Wheat Belly #4

WHEAT BELLY

by William Davis M.D.

WHEAT AND ITS HEAD-TO-TOE DESTRUCTION OF HEALTH

Is It Celiac Disease or Not?

A True Story Let me tell you about Wendy.

For more than ten years, Wendy struggled unsuccessfully with ulcerative colitis. A thirty-six-year-old grade school teacher and mother of three, she lived with constant cramping, diarrhea, and frequent bleeding, necessitating occasional blood transfusions. She endured several colonoscopies and required the use of three prescription medications to manage her disease, including the highly toxic methotrexate, a drug also used in cancer treatment and medical abortions.

I met Wendy for an unrelated minor complaint of heart palpitations that proved to be benign, requiring no specific treatment. However, she told me that, because her ulcerative colitis was failing to respond to medications, her gastroenterologist advised colon removal with creation of an ileostomy. This is an artificial orifice for the small intestine (ileum) at the abdominal surface, the sort to which you affix a bag to catch the continually emptying stool.

After hearing Wendy's medical history, I urged her to try wheat elimination. "I really don't know if it's going to work," I told her, "but since you're facing colon removal and ileostomy, I think you should give it a try."

"But why?" she asked. "I've already been tested for celiac and my doctor said I don't have it."

"Yes, I know. But you've got nothing to lose. Try it for four weeks. You'll know if you're responding."

Wendy was skeptical but agreed to try.

She returned to my office three months later, no ileostomy bag in sight. "What happened?" I asked.

"Well, first I lost thirty-eight pounds." She ran her hand over her abdomen to show me. "And my ulcerative colitis is nearly gone. No more cramps or diarrhea. I'm off everything except my Asacol." (Asacol is a derivative of aspirin often used to treat ulcerative colitis.) "I really feel great."

In the year since, Wendy has meticulously avoided wheat and gluten and has also eliminated the Asacol, with no return of symptoms. Cured. Yes, cured. No diarrhea, no bleeding, no cramps, no anemia, no more drugs, no ileostomy.

So if Wendy's colitis tested negative for celiac antibodies, but responded to-indeed, was cured by-wheat gluten elimination, what should we label it? Should we call it antibody-negative celiac disease? Antibody-negative wheat intolerance?

There is great hazard in trying to pigeonhole conditions such as Wendy's into something like celiac disease. It nearly caused her to lose her colon and suffer the lifelong health difficulties associated with colon removal, not to mention the embarrassment and inconvenience of wearing an ileostomy bag.

　

Today diabetes is epidemic, as common as tabloid gossip. In 2009, twenty-four million Americans were diabetic, a number that represents explosive growth compared to just a few years earlier. The number of Americans with diabetes is growing faster than any other disease condition with the exception of obesity (if you call obesity a disease). If you're not diabetic yourself, then you likely have friends who are diabetic, coworkers who are diabetic, neighbors who are diabetic. Given the exceptionally high incidence in the elderly, your parents are (or were) likely to be diabetic.

And diabetes is just the tip of the iceberg. For every diabetic, there are three or four people with prediabetes (encompassing the conditions impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance,

and metabolic syndrome) waiting in the wings. Depending on whose definition you use, an incredible 22 to 39 percent of all US adults have prediabetes.' The combined total of people with diabetes and prediabetes in 2008 was eighty-one million, or one in three adults over eighteen years of age.' That's more than the total number of people, adults and children, diabetic and nondiabetic, living in the entire United States in 1900.

If you also count the people who don't yet meet full criteria for prediabetes but just show high after-meal blood sugars, high triglycerides, small LDL particles, and poor responsiveness to insulin (insulin resistance)-phenomena that can still lead to heart disease, cataracts, kidney disease, and eventually diabetesyou would find few people in the modern age who are not in this group, children included.

This disease is not just about being fat and having to take medications; it leads to serious complications, such as kidney failure (40 percent of all kidney failure is caused by diabetes) and limb amputation (more limb amputations are performed for diabetes than any other nontraumatic disease). We're talking real serious. It's a frightening modern phenomenon, the widespread democratization of a formerly uncommon disease. The widely broadcast advice to put a stop to it? Exercise more, snack less ... and eat more "healthy whole grains."

　

The ADA exerts heavy influence in crafting national attitudes toward nutrition. When someone is diagnosed with diabetes, they are sent to a diabetes educator or nurse who counsels them in the ADA diet principles. If a patient enters the hospital and has diabetes, the doctor orders an "ADA diet." Such dietary "guidelines" can, in effect, be enacted into health "law." I've seen smart diabetes nurses and educators who, coming to understand that carbohydrates cause diabetes, buck ADA advice and counsel patients to curtail carbohydrate consumption. Because such advice flies in the face of ADA guidelines, the medical establishment demonstrates its incredulity by firing these rogue employees. Never underestimate the convictions of the conventional, particularly in medicine.

The list of ADA-recommended foods includes:

* whole grain breads, such as whole wheat or rye ò whole grain, high-fiber cereal

* cooked cereal such as oatmeal, grits, hominy, or cream of wheat

* rice, pasta, tortillas

* cooked beans and peas, such as pinto beans or black-eyed peas ò potatoes, green peas, corn, lima beans, sweet potatoes, winter squash

* low-fat crackers and snack chips, pretzels, and fat-free popcorn

In short, eat wheat, wheat, corn, rice, and wheat.

..........

To be continued in part

YOU NEED TO HAVE THIS BLOCK-BUSTER BOOK "WHEAT BELLY"

IT IS A TRUE EYE OPENER AS TO WHAT THE WESTERN WORLD HAS DONE TO WHEAT AND ALSO OUR GREATLY OVER-EATING OF IT IN ALL KINDS OF FORMS.