Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health

So what are the effects of wheat on the vulnerable schizophrenic mind?

The earliest formal connection of the effects of wheat on the schizophrenic brain began with the work of psychiatrist F. Curtis Dohan, whose observations ranged as far as Europe and New Guinea. Dr Dohan journeyed down this line of investigation because he observed that, during World War II, the men and women of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and the United States required fewer hospitalisations for schizophrenia when food shortages made bread unavailable, only to require an increased number of hospitalisations when wheat consumption resumed after the war was over.1

Dr Dohan observed a similar pattern in the hunter-gatherer Stone Age culture of New Guinea. Prior to the introduction of Western influence, schizophrenia was virtually unknown, diagnosed in only 2 of 65,000 inhabitants. As Western eating habits infiltrated the New Guinean population and cultivated wheat products, beer made from barley, and corn were introduced, Dr Dohan watched the incidence of schizophrenia skyrocket sixty-five-fold.2 On this background, he set out to develop the observations that established whether or not there was a cause-and-effect relationship between wheat consumption and schizophrenia.

In the mid-sixties, while working at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Philadelphia, Dr Dohan and his colleagues decided to remove all wheat products from meals provided to schizophrenic patients without their knowledge or permission. (This was in the era before informed consent of participants was required, and before the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment became publicised, which triggered public outrage and led to legislation requiring fully informed participant consent.) Lo and behold, four weeks sans wheat and there were distinct and measurable improvements in the hallmarks of the disease: a reduced number of auditory hallucinations, fewer delusions, less detachment from reality. Psychiatrists then added the wheat products back into their patients’ diets and the hallucinations, delusions and social detachment rushed right back. Remove wheat again, patients and symptoms got better; add it back, they got worse.3

The Philadelphia observations in schizophrenics were corroborated by psychiatrists at the University of Sheffield, with similar conclusions.4 There have since even been reports of complete remission of the disease, such as the seventy-year-old schizophrenic woman described by Duke University doctors, suffering with delusions, hallucinations and suicide attempts with sharp objects and cleaning solutions over a period of fifty-three years, who experienced complete relief from psychosis and suicidal desires within eight days of stopping wheat.5

While it seems unlikely that wheat exposure caused schizophrenia in the first place, the observations of Dr Dohan and others suggest that wheat is associated with measurable worsening of symptoms.

Another condition in which wheat may exert effects on a vulnerable mind is autism. Autistic children suffer from impaired ability to interact socially and communicate. The condition has increased in frequency over the past forty years, from rare in the mid-twentieth century to 1 in 150 children in the twenty-first.6 Initial small samples have demonstrated improvement in autistic behaviours with wheat-gluten removal.7, 8 The most comprehensive clinical trial to date involved fifty-five autistic Danish children, with formal measures of autistic behaviour showing improvement with gluten elimination (along with elimination of casein from dairy).9

While it remains a topic of debate, a substantial proportion of children and adults with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may also respond to elimination of wheat. However, responses are often muddied due to sensitivities to other components of diet, such as sugars, artificial sweeteners, additives and dairy.10

It is unlikely that wheat exposure was the initial cause of autism or ADHD but, as with schizophrenia, wheat appears to be associated with worsening of the symptoms characteristic of the conditions.

Though the laboratory rat treatment of the unsuspecting schizophrenic patients in the Philadelphia VA Hospital may send chills down our spines from the comfort of our fully informed and consenting twenty-first century, it is nevertheless a graphic illustration of wheat’s effect on mental function. But why in the world are schizophrenia, autism and ADHD exacerbated by wheat? What is in this grain that worsens psychosis and other abnormal behaviours?

Investigators at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to find some answers.

EXORPHINS: THE WHEAT–MIND CONNECTION

Dr Christine Zioudrou and her colleagues at the NIH subjected gluten, the main protein of wheat, to a simulated digestive process to mimic what happens after we eat bread or other wheat-containing products.11 Exposed to pepsin (a stomach enzyme) and hydrochloric acid (stomach acid), gluten is degraded to a mix of polypeptides. The dominant polypeptides were then isolated and administered to laboratory rats. These polypeptides were discovered to have the peculiar ability to penetrate the blood–brain barrier that separates the bloodstream from the brain. This barrier is there for a reason. The brain is highly sensitive to the wide variety of substances that gain entry to the blood, some of which can provoke undesirable effects should they cross into your amygdala, hippocampus, cerebral cortex or other brain structure. Once having gained entry into the brain, wheat polypeptides bind to the brain’s morphine receptor, the very same receptor to which opiate drugs bind.

Zioudrou and her colleagues dubbed these polypeptides ‘exorphins’, short for exogenous morphine-like compounds, distinguishing them from endorphins, the endogenous (internally sourced) morphine-like compounds that occur, for instance, during a ‘runner’s high’. They named the dominant polypeptide that crossed the blood–brain barrier ‘gluteomorphin’, or morphine-like compound from gluten (though the name sounds to me more like a morphine shot in the butt). The investigators speculated that exorphins might be the active factors derived from wheat that account for the deterioration of schizophrenic symptoms seen in the Philadelphia VA Hospital and elsewhere.

Even more telling, the brain effect of gluten-derived polypeptides is blocked by administration of the drug naloxone.

Let’s pretend you’re an inner-city heroin addict. You get knifed during a drug deal gone sour and get carted to the nearest A&E. Because you’re high on heroin, you kick and scream at the staff trying to help you. So these nice people strap you down and inject you with a drug called naloxone, and you are instantly not high. Through the magic of chemistry, naloxone immediately reverses the action of heroin or any other opiate drug such as morphine or oxycodone.

In lab animals, administration of naloxone blocks the binding of wheat exorphins to the morphine receptor of brain cells. Yes, opiate-blocking naloxone prevents the binding of wheat-derived exorphins to the brain. The very same drug that turns off the heroin in a drug-abusing addict also blocks the effects of wheat exorphins.

In a World Health Organization study of thirty-two schizophrenic people with active auditory hallucinations, naloxone was shown to reduce hallucinations.12 Unfortunately, the next logical step – administering naloxone to schizophrenics eating a ‘normal’ wheat-containing diet compared to schizophrenics administered naloxone on a wheat-free diet – has not been studied. (Clinical studies that might lead to conclusions that don’t support drug use are often not performed. In this case, had naloxone shown benefit in wheat-consuming schizophrenics, the unavoidable conclusion would have been to eliminate wheat, not prescribe the drug.)

The schizophrenia experience shows us that wheat exorphins have the potential to exert distinct effects on the brain. Those of us without schizophrenia don’t experience auditory hallucinations from exorphins resulting from an onion bagel, but these compounds are still there in the brain, no different than in a schizophrenic. It also highlights how wheat is truly unique among grains, since other grains such as millet and flax do not generate exorphins (since they lack gluten), nor do they cultivate obsessive behaviour or withdrawal in people with normal brains or people with abnormal brains.

So this is your brain on wheat: digestion yields morphine-like compounds that bind to the brain’s opiate receptors. It induces a form of reward, a mild euphoria. When the effect is blocked or no exorphin-yielding foods are consumed, some people experience a distinctly unpleasant withdrawal.

What happens if normal (i.e., nonschizophrenic) humans are given opiate-blocking drugs? In a study conducted at the Psychiatric Institute of the University of South Carolina, wheat-consuming participants given naloxone consumed 33 per cent fewer calories at lunch and 23 per cent fewer calories at dinner (a total of approximately 400 calories less over the two meals) than participants given a placebo.13 At the University of Michigan, binge eaters were confined to a room filled with food for one hour. (There’s an idea for a new TV show: The Biggest Gainer.) Participants consumed 28 per cent less wheat crackers, bread sticks and pretzels with administration of naloxone.14

In other words, block the euphoric reward of wheat and calorie intake goes down, since wheat no longer generates the favourable feelings that encourage repetitive consumption. (Predictably, this strategy is being pursued by the pharmaceutical industry to commercialise a weight loss drug that contains naltrexone, an oral equivalent to naloxone. The drug is purported to block the mesolimbic reward system buried deep within the human brain that is responsible for generating pleasurable feelings from heroin, morphine and other substances. Pleasurable feelings can be replaced by feelings of dysphoria, or unhappiness. Naltrexone will therefore be combined with the antidepressant and smoking-cessation drug bupropion.)

From withdrawal effects to psychotic hallucinations, wheat is party to some peculiar neurological phenomena. To recap:

 Common wheat, upon digestion, yields polypeptides that possess the ability to cross into the brain and bind to opiate receptors.

 The action of wheat-derived polypeptides, the so-called exorphins such as gluteomorphin, can be short-circuited with the opiate-blocking drugs naloxone and naltrexone.

 When administered to normal people or people with uncontrollable appetite, opiate-blocking drugs yield reductions in appetite, cravings, and calorie intake, as well as dampen mood, and the effect seems particularly specific to wheat-containing products.

Wheat, in fact, nearly stands alone as a food with potent central nervous system effects. Outside of intoxicants such as ethanol (like that in your favourite merlot or chardonnay), wheat is one of the few foods that can alter behaviour, induce pleasurable effects and generate a withdrawal syndrome upon its removal. And it required observations in schizophrenic patients to teach us about these effects.

NIGHT CRAVINGS CONQUERED

For as long as he could remember, Larry struggled with weight.

It never made sense to him. He exercised, often to extremes. A 50-mile bike ride was not unusual, nor was a 15-mile walk in the woods or desert. As part of his work, Larry enjoyed the terrain of many different areas of the United States. His travel often took him to the southwest, where he hiked for up to six hours. He also prided himself on following a healthy diet: limiting his red meat and oils and eating plenty of vegetables and fruit and, yes, an abundance of ‘healthy whole grains’.

I met Larry because of a heart rhythm problem, an issue we dealt with easily. But his blood work was another issue. In short, it was a disaster: blood glucose in the low diabetic range, triglycerides too high at 210 mg/dl, HDL too low at 37 mg/dl, and 70 per cent of his LDL particles were the small heart disease-causing type. Blood pressure was an important issue with systolic (‘top’) values ranging up to 170 mmHg and diastolic (‘bottom’) values of 90 mmHg. Larry was also, at 5 feet 8 inches and 17 stone 5 pounds, nearly 6 stone overweight.

‘I don’t get it. I exercise like nobody you know. I really like exercise. But I just cannot – cannot – lose the weight, no matter what I do.’ Larry recounted his diet escapades that included an all-rice diet, protein drink programmes, ‘detox’ regimens, even hypnosis. They all resulted in a few pounds lost, only to be promptly regained. He did admit to one peculiar excess: ‘I really struggle with my appetite at night. After dinner, I can’t resist the urge to graze. I try to graze on the good stuff, like whole-wheat pretzels and these multigrain crackers I have with a yoghurt dip. But I’ll sometimes eat all night from dinner until I go to bed. I don’t know why, but something happens at night and I just can’t stop.’

I counselled Larry on the need to remove the number one most powerful appetite stimulant in his diet: wheat. Larry gave me that ‘not another kooky idea!’ look. After a big sigh, he agreed to give it a go. With four teenagers in the house, clearing the shelves of all things wheat was quite a task, but he and his wife did it.

Larry returned to my office six weeks later. He reported that, within three days, his nighttime cravings had disappeared entirely. He now ate dinner and was satisfied with no need to graze. He also noticed that his appetite was much smaller during the day and his desire for snacks virtually disappeared. He also admitted that, now that his craving for food was much less, his calorie intake and portion size was a fraction of its former level. With no change in his exercise habits, he’d lost ‘only’ eleven pounds. But, more than that, he also felt that he’d regained control over appetite and impulse, a feeling he thought he’d lost years earlier.

WHEAT: APPETITE STIMULANT

Crackheads and heroin addicts shooting up in the dark corners of an inner-city drug house have no qualms about ingesting substances that mess with their minds. But how about law-abiding citizens like you and your family? I’ll bet your idea of mind bending is going for the strong brew rather than the mild stuff at Starbucks, or hoisting one too many Heinekens on the weekend. But ingesting wheat means you have been unwittingly ingesting the most common dietary mind-active food known.

In effect, wheat is an appetite stimulant: it makes you want more – more cookies, cupcakes, pretzels, candy, soft drinks. More bagels, muffins, tacos, submarine sandwiches, pizza. It makes you want both wheat-containing and non-wheat-containing foods. And, on top of that, for some people wheat is a drug, or at least yields peculiar drug-like neurological effects that can be reversed with medications used to counter the effects of narcotics.

If you balk at the notion of being dosed with a drug such as naloxone, you might ask, ‘What happens if, rather than blocking the brain effect of wheat chemically, you simply remove the wheat altogether?’ Well, that’s the very same question I have been asking. Provided you can tolerate the withdrawal (while unpleasant, the withdrawal syndrome is generally harmless aside from the rancour you incur from your irritated spouse, friends and co-workers), hunger and cravings diminish, calorie intake decreases, mood and well-being increase, weight goes down, wheat belly shrinks.

Understanding that wheat, specifically exorphins from gluten, have the potential to generate euphoria, addictive behaviour and appetite stimulation means that we have a potential means of weight control. Lose the wheat, lose the weight.

CHAPTER 5

YOUR WHEAT BELLY IS SHOWING: THE WHEAT/OBESITY CONNECTION

PERHAPS YOU’VE EXPERIENCED this scenario:

You encounter a friend you haven’t seen in some time and exclaim with delight: ‘Elizabeth! When are you due?’

Elizabeth: [Pause.] ‘Due? I’m not sure what you mean.’

You: Gulp . . .

Yes, indeed. Wheat belly’s abdominal fat can do a darn good imitation of a baby bump.

Why does wheat cause fat accumulation specifically in the abdomen and not, say, on the scalp, left ear or backside? And, beyond the occasional ‘I’m not pregnant’ mishap, why does it matter?

And why would elimination of wheat lead to loss of abdominal fat?

Let’s explore the unique features of the wheat belly habitus.

WHEAT BELLY, LOVE HANDLES, MAN BOOBS AND ‘FOOD BABIES’

These are the curious manifestations of consuming the modern grain we call wheat. Dimpled or smooth, hairy or hairless, tense or flaccid, wheat bellies come in as many shapes, colours and sizes as there are humans. But all share the same underlying metabolic cause.

I’d like to make the case that foods made with or containing wheat make you fat. I’d go as far as saying that overly enthusiastic wheat consumption is the main cause of the obesity and diabetes crisis in the United States. It explains why modern athletes, such as baseball players and triathletes, are fatter than ever. Blame wheat when you are being crushed in your airline seat by the twenty-stone man next to you.

Sure, sugary soft drinks and sedentary lifestyles add to the problem. But for the great majority of health-conscious people who don’t indulge in these obvious weight-gaining behaviours, the principal trigger for increasing weight is wheat.

In fact, the incredible financial bonanza that the proliferation of wheat in the American diet has created for the food and drug industries can make you wonder if this ‘perfect storm’ was somehow man-made. Did a group of powerful men convene a secret Howard Hughesian meeting in 1955, map out an evil plan to mass-produce high-yield, low-cost dwarf wheat, engineer the release of government-sanctioned advice to eat ‘healthy whole grains’, lead the charge of corporate Big Food to sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of processed wheat food products – all leading to obesity and the ‘need’ for billions of dollars of drug treatments for diabetes, heart disease and all the other health consequences of obesity? It sounds ridiculous, but in a sense that’s exactly what happened. Here’s how.

Wheat Belly Diva

Celeste no longer felt ‘cool’.

At the age of sixty-one, Celeste reported that she’d gradually gained weight from her normal range of 18½ to 9½ stone in her twenties and thirties. Something happened starting in her mid-forties, and even without substantial changes in habits, she gradually ballooned up to 13 stone. ‘This is the heaviest I have ever been,’ she groaned.

As a professor of modern art, Celeste hung around with a fairly urbane crowd and her weight made her feel even more self-conscious and out of place. So I got an attentive ear when I explained my diet approach that involved elimination of all wheat products.

Over the first three months she lost 1½ stone, more than enough to convince her that the programme worked. She was already having to reach to the back of her closet to find clothes she hadn’t been able to wear for the past five years.

Celeste stuck to the diet, admitting to me that it had quickly become second nature with no cravings, a rare need to snack, just a comfortable cruise through meals that kept her satisfied. She noted that, from time to time, work pressures kept her from being able to have lunch or dinner, but the prolonged periods without something to eat proved effortless. I reminded her that healthy snacks such as raw nuts, linseed crackers, and cheese readily fit into her programme. But she simply found that snacks weren’t necessary most of the time.

Fourteen months after adopting the Wheat Belly diet, Celeste couldn’t stop smiling when she returned to my office at 9 stone – a weight she’d last seen in her thirties. She’d lost 3 stone 13 pounds from her high, including 12 inches off her waist, which shrank from 39 inches to 27. Not only could she fit into size 10 dresses again, she no longer felt uncomfortable mingling with the artsy set. No more need to conceal her sagging wheat belly under loose-fitting tops or layers. She could wear her tightest Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress proudly, no wheat belly bulge in sight.

WHOLE GRAINS, HALF-TRUTHS

In nutrition circles, whole grain is the dietary darling du jour. In fact, this USDA-endorsed, ‘heart healthy’ ingredient, the stuff that purveyors of dietary advice agree you should eat more of, makes us hungry and fat, hungrier and fatter than any other time in human history.

Hold up a current picture of ten random Americans against a picture of ten Americans from the early twentieth century, or any preceding century where photographs are available, and you’d see the stark contrast: Americans are now fat. According to the CDC, 34.4 per cent of adults are now overweight (BMI of 25 to 29.9) and another 33.9 per cent are obese (BMI 30 or greater), leaving less than one in three normal weight.1 Since 1960, the ranks of the obese have grown the most rapidly, nearly tripling over those fifty years.2

Few Americans were overweight or obese during the first two centuries of the nation’s history. (Most data collected on BMI that we have for comparison prior to the twentieth century come from body weight and height tabulated by the US military. The average male in the military in the late nineteenth century had a BMI of <23.2, regardless of age; by the 1990s, the average military BMI was well into the overweight range.3 We can easily presume that, if it applies to military recruits, it’s worse in the civilian population.) Weight grew at the fastest pace once the USDA and others got into the business of telling Americans what to eat. Accordingly, while obesity grew gradually from 1960, the real upwards acceleration of obesity started in the mid-eighties. In the UK, as of March 2013, the Department of Health reported that in England, most people are overweight or obese. This includes 61.9 per cent of adults and 28 per cent of children aged between 2 and 15. Health problems associated with being overweight or obese cost the NHS more than £5 billion every year.

Studies conducted during the eighties and since have shown that, when processed white flour products are replaced with whole-grain flour products, there is a reduction in colon cancer, heart disease and diabetes. That is indeed true and indisputable.

According to accepted dietary wisdom, if something that is bad for you (white flour) is replaced by something less bad (whole-wheat), then lots of that less-bad thing must be great for you. By that logic, if high-tar cigarettes are bad for you and low-tar cigarettes are less bad, then lots of low-tar cigarettes should be good for you. An imperfect analogy, perhaps, but it illustrates the flawed rationale used to justify the proliferation of grains in our diet. Throw into the mix the fact that wheat has undergone extensive agricultural genetics-engineered changes, and you have devised the formula for creating a nation of fat people.

The USDA and other ‘official’ opinion makers say that more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese because we’re inactive and gluttonous. We sit on our fat behinds watching too much reality TV, spend too much time online and don’t exercise. We drink too many sugary fizzy drinks and eat too much fast food and too many junk snacks. Betcha can’t eat just one!

Certainly these are poor habits that will eventually take their toll on one’s health. But I meet plenty of people who tell me that they follow ‘official’ nutritional guidelines seriously, avoid junk foods and fast foods, exercise an hour every day, all while continuing to gain and gain and gain. Many follow the guidelines set by the USDA food pyramid (six to eleven servings of grain per day, of which four or more should be whole grain), the American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association or the American Diabetes Association. The cornerstone of all these nutritional directives? ‘Eat more healthy whole grains’. This largely matches the advice given by the UK government and the NHS, which recommend that you ‘choose wholegrain varieties whenever you can’.