Look as if the grain-industry people have been trolling the internet attempting to trash Wheat Belly, the outstanding new book by Dr. William Davis. How else do you explain an Amazon review written under the title The David Koresh of Medicine. Notice that the review doesn’t dispute any of the facts or science presented in Wheat Belly:
The author has no credentials, no credibility, just a small cult of terriby misinformed followers. Don’t be fooled by the high volume screech against wheat and grains.
I have to admit, it didn’t occur to me when I recommended Wheat Belly that Dr. Davis has no credentials. I assumed being a doctor who’s seen the benefits of a wheat-free diet in thousands of his own patients counted for something. I also figured that after poring over hundreds of studies on wheat’s health effects and thoroughly researching the history and genetic structure of wheat, Dr. Davis was qualified to write on the topic.
Allegations of “secret ingredients in wheat” to make you eat more, or comparisons to cigerettes. Seriously?!
Apparently the wheat lobby doesn’t require its job applicants to pass a spelling test. Are cigerettes similar to cigarettes?
Dr. Davis never claimed there are secret ingredients in wheat. He didn’t (as far as I know) don a Ninja costume or disguise himself as a plumber and break into the headquarters of Wheat , Inc. to pilfer documents. He simply described, based on published documents, how wheat has been modified during the past 50 years.
For over 8000 years wheat has sustained and grown human kind …
Eight-thousand years ago, humans (some of them, anyway) consumed Einkorn wheat. The main similarity between Einkorn wheat and today’s mutant wheat is they’re both called “wheat.” We also call both Thomas Jefferson and Adolph Hitler “humans,” but they produced rather different effects on other humans. What we ate 8,000 years ago has nothing to with the health consequences of eating a highly modified variety of wheat that’s only been around for the past 50 years.
And wheat didn’t “grow” humankind. Wheat shrunk humankind.
… oh and it tastes good when mixed with a little water and yeast.
That explains why nearly every brand of bread includes high fructose corn syrup high on the list of ingredients.
Every nutritionist and serious medical professional will tell you that bread is the most economical and safe source of essential nutrients.
Every one, seriously? That’s odd … I seem to recall a lot of conversations and interviews with nutritionists and medical professionals who agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Davis — who, despite having a good sense of humor, is a serious medical professional. So serious that he wrote a book about wheat.
In fact, bread is handed out in natural disasters because it sustains life without food safety issues or requiring refrigeration.
Tell ya what: if I’m ever starving because a tornado wiped out all the refrigerators within a 50-mile radius, I’ll eat some of the bread FEMA hands out. But the fact that bread doesn’t require refrigeration doesn’t in any way prove it’s good for us. Coca-Cola and heroin don’t require refrigeration either.
And now, suddenly it will kill you. Comical!
No, today’s mutant wheat doesn’t kill you suddenly. It’s more like slow torture.
This book is such a bone headed, misinformed way to just scare people into not eating.
Now wait a minute, Buster! Dr. Davis is 100% in favor of people eating. He just doesn’t want them eating a mutant grain product that will make them fat and sick.
As for secret ingredients, humm, apparently the author is ignorant of the food laws that regulate everything that goes into food and on food labels. Unlike some enforcement agencies, the FDA has some serious teeth behind its enforcement.
Well, that certainly negates all the studies demonstrating the negative effects of wheat that Dr. Davis cited in Wheat Belly. If the USDA and FDA are on the beat, mutant wheat (which is heavily subsidized by the same government that funds the USDA and FDA) simply has to be safe. That’s why they conducted all those tests on the stuff to make sure it wouldn’t cause any … no, wait a minute. Nobody ever conducted tests on mutant wheat to see if it’s fit for human consumption. Okay then, we’ll just have faith the USDA and FDA can tell if a food product is safe by looking at it. That works for me.
As for frankenwheat, again seriously?! Wheat, due to its ubiquitous presence in the world is treated as sacrosant from any GMO research or development.
I see. So when wheat went from being a wispy plant that couldn’t be harvested until it was five feet tall to a short, stubby little plant that’s harvested when it’s two feet tall — all in just the past 50 years — that was a natural mutation, was it? Boy, evolution works really, really quickly. I wonder what all those plant geneticists on the Monsanto payroll are doing all day. They’re probably just sitting around, playing poker and thinking, “Geez, I wish they’d let us develop some kind of hybridized new seeds that the company could patent and then force farmers to buy by threatening to sue them if some of those seeds blow onto their farms and start growing even if the farmers didn’t want the seeds in the first place.”
If you need real, science based information on healthy eating, check out […] and leave this book and its cult in the compound.
I’ll try to read […], but when I searched for […] on Amazon, all that came up was a kids’ book titled “Dot and Dash play Dot-Dot-Dot.”
I was hoping the grain lobby wouldn’t find out about our cult. For those of you who haven’t been recruited yet, we have a secret handshake that requires a lot of flexibility in the fingers — that keeps out the grain-lobby infiltrators who are suffering from wheat-induced arthritis. At our meetings, Dr. Davis sacrifices a goat and then we all spend hours enjoying ritual dancing around a bonfire on our pain-free legs. Sometimes we even dance naked. It’s not a sexual thing, you understand … we just like showing off our rash-free skins.
I’m sure this campaign by the grain industry will succeed. Any day now, Dr. Davis will have a conversation with a patient something like this:
“So how do feel after being wheat-free for the past two months?”
“Well, Dr. Davis, I lost 25 pounds, my psoriasis cleared up, my arthritis went away, I’m sleeping better, I’m not depressed anymore, I think more clearly, and I stopped wheezing.”
“Excellent! So you’ll continue avoiding wheat?”
“Of course not.”
“But—“
“Wheat has been sustaining humans for 8,000 years, Dr. Davis, so it has to be good for us. Besides, I don’t want to end up spending all day the airport banging on a tambourine and selling flowers to passengers.”
“But I never asked you to– why are you sticking your fingers in your ears?”
“What?”
“I said, WHY ARE YOU STICKING YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS?”
“My de-programmers told me not to listen to you.”
If you enjoy my posts, please consider a small donation to the Fat Head Kids GoFundMe campaign.
Maybe it’s those damned Martians. They sneaked in here about fifty years ago and screwed up our gene pool, causing us all to become obese, diabetic, and apparently waaay less intelligent. The whole wheat thing is just a coincidence those pesky green turds used as a cover so we’d all blame the well-meaning folks at Kellogs, Monsanto, etc.
Keep in mind here, I’m not saying I really think it was Martians. I’m merely offering a possibility that might disprove your theory that hybridized, mutant grains are inherently toxic to the human body. I HAVE MADE NO CONCLUSIONS.
Seriously, bro, how about a 3 turns per troll limit on these people? The first couple of times they’re amusing, but after the first couple of shots not so much. Leaving aside their missionary fervor (always in the name of The One and True Science) and condescending ignorance, they are BORING. They become redundant. They repeat themselves. They say the same thing over and over.
Cheers
Yeah, I’m debating what kind of troll policy to establish. I’ve blocked three so far because all they did was repeat themselves over and over and over. And they were redundant.
@DJ, I’m on your side but be careful when stating things as facts when they aren’t. You said the result would be your body converting stored fat to glucose, that is patently false. Fat can not be converted back to glucose, period. The glycerol skeleton used to fix the three fatty acid in a triglyceride can enter the gluco-neogenesis cycle and be recycled as glucose (glycerol is a glucose molecule split in 2), but the quantity generated that way is small, very small.
You’re right though to point out that the prioritizing of glucose over other fuels hardly constitute an argument in favor of consuming it. If we followed that argument we should try to make alcohol our 1st choice fuel, as it is metabolized with even more priority than glucose.
While Dr. Davis didn’t perfom unauthorized experiments on his patients, I did on my mom. After I read Wheat Belly, I told her that it might help her blood sugar by cutting out wheat — leaving out all the benefits of appearance and joint pain — as my own little experiment. We started this on Sunday, and Friday was the first day in many years that she woke up without having to take Tylenol to walk to the bathroom. Today, she is still completely pain free. This is someone who was scheduled to have vascular surgery on BOTH legs (didn’t do it because she heard about the year long rehab and decided at 78 it wasn’t worthwhile) and has to take a lot of pain pills because of sore hips and hands. She’s loving the new meal plan that I provided to her to ensure she stayed on course and doesn’t miss wheat at all. I think she’s more upset about no popcorn.
So unless she somehow inherently “knew” wheat was bad for her, I can’t see how you can claim that this is all in her head. After all of the vacations and years of her life that being in pain has ruined, I find it hilarious that you’re claiming that mentally someone in pain can just overcome it because they believe they should be able to. If that were the case, she would have been able to have a lot more fun on vacations instead of sitting in agony in a hotel room, dreading the 5 hour flight and the 10 minute walk through the gate.
Your mom’s story has been repeated over and over by people who had no expectation of their arthritis going away.
My husband and I went wheat-free for the month of september. Neither one of us are celiac. And while it was n=1 (because hubby wisely decided that what I was doing was stupid), I did a little experiment on myself. I ate a sandwich AND a piece of cake.
I will admit to suffering no complications the day after, other than some water retention (which probably means some inflamation). However this may be due to the fact my body decided I had poisoned it and uhmmm, got rid of it very quickly. Faster than I had thought the GI tract was physically capable of.
Sugar from chocolate bars did not have this effect. Roasted white potatoes did not have this effect. But there were no double-blinds. No sugar pills or statistical margins of error. But in the end my personal n=1 is all that really matters to me.
And yes, I did let my huaband say “I told you so.”
And here I thought it was the barometric pressure that was making my head pound. Here it was David’s posts all along.
His comments are so long, so convoluted, and so full of tortured logic, reading them makes me want to shoot myself in the head.
Thanks, Gallier… I apologize for my error. What I meant was that when you keep glucose levels high, it becomes almost impossible for your body to used its stored body fat as fuel. After all, if high glucose levels are maintained the body won’t touch fat because it prefers the glucose. So most of the proponents of high-carb diets would prefer us to stay fat longer and struggle harder to lose the weight. They are obsessed with the calories in calories out formula… without considering that some calories are better than others.
Regarding your trolls, it strikes me that many suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which is part of a larger grouping of conditions called Dramatic Personlity Disorders. The person running carbsanity definitely falls into this category, and many of Guyenet’s fanboys as well (all text below is a quote):
“Lacking empathy is a profound disturbance to the narcissist’s thinking (cognition) and feeling (affectivity). Even when very intelligent, narcissists can’t reason well. One I’ve worked with closely does something I characterize as “analysis by eggbeater.” They don’t understand the meaning of what people say and they don’t grasp the meaning of the written word either — because so much of the meaning of anything we say depends on context and affect, narcissists (lacking empathy and thus lacking both context and affect) hear only the words. (Discussions with narcissists can be really weird and disconcerting; they seem to think that using some of the same words means that they are following a line of conversation or reasoning. Thus, they will go off on tangents and irrelevancies, apparently in the blithe delusion that they understand what others are talking about.) And, frankly, they don’t hear all the words, either. They can pay attention only to stuff that has them in it. This is not merely a bad habit — it’s a cognitive deficiency.
Narcissists have little sense of humor. They don’t get jokes, not even the funny papers or simple riddles, and they don’t make jokes, except for sarcastic cracks and the lamest puns. This is because, lacking empathy, they don’t get the context and affect of words or actions, and jokes, humor, comedy depend entirely on context and affect. They specialize in sarcasm about others and mistake it for wit, but, in my experience, narcissists are entirely incapable of irony — thus, I’ve been chagrinned more than once to discover that something I’d taken as an intentional pose or humorous put-on was, in fact, something the narcissist was totally serious about. Which is to say that they come mighty close to parody in their pretensions and pretending, so that they can be very funny without knowing it, but you’d better not let on that you think so.”
(http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html)
Certainly our troll has difficulty grasping what other people write. I stated clearly– more than once — that I don’t think a placebo effect can explain why people would notice wheat provoked arthritis pains, and he somehow managed to interpret that as me claiming there’s no such thing as a placebo effect.
The Carb(in)Sanity lady does indeed exhibit an amazing capacity to misinterpret. She’s one of the few trolls I finally blocked from posting here. She would regularly take something I wrote, misinterpret it, put words in my mouth, then demand an explanations of the words she put in my mouth. When I’d ask a challenging question, she’d ignore it and go on another diatribe. I finally got tired of trying to respond to all her goofy misinterpretations. You can’t keep up with someone that obsessed.
Maybe it’s those damned Martians. They sneaked in here about fifty years ago and screwed up our gene pool, causing us all to become obese, diabetic, and apparently waaay less intelligent. The whole wheat thing is just a coincidence those pesky green turds used as a cover so we’d all blame the well-meaning folks at Kellogs, Monsanto, etc.
Keep in mind here, I’m not saying I really think it was Martians. I’m merely offering a possibility that might disprove your theory that hybridized, mutant grains are inherently toxic to the human body. I HAVE MADE NO CONCLUSIONS.
Seriously, bro, how about a 3 turns per troll limit on these people? The first couple of times they’re amusing, but after the first couple of shots not so much. Leaving aside their missionary fervor (always in the name of The One and True Science) and condescending ignorance, they are BORING. They become redundant. They repeat themselves. They say the same thing over and over.
Cheers
Yeah, I’m debating what kind of troll policy to establish. I’ve blocked three so far because all they did was repeat themselves over and over and over. And they were redundant.
While Dr. Davis didn’t perfom unauthorized experiments on his patients, I did on my mom. After I read Wheat Belly, I told her that it might help her blood sugar by cutting out wheat — leaving out all the benefits of appearance and joint pain — as my own little experiment. We started this on Sunday, and Friday was the first day in many years that she woke up without having to take Tylenol to walk to the bathroom. Today, she is still completely pain free. This is someone who was scheduled to have vascular surgery on BOTH legs (didn’t do it because she heard about the year long rehab and decided at 78 it wasn’t worthwhile) and has to take a lot of pain pills because of sore hips and hands. She’s loving the new meal plan that I provided to her to ensure she stayed on course and doesn’t miss wheat at all. I think she’s more upset about no popcorn.
So unless she somehow inherently “knew” wheat was bad for her, I can’t see how you can claim that this is all in her head. After all of the vacations and years of her life that being in pain has ruined, I find it hilarious that you’re claiming that mentally someone in pain can just overcome it because they believe they should be able to. If that were the case, she would have been able to have a lot more fun on vacations instead of sitting in agony in a hotel room, dreading the 5 hour flight and the 10 minute walk through the gate.
Your mom’s story has been repeated over and over by people who had no expectation of their arthritis going away.
My husband and I went wheat-free for the month of september. Neither one of us are celiac. And while it was n=1 (because hubby wisely decided that what I was doing was stupid), I did a little experiment on myself. I ate a sandwich AND a piece of cake.
I will admit to suffering no complications the day after, other than some water retention (which probably means some inflamation). However this may be due to the fact my body decided I had poisoned it and uhmmm, got rid of it very quickly. Faster than I had thought the GI tract was physically capable of.
Sugar from chocolate bars did not have this effect. Roasted white potatoes did not have this effect. But there were no double-blinds. No sugar pills or statistical margins of error. But in the end my personal n=1 is all that really matters to me.
And yes, I did let my huaband say “I told you so.”
And here I thought it was the barometric pressure that was making my head pound. Here it was David’s posts all along.
His comments are so long, so convoluted, and so full of tortured logic, reading them makes me want to shoot myself in the head.
You know what’s a lot more alarming than “mutant wheat”? People who are deeply ignorant of genetics and basic biochemistry that attempt to spread fear of GMOs.
Fear of mutant wheat is natural and justified. I’m considering dressing up as mutant wheat for Halloween. I’m not sure I can pull it off, since (like natural wheat) I’m fairly tall.
Thanks, Gallier… I apologize for my error. What I meant was that when you keep glucose levels high, it becomes almost impossible for your body to used its stored body fat as fuel. After all, if high glucose levels are maintained the body won’t touch fat because it prefers the glucose. So most of the proponents of high-carb diets would prefer us to stay fat longer and struggle harder to lose the weight. They are obsessed with the calories in calories out formula… without considering that some calories are better than others.
Regarding your trolls, it strikes me that many suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which is part of a larger grouping of conditions called Dramatic Personlity Disorders. The person running carbsanity definitely falls into this category, and many of Guyenet’s fanboys as well (all text below is a quote):
“Lacking empathy is a profound disturbance to the narcissist’s thinking (cognition) and feeling (affectivity). Even when very intelligent, narcissists can’t reason well. One I’ve worked with closely does something I characterize as “analysis by eggbeater.” They don’t understand the meaning of what people say and they don’t grasp the meaning of the written word either — because so much of the meaning of anything we say depends on context and affect, narcissists (lacking empathy and thus lacking both context and affect) hear only the words. (Discussions with narcissists can be really weird and disconcerting; they seem to think that using some of the same words means that they are following a line of conversation or reasoning. Thus, they will go off on tangents and irrelevancies, apparently in the blithe delusion that they understand what others are talking about.) And, frankly, they don’t hear all the words, either. They can pay attention only to stuff that has them in it. This is not merely a bad habit — it’s a cognitive deficiency.
Narcissists have little sense of humor. They don’t get jokes, not even the funny papers or simple riddles, and they don’t make jokes, except for sarcastic cracks and the lamest puns. This is because, lacking empathy, they don’t get the context and affect of words or actions, and jokes, humor, comedy depend entirely on context and affect. They specialize in sarcasm about others and mistake it for wit, but, in my experience, narcissists are entirely incapable of irony — thus, I’ve been chagrinned more than once to discover that something I’d taken as an intentional pose or humorous put-on was, in fact, something the narcissist was totally serious about. Which is to say that they come mighty close to parody in their pretensions and pretending, so that they can be very funny without knowing it, but you’d better not let on that you think so.”
(http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html)
Certainly our troll has difficulty grasping what other people write. I stated clearly– more than once — that I don’t think a placebo effect can explain why people would notice wheat provoked arthritis pains, and he somehow managed to interpret that as me claiming there’s no such thing as a placebo effect.
The Carb(in)Sanity lady does indeed exhibit an amazing capacity to misinterpret. She’s one of the few trolls I finally blocked from posting here. She would regularly take something I wrote, misinterpret it, put words in my mouth, then demand an explanations of the words she put in my mouth. When I’d ask a challenging question, she’d ignore it and go on another diatribe. I finally got tired of trying to respond to all her goofy misinterpretations. You can’t keep up with someone that obsessed.
You know what’s a lot more alarming than “mutant wheat”? People who are deeply ignorant of genetics and basic biochemistry that attempt to spread fear of GMOs.
Fear of mutant wheat is natural and justified. I’m considering dressing up as mutant wheat for Halloween. I’m not sure I can pull it off, since (like natural wheat) I’m fairly tall.
Fred Hahn exposed carbinsane for what she is: a carbohydrates addict!
http://slowburnfitness.com/fat-regulation-insulin-or-asp/
Hey! Great idea! My friend’s been looking for a Halloween costume idea, she should go as mutant wheat! Although…then again, if she rejected being a zombie or vampire because they were too scary can you imagine how terrified she’d be of this? Personally, this has scared me to the point where I’ve decided that if I take a day off on Halloween and Christmas and such, I’ll stay away from anything with wheat 🙂 better to have sugar and fat than sugar and wheat,
Is your friend two feet tall? That will make the costume more authentic.
Fred Hahn exposed carbinsane for what she is: a carbohydrates addict!
http://slowburnfitness.com/fat-regulation-insulin-or-asp/
Hey! Great idea! My friend’s been looking for a Halloween costume idea, she should go as mutant wheat! Although…then again, if she rejected being a zombie or vampire because they were too scary can you imagine how terrified she’d be of this? Personally, this has scared me to the point where I’ve decided that if I take a day off on Halloween and Christmas and such, I’ll stay away from anything with wheat 🙂 better to have sugar and fat than sugar and wheat,
Is your friend two feet tall? That will make the costume more authentic.
@Brandon,
*If you read* ‘Wheat Belly’, you’ll see that Dr. Davis points out that today’s ‘mutant’ wheat is not the product of genetic modification techniques like inserting a single gene into a plant’s DNA, etc., which he notes is somewhat benign, but rather, is the product of various forms of hybridization and chemical mutagenesis (e.g., soaking wheat in sodium azide), which produces something very different.
Regardless, as a consumer, I want to know exactly what’s been done to my food so that I can make a decision about whether or not I want to expose my family to it. If I want to avoid GMOs, even IF that is a decision based on ignorance, let *me* make that decision – I want full information up front. Don’t tell me GMOs are safe, pat me on the head and tell me that I don’t need to know whether or not my food supply includes GMOs (I know you didn’t say that, but I sense that is the implication of your comment).
You know what to keep in mind about trolls – “Don’t wrassle with a pig. You get dirty, and the pig likes it.” Any attention by way of response is enough to keep them coming back for more. Better to ignore or delete.
When they become annoying enough, I start deleting.
@Brandon,
*If you read* ‘Wheat Belly’, you’ll see that Dr. Davis points out that today’s ‘mutant’ wheat is not the product of genetic modification techniques like inserting a single gene into a plant’s DNA, etc., which he notes is somewhat benign, but rather, is the product of various forms of hybridization and chemical mutagenesis (e.g., soaking wheat in sodium azide), which produces something very different.
Regardless, as a consumer, I want to know exactly what’s been done to my food so that I can make a decision about whether or not I want to expose my family to it. If I want to avoid GMOs, even IF that is a decision based on ignorance, let *me* make that decision – I want full information up front. Don’t tell me GMOs are safe, pat me on the head and tell me that I don’t need to know whether or not my food supply includes GMOs (I know you didn’t say that, but I sense that is the implication of your comment).
You know what to keep in mind about trolls – “Don’t wrassle with a pig. You get dirty, and the pig likes it.” Any attention by way of response is enough to keep them coming back for more. Better to ignore or delete.
When they become annoying enough, I start deleting.
Oh goody. Wheat trolls.
Celiac disease used to be a rare diagnosis. Now they estimate as many as 1 out of every 133 people has it (and that was an estimate back in 2003!). Wouldn’t that be approaching epidemic status? Not as bad yet as diabetes, but given time, it might be, if it keeps doubling or more every 15 years. That’s really enough for me, but the book is really a fascinating read.
Watch, next Big Pharma will develop some crazy drug that allows people with celiac disease to eat gluten with less damage to their system. Unfortunately the side effects will be cancer, hearing loss, and acid reflux. But dangit, they’ll get to eat their “healthy whole grains!”
The researchers who analyzed blood samples from soldiers today and compared them to blood samples from soldiers 50 years ago where surprised to find a quadrupling of celiac antibodies. They figured doctors had simply gotten better at diagnosing the disease. Nope.
Oh goody. Wheat trolls.
Celiac disease used to be a rare diagnosis. Now they estimate as many as 1 out of every 133 people has it (and that was an estimate back in 2003!). Wouldn’t that be approaching epidemic status? Not as bad yet as diabetes, but given time, it might be, if it keeps doubling or more every 15 years. That’s really enough for me, but the book is really a fascinating read.
Watch, next Big Pharma will develop some crazy drug that allows people with celiac disease to eat gluten with less damage to their system. Unfortunately the side effects will be cancer, hearing loss, and acid reflux. But dangit, they’ll get to eat their “healthy whole grains!”
The researchers who analyzed blood samples from soldiers today and compared them to blood samples from soldiers 50 years ago where surprised to find a quadrupling of celiac antibodies. They figured doctors had simply gotten better at diagnosing the disease. Nope.
Uh, oh! Brandon’s shown up on this site, too. If he stays, he will make the Troll of the Month List, too.
Could be a fierce competition.
Uh, oh! Brandon’s shown up on this site, too. If he stays, he will make the Troll of the Month List, too.
Could be a fierce competition.
Dr. Emily Deans is not in favor of eating wheat, but she’s not impressed with ‘Wheat Belly’:
http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/10/slam-dunked-and-wheat-belly.html
Dr. Emily Deans is not in favor of eating wheat, but she’s not impressed with ‘Wheat Belly’:
http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2011/10/slam-dunked-and-wheat-belly.html
First of all, I am inclined to believe that Dr Davis is correct. However, I do think that David and other commenters have been unfairly maligned.
The placebo effect is extremely complicated, and the fact that people weren’t expecting their arthritis to go away may be largely irrelevant. Even visiting a doctor may be enough to trigger the placebo effect, even more so if that doctor is wearing a white coat. Visiting and being under the care of a doctor makes you feel better, period. If a patient cuts out wheat because their doctor says it will cure warts, and they find it DOES cure warts, they are much more likely to ascribe any other unrelated events- such as a reduction in the symptoms of arthritis- to cutting out wheat. In short, correlation does not prove causation.
Furthermore, Dr Dean Ornish could probably provide you with thousands of examples of people who followed HIS advice and had good outcomes from it. Does that mean he’s right? Hell, a crystal-therapist could do the same. A homeopathist could write a book saying that thousands of his “patients” report reductions in arthritis symptoms after taking a homeopathic “remedy”. You wouldn’t believe him, and rightly so.
As I say, my (leaky) gut feeling is that Dr Davis is right, and I’m happy to avoid wheat for a host of reasons. However, the commenters calling for clinical trials to prove the theory are correct, IMHO. In fact such trials will probably prove Dr Davis right. This is why they’ll never happen. Doesn’t mean people are wrong to point out the lack of them.
I don’t think the placebo effect can explain the results here. Keep mind, we’re talking about people who were suffering from arthritis and other ailments for years and had visited other doctors, but weren’t cured by any doctor-worship placebo effects. Many came to Dr. Davis for treatment of diabetes with no expectation whatsoever of relief from arthritis.
Ornish’s program does produce improvements in his patients’ health, and the results are genuine. His program requires them to give up sugar, white flour, white rice, processed vegetable oils and smoking if they smoke. He also requires them to take up exercise and attend stress-management classes. And oh yeah … they also give up meat. Then when his program works — which it should, since he’s removing the junk from the diets of people who ate a lot of junk — he cites it as proof that meat is bad for us.
First of all, I am inclined to believe that Dr Davis is correct. However, I do think that David and other commenters have been unfairly maligned.
The placebo effect is extremely complicated, and the fact that people weren’t expecting their arthritis to go away may be largely irrelevant. Even visiting a doctor may be enough to trigger the placebo effect, even more so if that doctor is wearing a white coat. Visiting and being under the care of a doctor makes you feel better, period. If a patient cuts out wheat because their doctor says it will cure warts, and they find it DOES cure warts, they are much more likely to ascribe any other unrelated events- such as a reduction in the symptoms of arthritis- to cutting out wheat. In short, correlation does not prove causation.
Furthermore, Dr Dean Ornish could probably provide you with thousands of examples of people who followed HIS advice and had good outcomes from it. Does that mean he’s right? Hell, a crystal-therapist could do the same. A homeopathist could write a book saying that thousands of his “patients” report reductions in arthritis symptoms after taking a homeopathic “remedy”. You wouldn’t believe him, and rightly so.
As I say, my (leaky) gut feeling is that Dr Davis is right, and I’m happy to avoid wheat for a host of reasons. However, the commenters calling for clinical trials to prove the theory are correct, IMHO. In fact such trials will probably prove Dr Davis right. This is why they’ll never happen. Doesn’t mean people are wrong to point out the lack of them.
I don’t think the placebo effect can explain the results here. Keep mind, we’re talking about people who were suffering from arthritis and other ailments for years and had visited other doctors, but weren’t cured by any doctor-worship placebo effects. Many came to Dr. Davis for treatment of diabetes with no expectation whatsoever of relief from arthritis.
Ornish’s program does produce improvements in his patients’ health, and the results are genuine. His program requires them to give up sugar, white flour, white rice, processed vegetable oils and smoking if they smoke. He also requires them to take up exercise and attend stress-management classes. And oh yeah … they also give up meat. Then when his program works — which it should, since he’s removing the junk from the diets of people who ate a lot of junk — he cites it as proof that meat is bad for us.
And if we hadn’t overindulged in ubiquitous bread for so many centuries, we could have kept indulging in the food that grains were originally cultivated for and that was their primary use for most of the 10,000 years we have been consuming them: beer!
And if we hadn’t overindulged in ubiquitous bread for so many centuries, we could have kept indulging in the food that grains were originally cultivated for and that was their primary use for most of the 10,000 years we have been consuming them: beer!
I just love it when people try to pin a beneficial outcome on the ‘placebo effect’.
Ok, let’s say, just for yuks, that all those beneficial results of doing X (or stopping consumption of X) are caused by the placebo effect. (I don’t accept that conjecture in the case of the Dr. Davis’ claims, but let’s just play along, shall we?)
So, doing X (or in the case at hand, stopping consumption of wheat gluten) results in all those beneficial outcomes. Healthy weight loss, cessation of arthritic pain, skin problems clearing up, etc. And it’s all just because of the placebo effect. It’s all because of the awesome power of the mind.
If that’s the case, shouldn’t we be encouraging people to continue doing whatever triggered the awesome placebo effect? In the case of cutting wheat/gluten from the diet, no harm is done (except, of course, to the processed food industry.)
And if the observed benefits are indeed caused by the awesome power of the human mind (are you picking up on my sarcastic tone yet?) then we should do everything in our power to trigger that awesome power of the placebo effect.
That’s right, we should be telling people to run, do not walk, away from bread, muffins, cake, cookies, pizza, etc. etc. if for no other reason than your awesome subconscious mind will cause your body to heal itself through the awesome power of the placebo effect.
Really.
Well said.
I just love it when people try to pin a beneficial outcome on the ‘placebo effect’.
Ok, let’s say, just for yuks, that all those beneficial results of doing X (or stopping consumption of X) are caused by the placebo effect. (I don’t accept that conjecture in the case of the Dr. Davis’ claims, but let’s just play along, shall we?)
So, doing X (or in the case at hand, stopping consumption of wheat gluten) results in all those beneficial outcomes. Healthy weight loss, cessation of arthritic pain, skin problems clearing up, etc. And it’s all just because of the placebo effect. It’s all because of the awesome power of the mind.
If that’s the case, shouldn’t we be encouraging people to continue doing whatever triggered the awesome placebo effect? In the case of cutting wheat/gluten from the diet, no harm is done (except, of course, to the processed food industry.)
And if the observed benefits are indeed caused by the awesome power of the human mind (are you picking up on my sarcastic tone yet?) then we should do everything in our power to trigger that awesome power of the placebo effect.
That’s right, we should be telling people to run, do not walk, away from bread, muffins, cake, cookies, pizza, etc. etc. if for no other reason than your awesome subconscious mind will cause your body to heal itself through the awesome power of the placebo effect.
Really.
Well said.
Does anyone grow the kind of wheat that was grown over 50 years ago? If so, how can we get it?
Does anyone grow the kind of wheat that was grown over 50 years ago? If so, how can we get it?
So is my local bakery a part of Wheat, Inc.? (I think they are incorporated.)
Yes. They’re the updated version of Murder, Inc. Someone puts out a contract on you, and they feed you bread and bagels to kill you.
So is my local bakery a part of Wheat, Inc.? (I think they are incorporated.)
Yes. They’re the updated version of Murder, Inc. Someone puts out a contract on you, and they feed you bread and bagels to kill you.
You can’t spell either–pouring–not poring hello and this guy is not a nutritionist but a cardio doctor who over exaggerates everything from any study!!!
Dear Idiot: “Pour” and “Pore” are two different words with two different meanings. Perhaps you should take a remedial spelling course, then come back and share your insights.
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/poring-over-pore-and-pour/
http://www.thewritersforhire.com/blog/copywriting/%E2%80%9Cporing%E2%80%9D-vs-%E2%80%9Cpouring%E2%80%9D-whats-the-difference/
Given that you typed a run-on sentence in your (incorrect) attempt to correct my spelling, you might also want to review when and how to use a comma.
You can’t spell either–pouring–not poring hello and this guy is not a nutritionist but a cardio doctor who over exaggerates everything from any study!!!
Dear Idiot: “Pour” and “Pore” are two different words with two different meanings. Perhaps you should take a remedial spelling course, then come back and share your insights.
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/poring-over-pore-and-pour/
http://www.thewritersforhire.com/blog/copywriting/%E2%80%9Cporing%E2%80%9D-vs-%E2%80%9Cpouring%E2%80%9D-whats-the-difference/
Given that you typed a run-on sentence in your (incorrect) attempt to correct my spelling, you might also want to review when and how to use a comma.
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”
Reagan had a thing or two to say about this line…