Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

by William Davis

symptoms of acid reflux disappeared

Multiply these alterations by the tens of thousands of hybridizations to which wheat has been subjected and you have the potential for dramatic shifts in genetically determined traits such as gluten structure. And note that the genetic modifications created by hybridization for the wheat plants themselves were essentially fatal, since the thousands of new wheat breeds were helpless when left to grow in the wild, relying on human assistance for survival.

Of the complex carbohydrate in wheat, 75 percent is the chain of branching glucose units, amylopectin, and 25 percent is the linear chain of glucose units, amylose. In the human gastrointestinal tract, both amylopectin and amylose are digested by the salivary and stomach enzyme amylase. Amylopectin is efficiently digested by amylase to glucose, while amylose is much less efficiently digested, some of it making its way to the colon undigested. Thus, the complex carbohydrate amylopectin is rapidly converted to glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream and, because it is most efficiently digested, is mainly responsible for wheat’s blood-sugar-increasing effect.

Other carbohydrate foods also contain amylopectin, but not the same kind of amylopectin as wheat. The branching structure of amylopectin varies depending on its source.3 Amylopectin from legumes, so-called amylopectin C, is the least digestible—hence the schoolkid’s chant, “Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart, the more you eat ’em, the more you. . . .” Undigested amylopectin makes its way to the colon, whereupon the symbiotic bacteria happily dwelling there feast on the undigested starches and generate gases such as nitrogen and hydrogen, making the sugars unavailable for you to digest. Amylopectin B is the form found in bananas and potatoes and, while more digestible than bean amylopectin C, still resists digestion to some degree. The most digestible form of amylopectin, amylopectin A, is the form found in wheat. Because it is the most digestible, it is the form that most enthusiastically increases blood sugar. This explains why, gram for gram, wheat increases blood sugar to a greater degree than, say, kidney beans or potato chips. The amylopectin A of wheat products, complex or no, might be regarded as a supercarbohydrate, a form of highly digestible carbohydrate that is more efficiently converted to blood sugar than nearly all other carbohydrate foods, simple or complex.

People are usually shocked when I tell them that whole wheat bread increases blood sugar to a higher level than sucrose.4 Aside from some extra fiber, eating two slices of whole wheat bread is really little different, and often worse, than drinking a can of sugar-sweetened soda or eating a sugary candy bar.

The consequences of glucose-insulin-fat deposition are especially visible in the abdomen—resulting in, yes, wheat belly. The bigger your wheat belly, the poorer your response to insulin, since the deep visceral fat of the wheat belly is associated with poor responsiveness, or “resistance,” to insulin, demanding higher and higher insulin levels, a situation that cultivates diabetes.

The bigger your wheat belly, the more inflammatory responses that are triggered: heart disease and cancer.

As it happens, wheat-free, gluten-free diets are also amylopectin A–free.

Beyond celiac disease, though, there are allergic or anaphylactic (a severe reaction resulting in

shock) reactions to nongluten proteins, including a-amylases, thioredoxin, and glycerinaldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, along with about a dozen others.18 Exposure in susceptible individuals triggers asthma, rashes (atopic dermatitis and urticaria), and a curious and dangerous condition called wheat-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis (WDEIA), in which rash, asthma, or anaphylaxis are provoked during exercise. WDEIA

is most commonly associated with wheat (it can also occur with shellfish) and has been attributed to var...

While you knowingly consume coffee and alcohol to obtain specific mind effects, wheat is something you consume for “nutrition,” not for a “fix.”

People who eliminate wheat from their diet typically report improved mood, fewer mood swings, improved ability to concentrate, and deeper sleep within just days to weeks of their last bite of bagel or baked lasagna.

It’s a vicious circle: Abstain from a substance and a distinctly

unpleasant experience ensues; resume it, the unpleasant experience ceases—that sounds a lot like addiction and withdrawal to me.

There have since even been reports of complete remission of the disease, such as the seventy-year-old schizophrenic woman described by Duke University doctors, suffering with delusions, hallucinations, and suicide attempts with sharp objects and cleaning solutions over a period of fifty-three years, who experienced complete relief from psychosis and suicidal desires within eight days of stopping wheat.5

Initial small samples have demonstrated improvement in autistic behaviors with wheat gluten removal.7, 8

But why in the world are schizophrenia, autism, and ADHD exacerbated by wheat? What is in this grain that worsens psychosis and other abnormal behaviors? Investigators at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to find some answers.

Common wheat, upon digestion, yields polypeptides that possess the ability to cross into the brain and bind to opiate receptors. • The action of wheat-derived polypeptides, the so-called exorphins such as gluteomorphin, can be short-circuited with the opiate-blocking drugs naloxone and naltrexone.

When administered to normal people or people with uncontrollable appetite, opiate-blocking drugs yield reductions in appetite, cravings, and calorie intake, as well as dampen mood, and the effect seems particularly specific to wheat-containing products. Wheat, in fact, nearly stands alone as a food with potent central nervous system effects.

wheat is one of the few foods that can alter behavior, induce pleasurable effects, and generate a withdrawal syndrome upon its removal. And it required observations in schizop...

plenty of people who tell me that they follow “official” nutritional guidelines seriously, avoid junk foods and fast foods, exercise an hour every day, all while continuing to gain and gain and gain.

Dietetic Association, or the American Diabetes Association.

Wheat triggers a cycle of insulin-driven satiety and hunger, paralleled by the ups and downs of euphoria and withdrawal, distortions of neurological function, and addictive effects, all leading to fat deposition.

Nutritionists established the fact that wheat increases blood sugar more profoundly than table sugar thirty years ago. As we’ve discussed, the glycemic index, or GI, is the nutritionist’s measure of how much blood sugar levels increase in the 90 to 120 minutes after a food is consumed.

the only other foods that have GIs as high as wheat products are dried, pulverized starches such as cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch. (It is worth noting that these are the very same carbohydrates often used to make “gluten-free” food. More on this later.)

However, celiac experts have observed that, over the past thirty to forty years, newly diagnosed patients with celiac disease are more and more often overweight or obese.

However, many gluten-free foods are made by

replacing wheat flour with cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, or tapioca starch (starch extracted from the root of the cassava plant). This is especially hazardous for anybody looking to drop twenty, thirty, or more pounds, since gluten-free foods, though they do not trigger the immune or neurological response of wheat gluten, still trigger the glucose-insulin response that causes you to gain weight.

Foods made with cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch, and tapioca starch are among the few foods that increase blood su...

In short, don’t replace wheat calories with rapidly absorbed carbohydrates of the sort that trigger insulin and visceral fat deposition.

Celiac disease is the prototype for wheat intolerance, a standard against which we compare all other forms of wheat intolerance. Celiac disease is also on the rise, increasing fourfold over the past fifty years, a fact that, I believe, reflects the changes that wheat itself has undergone.

Nonetheless, celiac disease is a well-kept secret. In the United States, 1 in 133 equates to just over two million people who have celiac disease, yet less

than 10 percent of them know it. One of the reasons 1,800,000 Americans don’t know that they have celiac disease is that it is “The Great Imitator” (an honor previously bestowed on syphilis), expressing itself in so many varied ways. While 50 percent will experience the classic cramping, diarrhea, and weight loss over time, the other half show anemia, migraine headaches, arthritis, neurological symptoms, infertility, short stature

(in children), depression, chronic fatigue, or a variety of other symptoms and disorders that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with celiac disease.6 In others, it may cause no symptoms whatsoever but shows up later in life as neurologic...

Recruits with positive celiac markers were also four times more likely to die, usually from cancer, over the fifty years since providing blood samples.

Other studies showing that celiac disease occurs for the first time in elderly patients back up the imputation that something is affecting the population at any age, not just infant feeding patterns.”

matters worse, the increase in celiac disease has been paralleled by an increase in type 1 diabetes, autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease, and allergies.22 Emerging evidence suggests that the greater exposure to gluten that now occurs with modern wheat may underlie at least part of the explanation for the increased incidence of celiac disease.

HLA DQ2, HLA DQ8. These are not antibodies, but genetic markers for human leukocyte antigens, or HLA, that, if present, make the bearer more likely to develop celiac disease. More than 90 percent of people who have celiac disease diagnosed by intestinal biopsy have either of these two HLA markers, most commonly the DQ2.

A dilemma: Forty percent of the population have one of the HLA markers and/or antibody markers that predispose them to celiac, yet express no symptoms or other evidence of an immune system gone awry.

Conventional wisdom holds that, if one or more antibody tests are abnormal but intestinal biopsy is

negative for celiac, then gluten elimination is not necessary. I believe this is dead wrong, since many of these so-called gluten-sensitive or latent celiac disease sufferers will either develop celiac disease over time, or will develop some other manifestation of celiac disease, such as neurological impairment or rheumatoid arthritis.

So what happens if various obnoxious compounds mistakenly gain entry into the bloodstream? One of the undesirable effects is

autoimmunity—i.e., the body’s immune response is “tricked” into activation and attacks normal organs such as the thyroid gland or joint tissue. This can lead to autoimmune conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and rheumatoid arthritis.

When gliadin triggers zonulin release, intestinal tight junctions are disrupted, and unwanted proteins such as gliadin and other wheat protein fractions gain entry to the bloodstream. Immune-activating lymphocytes, such as T-cells, are then triggered to

begin an inflammatory process against various “self” proteins, thus initiating wheat gluten– and gliadin-initiated conditions such as celiac disease, thyroid disease, joint diseases, and asthma. Gliadin wheat proteins are akin to being able to pick the lock on any door, allowing unwanted intruders to gain entry into places they don’t belong.

Neurological impairment—There are neurological conditions associated with gluten exposure that we will consider in greater detail later in the book. There is a

curiously high incidence (50 percent) of celiac markers among people who develop otherwise unexplained loss of balance and coordination (ataxia) or loss of feeling and muscle control in the legs (peripheral neuropathy).32

The Celiac Society (www.celiacsociety.com) provides a listing and search feature for gluten-free foods, restaurants, and manufacturers. The Celiac Disease Foundation (www.celiac.org) is a good resource for emerging science.

The Celiac Sprue Association (www.csaceliacs.org), the most grassroots effort, is the least commercial.