Wheat Belly - William MD Davis

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peculiar effects of wheat on humans include appetite stimulation, exposure to brain-active exorphins (the counterpart of internally derived endorphins), exaggerated blood sugar surges that trigger cycles of satiety alternating with heightened appetite, the process of glycation that underlies disease and ageing, inflammatory and pH effects that erode cartilage and damage bone, and activation of disordered immune responses. A complex range of diseases results from consumption of wheat, from coeliac disease – the devastating intestinal disease that develops from exposure to wheat gluten – to an assortment of neurological disorders, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, curious rashes and the paralysing delusions of schizophrenia.

      If this thing called wheat is such a problem, then removing it should yield outsize and unexpected benefits. Indeed, that is the case. As a cardiologist who sees and treats thousands of patients at risk for heart disease, diabetes and the myriad destructive effects of obesity, I have personally observed protuberant, flop-over-the-belt belly fat vanish when my patients eliminated wheat from their diets, with typical weight loss totalling 1½, 2 or 3½ stone just within the first few months. Rapid and effortless weight loss is usually followed by health benefits that continue to amaze me even today after having witnessed this phenomenon thousands of times.

      I’ve seen dramatic turnarounds in health, such as the thirty-eight-year-old woman with ulcerative colitis facing colon removal who was cured with wheat elimination – colon intact. Or the twenty-six-year-old man, incapacitated and barely able to walk because of joint pain, who experienced complete relief and walked and ran freely again after taking wheat off the menu.

      Extraordinary as these results may sound, there is ample scientific research to implicate wheat as the root cause of these conditions – and to indicate that removal of wheat can reduce or relieve symptoms entirely. You will see that we have unwittingly traded convenience, abundance and low cost for health, with wheat bellies, bulging thighs and double chins to prove it. Many of the arguments I make in the chapters that follow have been proven in scientific studies that are available for one and all to review. Incredibly, many of the lessons I’ve learnt were demonstrated in clinical studies decades ago, but somehow never percolated to the surface of medical or public consciousness. I’ve simply put two and two together to come up with some conclusions that you may find startling.

      IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

      In the film Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon’s character, possessing uncommon genius but harbouring demons of past abuse, breaks down in sobs when psychologist Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) repeats ‘It’s not your fault’ over and over again.

      Likewise, too many of us, stricken with an unsightly wheat belly, blame ourselves: too many calories, too little exercise, too little restraint. But it’s more accurate to say that the advice we’ve been given to eat more ‘healthy whole grains’ has deprived us of control over appetites and impulses, making us fat and unhealthy despite our best efforts and good intentions.

      I liken the widely accepted advice to eat healthy whole grains to telling an alcoholic that, if a drink or two won’t hurt, nine or ten may be even better. Taking this advice has disastrous repercussions on health.

      It’s not your fault.

      If you find yourself carrying around a protuberant, uncomfortable wheat belly; unsuccessfully trying to squeeze into last year’s jeans; reassuring your doctor that, no, you haven’t been eating badly, but you’re still overweight and pre-diabetic with high blood pressure and cholesterol; or desperately trying to conceal a pair of humiliating man breasts, consider saying goodbye to wheat.

      Eliminate the wheat, eliminate the problem.

      What have you got to lose except your wheat belly, your man breasts or your bagel butt?

      

       CHAPTER 1

       WHAT BELLY?

      The scientific physician welcomes the establishment of a standard loaf of bread made according to the best scientific evidence. . . . Such a product can be included in diets both for the sick and for the well with a clear understanding of the effect that it may have on digestion and growth.

      Morris Fishbein, MD,

      editor, Journal of the American Medical Association, 1932

      IN CENTURIES PAST, a prominent belly was the domain of the privileged, a mark of wealth and success, a symbol of not having to clean your own stables or plough your own field. In this century, you don’t have to plough your own field. Today, obesity has been democratised: everybody can have a big belly. Your dad called his rudimentary mid-twentieth-century equivalent a beer belly. But what are mums, kids and half of your friends and neighbours who don’t drink beer doing with a beer belly?

      I call it wheat belly, though I could have just as easily called this condition pretzel brain or bagel bowel or biscuit face since there’s not an organ system unaffected by wheat. But wheat’s impact on the waistline is its most visible and defining characteristic, an outward expression of the grotesque distortions humans experience with consumption of this grain.

      A wheat belly represents the accumulation of fat that results from years of consuming foods that trigger insulin, the hormone of fat storage. While some people store fat in their buttocks and thighs, most people collect ungainly fat around the middle. This ‘central’ or ‘visceral’ fat is unique. Unlike fat in other body areas, it provokes inflammatory phenomena, distorts insulin responses and issues abnormal metabolic signals to the rest of the body. In the unwitting wheat-bellied male, visceral fat also produces oestrogen, creating ‘man breasts’.

      The consequences of wheat consumption, however, are not just manifested on the body’s surface; wheat can also reach deep down into virtually every organ of the body, from the intestines, liver, heart and thyroid gland all the way up to the brain. In fact, there’s hardly an organ that is not affected by wheat in some potentially damaging way.

      PANTING AND SWEATING IN THE HEARTLAND

      I practise preventive cardiology in Milwaukee. Like many other midwestern cities, Milwaukee is a good place to live and raise a family. City services work pretty well, the libraries are first-rate, my kids go to high-quality state schools and the population is just large enough to enjoy big-city culture, such as an excellent symphony and art museum. The people living here are a fairly friendly bunch. But . . . they’re fat.

      I don’t mean a little bit fat. I mean really, really fat. I mean panting-and-sweating-after-one-flight-of-stairs fat. I mean 17-stone 18-year-old women, 4x4s tipped sharply to the driver’s side, double-wide wheelchairs, hospital equipment unable to accommodate patients who tip the scales at 25 stone or more. (Not only can’t they fit into the CT scanner or other imaging device, you wouldn’t be able to see anything even if they could. It’s like trying to determine whether the image in the murky ocean water is a flounder or a shark.)

      Once upon a time, an individual weighing 17 stone or more was a rarity; today it’s a common sight among the men and women walking the streets, as humdrum as selling jeans at Gap. Retired people are overweight or obese, as are middle-aged adults, young adults, teenagers, even children. White-collar workers are fat, blue-collar workers are fat. The sedentary are fat and so are athletes. White people are fat, black people are fat, Hispanics are fat, Asians are fat. Carnivores are fat, vegetarians are fat. Americans are plagued by obesity on a scale never before seen in the human experience. No demographic has escaped the weight gain crisis.

      Ask the USDA or the Surgeon General’s office and they will tell you that Americans are fat because they drink too many fizzy drinks, eat too many crisps, drink too much beer, and

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