Low Cholesterol Leads to an Early Death: Evidence From 101 Scientific Papers
This book is a sequel to Cholesterol and Saturated Fat Prevent Heart Disease: Evidence from 101 Scientific Papers by the same author (and given a Thumbs Up review in Wise Traditions, Summer 2013). Evans provides studies in chronological order showing that the lower your cholesterol, the earlier you die; that high levels of both “good” and “bad” cholesterol help you to live longer; that high cholesterol does not cause cardiovascular disease; that low cholesterol leads to an early death in many diseases; and that low cholesterol leads to an increased prevalence of many diseases.
Some gems from Evans’ book: A 1992 study of over three hundred fifty thousand men, aged thirty-five to fifty-seven, followed for twelve years, found that higher cholesterol levels were associated with lower death rates; a five-year study published in 1989 found that low cholesterol increases the risk of death by at least 340 percent in elderly women; a twenty-year study published in 2001 found that those with the lowest cholesterol levels have a 35 percent increase in death rates compared to those with the highest cholesterol levels; and a 1998 study found that low cholesterol levels are associated with higher rates of many infectious diseases including hepatitis, appendicitis, digestive and liver infections, kidney and urinary tract infections, venereal disease and musculo-skeletal infections. None of these important studies got front-page billing in the media; meanwhile the anti-cholesterol juggernaut rolls on.
This book represents a great compilation of studies we never hear about and is enhanced by an amusing foreword by Tom Naughton, producer of the movie Fat Head. Thumbs up!
================================================================
Read the complete article here.
This book is available here.
Showing posts with label Fat Head. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fat Head. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Low Cholesterol Leads to an Early Death - Evans/Naughton
Book Review: Low Cholesterol Leads to an Early Death Posted by Tom Naughton Oct082012
Back in April I reviewed and recommended Cholesterol and Saturated Fat Prevent Heart Disease – Evidence from 101 Scientific Papers, a book by David Evans, who somehow manages to maintain and constantly update a huge collection of study abstracts and synopses on his Healthy Diets and Science website.
After I posted that review, David asked me if I’d write the foreword for his next book, another collection of 101 studies which suggest that low cholesterol – despite everything we’ve been told – isn’t good for us. I agreed, wrote the forward, then forgot about it until I received a copy of the new book this week. I was actually a bit surprised when I saw Foreword by Tom Naughton in the table of contents. Must be my advancing age.
Anyway, I like Low Cholesterol Leads to an Early Death — Evidence From 101 Scientific Papers for all the same reasons I like the previous one. It’s not a book you’ll sit down and read for pleasure, but it’s an excellent, easy-to-use reference to keep on your bookshelf. I frequently receive emails from readers asking me to point them to research they can wave in front of worried family or friends and say, “See? Saturated fat isn’t going to kill me, and no, I don’t need to take the @#$%ing statin the doctor is pushing on me!” (Or words that effect. ) If 101 studies won’t do the trick, nothing will.
As in the previous book, for each of the 101 studies there’s a title, a citation so you can look up the study yourself, and a brief summary with occasional commentary by Evans. Papers published in medical journals tend to have sleep-inducing titles along the lines of Low-density lipoprotein as a predictor of mortality in a cohort of elderly Scandinavian patients, so Evans provides more colorful titles that get to the point. You’ve got to love opening a book and seeing titles like these:
Heart attack survivors live longer if they have high cholesterol
Low cholesterol levels increase the risk of death from stroke, cancer and all causes
Low cholesterol levels predict death in patients with bacteria in the blood
Colon cancer deaths increase in men with low cholesterol
Many of these studies (and there are many of them) have been around for decades. I doubt most doctors have ever read the studies or even heard of them. If they had, I don’t see how they could possibly believe prescribing statins to beat down an elderly patient’s “high” cholesterol is a good idea. As Evans writes in the book’s introduction:
The “high cholesterol is bad for your health” myth has survived for five or six decades. The myth is why health-care practitioners, media advertisements and family and friends keep pressing home the message we should lower our cholesterol. The myth is why, despite mounting scientific evidence showing the opposite, we are still advised to lower our cholesterol. The myth is why we are told we should eat tasteless, manufactured low-fat products to lower our cholesterol. The myth is why millions of healthy people are subjected to statins drugs (and their many side effects) that will lower our cholesterol.
The myth survives largely because the millions of people buying cholesterol-lowering cereals and swallowing cholesterol-lowering drugs represent billions of dollars in revenues. We can’t change that. But we can arm ourselves with evidence and hope to convince a few loved ones that lowering our cholesterol isn’t necessary or even a good idea.
If you’re arming yourself, this book is a great addition to your arsenal.
=============================================================
Read the complete article here.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Book Review: Don’t Die Early - Rocky Angelucci (Naughton reviewed)
Sep062012
Lying on the gurney in the emergency room, I shielded my eyes from the glaring overhead lights and tried to remember exactly when my heart went wacko. I remember being anxious and out of sorts all evening. Looking back, I realized that during dinner my chest felt fluttery and strange inside, and I recall snapping at my wife, Laura, over nothing as I left the kitchen to go upstairs.
By the time I reached the top of the stairs, I knew something was very wrong— I could barely breathe and when I placed my fingers to the side of my neck, my pulse felt very unusual. Not the rhythmic beating I would have expected, but more like an indistinct, squishy fluttering. Walking into our spare bedroom, I retrieved the pulse meter from the shelf next to the treadmill. I slipped the meter on my finger and looked at the readout. The effort seemed exhausting. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I called for Laura. When she arrived a moment later, I handed her the pulse meter.
The display read 195 beats per minute and I knew my life had just changed forever. The old carefree way of taking care of my body that had worked fine in my youth and young adulthood wasn’t working anymore. I now had to become a conscious advocate of my own health.
That’s the opening from Don’t Die Early, an educational and very well-written book by Rocky Angelucci – who did nearly die early. Finding yourself lying on a gurney should certainly put a scare into you, but unfortunately many people respond to that scare by following their well-meaning doctor’s orders … you know, cut back on the eggs and saturated fats, eat your hearthealthywholegrains, etc.
Rocky didn’t go that route, partly (and I’m delighted to say this) because of Fat Head. As he explained in an email some months ago:
I have been a fan of yours since discovering a snippet of Fat Head on YouTube the evening I returned home from the hospital following a life-changing episode of atrial fibrillation. I was only 45 years old at the time, but had just been rudely awakened by the realization that the carefree lifestyle of my youth had become increasingly harmful. Fat Head’s discussion of insulin resistance and fat storage resonated very well with my pre-med college days studying life sciences and my experiences with the Zone diet and the hormonal implications of foods. Fat Head also catalyzed my growing displeasure at a procedure-driven medical system and gave substance to my vague feeling that politics, not science, has infiltrated medical care.
Because my underlying cardiac problem ultimately turned out to be an alarming plaque burden, my research quickly lead me to Dr. William Davis’ Track Your Plaque forum, where I have been a very active member for the past two years. I became so impressed with Dr. Davis that he has been my cardiologist for the past year. His warmth and prevention-minded attitude makes the journey from Dallas to Wisconsin entirely worthwhile. Thanks to my radical lifestyle changes, most of them flying in the face of conventional wisdom, I’m fortunate to be one of the TYP members who has shown dramatic plaque reversal, recently showing a 24% six-month decrease immediately following a horrific 83% increase the year before.
If I had heart disease, there’s no one in the world I’d rather have treating me than Dr. Davis. Rocky’s in good hands.
His email continued:
Emboldened by a background as a technical writer in the fields of software, nanotechnology, and medical devices, I’ve spent the past year writing a book on preventive health that captures what I’ve learned and applied to my own condition.
I read the book before it was published and again last week, and it’s excellent. When I consider recommending a book (publishers send me books I don’t recommend, by the way), I ask myself two questions: 1) Is the information useful to people who want to lose weight or become healthier? 2) Does it pass my “Aunt Martha” test … that is, could your Aunt Martha read it and understand it?
The answer to both questions in this case is an enthusiastic yes. Rocky has a gift for taking the science of nutrition and health and explaining it clearly, and it’s obvious from the many topics he covers and how well he covers them that he jumped into that science head-first. I learned more from this book than I thought I would, which is always a pleasure.
As the title indicates, Don’t Die Early isn’t about weight loss. It’s about how to live to a ripe old age and remain healthy along the way. Weight loss is covered in a section about dietary fallacies, but Rocky’s goals for the reader are the same goals he set for himself: 1) understand the true causes of heart disease, diabetes and inflammation; 2) learn how to reliably measure and track the instigators or markers of those diseases, such as LDL particle size and A1C; and 3) take specific actions to reverse disease or prevent it from developing in the first place.
That’s what Rocky did, and was rewarded with excellent results:
In the first six months after embracing a preventive lifestyle, I accomplished the following:
The book is divided into two parts. Part One, titled The Major Players, provides in-depth explanations of heart disease, diabetes and inflammation. The message Rocky pounds home in these chapters is that it’s important not only to understand what these diseases actually are and what causes them, but to know specifically what to measure so you can tell if you’re developing them. Sadly (but not surprisingly), the tests your doctor orders often add up to too little, too late:
Imagine having the following conversation with your child’s teacher:
You: How is my daughter doing in school this semester? Is she learning the required material?
Teacher: Based upon her age, and what we infer her socioeconomic status to be, as well as her assertions that she does homework on a regular basis, we believe she has a very high likelihood of having mastered this semester’s materials acceptably.
You: Excuse me? What does this mean? Have you tested her on the material?
Teacher: No, we compared her socioeconomic status, apparent nutritional health, and her testimony that she does her homework regularly to a statistical model we have and there’s a strong correlation between your daughter’s parameters and students who mastered the coursework. Oh, and we measured the callouses on her writing fingers and they indicate that she’s likely doing quite a bit of writing, which our statistical model shows increases by 22% her chances of having mastered the material. Overall, we feel very confident that she has mastered this semester’s material.
You: I don’t understand why you’re comparing her to a statistical model instead of testing her. Do you ever plan on testing her?
Teacher: Only if she shows clear signs of having failed to master the material would we test her. As long as her parameters correlate acceptably to the statistical models of a successful population, we will assume that she is mastering the material.
Does this sound like a school you would like your child to attend? Does estimating your child’s performance by comparing indirect parameters to a statistical model sound like an ideal way to gauge her mastery of the subject matter? It certainly doesn’t to me.
Yet this is how our medical culture typically measures the risk of coronary artery disease during routine preventive exams.
That’s why Rocky didn’t know he was developing plaque in his arteries. He quotes Dr. William Davis, who says that the traditional methods of identifying people at risk for heart disease miss 90 percent of the people who eventually have a heart attack. If you want to know if you’re developing plaque, you should (surprise!) measure plaque.
The standard test for measuring diabetes often misses those who are developing it as well:
Many of the clinical guidelines in use today encourage a physician to use fasting glucose as the sole indicator of one’s diabetic health. Seeing a fasting glucose level within the laboratory “normal” range, both patient and physician are satisfied that the patient is at low risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Now that you know more about how diabetes progresses, you can see that gauging the risk of Type 2 diabetes solely on fasting glucose is terribly ineffective. An abnormal fasting glucose is typically the last commonly used indicator to show the presence of diabetes. In fact, by the time your fasting glucose is no longer in the normal range, you are already diabetic.
Throughout these chapters, Rocky explains which health markers you should be actually measuring and which specific tests you can request from your doctor or order online and perform at home.
Fat Head fans will be familiar with much of material on heart disease and diabetes, including how much of the standard advice from so-called experts is wrong. But even though I’ve read quite a bit on those topics, I kept coming across information in Don’t Die Early that was either new to me or struck me as particularly well-explained. Here are a couple of sample bits:
Perhaps the biggest problem with insulin being a growth hormone is that not all of the tissues in the body become desensitized to increasing levels of insulin at the same rate. As a person becomes more and more insulin-resistant, cells that are much less affected continue to respond to the ever-increasing levels of insulin, growing and multiplying more rapidly as insulin levels increase. What cells exhibit this behavior? The endothelial cells that form the lining of your arteries, for one. As these arterial cells multiply more rapidly, the lining of an insulin-resistant person’s arteries thicken and grow inward, hastening coronary artery disease. This is one of the reasons why so many diabetics die from heart disease.
…
A typical cell membrane is composed of a lipid bilayer, which is just what it sounds like: two layers of fatty acid molecules, sandwiched together to give cell membranes their much-needed strength. This bilayer also forms an effective barrier to foreign substances, through the use of embedded receptors that are designed to transfer only specific things into and out of the cell. The impermeable lipid layers and their receptors serve as gatekeepers to help ensure the health of a cell by transferring only what the cell needs, in the right amounts, into the cell and removing unwanted substances from within the cell. Virtually anything that the cell consumes or produces is transported this way, ensuring that only the proper substances ever reach the interior of the cell.
As with most structures of the body, the cell’s lipid bilayer needs to be constantly maintained, which the body does by constantly replenishing the crucial fatty acids that comprise the cell membranes. What happens if a person eats a trivial amount of healthy omega-3 fatty acids and an abundance of unhealthy omega-6 fatty acid? Simple, the body does its best with what you give it and will use the omega-6 fatty acids instead.
What this means is that in addition to their role in promoting inflammatory chemical messengers, omega-6 fatty acids become incorporated into virtually every cell in your body.
Part two of the book, Lifestyle Changes, includes chapters on dietary truths and fallacies, setting goals, and taking action. Again, the chapter on diet covers ground that’s largely familiar for Fat Heads (Gary Taubes and Dr. William Davis are quoted several times), but it’s well written and worth the read.
In the final two chapters, Rocky urges the reader to do enough testing to establish several baseline measurements (blood sugar, fasting insulin, vitamin D concentration, LDL particle size, etc.), set specific and attainable goals for improving those markers, then work to meet them. If you’ve ever wondered what your fasting insulin level or vitamin D concentration should be (ideally, anyway) this chapter will tell you. Rocky also gives advice on how to improve your odds of meeting each goal. For example, to achieve optimum triglyceride levels:
In summary, the best approach to reducing one’s triglycerides is
You may find yourself biting your tongue every time you see a friend, colleague, or loved one wolf down a low-fat, grain-based meal, laden with vegetable oil, as they complain about having acid reflux or autoimmune disorders.
You may see friends and loved ones struggle with weight problems while they eat low-fat foods that constantly elevate their blood glucose level, ensuring that they live life as the “walking starving,” trying unsuccessfully to lose weight.
Even your more health-conscious friends may not appreciate your one-upping them on matters of health and nutrition. Responding to their enthusiasm for fish oil with “Yes, but do you track your daily intake of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and have you ever checked your Omega-3 Index?” will make you sound like a know-it-all.
It’s painful to realize that some people just don’t want to hear that there’s a better future available to them if they just abandon the current thinking on what’s healthy and what’s not. Many refuse to believe that they could ever get bad advice from a physician or from a “trusted” source like the USDA, the American Dietetic Association, or the American Diabetes Association. In such cases, you may just need to silently watch them continue on their path.
Sadly, that’s true. But for people who are open to trying a new path to health, Don’t Die Early is an excellent guidebook.
==============================================================
Read the full article here.
Book Review: Don’t Die Early
Posted by Tom NaughtonLying on the gurney in the emergency room, I shielded my eyes from the glaring overhead lights and tried to remember exactly when my heart went wacko. I remember being anxious and out of sorts all evening. Looking back, I realized that during dinner my chest felt fluttery and strange inside, and I recall snapping at my wife, Laura, over nothing as I left the kitchen to go upstairs.
By the time I reached the top of the stairs, I knew something was very wrong— I could barely breathe and when I placed my fingers to the side of my neck, my pulse felt very unusual. Not the rhythmic beating I would have expected, but more like an indistinct, squishy fluttering. Walking into our spare bedroom, I retrieved the pulse meter from the shelf next to the treadmill. I slipped the meter on my finger and looked at the readout. The effort seemed exhausting. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I called for Laura. When she arrived a moment later, I handed her the pulse meter.
The display read 195 beats per minute and I knew my life had just changed forever. The old carefree way of taking care of my body that had worked fine in my youth and young adulthood wasn’t working anymore. I now had to become a conscious advocate of my own health.
That’s the opening from Don’t Die Early, an educational and very well-written book by Rocky Angelucci – who did nearly die early. Finding yourself lying on a gurney should certainly put a scare into you, but unfortunately many people respond to that scare by following their well-meaning doctor’s orders … you know, cut back on the eggs and saturated fats, eat your hearthealthywholegrains, etc.
Rocky didn’t go that route, partly (and I’m delighted to say this) because of Fat Head. As he explained in an email some months ago:
I have been a fan of yours since discovering a snippet of Fat Head on YouTube the evening I returned home from the hospital following a life-changing episode of atrial fibrillation. I was only 45 years old at the time, but had just been rudely awakened by the realization that the carefree lifestyle of my youth had become increasingly harmful. Fat Head’s discussion of insulin resistance and fat storage resonated very well with my pre-med college days studying life sciences and my experiences with the Zone diet and the hormonal implications of foods. Fat Head also catalyzed my growing displeasure at a procedure-driven medical system and gave substance to my vague feeling that politics, not science, has infiltrated medical care.
Because my underlying cardiac problem ultimately turned out to be an alarming plaque burden, my research quickly lead me to Dr. William Davis’ Track Your Plaque forum, where I have been a very active member for the past two years. I became so impressed with Dr. Davis that he has been my cardiologist for the past year. His warmth and prevention-minded attitude makes the journey from Dallas to Wisconsin entirely worthwhile. Thanks to my radical lifestyle changes, most of them flying in the face of conventional wisdom, I’m fortunate to be one of the TYP members who has shown dramatic plaque reversal, recently showing a 24% six-month decrease immediately following a horrific 83% increase the year before.
If I had heart disease, there’s no one in the world I’d rather have treating me than Dr. Davis. Rocky’s in good hands.
His email continued:
Emboldened by a background as a technical writer in the fields of software, nanotechnology, and medical devices, I’ve spent the past year writing a book on preventive health that captures what I’ve learned and applied to my own condition.
I read the book before it was published and again last week, and it’s excellent. When I consider recommending a book (publishers send me books I don’t recommend, by the way), I ask myself two questions: 1) Is the information useful to people who want to lose weight or become healthier? 2) Does it pass my “Aunt Martha” test … that is, could your Aunt Martha read it and understand it?
The answer to both questions in this case is an enthusiastic yes. Rocky has a gift for taking the science of nutrition and health and explaining it clearly, and it’s obvious from the many topics he covers and how well he covers them that he jumped into that science head-first. I learned more from this book than I thought I would, which is always a pleasure.
As the title indicates, Don’t Die Early isn’t about weight loss. It’s about how to live to a ripe old age and remain healthy along the way. Weight loss is covered in a section about dietary fallacies, but Rocky’s goals for the reader are the same goals he set for himself: 1) understand the true causes of heart disease, diabetes and inflammation; 2) learn how to reliably measure and track the instigators or markers of those diseases, such as LDL particle size and A1C; and 3) take specific actions to reverse disease or prevent it from developing in the first place.
That’s what Rocky did, and was rewarded with excellent results:
In the first six months after embracing a preventive lifestyle, I accomplished the following:
- Lowered my body fat percentage from 20% to 11%
- Lowered my inflammatory markers by as much as 75% (you’ll learn about inflammation later)
- Reduced my triglycerides by more than 90% (this happened in the first 30 days)
- Improved every measurable aspect of my cholesterol
- Improved my fasting glucose by 25%
- Improved my muscle tone and stamina
- Lowered my blood pressure from an average of 145/90 to an average of 115/70
- Reduced my resting heart rate by more than 13 points
The book is divided into two parts. Part One, titled The Major Players, provides in-depth explanations of heart disease, diabetes and inflammation. The message Rocky pounds home in these chapters is that it’s important not only to understand what these diseases actually are and what causes them, but to know specifically what to measure so you can tell if you’re developing them. Sadly (but not surprisingly), the tests your doctor orders often add up to too little, too late:
Imagine having the following conversation with your child’s teacher:
You: How is my daughter doing in school this semester? Is she learning the required material?
Teacher: Based upon her age, and what we infer her socioeconomic status to be, as well as her assertions that she does homework on a regular basis, we believe she has a very high likelihood of having mastered this semester’s materials acceptably.
You: Excuse me? What does this mean? Have you tested her on the material?
Teacher: No, we compared her socioeconomic status, apparent nutritional health, and her testimony that she does her homework regularly to a statistical model we have and there’s a strong correlation between your daughter’s parameters and students who mastered the coursework. Oh, and we measured the callouses on her writing fingers and they indicate that she’s likely doing quite a bit of writing, which our statistical model shows increases by 22% her chances of having mastered the material. Overall, we feel very confident that she has mastered this semester’s material.
You: I don’t understand why you’re comparing her to a statistical model instead of testing her. Do you ever plan on testing her?
Teacher: Only if she shows clear signs of having failed to master the material would we test her. As long as her parameters correlate acceptably to the statistical models of a successful population, we will assume that she is mastering the material.
Does this sound like a school you would like your child to attend? Does estimating your child’s performance by comparing indirect parameters to a statistical model sound like an ideal way to gauge her mastery of the subject matter? It certainly doesn’t to me.
Yet this is how our medical culture typically measures the risk of coronary artery disease during routine preventive exams.
That’s why Rocky didn’t know he was developing plaque in his arteries. He quotes Dr. William Davis, who says that the traditional methods of identifying people at risk for heart disease miss 90 percent of the people who eventually have a heart attack. If you want to know if you’re developing plaque, you should (surprise!) measure plaque.
The standard test for measuring diabetes often misses those who are developing it as well:
Many of the clinical guidelines in use today encourage a physician to use fasting glucose as the sole indicator of one’s diabetic health. Seeing a fasting glucose level within the laboratory “normal” range, both patient and physician are satisfied that the patient is at low risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Now that you know more about how diabetes progresses, you can see that gauging the risk of Type 2 diabetes solely on fasting glucose is terribly ineffective. An abnormal fasting glucose is typically the last commonly used indicator to show the presence of diabetes. In fact, by the time your fasting glucose is no longer in the normal range, you are already diabetic.
Throughout these chapters, Rocky explains which health markers you should be actually measuring and which specific tests you can request from your doctor or order online and perform at home.
Fat Head fans will be familiar with much of material on heart disease and diabetes, including how much of the standard advice from so-called experts is wrong. But even though I’ve read quite a bit on those topics, I kept coming across information in Don’t Die Early that was either new to me or struck me as particularly well-explained. Here are a couple of sample bits:
Perhaps the biggest problem with insulin being a growth hormone is that not all of the tissues in the body become desensitized to increasing levels of insulin at the same rate. As a person becomes more and more insulin-resistant, cells that are much less affected continue to respond to the ever-increasing levels of insulin, growing and multiplying more rapidly as insulin levels increase. What cells exhibit this behavior? The endothelial cells that form the lining of your arteries, for one. As these arterial cells multiply more rapidly, the lining of an insulin-resistant person’s arteries thicken and grow inward, hastening coronary artery disease. This is one of the reasons why so many diabetics die from heart disease.
…
A typical cell membrane is composed of a lipid bilayer, which is just what it sounds like: two layers of fatty acid molecules, sandwiched together to give cell membranes their much-needed strength. This bilayer also forms an effective barrier to foreign substances, through the use of embedded receptors that are designed to transfer only specific things into and out of the cell. The impermeable lipid layers and their receptors serve as gatekeepers to help ensure the health of a cell by transferring only what the cell needs, in the right amounts, into the cell and removing unwanted substances from within the cell. Virtually anything that the cell consumes or produces is transported this way, ensuring that only the proper substances ever reach the interior of the cell.
As with most structures of the body, the cell’s lipid bilayer needs to be constantly maintained, which the body does by constantly replenishing the crucial fatty acids that comprise the cell membranes. What happens if a person eats a trivial amount of healthy omega-3 fatty acids and an abundance of unhealthy omega-6 fatty acid? Simple, the body does its best with what you give it and will use the omega-6 fatty acids instead.
What this means is that in addition to their role in promoting inflammatory chemical messengers, omega-6 fatty acids become incorporated into virtually every cell in your body.
Part two of the book, Lifestyle Changes, includes chapters on dietary truths and fallacies, setting goals, and taking action. Again, the chapter on diet covers ground that’s largely familiar for Fat Heads (Gary Taubes and Dr. William Davis are quoted several times), but it’s well written and worth the read.
In the final two chapters, Rocky urges the reader to do enough testing to establish several baseline measurements (blood sugar, fasting insulin, vitamin D concentration, LDL particle size, etc.), set specific and attainable goals for improving those markers, then work to meet them. If you’ve ever wondered what your fasting insulin level or vitamin D concentration should be (ideally, anyway) this chapter will tell you. Rocky also gives advice on how to improve your odds of meeting each goal. For example, to achieve optimum triglyceride levels:
In summary, the best approach to reducing one’s triglycerides is
- Eliminate grains, replacing them with vegetables, nuts, and berries.
- Minimize carbohydrates (especially fructose), eating them in sufficient moderation so as to never cause unfavorable glucose levels.
- Consider supplementing your diet with omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil.
- Speak to your physician about supplementing with niacin to help optimize your triglycerides.
- All of the above steps will very effectively control your fasting triglycerides. To really take it to the next level, buy a Cardio-Chek triglyceride meter to measure your body’s response to different types of meals to identify exactly how sensitive your body is to specific types and quantities of fats. If you perform a small series of these carefully controlled tests, you’ll have infinitely more clarity on how to optimize your diet for the best possible postprandial triglyceride production (this will be especially valuable in determining whether saturated fat is good for you and at what level).
You may find yourself biting your tongue every time you see a friend, colleague, or loved one wolf down a low-fat, grain-based meal, laden with vegetable oil, as they complain about having acid reflux or autoimmune disorders.
You may see friends and loved ones struggle with weight problems while they eat low-fat foods that constantly elevate their blood glucose level, ensuring that they live life as the “walking starving,” trying unsuccessfully to lose weight.
Even your more health-conscious friends may not appreciate your one-upping them on matters of health and nutrition. Responding to their enthusiasm for fish oil with “Yes, but do you track your daily intake of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and have you ever checked your Omega-3 Index?” will make you sound like a know-it-all.
It’s painful to realize that some people just don’t want to hear that there’s a better future available to them if they just abandon the current thinking on what’s healthy and what’s not. Many refuse to believe that they could ever get bad advice from a physician or from a “trusted” source like the USDA, the American Dietetic Association, or the American Diabetes Association. In such cases, you may just need to silently watch them continue on their path.
Sadly, that’s true. But for people who are open to trying a new path to health, Don’t Die Early is an excellent guidebook.
==============================================================
Read the full article here.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Tom Naughton's talk to Office of Research Integrity
From Dr John Briffa's blog watch this 20 minute presentation by Tom Naughton. Tom hits another bull's Eye! And, "Yes he does mention heart disease!"
Tom says "Doctors, nutritionists, researchers, medical industry trade groups, government agencies and other established authorities handing out dietary advice that flat-out doesn’t work very well for an awful lot of people."
=====================================================================
Dr John Briffa says....
Tom recently gave a 20-minute talk in Washington DC in which he gives a (I think) great summary of the dunderheaded dietary advice given to us by government agencies, health groups and most health professionals. He also highlights the fact that people are increasingly looking for help on-line, and finding it in the form of blogs and within social media. He makes the point that getting information this way can be better and more useful than taking, say, one piece of advice from a so-called ‘expert’ who just so happens to have it all wrong. He’s right.
Tom’s presentation gives us cause for optimism. He seems to be rightly aware that people appear to be turning away from conventional sources of information in their droves, and that people are increasingly looking for genuinely helpful dietary advice in all the right places. If I had 20 minutes to say what I feel is wrong with conventional dietetic advice and where people would be better off looking for useful (and science-based) information and advice, I hope it would come out a lot like Tom’s talk.
=======================================================================
See Tom's own site here.
Tom says "Doctors, nutritionists, researchers, medical industry trade groups, government agencies and other established authorities handing out dietary advice that flat-out doesn’t work very well for an awful lot of people."
=====================================================================
Dr John Briffa says....
Tom recently gave a 20-minute talk in Washington DC in which he gives a (I think) great summary of the dunderheaded dietary advice given to us by government agencies, health groups and most health professionals. He also highlights the fact that people are increasingly looking for help on-line, and finding it in the form of blogs and within social media. He makes the point that getting information this way can be better and more useful than taking, say, one piece of advice from a so-called ‘expert’ who just so happens to have it all wrong. He’s right.
Tom’s presentation gives us cause for optimism. He seems to be rightly aware that people appear to be turning away from conventional sources of information in their droves, and that people are increasingly looking for genuinely helpful dietary advice in all the right places. If I had 20 minutes to say what I feel is wrong with conventional dietetic advice and where people would be better off looking for useful (and science-based) information and advice, I hope it would come out a lot like Tom’s talk.
=======================================================================
See Tom's own site here.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Fat Head interviews Dr. William R. Davis
Interview with ‘Wheat Belly’ Author Dr. William Davis
Posted by Tom Naughton in Good Science, News and Reviews
You all (or y’all, as we say around these parts) submitted so many good questions for Wheat Belly author Dr. William Davis, we decided to make this a two-part Q & A. We’ll probably have part two ready early next week.
Fat Head: You’re a cardiologist by profession, and yet you just wrote an in-depth book about the negative health effects of consuming wheat. How did wheat end up on your radar? What first made you suspect wheat might be behind many of our modern health problems?
Dr. Davis: It started several years ago when I asked patients in my office to consider eliminating all wheat from their diet. I did this because of some very simple logic: If foods made from wheat raise blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods (due to its high-glycemic index), including table sugar, then removing wheat should reduce blood sugar. I was concerned about high blood sugar since around 80% of the people coming to my office had diabetes, pre-diabetes, or what I call “pre-pre-diabetes.” In short, the vast majority of people showed abnormal metabolic markers.
I provided patients with a simple two-page handout on how to do this, i.e., how to eliminate wheat and replace the lost calories with healthy foods like more vegetables, raw nuts, meats, eggs, avocados, olives, olive oil, etc. They’d come back three months later with lower fasting blood sugars, lower hemoglobin A1c (a reflection of the previous 60 days’ blood sugar); some diabetics became non-diabetics, pre-diabetics became non-pre-diabetic. They’d also be around 30 pounds lighter.
Then they began to tell me about other experiences: relief from arthritis and joint pains, chronic rashes disappearing, asthma improved sufficiently to stop inhalers, chronic sinus infections gone, leg swelling gone, migraine headaches gone for the first time in decades, acid reflux and irritable bowel symptoms relieved. At first, I told patients it was just an odd coincidence. But it happened so many times to so many people that it became clear that this was no coincidence; this was a real and reproducible phenomenon.
That’s when I began to systematically remove wheat from everyone’s diet and continued to witness similar turnarounds in health across dozens of conditions. There has been no turning back since.
Fat Head: You cite quite a bit of academic research in your book, but you also cite case histories from your medical practice. So, as a chicken-or-the-egg issue, which came first? Did you start noticing that patients who consumed a lot of wheat had more health problems and then go looking for the research to back up your suspicions, or did you come across research that prompted you to take notice of what your patients were eating?
Dr. Davis: The real-world experience came first. But what surprised me was that there already was an extensive medical literature documenting all of this, but it was largely ignored or didn’t reach mainstream consciousness nor the consciousness of most of my colleagues. And a lot of the documentation comes from the agricultural genetics literature, an area, I can assure you, my colleagues do not study. But I dug into this area of science and talked to people at the USDA and in agriculture departments in universities to gain a full understanding of all the issues.
One of the difficulties that partly explains why much of this information has not previously seen the light of day is that agricultural geneticists work on plants, not humans. There is a broad and pervasive assumption followed by these well-meaning scientists: No matter how extreme the techniques used to alter the genetics of a plant like wheat, it is still just fine for human consumption …no questions asked. I believe that is flat wrong and underlies much of the suffering inflicted on humans consuming this modern product of genetics research still called, misleadingly, “wheat.”
Fat Head: So after pinpointing wheat as a driver of various health problems, you started counseling your patients to eliminate wheat from their diets. What inspired you take the extra step – and it’s a big step – of writing a book?
Dr. Davis: What I witnessed in the thousands of people removing wheat from their diet was nothing short of incredible. When I saw weight loss of 70 pounds in six months, energy and mood surging, reversal of inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis, relief from chronic rashes and arthritis — and the effects were consistent over and over again — I realized that I could not just let this issue pass quietly in my office practice.
Admittedly, the world is going to need more confirmatory data before wheat, or at least the modern genetically-altered version of wheat we are being sold, is removed from the world’s dinner plate. But the data that are already available are more than enough, I believe, to bring this information to the public for people to make the decision themselves. I liken this situation to living in a village where everyone drinks water from the same well. Nine out of 10 people get sick when they drink water from the well; all recover when they stop drinking from it. Drink from the same well, they all get sick again; stop, they get better. With such a consistent and reproducible cause-and-effect relationship, do we need a clinical trial to prove it to us? I don’t.
This is going to be a long, hard battle in the public arena. Wheat comprises 20% of all human calories. It requires a huge infrastructure to grow, harvest, collect seeds, fertilize, herbicide, process, and distribute. This message is going to potentially hurt the livelihoods of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who are part of the infrastructure. It reminds me of the battles that were fought (and still being fought today) when it became widely accepted that smoking cigarettes was bad. When people within the tobacco industry were asked how they could work for a company that destroyed people’s health, they replied, “I had to support my family and pay my mortgage.” The eliminate-all-wheat-in-the-human-diet argument that I make will hurt many people where it counts: right in the pocketbook. But, personally, I am not willing to sacrifice my own health, the health of my family, friends, neighbors, patients, and the nation to allow the incredibly unhealthy status quo to continue.
Fat Head: The more of the book I read, the more I found myself thinking, “Wow, I knew wheat was bad for us, but it’s even worse than I thought.” Did you have the same reaction while researching the book? Were you surprised at how many physical and mental problems wheat can cause?
Dr. Davis: Yes. I knew wheat was bad from the start of this project. And there were times when I wondered if I was missing something, given the unanimous embracing of this grain by agribusiness, farmers, agricultural scientists, the USDA, FDA, American Dietetic Association, etc. But the opposite happened: The deeper I got into it, this thing being sold to us called “wheat” appeared worse … and worse, and worse, the farther I got.
I am mindful of the “For a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” trap we can all fall into, but when you see disease condition after disease condition vanish with elimination of wheat, you can’t help but become convinced that it plays a crucial role in hundreds, literally hundreds, of common conditions.
Fat Head: You described in your book how today’s wheat is the product of energetic cross-breeding. Is cross-breeding inherently bad? Doesn’t cross-breeding take place in nature all the time?
Dr. Davis: Yes, it does. Humans, along with all plants and animals, are the product of cross-breeding or hybridization. Love, sex, and cross-breeding make the world go ‘round and make life interesting. The problem is that these terms are used very loosely by geneticists.
For example, if I subject wheat seeds and embryos to the potent industrial poison sodium azide, I can induce mutations in the plant’s genetic code. First, let me tell you about sodium azide. If ingested, the poison control people at the Centers for Disease Control advise you to not resuscitate the person who ingested it and stopped breathing as a result —just let the victim die—because the rescuer can die, too. And, if the victim vomits, don’t throw the vomit in the sink because it can explode (this has actually happened). So, expose wheat seeds and embryos to sodium azide and you obtain mutations. This is called chemical mutagenesis. Seeds and embryos can also be exposed to gamma irradiation and high-dose x-ray radiation. All of these techniques fall under the umbrella of hybridization or, even more misleading, traditional breeding techniques. I don’t know about you, but cross-breeding among the humans I know doesn’t involve slipping each other chemical poisons or a romantic evening in the cyclotron to induce mutations in our offspring.
These “traditional breeding techniques,” by the way, are markedly more disruptive to the plant’s genetics than genetic engineering. Americans are up in arms about genetically-modified (GMO) foods (i.e., the insertion or deletion of a single gene). The great irony is that genetic engineering is a substantial improvement over “traditional breeding techniques” that have gone on for decades and are still going on.
[Note from Tom: I tried talking my wife into stepping into a cyclotron with me on our honeymoon. She told me to stop drinking the champagne and go to sleep.]
Fat Head: I met you in person over a year ago, and you’re a very lean guy, so I was surprised to learn from the book that you used to carry around your very own wheat belly. Describe the differences between you as a wheat-eater and you now, both in terms of your physique and your health.
Dr. Davis: Thirty pounds ago, while I was still an enthusiastic consumer of “healthy whole grains,” I struggled with constant difficulties in maintaining focus and energy. I relied on pots of coffee or walking and exercise just to battle the constant stuporous haze. My cholesterol values reflected my wheat-consuming habits: HDL 27 mg/dl (very low), triglycerides 350 mg/dl (VERY high), and blood sugars in the diabetic range (161 mg/dl). I had high blood pressure, running values around 150/90. And all my excess weight was around my middle—yes, my very own wheat belly.
Saying goodbye to wheat has helped me shed the weight around the middle; my cholesterol values: HDL 63 mg/dl, triglycerides 50 mg/dl, LDL 70 mg/dl, blood sugar 84 mg/dl, BP 114/74—using no drugs. In other words, everything reversed. Everything reversed including the struggle to maintain attention and focus. I can now concentrate and focus on something for so long that my wife yells for me to stop.
All in all, I feel better today at age 54 than I felt at age 30.
Fat Head: How has learning what you now know about wheat and other grains changed your medical practice?
Dr. Davis: It has catapulted success in helping people regain health into the stratosphere. Among people following this diet, i.e., eliminate wheat and limit other carbohydrates (along with the other heart-healthy strategies I advocate, including omega-3 fatty acid supplementation with fish oil, vitamin D supplementation to achieve a desirable 25-hydroxy vitamin D level of 60-70 ng/ml, iodine supplementation and normalization of thyroid dysfunction), I no longer see heart attacks. The only heart attacks I see are people whom I’ve just met or those who, for one reason or another (usually lack of interest) don’t follow the diet. A priest I take care of, for instance, a wonderful and generous man, couldn’t bring himself to turn down the muffins, pies, and breads his parishioners brought him every day; he had a heart attack despite doing everything else right.
This diet approach, though it seems quirky on the surface, is extremely powerful. What diet, after all, causes substantial weight loss, corrects the causes of heart disease such as small LDL particles, reverses diabetes and pre-diabetes, and improves or cures multiple conditions ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to acid reflux?
Fat Head: You’ve seen hundreds of your own patients become cured of supposedly incurable diseases after giving up wheat. Describe one or two of the most dramatic examples.
Dr. Davis: Two people are on my mind nearly every day, mostly because I am especially gratified about the magnitude of their response and because I shudder to think what their lives would have been like had they not engaged in this diet change.
I describe Wendy’s story in the book, a 36-year mother and schoolteacher who had nearly incapacitating ulcerative colitis; so bad that, despite three medications, she continued to suffer constant cramps, diarrhea, and bleeding sufficient to require blood transfusions. When I met Wendy, she told me that her gastroenterologist and surgeon had scheduled her for colon removal and creation of an ileostomy bag. These would be lifelong changes; she would be consigned to wearing a bag to catch stool at the surface for the rest of her life. I urged her to remove wheat. At first, she objected, since her intestinal biopsies and blood work all failed to suggest celiac disease. But, having seen many amazing things happen with removal of wheat, I suggested that there was nothing to lose. She did it. Three months later, not only had she lost 38 pounds, but all the cramps, diarrhea, and bleeding had stopped. It’s now been two years. She’s off all drugs with no sign of the disease left—colon intact, no ileostomy bag. She is cured.
The second case is Jason, also described in the book, a 26-year old software programmer, in this case incapacitated by joint pains and arthritis. Consultations with three rheumatologists failed to yield a diagnosis; all prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs and pain medication, while Jason continued to hobble around, unable to engage in much more than short walks. Within five days of removing all wheat, Jason was 100% free of joint pains. He told that he found this absolutely ridiculous and refused to believe it. So he had a sandwich: Joint pains rushed right back. He’s now strictly wheat-free and pain-free.
Fat Head: Your patients are lucky – you’d rather change a patient’s diet than write a prescription whenever possible. Unfortunately, you’re in the minority. As I recounted on my blog recently, a co-worker’s wife was finally cured of her pounding headaches when an acquaintance suggested she stop eating grains. She’d been to several doctors who merely prescribed medications. So … why are so few doctors aware of how grains can affect our health?
Dr. Davis: I believe healthcare has detoured towards high-tech, high revenue-producing procedures, medications, and catastrophic care. Too many in healthcare have lost the vision of helping people and fulfilling their mission to heal. While that sounds old-fashioned, I believe it is a bad trend for healthcare to be reduced to a financial transaction bound by legal constraints. It needs to be restored to a relationship of healing.
I believe that many in healthcare have also been disenchanted with the ineffectiveness of dietary advice. Because dietary “wisdom” has been wrong on so many counts over the past 50 years, people have become soured on the ability of nutrition and natural methods to improve health. From what I’ve witnessed, however, nutrition and natural methods have enormous power to heal—if the right methods are applied.
Fat Head: Do you hope your book will educate more doctors on the topic, or is this one of those situations where the public will have to ignore their doctors and educate themselves?
Dr. Davis: Regrettably, many people will read the message in Wheat Belly, experience the life-changing health and weight transformations that can result, then they will then tell their doctors, who will declare their success “coincidence,” “mind over matter,” “placebo effect,” or some other dismissal. Many of my colleagues refuse to recognize the power of diet even when confronted with powerful results. That can only change over a very long time.
Thankfully, more and more of my colleagues are beginning to see the light and not look for the answer in drugs and procedures. These are the healthcare providers that I hope will emerge to assist people as advocates and coaches in conducting an experience like that described in Wheat Belly.
Fat Head: If more doctors were informed of the issues you wrote about in Wheat Belly, do you think they’d change their dietary advice, or is the “fat is bad, grains are good” mentality too ingrained in the profession?
Dr. Davis: There is absolutely no question that the “fat is bad, grains are good” argument will persist in the minds of many of my colleagues for many years. However, I believe if they were to read the arguments laid out logically in Wheat Belly, they would first come to recognize that “wheat” is no longer wheat but an incredibly transformed product of genetics research. Then they would begin to follow the logic and understand that the long menu of problems associated with consumption of modern “wheat” begins to explain why we’ve all been witnessing an explosion in common diseases. That’s when I hope we all hear a collective “Aha!”
Fat Head: You’re a cardiologist by profession, and yet you just wrote an in-depth book about the negative health effects of consuming wheat. How did wheat end up on your radar? What first made you suspect wheat might be behind many of our modern health problems?
Dr. Davis: It started several years ago when I asked patients in my office to consider eliminating all wheat from their diet. I did this because of some very simple logic: If foods made from wheat raise blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods (due to its high-glycemic index), including table sugar, then removing wheat should reduce blood sugar. I was concerned about high blood sugar since around 80% of the people coming to my office had diabetes, pre-diabetes, or what I call “pre-pre-diabetes.” In short, the vast majority of people showed abnormal metabolic markers.
I provided patients with a simple two-page handout on how to do this, i.e., how to eliminate wheat and replace the lost calories with healthy foods like more vegetables, raw nuts, meats, eggs, avocados, olives, olive oil, etc. They’d come back three months later with lower fasting blood sugars, lower hemoglobin A1c (a reflection of the previous 60 days’ blood sugar); some diabetics became non-diabetics, pre-diabetics became non-pre-diabetic. They’d also be around 30 pounds lighter.
Then they began to tell me about other experiences: relief from arthritis and joint pains, chronic rashes disappearing, asthma improved sufficiently to stop inhalers, chronic sinus infections gone, leg swelling gone, migraine headaches gone for the first time in decades, acid reflux and irritable bowel symptoms relieved. At first, I told patients it was just an odd coincidence. But it happened so many times to so many people that it became clear that this was no coincidence; this was a real and reproducible phenomenon.
That’s when I began to systematically remove wheat from everyone’s diet and continued to witness similar turnarounds in health across dozens of conditions. There has been no turning back since.
Fat Head: You cite quite a bit of academic research in your book, but you also cite case histories from your medical practice. So, as a chicken-or-the-egg issue, which came first? Did you start noticing that patients who consumed a lot of wheat had more health problems and then go looking for the research to back up your suspicions, or did you come across research that prompted you to take notice of what your patients were eating?
Dr. Davis: The real-world experience came first. But what surprised me was that there already was an extensive medical literature documenting all of this, but it was largely ignored or didn’t reach mainstream consciousness nor the consciousness of most of my colleagues. And a lot of the documentation comes from the agricultural genetics literature, an area, I can assure you, my colleagues do not study. But I dug into this area of science and talked to people at the USDA and in agriculture departments in universities to gain a full understanding of all the issues.
One of the difficulties that partly explains why much of this information has not previously seen the light of day is that agricultural geneticists work on plants, not humans. There is a broad and pervasive assumption followed by these well-meaning scientists: No matter how extreme the techniques used to alter the genetics of a plant like wheat, it is still just fine for human consumption …no questions asked. I believe that is flat wrong and underlies much of the suffering inflicted on humans consuming this modern product of genetics research still called, misleadingly, “wheat.”
Fat Head: So after pinpointing wheat as a driver of various health problems, you started counseling your patients to eliminate wheat from their diets. What inspired you take the extra step – and it’s a big step – of writing a book?
Dr. Davis: What I witnessed in the thousands of people removing wheat from their diet was nothing short of incredible. When I saw weight loss of 70 pounds in six months, energy and mood surging, reversal of inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis, relief from chronic rashes and arthritis — and the effects were consistent over and over again — I realized that I could not just let this issue pass quietly in my office practice.
Admittedly, the world is going to need more confirmatory data before wheat, or at least the modern genetically-altered version of wheat we are being sold, is removed from the world’s dinner plate. But the data that are already available are more than enough, I believe, to bring this information to the public for people to make the decision themselves. I liken this situation to living in a village where everyone drinks water from the same well. Nine out of 10 people get sick when they drink water from the well; all recover when they stop drinking from it. Drink from the same well, they all get sick again; stop, they get better. With such a consistent and reproducible cause-and-effect relationship, do we need a clinical trial to prove it to us? I don’t.
This is going to be a long, hard battle in the public arena. Wheat comprises 20% of all human calories. It requires a huge infrastructure to grow, harvest, collect seeds, fertilize, herbicide, process, and distribute. This message is going to potentially hurt the livelihoods of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who are part of the infrastructure. It reminds me of the battles that were fought (and still being fought today) when it became widely accepted that smoking cigarettes was bad. When people within the tobacco industry were asked how they could work for a company that destroyed people’s health, they replied, “I had to support my family and pay my mortgage.” The eliminate-all-wheat-in-the-human-diet argument that I make will hurt many people where it counts: right in the pocketbook. But, personally, I am not willing to sacrifice my own health, the health of my family, friends, neighbors, patients, and the nation to allow the incredibly unhealthy status quo to continue.
Fat Head: The more of the book I read, the more I found myself thinking, “Wow, I knew wheat was bad for us, but it’s even worse than I thought.” Did you have the same reaction while researching the book? Were you surprised at how many physical and mental problems wheat can cause?
Dr. Davis: Yes. I knew wheat was bad from the start of this project. And there were times when I wondered if I was missing something, given the unanimous embracing of this grain by agribusiness, farmers, agricultural scientists, the USDA, FDA, American Dietetic Association, etc. But the opposite happened: The deeper I got into it, this thing being sold to us called “wheat” appeared worse … and worse, and worse, the farther I got.
I am mindful of the “For a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” trap we can all fall into, but when you see disease condition after disease condition vanish with elimination of wheat, you can’t help but become convinced that it plays a crucial role in hundreds, literally hundreds, of common conditions.
Fat Head: You described in your book how today’s wheat is the product of energetic cross-breeding. Is cross-breeding inherently bad? Doesn’t cross-breeding take place in nature all the time?
Dr. Davis: Yes, it does. Humans, along with all plants and animals, are the product of cross-breeding or hybridization. Love, sex, and cross-breeding make the world go ‘round and make life interesting. The problem is that these terms are used very loosely by geneticists.
For example, if I subject wheat seeds and embryos to the potent industrial poison sodium azide, I can induce mutations in the plant’s genetic code. First, let me tell you about sodium azide. If ingested, the poison control people at the Centers for Disease Control advise you to not resuscitate the person who ingested it and stopped breathing as a result —just let the victim die—because the rescuer can die, too. And, if the victim vomits, don’t throw the vomit in the sink because it can explode (this has actually happened). So, expose wheat seeds and embryos to sodium azide and you obtain mutations. This is called chemical mutagenesis. Seeds and embryos can also be exposed to gamma irradiation and high-dose x-ray radiation. All of these techniques fall under the umbrella of hybridization or, even more misleading, traditional breeding techniques. I don’t know about you, but cross-breeding among the humans I know doesn’t involve slipping each other chemical poisons or a romantic evening in the cyclotron to induce mutations in our offspring.
These “traditional breeding techniques,” by the way, are markedly more disruptive to the plant’s genetics than genetic engineering. Americans are up in arms about genetically-modified (GMO) foods (i.e., the insertion or deletion of a single gene). The great irony is that genetic engineering is a substantial improvement over “traditional breeding techniques” that have gone on for decades and are still going on.
[Note from Tom: I tried talking my wife into stepping into a cyclotron with me on our honeymoon. She told me to stop drinking the champagne and go to sleep.]
Fat Head: I met you in person over a year ago, and you’re a very lean guy, so I was surprised to learn from the book that you used to carry around your very own wheat belly. Describe the differences between you as a wheat-eater and you now, both in terms of your physique and your health.
Dr. Davis: Thirty pounds ago, while I was still an enthusiastic consumer of “healthy whole grains,” I struggled with constant difficulties in maintaining focus and energy. I relied on pots of coffee or walking and exercise just to battle the constant stuporous haze. My cholesterol values reflected my wheat-consuming habits: HDL 27 mg/dl (very low), triglycerides 350 mg/dl (VERY high), and blood sugars in the diabetic range (161 mg/dl). I had high blood pressure, running values around 150/90. And all my excess weight was around my middle—yes, my very own wheat belly.
Saying goodbye to wheat has helped me shed the weight around the middle; my cholesterol values: HDL 63 mg/dl, triglycerides 50 mg/dl, LDL 70 mg/dl, blood sugar 84 mg/dl, BP 114/74—using no drugs. In other words, everything reversed. Everything reversed including the struggle to maintain attention and focus. I can now concentrate and focus on something for so long that my wife yells for me to stop.
All in all, I feel better today at age 54 than I felt at age 30.
Fat Head: How has learning what you now know about wheat and other grains changed your medical practice?
Dr. Davis: It has catapulted success in helping people regain health into the stratosphere. Among people following this diet, i.e., eliminate wheat and limit other carbohydrates (along with the other heart-healthy strategies I advocate, including omega-3 fatty acid supplementation with fish oil, vitamin D supplementation to achieve a desirable 25-hydroxy vitamin D level of 60-70 ng/ml, iodine supplementation and normalization of thyroid dysfunction), I no longer see heart attacks. The only heart attacks I see are people whom I’ve just met or those who, for one reason or another (usually lack of interest) don’t follow the diet. A priest I take care of, for instance, a wonderful and generous man, couldn’t bring himself to turn down the muffins, pies, and breads his parishioners brought him every day; he had a heart attack despite doing everything else right.
This diet approach, though it seems quirky on the surface, is extremely powerful. What diet, after all, causes substantial weight loss, corrects the causes of heart disease such as small LDL particles, reverses diabetes and pre-diabetes, and improves or cures multiple conditions ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to acid reflux?
Fat Head: You’ve seen hundreds of your own patients become cured of supposedly incurable diseases after giving up wheat. Describe one or two of the most dramatic examples.
Dr. Davis: Two people are on my mind nearly every day, mostly because I am especially gratified about the magnitude of their response and because I shudder to think what their lives would have been like had they not engaged in this diet change.
I describe Wendy’s story in the book, a 36-year mother and schoolteacher who had nearly incapacitating ulcerative colitis; so bad that, despite three medications, she continued to suffer constant cramps, diarrhea, and bleeding sufficient to require blood transfusions. When I met Wendy, she told me that her gastroenterologist and surgeon had scheduled her for colon removal and creation of an ileostomy bag. These would be lifelong changes; she would be consigned to wearing a bag to catch stool at the surface for the rest of her life. I urged her to remove wheat. At first, she objected, since her intestinal biopsies and blood work all failed to suggest celiac disease. But, having seen many amazing things happen with removal of wheat, I suggested that there was nothing to lose. She did it. Three months later, not only had she lost 38 pounds, but all the cramps, diarrhea, and bleeding had stopped. It’s now been two years. She’s off all drugs with no sign of the disease left—colon intact, no ileostomy bag. She is cured.
The second case is Jason, also described in the book, a 26-year old software programmer, in this case incapacitated by joint pains and arthritis. Consultations with three rheumatologists failed to yield a diagnosis; all prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs and pain medication, while Jason continued to hobble around, unable to engage in much more than short walks. Within five days of removing all wheat, Jason was 100% free of joint pains. He told that he found this absolutely ridiculous and refused to believe it. So he had a sandwich: Joint pains rushed right back. He’s now strictly wheat-free and pain-free.
Fat Head: Your patients are lucky – you’d rather change a patient’s diet than write a prescription whenever possible. Unfortunately, you’re in the minority. As I recounted on my blog recently, a co-worker’s wife was finally cured of her pounding headaches when an acquaintance suggested she stop eating grains. She’d been to several doctors who merely prescribed medications. So … why are so few doctors aware of how grains can affect our health?
Dr. Davis: I believe healthcare has detoured towards high-tech, high revenue-producing procedures, medications, and catastrophic care. Too many in healthcare have lost the vision of helping people and fulfilling their mission to heal. While that sounds old-fashioned, I believe it is a bad trend for healthcare to be reduced to a financial transaction bound by legal constraints. It needs to be restored to a relationship of healing.
I believe that many in healthcare have also been disenchanted with the ineffectiveness of dietary advice. Because dietary “wisdom” has been wrong on so many counts over the past 50 years, people have become soured on the ability of nutrition and natural methods to improve health. From what I’ve witnessed, however, nutrition and natural methods have enormous power to heal—if the right methods are applied.
Fat Head: Do you hope your book will educate more doctors on the topic, or is this one of those situations where the public will have to ignore their doctors and educate themselves?
Dr. Davis: Regrettably, many people will read the message in Wheat Belly, experience the life-changing health and weight transformations that can result, then they will then tell their doctors, who will declare their success “coincidence,” “mind over matter,” “placebo effect,” or some other dismissal. Many of my colleagues refuse to recognize the power of diet even when confronted with powerful results. That can only change over a very long time.
Thankfully, more and more of my colleagues are beginning to see the light and not look for the answer in drugs and procedures. These are the healthcare providers that I hope will emerge to assist people as advocates and coaches in conducting an experience like that described in Wheat Belly.
Fat Head: If more doctors were informed of the issues you wrote about in Wheat Belly, do you think they’d change their dietary advice, or is the “fat is bad, grains are good” mentality too ingrained in the profession?
Dr. Davis: There is absolutely no question that the “fat is bad, grains are good” argument will persist in the minds of many of my colleagues for many years. However, I believe if they were to read the arguments laid out logically in Wheat Belly, they would first come to recognize that “wheat” is no longer wheat but an incredibly transformed product of genetics research. Then they would begin to follow the logic and understand that the long menu of problems associated with consumption of modern “wheat” begins to explain why we’ve all been witnessing an explosion in common diseases. That’s when I hope we all hear a collective “Aha!”
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