Reference: Wheat Belly by Bill Davis, MD (Milwaukee Cardiologist: http://www.TrackYourPlaque.com

Ever been accused of being an addict! Well, we’ll take care of that in just four short paragraphs. Wheat is yummy. We love warm bread. Every culture around the globe makes warm bread and we find it irresistible. Have a little more. And a little more. A little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Or, a touch of butter and jam. Or some cheese, tomatoes and pepperoni. We love our wheat.

The problem is that we like it just a bit more than we realize. In fact, we eat that little bit more with just a touch of compulsion. We can’t really resist it. Munching on some pretzels? Chewing on a breadstick? You find yourself unconsciously being directed to eat a bit more. Why? Because the proteins in wheat get broken down into characteristic pieces that penetrate both the gut and the blood brain barrier. (Other foods don’t do this – it’s characteristic of gluten from wheat) And there those peptides bind to the brains opiate receptors. Well, that sets off your internal fix and your brain says, “Whoopee” and you eat some more.

Now, the house of medicine has invented some marvelous drugs that reverse and completely block the opiate receptor. If you give it to an overdosed heroin addict in the ER, and give them an IV opiate blocker they get really, really mad because you take away their high. (Never mind you saved their lives) Naloxone and naltrexone are two examples. Guess what happens when you give these drugs to people who are trying to lose weight and being fed a diet of wheat? Come on, commit yourself to a guess! Correct! You give up eating as much. Bill Davis documents in Wheat Belly that folks put on naltrexone will lose as much as 24 pounds in a few months because they just don’t have the inclination to eat that 6th piece of pizza, or 12th bread stick, or 100th Wheat Thin, or…… (My personal record is a clean 12 Krispy Kremes) Twenty percent of human calories come from wheat. If you are inclined to have 10% fewer calories because you eat one piece of french toast instead of three, you might start to lose weight too.

Exorphins is the name for those peptides, and we’ve known about them since the 1970s. There are few other foods that make them. Wheat makes a bunch and we eat a lot of wheat. Combine that with it’s freely and rapidly digested amylopectin carbohydrate, and consequent fast release of insulin, and you take in calories compulsively and your insulin then stores those calories assiduously. You lose.

That’s the argument. Unique among food, wheat provides the easy calories and the addicting exorphins to make each of us “wheat addicts”. And you get fat, from wheat.

WWW. What will work for me. Try the experiment. Go five days without wheat and see how you feel. Watch your own behavior when you start eating it again. The question arises, “what about trying long term naltrexone therapy as a way to lose 24 pounds”? Now that we have named the enemy, you can stand up at group and confess that you too are an addict. To wheat. (Problem #4)

Written by John Whitcomb, MD Brookfield Longevity and Healthy Living Clinic, 262-784-5300, 17585 W North Ave, Suite 160 www.LiveLongMD.com Archives of News Letter at www.NewsinNutrition.com

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Reference: Eric Westman, Duke University Weight Loss Associate Professor and American Jr of Clin Nutrition August 2007

The problem with wheat and insulin is pretty easy. It’s all about how fast the glucose of wheat gets into your blood. The form that carbohydrate is stored in wheat is called amylopectin and is very available to be digested in your gut. It is composed of long strings of glucose attached to each other, and branched every 24 to 30 glucose units making it have many endpoints, each of which can be attacked by a digestive enzyme to release it. You can digest it very rapidly, breaking down the chains of glucose molecules into single glucose units. In fact, white bread has a glycemic index of about 72-75 which means it gets into your blood at about 72% of the speed of pure glucose.

That’s the problem. Your body has a traffic cop called insulin that sees glucose speeding into your blood at 72% of pure glucose when the speed limit is about a glycemic index of 55. Foods below a glycemic index of 55 don’t inspire the release insulin. (The cop stays in his car, eating his own, low glycemic snack of raw broccoli) With a glycemic index over 55, the rapid and efficient secretion of insulin instantly ensues, slowing down the rise of glucose. And guess what insulin does? Exactly! It puts the glucose into the slammer (aka – fat cells, aka, long term storage) and takes no excuses, no lame pleading, no second chances. The glucose gets put into those fat cells, where it stays. Not even three strikes to be out. First time, long term storage. “A minute on the lips, a life time on the…….(need I say it?) We are just getting a real handle on the efficiency of the insulin effect on your body’s ability to mobilize fats. It’s extremely efficient, effective and rapid. It takes just a tiny bit of insulin to shut down the release of fatty acids from your fat cells for hours. That means just only little bit of processed wheat (a donut, a breakfast cereal made from some processed grain, a bagel, a cookie, even just sweetened coffee) and you release some insulin, and your fat cells are slammed shut with about 80-90% efficiency in just a few minutes. Without access to fatty acids, your cells don’t get any energy and you feel tired and hungry. Hence, you have to eat more. Remember last week? Which came first? Overeating is COMPENSATORY, not primary. You eat because you are starving and your cells are crying out for energy. You set yourself up because you released the stupid traffic cop inside you, insulin, who just did his job and put all the glucose away in the slammer without any excuses.

Wheat has never been refined like we have it in America today. When you eat it as a whole grain, the glycemic index is about 38. That is below the 55 speed limit and doesn’t set off the insulin response. We only discovered how to make fine white flour 150 years ago in Minneapolis when Pillsbury came out with a series of inventions on how to make fine white flour. Whole wheat flour is not much better. It’s glycemic index is 72, just the same. The tiny bit of retained fiber doesn’t slow down the speed of digestion. (Traffic cop is perfectly color neutral)

WWW. What will work for me. This is JUST the first layer of trouble. We have more to go. But trouble #1 is that wheat is processed into fine white flour and our body is completely unable to handle it. Still, we refine wheat and make it into about every product we eat. And that pesky glycemic index is incredibly rapid, merciless and ever watchful. You inner sugar cop is ALWAYS on our street corner. You just can’t cheat, unless you want all the calories you are eating to go into storage. Think of it. 90% efficient at marshaling (get the pun with the cop?) your calories into storage. You then are starving. You eat more to compensate for your hunger when you have all the calories you need, sitting there on your hips, unable to be released, because you just ate another free carbohydrate. Your homework: just try and make it through one day without ANY processed wheat. Just try. I’ve been at it for a week. I’m currently O for 7. Did I lose any weight this Holiday week? No no no.

Written by John Whitcomb, MD Brookfield Longevity and Healthy Living Clinic, 17575 W North Ave, # 160 Milwaukee, WI 53045 262-784-5300 www.LiveLongMD.com and newsletters archived at www.NewsinNutrition.com

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Reference: Eric Westman, MD Duke University Weight Loss Clinic

We have always defined obesity as YOUR problem. You got fat because you ate too much and were lazy! That definition doesn’t get us very far because all of us are now fat. I bet most of you don’t think of yourselves as lazy. So, we come up with simplistic answers like, “you are fat, therefore, don’t eat fat”. In 1978, our food guidelines from our own government came out with the biggest public health disaster in modern history. We said to stop eating fat and stoke up on healthy carbs. As many as you want. Our FDA said it so our Diabetes Association, our Dieticians, our American Heart association all chanted the same mantra. You get fat because you eat too much fat. And in the next thirty years, we all cut down on our fat, and got fatter.

Someone needs to tell the Emperor that his clothes don’t fit! In fact, that theory is dead wrong. There is now an emerging consensus from both research on humans and population studies all around the world in “non-obese” populations that we get fat when we eat our unique, Western, wheat and processed carb (including sugar) diet dominated diet. I’m going to discuss this for a couple of news letters, but first, we are going to start with a new definition of obesity and how you got there. Then, I’m going to prove it to you! If it’s outrageous and different enough, we’ll both learn something here. So, bear with me and enjoy this ride.

Here goes. # 1 What is obesity? Dr Westman proposes that it is a disorder of excessive fat accumulation. NOT overeating, NOT energy balance, NOT sedentary behavior. You are accumulating fat because your hormonal response to the food you eat is all messed up by insulin sensitivity. YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME!

#2: The PRIMARY DEFECT is in the body, NOT the brain. Our fat tissue is tightly regulated with incredible sensitivity to our insulin levels. That’s what’s messed up. Our bodies think we are hibernating for winter, and store calories willy-nilly.

#3 OVEREATING and SEDENTARY behaviors are COMPENSATORY, not primary behaviors. We’ve had chicken and egg backwards. We eat to keep up with our fat tissue accumulating fat. We rest because we are exhausted, and don’t have the energy to exercise. Your calories are all going to fat, and not to energy. You get starving hungry so you eat again, and again, and again. And when you eat wheat, you force yourself to release insulin, store more calories and get fatter.

#4 THE CORE PROBLEM is that insulin is exquisitely capable of defining how much fat we either STORE or BURN. Hence, if we force ourselves to secrete insulin, we lock up fat calories, and force ourselves to put on weight. We’ve had our strategies all backwards because we based them on the concept that we simply have to eat less not realizing the incredible power of appetite to drive our behavior. We have to change the food we eat to get away from the vicious circle. And wheat sits at the center of that circle. That’s just one of the problems with wheat. There are more.

We are doing it to ourselves, that we must admit. But it has been upon the advice of all our experts from the FDA, to the ADA, to the American Heart Association to EAT MORE WHOLE GRAINs. And that means eat more wheat. Next week: a whole new world. “The problem with wheat”.

WWW. What will work for me? The bread of life. Wheat is a problem. It makes us sick. It makes us fat. It forces us to secrete insulin. Now that I have your attention, I’ll show you how in about 5-6 newsletters. We will learn more about “the trouble with wheat”. You got fat because the food we have invented in the 20^th century is poisoning you in unique ways that play upon the core mechanisms of our metabolism. You need to understand those mechanisms and how to get around it. But it all starts with wheat.

Written by John Whitcomb, MD Brookfield Longevity and Healthy Living Clinic, 17575 W North Ave, # 160 Milwaukee, WI 53045 262-784-5300 www.LiveLongMD.com and newsletters archived at www.NewsinNutrition.com

To unsubscribe, please just write back. And please forward this email to a friend. That way, you learn it too!

Fay McCabe had tried several programs to lose weight: Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, LA Weight Loss.

She lost 10 pounds on Jenny Craig but grew tired of the prepackaged meals. Once she stopped eating them, she gained the weight back. Weight Watchers was better, but she didn’t like attending meetings and talking in front of people. She didn’t want to hear their issues either. And the LA Weight Loss bars and supplements got old.

So she turned to someone else to help her with her weight loss: her doctor, Dr. Rebecca Hunton. The result: a 50-pound weight loss in two years.

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