Wheat Belly. William MD Davis

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      LESSONS FROM A WHEAT-FREE EXPERIMENT

      An interesting fact: whole-wheat bread (glycaemic index 72) increases blood sugar as much as or more than table sugar, or sucrose (glycaemic index 59). (Glucose increases blood sugar to 100, hence a glycaemic index of 100. The extent to which a particular food increases blood sugar relative to glucose determines that food’s glycaemic 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 sugar, but wheat. I provided a simple handout detailing how to replace wheat-based foods with other low-glycaemic whole 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 nondiabetics. That’s right: diabetes in many cases can be cured – not simply managed – by removal of carbohydrates, especially wheat, from the diet. Many of my patients had also lost twenty, thirty, even forty pounds.

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

      They reported that symptoms of acid reflux disappeared and the cyclic cramping and diarrhoea of irritable bowel syndrome were gone. Their energy improved, they had greater focus, sleep was deeper. Rashes disappeared, even rashes that had been present for many years. Their rheumatoid arthritis pain improved or disappeared, enabling them to cut back, even eliminate, the nasty medications used to treat it. Asthma symptoms improved or resolved completely, allowing many to throw away their inhalers. Athletes reported more consistent performance.

      Thinner. More energetic. Clearer thinking. Better bowel, joint and lung health. Time and time again. Surely these results were reason enough to forgo wheat.

      What convinced me further were the many instances in which people removed wheat, then permitted themselves a wheat indulgence: a couple of pretzels, a canapé at a cocktail party. Within minutes, many would experience diarrhoea, joint swelling and pain, or wheezing. On again, off again, the phenomenon would repeat itself.

      What started out as a simple experiment in reducing blood sugars exploded into an insight into multiple health conditions and weight loss that continues to amaze me even today.

      A RADICAL WHEAT-ECTOMY

      For many, the idea of removing wheat from the diet is, at least psychologically, as painful as the thought of having root-canal treatment without anaesthesia. For some, the process can indeed have uncomfortable side effects akin to withdrawal from cigarettes or alcohol. But this procedure must be performed to permit the patient to recover.

      Wheat Belly explores the proposition that the health problems of Americans, from fatigue to arthritis to gastrointestinal distress to obesity, originate with the innocent-looking bran muffin or cinnamon raisin bagel you down with your coffee every morning.

      The good news: there is a cure for this condition called wheat belly – or, if you prefer, pretzel brain, bagel bowel or biscuit face.

      The bottom line: elimination of this food, part of human culture for more centuries than Larry King was on the air, will make you sleeker, smarter, faster and happier. Weight loss, in particular, can proceed at a pace you didn’t think possible. And you can selectively lose the most visible, insulin-opposing, diabetes-creating, inflammation-producing, embarrassment-causing fat: belly fat. It is a process accomplished with virtually no hunger or deprivation, with a wide spectrum of health benefits.

      So why eliminate wheat rather than, say, sugar, or all grains in general? The next chapter will explain why wheat is unique among modern grains in its ability to convert quickly to blood sugar. In addition, it has a poorly understood and understudied genetic makeup and addictive properties that actually cause us to overeat even more; has been linked to literally dozens of debilitating ailments beyond those associated with overweight; and has infiltrated almost every aspect of our diet. Sure, cutting out refined sugar is probably a good idea, as it provides little or no nutritional benefit and will also impact your blood sugar in a negative way. But for the most bang for your buck, eliminating wheat is the easiest and most effective step you can take to safeguard your health and trim your waistline.

       CHAPTER 2

       NOT YOUR GRAN’S MUFFINS: THE CREATION OF MODERN WHEAT

      He is as good as good bread.

      Miguel de Cervantes,

      Don Quixote

      WHEAT, MORE THAN any other foodstuff (including sugar, fat and salt), is woven into the fabric of the Western food experience, a trend that began even before 1950s US TV show Ozzie met Harriet. It has become such a ubiquitous part of our diet in so many ways that it seems essential to our lifestyle. What would a fry-up be without toast, lunch without sarnies, bacon butty without bread, picnics without hot-dog buns, dip without crackers, hummus without pitta, coffee without a croissant, apple pie without the pastry?

      IF IT’S TUESDAY, IT MUST BE WHEAT

      I once measured the length of the bread aisle at my local supermarket: sixty-eight feet.

      That’s sixty-eight feet of white bread, whole-wheat bread, multi-grain bread, seven-grain bread, rye bread, pumpernickel bread, sourdough bread, Italian bread, French bread, bread sticks, white bagels, raisin bagels, cheese bagels, garlic bagels, oat bread, flax bread, pitta bread, dinner rolls, Kaiser rolls, poppy seed rolls, hamburger buns, and fourteen varieties of hot dog buns. That’s not even counting the bakery and the additional forty feet of shelves packed with a variety of ‘artisanal’ wheat products.

      And then there’s the snack aisle with forty-something brands of crackers and twenty-seven brands of pretzels. The baking aisle has bread crumbs and croutons. The dairy case has dozens of those tubes you crack open to bake rolls, Danish pastries and croissants.

      Breakfast cereals fill a world unto themselves, usually enjoying a monopoly over an entire supermarket aisle, top to bottom shelf.

      There’s much of an aisle devoted to boxes and bags of pasta and noodles: spaghetti, lasagna, penne, elbows, shells, whole-wheat pasta, green spinach pasta, orange tomato pasta, egg noodles, tiny-grained couscous to seven-inch-wide lasagne sheets.

      How about frozen foods? The freezer has hundreds of noodle, pasta and wheat-containing side dishes to accompany the meat loaf and roast beef au jus.

      In fact, apart from the detergent and soap aisle, there’s barely a shelf that doesn’t contain wheat products. Can you blame Americans if they’ve allowed wheat to dominate their diets? After all, it’s in practically everything.

      Wheat as a crop has succeeded on an unprecedented scale, exceeded only by corn in acreage of farmland planted. It is, by a long stretch, among the most consumed grains on earth, constituting 20 per cent of all calories consumed.

      And wheat has been an undeniable financial success. How many other ways can a manufacturer transform five pence worth of raw material into £2.50 worth of glitzy, consumer-friendly product, topped off СКАЧАТЬ