Originally posted by Dr. Davis on 2015-04-04
on the Wheat Belly Blog, sourced from and currently found at: Infinite Health Blog.
PCM forum Index of WB Blog articles.

Top 10 reasons to kiss wheat and grains goodbye forever

There are plenty of reasons to never allow your lips to meet a wheat bagel, sandwich, or pretzels again. But here are the top 10 most compelling, powerful reasons to tell the USDA and other providers of dietary advice to bug off with their “healthy whole grains” advice.

1. Gliadin derived opiates (from partial digestion to 4- and 5-amino acid long fragments) increase appetite substantially–as do related proteins from rye, barley, and corn. This is a big part of the reason grains make you gain weight.
    
2. Gliadin derived opiates are mind active drugs that trigger behavioral outbursts in kids with ADHD and autism, mania in bipolar illness, paranoia in schizophrenics, 24 hour a day food obsessions in people prone to bulimia and binge eating disorder.
    
3. Gliadin, when intact, initiates the processes of autoimmunity leading to rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and 200 other conditions.
    
4. Amylopectin A raises blood sugar to high levels, higher, ounce for ounce, than table sugar.
    
5. Wheat germ agglutinin is a potent bowel toxin.
    
6. Wheat germ agglutinin blocks gallbladder and pancreatic function (via blocking the receptor for cholecystokinin).
    
7. Phytates block absorption of all positively-charged minerals–such as iron, zinc, and magnesium
    
8. Multiple allergens are present–such as trypsin inhibitors, thioreductases, alpha amylase inhibitors, and gamma gliadins, responsible for asthma, skin rashes, and gastrointestinal distress.
    
9. Grains are potent endocrine disrupters explaining why women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS, are much worse with grain consumption, why men grow man breasts, why male levels of testosterone drop and estrogen increases, why pituitary prolactin levels are higher, why cortisol action is blocked, and why thyroid health is disrupted by autoimmune inflammation.
    
10. Big Food and agribusiness use wheat and grains to control human buying behavior, putting the addictive appetite-stimulating effects to use to increase food consumption and keep you coming back for more.

These are among the reasons that, in the Wheat Belly lifestyle, we return to real, single-ingredient foods minus wheat and grains. Remember: grains are the seeds of grasses, added in desperation by hungry humans just a moment ago in anthropological time (less than ½ of 1% of our time on this planet). Because grains are the seeds of grasses and humans are not equipped (as are grazing ruminants) to consume any component of grasses, many of the problems with grains originate with indigestible or poorly-digestible proteins. Wheat germ agglutinin, for example, is entirely resistant to human digestion, but exerts all manner of odd gastrointestinal inflammatory and hormonally disruptive effects in its passage from mouth to toilet. Gliadin, if left intact, initiates the autoimmune processed described above, but can also be partially digested to peptides–not single amino acids like other proteins–that have unique amino acid sequences that allow binding to opiate receptors of the human brain. The exception to the poor digestibility of the seeds of grasses is, ironically, amylopectin A, the component that accounts for the exceptional blood sugar raising potential of grains.

Understanding reason #10 is what sets you back on the path to being in control of appetite, impulse, and health. Minus the appetite-stimulating, health-disrupting effects of the various components of grains, you are back in the driver’s seat. Now how about a trip to the nightmare of all Big Food executives, the local farmers’ market.