Boule’tard wrote on 03/17/12 at 12:57:46:

+1

This is incredible:



You are getting a larger increase from oatmeal than Mr. Davis got from eating the modern wheat bread.  Yes DO stay off all grains.. I would if I had your body chemistry.

What do you think about the paleo-people avoiding dairy as well as grains?  I see on another of your images, the 'Food Bar Chart'  you place cheese in the healty category, and other dairy (I guess other non-milk dairy like eggs?) just below that.  The paleo folks say eggs are all right, but that milk-based stuff has a profile of harm similar to grains.

How many of you pipple have achy joints, or maybe even actual arthritis?  I did.  Don't no more.

Here's a typical input on the Wheat Belly FaceBook page.  It showed up a few hours ago.  This lady is pretty thrilled with what happened to her.


OK WB people, here is a flat out miracle: Eight days ago I went wheat free. Almost from the beginning, no hunger.

Two days ago, I could stand up straight out of bed and walk to the coffee pot like a normal person (as opposed to whimpering pitifully and lurching and hobbling to the kitchen).

Next day, even better, and I actually ran errands and got in and out of the car over and over and was STILL okay.

I have severe arthritis of the knees and severe leg pain along with it, with a hideous stiffness that starts up in 10-15 minutes if I sit in a chair with my feet on the floor.
-- It has been debilitating and so very depressing, imagining such a limited life.
-- My doc recommended two new knees, but have to lose weight first.

TODAY, I sat with my feet on the floor for almost 7 hours. I walked back and forth, covering about 50 yards, a dozen times or more. A couple of times, I got up and walked around without the crutches that are the only possible means of walking any distance.

Now I'm home and able to walk in the house with minor pain. MINOR.

This is truly unbelievable. Dr. Davis, thank you so, so much for writing this book. I've done low carb off and on for the last few years. Nothing has given me this kind of relief (darn those low carb pitas! ... I am astonished, grateful, amazed, so, so happy.

Note,  she is more than just wheat free, she did the whole Wheat Belly thing: no wheat, no grains, no sugar.

Boule’tard wrote on 03/17/12 at 14:26:07:


Bouletard, it's not incredible, it's quite normal.

First of all, you didn't tell us what you had for dinner the night before;

Secondly, you didn't tell us what you did the day before, what you had for lunch, etc.;

In other words, we do not know the levels of natural glycemia in your system for the entire 24-hour cycle before you had that oatmeal.

Last, your glycemic cycle is quite normal! Source, my wife, who is a medical doctor, and her books.

(Unless, of course, you have an ailment we do not know about...)

The issue would be serious if your blood sugars spiked at 166 and stayed over 150 for the rest of the day...
... but I can clearly see that by 10:30 they had "normalized" to 116 and by 11:00 you were down to 112.

What do you expect?

Now, let's look at things from another perspective, that of dietary standards.

1) The typical US diet is rife with excess sugars, be they from soft drinks (and let's avoid the "sugar-free" issue of cancerous aspartame...)
2) The typical US diet is rife with excess sugars, because you include sugar in wheat prodicts like bread; sugar is absent from bread in Europe;
3) The typical US diet is rife with excess sugars, because you find sugar derivatives and extracts just about anywhere except in fresh meats (read the ingredients in burgers or hot dogs, not to mention some beers);
4) The typical US diet is rife with unhealthy fats, be it palm oil, soybean oil, or linseed oil; just read the list of ingredients in "spray cooking oil" or "frying oil", and ask yourselves why the average middle age oriental (in the Orient, not in the US) is plumper than his/her European counterpart;
5) In the US, in order to keep bread "soft and fresh" alcohol-based preservatives are used; these preservatives are banned in Europe. Hence, a hamburger bun will keep fresh for well over a week in the US, but become crumbly, then stale in Europe after a mere 48 hrs.

All in all, I have noticed the average family of the US Military come to Europe with a certain "life style" and dress size, and leave a few years later a few sizes slimmer.

That's all the evidence I need.

PS Gyrobob, I really enjoyed reading the red ink caption of that lady who could actually SIT with her feet on the floor for a full 7 hours !!!
How much does she weigh? Nothing below 400lbs, I presume...
Else, if it's a circulatory disorder, it has nothing to do with carbs and a LOT to do with pregnancies, dietary habits and hereditary traits.

A few observations...

The author's diet is almost precisely an Atkins diet.  It looks like the Paleo diet with dairy added, except he stresses limiting dairy intake except for cheese.

There is one grain that should not spike blood sugar: flax seed.

I would guess (and it just a guess, based on the way our bodies react to other substances) that someone who subsists on an extremely carb-limited diet would react to the introduction of carbs more than someone who regularly takes in these types of carbs, even in limited amounts.  In other words, when you quit drinking for a while, you become a lightweight because your tolerance decreases substantially.  Essentially, your body is dropping its guard because it's not being subjected to exposure on a regular basis.

Boule’tard wrote on 03/18/12 at 09:21:53:




My apologies, I simply read the post where you inserted the six pictures of a glycometer and assumed they were your own readings. But the considerations are still valid.

Anyway, the sugar spike is not due to the oatmeal, but to the sugar used to sweeten the cereal.

May I suggest an experiment:

2 people, one who has fully embraced the "Wheatbelly theorem" and one who rejects it. Possibly same sex, age, build, same state of health. May I suggest you start on Friday evening and finish on Sunday morning.

Take your sugar reading in the evening just before dinner, then have exactly the same dinner.

Then take your sugar readings 1, 2, 3 hours after finishing dinner, along with heart rate and blood pressure. (Too bad we can't check our cholesterol in the same way...)

Do NOT have anything else to eat, other than water, until breakfast. This is to ensure you are at the starting point for the experiment the next day.

Then have a one-day cycle (WB, non-WB) cycle, taking care the two individuals should also carry out exactly the same daily routines, i.e. burn the same calories doing the same chores at the very same hours of the day.

Every 60' take a sugar reading.

Have your WB Vs. "normal" meals, drink your traditional drinks, and not down your readings from [Friday evening] to [Sunday morning].

Then compare them. Then consider this:

Having low sugar levels means nothing if you can't relate them to your activities and your protein and cholesterol levels in the bloodstream.

Ask any trainer, any professional baseball or football coach [better still, any soccer or basketball or wrestling coach!] if he would ever recommend a carb-free diet. They would smile and shrug and walk away.

The blood, the system need sugars. They are what the body relies on for any anaerobic effort, which goes from getting up in the morning to standing up from a sitting position to sprinting to catch the subway.
(Or kickstarting a stalled bike... )

Protein are fuel for aerobic effort, such as a mid-long distance run. Then the fats kick in. You already burned your sugars in the initial 1/4 mile.

One last comment: "Paleo"... to claim stone age man only ate protein is a false myth, go to any museum and see the stone hand mills used to grind grains to make flour.

Find me ANY modern day "paleo" tribe and I will easily point out that, whle they may not have ovens or wheat flour, they still bake/roast yams over an open fire or under the coals.

I know, I've seen them do it (and done it myself).

Even hunters will send off their women to comb for vegetables.

Gyrobob, I do not recall insulting anyone, nor calling them dull.

So much for being a gentleman and trying to discern fact from fad.

I insist on keeping hushed tones and not calling anyone names.

Here's a few facts.

On my mother's side, my family originates from Trieste, which, until 1918, was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's one seaport to the Adriatic Sea and to worldwide commerce; I come from generation after generaiton of medium-high level civil servants, school teachers and Magistrates. They all enjoyed a protein-rich diet with plenty of red meats and all that the well-off middle-class could afford (and they could!) as opposed to the local peasantry.

They boast an alarming rate of heart desease and deaths due to heart failure.

On my father's side, they all come from generation after generation of seamen; fish, not read meat, was their source of protein, along with unleavened crackers and whatever fruit the season brought. Some of the women in the family would marry a farmer, who would often be better off than a seaman; a storm can ruin your crop but never wreck your house, whereas boats can sink and husbands die at sea.

I have seen all those people live to be a healthy hundred and older, yet their diet was based on freshly ground flour, wine, cheese and fish - little money for read meat unless you slaughtered a pig - and then only once/year.

So much for so much.

I insist, it is a matter of culture. Europe can be divided into two areas:
- the Mediterranean (and Black Sea) area where agriculture plays a major role to produce food,
- the Germanic/Scandinavian area where hunting/breeding/fishing were the major source of food.

Now leaf through any history book and see which Peoples produced the most culture, from the Liberal Arts to the Codes of Law, from Medicine to Architecture.

The go see how India and China have been great through the ages, and how they fed their people on rice and other grains.

The same applies to the North American natives, it was those who had mastered agriculture (such as the Seminoles) who were most advanced; others, such as the Sioux, would follow bison herds bot technologically were no better than European Neolithic Man in 2000BC .

I again kindly ask you go to inquire with any medical doctor who looks after major professional sports players (there must be a "something-ball" team in your area?) and see the amount of carbohydrates they have in their diet.

LAST, discern between "eating carbohydrates" and "The Mediterranean Diet" (also known as the Greek Diet)

See the composition of carbohydrates (and their source) of protein (and their source) of fats (and their source),
see the composition of meals depending on the time of day (you DO know that your metabolism changes with the time of day, and what provides 100 calories in the morning may provide half, or twice as much in the evening?)
see the average HDL and LDL (cholesterol) in the FDA-approved tables as opposed to French, Italian or Spanish government tables,

...

and ask yourselves why the average Italian "fatso" still lives to be 100...

(Me, I admit I'm 5'6", 200lbs but my cholesterol and sugar are well within the limit)

Gyrobob wrote on 03/19/12 at 07:22:31:


I don't understand this tit for tat.

I don't enjoy teasing you for the pleasure of reading your reaction, I am simply presenting my thoughts to the Forum. I am not in the habit of prodding for pleasure.

Whereas I do realize you'd be happier by torching anyone who doesn't share your opinion, I consider myself a free-thinker - hence, I defend my right (and my heritage) to a healthy and balanced diet.

I still have to understand how you can consider "balanced" a diet which has chopped away 50% of its available source of food.

It's like pushing to build homes in lumber, disregarding brickwork.

The 3 Little Pigs should have left their mark there somewhere...