Wheat Belly

What I thought was going to be a simple book about the perils of wheat consumption turned out to be a fascinating book about aging. A major component of aging is the formation of gunk called Advanced Glycation End-product, aka AGE (hah!). The process of bringing down high blood sugar results in the formation of AGEs in your body. The stuff builds up and causes you to age; cataracts, wrinkles, etc. It's a naturally ocurring process, but high blood sugar accelerates the process tremendously. The reason this is fascinating is because it was discovered from studying diabetics, i.e. folks who age really fast.

So what does this have to do with wheat? Two slices of whole grain toast has a glycemic index slighly more than a Snickers bar. However, high blood sugar is just one perils of eating wheat. The immune response, i.e. inflamation, triggered by the gluten, in wheat, in your body is subtle in most folks, but no fun (balding!?). Wheat breaks down into acidic components; to balance this, your body draws on minerals in your bones! In general, consumption of modern wheat takes a huge metabolic toll on your body and there's no nutritional reason to make it a part of your diet; except that it tastes so good :-)

Another aspect to wheat is the concept of 'exorphins'. Exorphins are a class of compounds that result from the digestion of wheat. These compounds bind to the same receptors in the brain that are known for binding to morphine; wheat addiction! Folks have proved this in couple of ways. If you take morphine-blocking meds, you'll be able to stop eating wheat and lose weight. Schizophrenic patients are closer to normal when wheat is removed from the diet; that is, wheat definitely has an impact on the brain. Exorphines are why cookies are so, so irrisitable.

So why is wheat such a big part of our diet? Well, when wheat was first cultivated it wasn't quite the beast it is today. When humans began to grow wheat, it was a low yield grain that was a dependable, storable addition to the rest of the diet. However, in the past 50 years, we've turned it into a very high yield grain by modifying its genome (more than doubling the number of chromosomes) and have thereby introduced an impact on human health. He talked about folks who sell the original variety; might have to check that out. In the meantime, I've been successful at keeping wheat out of my diet 6-days a week, I enjoy the improvement it's had on my body. In my experience, it takes two weeks to break the wheat addiction.

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