Think food allergy and you might conjure the worst-case scenario, like a child going into anaphylactic shock after exposure to peanuts. No doubt, a severe food allergy is scary. But it’s also relatively rare. A much more common scenario is an adult with a low-grade food allergy to, say, gluten who never pinpoints the cause of his misery. His symptoms are vague (bloating, constipation, weight gain) and his exposure is frequent (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), so the connection is murky. And, over years, the hidden allergy takes a toll on the immune system. The result of an overworked immune system is everything from weight gain to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to arthritis.

That’s what happened to a patient of mine. John weighed 350 pounds and was facing diabetes. But his blood sugar problem was only the tip of the iceberg. He also had joint pain, asthma, crippling fatigue and a sleep disorder. To combat his lethargy, he craved diet soda and fast food for its high number of starchy carbs, a false source of fast energy. What he didn’t know was that he had celiac disease, a serious autoimmune disease fed by his daily indulgence in bagels and donuts. Celiac disease causes the immune system to turn on itself, attacking the healthy lining of the digestive tract. And the major trigger is gluten, a sticky protein found in many grains, including John’s daily dose of bagels and donuts.

Unchecked autoimmune diseases mean the gut is in a constant state of inflammation, a breeding ground for chronic illness.

Food Sensitivities and Inflammation

John’s story is not unique. Inflammation is one of the biggest drivers of weight gain and disease in America. While celiac afflicts roughly 1 percent of Americans (1) as many as 30 percent may have non-celiac gluten intolerance. The key difference is that, in people with celiac disease, the body attacks the small intestine. But in people with non-celiac gluten intolerance, the immune system attacks the gluten. A recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine listed 55 “diseases” that can be traced back to eating gluten (2). Either way, the gut festers out of sight. And, when the lining of the gut is inflamed, the body is even more prone to food reactions, so the problem spirals out of control.

When the lining of the gut is inflamed, small fissures open between the tightly woven cells making up the gut walls. Called leaky gut syndrome, these chinks in the gut’s armor allow bacteria and partially digested food molecules to slip out into the bloodstream where they are considered foreign invaders. Once it spies a potential enemy, the body doesn’t hold back. The immune system attacks full throttle. White blood cells rush to surround the offending particle and systemic inflammation ensues. I’m not talking about a sore throat or infected finger. I’m talking about a hidden, smoldering fire created by the immune system as it tries to fend off a daily onslaught of food allergies.

The problem is that most people, like John, eat foods they are allergic to several times a day. Meaning every time that food enters the body, the immune system whips itself into a frenzy. But because symptoms are delayed up to 72 hours after eating, a low-grade food allergy can be hard to spot. Without diagnosis or awareness, the damage is repeated over and over, meal after meal. Eventually, inflammation seeps throughout the body, establishing an environment ripe for weight gain and chronic disease.

Identifying and treating food allergies and food sensitivities is an important part of my practice. Six weeks after John went gluten-free on The Blood Sugar Solution not only did he lose 3 notches on his belt, but his knees didn’t hurt, his asthma was gone, he wasn’t hungry and his energy was back. John’s response was not unusual.  I have seen dramatic effects in weight loss, inflammatory conditions like autoimmune disease, and even mood and behavioral disorders.

The problem is that most physicians, especially allergists, don’t see the value in uncovering hidden food allergies.  That is unfortunate because there is a growing body of medical literature illuminating the intimate relationship between the gut, food, and illness. Luckily, you don’t have to wait for your doctor to catch up with the times. Here are three ways to determine if food allergies are undermining your health.

Three Ways to Identify Food Allergies

1. Get a blood test. Blood testing for IgG food allergens (www.immunolabs.com and other labs) can help you to identify hidden food allergies. While these tests do have limitations and need to be interpreted in the context of the rest of your health, they can be useful guides to what’s bothering YOU in particular. When considering blood tests for allergens, it’s always a good idea to work with a doctor or nutritionist trained in dealing with food allergies.
2. Go dairy- and gluten-free for 6 weeks. Dairy and gluten are the most common triggers of food allergies. For patients who have trouble losing weight, I often recommend a short elimination, as part of the The Blood Sugar Solution. Both dairy (milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt) and gluten (most often found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt, triticale, and kamut) are linked to insulin resistance and, therefore, weight gain. Temporarily cutting them out of the diet, allows the inflamed gut to heal. This one move may be the single most important thing most you can do to lose weight.
3. Avoid the top food allergens.  If you don’t feel a sense of relief from nixing dairy and gluten, you may need to take the elimination diet one step further by cutting out the top food allergens: gluten, dairy, corn, eggs, soy, nuts, nightshades (tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes, and eggplant), citrus, and yeast (baker’s, brewer’s yeast, and fermented products like vinegar). Try this for a full six weeks. That is enough time to feel better and notice a change. When you reintroduce a top food allergen, eat it at least 2-3 times a day for 3 days to see if you notice a reaction. If you do, note the food and eliminate it for 90 days.

If you are overweight, if you suffer from inflammatory diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, the potential health benefits of discovering and uprooting hidden food allergies cannot be overstated. Remember, food is your greatest ally in helping to prevent and treat illness.  For more information see The Blood Sugar Solution  to get a free sneak peak.

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Do you have food allergies?

Are you gluten intolerant?

Have you eliminated your food sensitivities and lost weight?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

References:

(1) Ludvigsson, JF, et al. 2009. “Small-intestinal histopathology and mortality risk in celiac disease” Journal of the American Medical Association 302 (11): 1171-8

(2) Farrell, RJ, and CP Kelly. 2002. Celiac sprue, New England Journal of Medicine 346 (3): 180-88 Review

Scientists recently uncovered a surprising and disturbing fact: environmental toxins make you fat and cause diabetes(1). Inside the body, these chemicals monkey with our ability to balance blood sugar and metabolize cholesterol. Over time, the changes can lead to insulin resistance. This discovery should be headline news but no one is talking about it. Why? Because there are no drugs to treat it. In the quest to conquer the two biggest epidemics of our time—diabetes and obesity—we’ve got to turn our attention to the heavy burden environmental toxins put on our bodies.

Until conventional medicine catches up, you’ve got to optimize your body’s ability to rid itself of toxins. If your body’s detoxification tools aren’t up to snuff, waste will build up. Overtime, the damage is similar to what happens when trash collectors go on strike and don’t pick up the garbage off the streets. The waste piles high, making the neighborhood smell bad and creating a breeding ground for illness.

Don’t let the word detoxification turn you off. You may think it sounds like a New-age idea or something from celebs in Hollywood on the heels of an alcohol or drug binge, but detoxification is a normal, every day function. It’s the body’s way of breaking down and eliminating anything that doesn’t belong. And, these days, there are a lot of things our bodies come into contact with that don’t belong.

We live in an environment steeped in chemicals that our bodies were not designed to process. For a disturbing look at the chemicals that breach the boundaries of our bodies, look no further than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals .  In the latest report, scientists at the CDC found that nearly every person they tested was packing a host of nasty chemicals, including flame retardants stored in fatty tissue and Bisphenol A (2), a hormone-like substance found in plastics, excreted in urine.  Even babies are contaminated. The average newborn has 287 chemicals in her umbilical cord blood, 217 of which are neurotoxic (poisonous to nerves or nerve cells) (3).

Take Out The Trash

While it’s true that we live in a toxic world, it’s important to remember that there is a lot you can do to enhance your body’s natural ability to detox. The body has four main exit routes for toxins: pee, poop, perspiration and pranayama (Sanskrit for breath). I call these the quadruple “P.” Every moment of every day your body is relying on the quadruple “P” to mobilize, transform, and excrete toxins. Here is a quick primer on how to make the most of each strategy:

Pee: The kidneys are responsible for flushing waste from the blood. Make sure you give them what they need by drinking plenty of water. Humans are predominately composed of water (about 66 percent by weight for men, about 60 percent for women). Drink plenty of clean water, at least eight 8-ounce glasses of filtered water a day. One of the first signs of dehydration is the color of your urine. Your urine should be mostly clear (clear enough to read a newspaper through) or with only a slight tinge of yellow. (If you take vitamins, keep in mind that some nutrients, especially riboflavin, causes your urine to turn bright yellow.) But, if your urine is dark yellow or has a strong odor, chances are you aren’t drinking enough.

And, of course, you’ll want to make sure you’re not upending your actions by dousing your body with more chemicals. In many communities, tap water is not safe to drink and bottled water isn’t much better. The best option is to filter your own water and carry it with you in stainless steel bottles. If possible, install a reverse osmosis filter in your house, at least for your drinking water or use a carbon filter (like Brita).

Poop: One or two well formed bowel movements every day is one of the best ways to give toxins a one-way ticket out of your body. If that goal seems high you’re not alone. As many as 20 percent of people struggle with constipation and, unfortunately, the problem can get more onerous with aging(4). But bowel function is something you have a lot of control over. For starters, up your fiber intake. Fiber cleans out the colon by making our stool heftier and easier to expel.

Secondly, drink plenty of water. The body is very good at conserving water. Sometimes it’s almost too good. When the walls of the colon suck too much moisture out of stool, it dries and hardens, which can lead to pebble-like poop and constipation. Drinking more water and other liquids during the day (aim for eight 8-ounce glasses) can make your BMs softer and easier to expel(5). And, if you still can’t get going, then you need some help and this can include taking two tablespoons of ground flax seeds, taking acidophilus and extra magnesium capsules in the form of magnesium citrate.

Perspiration: Your skin is your single largest organ of elimination. Make sure you’re maximizing the detox-potential of your pores by working up a sweat at least three times a week. Of course, heart-thumping exercise that gets the body sweating for 20 minutes, three times a week is ideal, since it confers other health benefits. But, if that is not an option, consider using a sauna, steam or detox bath to trigger the body’s natural ability to detoxify itself through sweat.

People have long gravitated toward heat as a means of cleansing the physical and emotional body. In particular, people in Scandinavian countries have used saunas for hundreds of years. Some research indicates that sauna therapy increases excretion of heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, and fat-soluble chemicals—PCBs, PBBs, and HCBs). Taking saunas or steam baths also helps reduce stress and balance the autonomic nervous system(6). (Sauna temperatures should be no higher than 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit for those with environmental illness or a history of increased toxic exposure).  On a purely physical note, sauna therapy can improve circulation, help with weight loss, balance blood sugar and improve detoxification. While the exact mechanism is not clear, it is likely due to its effects on calming the nervous system, relaxing the muscles, and increasing vasodilation.  If you don’t have access to a sauna, you can use my favorite technique to heat up and sweat, the UltraBath.

Pranayama: The lungs are the unsung heroes of the body’s detox squad. With each breath, they bring in fresh oxygen and help transport it throughout the body. Unfortunately, the air we breathe is not always clean. Every day the lungs filter out carcinogens in gas fumes, allergens from pets and plants, and spores of mold. Restricted or shallow breathing can diminish the power of the lungs by preventing oxygen from reaching all of your tissues. Breathing deeply and fully will oxygenate your brain, body, and spirit, transforming your health in the process.

One of the best ways to harness the power of the lungs to heal and detoxify is to learn how to belly breathe. Start by putting your hand on your belly. Breathe out, squeezing the air out of your lungs with your stomach muscles. As you breathe in, relax your stomach muscles and, after filling your lungs, try to push your hand off your belly with your breath, filling the lower part of your lungs. Continue to breathe in and out slowly through your nose. Each in and out breath should last to the count of three. Do this for five minutes a day.

If you are struggling to lose weight despite eating well and exercising your butt off, toxins may be interfering with your body’s metabolism. Consider applying the rules of the quadruple “P” to your life. For more on how toxins undermine your health, including a “Toxicity Quiz” to measure your exposure, see The Blood Sugar Solution  to get a free sneak peak.

Now I’d like to hear from you…

What do you think of environmental toxins?

Do you experience the effects of them in your health?

What are you doing to rid your diet of these toxins?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

References:

(1) Jones OA, Maguire ML, Griffin JL. Environmental pollution and diabetes: a neglected association. Lancet. 2008 Jan 26;371(9609):287-8.

(2) Lang IA, et al. Association of urinary bisphenol A concentration with medical disorders and loratory abnormalities in adults. JAMA. 2008 Sep 17;300(11):1303-10.

(3) Environmental Working Group “Study Finds Industrial Pollution Begins in the Womb” (www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/newsrelease.php)

(4) McCallum, J.D., Ong, S., M Mercer-Jones. (2009) Chronic Constipation in Adults: Clinical Review, British Medical Journal. 338:b831

(5) National Institutes of Health (http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/constipation/)

(6) Crinnion, WJ (2011) Sauna as a Valuable Clinical Tool for Cardiovascular, Autoimmune, Toxicant-induced and other Chronic Health Problems, Alternative Medicine Review 16(3): 215-225

Modern industrial medicine treats disease with medication or surgery. That’s what it is designed to do, and when it comes to emergency interventions it is still the best medicine in the world. When someone comes into the emergency room with a severed leg, conventional medicine treats the problem with incredible efficacy.

But when it comes to chronic illness, this approach simply doesn’t work.

Here’s why conventional medicine tends to break down in the face of chronic illnesses like diabesity …

Most medicine today is based on clear-cut, on-or-off, yes-or-no diagnoses that often miss the underlying causes and more subtle manifestations of illness. Most conventional doctors are taught that you have a disease or you don’t; you have diabetes or you don’t. There are no gray areas.

Practicing medicine this way is extremely misguided because it misses one of the most fundamental laws of physiology, biology, and disease: The continuum concept. There is a continuum from optimal health to hidden imbalance to serious dysfunction to disease. Anywhere along that continuum, we can intervene and reverse the process. The sooner we address it, the better.

For example, when it comes to diabesity most doctors just follow blood sugar, which actually rises very late in the disease process. If your blood sugar is 90 or 110, you don’t have diabetes. If it’s over 126, you do have diabetes. But these distinctions are completely arbitrary, and they do nothing to help treat impending problems. I remember one patient, Daren, who came to see me with mildly elevated blood sugar. I asked Daren if he had seen his doctor about this. He said yes. I then asked, “What did your doctor say?” Daren’s doctor had told him, “We are going to wait and watch until your blood sugar is more elevated, and then we are going to treat you with medication for diabetes.”

This attitude is absurd and harmful in the face of what we know about the problems that occur even in the absence of full-blown diabetes. Science is now showing us that many people with prediabetes never get diabetes, but they are at severe risk just the same. Prediabetes actually isn’t pre-anything, it’s a serious health condition and needs to be treated as early as possible.

More to the point, this approach of completely ignores more subtle clues from symptoms and signs of disease, which may highlight underlying metabolic imbalances (especially when complemented by further testing). These imbalances may be remedied by the appropriate treatment—treatment that is not focused on some disease, but instead works to remove those things that alter or damage our functioning, and provides those things that enhance, optimize, and normalize our functioning by balancing the system rather than treating the symptom. We need to treat the system, not the symptom; the patient, not the disease.

Consider the man in the emergency room with the severed leg again for a moment. For that person, identifying what severed the leg isn’t likely to make the difference between life and death. The symptom—the severed leg—must be treated if he is going to survive.

But that paradigm simply doesn’t hold true for health conditions like diabesity. This mechanistic model can be applied in some health crises, but it doesn’t work when it comes to chronic disease.

For more information about diabesity click here for a sneak peak of my new book The Blood Sugar Solution coming out on February 28^th.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you …

Do you suffer from diabesity? What has your struggle been like?

Why do you think conventional medicine is so ineffective at treating this illness?

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Yes, gluten is a real problem.  But the problem is not just gluten.  In fact, there are three major hidden reasons that wheat products, not just gluten (along with sugar in all its forms) is the major contributor to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, depression and so many other modern ills.

This is why there are now 30% more obese than undernourished in the world, and why globally chronic lifestyle and dietary driven disease kills more than twice as many people as infectious disease.  These non-communicable chronic diseases will cost our global economy $47 trillion over the next 20 years.

Sadly, this tsunami of chronic illness is increasingly caused by eating our beloved diet staple, bread, the staff of life, and all the wheat products hidden in everything from soups to vodka to lipstick to envelope adhesive.

The biggest problem is wheat, the major source of gluten in our diet.  But wheat weaves it misery through many mechanisms, not just the gluten!    The history of wheat parallels the history of chronic disease and obesity across the world.  Supermarkets today contain walls of wheat and corn disguised in literally hundreds of thousands of different food- like products, or FrankenFoods.  Each American now consumes about 55 pounds of wheat flour every year.

It is not just the amount but also the hidden components of wheat that drive weight gain and disease.  This is not the wheat your great-grandmother used to bake her bread.  It is FrankenWheat – a scientifically engineered food product developed in the last 50 years.

How Wheat (and Gluten) Triggers Weight Gain, Prediabetes, Diabetes and More

This new modern wheat may look like wheat, but it is different in three important ways that all drive obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and more.

1. It contains a Super Starch – amylopectin A that is super fattening.
2. It contains a form of Super Gluten that is super-inflammatory.
3. It contains forms of a Super Drug that is super-addictive and makes you crave and eat more.

The Super Starch

The Bible says, “Give us this day our daily bread”.  Eating bread is nearly a religious commandment. But the Einkorn, heirloom, Biblical wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans never eat.

Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization that created short, stubby, hardy, high yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten and many more chromosomes coding for all sorts of new odd proteins.  The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize – it promised to feed millions of starving around the world.  Well, it has, and it has made them fat and sick.

The first major difference of this dwarf wheat is that it contains very high levels of a super starch called amylopectin A.  This is how we get big fluffy Wonder Bread and Cinnabons.

Here’s the downside.  Two slices of whole wheat bread now raise your blood sugar more than two tablespoons of table sugar.

There is no difference between whole wheat and white flour here.  The biggest scam perpetrated on the unsuspecting public is the inclusion of “whole grains” in many processed foods full of sugar and wheat giving the food a virtuous glow.  The best way to avoid foods that are bad for you is to stay away from foods with health claims on the label.  They are usually hiding something bad.

In people with diabetes, both white and whole grain bread raises blood sugar levels 70 to 120 mg/dl over starting levels.  We know that foods with a high glycemic index make people store belly fat, trigger hidden fires of inflammation in the body, and give you a fatty liver leading the whole cascade of obesity, pre-diabetes and diabetes.  This problem now affects every other American and is the major driver of nearly all chronic disease and most our health care costs. Diabetes now sucks up one in three Medicare dollars.

The Super Gluten

Not only does this dwarf, FrankenWheat, contain the super starch, but it also contains super gluten which is much more likely to create inflammation in the body. And in addition to a host of inflammatory and chronic diseases caused by gluten, it causes obesity and diabetes.

Gluten is that sticky protein in wheat that holds bread together and makes it rise.  The old fourteen chromosome containing Einkorn wheat codes for the small number of gluten proteins and those that it does produce are the least likely to trigger celiac disease and inflammation. The new dwarf wheat contains twenty-eight or twice as many chromosomes and produces a large variety of gluten proteins, including the ones most likely to cause celiac disease.

Five Ways Gluten Makes You Sick and Fat

Gluten can trigger inflammation, obesity and chronic disease in five major ways.

1. Full-blown celiac disease is an autoimmune disease that triggers body-wide inflammation triggering insulin resistance, which causes weight gain and diabetes, as well as over 55 conditions including autoimmune diseases, irritable bowel, reflux, cancer, depression, osteoporosis and more.
2. Low-level inflammation reactions to gluten trigger the same problems even if you don’t have full-blown celiac disease but just have elevated antibodies (7% of the population or 21 million Americans).
3. There is also striking new research showing that adverse immune reactions to gluten may result from problems in very different parts of the immune system than those implicated in celiac disease.  Most doctors dismiss gluten sensitivity if you don’t have a diagnosis of celiac disease, but this new research proves them wrong. Celiac disease results when the body creates antibodies against the wheat (adaptive immunity), but another kind of gluten sensitivity results from a generalized activated immune system (innate immunity).  This means that people can be gluten-sensitive without having celiac disease or gluten antibodies and still have inflammation and many other symptoms.
4. A NON-gluten glycoprotein or lectin (combination of sugar and protein) in wheat called wheat germ agglutinin (WGA)(1)   found in highest concentrations in whole wheat increases whole body inflammation as well. This is not an autoimmune reaction but can be just as dangerous and cause heart attacks (2).
5. Eating too much gluten free food (what I call gluten free junk food) like gluten free cookies, cakes and processed food.  Processed food has a high glycemic load.  Just because it is gluten free, doesn’t mean it is healthy. Gluten free cakes and cookies are still cakes and cookies!  Vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and seeds and lean animal protein are all gluten free – stick with those.

Let’s look at this a little more closely.  Gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt and oats) can cause celiac disease, which triggers severe inflammation throughout the body and has been linked to autoimmune diseases, mood disorders, autism, schizophrenia, dementia, digestive disorders, nutritional deficiencies, diabetes, cancer, and more.

Celiac Disease: The First Problem

Celiac disease and gluten related problems has been increasing and now affects at least 21 million Americans and perhaps many millions more.  And 99% of people who have problems with gluten or wheat are NOT currently diagnosed.

Ninety eight percent of people with celiac have a genetic predisposition known as HLA DQ2 or DQ8, which occurs in 30% of the population.  But even though our genes haven’t changed, we have seen a dramatic increase in celiac disease in the last 50 years because of some environmental trigger.

In a recent study comparing blood samples taken 50 years ago from 10,000 young Air Force recruits to samples taken recently from 10,000 people, researchers found something quite remarkable. There has been a real 400 percent increase in celiac disease over the last 50 years (3).   And that’s just the full-blown disease affecting about 1 in 100 people, or about 3 million Americans. We used to think that this only was diagnosed in children with bloated bellies, weight loss and nutritional deficiencies.  But now we know it can be triggered (based on a genetic susceptibility) at any age and without ANY digestive symptoms.  The inflammation triggered by celiac disease can drive insulin resistance, weight gain and diabetes, just like any inflammatory trigger – and I have seen this over and over in my patients.

Gluten and Gut Inflammation: The Second Problem

But there are two ways other than celiac disease in which wheat appears to be a problem.

The second way gluten causes inflammation is through a low-grade autoimmune reaction to gluten. Your immune system creates low-level antibodies to gluten but doesn’t create full blown celiac disease.  In fact 7% of the population, 21 million, has these anti-gliadin antibodies.   These antibodies were also found in 18% of people with autism and 20% of those with schizophrenia.

A major study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, hidden gluten sensitivity (elevated antibodies without full blown celiac disease) was shown to increase risk of death by 35 to 75 percent, mostly by causing heart disease and cancer.(4)   Just by this mechanism alone over 20 million Americans are at risk for heart attack, obesity, cancer and death.

How does eating gluten cause inflammation, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer?

Most of the increased risk occurs when gluten triggers inflammation that spreads like a fire throughout your whole body.  It damages the gut lining. Then all the bugs and partially digested food particles inside your intestine get across the gut barrier and are exposed your immune system, 60% of which lies right under the surface of the one cell thick layer of cells lining your gut or small intestine.  If you spread out the lining of your gut it would equal the surface area of a tennis court.  Your immune system starts attacking these foreign proteins leading to systemic inflammation that then causes heart disease, dementia, cancer, diabetes and more.

Dr. Alessio Fasano, a celiac expert from the University of Maryland School of Medicine discovered a protein made in the intestine called “zonulin” that is increased by exposure to gluten (5).   Zonulin breaks up the tight junctions or cement between the intestinal cells that normally protect your immune system from bugs and foreign proteins in food leaking across the intestinal barrier. If you have a “leaky gut” you will get inflammation throughout your whole body and a whole list of symptoms and diseases.

Why is there an increase in disease from gluten in the last 50 years?

It is because, as I described earlier, the dwarf wheat grown in this country has changed the quality and type of gluten proteins in wheat, creating much higher gluten content and many more of the gluten proteins that cause celiac disease and autoimmune antibodies.

Combine that with the damage our guts have suffered from our diet, environment, lifestyle, and medication use, and you have the perfect storm for gluten intolerance. This super gluten crosses our leaky guts and gets exposed to our immune system. Our immune system reacts as if gluten was something foreign and sets off the fires of inflammation in an attempt to eliminate it. However, this inflammation is not selective, so it begins to attack our cells—leading to diabesity and other inflammatory diseases.

Damage to the gastrointestinal tract from overuse of antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil or Aleve, and acid-blocking drugs like Prilosec or Nexium, combined with our low-fiber, high-sugar diet, leads to the development of celiac disease and gluten intolerance or sensitivity and the resultant inflammation. That is why elimination of gluten and food allergens or sensitivities can be a powerful way to prevent and reverse diabesity and so many other chronic diseases.

The Super Drug

Not only does wheat contain super starch and super gluten – making it super fattening and super inflammatory, but it also contains a super drug that makes you crazy, hungry and addicted.

When processed by your digestion, the proteins in wheat are converted into shorter proteins, “polypeptides”, called “exorphins”.  They are like the endorphins you get from a runner’s high and bind to the opioid receptors in the brain, making you high, and addicted just like a heroin addict.  These wheat polypeptides are absorbed into the bloodstream and get right across the blood brain barrier.  They are called “gluteomorphins” after “gluten” and “morphine”.

These super drugs can cause multiple problems including schizophrenia and autism. But they also cause addictive eating behavior including cravings and bingeing.  No one binges on broccoli, but they binge on cookies or cake.  Even more alarming is the fact that you can block these food cravings and addictive eating behaviors and reduce calorie intake by giving the same drug we use in the emergency room to block heroin or morphine in an overdose called naloxone.  Binge eaters ate nearly 30% less food when given this drug.

Bottom line: wheat is an addictive appetite stimulant.

How to Beat the Wheat, and Lose the Weight

First you should get tested to see if you have a more serious wheat or gluten problem.

If you meet any of these criteria then you should do a six-week 100% gluten free diet trial to see how you feel.  If you have 3 out of 5 criteria, you should be gluten free for life.

1. You have symptoms of celiac (any digestive, allergic, autoimmune or inflammatory disease including diabesity).
2. You get better on a gluten free diet.
3. You have elevated antibodies to gluten (anti-gliadin, AGA, or tissue transglutaminase antibodies, TTG).
4. You have a positive small intestinal biopsy.
5. You have the genes that predispose you to gluten (HLA DQ2/8).

Second, for the rest of you who don’t have gluten antibodies or some variety of celiac, the super starch and the super drug, both of which make you fat and sick, can still affect you.  So go cold turkey for six weeks.  And keep a journal of how you feel.

The problems with wheat are real, scientifically validated and ever present.  Getting off wheat may not only make you feel better and lose weight, it could save your life.

My personal hope is that together we can create a national conversation about a real, practical solution for the prevention, treatment, and reversal of our obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemic.  Getting off wheat may just be an important step.

To learn more and to get a free sneak preview of The Blood Sugar Solution where I explain exactly how to avoid wheat and what to eat instead go to www.drhyman.com.

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

References

———————————————————–

(1) Saja K, Chatterjee U, Chatterjee BP, Sudhakaran PR. Activation dependent expression of MMPs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells involves protein kinase  A. Mol Cell Biochem. 2007 Feb;296(1-2):185-92

(2) Dalla Pellegrina C, Perbellini O, Scupoli MT, Tomelleri C, Zanetti C, Zoccatelli G, Fusi M, Peruffo A, Rizzi C, Chignola R. Effects of wheat germ agglutinin on human gastrointestinal epithelium:  insights  experimental model of immune/epithelial cell interaction. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2009 Jun 1;237(2):146-53.

(3)  Rubio-Tapia A, Kyle RA, Kaplan EL, Johnson DR, Page W, Erdtmann F, Brantner TL, Kim WR, Phelps TK, Lahr BD, Zinsmeister AR, Melton LJ 3rd, Murray JA. Increased prevalence and mortality in undiagnosed celiac disease. Gastroenterology. 2009 Jul;137(1):88-93

(4)  Ludvigsson JF, Montgomery SM, Ekbom A, Brandt L, Granath F. Small-intestinal histopathology and mortality risk in celiac disease. JAMA. 2009 Sep 16;302(11):1171-8.

(5) Fasano A. Physiological, pathological, and therapeutic implications of zonulin-mediated intestinal barrier modulation: living life on the edge of the wall. Am J Pathol. 2008 Nov;173(5):1243-52.

In the study, researchers admitted 25 brave volunteers to a hospital ward for 12 weeks.  They controlled everything they ate and did.  But they made them all overeat about 1,000 calories a day. The only different was where the calories came from – protein or carbs.

The low protein group (5% protein) lost 1.5 pounds of muscle, and gained 7.5 pounds of fat.  The high protein group (25% protein) gained 6.3 pounds of metabolically active muscle. They also gained fat because they were being force fed. But even though they gained more total weight, they were LESS fat than the low protein group.

This has important implications for our thinking about calories.

Bottom line: Not all calories are the same.  Some calories make you store fat, while others make you store muscle.

In a world where for the first time in history more people are overweight (2.1 billion) than underweight this has important implications.  And the world is getting bigger – over the next 30 years, the prevalence of obesity will double and mostly in countries like China and India (because how do you get twice as many fat people in a country like America where 65% are already fat)!

Here’s the take home.  Quickly absorbed carbohydrates from the bulk of the American and increasingly the world’s diet – from sugar, high fructose corn syrup and white flour, are very efficiently turned into belly fat in the body.²  And that leads to obesity and diabetes, or what I call diabesity.

Another recent study found that the free fructose in high fructose corn syrup (not in fruit), led to dramatic increases in belly fat, inflammation, blood pressure, blood sugar and even pre-diabetes in adolescents.³

Carbohydrates and protein trigger produce very different chemical messages in the body independent of calories.  Carbs lay down the fat, while protein lays down muscle. ⁴

This study on protein adds to a whole slew of research that proves that higher protein diets (25%) does all sorts of obesity fighting things to your body and your brain.

1. It makes you feel more full than an equivalent amount of calories from carbs.
2. It leads to more weight loss in “free-living” humans as compared the ones who were force fed extra calories.
3. It prevents gaining weight back after you have lost weight.⁵
4. It speeds up metabolism and builds muscle so you burn more calories all day long and even while you sleep.

Reducing belly fat and building muscle is quite simple.  And it is not just about the calories you consume. It is about where those calories come from.

Here are a few simple tips to speed up your metabolism and get rid of belly fat.

1. Skip the sugar  – in all of its forms. Especially liquid calories from any source (soda, juice, alcohol) all of which store belly fat. Be on a mission to get high fructose corn syrup out of your diet, it is especially good at laying down belly fat.
2. Ditch the flour – wheat flour, especially, is just like sugar. Did you know that 2 slices of whole wheat bread raise your blood sugar more than 2 tablespoons of table sugar?
3. Start the day with protein not starch or sugar.  Try whole omega-3 eggs, a protein shake, nut butters or even kippers! Skip the bagels, muffins and donuts.
4. Have protein with every meal – try nuts like almonds, walnuts or pecans, seeds like pumpkin, chia or hemp or have beans, chicken or fish.

Somehow we are still duped by the idea that all calories are the same. They are not. Hopefully soon the practice of nutrition and medicine, and our government nutrition advice will catch up with the science. Then perhaps we can make a dent in the tsunami of obesity, diabetes and chronic disease coming right at us.

My personal hope is that together we can create a national conversation about a real, practical solution for the prevention, treatment, and reversal of our obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemic.

To learn more and to get a free sneak preview of The Blood Sugar Solution go to www.drhyman.com.

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

1. Bray GA, Smith SR, de Jonge L, Xie H, Rood J, Martin CK, Most M, Brock C, Mancuso S, Redman LM. Effect of dietary protein content on weight gain, energy expenditure, and body composition during overeating: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2012 Jan 4;307(1):47-55.

2. Stanhope KL, Schwarz JM, Keim NL, et al. Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans. J Clin Invest. 2009;119(5):1322–1334.

3. Pollock NK, Bundy V, Kanto W, Davis CL, Bernard PJ, Zhu H, Gutin B, Dong Y. Greater fructose consumption is associated with cardiometabolic risk markers and visceral adiposity in adolescents. J Nutr. 2012 Feb;142(2):251-7.

4. Devkota S, Layman DK. Increased ratio of dietary carbohydrate to protein shifts the focus of metabolic signaling from skeletal muscle to adipose. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2011;8(1):13

5. Westerterp-Plantenga MS, Nieuwenhuizen A, Tomé D, Soenen S, Westerterp KR. Dietary protein, weight loss, and weight maintenance. Annu Rev Nutr. 2009;29:21–41.

Think of them as shortcuts or tricks to use when shopping or eating. If you just do these things and nothing else, you will automatically be eating real, fresh food that will prevent, treat and even reverse most of the chronic diseases that drain our energy, stress our families and deplete our economy.   You don’t even have to understand anything about nutrition.  Just follow these goof proof rules for getting healthy, losing weight and feeling great.

1. Ideally have only food without labels in your kitchen or foods that don’t come in a box, a package, or a can. There are labeled foods that are great, like sardines, artichoke hearts, or roasted red peppers, but you have to be very smart in reading the labels.   There are two things to look for: the ingredient list and the nutrition facts.  Check out my special report on “How to Read Labels” for more information.
   Where is the primary ingredient on the list? If the real food is at the end of the list and the sugar or salt is at the beginning, beware. The most abundant ingredient is listed first and the others are listed in descending order by weight. Be conscious, too, of ingredients that may not be on the list; some ingredients may be exempt from labels. This is often true if the food is in a very small package, if it has been prepared in the store, or if it has been made by a small manufacturer. Beware of these foods.
2. If a food has a label it should have fewer than five ingredients. If it has more than five ingredients, throw it out. Also beware of food with health claims on the label. They are usually bad for you – think ”sports beverages.”  I recently saw a bag of deep-fried potato chips with the health claims “gluten-free, organic, no artificial ingredients, no sugar” and with fewer than 5 ingredients listed.  Sounds great, right?  But remember, cola is 100 percent fat-free and that doesn’t make it a health food.
3.  If sugar (by any name, including organic cane juice, honey, agave, maple syrup, cane syrup, or molasses) is on the label, throw it out. There may be up to 33 teaspoons of sugar in the average bottle of ketchup. Same goes for white rice and white flour, which act just like sugar in the body.  If you have diabesity – the spectrum of metabolic imbalances starting with just a little belly fat, leading all the way to diabetes— you can’t easily handle any flour, even whole-grain. Throw it out.
4. Throw out any food with high-fructose corn syrup on the label. It is a super sweet liquid sugar that takes no energy for the body to process. Some high-fructose corn syrup also contains mercury as a by-product of the manufacturing process. Many liquid calories, such as sodas, juices, and “sports” drinks, contain this metabolic poison. It always signals low quality or processed food.
5. Throw out any food with the word hydrogenated on the label. This is an indicator of trans fats, vegetable oils converted through a chemical process into margarine or shortening. They are good for keeping cookies on the shelf for long periods of time without going stale, but these fats have been proven to cause heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. New York City and most European counties have banned trans fats, and you should, too.
6. Throw out any highly refined cooking oils such as corn, soy, etc. (I will explain which oils to buy in Week 1 of the program in my book The Blood Sugar Solution). Also avoid toxic fats and fried foods.
7. Throw out any food with ingredients you can’t recognize, pronounce, or that are in Latin.
8. Throw out any foods with preservatives, additives, coloring or dyes, “natural flavorings,” or flavor enhancers such as MSG (monosodium glutamate).
9. Throw out food with artificial sweeteners of all kinds  (aspartame, Splenda, sucralose, and sugar alcohols—any word that ends with “ol” like xylitol, sorbitol). They make you hungrier, slow your metabolism, give you bad gas, and make you store belly fat.
10. If it came from the earth or a farmer’s field, not a food chemist’s lab, it’s safe to eat. As Michael Pollan says, if it was grown on a plant, not made in a plant, then you can keep it in your kitchen. If it is something your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, throw it out (like a “lunchable” or go-gurt”).  Stay away from “food-like substances.”

That’s it – just ten simple goof proof rules for staying healthy for life. It is a simple recipe for staying out of trouble and automatically leads you to a real, whole foods diet.  And the side effect will be weight loss, energy, reduction in the need for medication and saving our nation from the tsunami of chronic disease and Pharmageddon!

When you make these simple choices you will not only improve your health, and your family’s health, but you will create a “wellness spring” that will shift the demand in the marketplace.  You will not only take back your health, but also help America take back its health.  You vote three times a day with your fork and it impacts our health, how we grow food, energy consumption, climate change and environmental degradation.   You have more power than you think.  Use it!

My personal hope is that together we can create a national conversation about a real, practical solution for the prevention, treatment, and reversal of our obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemic.

To learn more and to get a free sneak preview of The Blood Sugar Solution go to www.drhyman.com.

Now I’d like to hear from you …

What are your rules for eating heathy for life?

How have you transformed your health with food?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD