Wheat Belly Total Health: The Ultimate Grain-Free Health and Weight-Loss Life Plan by William Davis

Author:William Davis
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Rodale Books
Published: 2014-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

GRAINLESS METABOLIC MASTERY: REGAIN CONTROL OVER BLOOD SUGAR, CHOLESTEROL, BONE HEALTH, AND INFLAMMATION

I don’t deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either.

—Jack Benny

INJECT SOMETHING INTO the human experience that doesn’t belong there, such as Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes bubonic plague to be passed to humans from infected rats, or LSD, with its frenzied delusions, hallucinations, and flashbacks, and you can quickly discern whether or not such things belong in our lives.

Introduce the seeds of grasses into the human diet and all manner of peculiar health problems crop up. They might involve mental effects, such as impulsive or irrational behavior. They might cause stimulation of appetite, provoking abnormal or incessant eating that makes no physiologic sense. They could cause an odd and annoying rash that won’t go away, or unpredictable and explosive diarrhea. They might initiate the process of autoimmunity. Grains are, in a word, an unnatural component in the human dietary experience. Just as no law-abiding member of the workforce can adhere to a daily routine while high on LSD, no member of the species Homo sapiens can achieve and maintain optimal health while under the disruptive influence of the seeds of grasses.

After surviving the chronic health disruptions of grains, you removed them. But will all aspects of your metabolism normalize with their removal?

Possibly, but they may not. As powerful as grain elimination can be, it may not allow all the unhealthy metabolic phenomena caused by grains to fully unwind, much as abstinence from alcohol will not correct the nutritional deficiencies and cirrhosis an alcoholic incurs while drinking. For example, if you have diabetes and previously required insulin and oral drugs to control your blood sugar, removing the grains will cause your blood sugar to drop precipitously, along with your need for insulin and drugs—but not always all the way to normal. Are there steps to take that safeguard you from negative effects, such as low blood sugars? Are there additional steps that will maximize your chances of becoming confidently and assuredly nondiabetic, enjoying normal blood sugars and HbA1c without the assistance of drugs? Or if you have hypertension and take three different antihypertensive drugs, going grain-free may drop your blood pressure along with your visceral fat. How do you safely reduce your medications, and what can you do to stack the odds in your favor such that you won’t require any drugs?

This chapter will address these questions of metabolic health and others that will arise during both your early grain-free period and the rest of your grainless life.

PLAYING WITH FIRE

The concept of metabolism covers a lot of territory. Metabolism refers to all of the chemical processes by which your body uses food, nutrients, and water to grow, heal, and produce energy. It is the bonfire of body energy: It needs kindling and wood to build heat and convert energy from one form to another.

The myriad processes of metabolic activity can be tracked by measuring parameters that show whether it is proceeding

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