William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 73

Take a minute and ask: Is that really grain-free?

Living the Undoctored and Wheat Belly Lifestyles may take a bit of effort, but the results are so worth it. You have to really think before you order your meals. Hidden sources of grains and corn by-products are lurking in some unlikely places. You may have thought that by skipping the bread/sandwich and choosing the soup-n-salad would ensure that your meal was safe. Think again…

Often the seemingly innocent chicken breast sitting on top of your salad was dusted with wheat flour before cooking to help it retain moisture and achieve that golden-brown color. Or the seasoning used contained grain by-products. Or the fish was marinated in a solution containing the same. Salad dressings and marinades often contain malt vinegar, soy sauce, and flour. Also, watch out for spice blends such as taco mixes and salad seasonings. Pure spices and herbs are fine, but mixes often contain these by-products. Many commercial “cream” sauces and soups get their creamy texture from starch, not real cream. And that starch often comes from wheat flour or corn starch. In fact, most commercial soup manufacturers literally use countless tons of wheat every year to produce canned soup.

Wheat and corn by-products are used as stabilizers and thickeners in many products, of course gravies, but even ketchup and mustard. The same goes for pasta sauce, tomato paste, BBQ sauce and prepared marinades. Keep in mind that this applies to any marinated fish or meat that you buy. You may have thought that soy sauce would be safe, but unfortunately most soy sauce is made with fermented wheat.

Don’t despair: There are so many ways for you to still enjoy delicious meals both while dining out and preparing meals at home. When eating out, make sure to ask your waiter what’s in the seasoning or sauce, or just order your food without it. Obviously, it is much easier to control what goes into your meals when you prepare it yourself. Let’s begin with soups, sauces, and gravies.

In both the Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles, we’ve removed all the standard gravy and sauce thickeners from our kitchen shelves (no wheat flour or cornstarch) despite their widespread use in culinary practices. Even though cornstarch is mostly amylose/amylopectin carbohydrates, there are zein protein residues that are problematic in a grain-free lifestyle, not to mention the excessive carbs, as well.

But, when looking for alternative ingredients to use as thickeners, it would be silly to replace one problem ingredient with another problem ingredient, like replacing unfiltered cigarettes with low-tar cigarettes–not a good switch. Oat flour, rice flour, or other grain flours would not be good replacement choices, as they all share high carbohydrate content and proteins that can mimic some of the effects of wheat gliadin, such as triggering autoimmune inflammation and appetite-stimulation.

 

Here are my top choices for safe thickeners (in no particular order):

Coconut flour/coconut milk– Coconut flour or coconut milk (canned variety) make a great roux or gravy. If you use coconut flower, the key is to add it slowly and sparingly while heating at a low temperature, e.g., low simmer in a saucepan, stirring in one teaspoon every minute or so. Much more so than conventional thickeners, coconut flour is very hygroscopic, or water-absorbent, and impatience can lead to a pan of concrete, rather than thickened gravy. If any coconut flavor shows through, adding some sea salt, ground pepper, onion powder, ground thyme or other ground seasonings can easily conceal it. Using coconut flour the end-product will be a bit grittier than that made with cornstarch or wheat flour (because of protein and fat content), but the flavor will be wonderful, especially if drippings or homemade stocks are used. You can therefore minimize this gritty effect by using a mixture of coconut milk and flour.

Butter– Dairy does not figure prominently in the Wheat Belly lifestyle, as there are issues with hormone content, whey, some forms of casein, as well as lactose. But butter, especially if organic, is among the least problematic, since it is mostly fat. Because the Wheat Belly lifestyle does not involve any restrictions on fat, saturated fat, or calories, you can “go to town” with butter and enjoy its rich flavors and ability to thicken. You will discover that the longer you are grain-free your taste sensitivity will begin to heighten, making formally tasty sweets taste sickeningly sweet.

Heavy cream– Not my first choice due to the above-mentioned reservations about dairy products that contain more than dairy fat. But, for occasional use, it is a versatile and delicious thickener. You can also add egg yolk for a liaison for added richness (but kept below boiling temperature to avoid coagulating the egg yolk), just as you would in traditional French cooking.

Pureed eggplant, zucchini, broccoli, pumpkin, squash– Just be mindful of your carbohydrate exposure with the higher carb choices such as squash. I love these for soups. Zucchini is the easiest and safest choice for most dishes, both sweet and savory.

Fresh mushrooms– Try pureeing fresh mushrooms as well. It adds another dimension of flavor to your sauce or gravy. One caveat: you need a really powerful chopper or food processor to generate a smooth puree, otherwise you will get a grainy consistency.

Okra– Unlike other veggies, okra does not have to be pureed, but can be added to, say, gumbo, as it cooks on the stove and will yield a wonderful thickening effect that avoids the use of traditional cornstarch or wheat flour.

Nut butters– Aside from peanut butter in Thai dishes, I find these more useful for thickening non-savory dishes, such as a smoothie.

Avocado– In addition to nut butters, avocado is a marvelous thickening agent for smoothies and puddings.

Chia and ground golden flaxseed– These are best reserved for thickening puddings, jams, and smoothies as they tend to yield a not-so-desirable gooey texture that you may not like for a gravy. Chia, however, does make a wonderful thickener for jams and preserves. You can find several easy recipes in the Wheat Belly 30-Minute Cookbook.

See, I told you. Now you have a variety of healthy thickeners that can accommodate any recipe you may encounter. Whether you’re preparing a rich roux for a sauce, gravy for a holiday dinner, creamy base for a soup, green smoothie or raspberry jam, you can have them all while avoiding the potential health risks presented by traditional thickeners.

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“Don’t eat anything white”

I’ve heard this advice countless times, as I’ll bet you have, too. I’ve also witnessed many people try it (though certainly not on my advice), only to experience modest (if any) benefits that quickly come a halt. And, of course, this advice makes no sense.

“White,” of course, refers primarily to refined grain products such as breads, rolls, and bagels made with white flour, as well as sucrose table sugar. Non-white primarily refers to whole grains that are darker based on the commonly held misconception that whole grains are not just better for you, but healthy. (I’ve discussed this logical fallacy many times in my Wheat Belly books. In a nutshell, if we replace something bad–white flour products–with something less bad–whole grains–and there is an apparent health benefit, and there is: less heart disease, less diabetes, less colon cancer, then the common conclusion is that including plenty of the less harmful foods must therefore be good. This ignores the logic and the science demonstrating that removing both white and whole grain products is not only healthier, but reverses numerous health conditions, such as type 2 diabetes/reduce HbA1c, can induce remission in rheumatoid arthritis, reverses cerebellar ataxia, just to name a few examples.) It might also refer to brown sugar, i.e., sugar with molasses that is still, for all practical purposes, sugar.

Non-white grains still retain all the health destructive properties of gliadin-derived opioid peptides that drive appetite and impair emotion and brain function; the intestinal toxicity of wheat germ agglutinin; the iron-, zinc-, calcium-, and magnesium-binding effect of phytates that yield common mineral deficiencies; amylopectin A that sends blood sugar sky-high; and a multitude of proteins, such as alpha-amylase inhibitors and thioreductases that trigger allergic responses—they all remain present whether white or brown/whole grain. White flour products have less fiber and B vitamins but still contain all problematic components. And brown sugar, while it contains non-heme iron and other nutrients from molasses, still rots teeth, contributes to weight gain and diabetes, and adds to risk for cancer, heart disease, and dementia just like white sugar.

And, if you avoid all things white, what about:

Eggs that should be eaten ad libitum (as much as you want, as often as you want) because they are rich in fats and nutrients such as vitamin D and carotenoids such as zeaxanthin.
Cauliflower--Cauliflower is our go-to replacement for excessively starchy foods like potatoes, a wonderful and healthy way to recreate mashed potatoes, for instance, or a stir-fry replacing rice with riced cauliflower.
Yogurt–Dairy has its problems, such as the immunogenicity of the casein beta A1 or the insulin-provoking effect of whey. But yogurt, i.e., lactate fermented milk/cream, has reduced lactose content, contains denatured (partially broken down) casein, and introduces probiotic microoganisms such as Lactobacillus. Yogurt is the least problematic form of dairy, especially when full-fat and allowed to fully ferment. Avoid white and you avoid the most benign, health-providing form of dairy.
Zoodles–i.e., spiral-cut zucchini that we use to replace grain-based pasta. Yes, zucchini has a green outer skin, but the pulp is all white. Despite defying this no-white advice, it is wonderfully healthy, as are other vegetables such as turnips, parsnips, and radishes.
Mushrooms–Such as white button mushrooms. Mushrooms are little powerhouses of nutrients and it would be silly and unproductive to avoid them, not to mention they introduce wonderfully earthy flavors into salads and cooking.
Garlic–I believe we can all agree that, not only does garlic make almost everything taste more flavorful, but it also provides a wide range of healthy nutrients such as sulfur compounds that have been associated with reduced cancer risk and prebiotic fibers that cultivate healthy bowel flora.

You get the idea. Avoiding white foods is silly, unnecessary, and ineffective. It actually deprives you of many healthy nutrient sources. Avoiding white foods also continues to expose you to the harmful effects of whole grains. Eat white, eat brown, eat purple, eat red and orange—but ignore nonsensical advice that just sounds clever.

 

 

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The next Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox begins just after the New Year!

Through my New York Times bestseller, Wheat Belly, millions of people learned how to reverse years of chronic health problems by removing wheat from their daily diets. But, after reading the original Wheat Belly or the Wheat Belly Total Health book, or even using the recipes from the Wheat Belly Cookbook and Wheat Belly 30-Minute Cookbook, people still said: “I’ve read the books, but I’m still not sure how to best get started on this lifestyle.”

That’s why I wrote the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox and now help readers along in this Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox CHALLENGE. This is the quickest, most assured way to get started on regaining magnificent health and slenderness by adopting the Wheat Belly lifestyle.

And this next CHALLENGE begins just after the start of the New Year to help you live up to your resolutions.

The Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox supplies you with carefully designed meal plans and delicious recipes to fully eliminate wheat and related grains in the shortest time possible. Perfect for those who may have fallen off the wagon or for newcomers who need a jump-start for weight loss, this new addition to the Wheat Belly phenomenon guides you through the complete 10-Day Detox experience.

In addition to this quick-start program, I’ll teach you:

How to recognize and reduce wheat-withdrawal symptoms,
How to avoid common landmines that can sabotage success
How to use nutritional supplements to further advance weight loss and health benefits

The Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox also includes:

Inspiring testimonials from people who have completed the program (and have now made grain-free eating a way of life)

Exciting new recipes to help get your entire family on board

To join the Detox Challenge:

Step 1

Get the book. And read it (at least the first 5 chapters). Detox Challenge participants should be informed and active in order to get the most out of the challenge and private Facebook group. READING THE WHEAT BELLY DETOX BOOK IS REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE. PLEASE DO NOT PARTICIPATE IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK or else the conversations will not make sense and you will not enjoy full benefit.

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1JqzMea

Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/wheatbelly10daygraindetox-bn

Indiebound: http://bit.ly/1KwcFTQ

Or grab the course from Rodale.

https://www.rodaleu.com/courses/wheat-belly-10-day-grain-detox

(The PLATINUM level INCLUDES the book.)

Using the code DETOX saves you $20+ when you checkout.

Step 2

Come join the Private Facebook Group.

http://bit.ly/WheatBelly-PrivateFBGroup

Step 3

Head back to the Private Facebook Group starting Wednesday, January 2nd (the day before the official start of the Challenge) and onwards for tips, videos, and discussions to help you get through your detox and reprogram your body for rapid weight loss and health. Dr. Davis will be posting video instructions and answers to your questions.

Need support? Lapsed and want to get back on board? Join the thousands of people who are losing weight and regaining health by following the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox. Join us if you desire support through the sometimes unpleasant process of wheat/grain detoxification and withdrawal or if you are among those who previously followed the program but lapsed, and now want to get back on board as confidently as possible, this Detox Challenge was made for you.

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To prevent Alzheimer’s, play Pac-Man

The results of the ACTIVE study—Advanced Cognitive Training in Vital Elderly—have been released and contain groundbreaking findings.

It’s not news that cognitive exercise, such as learning a new language, solving riddles and puzzles, playing a new musical instrument, reading, etc., improves memory and the ability to process information. Observational studies, i.e., the sort of studies that can suggest associations but cannot establish cause-effect relationships, have suggested that cognitive exercise is associated with reduced potential for dementia. (Comparing, for example, two people with similar quantities of brain atrophy and beta-amyloid plaque accumulation in the brain, the person who engaged in lifelong learning will show less dementia than the person who did not engage in lifelong learning.)

ACTIVE was not an observational study, but the much more solid prospective treatment trial in which people were given various forms of learning, then tested for cognitive ability over the years, up to a total of 10 years. The novel finding from the ACTIVE study is that certain forms of cognitive exercise can substantially reduce the likelihood of developing dementia as assessed by cognitive testing.

Interestingly, exercises for memory and reasoning did not impact on likelihood of developing dementia. However, exercises involving speed-of-processing reduced likelihood of dementia by 29% over the 10-year period. Participants who engaged in the greatest number of training sessions had an impressive 42% reduction in dementia.

The speed-of-processing training used in ACTIVE was the BrainHQ program in which participants are given patterns shown with increasingly shorter periods of time. For example, you are shown a dozen identical birds and have to click on the one odd bird among them. Each time, the picture is shown to you in increasingly shorter time periods, challenging you to recognize patterns quickly, down to fractions of a second. Or you drive a make-believe car on a desert highway and you have to read the signs on the road that flash quicker and quicker along the side of the road. Such exercises have been shown to increase auditory and visual processing speed, reverse memory ability to that of someone 10 years younger, improve attention, and appear to translate to improved driving habits with a reduction in accidents.

It therefore appears that cognitive exercises that force you to process information faster and faster, recognize patterns quickly, and be spatially aware are key to preventing dementia, but not so much memory or reasoning exercises. The BrainHQ program has the support of many research publications over the years that validate their methods.

You could enroll in the BrainHQ program for $14 per month. But are there other ways besides BrainHQ that employ speed-of-processing training involving multiple simultaneous spatial sensory inputs?

Remember Pac-Man? You control the yellow cartoon creature who eats up the dots as the ghosts chase you faster and faster in a two-dimensional maze: speed-of-processing, multiple spatial inputs. How about the old Galaxian or Galaga space games? Once again: speed-of-processing, multiple spatial inputs.

Obviously, such video games do not have the scientific validation of a program like BrainHQ. But, because they are nearly 40 years old, you can obtain them inexpensively (on computer, tablet, smartphone, game devices, devices that plug directly into TVs) and they are simple, certainly far simpler than, say, Call of Duty Black Ops on an XBox.

Given the findings of the ACTIVE study, I’ll wager that just getting yourself some video games, even relatively simple ones like Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man, can accomplish quite a bit in engaging your brain in healthy ways, even though it may appear to be nothing more than a mindless game.

In coming weeks, we will be posting a number of advanced concepts on how to prevent/reverse cognitive decline and prevent Alzheimer’s dementia on the Undoctored Inner Circle website. We will include many of the most cutting-edge and unconventional strategies t stack the odds in your favor to preserve high cognitive functioning for a lifetime.

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Five Ways to Reduce Risk for Alzheimer’s

There are a handful of basic strategies that can substantially reduce your risk for developing cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s dementia, simple strategies that you can initiate on your own. They are certainly far more effective than prescription drugs for dementia which do almost nothing for memory and have NO impact on progression of the disease.

About Undoctored:

We are entering a new age in which the individual has astounding power over health–but don’t count on the doctor or healthcare system to tell you this.

We draw from the health information of the world, collaborate, share experiences, collect data, and show how to apply new health tools to achieve levels of health that you may have thought unattainable. We do all this at a time when conventional healthcare costs have become crippling.

The result: personal health that is SUPERIOR to that obtained through conventional means.

Start with the book that shows you how to get started on an Undoctored life:

Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor.

Then connect and collaborate for greater success:

InnerCircle.Undoctored.com

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Roly Poly

What is it about flour, i.e., the starch, bran, and germ of seeds of grass plants, such as modern Triticum species of wheat, that makes them extravagantly fattening? The weight gain effect of modern wheat is so powerful that I call it the perfect obesogen, a food that is perfectly crafted to cause obesity.

As a society, we have conducted a massive and inadvertent experiment. Based on the flawed logic that emerged from “white flour is bad, whole grains are good” epidemiological observations (or what I would label “white flour is bad, whole grains are less bad” observations), the American diet, thanks to the pronouncements of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, has become a grain-based diet. We have grain-based breakfast cereals, toast, and bagels for breakfast; sandwiches or wraps for lunch; pasta and rolls for dinner; pretzels and cookies for snacks. The result: Obesity and type 2 diabetes on a scale never before seen on this planet. Not just a situation that is incrementally worse, but the worst ever. We now need larger wheelchairs, larger airline seats, dress sizes that were previously unimaginable.

And let’s be absolutely clear: In the language of agribusiness, modern wheat is NOT “genetically modified,” i.e., gene-splicing techniques were not used to introduced genetic changes. No, modern wheat is the product of methods that pre-date genetic modification (GM). But earlier methods were not more benign; it included methods that were worse, such as chemical mutagenesis that don’t introduce just one or two genetic alterations like GM methods, but dozens. Yet the product of these extensive genetic changes have been sold on supermarket shelves since the 1980s. (I am no defender of awful GM products, but GM is actually an improvement over older methods.)

Yes, there are other factors at work, also, such as overconsumption of sugar, endocrine disruption from exposure to industrial chemicals, and increasingly sedentary lifestyles. But none of these were thrust on us, even encouraged, by national dietary advice.

So what is it about the seeds of grasses, especially that of the most dominant and harmful grain of all, modern wheat, that has played such a big role in contributing to 40+ inch waists, size XXL dresses, and a booming bottom line for diabetes drug manufacturers? While I’ve articulated many of these concepts in the Wheat Belly books, it bears repeating, as the grain lobby and Big Food continue to flood media with their ads, including paid spokespeople to plug their products, all proclaiming the health benefits of “healthy whole grains.”

Gliadin protein-derived opioid peptides are powerful appetite stimulants–Injected into rats, for instance, they promptly gain substantial weight. These are the factors that are responsible for 24-hour-per-day food obsessions in people with bulimia and binge eating disorder. Those of us without these conditions “only” have appetite stimulation, an effect that makes us hungry all the time, even when our stomachs are full or an hour or two after a full meal. Gliadin-derived opioids increase calorie consumption by 400-800 calories per day on average, though many people consume 1500 or more calories per day. And the increased calorie intake is typically from junk carbs such as donuts and pastry. The addictive properties of gliadin-derived opioids are also responsible for the opiate withdrawal syndrome that results when you stop consuming grains: nausea, headache, fatigue, and depression that lasts about a week.
Both gliadin-derived peptides and wheat germ agglutinin (the indigestible lectin protein of wheat, rye, barley, and rice) block the leptin receptor that induces satiety. This effect leads to leptin resistance that underlies weight gain and obesity. People who are leptin resistant have ineffective satiety signals: they don’t know when to stop eating and thereby eat more and more.
Modern grains have been enriched in the amylopectin A complex carbohydrate that, due to its unique structure, raises blood sugar higher than table sugar. High blood sugar or hyperglycemia is followed by low blood sugar or hypoglycemia 90-120 minutes later due to release of insulin. Each grain indulgence is therefore accompanied by a feeling of mental fog, irritability, and hunger in 90-120 minute cycles. This is the reason that conventional dietitians offer the silly and harmful advice to “consume many small meals every 2 hours throughout the day.” The hunger created by this effect is powerful, as it is a physiological response to maintain normal blood sugar. People who are prone to type 2 diabetes are especially susceptible to this effect.
Grains generate insulin resistance–Repeated rises in blood sugar are accompanied by repeated rises in insulin that leads to insulin resistance in the liver and muscle. The small quantity of wheat germ agglutinin that enters the bloodstream also adds to the effect. Insulin resistance means that there are high blood levels of insulin that cause fat storage, especially fat surrounding abdominal organs—inflammatory visceral fat. This further aggravates insulin resistance, increases insulin levels even more, while also contributing to body-wide inflammation.

It helps to remind ourselves that wheat and related grains are the seeds of grasses added only recently to the human diet after millions of years of not consuming them. Our bodies are therefore unable to digest many grain proteins explaining why, for instance, gliadin yields peptide fragments rather than single amino acids and why wheat germ agglutinin is completely impervious to human digestion.

Rather than getting at the root of the problem—grain consumption—doctors and the pharmaceutical industry try to “treat” every aspect of distorted grain-provoked physiology. They administer drugs like naltexone (Contrave) that block opiates for weight loss. A drug to block leptin, JD5037, is in development for weight loss. And, of course, the drug industry is having a heyday releasing new drugs to reduce blood sugar in diabetics. Big Food adds gasoline to the fire by including wheat and related grains in virtually every processed food from licorice, to instant soup mixes, to salad dressings, to frozen dinners because wheat/grain consumption = hunger and more food sales.

The solution is therefore painfully simple: Eat no wheat or grains and thereby be freed from gliadin-derived opioid peptide appetite stimulation, leptin blockade, hyper/hypoglycemia, and insulin resistance. You will no longer be incessantly hungry and eat only what you require for sustenance without applying restraint or willpower. You won’t get your money’s worth at the all-you-can-eat-buffet, but you will be freed from the weight gain and health problems associated with consuming “healthy whole grains.”

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A fire, thick socks, and prebiotics to keep you warm

Here’s an interesting speculation: The microbes in bowel flora are metabolically active, generating heat. There are so many microbes inhabiting the human intestine that it is estimated that up to 70% of human heat (at rest) is generated by bowel flora.

In support of this argument, antibiotics have been found to reduce body temperature. Animals raised to have sterile intestines free of microorganisms also have lower body temperature. The pound or so of human bowel flora is therefore a virtual heat factory.

We know that feelings of being cold can be produced by common health conditions such as iodine deficiency, hypothyroidism, and anemia. Prescription drugs that relax (“vasodilate” ) blood vessels or block adrenaline can also yield feelings of cold (e.g., blood pressure drugs like ACE inhibitors and ARBs, beta blockers like metoprolol).

But should we add dysbiosis, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and prebiotic fiber deficiency to the list of factors that yield feelings of being cold? I think we should. In particular, nourishing bowel flora with prebiotic fibers is likely to be a useful heat-generating strategy, one that may provide improved tolerance to cold, less feelings of being cold.

Could this phenomenon explain why we often feel cold during an extended fasting period? Anyone who has fasted more than 24 hours is familiar with this effect that can be quite bothersome. Not eating means you take in no calories or nutrients, but it also means that intestinal microbes are also starved with resultant drops in bacterial counts and conversion to sporulating (spore-forming) hibernation mode. To prevent unpleasant feelings of cold during fasting, should we supplement prebiotic fibers, e.g., inulin/FOS powder, during a fast to preserve microbial survival and metabolism, while keeping us warm? That’s an interesting experiment we can conduct on our own.

Some other questions are raised by recognizing that bowel flora is part of human heat production:

Can alterations in bowel flora composition and/or prebiotic fiber intake/composition account for better cold tolerance of some populations, e.g., Inuit living in circumpolar environments? Is there a specific probiotic species or prebiotic fiber(s) that we could supplement to improve cold tolerance?
Does an increasing prevalence of dysbiosis account for the higher prevalence of feeling cold as we get older?
Can the presence of cold intolerance (always feeling cold) or heat intolerance (always feeling hot) suggest dysbiosis or other disruptions of bowel flora composition?

Until we have answers to these and other questions, this provides yet another reason to continue to explore the issue of bowel flora and how to best put it to use. In the meantime, the Wheat Belly/Undoctored approach to bowel health remains the most rational way to cultivate healthy intestinal microorganisms and feed them with prebiotic fibers.

Another strategy for increasing the sensation of warmth, as well as reducing insulin resistance, blood sugar, and facilitating weight loss, are to adopt strategies that increase the proportion of brown fat in our bodies—a discussion for another day.

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What Spirits Are Safe?

Spirits are a mixed bag, but you are likely to find at least several that you can enjoy without provoking health problems. Beware of flavored varieties of vodka or rum, as they are loaded with sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup. In general, simple unflavored spirits are safest.

Here’s a short list to help you navigate through your holiday cocktail parties and toasts without exposing yourself to the harmful effects of grains.

Vodkas brewed from nongrain sources, including Chopin (potatoes; outside of North America you will have to ask or examine the bottle for the source as there are also wheat and rye vodkas from Chopin) and Cîroc (grapes), are safe. Recently, many more vodkas are appearing on the market brewed from grapes, quinoa (not a grain), potatoes, and other sources, though not always nationally distributed.

Brandies and cognacs are generally safe since they are distilled from wine. Safe brands include Grand Marnier, Courvoisier, and Rémy Martin. There are exceptions, such as Martell, that add caramel coloring (a potential grain exposure.)

Gins are likewise safe, brewed from juniper and other herbs. However, some gins can be brewed from grains, though grain protein levels are typically negligible and only an issue for those with severe gluten sensitivity.

Rum is distilled from sugarcane and therefore does not contain residues of grain proteins (and the sugar is fermented to alcohol).

Whiskeys and bourbons are, like most beers, distilled from rye, barley, wheat, and corn and thereby potential problem sources. However, given the distillation process, whiskeys typically test below the 20-parts-per-million limit for gluten that the FDA set as the safe threshold for people with celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. Nonetheless, some people still seem to react to whiskeys distilled from grains. It means that many popular whiskeys— such as Jack Daniels (barley, rye, corn), Jameson (barley), and Bushmills (barley)—can potentially cause a gluten (gliadin) reaction. People without extreme sensitivities are likely safe, though, given the very low quantity of grain proteins.

Liqueurs that are safe include Kahlúa (dairy), fruit liqueurs like triple sec and Cherry Kijafa, Disaronno (amaretto-flavored), and Baileys Irish Cream (dairy). The most gluten-sensitive may need to avoid liqueurs blended with whiskey. Also, liqueurs tend to be high in sugar, so small servings are key.

An occasional cocktail is fine when adhering to a grain-free lifestyle. Just remember to be careful what you choose. A poor choice can mean inadvertent re-exposure to grains/grain by-products and excessive amounts of sugar. This could cause an autoimmune condition to reignite, provoke a spike in blood sugar, trigger a series of gastrointestinal issues, or last but not least regaining undesired pounds. The reward for choosing wisely can be a wonderful time spent with family and friends without such problems. Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention that any amount of alcohol can stall weight loss.

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Go ahead and enjoy a glass of wine.

Having a glass or two of wine, brandy, or a cocktail is perfectly acceptable in the grain-free lifestyle, but you will have to be selective.

The price of a poor choice can be reigniting an autoimmune condition, provoking high blood sugar, triggering an inappropriate emotional outburst that ruins your evening, or regaining those undesired pounds. The reward for choosing wisely can be a wonderful time spent with friends without such problems. Also, do recognize that any amount of wine, cocktails, or beer can stall weight loss.

Navigating alcoholic beverages can be hazardous, as many are brewed from grains. But wine stands out as the safest choice in alcoholic beverages by a wide margin.

Wine is as close to a perfect wheat- , grain-, and gluten-free beverage as it gets, regardless of varietal or vintage. If you consider the probable health effects that can be derived from light wine drinking (no more than two 4-ounce glasses per day), wine is proving to be both pleasurable and healthy.

The vast majority of wines are made without exposure to anything wheat, grain, or gluten. There is one rare exception: Because of a push to get away from animal-derived clarifying agents, such as gelatin derived from cows (due to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease), winemakers have sought non-animal sources of clarifying agents. Clarifying agents are used to make wines clearer and more appealing to the consumer. Clarification removes residual grape skin, seeds, or stem debris; dead yeast cells; and various proteins. Among the most popular clarifying agent choices are bentonite, potassium sorbate, and sodium benzoate. However, some winemakers have lately turned to gluten or deamidated gluten for wine clarification. Thankfully, this remains an uncommon practice. I believe it will become less common as more and more of us raise a stink about grain/gluten exposure in ANY food.

The available scientific data on gluten content in wines in which gluten has been used for clarification suggest that virtually none makes its way to the finished product you pour. There are three studies I’m aware of that have examined whether gluten used in the clarification process make their way to the wine itself. Here is one such study.

Obviously, if you consume a rare rogue wine that provokes a gluten response, don’t drink it again, then be sure to tell the winemaker about it. Also, be sure tell us about it on the Wheat Belly Blog, Undoctored Blog or the Official Wheat Belly Facebook page.

The overwhelming majority of wines are wheat-, grain-, and gluten-free safe choices for alcoholic beverages. Whether you choose a chardonnay, pinot grigio, viognier, vinho verde, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, garnacha, malbec, rioja . . . or any of the other wines produced from other varietals and blends you can do so knowing you are safe. More so than any other class of alcoholic beverage, wines are therefore our first choice. So enjoy your holiday toast with family and friends with a glass of wine!

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The Six Worst U.S. Health Disasters of the Last 50 Years

Up until the first half of the twentieth century, large-scale health disasters were mostly due to natural causes (earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, etc.) or infections (e.g., smallpox, influenza epidemics, cholera). But something peculiar happened as we entered the second half of the century: Health disasters due to natural causes became dwarfed by large-scale health disasters that are man-made.

Here’s a list of the Six Worst U.S. Health Disasters of the Last 50 Years, mostly man-made phenomena that have exacted huge tolls: widespread disease, premature death, poorly managed (though nonetheless highly profitable for healthcare insiders–but perhaps that is the rub). This is not to make light of the lesser health disasters over the same time period, ranging from lead poisoning in children, to E. coli contamination of high-volume commercial produce, to proliferation of gun violence. But it highlights the tidal wave of change in the landscape of health disasters. We have gone from being victims of forces beyond our control to forces that are under human influence, even profitable to those “properly” positioned.

 

The Six Worst U.S. Health Disasters of the Last 50 Years

The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans–A joint effort between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) resulted in the first U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980—and the American public has yet to recover from its disastrous campaign of misinformation, some of the blunders due to ignorance, others due to the corrupting influence of industry. The “cut your fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol” and increased reliance on “starches” (grains) began with the guideline’s first version in 1980, gaining fat-cutting, grain-consuming momentum with each subsequent version. The first version was also responsible for propagating the nonsensical notion that “complex” carbohydrates are better than simple sugars.

As the weight of Americans climbed with the release of the guidelines, so did their level of insulin resistance, resulting in a surge in type 2 diabetes after a few year lag of weight gain:

To gauge the scale of this health disaster, just look at the numbers: There are now nearly 40 million Americans with type 2 diabetes that necessitate oral and injectable medications and over the long-term result in amputations, blindness, heart disease, and abbreviate lives by an average of 8 years. Or how about the 200 million Americans who are overweight or obese and thereby suffer excess risk for joint arthritis, Alzheimer’s dementia, cancer, and heart disease, not to mention the psychological toll? Or the nearly 25 million Americans who now have one or more autoimmune conditions, diseases virtually unknown in cultures that do not follow a diet such as ours. The sheer scale of health impairment initiated by the Dietary Guidelines, further amplified by cutthroat profiteering practices of Big Food and Big Pharma, are unprecedented in scale, dwarfing the human toll of any natural disaster.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising permitted by the FDA–Once the FDA opened the door to DTC drug advertising, Big Pharma quickly recognized that it was a license to print money. TV and print media drug ads proliferated. Today, you cannot watch more than few minutes of TV without viewing a barrage of ads for Farxiga, Humira, Enbrel, Harvoni and countless others, many commanding price tags of thousands of dollars per month. Only two countries on earth permit DTC drug ads: the U.S. and New Zealand, the two nations on earth with the world’s highest healthcare costs.

Big Pharma now spends $6 billion per year to run DTC ads. But who pays for these $6 billion in ads? You do, through increased drug prices and increased healthcare insurance premiums, as well as the health toll that the world of imprecise, side-effect-plagued modern drugs can be. Are DTC drug ads, on balance, beneficial or harmful? Surely increased awareness of pharmaceutical agents is beneficial. The problem: the majority of Americans, given disastrous or ineffective health advice from doctors and the drug industry they support, unquestioningly follow their doctor’s advice and are avid consumers of these drugs, even request them. Drug prescriptions beget more drug prescriptions, as the awful side-effects of these drugs often oblige more drugs to deal with side-effects. Public health has become a pharmaceutically-supported disaster, while Big Pharma continues to grow its bottom line. Americans in the 35-49 age group fill 6 prescriptions per year on average, the 50-64 age group fill 13 prescriptions per year, while those in the 65-79 age group fill 20 per year—and the number of prescription drugs consumed per capita is growing.

But the impact of DTC drugs ads doesn’t end there. Big Media—network and cable TV, as well as most print media—is now fearful of antagonizing this cash cow of advertising dollars. Media no longer reports news that might antagonize their number one source of ad dollars. Big Pharma has, in effect, purchased the allegiance of Big Media. DTC drug advertising now means that virtually all mainstream media is now friendly to the drug industry and you cannot obtain objective reporting of the problems with drugs or healthcare, essentially squashing free speech and objective reporting on the enormous, systemic problems in healthcare. The result: We are a pharmaceuticalized society, thanks to Big Pharma, doctors, Big Media, and the FDA, and the problem grows at double-digit rates annually, while there is almost no public conversation about this health disaster.

And much of the “need” for prescription drugs was created by the disaster of U.S. dietary guidelines: one enormous disaster feeding another disaster. The scale of this combined health disaster is staggering. And it is entirely man-made.

The proliferation of medical liability lawsuits–Before you think that I’ve become an apologist for the medical system, hear me out.

For many years, being a physician meant you were—rightly or wrongly—respected, your opinions appreciated. Then medical liability lawsuits began to proliferate, sometimes for legitimate malpractice, other times for trivial reasons, anger, or greed. But one of the inevitable fallouts of this trend was widespread disenchantment among practicing physicians who responded by practicing defensive medicine, ordering diagnostic tests far beyond those truly necessary, specialty consultations that resulted in proliferation of unnecessary procedures, drugs, and complications. More and more, doctors came to view medicine no longer as a calling or duty, but as a business, something to exploit for personal profit. Patients became customers or sources of exploitation, a source of revenue, the sanctity of life and health viewed as vehicles for profit. And, predictably, Big Pharma and the gargantuan medical device industry were more than willing to ride and service this trend. The U.S. market for Big Pharma alone, given the complicity of the medical community who no longer dispense advice to support health but to support revenues, now approaches half -a-trillion dollars annually—money out of your pocket, with your friends, family, and relatives the unwitting recipients of this lawsuit-happy juggernaut.

The explosion of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD)–This neurodevelopmental disorder now affects nearly 2% of all children, an unprecedented phenomenon, and not just an artifact of better diagnosis, but of actual occurrence. The condition has increased 30% in just the last 5 years.

ASD is almost certainly a multifactorial phenomenon, i.e., a result of numerous environmental, nutritional, and genetic influences. At the current rate, there may be a time in the not-too-distant future when ASD is not the exception, but the rule. Given the explosive trajectory of ASD, it points towards something that we have introduced, as opposed to something that is purely genetic. It might be components of diet, it could be dysbiosis given modern chemical exposures, it might be a dozen or more factors, all conspiring to impair neurological development. But make no mistake: ASD is a modern health disaster, a development unprecedented in human history, yet another creation of humans.

Drug addiction–Drug addiction has been in the news lately because of the modern opioid addiction crisis that is resulting in an unprecedented surge in overdose deaths:

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that there are now 90 deaths per day from opioid overdose alone. Yes, once again a man-made health disaster, created and worsened by loose prescribing practices and the drug industry’s insistence that opioids are not addicting.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)–Yes, there is a non-man-made disease in this list of large-scale health disasters. Worldwide, AIDS has reached pandemic proportions, responsible for nearly one million deaths in the U.S. since the early 1980s.

I remember the first few cases of AIDS I witnessed during my internal medicine training in the mid-1980s. Desperately ill young men were being hospitalized at my university hospital and we would recover fungi and other soil organisms from their blood and lungs, reflecting the profoundly impaired immunity of this viral illness. In those days, no one survived. The AIDS situation has improved substantially over the subsequent 40 years with the development of antivirals (and, yes, a testimony to the effectiveness of conventional medical methods in infectious illnesses), though it remains a serious diagnosis.

 

Surely there are other health disasters in our future. Just witness the destruction of hurricane Irma a few months ago. If such climate extremes are indeed due to global climate change, there is a very limited contribution we can make as individuals. But, when it comes to health disasters that are purely man-made, products of misinformation, misinterpretation, and ulterior motive, we can indeed exert substantial personal control. Unlike a hurricane or earthquake, such man-made health disasters are something you can stay clear of with a little knowledge. By examining the landscape of enormous human health disasters, you can discern patterns here: So much of modern disease is not due to bad luck or bad genes, but to bad advice and bad policy. It means that programs such as the USDA My Plate is destructive and harmful, it means that DTC drug advertising ensures that you no longer hear the real stories behind healthcare problems. But it also means that YOU are the arbiter of how you conduct your own personal campaign of health.

Bottom line: Take back personal control over health by ignoring most of the health advice delivered by government agencies and others in the business of profiting from your health struggles.

 

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