your listeners when you talk about autoimmunity about the need to be strict for certainly a while to determine what foods might be a problem we had a as I said we were working with autoimmune patients and I was sort of going off doing lectures almost on dr. cordain's behalf I did want to remember to some hunters who were loving with the message that we were sending out I was featured in both hunter magazine was went to one of the churches that was interesting they were a modern church that believes the earth was I think four thousand years old so had kind of change how I approached selling the concept but anyway the point was we were getting information back from people requests as sort of they wanted to try this and there was one particularly interesting case study a lady with multiple sclerosis so we said okay well we know we're not hurting you we've done a data analysis we feel we've got a good diet we think it might help so she goes on the diet and immediately starts to see improvements in another meeting with another friend that had fibromyalgia wanted to do it in that discussion she mentioned she liked green beans and I mistakenly said that's more alkaline I think you can probably consume those was a bad recommendation but she went home she loved them ate them for a couple of days got on the phone with me and said I clearly can't do green beans I got on the phone with dr. Cordain yeah saying Jesus you know we shouldn't be doing that whoops sorry mistake learn throw them down the road looking at some of the research with multiple sclerosis we were trying to get the DHA levels elevated which had been shown to help in certain circumstances Jocasta hexanoic acid so one of the omega-3 fatty acids so fish oil DHA and EPA this is the DHA component found a lot in brain tissue actually so anyway I you know back then didn't work with good quality stuff was just sent her to the local health food store and said see if you can get some DHA we think that might help she goes home takes two I think two capsules of DHA calls me up as well clearly I can't do this DHA I had a terrible reaction to it and I'm like that just seems strange don't go down and I were talking we're trying to figure it out and get you know what maybe there's something else in that pill I said get the bottle read out what's on the on the built on the bottle for me and she said okay it says that the gelatin capsule is darkened with a herbal extract Karen that's not a herbal extract carob is a bean extract we'd already established that legumes and beans are not good for so I don't know how much was in that but it's kind of like a kid with a peanut allergy I don't think you need a lot to trigger that a whole immune system so when you are trying to deal with an autoimmune case you do have to be straight for quite some time to try and clean the system out and then you can reintroduce things to see if they're offending but you have to do it one at a time to I don't obviously you can do lab tests and stuff like that but but I was that's always a story of a case study that we found rather remarkable mark I'd I think this is a good point to bring up wheat germ agglutinin WGA and the”

“I think nuts and seeds are are also likely to have lectins and are also likely to have digestive enzyme inhibitors”

“they have all sorts of these amylase and trypsin inhibitors we see this kind of across the the various plant species with some variation but and plant seeds broadly is seeds grains nuts and legumes and we can talk about this nuts and seeds versus the grains and legumes which we made different opinion on but what we're talking about here is that plant babies I think most of us would agree go on the far end of the spectrum of plant toxicity these are pretty toxic things plants don't want these to get eaten and they put all sorts of things in them to kind of really mess with our guts”

“remember that grains and beans and nuts and seeds are all seeds they're all plant reproductive babies but in the case of a paleo diet nuts and seeds were originally included and then suggested to be excluded on an autoimmune paleo diet but grains and legumes are felt to be the more toxic sort of types of seeds i totally agree with this i think that things like beans and lentils are going to be very high in digestive enzyme inhibitors and lectins not all of which can be degraded with cooking or even pressure cooking so these are even things like saponins tons of these compounds that really inhibit our digestion found in legumes and also grains”

“because really nuts and seeds are also seeds just with grains and legumes and they're similarly defended they're similarly full of digestive enzyme inhibitors and things that prevent animals and humans from digesting those fully causing lots of gi problems whether it's gas or bloating or constipation etc nuts and seeds are not really that digestible for humans either so making a diet with a lot of nuts and seeds in it is just going to lead to major gi issues as well something you don't want to happen”

“if we eat the foods that are most sought after and we leave the seeds nuts grains and legumes for non-humans that may be better defended and better able to process these non-protein amino acids”

“seeds are seeds nuts grains and beans these are all things that if you plant in the ground they will grow into a plant they're going to the most highly defended part of the plant they're not very very negative it's not to say that you can't find one study showing that if you include beans maybe you have a positive outcome because it's displacing something else but why would you eat the foods of survival why would you eat the foods that really only starving humans eat”

“plant defense chemicals exist there is a robust body of literature to at least raise the suspicion the hypothesis the question that they are problematic for many humans”

“now seeds are seeds nuts grains and beans beans and grains are problematic for humans from a digestive enzyme perspective containing digestive enzyme Inhibitors”