William Davis's Blog: Dr. Davis Infinite Health Blog, page 76

The next Wheat Belly Detox CHALLENGE begins Wednesday, November 1st!

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. Now, I have created an easy and accessible 10-Day Detox Program.

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.

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 Tuesday, October 3rd (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.

The post The next Wheat Belly Detox CHALLENGE begins Wednesday, November 1st! appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Chocolate Frozen Yogurt

I took the super-duper thick yogurt that I made with added prebiotic fiber and made a really delicious and rich chocolate frozen yogurt.

Most store-bought yogurt, of course is the outdated and unhealthy low- or non-fat variety, often thickened with emulsifying agents to improve consistency, but damaging the mucous lining of your intestinal tract and encouraging dysbiosis, even if it contains probiotic microorganisms. We can make high-fat yogurt, prolong the fermentation process to further reduce lactose and denature the casein protein, and add a prebiotic fiber such as inulin to increase bacterial counts and increase butyrate content for intestinal and metabolic health. (Recall that butyrate is the microbial metabolite produced by healthy bowel flora microorganisms believed to be responsible for physiologic benefits in humans, such as decreased blood sugar and blood pressure, improved insulin responsiveness, reduced triglycerides, improved mood and reduced depression, deeper sleep, better bowel regularity and reduced risk for colon cancer. Butyrate is also found in large quantities in butter.) The result is a yogurt so rich and thick that it can stand up on a plate.

I therefore used this extra-thick yogurt to make frozen yogurt. The end result was wonderful, the best frozen yogurt I’ve ever had. And, of course, it contained no added sugars and no emulsifiers.

I chose chocolate, but you can easily replace the cocoa powder with berries, other fruit, or add mint or instant coffee for other flavor variations.

The painfully simple recipe below uses 1 cup, so just multiply by the number of cups you want to make.

1 cup Wheat Belly Yogurt

1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tablespoons Virtue Sweetener (or other sweetener equivalent to 1/2 cup sugar)

In bowl, combine yogurt, cocoa powder, and Virtue and mix thoroughly. Allow to set at least 1 hour in freezer.

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Yogurt So Thick It Can Stand Up

I tried something new with making yogurt.

I made the Super-Duper High-Fat Wheat Belly Yogurt starting with organic half-and-half for richer fat content. This generally yields an end-product with great creamy mouthfeel, thicker than most store-bought full-fat yogurt, certainly far thicker, tastier, and more filling than the low- or non-fat garbage that fills most supermarket refrigerators.

Recall that, while dairy products undoubtedly have their problems, the process of lactate fermentation yielding yogurt reduces many of these problems. The lactose sugar is converted to lactic acid, reducing carb content, and potential for lactose intolerance. It also reduces pH (making is mildly acidic) and thereby denatures (breaks down) milk proteins such as casein beta A1 that is potentially immunogenic.

For this little experience, I reasoned that 1) given the presence of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria and other species of probiotic organisms in yogurt that, when residing in the human gut, 2) feed on prebiotic fibers and proliferate and “outmuscle” undesirable species while 3) producing metabolites that yield health benefits (e.g., butyrate that reduces blood pressure, improves insulin sensitivity, reduces blood sugar, has mental/emotional benefits, and nourishes the intestinal lining and protects against colon cancer), what if I added prebiotic fibers to the yogurt mixture prior to fermentation, thereby providing nutrition to the microorganisms? It would conceivably increase bacterial counts, while perhaps also yield microbial metabolites like butyrate, maybe even reduce lactose further, given the presumed invigorated proliferation and metabolism made possible.

On preparing the half-and-half for fermentation, in addition to the live culture-containing couple of tablespoons of yogurt I added to “seed” the mixture, I also added one tablespoon of inulin powder and mixed. I then fermented at around 110 degrees F for 48 hours.

The end-result was interesting: A yogurt so thick that it stood up, as shown in the photograph. It almost had the consistency of whipped butter and was especially thick and creamy. The taste was slightly different, also, a bit tangier, perhaps from greater lactic acid content.

I don’t have a laboratory in my house, else I would have also run bacterial counts and an analysis of species, lactic acid and lactose. Nonetheless, if you are looking for an especially thick yogurt, give this little trick a try.

The post Yogurt So Thick It Can Stand Up appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Yogurt That Can Stand Up

I tried something new with making yogurt.

I made the Super-Duper High-Fat Wheat Belly Yogurt starting with organic half-and-half for richer fat content. This generally yields an end-product with great creamy mouthfeel, thicker than most store-bought full-fat yogurt, certainly far thicker, tastier, and more filling than the low- or non-fat garbage that fills most supermarket refrigerators.

Recall that, while dairy products undoubtedly have their problems, the process of lactate fermentation yielding yogurt reduces many of these problems. The lactose sugar is converted to lactic acid, reducing carb content, and potential for lactose intolerance. It also reduces pH (making is mildly acidic) and thereby denatures (breaks down) milk proteins such as casein beta A1 that is potentially immunogenic.

For this little experience, I reasoned that 1) given the presence of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria and other species of probiotic organisms in yogurt that, when residing in the human gut, 2) feed on prebiotic fibers and proliferate and “outmuscle” undesirable species while 3) producing metabolites that yield health benefits (e.g., butyrate that reduces blood pressure, improves insulin sensitivity, reduces blood sugar, has mental/emotional benefits, and nourishes the intestinal lining and protects against colon cancer), what if I added prebiotic fibers to the yogurt mixture prior to fermentation, thereby providing nutrition to the microorganisms? It would conceivably increase bacterial counts, while perhaps also yield microbial metabolites like butyrate, maybe even reduce lactose further, given the presumed invigorated proliferation and metabolism made possible.

On preparing the half-and-half for fermentation, in addition to the live culture-containing couple of tablespoons of yogurt I added to “seed” the mixture, I also added one tablespoon of inulin powder and mixed. I then fermented at around 110 degrees F for 48 hours.

The end-result was interesting: A yogurt so thick that it stood up, as shown in the photograph. It almost had the consistency of whipped butter and was especially thick and creamy. The taste was slightly different, also, a bit tangier, perhaps from greater lactic acid content.

I don’t have a laboratory in my house, else I would have also run bacterial counts and an analysis of species, lactic acid and lactose. Nonetheless, if you are looking for an especially thick yogurt, give this little trick a try.

The post Yogurt That Can Stand Up appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

The Dietary Lessons of Teeth

We can draw many important lessons on human diet from history. In particular, examination of human teeth provides some of the most important insights we have into what humans should eat, what we should not eat, or at least are poorly adapted to eating.

Prior to around 10,000 years ago, tooth decay was uncommon–despite the lack of fluoridated toothpaste, dental floss, toothbrushes, and dentists. When grains were added to the diet, there was an explosion of tooth decay: 16-49% of all teeth recovered showed decay or abscess formation.

Modern efforts at dental hygiene help subdue the extravagant tooth decay that now occurs because of grain (and sugar) consumption. But in this historical observation an important dietary lesson can be learned: Humans were never meant to consume the seeds of grasses, i.e., “grains.”

 

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The post The Dietary Lessons of Teeth appeared first on Dr. William Davis.

Nima testing at Jimmy John’s

Jimmy John’s has the option of having their sandwiches prepared as “Unwiches” in which they wrap the contents in large lettuce leaves. They’re actually quite tasty (though made with cured lunch meats, another issue).

Problem: If you watch the workers behind the counter preparing the sandwiches, you can see that the work surface is the very same one used to create bread-wrapped sandwiches—cross-contamination is virtually guaranteed. This is clearly an issue for those of you with exceptional gliadin/gluten sensitivities, such as anyone with celiac disease, cerebellar ataxia, or autoimmune conditions.

I am not among the most exceptionally sensitive and can tolerate such low-grade cross-contamination exposures. I have had an occasional Unwich at Jimmy John’s and not had an adverse reaction. And, in their defense, they make no claims that their Unwiches are gluten-free.

Nonetheless, I was curious if an Unwich would test positive on the Nima device. So I ran two samples—one from the lettuce covering, another from pieces of meat and cheese. Surprise: It tested negative.

Now please do not interpret this observation to mean that every Unwich will test negative. It could also be that gluten residues were indeed present but simply not present in the limited samples I tested which were after all, just pieces of the lettuce and interior meat and cheese, but not the entire sandwich. (I know of no way to test the entire sandwich.) But I share this with everyone just to suggest that, unless you have an exceptional gluten sensitivity, these Unwiches can serve as a reasonable and safe choice for those of us who are not exceptionally sensitive to cross-contamination to grain components.

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Fried Curry Shrimp and “Rice”

Cauliflower is a versatile vegetable: mashed, roasted, and riced, here, as part of a flavorful mix of curry and cilantro. You can rice the raw cauliflower yourself or buy it pre-riced (available at Trader Joe’s and other retailers).

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

1 large head cauliflower, cut into florets
1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, or butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
6–8 scallions, chopped
2–3 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, chopped or shredded
4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced
3⁄4 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined, and cooked
2 tablespoons curry powder
2–3 tablespoons chicken broth or water, if needed
1⁄4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Steam the cauliflower for 20 minutes, or until soft.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet over medium-high heat, warm the oil or butter. Cook the onion, scallions, and garlic for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the onion is translucent. Add the carrots, mushrooms, shrimp, and curry powder. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the carrots are softened.

Transfer the steamed cauliflower to a food processor or food chopper and pulse briefly to rice consistency.

Add the riced cauliflower to the shrimp mixture and stir in. If the mixture is too dry, add the broth or water. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle cilantro over top and serve.

Find more recipes like this in Undoctored.

 

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Spicy Pork-Stuffed Peppers

Using riced cauliflower allows you to re-create many rice dishes easily while maintaining a

grain-free, low-carb eating style. While you can rice the cauliflower yourself in a food chopper

or food processor, food retailers such as Trader Joe’s are now selling pre-riced bags for

convenience.

Choose your marinara sauce for low sugar/carbohydrate content, ideally no more than

12 grams net carbs per cup (or prepare it yourself, of course). Also choose the roundest bell

peppers you can find.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, or butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground pork
3–4 cups riced cauliflower
2 cups marinara sauce
1⁄4 cup chopped fresh basil or 1 tablespoon dried
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon red-pepper flakes
Sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
4 green bell peppers, tops cut off, seeded, and membranes removed

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, warm the oil or butter. Cook the onion and garlic

for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the onion is softened.

Add the ground pork and cook, breaking it apart as it cooks, for 8 to 10 minutes, or until no longer pink. Add the cauliflower, marinara sauce, basil, oregano, red-pepper flakes, and salt and black pepper. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, or until the cauliflower is partially softened.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Make a shallow horizontal cut across the bottom of each bell pepper to help them stand upright. When the cauliflower mixture is finished, spoon into each bell pepper. Transfer the stuffed peppers to a shallow baking pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until the peppers are tender.

Find more recipes like this in Undoctored.

 

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Who needs rice when you have cauliflower?

 

 

Cauliflower is a versatile vegetable: raw, cooked, mashed, roasted, or riced. Using riced cauliflower allows you to recreate many rice dishes easily while maintaining a grain-free, low-carb eating style.

Use riced cauliflower as a substitute for all forms of rice without sacrificing taste or texture. While you can rice the cauliflower yourself in a food chopper or food processor, food retailers such as Trader Joe’s are now selling pre-riced bags for convenience. Our replacement for mashed potatoes is mashed cauliflower, a delicious substitute that tastes every bit as good without the excessive carbohydrate load of potatoes.

Cauliflower is a healthy choice. Consumption of cruciferous vegetables, such as Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, kale, and cauliflower, helps detoxify the body. They contain a class of natural compounds called glucosinolates that amplify the activity of liver enzymes that accelerate detoxification reactions, causing chemicals to be harmlessly excreted into the stool and then out of the body. This may account for the reduction in a variety of cancers in people who consume plenty of crucifers.

I cringe when people declare, “I avoid all cruciferous vegetables—such as cauliflower, horseradish, collard greens, radishes, turnips, and cabbage—because they block the thyroid.” Cruciferous vegetables are nutritious, including amping up cancer-protecting properties via chemical detoxification pathways in the liver. Eliminating them is foolhardy and unnecessary—if iodine intake is adequate. Hypothyroidism from eating foods like broccoli and kale is virtually unheard of, though it can occur with consumption of millet (a grain).

So the next time you see a recipe that contains rice, don’t despair, make your own version substituting healthy delicious cauliflower. Get creative… we did!

There are some great recipes in Undoctored to get you started.

 

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So What’s The Problem With Rice?

There is no question that, in this barrel of rotten apples, wheat is the rottenest. But you still may not want to make cider with those other apples. What I call “non-wheat grains,” such as oats, barley, rye, millet, teff, sorghum, corn, and rice, are nonetheless seeds of grasses whose consumption has the potential for harmful effects.

I would classify non-wheat grains as less bad than the worst— modern wheat— but less bad is not necessarily good. (That extraordinarily simple insight— that less bad is not necessarily good— is one that will serve you well over and over as you learn to question conventional nutritional advice. You will realize that much of what we have been told by the dietary community, the food industry, and even government agencies violates this basic principle of logic again and again.) Less bad can mean that a variety of undesirable health effects can still occur with that seed’s consumption— those effects will just not be as bad as those provoked by modern wheat.

It’s true that rice is among the more benign of grains, though it’s far from harmless.

So what’s the problem with rice?

Carbohydrates

As with the seeds of all other grasses, rice shares the potential for excessive glycemic effects. Carbs account for 85 percent of the calories in rice, among the highest of all seeds of grasses. Rice-consuming cultures, for instance, can still experience plenty of diabetes. The carbohydrate in seeds, called amylopectin A, is rapidly digested by humans and raises blood sugar, gram for gram, higher than table sugar does. All non-wheat grasses, without exception, raise blood sugar and provoke glycation to similar degrees, including rice.

Arsenic

Rice is unique among grasses in its natural ability to concentrate inorganic arsenic from soil and water. (We can’t blame agribusiness for this effect.) Rice has a high arsenic content, according to reports confirmed by FDA analyses, though the FDA reassures us that no acute toxicity develops from such exposure. Substantial research, however, has associated chronic arsenic exposure with multiple forms of cancer, as well as cardiovascular and neurological diseases. In Bangladesh, where arsenic exposure is a major public health problem, increasing chronic arsenic exposure, starting at low levels, is associated with premalignant skin lesions, high blood pressure, neurological dysfunction, and increased mortality. This analysis suggests that adverse health effects can manifest with chronic exposure provided by as little as one serving (approximately 1 cup cooked) of rice per day. The FDA had previously established an upper limit for arsenic in apple juice of 10 parts per billion; analyses of rice have found many rice products approaching or exceeding this cutoff. The data that already exist linking low-level exposure of arsenic-contaminated water with increases in many chronic diseases is, in my mind, all the information we need. Makes you shudder to think about the old Rice Diet.

Lectin

Rice shares the same lectin protein as wheat, wheat germ agglutinin. The lectin proteins of grains are, by design, toxins. Lectins discourage creatures, such as molds, fungi, and insects, from eating the seeds of a plant by sickening or killing them. After all, the seed is the means by which plants continue their species. When we consume plants, we consume defensive lectins.

The effects of lectin proteins on humans vary, from harmless to fatal. Most plant lectins are benign, such as those in spinach and white mushrooms, which cause no adverse effects when consumed as a spinach salad. The lectin of castor beans is an entirely different story; its lectin, ricin, is highly toxic and is fatal even in small quantities.

Interesting bit of history: ricin has been used by terrorists around the world. Gyorgy Markov, Bulgarian dissident and critic of the Soviet government, was murdered by KGB agents in 1978 when he was poked with the tip of an umbrella laced with ricin.

More about the lectin in seeds and grains

The lectin of the seed of wheat is wheat germ agglutinin (WGA). It is neither as benign as the lectin of spinach nor as toxic as the lectin of ricin; it is somewhere in between. WGA wreaks ill effects on everyone, regardless of whether you have celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, or no digestive issues at all. The lectins of rye, barley, and rice are structurally identical to WGA and share all of its properties and are also called “WGA.” Interestingly, 21 percent of the amino acid structure of WGA lectins overlaps with ricin, including the active site responsible for shutting down protein synthesis, the site that accounts for ricin’s exceptional toxicity.

When a minute quantity, such as 1 milligram, of WGA is purified and intestinal tissue is exposed to it, intestinal glycoproteins are bound and severe damage that resembles the effects of celiac disease results. We also know that WGA compounds the destructive intestinal effects of celiac disease started by gliadin and other grain prolamin proteins. If you have inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, or Crohn’s disease, lectins intensify the inflammation, making cramps, diarrhea, bleeding, and poor nutrient absorption worse.

WGA is oddly indestructible. It is unaffected by cooking, boiling, baking, or frying. WGA is also untouched by stomach acid. Though the acid produced in the human stomach is powerfully corrosive (dip your finger in a glass full of stomach acid and you won’t have a finger for very long), WGA is impervious to it, entering the stomach and passing through the entire gastrointestinal tract unscathed, undigested, and free to do what it likes to any glycoproteins. All in all, grain lectins are part of a potent collection of inflammatory factors. Indigestible or only partially digestible, they fool receptors and thwart hormonal signals .

GM– it’s simply not what it used to be.

The comforting notion that rice is among the most benign of grains is being challenged, as it has been the recipient of extensive genetic modification. This includes efforts to make it glyphosate resistant and able to express the Bt toxin, posing the same safety questions as for glyphosate-resistant and Bt toxin– containing corn.

Interestingly, one strain of rice— “Golden Rice”, which has been genetically modified to express beta-carotene to alleviate the vitamin A deficiency that plagues rice-consuming societies— has been at the forefront of the biotechnology effort to paint genetic modification as something beautiful to behold and safe for consumption. Agribusiness giant Syngenta has been promoting Golden Rice as an example of what the science of genetic modification can accomplish, despite the vigorous opposition of many farmers who wish to avoid using GM grains. Critics have also accused its promoters of trying to capitalize on a common nutrient deficiency by a more profitable route than, say, just having vitamin A– deficient populations eat an occasional sweet potato, which would match or exceed the benefits provided by Golden Rice. (But you can’t trademark a regular, nutritious sweet potato.) Much of the science purporting to explore the safety of GM crops reads more like marketing than science, with researchers gushing about the safety and nutrition of the crop, herbicide, or pesticide in question, rather than impartially reporting the science. This brings us to the fundamental problem when deep-pocketed influences such as agribusiness or the pharmaceutical industry are involved: How much can we believe when much of the positive “science” is generated by those who stand to benefit from it?

Though at the more benign end of the spectrum as far as seeds of grasses go, enthusiastic consumption of rice in any form (white, brown, or wild) is clearly not a good idea for health. Occasional consumption of small quantities (around ¼ cup) is likely all a healthy human can tolerate before triggering such concerns.

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