Wheat Belly. William Davis, MD

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СКАЧАТЬ has become the national icon of health: “Eat more healthy whole grains,” we’re told, and the food industry happily jumped on board, creating “heart healthy” versions of all our favorite wheat products chock-full of whole grains.

      The sad truth is that the proliferation of wheat products in the American diet parallels the expansion of our waists. Advice to cut fat and cholesterol intake and replace the calories with whole grains that was issued by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute through its National Cholesterol Education Program in 1985 coincides precisely with the start of a sharp upward climb in body weight for men and women. Ironically, 1985 also marks the year when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began tracking body weight statistics, tidily documenting the explosion in obesity and diabetes that began that very year.

      Of all the grains in the human diet, why pick on wheat? Because wheat, by a considerable margin, is the worst of the bunch, the ringleader of dietary ne’er-do-wells. Unless they’re Euell Gibbons, most people don’t eat much rye, barley, spelt, triticale, bulgur, kamut, or other less common grains; wheat consumption overshadows consumption of most other grains by more than a hundred to one. Wheat also has unique attributes those other grains do not, attributes that make it especially destructive to our health, which I will cover in later chapters. And it’s not just about gluten—modern wheat is an impressive collection of dozens of dietary toxins. Once you come to appreciate just how toxic many of the components of modern wheat truly are, you will be amazed that most people even survive its consumption. While I mostly focus on wheat, the worst offender, I will also discuss how and why other grains that are, after all, genetic cousins, will not be left off the hook, either. Grains—really just seeds of grasses—are also uncommonly promiscuous, readily sharing genes across species. It means that, although wheat is the worst, genetically related grasses like rye, oats, or corn are not blameless.

      The health impact of Triticum aestivum, common bread wheat, and its genetic brethren ranges far and wide, with curious effects from mouth to anus, brain to pancreas, Appalachian housewife to Wall Street arbitrageur. But recognize that this food, blessed by virtually all who provide dietary advice, star of nutritionally bankrupt “healthy whole grains,” lies at the foundation of struggles with weight, visceral fat, and, oh, just a few hundred common health conditions, and you will be on your way to undoing the entire mess.

      If it sounds crazy, bear with me. I make these claims with a clear, wheat-free conscience.

      NUTRI-GROAN

      Like most children of my generation, born in the middle of the twentieth century and reared on Wonder Bread and Devil Dogs, I have had a long and close personal relationship with wheat. My sisters and I were veritable connoisseurs of breakfast cereal, making our own individual blends of Trix, Lucky Charms, and Froot Loops and eagerly drinking the sweet, pastel-hued milk that remained at the bottom of the bowl. The Great American Processed Food Experience didn’t end at breakfast, of course. For school lunch, my mom usually packed peanut butter or bologna sandwiches, the prelude to cellophane-wrapped Ho Hos and Scooter Pies. Sometimes she would throw in a few Oreos or Vienna Fingers, too. For supper, we loved the TV dinners that came packaged in their own foil plates, allowing us to consume our battered chicken, corn muffin, and apple brown betty while watching Get Smart.

      My first year of college, armed with an all-you-can-eat dining room ticket, I gorged on waffles and pancakes for breakfast, fettuccine Alfredo for lunch, pasta with Italian bread for dinner. Poppy seed muffin or angel food cake for dessert? You bet! Not only did I gain a hefty spare tire around the middle at age nineteen (my version of the “freshman fifteen”), I felt exhausted all the time. For the next twenty years, I battled this effect, drinking gallons of coffee, struggling to shake off the pervasive stupor that persisted no matter how many hours I slept each night.

      Yet none of this really registered until I caught sight of a photo my wife snapped of me while on vacation with our kids, then ages ten, eight, and four, on Marco Island, Florida. It was 1999.

      In the picture, I was fast asleep on the sand, my flabby abdomen splayed to either side, my second chin resting on my crossed flabby arms.

      That’s when it really hit me: I didn’t just have a few extra pounds to lose, I had a good 30 pounds of accumulated weight around my middle. What must patients think when I counseled them on diet? I was no better than the doctors of the sixties puffing on Marlboros while advising their patients to live healthier lives.

      Why did I have those extra pounds under my belt? After all, I jogged three to five miles every day, ate a sensible, balanced diet that didn’t include excessive quantities of meats or fats, avoided junk foods and snacks, and instead concentrated on getting plenty of healthy whole grains. What was going on here?

      Sure, I had my suspicions. I couldn’t help but notice that on the days when I’d eat toast, waffles, or bagels for breakfast, I’d stumble through several hours of sleepiness and lethargy. But when I’d eat a three-egg omelet with cheese, I’d feel fine. Some basic laboratory work, though, really stopped me in my tracks. Triglycerides: 350 mg/dl; HDL (“good”) cholesterol: 27 mg/dl, a level that put me at high risk for heart disease. And I was diabetic, with a fasting blood sugar of 161 mg/dl. I was jogging nearly every day, cutting my fat, but I was overweight and diabetic? Something had to be fundamentally wrong with my diet. Of all the changes I had made in my diet in the name of health, cutting fat and boosting my intake of healthy whole grains had been the most significant. Could it be that the grains were actually making me fatter?

      That moment of flabby realization began the start of a journey, following the trail of crumbs back from being overweight and all the health problems that came with it. But it was when I observed even greater effects on a larger scale beyond my own personal experience that I became convinced that there really was something interesting going on, something completely contrary to prevailing dietary opinion.

      LESSONS FROM A WHEAT-FREE EXPERIMENT

      An interesting fact: Whole wheat bread (glycemic index 72) increases blood sugar as much as or more than table sugar, or sucrose (glycemic index 59). (Glucose increases blood sugar to 100, hence a glycemic index of 100. The extent to which a particular food increases blood sugar relative to glucose determines that food’s glycemic index.) So when I was devising a strategy to help my overweight, diabetes-prone patients reduce blood sugar most efficiently, it made sense to me that the quickest and simplest way to get results would be to eliminate the foods that caused their blood sugar to rise most profoundly: in other words, not just sugar, but wheat. I provided a simple handout detailing how to replace wheat-based foods with other foods to create a healthy diet.

      After three months, my patients returned to have more blood work done. As I had anticipated, with only rare exceptions, blood sugar (glucose) had indeed often dropped from diabetic range (126 mg/dl or greater) to normal. Yes, diabetics became non-diabetics. That’s right: Diabetes in most cases can be cured—not simply managed—by removal of carbohydrates, especially wheat, from the diet, with the odds further stacked in your favor by correcting a few common nutrient deficiencies. Many of my patients also lost 20, 30, even 40 pounds, even when I didn’t tell them that they would slim down—yes: weight loss by “accident.”

      But it’s what I didn’t expect that astounded me.

      They reported that symptoms of acid reflux disappeared and the cyclic cramping and diarrhea of irritable bowel syndrome were gone, typically within five days, eliminating the need for mad rushes to the toilet. Energy improved, focus was greater, sleep was deeper. Rashes disappeared, even rashes that had been present for years. Rheumatoid arthritis pain improved or disappeared over several weeks, enabling them to cut back, even eliminate, the nasty medications used to treat it. Joint pains in the hands, wrists, and elbows disappeared within a week. Anxiety, dark moods, even suicidal thoughts miraculously receded. Asthma symptoms improved or resolved СКАЧАТЬ