William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 56

There’s Nothing Phunny About Phytates

We are told that we must eat wheat and grains for nutrition.

But the OPPOSITE is true: Wheat and grains are responsible for widespread, sometimes severe, nutritional deficiencies.

Conventional dietary advice is a collection of fairy tales. But understand this and you are empowered to achieve magnificent health.

Transcript:

I call this Wheat Belly conversation “There’s Nothing Phunny About Phytates”. Let me tell you what I mean. There’s a compound in grains called phytic acids, or phytates, and these are very powerfully effective binders of any mineral that is positively charged. When it binds up these minerals, you pass it out in the toilet.

Screen text: IRON, ZINC, CALCIUM, MAGNESIUM

The phytates in, say, two slices of whole wheat bread, bind up to 90%, sometimes more of all the iron, zinc, calcium, magnesium and some other minerals in your gut, and you pass it out in the toilet.

This is why, for instance, when the World Health Organization flies in wheat and corn to feed starving people, they already know that the children will stop growing, and are going to have learning impairments, because the iron is bound up in their intestines, and the zinc is bound up, and they stop growing. So the World Health Organization has to take additional steps to compensate for the nutritional deficiencies that are so severe, that they impair learning and growth in children. They’ve known this for decades — that the phytates in grains are powerful anti-nutrients.

But we’ve been told that grains are necessary for B-vitamins and fiber, right?

Well, it’s true, there are B-vitamins and fiber in grains. Now most of the fiber in grains is the cellulose fiber, and you don’t have a deficiency of sawdust. You don’t really need that cellulose. You can get lots of cellulose, say, from kale and spinach and broccoli. You do not need the cellulose fiber of grains. And B-vitamins? You can match or exceed the B-vitamin content of grains very easily, by having a pork chop, or having some nuts. It’s very easy to get lots of B-vitamins without grains. So this idea that you must have grains for fiber and B-vitamins, and that they’ll be good for you, is nonsense.

In fact, grains are anti-nutrients. They block the absorption of numerous nutrients. I’ve seen many women (women, oddly, have more of a problem with this) who had iron deficiency anemia unresponsive to iron supplementation — even injectable iron, and had even gone through transfusions — only to find out that their anemia disappeared within two weeks or so after not eating grains. That’s how bad the anemia can be.

You can appreciate that if you have no zinc, that you’ll have impaired healing, and you may have autoimmune conditions, and more prone to viral infections, and skin rashes. If you can’t absorb calcium, well that’s obvious, right? And also the gliadin protein of wheat causes you to lose urinary calcium. Grains cause calcium deficiency. They cause iron deficiency. They cause magnesium deficiency. The most important sign of magnesium deficiency is osteoporosis and osteopenia, because your bones act as a repository of magnesium. Not getting magnesium, because it’s been bound in your intestines by grain phytates, is a major problem.

So how do you remedy these problems? Get rid of the grains, right? You don’t have any more phytic acid that binds these things up in your intestines and, calcium is restored, zinc is restored, iron is restored. Some people have to supplement those things. Refer to the Wheat Belly Total Health book or the Undoctored book, for how to know whether your should supplement those nutrients.

Everybody, though, does supplement magnesium. Magnesium is a bit of an exception, and the reason for that is because the deficiency is cumulative, goes in the bones, which are the repository for magnesium, and because we drink filtered water, from which all magnesium has been lost.

So recognize that this idea that you must eat grains for nutrition is complete fairy tale — in fact, the opposite is true.

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The Wheat Belly “No Change Rule” to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Accelerate Weight Loss

Follow the simple Wheat Belly No Change Rule for fingerstick blood sugars and you maximize your chances of getting rid of type 2 diabetes and accelerating weight loss.

By becoming non-diabetic or at least minimizing it, you are freed from the awful health consequences of this disease, as well as extending life considerably. The No Change Rule also helps reverse insulin resistance that blocks weight loss.

Transcript:

Hi everybody. Doctor William Davis here. I want to talk about something I call the Wheat Belly “No Change Rule” — that is, no change in blood sugar — comparing a pre-meal to a post-meal blood sugar.

Well, why do this? There’s two really big benefits of following this Wheat Belly No Change Rule

It maximizes your chances of becoming a non (Type-2) diabetic. Isn’t that great? You can get off insulin. You can get off oral drugs, and injectable drugs, by doing this; the majority can. There’s an occasional person who can’t become fully non-diabetic, because some people, maybe about 5 to 7% of people, have done damage to their pancreas (and the pancreas is very bad at recovering). Those people sometimes have to remain on some medication, but at least you’ve minimized (1) your medications, and (2) the complications of having repeatedly high blood sugars — that’s what leads to blindness, and kidney failure, and all that sort of thing. The No Change Rule is very helpful in helping you become a non (Type-2) diabetic.
The No Change Rule is also very helpful for accelerating weight loss, because if there’s no change in blood sugar, no rise, you don’t provoke insulin release. Recall that insulin is the hormone of weight gain. Every time insulin goes up, you store fat. Well, you’re not going to raise insulin. It allows your body to mobilize its fat and lose weight more quickly.

In order to do this, you’re going to need a glucose meter. There’s a whole bunch out there. You can go to Walmart, for instance. Their own brand is like less than $20, I believe, and the test strips (you’ll have to buy also) those are also inexpensive, and you’ll have to buy the fingerstick devices (also inexpensive). You’ll need those 3 things.

Here’s one of my favorites. It’s the Dario device. What I like about it is it communicates with your smartphone. It’ll talk to your smartphone. You can track your blood sugars on your phone. It’s a little more expensive, a few dollars more expensive.

What you’re going to do is:

• do a blood sugar just prior to a meal, and then

• 30 to 60 minutes after the start of the meal.

What we’re trying to do is capture the peak blood sugar. Doctors often tell you check blood sugar before a meal and then two hours later. They’re looking for whether your blood shows coming back to baseline on your drugs. That’s not our concern, right? We want you off the drugs. So we check a blood sugar 30 to 60 minutes after the start of the meal. We aim for no change.

So what if you start at a blood sugar of 100, and you eat your meal, and the blood sugar is 148? Uh-oh. Look back at your meal. Identify which food did that. It will be a carbohydrate food. Next time, cut back or even better, eliminate that food, and eat more of the other foods — maybe an extra pork chop, or something like that.

What if your blood sugar starts at 100, and the next one is 105 or 95, give or take 10 or 15. That’s the error of these devices. You’re fine. No change, right? What if you start say, at 85, perfect blood sugar, and it goes to 95? As long as you’re below 100, you’re still pretty good. That’s essentially no change, given the error built into these devices.

Stick to that, over and over and over. What happens? Well, the fasting blood sugar comes down, and you do not need the medications anymore. Ideally you work with a health care practitioner who understands these principles. Unfortunately, 98% of them don’t, but try to find somebody help you to at least reduce your insulin, reduce your glipizide/glimepiride/glyburide — those kinds of drugs, reduce your injectable drugs.

Insist that your doctor help you get off these drugs. Hopefully they know what they’re doing, because one thing we do not want is hypoglycemia. You can see a lot of discussion about that on the Wheat Belly blog and Undoctored blog.

We do not want any hypoglycemia. As you become less and less diabetic, and you don’t reduce the medicines sufficiently, you can have hypoglycemia, which is an acutely dangerous situation. You do not want low blood sugars. If you were my patient, I’d rather have high-ish blood sugars (no higher than 200 preferably) in the in the midst of trying to get you off the medications. I’d rather have high-ish rather than low, because low can be acutely life-threatening.

A couple of tips when you do your finger sticks:

You want to use firm pressure. When you click the device in, it does a finger stick. You get a nice little dot of blood.
Do not squeeze your finger. People milk their finger — don’t do that, because that screws up the value. If you’re not getting it be good enough, drop even with firm pressure, and you’ve set the depth setting on this finger stick device to the lowest it can, that is, the deepest, what I do is just bend over and let your arm hang down. Let gravity cause blood to come to the to the finger you’ve stuck.

So follow the Wheat Belly No Change Rule in blood sugar, and you’ll see magnificent results in both getting off diabetes medications, in becoming a non-diabetic, and also accelerating weight loss. If you become a non-diabetic, you are spared from kidney failure, much reduced risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia, and you add many years to your life. It’s so important that you follow these kinds of ideas, and get rid of the diabetes.

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I’m grain-free, eat nutrient-dense food–why do I need nutritional supplements?

When you remove wheat and grains from your diet, you remove phytates that block gastrointestinal absorption of magnesium, iron, zinc, calcium, and other positively-charged minerals. You also remove the trigger for autoimmune destruction of stomach parietal cells that produce stomach acid and “intrinsic factor” necessary for vitamin B12 absorption. Wheat/grain elimination therefore preserve the stomach’s capacity to produce hydrochloric acid necessary for digestion and intrinsic factor for effective B12 absorption. So if you banish wheat and grains and thereby increase absorption of nutrients and make a habit of eating nutrient dense foods such as avocados, green vegetables, meats with the fat, nuts, and non-grain seeds, why do we need nutritional supplements?

There are definite benefits obtained by supplementing several crucial nutrients intrinsically necessary for health. But let’s be clear: nutritional supplements are not necessary to compensate for deficiencies that accompany the elimination of wheat and grains (except for the few grams of prebiotic fibers they provided, but easily replaced with other foods with none of the problems attached with grains). Nutritional supplementation is necessary to compensate for:

Nutritional deficiencies that developed during previous grain-consuming days but not fully reversed with their elimination—This applies mostly to magnesium, as magnesium deficiency is cumulative, evidenced as phenomena such as bone thinning (osteopenia, osteoporosis). We also rely on water filtration for obvious reasons, a process that removes virtually all magnesium, making magnesium supplementation necessary. To a lesser degree, this also applies to iron and zinc. While most grain-free people obtain sufficient iron and zinc from food, an occasional person will need to supplement one or both. (Vegans and vegetarians, for instance, are commonly deficient in iron and zinc as heme iron from animal products is the preferred form of iron and zinc only comes from animal meat and organs.) There is no benefit in supplementing calcium, as vitamin D and cultivation of healthy bowel flora increases calcium absorption and grain elimination reduces urinary calcium loss. If you have indeed damaged the parietal cells of the stomach, they are poor at recovering. You therefore remain deficient in stomach acid that impairs nutrient absorption and deficient in vitamin B12. In this situation, you may have to take measures to increase stomach acid, such as supplementing with betaine HCL or vinegar to help break down proteins, as well as B12.
Nutritional deficiencies created by modern life—Because we don’t run naked in a tropical sun, we need to supplement vitamin D. Because we no longer consume the brains of animals and cannot consume plentiful seafood due to mercury contamination, we supplement omega-3 fatty acids. Because we don’t all live along the coast and don’t eat the thyroid glands of animals, we supplement iodine.
Dysbiosis—As a society, we have managed to really mess up bowel flora resulting in epidemics of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, and intestinal fungal overgrowth, as well as lesser degrees of disrupted bowel flora. “Spontaneous” (i.e., without a preceding course of antibiotics) episodes of Clostridium difficile enterocolitis are also increasing. We therefore take specific action to help cultivate a return to a healthier profile of bowel flora with probiotics, fermented foods, and prebiotic fibers.

That sums up the rationale for the various components of the Wheat Belly Total Health and Undoctored programs. Each and every component meet an intrinsic, genetically-determined need. There are indeed additional nutritional supplements beyond those we put to use in the Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles. You can, for instance, add gotu kola or ashwaghanda, but your expectations should be lower, as they do not correct any deficiency nor serve an intrinsic need.

For a more thorough discussion, see the Wheat Belly Total Health book of the Undoctored book

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Essential oils for fungal overgrowth

I’ve discussed the extremely important health condition, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO, a number of times, as it is present at epidemic proportions and for the most part not being diagnosed nor managed in conventional doctors’ offices. The Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles provide a powerful start in reversing this condition, but additional steps are often necessary. A number of people in our Undoctored Inner Circle, for instance, have identified their own SIBO and then managed it successfully with the help of our Virtual Meetup discussions, even after doctors advised them that there is no such thing, or it was stupid, or received other unhelpful responses.

There is a related condition, intestinal fungal overgrowth, in which fungi proliferate, most commonly Candida albicans, in the colon, small intestine, stomach, even esophagus and mouth. Like SIBO, fungal overgrowth is common. While we know more about SIBO than fungal overgrowth, there are some important features to fungal overgrowth you should know about:

Fungal overgrowth is caused by many of the same causes as SIBO, such as prior grain and sugar consumption; too much alcohol; antibiotic exposures; herbicide/pesticide exposures; any form of intestinal inflammation.
Fungal overgrowth is associated with many of the same symptoms as SIBO such as IBS-like symptoms; persistent skin rashes, especially eczema; persistent allergies; persistent or new autoimmune conditions—even after all the components of the Wheat Belly lifestyle or Undoctored Wild, Naked, Unwashed program have been followed.
Any inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract, such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and celiac disease is associated with a high likelihood of fungal overgrowth. (It is not clear whether irritable bowel syndrome is associated.)

I won’t kid you: Managing SIBO on your own is sometimes a bit complicated. Our weekly Undoctored Virtual Meetups, I believe, are therefore helpful to navigate the finer points to know, for instance, when empiric management is acceptable without H2-breath testing, how to choose an herbal antibiotic regimen, how to stack the odds in your favor to prevent recurrences (which are common) and perhaps monitor with the new Aire device.

Fungal overgrowth is easier to identify than SIBO, as we have easy stool tests to identify the condition. Treatment options have also expanded enormously in the past few years. We now have these wonderfully concentrated phytochemicals called essential oils that are not just effective anti-fungal agents, but are more potent—and safer—than conventional anti-fungal drugs. For instance, if you were in the hospital with a serious Candidal infection of an artificial heart valve or other prosthesis, the device has to be surgically removed and you are treated with drugs like Amphotericin B, a highly-toxic anti-fungal drug. Several essential oils are more effective than even Amphotericin B against Candida and other fungi. (Essential oils cannot be used as intravenous treatment, but can taken orally and topically.) The mixture of terpenes and terpenoids that are contained in essential oils also disrupt the biofilm that Candida loves to produce, i.e., the mucousy film it produces that makes it difficult to eradicate, something that conventional anti-fungals do not do. Unlike our discussions about SIBO in which we question whether addition of a biofilm disrupter such as N-acetyl cysteine is helpful, essential oils have their own built-in biofilm-disrupting capacity. There are also some moderately effective herbal choices to reduce fungal populations such as turmeric.

The Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles achieve extraordinarily positive results. But, like SIBO, there can be issues that can persist even after these powerful strategies. Add fungal overgrowth to the list. If you would like a more extended conversation with details on how to test for fungal overgrowth, which essential oils and herbal preparations are the best choices and at what dose, I invite you to join the discussions on our Undoctored Inner Circle.

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BLT Avocado Sandwich with Aleppo Pepper Spread

If you like BLT sandwiches, you’ll love this variation that includes sliced avocado and a tasty Aleppo Pepper Spread.

I got my inspiration for the Aleppo Pepper Spread from a recipe provided by Penzey’s, a regional spice and herb retailer in Wisconsin and Michigan, that I tweaked a bit, including adding a bit of sriracha for some extra pizzazz. The Aleppo pepper adds sun-dried tomato-like layers of flavor to dried pepper. You will likely have to source it from a spice shop. Alternatively, if you cannot locate the Aleppo pepper, use standard ground black pepper and a dash of cayenne pepper instead.

As written, the recipe yields 2 large sandwiches. We use a flatbread method here for ease and time-saving. You’ll also need one medium tomato, sliced; one avocado, sliced (or guacamole); 6-8 strips of bacon, cooked; several leaves of your choice of lettuce such as green leaf or Boston.

The recipe is a celebration of fats from the bacon, avocado, and mayonnaise, just as we like it in the Wheat Belly lifestyle. The sriracha-charged Aleppo pepper spread adds a huge burst of flavor.

To make the bread:

1 cup almond flour

1/4 cup ground golden flaxseed

2 tablespoons ground psyllium husk

1 egg

1/2 cup water

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In medium bowl, combine almond flour, flaxseed, psyllium, egg, water, salt and mix thoroughly. Transfer to a greased 10×10 baking pan and spread with spoon or spatula to approximately 1/2-inch thickness. Bake for 25 minutes or until knife or toothpick withdraws clean. Allow to cool.

Cut into 4 square pieces.

To make the Aleppo Pepper Spread:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon sriracha sauce

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Sea salt to taste

In small bowl, combine mayonnaise, garlic powder, sriracha, lemon juice, salt and mix thoroughly.

 

To make the sandwiches:

Take one “bread” slice turned upside-down and layer lettuce, bacon, sliced tomato, sliced avocado, then spread Aleppo Pepper Spread generously.

Top with second bread slice.

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Eech (Armenian bulgur)

I saw this dish being made on a TV cooking show. It looked delicious, so I decided to make the grain-free equivalent.

It goes by the odd name “eech,” an Armenian dish made with onions, garlic, tomatoes. parsley, bell pepper, olive oil, lemon . . . and bulgur wheat.

Everyone here, of course, objects to the inclusion of any seed of a grass plant in their lifestyle to avoid becoming diabetic, overweight, and having to massage your painful joints with rheumatoid arthritis or applying topical steroid creams for skin rashes. I therefore replaced the granular bulgur wheat with riced cauliflower. I believe it turned out to be little different in flavor from the original.

The number of servings yielded depends on how you use this dish. If used as a side-dish, I expect that it will yield 6 or so servings alongside, say, baked chicken or fish. As a main dish, it will yield 4 servings.

For ease of preparation, look for pre-riced cauliflower. You can reduce whole cauliflower to rice-sized pieces in your food chopper or processor, of course, but the convenience of pre-riced cauliflower can’t be beat. For extra pizzazz, I used Aleppo pepper to season the dish, a fragrant version of pepper with sundried tomato-like overtones. But conventional pepper with a dash of cayenne does well, also.

Serves 4-6

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

6 green onions, chopped

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped

6 ounces tomato paste

2 1/2 cups water

1 pound riced cauliflower

Salt and ground black or Aleppo pepper, to taste (I used 2 teaspoons of Aleppo pepper)

1 cup parsley, chopped

Juice of 1 lemon

In large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat, then add onions, garlic, bell pepper and cook for 3-5 minutes until peppers softened, stirring occasionally.

Stir in tomato paste and water. Bring to boil, then cover and reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for 5 minutes.

Add cauliflower, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until cauliflower softened, stirring occasionally.

Stir in parsley. Serve topped with lemon juice squeezed over top.

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Wheat Belly and Autoimmune Diseases

The Wheat Belly lifestyle begins with elimination of the worst and most dominant of all grains in the diet, semi-dwarf wheat products, followed by elimination of its closely-related brethren in other grains. This alone is a powerful start in reversing the 200-some diseases of autoimmunity.

We now know that the gliadin protein of wheat and related proteins in other grains trigger increased intestinal permeability that initiates the process, as highly inflammatory compounds, such as lipopolysaccharide from bacterial cell walls, are permitted entry into the body. We also know that gliadin itself gains entry into the bloodstream and lymph system. Gliadin contains amino acid sequences that overlap in structure with human proteins. The synapsin protein of the brain, for instance, overlaps in structure with gliadin. The antibody/immune response launched against gliadin therefore also attacks structures containing synapsin, initiating some of the various forms of autoimmunity of the central nervous system, such as cerebellar ataxia, temporal lobe seizures, and some forms of dementia.

Conventional “treatments” of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis ignore these fundamental phenomena, as well as ignore all the other factors that permit the emergence of autoimmune phenomena, such as vitamin D deficiency and dysbiosis. Here are some of my comments from the Wheat Belly Total Health book concerning the conventional approach by rheumatologists and other specialists in the diseases of autoimmunity:

The conventional medical approach to autoimmune diseases ignores disturbances of intestinal permeability, molecular mimicry, immunomodulation by vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, composition of bowel flora, exposures to industrial chemicals or metals, and the notion that components of diet can initiate and perpetuate the immune system gone wrong.

Instead, modern healthcare chooses to focus only on turning off the immune responses with drugs. Some treatments are imprecise and non-specific, such as steroids like prednisone which, by shutting down the entire immune system, also make us susceptible to infections (as well as cause extravagant weight gain and type 2 diabetes). Other treatments are more specific for various inflammation-mediating factors, such as tumor necrosis factor blockers Enbrel and Humira. These intravenous agents only work occasionally with incomplete success, are absurdly expensive, and are accompanied by the potential for tuberculosis, viral and bacterial infections, liver damage or failure, and activation of viral hepatitis. They even allow other autoimmune diseases to develop—-imperfect solutions, to say the least, that cost several thousand dollars per month.

The wonderful thing about addressing the potential contributors to autoimmune processes, such as eliminating grains, restoring vitamin D, and correcting disruptions of bowel flora, is that these natural strategies help restore health in many ways, not just reductions in inflammation or autoimmunity. Eliminate grains, for instance, and depression can lift, blood sugars drop, visceral fat is lost—and autoimmunity can recede. Raise vitamin D blood levels to 70 ng/ml and your thinking becomes clearer, bone density increases, insulin levels drop, you obtain increased protection from viral illnesses—and autoimmunity can recede. And such interventions are safe and inexpensive, costing little compared to the thousands of dollars per month you’d spend for autoimmune disease biologics.

Take such natural steps appropriate for a non-grass-consuming member of the species Homo sapiens, and allow your immune system to distinguish friend from foe.

The Wheat Belly strategies therefore provide a powerful collection of strategies that:

prevent autoimmune diseases
reverse many forms of autoimmune diseases
minimize or eliminate the need for drugs that do not address the initiating causes

This simple approach has allowed people to reverse the pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis, the pain and diarrhea of ulcerative colitis, the annoying itchy rash of psoriasis. While these strategies cannot be expected to reverse all instances of autoimmunity, there is no downside and plenty of upside from the broad wave of positive health changes that develop.

If your autoimmune condition does not fully respond to these basic strategies, it’s not time to submit to a costly and toxic biologic drug treatment, but time to address small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, or Candidal overgrowth, issues we tackle in our more advanced Undoctored Inner Circle. 

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LESS BAD is not necessarily GOOD

One of the reasons why the Wheat Belly lifestyle is so spectacularly effective for restoring health, losing weight, and turning back the clock a decade or two is because we reject the flawed logic of conventional nutritional advice.

There is a long list of reasons why conventional nutritional advice gets it so wrong, from logical blunders, to relying on flawed observational evidence (rather than clinical trials), to getting too cozy with Big Food companies like Coca Cola and Kraft.

Let’s discuss a common and widely-held blunder in logic that is applied over and over again in nutrition:

If something bad is replaced by something less bad and there is an apparent health benefit, then a lot of the less bad thing must therefore be good.

With wheat, if we replace something bad—white flour products—with something less bad—whole grain products—and there is less obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and colon cancer (there is indeed a modest reduction), then a whole bunch of whole grains must therefore be good.

Let’s apply this to one of my perennial favorites, cigarettes: If we replace full-tar, unfiltered cigarettes—bad—with low-tar, filtered cigarettes—less bad—that yields a modest reduction in heart attack and lung cancer, then, by the logic of nutrition, you should smoke a lot of low-tar, filtered cigarettes. This is absurd, of course, but illustrates this blunder in logic that can lead you to false conclusions.

If we replace white flour products with whole wheat or whole grain products, there is still weight gain but just a little less; there is still type 2 diabetes but just a little less; there is still heart disease and colon cancer but just a little less: less bad is not necessarily good. And don’t forget that wheat and grains, regardless of whether they are refined white or unrefined, still trigger other health conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, initiate autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, make ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s worse, can trigger migraine headaches and plantar fasciitis, and on and on. You can appreciate just how far off course from a healthy diet such a logical blunder can lead you.

Other examples of this logical blunder being put to use include:

Replace high-glycemic (GI) index foods with low-glycemic index foods. The reality is that, low-GI foods still send blood sugar sky-high, generate insulin resistance, provoke fatty liver, provoke small LDL particles that lead to heart disease, and cause weight gain . . . but just not as much as high-GI foods.

Replace a standard American diet with the Mediterranean diet. This is based on the observation that the Mediterranean diet yields fewer heart attacks and less type 2 diabetes than the standard American diet. But, just like low-GI foods, numerous unhealthy effects are still provoked on the Mediterranean diet making it far from an ideal diet for humans.

As with so many areas of modern health, the last people you want to consult are the presumed “experts” who convey such conventional notions of healthy eating.

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Feast on fats

One of the most common mistakes people make when starting out on the Wheat Belly lifestyle is to remain fearful of fats. They continue to hold onto old misconceptions such as “fats raise cholesterol,” or “fat causes heart disease,” or “fats are calorie-dense and therefore make you fat.” None of this is true, no more true than “healthy whole grains” are a key to overall health. (The rationale dashing all these misconceptions is discussed in detail in Wheat Belly Total Health.)

This accounts for why some people, even after removing the gliadin-derived opiates that come from wheat and related grains, continue to experience hunger or cravings—it’s due to not taking in enough fats. The solution: get more fats and oils.

We avoid oils sourced from grains, of course, especially corn oil, since there will be corn protein residues that can mimic some of the effects of wheat gliadin, not to mention modern humans are so miserably overloaded with the omega-6 fraction/linoleic acid of oils (though linoleic acid is one of the essential fatty acids–avoiding it entirely is fatal, but you can get plenty from meats, nuts, and non-grain seeds).  We avoid mixed vegetable oils, soybean oil (like corn, it can have protein residues, although the fatty acid composition is not that bad), canola (increasingly related to health problems, such as hypertension, possibly due to the high trans fatty acid content created by the high-temperature process used to remove the erucic acid toxin), grapeseed oil (high omega-6).

Here are some strategies that can help add back the healthy fats you may be lacking:

Buy fatty cuts of meat–Ribeye steak, for example, over sirloin tip or round cuts. T-bone and skirt steak are moderately fatty. When buying ground meat, never buy lean (e.g., 90% or 95% lean); buy the fattiest you can find (70% lean). (Make the fat even healthier by buying organic, non-factory farmed meats.)
Don’t trim the fat off your meat–Eat it! Some people, especially the ladies, will say “Yechhh! The fat is gross!” Just imagine what your grandma would say if you made such a declaration in her presence: You’d earn a rap on the ear for it. Everyone prior to the last 50 years ate the fat and enjoyed it–modern aversion to meat fats, as with organ meats, is a modern mistake. Just like eating Doritos, tarted up in a laboratory to intensify addictive flavors, not eating fat is a perversion of human behavior.
Save the fats/oils from cooking meat–If you prepare bacon or other meats, save the oils and store in a jar in the refrigerator to use for cooking. You will appreciate the deeper flavors they provide over, say, something bland and awful like corn oil. You can also purchase lard and tallow, but be sure they have not been hydrogenated.
Use more butter–Dairy products are not without their own set of problems. But the problems originate with the proteins (casein beta A1, whey, others) and sugars (lactose), as well as hormone content and antibiotic residues. Contrary to popular opinion, this makes butter (and ghee) among the least problematic forms of dairy, as it is mostly fat. Yes: fat is the healthiest component of dairy, despite the silly preoccupation with low-fat and non-fat dairy products.
Use more coconut oil–Coconut oil is a staple around here. I use coconut oil in my cooking, baking, make Fat Blasters/Fat Bombs out of them (recipes in Wheat Belly Total Health and Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox, even use it as a skin and hair moisturizer (just rub it on). You can even make chocolate enriched with coconut oil with my Chocolate for Adults Only recipe. Look for organic and cold-pressed and be careful of refined (often involving organic compounds for purification, among other issues); I’ve found good choices at Costco and Trader Joes. Tropical Traditions is another excellent brand.
Pour oils over foods–T0p off your Wheat Belly Pizza with additional extra-virgin olive oil. Use more butter, bacon grease, lard, tallow, or coconut oil with your fried or scrambled eggs. Add some melted coconut oil to your (low-carb) smoothie. Most Wheat Belly recipes can readily accommodate increased oils.
Eat more avocados–With around 30 grams of fat in an average-sized avocado, you can get a nice wallop just by eating one . . . or two. Avocados added to your smoothie will thicken it substantially while providing a healthy dose of fat.

Getting sufficient fat in your diet is satiating, cuts off cravings and eliminates impulsive eating behavior, accelerates weight loss from visceral fat, helps reduce blood sugar and triglycerides, raises HDL, helps get rid of small LDL particles that lead to heart disease (not cholesterol, part of the semi-fiction of the lipid-heart hypothesis), subdues the after-meal (postprandial) flood of lipoproteins into the bloodstream, helps reverse fatty liver, and is part of the overall strategy to maintain brain health.

So go on and have a feast on fats.

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Thyroid Tune-Up

I am re-posting a classic Wheat Belly Blog post from a few years ago. Despite all our discussions about thyroid issues, there continues to be an enormous information gap: undiagnosed hypothyroidism, gross mismanagement sufficient to impair weight loss and increase cardiovascular risk, dismissing the importance of iodine, and ignorance among healthcare providers. This Thyroid Tune-up is therefore an updated version of the previous post.

Imagine that all the cars in your neighborhood run poorly because nobody bothers to tune-up their autos. I show you how to tune the cars and, lo and behold, 80% of the cars now run great. But 20% of cars still run poorly because their transmissions are bad. In other words, tuning the engine works when that’s the only problem with the car; if something else is wrong, then your car will not run properly.

So it goes with eliminating wheat and grains from the diet. It works right out of the box for the majority of people: substantial weight loss and shrinking waist size; reduced blood sugar and blood pressure; relief from arthritis, leg edema, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, etc. But some people complain that, despite saying goodbye to all things wheat, they still have problems. Obviously, as big a problem as modern wheat and other grains are, there are other causes for health conditions. There are nutritional deficiencies, infections, injuries, sensitivities to other foods, inherited conditions, etc. While wheat and grain exposure are causes for an incredible amount of human suffering, it is not the only cause.

How about weight loss? If all things wheat and grains are eliminated, most people can expect substantial weight loss. We also need to reduce exposure to other carbohydrates, especially if a lot of body weight needs to be lost and/or pre-diabetic or diabetic patterns are present. I cannot say “eliminate wheat and eat all the ice cream and candy you want.”

Then there are people who do all that and still cannot lose weight. This is when it’s time to give serious consideration to thyroid dysfunction.

By “thyroid dysfunction” I am referring to various degrees of hypothyroidism, i.e., low thyroid hormone levels. (I’m going to ignore hyperthyroidism, since this is much less common and does not impose any limitation on weight loss.) This is a big issue, so I’m going to cover it as a check list, a series of bullet points that you can run down to cover as much territory as possible. There are three blood tests that everyone should have assessed to even start thinking about thyroid dysfunction: TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), free T3, and free T4. Optionally, a reverse T3 and thyroid antibodies (to identify thyroid inflammation/autoimmunity) can also be helpful. You do not need all the other nonsense often run, such as total T3 and FTI; these are outdated and often misleading.

Important issues to consider in deciding whether hypothyroidism is contributing to stalled weight or other health problems:

Hypothyroid symptoms–Beyond stalled weight loss, the most common symptoms of low thyroid hormone status include cold hands and feet; low energy; mental “fog;” loss of hair and eyebrows; constipation; leg edema.

Low first a.m. oral temperature–An oral temperature immediately upon awakening can help you decide whether a thyroid question is present or not. Using a digital thermometer, take your oral temperature immediately upon arising. If it is consistently below 97.3 degrees F, then hypothyroidism is likely; the lower the temperature, the more likely and severe the thyroid dysfunction. However, note that disruptions of cortisol can do the same, as can anemia and failure to take in prebiotic fibers. (Contrary to some older discussions from the 1960s, axillary temperature should not be used due to excessive temperature variation.)

Iodine deficiency–Though it’s not even on most people’s radar, iodine deficiency is a common and under-diagnosed cause for inadequate thyroid hormone production. The thyroid requires iodine to manufacture thyroid hormones, T3 and T4, the “3” and “4” referring to the number of iodine atoms per thyroid hormone molecule. Iodine deficiency was a huge public health issue up to the last half of the 20th century, pretty much solved by the introduction of iodized salt. Now that salt overexposure in some populations has been fingered as a potential health problem, the FDA and other “official” providers of health advice tell us to reduce salt and sodium. But what about the iodine? Everyone forgot about the iodine.

Many people, including physicians, assume that iodine intake from diet is sufficient. Nope. Even the federally-funded NHANES data have uncovered substantial deficiency in some demographic groups, such as women of childbearing age, using a relatively lax definition of iodine deficiency. I’m seeing iodine deficiency and even goiters (enlarged thyroid glands due to iodine deficiency) frequently. Beyond having a goiter, a low free T4 and highish TSH (e.g., 3.5 mIU) is suggestive of iodine deficiency.

Iodine is not optional; it is necessary for health, including breast health, oral/gastrointestinal health, and the health of a developing fetus. The RDA for non-lactating adults is 150 mcg per day, the quantity required to not have a goiter, but not necessarily ideal thyroid health. I’ve therefore been advising 300-500 mcg per day from an iodine supplement, such as kelp tablets (dried seaweed), available at health food stores. The only adverse effects of iodine arise in people who have autoimmune thyroid disease, such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, unsuspected thyroid nodules, or longstanding and severe iodine deficiency. In most cases, very low doses of iodine, e.g., 50-100 mcg per day, can be introduced and increased gradually over months after wheat/grain elimination and vitamin D has been restored (factors that allow autoimmune thyroid inflammation to recede) . Ideally, this would be undertaken by your healthcare provider, but good luck finding one knowledgeable about iodine.

For most people, restoration of iodine usually develops over 2-3 months with gradual relief from hypothyroid symptoms (but only if iodine deficiency is the cause).

Ideal TSH–Notice I didn’t say “normal” or “reference range” TSH. I look for ideal TSH. Contrary to the values often cited as “normal” or “reference range” on laboratory values, ideal TSH is in the range of 2.0 mIU or less. This is the level at which thyroid dysfunction no longer contributes to stalled weight loss, as well as distortions of lipid (“cholesterol”) values and cardiovascular risk. The higher the TSH above 2.0, the greater the hypothyroidism.

Ideal free T3 and free T4–The upper half of the “reference range” quoted by your laboratory can serve as a reliable guide to desirable or ideal levels of these thyroid hormones. In particular, low free T3 levels are becoming a common problem and a frequent cause of stalled weight loss. It is not clear why T3 levels are impaired, but potential explanations include disturbed circadian variation of cortisol levels and exposure to organochemicals such as perchlorates (residues of synthetic fertilizer in your produce and water), triclosan in your antibacterial hand soap and hand sanitizer, and others. Unfortunately, the endocrinology community (which is woefully unhelpful with thyroid issues) sooner prescribe antidepressants than treat low T3 levels, which they regard as a non-issue.

Reverse T3–Less commonly, some people develop a T3 thyroid hormone mimic, reverse T3, or rT3, that blocks the activity of T3 in the body. In this situation, it is worth more seriously considering disrupted circadian cortisol variation and using higher doses of T3 thyroid hormone to overcome the blockade.

Should prescription thyroid hormone replacement be chosen, most people do best by including the T3 thyroid hormone, liothyronine, along with T4, levothyroxine. They can be taken separately or as a single tablet in desiccated thyroid gland preparations like Armour Thyroid or Naturethroid. If you already take a T4 preparation like Synthroid or levothyroxine but have stalled weight loss or persistent symptoms of hypothyroidism, then adding T3 nearly always solves the problem.

Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle in obtaining helpful feedback on your thyroid is usually your doctor, who will declare your thyroid status normal usually by just looking only at TSH and seeing whether it is in the “reference range” quoted by the laboratory–if he/she even bothers to check it at all. Lately, the functional medicine and naturopath communities have been very helpful to many people in my area eager to have their thyroid status intelligently assessed. As a last resort, you can purchase fingerstick test kits to obtain thyroid measures, such as the ZRT test kits you can purchase through Amazon and other online retailers.

Once properly corrected, the majority of people enjoy resumption of weight loss, not to mention feel happier, more energetic, with improved overall health, including reduced cardiovascular risk. Add that to the health and weight benefits of wheat/grain elimination, and you can make substantial strides in regaining ideal health.

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