Obesity advocacy groups hailed the decision as a major victory. AMA Board Member, Dr. Patrice Harris, said, “Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans.” Joseph Nadglowski, president and CEO of the Obesity Action Coalition, a non-profit obesity advocacy group, felt that identifying obesity as a disease may also help in reducing the stigma often associated with being overweight.

It all sounds good, doesn’t it? Let unstigmatize obesity. Let’s not blame the victim. Let’s get these people help when and where they need it.

Step back a second. How and why did this happen?

Well, it’s hard to know how the internal discussions at the AMA went until we get a look at the transcripts. But let’s take a look at the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC). I believe it tells the whole story.

The OAC Board of Directors is filled with bariatric surgeons, such as Drs. Titus Duncan and Lloyd Stegemann, people who make a living from procedures and surgeries like gastric bypass and lap-band. The largest contributors to the OAC? Eisai Pharmaceuticals, maker of BELVIQ, the new drug for weight loss; Ethicon EndoSurgery, makers of laparoscopic operating room supplies; Vivus, Inc., another obesity drug maker; the American Society for Bariatric Surgeons; and Orexigen, developer of the combination drug naltrexone-buproprion for weight loss, now in FDA application stage. (Recall that naltrexone is the opiate blocking drug taken by heroin addicts but now being proposed to be gain approval for weight loss.)

In other words, while it is being cast as something being done for the public good, the motivation is more likely to be . . . money: Bariatric surgeons gain by expanding the market for their procedures to patients who previously did not have insurance coverage for this “non-disease”; operating room supply manufacturers will sell more equipment for the dramatically increased number of surgical procedures; obesity drug manufacturers will have the clout to pressure health insurers to cover the drugs for this new disease.

From the perspective of the Wheat Belly arguments, I see the world something like this: Tell the world to eat more “healthy whole grains,” complete with the gliadin-derived opiates in wheat that stimulate appetite by binding to the opiate receptors of the human brain; we eat more–400 calories per person, per day, 365 days per year, with most of those calories coming from junk carbohydrates like corn chips and soft drinks, the sort that stimulate insulin, the hormone of fat storage; experience repetitive high blood sugars and insulin from the amylopectin A of wheat, the complex carbohydrate in wheat that behaves more like a simple sugar. We gain and gain and gain.

Doctors blame us for gluttony, failure to exercise enough, too many snacks, etc., then thoughts of drugs and surgery start to be entertained.

Treating obesity as a disease allows this condition to be subsumed under the domain of healthcare. After all, “healthcare” is nothing of the kind: It has nothing to do with health. Consistent with much the way healthcare is conducted nowadays, I call the healthcare system “The system to maximize profit from sickness.” And so now it goes with obesity.

To the system, you are worth more obese than slender. You are worth more diabetic than non-diabetic. And you are worth more as a wheat-eater than as a non-wheat eater.

Wheat Belly helped changed the way we think about food when the book first came out in August, 2011. We’ve witnessed and read about unprecedented transformations in health and weight minus all things wheat. We’ve shared recipes to make healthy, problem-free cookies, muffins, and crackers.

But many people asked for the ease and convenience of pre-made products, rather than having to make everything from scratch. This was the motivation for Wheat Free Market Foods.

Their products are now available here: cookies, grainless “granola,” a high-potency sweetener blend (4-fold sweeter than sugar), and wing and hot sauces.

As I have helped this company design their products from the start, I know that they are all consistent with the Wheat Belly message to 1) be wheat-free, 2) use no gluten-free junk carbohydrates (NO cornstarch, rice flour, tapioca starch, or potato starch) 3) limit carbohydrate exposure (2.5 grams “net” carbs, for instance, for each Almond Spice Cookie), and 4) use only “clean” ingredients–no GMO, no unhealthy synthetic preservatives or food coloring. All products are based on recipes in the original Wheat Belly and Wheat Belly Cookbook, applying a similar philosophy and choice of ingredients.

My hope is that these new products (with many more to come, I’m told) will help a lot of people succeed in following their wheat-free lifestyle and expand your choice of healthy foods.

A frequently asked question: Once you eliminate wheat, how fast do the benefits occur?

Well, it depends. It depends on what health issue we are discussing, what organ system, and how far along the process of wheat destruction you were.

Nonetheless, there are a number of common patterns that develop once you decide to eliminate all things wheat in your life:

Gastrointestinal
Acid reflux, bowel urgency–5 days is typical for these conditions to reduce or go away entirely.
Ulcerative colitis, Crohns–These complex inflammatory conditions require weeks to months. (Note that bowel flora is enormously disrupted by these conditions and can slow recovery. So it is VERY helpful to either undergo a bowel flora assessment and/or consider a high-potency probiotic for at least the first several weeks.)

Skin
The myriad rashes caused by wheat vary in their response. Seborrhea and acne generally improve within 5 days, while more complex skin conditions, such as psoriasis, can require weeks to months.

Mood, energy
First you have to get through wheat withdrawal, the 3- to 5-day long withdrawal from the opiates that derive from the digestion of the wheat protein, gliadin. Many of us have to endure several days of nausea, headache, fatigue, and depression first, but then you feel wonderful with better mood and more energy. Likewise, sleep responds similarly, with sleep disrupted at first, only to become deeper and more youthful after the withdrawal process.

Airways, sinuses
5-7 days are generally required to experience reduced airway spasm of asthma and reduced sinus congestion.

Joints
Pain and swelling in the wrist and fingers typically respond in 5 days, while larger joints such as the shoulder, knees, and hips require weeks or months.

Autoimmune conditions
The immune system gone haywire that characterizes autoimmune conditions generally require a longer time period to respond, likely due to the complex inflammatory pathways involved. The joint swelling of rheumatoid arthritis requires weeks to months to respond, not uncommonly with full response by 1-2 years. Other forms of inflammatory autoimmune phenomena, such as the skin rash of lupus and the muscle aches of polymyalgia rheumatica likewise require weeks to months.

Behavioral conditions
The behavioral outbursts and struggles with learning and attention in children with ADHD and autistic spectrum disorder respond within days to weeks. Likewise, the paranoia and auditory hallucinations of schizophrenia, the mania of bipolar illness, the low moods of (“unipolar”) depression, and the food obsessions of bulimia and binge eating disorder tend to respond within days to weeks. (Note that, in
these conditions, the result is not usually cure, but substantial improvement in symptoms. Cure can happen, but it is uncommon.)

Neurological impairment
As with autoimmune conditions, the inflammatory destruction of neurological tissue caused by wheat consumption, resulting in conditions such as cerebellar ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, gluten encephalopathy (dementia), and temporal lobe seizures, requires a longer time period to respond, typically months to years. Neurological tissue is very slow to recover, if it recovers at all. It is not uncommon to wait a year or longer for response.

Weight
Variable, but the typical response involves rapid weight loss of around 15-18 pounds the first month in people who were formerly avid wheat consumers. (It can also vary depending on the status of bowel flora, thyroid status, degree of insulin and leptin resistance present at the start, quantity of carbohydrates remaining in the diet, among others.) It is also not clear why some people lose waist circumference first without a corresponding weight loss–reduction in inflammation in visceral fat?

Blood sugar
Blood sugar will drop immediately upon cessation of wheat consumption . . . unless weight loss develops.

If weight loss develops, it means that there will be a flood of fatty acids into the bloodstream, representing the release of energy from fat stores. These fatty acids block insulin and raise blood sugar and HbA1c (the long-term measure of blood sugar fluctuations) and persists for the entire period while weight loss is ongoing. Once weight loss subsides and weight plateaus, then blood sugar drops over several weeks, followed by a more gradual reduction in HbA1c. So the reduction in blood sugar that develops in diabetics and pre-diabetics depends greatly on the amount of weight that has to be lost.

There are others, but those are the most common experiences. Now, can you name any other food that, when eliminated, yields such extraordinary benefits? Wheat is the only one I know of–because it ain’t wheat!

The key to the unique taste of this version are from the rice vinegar, cucumbers, and eggs. Be sure to slice the cucumbers very thinly or use a mandolin set to a thin slice. While not included here, some cooked crumbled bacon would go perfectly!

Use a healthy mayonnaise. If you cannot find one, I will be posting a recipe for homemade mayonnaise in an upcoming post.

1 large head cauliflower, chopped into ¾-inch pieces
4 hardboiled eggs, halved and sliced
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 cucumber, quartered and thinly-sliced
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Dijon or yellow mustard
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
½ teaspoon dried dill
1 teaspoon dried parsley
½ teaspoon sea salt or to taste

In large saucepan, heat approximately 1-inch water to boiling and add cauliflower; reduce heat to maintain low boil. Alternatively steam cauliflower. Cook until softened, approximately 10 minutes. Strain in colander and transfer to large bowl.

Add eggs, celery, onion, cucumber, mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, dill, parsley, salt and combine thoroughly.

No, actually you don’t.

Cows and other ruminants have specialized apparatus that makes them uniquely adapted to a diet of grasses. They can eat the stuff growing on your front lawn, the “weeds” that grow in the cracks of the sidewalk, the grasses that appear in any piece of land lying fallow, grasses that grow wild in any field or valley. Grasses are members of the family Poaceae, a collection of plants that includes fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, and zoysia grass.

Know what else falls in the grass family Poaceae? The grasses triticum, zea mays, and oryza: wheat, corn, and rice. They, too, are grasses.

When you see a field of grass, do you recognize that as food? Do you salivate when you spy someone’s freshly-mown lawn? Do you get out your fork and knife when you see some grasses growing along the sidewalk?

For the 2.4 million years that Homo species have inhabited the earth, we recognized the flesh and organs of animals, birds and their eggs, fish and shellfish, roots, fruit, the leaves and stems of some plants, mushrooms, nuts, and seeds as food. Like a cheetah, bear, or walrus, we knew instinctively what represented “food.” Around 4000 to 10,000 years ago–just a moment ago in archaeological time–most likely during a time of desperation, e.g., increasing aridity/drought, we saw grasses–ubiquitous, hardy, accessible–and asked, “Can we eat that stuff?” And we did. After all, wild ruminants like goats, yak, gazelle, and giraffes ate them.

When we recognized that grasses in their native form were inedible and made us sick (vomiting, diarrhea), we learned that we could isolate the seeds of grasses, mash and heat them, and they became edible. (Fire, incorporated something like 250,000 years ago, was therefore necessary to allow the seeds of grasses to be edible.)

So we learned that, by processing the seeds of grasses, we could consume them to live another day, even though they were not on our evolutionary menu of items recognized as food. We lived another day . . . only to pay the health price later. The grasses wheat, corn, and rice now comprise 50% of all human calories worldwide.

Your “inner cow”? Moooooo!

In November, 2012, I was approached by The Doctors TV show to work with Chaz Bono.

As of May 2, 2013—-just 5 months into his program—-Chaz has lost an astounding 60 pounds, along with impressive reductions in blood sugar/hemoglobin A1c, blood pressure, and total cholesterol. Read his most recent update on my website here.

Chaz is getting lots of attention for his successful health and weight turnaround. Here’s another recent discussion about his transformation from the Huffington Post. Imagine the torture and frustration that Chaz has been spared by Samantha’s insight. Had he been advised–like millions before him–that he had to cut calories and exercise more, well, he’d likely be 10 pounds lighter, yes, but tired, frustrated, and poised to regain everything. Instead, he did the opposite of what conventional “wisdom” advised and enjoyed a magical health transformation.

Thanks for passing on this wonderful story, Sam! Contact nutritionist Samantha F. Grant through her website.

I have been off wheat since November, 2012, and I can tell you that it was life changing.

All in one week. Thank you Dr. Davis for writing that book. You saved my life, literally.

Tammy is a perfect example of just how bad health–mental and physical–can get with negative markers for celiac disease. This is the fiction that the Wheat Lobby propagates: They claim that wheat is a problem only in the 1% of the population with celiac disease. This is not true.

Beyond the gastrointestinal, joint, and heart effects Tammy experienced with wheat, the most disturbing aspects of her experience were the mind effects, in her case the dark nocturnal thoughts. How many other foods can make someone suicidal?

Wheat is a mind-active drug Just as wheat (specifically the gliadin protein) can cause paranoia in people with schizophrenia, mania in people with bipolar illness, 24-hour-a-day food obsessions in people with binge eating disorder, behavioral outbursts in children with ADHD and autistic spectrum disorder, so wheat can also cause dark, self-destructive, suicidal thoughts. And such profound impulses do not require an entire loaf of bread, as Tammy discovered: just an inadvertent exposure in, say, soy sauce or salad dressing can be enough to re-trigger the whole collection of wheat-induced phenomena, dark thoughts included.

Obviously, there are many other causes and contributing factors in depression and suicide. But how many can be corrected as easily as not eating a pretzel?

I am a 53-year old male who considers himself in good physical condition. However, my weight has been creeping up and up over the past 10 years. I am very active and was a bit concerned about my weight gain; always felt I ate properly and am not a drinker. I exercise regularly and play hockey on a regular basis.

I highly recommend this change of eating to everyone; I am truly amazed at the results.

Peter’s story encapsulates so many of the Wheat Belly arguments that I had to pass it on: freedom from the incessant hunger triggered by wheat, better sleep, relief from eczema, loss of abdominal fat, weight loss. Yes, he experienced the opiate withdrawal from stopping the ingestion of the gliadin protein of wheat, but he survived and lived to talk about it!

This is why I call wheat “the perfect chronic poison” and why elimination of all wheat is the most powerful strategy for regaining control over health and weight I have seen . . . ever!

But you’re hungry, experiencing an intensity of hunger you and I have never felt. This is when instinct kicks in. You WILL find food. It might be found in an insect mound, or a wounded or aged monkey, nuts that you learned could be eaten if you cracked open the hard shell with a rock, the roots of plants dug out by hand or heavy sticks. Hunger drives instinctive behavior, an innate knowledge of what to do, what to eat, in order to survive.

We have lost that connection to instinctive knowledge. Wouldn’t it be great if, upon meeting a dietitian to counsel you on diet, she simply said, “Well, follow your instincts: Then you’ll know what to do!” It doesn’t work that way in a modern world where we are divorced from our internal wisdom.

I have a beautiful little Boston Terrier, Sophie. She is loving, throwing herself on her back in that unique way dogs show submission, hoping for a tummy rub. She was raised her entire life on (grain-free!) kibble that I purchase from the pet store. I never showed her how to hunt or kill. Yet, when I let her out into the backyard, this lovable, submissive creature reverts to a killer carnivore, stalking squirrels, rabbits, and birds. And she’s been successful, tearing the throat of a rabbit, for instance, then consuming the flesh and organs.

Why do animals maintain the instinctive knowledge of what represents “food” while we lose this capacity? How is it that we are so influenced by such non-instinctive factors such as clever marketing, even if the product can be classified as “food” only in a very loose way? Is abundance the driver of this separation? Is it due to the presence of artificial enhancers of appetite that fool us, such as those in wheat flour and cornstarch, or the sugars in sweets?

We have somehow been separated from our own internal natural knowledge–it’s there, to be sure!–of what is food. We spent 2.4 million years since our transition from Australopithecines exercising our internal script in finding food. Between 4000 and 10,000 years ago (differing in the various parts of the world and with different grains) we began to view grasses, plants inedible in their native state, as food: wheat (einkorn and emmer), rices, maize, oats, sorghum, millet, barley, and sugarcane. Until that relatively recent time, Homo had not regarded members of the Poaceae family of plants as something that was consistent with the instinctive notion of food.

Grasses: ubiquitous, hardy, populating virtually every corner of the earth, from tropics to tundra. We learned that, by processing the seeds or other parts of the grass, we could eat these ubiquitous and often non-perishable items and survive another day. It was not part of our evolutionary programming, it was not something immediately evident as food. Grasses were something, like poisonous tiger blowfish or deadly toadstools, that we managed to incorporate into diet through various manipulations.

I have pre-diabetes, and have tried EVERY popular “change your diet” book published in the last 10 years, with little results: I still fought my lifelong sweet-tooth and cravings for carbs. Last September I got an official diagnosis of diabetes (A1C was 8.2% or something), and reluctantly put myself back on a low-carb program–AGAIN. No grains except “healthy whole wheat bread” and some crackers, no fruit. I quickly became depressed, my body was tense and ached. Life was miserable. And my fasting glucose readings were still 160 [mg/dl] or so; far from the 110 I was looking for.

I don’t even MISS the old foods. I feel better than I EVER have in my LIFE. And I’ll NEVER go back to eating wheat. Thanks, Dr. D!

Consumption of modern wheat causes diabetes: pure and simple. Getting rid of modern wheat gets rid of diabetes in the majority of cases (provided you don’t fill the calorie gap with candy and ice cream!).

Why would this be? Why would “healthy whole grains” cause, or at least contribute, to development of type 2 diabetes? There are several reasons:

1) No other food–sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, sugary soft drinks, French fries, etc.–has its very own opiate that stimulates appetite. The gliadin protein, digested down to 5 tetra- and pentapeptide “exorphin” (exogenous morphine-like compounds) units, binds to the opiate receptors of the human brain and stimulates appetite. (Those nice people in the Wheat Lobby argue that other foods, such as dairy products and spinach, also have opiates; this is technically true, but the binding affinity of these compounds is so low–10% or less of the binding affinity of wheat exorphins–that they are not of any practical concern. Don’t fall for this obvious smokescreen.)

The increased appetite of wheat exorphins cause you to consume 400 or more calories per day, every day. Those calories are not from pork chops or salmon; they come carbohydrates almost exclusively–chips, cookies, crackers, pretzels, candy and other goodies, the foods that raise blood sugar.

2) Wheat contains the complex carbohydrate, amylopectin A–Recall that the unique branching structure of wheat’s amylopectin A makes it highly susceptible to digestion by the enzyme, amylase, in saliva and stomach juices, releasing glucose into the bloodstream literally within seconds of ingestion. This explains why two slices of whole wheat bread raise blood sugar higher and faster than 6 teaspoons of table sugar. High blood sugar obliges high blood insulin, over and over and over again in the world of the “healthy whole grain” eater. Over time, this leads to diminished responsiveness to insulin–”insulin resistance”–the foundation of pre-diabetes and diabetes. It also leads to creation of visceral belly fat which, in turn, worsens insulin resistance and inflammation.

3) Repetitive high blood sugars, over and over again, lead to pancreatic glucotoxicity–damage to pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. (Here is a representative discussion of this effect.) Death of pancreatic beta cells is, for all practical purposes, irreversible: When they’re dead, they’re dead and do not regenerate. Foods that raise blood sugar the most cause the most glucotoxicity. What food dominates the modern diet and has among the highest of glycemic indexes? Yup: wheat.

4) A vigorous and unending flow of carbohydrates fuels the process of liver de novo lipogenesis, the conversion of sugar and carbohydrates into fatty acids in the liver. Among the results: plenty of fatty acids and triglycerides in the bloodstream. This causes lipotoxicity, death to pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. So those typical triglyceride levels of 150 mg/dl, 200 mg/dl, 500 mg/dl or higher that persist for extended periods kill off pancreatic beta cells.

5) Leptin resistance–Gain weight, lose the satiating/appetite-limiting effect of the leptin hormone. It means that appetite is not turned off. High leptin levels are also toxic to the pancreas: leptin toxicity.

6) Inflammation–Insulin resistance, visceral fat accumulation: It all adds up to extravagant triggering of complex inflammatory pathways signaled by increased c-reactive protein in the bloodstream, increased interleukins, increased tumor necrosis factor, and many others, as well as increased inflammatory white blood cell content of the fat itself (like pus). The process is made worse by the entry of foreign compounds into the bloodstream and lymph permitted by the gliadin protein. The same gliadin that is broken down into exorphin polypeptides can also remain intact and exert bowel permeability increasing effects via the zonulin pathway described by Dr. Alessio Fasano; this occurs in people with celiac disease and it occurs in people without celiac disease.

7) The lectin of wheat, wheat germ agglutinin, mimics insulin. It stimulates many of the same processes triggered by insulin in fat cells, including reduced oxidation of fatty acids.

8) How about a more speculative, non-quantifiable effect: resorting to wheat products, such as chocolate chip cookies, Oreos, angel food cake, and chocolate eclairs, as “comfort” foods to quell the various emotional and physical aches and pains characteristic of wheat consumption?

That’s a partial list. Yes, a partial list of how wheat causes diabetes.

Increased appetite for sugar and carbohydrates, high blood sugar, high blood insulin, leptin effects, gluco- and lipotoxic pancreatic effects, inflammation, etc. It all adds up to a perfect storm to create type 2 diabetes. So what does our USDA, nice dietitians, and many of my colleagues tell you to do about his? Eat MORE “healthy whole grains.” Not only do they tell us to eat more of it, they tell us that they should dominate the diet. (Thus the largest segments of the USDA Food Pyramid and Plate.)

Is the explosion in diabetes any surprise? This is what the CDC says:

So Janzo is getting a little taste of the incredible power of eating NO “healthy whole grains” to minimize or reverse diabetes. Do you find it a little odd that the most vigorous and long-term financial supporters of the “healthy whole grain” message and the Wheat Lobby and trade groups are . . . diabetes drug manufacturers?