William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 151

Wheat Belly Pizza: Recipes!

Yes: pizza fits into the Wheat Belly lifestyle!

The Wheat Belly Pizza Crust and Wheat Belly Pizza recipes are posted on the Dr. Oz website: doctoroz.com.

And remember: We celebrate dietary sources of fat and cholesterol in this lifestyle, so don’t skimp on the cheese, sausage, and olive oil!

(Some info is missing in the version published on doctoroz.com. The baking temperature is 350 degrees F and it should read “1/4 cup ground golden flaxseed.”)

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Which ad do you like better?

Linzess is a new prescription drug for irritable bowel syndrome and constipation. It fails to work in the majority of cases, as demonstrated in the two clinical trials examining its use against placebo. Side effects include diarrhea and it costs $260 per month. The ad for Linzess is featured below.

Wheat Belly Facebook page follower, Melanie, envisioned a similar ad for Wheat Belly.

So which ad do you like better?

Drug ad version:

Wheat Belly version:

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Lose the Grains, Save Some Green: An excerpt from Wheat Belly Total Health

Here’s an excerpt from the new Wheat Belly Total Health book to be released September 16, 2014.

What’s there left to say after the original Wheat Belly knocked the socks off the dietary community with its upsetting revelations? Plenty! Remove this dietary poison, made worse by the shenanigans of agribusiness, and full health does not return right away–more needs to be done. The conversations in Wheat Belly Total Health show you how to take the reins and regain health as fully as possible, even if your health struggles include conditions such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, or failed weight loss.

Excerpt:

Eliminate grains from your diet and you can achieve optimal health—but overhauling your eating style doesn’t mean emptying your wallet.

There’s really nothing intrinsically wrong with grasses. They’re beautiful, swaying in the wind, covering large swaths of the earth. Like other plants, they process carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Animals eat them. The problem is that our species of primate, Homo sapiens, simply lacks the means to digest them as food. When we try, acute and chronic health pandemonium ensues. When we stop, our health begins to revert back to its natural state.

As you set out to remove all grains from your life, examining labels for anything that might contain the seeds of grasses, you will quickly throw your hands up in the air and declare, “This is impossible! Grains are in everything!”

Of the 60,000 or so processed food products that fill the shelves of the average supermarket, your options will be reduced to more like 1,000—an upheaval, to be sure. The only foods without traces of grains are the foods that are naturally grain-free, such as cabbage, eggs, and meats. That observation points us in the direction of a solution: a return to unprocessed, naturally grain-free foods.

Cutting Calories Cuts Costs

Some people balk at the prospect of following this lifestyle because they’re concerned that the increased reliance on pasture-fed and organic vegetables and meats will end up costing them an arm and a leg. They worry that this shift in diet will blow the lid off their grocery budget, and they worry about a life without quick, inexpensive convenience foods.

These concerns are entirely unwarranted. Sure, you will be purchasing more costly foods, but the net cost is typically unchanged or less. Many people who budget their monthly grocery bill actually report a modest cost savings with this lifestyle. Do the math: Banished from your life are the foods that stimulate appetite, and so you no longer have to purchase 400 additional calories per person, per day. In a family of five, that’s 2,000 or more calories per day that you no longer have to buy—60,000 calories over the course of a month. It is not uncommon to witness family-wide reductions of 3,000 to 4,000 calories every day with grain elimination: no more corn chips, rye crackers, frozen dinners, breakfast cereals, endless snacking, and bingeing. It’s like no longer having to feed an extra invisible person with a large appetite. Over a month’s time, that’s about 90 meals you no longer have to purchase or prepare.

“Grain-Free” Can Even Be Free

Nonetheless, there are a number of strategies that you can use to keep a lid on costs as you make your new food choices. Not everybody can or wants to follow each and every strategy, but incorporating just a few of these can further trim costs. Remember: We evolved in a world in which the foods we consumed were without cost because we gathered and hunted them from our surroundings. Bearing that in mind, the more we revert to such practices, the closer we get to consuming foods that are not only free but also healthier. Consider these cost-saving strategies.

Grow your own. Grow your own green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and fruit every spring. You don’t need a big, fancy garden (though that would be wonderful), just a simple 5- by 5-foot or similar plot, fertilized with coffee grounds and composted organic materials. If you have never gardened before, choose the vegetables that are easiest to grow, such as cucumbers, zucchini, and squash, and save your seeds for the next year.

Preserve your harvest. If you grow your own, you may be left with more than you can consume. Freeze, can, or ferment the excess whenever you have more than you and your family require.

Cultivate herbs. Grow your own fresh basil, oregano, mint, and other herbs in a windowsill planter indoors. You will no longer have to pay $3.99 for a few fresh leaves of basil but will simply pull a few off your own plant, which will regrow in just a few days.

Grow berries. Berry vines, such as raspberries, are wonderfully easy to grow and allow you to pick your own delicious fruit year after year. Plants typically cost just a few dollars, or you can obtain cuttings from someone else eager to cut back their endlessly propagating berry vines. Within a year or two of planting, you will be fighting your vines as they try to overtake your entire backyard. Grapes are another prolific fruit to grow.

Plant fruit trees. Nothing beats picking your own apples, pears, and cherries. Obviously, this is a long-term strategy, as these trees require a few years to mature. But once they do, you will have more than you will ever need. Those of us living a grain-free lifestyle limit fruit consumption because of the sugar content of most modern strains, so a little will go a long way.

Pick excess fruit in your neighborhood. It is shocking to see the number of apples, pears, and cherries in colder climates, and oranges, lemons, and grapefruit in warmer climates, that just fall to the ground or rot on the tree. If local laws or neighbors allow, why not gather them? And, if you are so inclined, join the growing number of people foraging. Just be sure to learn from a knowledgeable expert which leaves, flowers, and mushrooms are safely edible before you take this path.

Eat fatty or less costly cuts of meat. We embrace fat: It is essential for life and is good for health. It is also satiating. Buy fatty cuts of meat, such as chuck, rib eye, tongue, and fatty ground meat. Or just eyeball the cuts with the fat left on—and don’t cut it off before eating. Round, brisket, and shank, while not rich in fat, tend to be less costly cuts. If the cuts you choose are tough, pound them with a meat mallet before cooking or use a slow cooker.

Save fats from meats. Save fats in a nonplastic container (such as a clean jar) and set them aside to cool. Use the saved fats as your cooking oil, which is healthier and cheaper than buying bottles of polyunsaturated oils.

Save bones. Or purchase them from the butcher or meat section at the grocery store. (Sometimes they will just give them to you without charge.) Boil them for soup with added inexpensive cuts of meat. Three pounds of bones and a pound of inexpensive meat (with chopped onions, carrots, celery, etc., and some tomato paste) will yield a rich and delicious soup that lasts for days. If you use the bones to make stock, add it to vegetables and other dishes to enhance their flavor at virtually no cost.

Eat more eggs. Eggs, combined with vegetables, oils, olives, herbs, and other ingredients, make wonderful frittatas or quiches (with nut meal crusts; there are recipes for these in the Wheat Belly cookbooks) that can be used for exceptionally low-cost breakfasts or even dinners. Buy large quantities of eggs from family farms and they will also be healthier, with delicious orange or red yolks, if the chickens were allowed to range and forage freely.

Dehydrate foods. This is one of my favorite strategies, as it allows you to dehydrate leftover meats, vegetables, and fruits to convert them into delicious snacks. Spice them up with turmeric, ground red pepper, sea salt, and other spices prior to dehydrating. A dehydrating device can be purchased for as little $30 to $40 and will pay for itself after just a few uses.

Shop as close to the source as possible. By eliminating the middleman and avoiding high-end stores, you shave off substantial added costs. Purchase vegetables from a farm or farmers’ market. Subscribe to a community-supported agriculture (CSA) group (though you may want to split the subscription with another family, given the high volume typically provided) for vegetables, eggs, and meats. Increasingly, a market style of CSA is emerging in which you pick and choose each week what you desire, rather than receiving a predetermined variety or quantity.

Practice intermittent fasting. While I don’t view the practice of intermittent fasting as a money-saving maneuver, it is so easy in this grain-free lifestyle and it packs so many benefits that it can indeed result in diminished food costs. If, for instance, you fast for 36 hours every 10 days, that means you do not have to shop, cook, or eat for 41 ⁄2 days per month—all while feeling terrific, reducing blood pressure, restoring insulin responses, and reducing risk of heart disease. Plus, you’ll have a greater appreciation for the flavors and textures of foods when you resume eating. Fasting means eating no food but maintaining vigorous hydration, or else light-headedness and nausea can result.

Hunting, Gathering—And Saving

The ultimate way to save money would be, of course, to have a full-size garden and scavenge for edible leaves, tubers, and mushrooms while hunting wild game, fishing, and gathering shellfish. Wild turkey and deer are plentiful, and just a few hunting excursions can yield a freezer full of meat. Unfortunately, most people simply have neither the time nor the inclination to return to their scavenging, hunting, and gathering origins to this degree. But I believe that human health is enhanced by always remembering that you and your family are really just a small clan of hungry primates making your way through the world.

Beyond the money saved by choosing just one or more of the above cost-saving methods, you and your family will need fewer (or no) antacids, prescription drugs for acid reflux, antihypertensive drugs, cholesterol drugs, pain medications, and antidepressants. You’ll also make fewer visits to the doctor, emergency room, or hospital. So does grain elimination cost you money? Heck, no. In many, if not most, instances, the net effect of grain elimination is that it saves or makes you money.

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Wheat elimination is just the start!

Wheat Belly Total Health

Eliminating products made with modern semidwarf wheat, a creation of genetics research, is an astoundingly powerful strategy to regain control over health and weight, more powerful than any other single strategy I have ever encountered. Peruse the Wheat Belly Success Stories or the thousands of experiences discussed in the Wheat Belly Facebook page, and you get a sense for the power in following this lifestyle.

But anyone who has consumed wheat for any length of time has accumulated health problems that do not fully reverse with wheat elimination. It is therefore necessary to take steps to fully recover health. My solutions for these next steps are discussed in the new book, Wheat Belly Total Health.

The book begins with a discussion of the science and rationale for recognizing this dietary blunder we made as a species 10,000 years ago: turning to the seeds of grasses as food. It began with einkorn wheat in the Fertile Crescent and teosinte in Central America. We are now told that the seeds of grasses should dominate the human diet–our own USDA mistook us for ruminants, or at least chose to sacrifice us at the altar of Big Agribusiness. Grasses, including their seeds, are largely indigestible, yielding components that underlie disease in unwitting humans who eat the stuff. The seeds of grasses, first consumed by hungry humans, were never meant to be anything more than the food of desperation when nothing else was available. Understand this essential truth and you are off to a terrific start in regaining control over health.

But full recovery in the aftermath of wheat requires specific efforts. This applies to everybody, but especially includes people with health conditions such as autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, neurological conditions such as peripheral neuropathy and seizures, complex gastrointestinal diseases ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and excess weight not fully responsive to initial efforts.

Just as an alcoholic who stops drinking two fifths of vodka on Tuesday is not fully recovered and healthy by Wednesday, Thursday, or even next week, so it goes with the former wheat consumer: more needs to be done.

Among the issues to address in the new age of the wheat-free:

Why the seeds of ALL grasses are related to wheat and therefore overlap in many effects. We therefore aim for total grain elimination.
Follow a full program of bowel flora management–probiotics are a start, but there’s more to do to cultivate healthy species that yield, for instance, butyrate that achieves further metabolic benefits.
Correct nutritional deficiencies–especially of the nutrients previously bound by wheat phytates
What steps need to be taken to reverse or minimize diabetes, gain control over cardiovascular risk, and reduce or reverse bone thinning (osteopenia/osteoporosis)
How to know when endocrine disruption–shockingly common–is a factor in health and what steps to take to reverse it
The crucial steps to take to minimize or reverse autoimmunity and yield the best odds of reversing the pain and disability of rheumatoid arthritis, the cramping, pain, and diarrhea of ulcerative colitis, the dangers of a multitude of others.
A checklist of factors to address if weight loss plateaus or if you fail to lose weight at all
How to take mental and physical performance to higher levels once you say goodbye to grains

To help achieve these goals, I also include what I call “functional” recipes, i.e., recipes that help achieve your goals.

Wheat Belly Total Health is available for pre-order prior to its September 16th, 2014 release through these retailers:

Rodale (with bonus gifts)

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Indie Bound

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The Big Mistake called “agriculture”

From Guns, Germs, and Steel on public television

 

Humans and agriculture share a 10,000-year history of codependence. If it weren’t for the tools, technology, and food availability permitted by the development of agriculture, human civilization would surely look very different today. Agriculture brought an end to nomadic hunter-gatherer life, increased crop yields and freed up time previously spent on food procurement. This allowed humans to specialize as teachers, metal workers, builders, and soldiers. Once crops were cultivated, rather than just harvested wild, they too underwent changes at the hands of humans and were propagated over large areas.

But agriculture did not come without a price, both social and for health. Jared Diamond, PhD, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, had this to say about agriculture:

“Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us?”

(From Discover Magazine, 1987. The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race at http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake....)

The photograph accompanying this blog post is a still frame from Dr. Diamond’s public television production, Guns, Germs, and Steel, showing a native New Guinean man’s interpretation of uses for packaging and wheat, some of the perplexing “cargo” encountered by stone-age people unaccustomed to consuming the seeds of grasses.

In Dr. Diamond’s compressed clock timeline, at 11:54 pm of our day on this planet we embraced the seeds of grasses to get our agricultural efforts started, including einkorn wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent, teosinte and maize in central America, millet and sorghum in sub-Saharan Africa, and rice in southeast Asia. Resorting to the seeds of grasses for food in times of desperation evolved over time to become staple: foods expected as part of the routine diet.

We’ve taken the “seeds of grass” food paradigm to its absurd extreme today, thanks to the cheap, easy, surplus calories afforded by modern agriculture with its herbicides, pesticides, methods of genetically altering crop that yield vast fields of monoculture crops, compounded by misguided advice to base the human diet largely on “healthy whole grains.” The food of desperation, sought only when real food was unavailable, added just a moment in time ago, has now come to dominate the human diet. Wheat and corn alone–both seeds of grasses–now provide 50% of all human calories on all 7 continents. Yes, agriculture has the potential to yield food surpluses and parallels the human experience for the last 300 generations, but it also invited compromises in nutrition that largely explain why we have the fattest, most diabetic population with more psychiatric disease, skin conditions, gastrointestinal struggles, and autoimmune diseases than any other species that has ever walked the earth.

In my new book, Wheat Belly Total Health (to be released Sept 16, 2014), I elaborate on this cataclysmic shift in how and what we perceive as food and why, as Dr. Diamond puts it, we can count it as among the worst mistakes ever made by humans. Understanding the full implications of this mistake sets you on a new course in truly understanding nutrition, weight, and health in ways that you never imagined. More to come . . .

 

 

 

 

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Wheat: the silent killer

I’ll hear this comment with some frequency:

“Go wheat-free for 4 weeks. If you feel no better, you can go back to it.”

While consumption of modern wheat can indeed yield health conditions with overt symptoms, such as joint pain, skin rashes, and pain and explosive diarrhea from irritable bowel syndrome,  many of its effects are silent and do not result in any perceived symptoms.

The changes that underlie autoimmunity, for instance, that lead to multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune hepatitis, autoimmune pancreatitis, pancreatic beta cell destruction leading to type 1 diabetes, and other conditions all develop silently, brewing beneath your perceptions, without your knowledge, until you develop the joint swelling, pain, and disfigurement of rheumatoid arthritis or the abdominal pain of pancreatitis.

Among the silent effects of modern wheat products are:

Gliadin protein triggered intestinal permeability–the entry of foreign substances into the bloodstream that initiates the diseases of autoimmunity all begin silently.
Changes in bowel flora–A shift away from healthy lactobacillus and bifidobacteria species, for instance, occur without your knowledge.
High blood sugars–the amylopectin A of wheat and related grains is responsible for sky-high blood sugars that exceed the blood sugars, gram for gram, that result from table sugar. This, in turn, triggers all the silent phenomena of glycation, i.e., glucose-modification of proteins, that leads to cataracts, hypertension, coronary disease, peripheral vascular disease, skin aging, kidney damage, cancer, and dementia.
Digestive disruption–Wheat germ agglutinin is a potent blocker of the intestinal signal hormone, cholecystokinin, or CCK, that signals the gallbladder to release bile and the pancreas to release pancreatic enzyme. This allows “bile stasis” that cultivates gallstones, incomplete digestion of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates that may not cause symptoms but results in undesirable changes in bowel flora and impaired nutrient absorption.
Blocked absorption of iron, zinc, vitamin B12, and magnesium–The phytates of wheat and related grains block up to 90% of the absorption of these cations (positively-charged ions), all without your awareness. Vitamin B12 absorption is blocked at several steps in its complex absorption, including disruption of parietal cells of the stomach and the intrinsic factor required for absorption–none of which you will know.
Mood and emotions–Though not truly silent, many people fail to attribute their depression, paranoia, irritability, anxiety, difficulty with concentration, and impaired memory with wheat consumption.

There’s more, but you get the idea. Wheat is a silent killer and a silent disrupter of health, in addition to causing myriad overt symptoms of health disruption. Just as a silent cancer can kill you, so the silent and destructive effects of wheat and related grains can wreak all manner of destructive health effects. Silence in this instance is certainly not golden.

 

 

 

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Wheat Belly Total Health on public television!

The Wheat Belly Total Health public television special starts its national debut on Atlanta, Georgia’s GPB network. It’s first live airing was Tuesday, August 12th, 2014. It’s next daytime airing will be Saturday, August 16th, 2014 at 11 am.

In this first Wheat Belly special, I discuss why and what was done to modern wheat to create the Frankengrain it has become. I also introduce the concepts of the new Wheat Belly Total Health book, to be released in mid-September, 2014, that addresses all the health issues that can persist despite the power of wheat elimination. If an alcoholic stops drinking two fifths of bourbon on Tuesday, is his or her health fully restored by Thursday? Obviously not. Likewise, wheat elimination alone for many only begins the process to recovery.

Atlanta’s GPB begins the national rollout, with future airings to begin after Thanksgiving. I will announce here. The Atlanta GPB schedule for future airings can be viewed here.

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Nutritional Lipidology

I depart momentarily from the primary focus of the Wheat Belly Blog and discuss something that I have been following in practice for more than 10 years. I call it Nutritional Lipidology, the study of the effects of nutrition on lipids, lipoproteins, and metabolic parameters, the stuff underlying many diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases. It is indeed relevant to the Wheat Belly conversation, as wheat elimination and, even better, grain elimination, yields dramatic effects on lipids, lipoproteins, and the factors that drive cardiovascular risk. In fact, I have found these simple strategies so powerful that most people obtain values that are better than that achieved with statin drugs and other prescription agents. No, the world does not need more statin drugs; it needs better unbiased health information that does not result in revenues for deep-pocketed drug companies.

People–including my colleagues–prefer to talk about “cholesterol.” I call cholesterol the kindergarten version of how to understand how cardiovascular disease is caused: there’s a germ of truth to it, but it vastly oversimplifies the real causes, is often misleading, and can be subverted into the service of those who are adept at bending the truth, AKA pharmaceutical companies. This discussion can get awfully hairy very quickly (I tried to tame it in the chapter called “My particles are bigger than yours” in the original Wheat Belly book), so let me try to distill it down. Follow the nutritional principles laid out in Wheat Belly, incorporate a handful of core strategies to correct common nutritional deficiencies, and cultivate and nourish healthy species of bowel flora, and you have a powerful, do-it-yourself-at-home, and marvelously effective way to correct “cholesterol” values and, more importantly, lipoproteins (lipid-carrying proteins) and metabolic factors such as blood sugar and inflammation, the real currency of cardiovascular disease.

Wheat elimination followed by these few simple strategies exert these effects on the 4 values on any cholesterol panel:

HDL cholesterol goes up
Triglycerides drop, often dramatically
LDL cholesterol–remember: a crude calculated value, not a measured value, usually goes down. However, recall that this value is so unreliable that it can do anything, while real measures, such as an actual count of LDL particles (e.g., NMR lipoproteins) goes down.
Total cholesterol–also a confusing issue, because total cholesterol = LDL cholesterol + HDL cholesterol + triglycerides/5. Thus, if HDL goes up–a good thing–total cholesterol also goes up–often interpreted as a bad thing. Total cholesterol is, in my view, an outdated and total useless value, except for occasional use in epidemiological observations within large populations, but not for application to specific individuals.

While there’s a heck of a lot more to this than my own personal experience, here was my own transformation. When I was vegetarian 25 years ago, eating on only “healthy whole grains,” fruits, and vegetables, my values were:

HDL 27 mg/dl
Triglycerides 350 mg/dl
LDL cholesterol 144 mg/dl
Total cholesterol 241 mg/dl

In addition, my fasting glucose was 161 mg/dl–I became diabetic on this low-fat, vegetarian program. And I was jogging 3-5 miles a day. (Soon after Mevacor, the first statin cholesterol drug, was approved by the FDA and released, I took it. Within 72 hours, I became acutely ill, thought I was going to die and couldn’t get out of bed for 48 hours. Likewise, simvastatin, Lipitor, and Crestor made me sore all over, made me think I had aged 30 years overnight. Needless to say, I stopped playing with them both personally and, over time, learned how to help patients control the situation with almost no reliance on this deeply flawed group of drugs.) I stopped following a vegetarian, grain-based diet over the years, eventually eliminating all grains, eating more fat, correcting my vitamin D deficiency, supplementing omega-3 fatty acids, supplementing iodine and correcting thyroid dysfunction, and supplementing magnesium, and my values–on NO drugs–are:

HDL 97 mg/dl
Triglycerides 43 mg/dl
LDL cholesterol 81 mg/dl
Total cholesterol 187 mg/dl

My fasting blood sugar: 84 mvdl. HbA1c: 4.8%. If we were to look at the changes in lipoproteins, the real values underlying the crude cholesterol values, we would observe that:

Small LDL particles are gone or dramatically reduced–Because the amylopectin A of grains is the most flagrant trigger for this small LDL particles, eliminating wheat and grains results in marked reductions or elimination.  The reduction in triglycerides and VLDL achieved with omega-3 fatty acids, coupled with enhanced insulin sensitivity achieved through weight loss, vitamin D, and magnesium add to the effect.
VLDL particles are dramatically reduced–Because there is no amylopectin A to convert (via the liver process of de novo lipogenesis) to triglycerides that reside largely in VLDL particles, the number and composition of VLDL particles are altered and are less able to contribute to unhealthy effects, such as triggering formation of small LDL particles. Omega-3 fatty acids reduce VLDL particles substantially.
Postprandial lipoproteins, i.e., the after-meal flood of particles into the bloodstream after digestion, is markedly reduced. While fat makes a modest contribution to postprandial lipoproteins, carbohydrates such as amylopectin A makes a larger contribution, though delayed for several hours. Eliminate amylopectin A and this effect disappears. Omega-3 fatty acids further blunt the fat-driven postprandial rise.
The number of LDL particles (e.g., via NMR or measured as apoprotein B, the primary protein of LDL particles), the real measure of LDL and not a crude calculated value, drops substantially. This develops because of the reduction or elimination of small LDL particles within the total number of LDL particles; the cultivation of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria bowel flora species that express the enzyme, bile acid hydrolase, that inhibits resorption of bile acids that would otherwise have been recirculated to create more LDL particles; and correction of thyroid status.

Yes, a bit complicated. But we have to get beyond this ridiculous notion that cutting fat or saturated fat reduces “cholesterol.” You can appreciate that the situation is a bit more complex. When you start to understand what really happens with changes in diet, you quickly recognize that, not only is most of the $23 billion spent annually on statin drugs not really necessary, you recognize that astounding improvements in lipids and lipoproteins are achievable by incorporating just a few simple strategies.

Shouldn’t this be the default solution to people with “cholesterol” problems?

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Don’t fall for “gluten-free” foods made with junk carbs

Kyla posted this question on the Wheat Belly Facebook page. Her story so perfectly illustrates some of the problems with gluten-free foods that I’m sharing it here. I started the wheat free diet at the end of May. I lost over 8 1/2 inches all over during June and at the end that month I found the “gluten free/wheat free” section at the grocery store. Not thinking about the fact that it had rice flour, I found things I really liked. Problem is I stopped losing and actually gained an inch back, and started getting incredibly bad headaches that would last for hours.  Could it be the rice flour? Yes, Kyla: The increase in fat weight and headaches can most definitely be blamed on the rice flour. We’ve discussed why such gluten-free replacements are unhealthy, but let’s do so again in some greater detail. There are four common flours used to replace wheat and gluten to recreate baked products like breads, pasta, and cookies:

Rice flour (and brown rice flour)
Potato flour
Cornstarch
Tapioca starch

You already know that wheat products raise blood sugar to high levels, such that 2 slices of whole wheat bread raises blood sugar higher than 6 teaspoons of table sugar. (Don’t believe it? It’s in every table of glycemic index. Get yourself an inexpensive glucose meter and test strips and check your blood sugar 30-60 minutes after consuming either: You will see high values after sugar, higher values after whole wheat bread.) What foods are worse than wheat? Rice flour, potato flour, cornstarch, and tapioca starch. Every time blood sugars rise to high levels, high insulin levels follow. Insulin blocks mobilization of fat and encourages fat deposition. So wheat makes you grow fat, especially the inflammatory visceral fat variety–and so do these gluten-free flours and starches. That’s why I call these gluten-free replacement ingredients junk carbs. Let me state this unequivocally: Gluten-free foods made with these junk carb ingredients make you fat. The values below would be a representative blood sugar experience 30-60 minutes after consumption of these foods: Fasting blood glucoose: 100 mg/dl After a whole wheat bagel: 167 mg/dl After a whole grain gluten-free bagel: 189 mg/dl These would be typical values in a non-diabetic. People with diabetes typically range even higher. Every time blood sugar ranges above 100 mg/dl, you glycate proteins, i.e,. you glucose-modify proteins irreversibly. If the proteins in the lenses of your eyes are glycated, they create opacities that, over time, result in cataracts. If the proteins in the cartilage of your knees and hips are glycated, cartilage becomes increasingly brittle, eroding over time and leading to arthritis. If the proteins in your LDL particles in the bloodstream are glycated, they are much more adherent to artery walls and cause atherosclerosis and heart attack. If you glycate the proteins in the skin layers, you get brittle skin and age spots. Glycation is a body-wide process and, the higher the blood sugar, the greater the glycation. It doesn’t end there. As Kyla observed, rice flour had effects that could not be blamed on blood sugar phenomena, headaches in her case. In addition to its exceptional glycemic potential, rice has a small quantity of wheat germ agglutinin (even though it is in rice) that is inflammatory and a direct bowel toxin. It also contains inorganic arsenic, a finding that had the FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg hemming and hawing recently. FDA conclusion: levels detected did not provoke acute toxicity, even though the highest levels (30 mcg per serving in rice bran cereal) overlap with the toxic levels that occur in water in some parts of the world (WHO), but chronic toxicity is still an uncertainty. Among the effects of acute inorganic arsenic toxicity are neurological phenomena, such as headaches. If her gluten-free products were made with cornstarch, then there are other potential problems. Even though corn is technically classified as “gluten-free,” nobody tells you that the zein protein of corn overlaps substantially in amino acid structure with the gliadin proteins of wheat, rye, and barley. Many of effects triggered by wheat gliadin, such as increased intestinal permeability and anti-gliadin antibody autoimmune phenomena, are also triggered by the zein protein of corn. This explains why, for instance, in animal models of type 1 diabetes, 15% of animals eating wheat- and cornstarch-free chow develop the disease, while 57-70% of animals develop type 1 diabetes if they consume either corn- or wheat-containing chow.  And, because the majority of corn is now genetically-modified, it means that most corn products contain residues of the herbicides glyphosate and/or Bt toxin, as well as all the uncertainties introduced by the insertion of new genes, changes both genetic and epigenetic. In other words, the gluten-free industry have chosen to dig this deep hole for themselves, resorting to such junk ingredients to replace wheat and gluten. Don’t fall for it. And if you hear me repeating this over and over and over again, it is because the gluten-free message continues to propagate and engage many people who enjoy initial health benefits from elimination of wheat and gluten, just as Kyla did, only to then experience health problems because of the gluten-free bagels or breads you thought were good. 100% gluten-free usually means 100% awful.

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Don’t make these mistakes when starting Wheat Belly!

Follow our discussions here and on the Wheat Belly Facebook page, and you will see that newbies make the same mistakes, over and over again. While all of these issues are discussed in the original Wheat Belly book, and even more extensively in the soon-to-be-released in September, 2014 Wheat Belly Total Health book, somehow they missed some crucial pieces of the message. So, to help you avoid such common mistakes that booby trap both health and your ability to lose weight, here is the list. Don’t make these common mistakes:

Eat gluten-free foods–Gluten-free foods made with cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato flour, or rice flour should not be used in place of wheat or other gluten sources. This is replacing a problem with another problem. You already know that two slices of whole wheat bread raises blood sugar higher than 6 teaspoons of table sugar. Know what’s worse? Yup: gluten-free foods made with cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato flour, and rice flour!
Eat organic wheat–Without herbicides or pesticides, it’s still wheat. Even worse, it’s still likely to be modern high-yield semidwarf wheat, the worst of all. Is organic tobacco healthy to smoke? Of course not. Organic wheat is no better.
Eat traditional strains of wheat–This includes spelt, kamut, Red Fife, Russian wheat, emmer, and einkorn. These are older strains of wheat that predate many of the changes introduced by geneticists and agribusiness. These strains are indeed less harmful than modern semidwarf strains, but they are not harmless.  If I had a cigarette that posed 50% less risk of heart disease and cancer compared to conventional cigarettes, is that good enough for you? Probably not, but that’s how it goes with these traditional strains of wheat, too: less harmful, not harmless.
Find unhealthy grain substitutes–Outside of the awful gluten-free flours, people will often turn to quinoa,  buckwheat, or brown rice flour, even more exotic replacements such as teff or millet. While none of these alternatives have the potential like wheat to trigger autoimmune diseases, mind effects, neurological impairment, psychiatric disease, and gastrointestinal disruption, they still send blood sugar sky-high. As with gluten-free flours, don’t replace a problem with another problem.
Mistake gliadin-derived opiate withdrawal with “need”–Stop the flow of wheat and you stop the flow of gliadin protein-derived opiates and you experience the nausea, fatigue, depression, and headaches of opiate withdrawal. People will sometimes interpret this to mean that you body somehow must “need” wheat–no, it is an opiate withdrawal that you must get through.
Remain fearful of fat–Cutting total and saturated fat are corollaries of the “eat more healthy whole grain” message: We reject both. But many people have a hard time with this, having endured 30 years of low-fat messaging and products. This is represented by all the people who have lots of hunger or cravings with wheat elimination. So eat fat: buy fatty cuts of meat, eat the fat on pork and beef, eat the dark meat and skin on poultry, save drippings to use for cooking, save all bones to boil for soup or stock and don’t skim off the gelatin or fat when it cools, use more organic butter or ghee, use more coconut oil, eat more avocados, eat the yolks in eggs. This induces satiety.
Inadequate hydration–When you stop consuming all things wheat, insulin levels plummet. This permits water loss. If you lost, say, 5 pounds your first week, around 2 or 3 pounds during that first week can be water loss. This can leave you dehydrated. We compensate by hydrating more than usual that first week or so. As salt is also lost in the urine, adding back a mineral rich form of salt, such as sea salt, can be also be important.

It’s really not that tough. Millions of people are now wheat-free, many more millions will become wheat-free. With it, we are going to witness a dramatic tidal wave of health transformations–so don’t botch it up!

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