How the humble gluten-free diet could stem the bleeding in healthcare.

Burgeoning and unsustainable healthcare costs are a burden on the Australian economy: $106 billion in 2021-22[1] …an 8% increase on the previous year.  In that year a considerable chunk, around $38 billion[2] was outlaid for chronic ‘forever’ diseases.

This spending is authorised by medical practitioners, predicated on their authority: namely their accumulated knowledge, and the methods they were trained to employ.

But here’s a question. How sure are we that medicine’s approach is the most effective for tackling disease? Given its poor results – billions worldwide declared incurable – why do we tolerate a method that seems to fail so many patients? Has medical method – diagnosis – ever been critically reviewed?

Since so much depends upon diagnosis it is worth a closer look.

Diagnosis is a process of elimination – a procedure - that seeks to identify the disease, then treatments are applied. Importantly it does not set out to solve the problem, i.e. find its cause.  

The approach can relieve symptoms and generally make the patient more comfortable. But for many conditions, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s, lymphoma, arthritis and so many others – disease advances anyway. This often leads to complications, additional disorders and all too often, premature death.

In my mind - alarm bells ring. With so many incurable people – I have always wondered why nobody ever questions the method of diagnosis. So back in the winter of 2020 in Melbourne’s lockdown I sat down to deconstruct it. And after spending a few minutes – the astonishing flaws emerged.  

The revelation: diagnosis makes no investigation of the cause … nor has it any strategy for healing. To me this suddenly explained why people diagnosed with a chronic disease, who receive good medical treatment, keep getting sicker.

And in addition to the thousands of personal tragedies, there is constant drawdown on medical services – for the remainder of the patient’s life. But what if . . . diagnosis were not the first resort? What if there were an alternative approach?

The role of food toxins

Our findings suggest that the actual causes of most ‘incurable’ diseases are toxins in common food staples. Glutens, caseins, phytates, solanines, alkaloids and others (found in wheat and other grains, milk, legumes and nightshades) have been causally linked to compromised intestinal function … Leaky Gut.

Why does Leaky Gut matter? Anything interfering with the small intestine - like gluten - disturbs its twin functions of screening and absorption. So not only are nutrients lost … but suddenly any old poisons, fungals, bacteria or viruses are flushed into the bloodstream and confront our last line of defence, the beautiful immune system.

Gluten-free options are available everywhere.

This influx of ‘foreign’ things brings about a raft of adverse events: inflammation, tissue damage, organ dysfunction, system disruptions, plaque deposits – even uncontrolled cell replication (tumours). Any toxin will engage and provoke the immune system … they all make mischief. But food toxins work slowly – across months and years.

Yet another effect of the constant presence of food toxins is weakened immunity. So our habit of three meals a day renders us constantly vulnerable to pathogens like Covid, Candida, UTIs and RSV. Hello cold and ‘flu season.

There is more. Food toxins inflict slow-burn damage upon bodily tissues, organs and systems - but it is silent damage: few noticeable symptoms. So to the doctor – there is no recognisable disorder. Frequently – this is the moment when the doctor begins ordering tests to pick up on not-so-obvious changes with tests for blood glucose levels, ultrasounds, colonoscopies, MRIs, bone density scans and others.

Meanwhile sickness progresses because diagnosis requires sickness to advance to a definite stage. Eventually there is recognition: this is  lupus / rheumatoid arthritis / psoriasis / Lou-Gehrig’s / bipolar disorder / Sjogren’s  or something else.

Are most chronic diseases from poisoning?

What if disease really is just slow poisoning by food toxins? Is the solution to avoid them? Without the constant inflow of toxins – wouldn’t the body start to recover?

In our experience, yes. Our members often provide anecdotal accounts of recovery from often, quite serious disorders. They are always most grateful - but the main emotion is surprise. Most never suspected that food was the problem.

Avoiding gluten in grains - and casein and lactose in milk products has been particularly effective.

Clinical studies too report that removing soy, grains and dairy from the diet can arrest the advance of progressive diseases. In some cases healing begins. But what is more persuasive - reintroducing those toxins sees a surge in disease markers … disease reappears!

This implies that a gluten-free and dairy-free diet could be the start of good things for people in pre-disease phases and even later. Depending on the level of accumulated damage some patients could turn their disease around. At the very least they could stop its dreadful forward march.

Now let’s go back to our problem of unsustainable healthcare costs.

Focussing on just one disease, imagine if prediabetic patients never progressed to full blown diabetes. What savings might we expect?

In Australia with 1.3 million diabetics – annual expenditure on diabetes in 2020-21 was $3.4 billion[3]. And every year around three thousand prediabetic people proceed to diagnosis – each incurring new annual healthcare expenses of around $4,000. But as every year passes complications can demand interventions for kidney disease, cardiovascular issues, amputations and vision loss - where costs of $20,000 per year are conservative.

Now imagine halving the number of those new cases with some simple dietary intervention, beginning with a gluten-free, dairy-free diet. Notional savings for the Australian healthcare system could start at around $6 million for the first year and compound rapidly to tens of millions from there. Because if these savvy people stayed with the diet they may never advance to diagnosed diabetes.

But there’s more. Saving people this way from lifelong sickness need not stop with diabetes.

Research shows over and over that food toxins like glutens and caseins are implicated in heart disease, schizophrenia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, learning difficulties, dementia, metabolism  disorders, cancer, Graves’, Crohn’s, Hashimoto’s, Parkinson’s, miscarriage, infertility and others.

Indeed there are so many such links that during my long research a whole new perspective on disease jumped out at me: Manners-Xenos Theory is introduced in a new book[4].

High tolerance of life-changing incurable disease

But I still wonder – why as consumers of medical services are we so comfortable with the idea of ‘incurable’ disease … the ready acceptance that medicine has reached its limits?

Why do we not expect more from medicine? In the doctor’s rooms when the verdict is handed down, we accept it as gospel – with little query or pushback.

Diagnosis is deeply entrenched in Western society. So we might expect it would be subject to regular scrutiny for its effectiveness at solving sickness.

Yet there is little evidence of it. How can it be that millions of people deemed incurable is not seen as some kind of failure by medicine? And why, in two centuries of ‘modern medicine’ has the profession has never critically reviewed its most fundamental tenet? For even a cursory glance would expose its flaws – as it did to me.

Diagnosis serves us well in time-critical situations: trauma, childbirth and medical emergencies. But for disease – the story is different. The method fails to make sick people well - yet it triggers millions of claims for consultations, pathology, imaging, medications, therapeutic devices and surgical procedures each month.

So exactly why doesn’t diagnosis lead to healing? We find it is because it sidesteps scientific method: there is no investigation of the cause.

And so women and men in biblical numbers are labelled ‘incurable’ and lost from families, productive careers, communities and national economies. Their loved ones too are deprived as expenses mount and incomes shrivel.

As an alternative we suggest that - if there are no life-threatening issues – doctors might encourage patients to begin reducing food toxins (say with a low toxin diet). It could easily  work in parallel with medications for immediate symptom relief.

Then full blown disease may be averted, and billions in healthcare savings could be directed into education, childcare, housing, infrastructure, national security, the arts – or so many other worthwhile areas.

Our research and long experience with members suggests that ‘switching a few foods’ can set patients on a path towards healing. It is simple to apply, low cost and brings rather rapid results.

[1] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2023) Health expenditure Australia 2021-22.

[2] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2019) Disease expenditure in Australia 2015-16,

[3] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) Diabetes: Australian facts

[4] Book and video, ‘UNRAVELLING THE MYSTERY OF DISEASE. The medical reform needed to cure the incurable … Manners-Xenos Theory a Kuhnian shift’ https://www.foodintollotox.com/videos-foodintol