Wheat Belly Cookbook: 150 delicious wheat-free recipes for effortless weight loss and optimum health. Dr Davis William

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СКАЧАТЬ sugar drops and haemoglobin A1c (a common measure that reflects the prior 60 to 90 days of blood sugars) plummets.

      Credit the absence of gliadin that stimulates appetite and the amylopectin A that drives blood sugar higher for improvements in diabetic blood sugars. Over time, improvements are compounded by dropping body weight and shrinkage of inflammatory visceral fat. That’s when most pre-diabetics become non-pre-diabetic and many, if not most, diabetics become nondiabetic, or at least experience marked improvements in blood sugar and reduced reliance on diabetes medication.

      Wheat elimination represents the exact opposite of the advice offered by the American Diabetes Association and other purveyors of health advice, who advocate that people with diabetes cut consumption of fat and, yes, eat more ‘healthy whole grains’. I’ve witnessed countless diabetics follow this advice and watched them gain weight, experience increasing blood sugars and HbA1c, resulting in increased need for diabetes drugs, then insulin, not to mention experience leg oedema, hypertension, acid reflux and the myriad other effects of wheat consumption. (And just who profits from such advice? That’s an entire conversation of its own. Suffice it to say that one of the biggest contributors to the American Diabetes Association over the years has been Cadbury Schweppes, the world’s largest sweet and soft drink manufacturer. Diabetes drug manufacturers have been quite generous, too.) It is an exceptionally common progression, one that is predicted to ensnare one in three Americans in the diabetic category in coming years. I have no question in my mind that this blunder constitutes one of the biggest nutritional crimes of the century.

Can I Eat Quinoa? Carb-counting Basics

      It’s a frequent question: Can I eat quinoa, beans, brown rice or sweet potatoes? Or how about amaranth, sorghum and buckwheat? Surely corn on the cob is okay!

      These are, of course, non-wheat carbohydrates. They lack several undesirable ingredients found in wheat, including:

      Gliadin – The protein that degrades to exorphins, the compound from wheat digestion that exerts mind effects and stimulates appetite.

      Gluten – The family of proteins that trigger immune diseases and neurological impairment.

      Amylopectin A – The highly digestible carbohydrate that is no better – worse, in fact – than table sugar.

      Wheat germ agglutinin – The protein that is directly disruptive in the intestines and can generate coeliac-like destructive changes, as well as piggyback foreign substances into the bloodstream.

      So why not eat all the non-wheat grains you want? If they don’t cause appetite stimulation, behavioural outbursts in children, addictive consumption of foods, skin rashes, dementia, etc., why not just eat them willy-nilly?

      Because they still increase blood sugar and insulin.

      Conventional wisdom is that these foods have a lower glycaemic index than, say, table sugar, meaning they raise blood glucose less. That’s true, but misleading. Oats, for instance, with a glycaemic index of 55 compared with table sugar’s 59 to 65, will still send blood sugar through the roof. Likewise, quinoa, with a glycaemic index of 53, will send blood sugar to, say, 150 milligrams/decilitre compared with 158 milligrams/decilitre for table sugar – yeah, sure, it’s better, but it still stinks. And that’s the result in people who don’t have diabetes. It’s worse in people with diabetes and pre-diabetes. You can be wheat free and lose the appetite-stimulating effects of gliadin, but consuming larger servings of oatmeal, quinoa and rice will serve to stall or reverse your weight loss. Because it is gluten free, quinoa in particular has acquired a reputation for being problem free. Not true. Consume 177 grams (6¼ oz) of cooked quinoa containing 34 grams of ‘net’ carbs, for instance, and you will trigger insulin and stall weight loss.

      Of course, John Q. Internist will tell you that, provided your blood sugars after eating don’t exceed 200 milligrams/decilitre, you’ll be okay. What he’s really saying is ‘There’s no need for diabetes medication right now. You will still be exposed to the many adverse health consequences of high blood sugar similar to, though less quickly than, a full diabetic, but that’s not an urgent problem. You’re probably lazy and gluttonous, anyway, and can’t follow a diet programme. We’ll just keep an eye on you until you need medication’.

      In reality, most people can get away with consuming some of these non-wheat grains, provided portion size is limited. Limit portion size and you better manage carbohydrates to ensure that metabolic distortions, such as high blood sugar, glycation (glucose modification of proteins associated with conditions like cataracts, hypertension, heart disease and arthritis), and small LDL particles (the worst LDL particles of all, the bad of the bad), are not triggered.

      These non-wheat carbohydrates, or what I call intermediate carbohydrates (for lack of a better term; low glycaemic index is falsely reassuring), still trigger all the carbohydrate phenomena of table sugar. Is it possible to obtain the fibre, B vitamins and antioxidant benefits of these intermediate carbohydrates without triggering the undesirable carbohydrate consequences?

      Yes, by using small portions. Small portions are tolerated by most people without triggering all these phenomena. Problem: Individual sensitivity varies widely. One person’s perfectly safe portion size is another person’s deadly dose. For instance, I’ve witnessed extreme differences, such as blood sugar 1 hour after eating 175 grams/6 ounces of unsweetened yogurt of 250 milligrams/decilitre in one person, 105 milligrams/decilitre in another. So checking 1-hour blood sugars is a reliable means of assessing individual sensitivity to carbs.

      Many people don’t like the idea of checking blood sugars, however. Or there might be times when it’s inconvenient or unavailable. A useful alternative: Count carbohydrate grams. (Count ‘net’ carbohydrate grams, i.e., total carbohydrates minus fibre grams to yield ‘net’, or ‘effective’, carbs, i.e., the carbs that are actually digested, not just passively passing through like fibre.) Most people can tolerate 14 to 15 ‘net’ grams of carbohydrates per meal and deal with them effectively. Only the most sensitive people, for example, people with diabetes or individuals with an inherited tendency for high triglycerides, are intolerant to even this amount and do better with no more than 10 grams per meal. Then there are the genetically gifted from a carbohydrate perspective: people who can tolerate 20, 40, 50 or more grams at a sitting.

      People will sometimes say things like ‘I eat 200 grams of carbohydrate per day, and I’m normal weight and have perfect fasting blood sugar and lipids’. As in many things, the crude measures made are falsely reassuring. Glycation, for instance, from postprandial blood sugars of ‘only’ 140 milligrams/decilitre – typical after, say, a bowl of organic, stoneground, unsweetened oatmeal in a slender person – still works its unhealthy magic and over the long term will lead to cataracts, arthritis and other conditions.

      Humans were not meant to consume an endless supply of readily digestible carbohydrates. Counting carbohydrates is a great way to ‘tighten up’ a carbohydrate restriction.

      Reject this advice – eat more fat and eat no ‘healthy whole grains’ – and diabetes powerfully recedes. I’ve watched this happen many times.

      However, if you have diabetes, there is the potential for dangerous hypoglycaemia (low blood sugars) when you eliminate all things wheat and are taking diabetes medications. The risks of hypoglycaemia are even greater if you eliminate wheat and restrict other carbohydrates, regardless of the source. In other words, as you become less diabetic and consume fewer foods that raise blood sugar, you may experience low blood sugars, much as a non-diabetic person taking diabetes medication might experience. For this reason, several pre-cautions should be taken (see ‘Caution: If You Have Diabetes СКАЧАТЬ