William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 24

Vitamin D and Immunity

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Travis and Ashley rediscover health and slenderness on the Wheat Belly lifestyle

Ashley convinced her husband, Travis, to join her in following the Wheat Belly lifestyle that began with the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox. Ashley lost 70 pounds, while Travis experienced both weight loss and health/emotional benefits. Travis elaborates:

“I feel like I have a new lease on life and I feel better than I have ever felt in my entire life (40 years old).

“I started this WOE at 285 lbs on July 21, 2019, so it’s been 8 months and I’m down 65 lbs. It took me a couple months before I finally felt like I had completely detoxed and felt great everyday. It’s a bit overwhelming at first but it all becomes easier and easier and ‘the new normal.’ Trust the process and the methods that Dr. Davis has in place, with all the support of April Duval, the wonderful people on this Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox group and, in my case, my wife was the biggest supporter and cheerleader. If I can do it anyone can!

“The blue shirt was 2016 (325 lbs), the pink was today (220 lbs). I went from 44 pants to 36’s and 3XL shirts to L/XL in 8 months on this WOE. 8 inches lost on the waist. Besides the physical changes, it’s the non-scale victories that are huge! I sleep better and have much more energy, reduced blood pressure, anxiety, hot flashes/flush feeling, never feel bloated anymore and better skin health, just to name a few.”

Both Travis and Ashley are enjoying enormous weight loss successes. But you can appreciate that the Wheat Belly lifestyle achieves more than weight loss, yielding health benefits that include reversal of inflammation (look at Travis’ face before and after), improvements in insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction (judging by the drop in blood pressure), improved gastrointestinal health, normalization of hormonal health. These are health changes that, over time, also yield reductions in potential for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, even cancer and dementia. Yes, weight loss is the most visible evidence of Travis’ and Ashley’s success, but there is so much more beneath the surface.

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L. casei subspecies Shirota augments the immune response

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Max Lugavere’s new book: Genius Life

Journalist and filmmaker Max Lugavere has committed his life to exploring and understanding brain health, prompted by the loss of his mom to dementia that began at the unusually young age of 58. His newest book, Genius Life: Heal Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Become Extraordinary, has just been released. Written with genuine heartfelt passion and attention to detail, Max has crafted a wonderful book for anyone interested in understanding how to preserve brain health and bolster brain performance.

Here is an excerpt from the especially well-crafted chapter he calls “The Vigor Trigger”:

Ice, Ice, Baby

Prior to the relative safety of the modern world, dramatic swings in temperature frequently implied physical threat. Imagine, as a hunter- gatherer, fishing for your family on a frozen lake. One day, you pass over thin ice, suddenly falling through and into the frigid water. In seconds, you went from enjoying a routine day on the ice to facing possible—if not probable—death. Your body launches into action: your muscles contract, grabbing on to what’s left of the ice and vaulting you out of the water with seemingly superhuman strength.

Much as you’d like to credit your brawn for your survival abilities, your brain played just as crucial a role. That night as you speak of your heroics, you mention feeling as though your experience oc- curred in slow motion, even though it all took place within an instant. This is common during stressful events, as senses heighten and reaction time quickens. Your brain also takes precautions to prevent it from happening again, logging the minutiae of the event with the crystal-clear precision of a high-speed camera. You share details that on most days you’d have barely noticed; location, the sound the ice made as it cracked, time of day, weather, and the like are all duly noted with crystalline accuracy.

Many of these cognitive effects can be traced to a chemical messenger in the brain called norepinephrine, which spikes sharply during a stressful event. It’s known for supporting laser-like focus, attention, and detailed memory storage, and low levels are related to ADHD, feelings of lethargy, and lack of focus and concentration. But the neurotransmitter also plays a role in depression; many anti- depressant drugs aim to work by boosting it. Harnessing the power of norepinephrine may therefore provide a lever to both increased mental vigilance and a brighter mood—even if it means getting out of your comfort zone and enduring the occasional cold.

True to his promise to provide actionable advice, Max goes onto discussing how cold exposure and cryotherapy can be used to enhance mental clarity and energy, while heat exposure such as that experienced in a sauna yields nitric oxide-driven benefits such as reduced blood pressure. There are also excellent discussions about endocrine disrupting chemicals, heavy metal toxicity, detoxification, and a comprehensive plan to put all this information into practical use.

Perhaps due to his background in filmmaking, Genius Life reads like Max is telling stories, making the read enjoyable as well as informative. If there is one book you invest in to gain awareness of all the things that you can do to improve brain health, sharpen focus, preserve memory, and delivered in an enjoyable down-to-earth voice, Genius Life would be an excellent choice.

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Some unconventional thoughts on coronavirus (COVID-19)

Public health authorities are advising frequent hand washing and social distancing, especially in the absence of confirmatory testing for COVID-19. I don’t have any wisdom to add to these practices. Vaccines are in the works, as are anti-viral drugs—nothing to add here, either.

But let me reiterate what we do in the Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles. In general, we do not treat diseases; we correct the factors that allow disease to emerge in the first place—a big difference.

Take rheumatoid arthritis, for example. In conventional healthcare, the joint pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis are suppressed with anti-inflammatory agents to reduce the white blood cell infiltration of the joint, tumor necrosis factor-blocking agents to block inflammation, opiates to block the sensation of pain. In the Wheat Belly/Undoctored approach, we eliminate the gliadin protein that initiated autoimmunity in the intestine, we correct vitamin D deficiency that permits autoimmune phenomena to emerge, correct omega-3 fatty acid deficiency that allows prostaglandin-mediated inflammation to occur, address disrupted bowel flora that helps reduce inflammation. We also reduce visceral fat that amplifies inflammation.

With the coronavirus, we are not going to “treat” the viral illness, but we can amplify or optimize your immune system response to provide increased protection to many viruses.

Those of you already following the Wheat Belly lifestyle have therefore removed wheat, grains, and sugars. This alone helps reduce frequency of viral illnesses because airway inflammation is reduced, thereby reducing susceptibility to airborne pathogens. Removing the amylopectin A of grains and removing other sugar sources spares you the drop in immune response that accompanies high blood sugars. Restoring vitamin D to achieve a 25-hydroxy vitamin D blood level substantially boosts your immune response, especially that mediated via T-lymphocytes that protect you from viral infections. (It may be too early, but can you discern the start of a latitudinal gradient in COVID-19 epidemiology on this distribution map? The development of a latitudinal gradient—less at the equator, more heading north and south away from the equator—can suggest a vitamin D deficiency connection. Of course, population density confounds any potential association, but stay tuned and we’ll see if latitude can trump population density.) Those of us who have been following the Wheat Belly/Undoctored lifestyles therefore rarely have any viral illnesses, even while everyone around us is coughing, sneezing, and suffering fevers and runny noses.

But there is more you can do to further boost the immune response. They are unconventional—but then, what isn’t unconventional in the Wheat Belly and Undoctored world?—but potentially huge boosters of the human immune response. These strategies include:

Reverse the metabolic endotoxemia of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO

People think of SIBO as a process confined to the small intestine. And that is true if we are looking only at bacteria. The proliferation of unhealthy bacterial species that characterizes SIBO is accompanied by death of bacteria that, in turn, release components of their cell walls such as lipopolysaccharide, LPS. Due to the increased intestinal permeability of SIBO, large quantities of LPS gain entry into the bloodstream, a process labeled “metabolic endotoxemia, “exporting” inflammation body-wide. This explains why SIBO can manifest as rosacea, psoriasis, restless leg syndrome, fibromyalgia, and neurodegenerative disorders of the brain, i.e., health conditions outside of the intestinal tract. But the metabolic endotoxemia of SIBO also increases susceptibility to viral illnesses, a phenomenon shared with autoimmune diseases and other inflammatory diseases. While there are many, many reasons to identify, then manage, your SIBO, the pandemic of coronavirus is yet another reason to take steps to eradicate this additional vulnerability. See the many Wheat Belly Blog posts about SIBO and metabolic endotoxemia. If you believe you have this condition, join our discussions in the Undoctored Inner Circle on how to manage it, even if your doctor has no idea what it is. We show you how to incorporate the AIRE device, what herbal antibiotic regimens have proven efficacy, how to stack the odds in favor of remission and prevention of recurrence.

Supplement with the probiotic Lactobacillus casei subspecies Shirota

Lactobacillus casei is a well-studied microorganism since its discovery in 1930. Since then, it has been commercialized as a probiotic drink called Yakult that, while originating in Japan, has been widely distributed in the U.S. since 2019.

This strain of L. casei has been shown to:

Reduce wintertime respiratory illnesses by over 50% and abbreviate duration of infections by 50%.
Increase responsiveness of pneumonia when added to conventional antibiotics.
Reduce duration of fever by 50% during norovirus infection among elderly residents of a retirement center.
Enhance immune system function including increased protection provided by natural killer cells that play an important role in cells that become infected with viruses and increasing anti-inflammatory IL-10. (Interestingly, our favorite strains of the bacteria, L. reuteri, also boost IL-10, the interleukin responsible for many of this species’/strains’ benefits.)

These are potent effects. This strain of L. casei is commercially available in the U.S. as the Yakult brand of probiotic beverage, available through selected retailers, only having been introduced on a national basis in this country since 2019. (Here is a store locator.) As with most commercially-prepared beverages, the manufacturer of Yakult does stupid things like use non-fat dairy and add sugar and maltodextrin, so I would not recommend consuming Yakult off the shelf. I would instead suggest getting hold of some of the product, then making yogurt (or other fermented food) yourself. And we, of course, do not subscribe to typical yogurt-making rules and instead 1) ferment for extended periods of 24 or more hours and 2) ferment in the presence of prebiotic fibers to increase bacterial counts and richness of the end-product. Each 80 ml (2.7 ounce) bottle (5 servings) contains 6.5 billion CFUs of L. casei; a tablespoon or so provides more than enough to get you started. Ideal fermenting temperature is in the 95-109 degrees F range.

Reverse age-related thymus involution

Lactobacillus reuteri reverses age-related atrophy of the thymus in experimental models. The thymus (sitting just in front of the heart in the anterior mediastinum) is the seat of much of the immune response, especially that involving T-lymphocytes. Starting at age 18, the thymus begins to atrophy such that, by age 70, it is a tiny fragment of its former self, a phenomenon accompanied by increased susceptibility to infections like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, and sepsis. Even though this phenomenon has not yet been formally corroborated in humans, nearly every other observation made in mice with L. reuteri (or exogenous oxytocin) has held true in humans in formal clinical trials: preservation of bone density, accelerated healing, increased oxytocin, reduction of appetite, weight loss, etc. It is therefore likely that reversal of thymic involution and thereby restoration of youthful immune potential occurs, also. The collection of benefits of consuming the super-duper high amplified bacterial counts of L. reuteri add up to a substantial age-reversing effect, all in the form of a thick, rich, and delicious “yogurt.” 

I also predict that, as with all the strategies in the Wheat Belly and Undoctored programs, a synergy among combined efforts will emerge, the effect I call the “2 + 2 = 11” effect: the total will be greater than the sum of the parts.

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Wheat Belly Seasoning Mixes

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In Defense of the Potato

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Meet VLDL: The REAL Cause of Heart Disease

Here’s a video from my YouTube channel. (Oh, you didn’t know I had a YouTube channel? You can find almost 300 additional videos there.)

VLDL particles, NOT LDL cholesterol, determine whether heart disease is in your future or not, as VLDL is a pivotal lipoprotein particle that influences the composition of virtually all other lipoprotein particles in the bloodstream.

Statin cholesterol drugs therefore focus on the wrong measure. Good news: You have profound control over VLDL particles and their consequences using nutrition and selected nutritional supplements to reduce VLDL and the triglycerides they contain. That is one of the reasons the Wheat Belly lifestyle is so effective for addressing factors that lead to heart disease.

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Insulin Resistance: the silent killer that you can completely reverse–even if your doctor doesn’t know how

You may have already heard the term “insulin resistance,” as it has been widely discussed by doctors and the media. But did you know that you can reduce or reverse it in the vast majority of people?

Insulin resistance, i.e., the inability of the body’s cells, especially liver, muscle, and brain, to respond to insulin and allow blood sugar to enter cells, drives numerous abnormal health conditions including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, fatty liver, Alzheimer’s dementia, and cancer. It is therefore a driving force behind so many modern and common chronic health conditions.

You can recognize insulin resistance because it:

Causes high resting blood sugars—i.e., any value above 90 mg/dl
Causes high resting blood insulin—i.e., any value above 3 or 4 mIU/L.
Causes higher blood triglycerides—Any value of 60 mg/dl or higher signals increasing levels of insulin resistance.

The conventional medical response to even flagrant levels of insulin resistance? Mostly do nothing except to deal with overt consequences such as high blood sugar in the diabetic range (126 mg/dl or higher) or high triglycerides (400 mg/dl or higher). Some prescribe a class of drugs called glitazones or thiazolidinediones that modestly reduce insulin resistance but have been plagued with problems such as weight gain, massive fluid retention, and congestive heart failure. The original drug in its class, troglitazone, was withdrawn from the market due to cases of liver damage, but pioglitazone (Actos) and rosiglitazone (Avandia) remain on the market. Rosiglitazone has also been associated with increased risk for heart attack. But that’s it: That is as far as conventional efforts go to reduce or reverse insulin resistance.

Yet there are SO many steps you can take to reverse insulin resistance and thereby reduce or eliminate risk for all those diseases from type 2 diabetes to dementia. This is not speculation—the evidence is overwhelming. Among the steps you can take include:

Diet—Eliminate the foods that provoke blood sugar and thereby rises in insulin. These are carbohydrates, especially the amylopectin A of grains, fructose, and sucrose (table sugar). If you have no rise in blood sugar, there is no rise in insulin and insulin resistance and high blood insulin recede over time. Grain and sugar elimination also hugely reduces de novo lipogenesis in the liver, the liver’s conversion of carbs to triglycerides that thereby helps reduce blood triglycerides and fatty liver, further reversing insulin resistance.
Vitamin D—Restoration of vitamin D to healthy levels (we aim for 60-70 ng/ml) reduces insulin resistance
EPA+DHA—The omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, reduce the postprandial (after-meal) rise in VLDL particles that derive from liver de novo lipogenesis. This adds further to reducing insulin resistance.
Magnesium—Magnesium deficiency, widespread and severe due to reliance on filtered drinking water and reduced magnesium levels in vegetables, amplifies insulin resistance; restoration helps reverse it.
Iodine and thyroid optimization—The worse the level of hypothyroidism (signaled by rising levels of TSH), the worse the insulin resistance, even at low levels in the “normal” range. Supplementing iodine corrects mild hypothyroidism in about 20% of people. Others will need to explore thyroid status further. Uncorrected hypothyroidism can also, via reduced intestinal motility, commonly encourage SIBO that further worsens insulin resistance.
Efforts to correct dysbiosis/SIBO—The metabolic endotoxemia of dysbiosis and SIBO, i.e., the flood of inflammatory factors from dying bacteria such as E coli and Enterobacter, is a huge factor amplifying insulin resistance. Correcting these situations reduces metabolic endotoxemia and thereby insulin resistance.

These strategies also enjoy a powerful synergy. Correcting iodine deficiency/hypothyroidism, for example, helps reduce visceral fat and metabolic endotoxemia. I call the powerful synergy that emerges from these efforts the “2 + 2 = 11” effect.

Do these strategies look familiar to you? They should, because they are the six basic strategic components of the Wheat Belly and Undoctored programs. This is a big part of the reason why these programs are so spectacularly effective in reducing blood sugar, reducing blood pressure, reducing triglycerides, reversing fatty liver, and reducing or reversing insulin resistance. The list of strategies in my programs are not a random hodgepodge of nutritional supplements; they were careful and thoughtfully picked and crafted to achieve specific effects, addressing nutrient deficiencies or, in the case of the microbiome, addressing disruptions that are painfully common in modern life. And you can appreciate that we go way beyond diet to achieve these benefits—diet alone is powerful, but not enough.

If you are new to my programs, there are a number of ways you can get started confidently by:

Reading the latest Revised & Expanded Edition of Wheat Belly—updated with the full program outlined in detail, condensing the information of all preceding books

Reading the Undoctored book and joining the Undoctored Inner Circle—if additional support is desired

Joining my next Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox Challenge that begins Wednesday, March 18th 2020

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Big Tobacco, Big Grain

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