Dr William Davis – Lose The Wheat And Find Your Path Back To Health

Content by: Dr William Davis

Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.

Stu: This week we welcome Dr William Davis to the show. Dr Davis is a preventive cardiologist who took a unique approach to diet (specifically the removal of wheat) which allowed him to advocate the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

He is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Wheat Belly amongst others.

Audio Version

downloaditunesListen to Stitcher Questions we ask in this episode:

  • Is wheat really as harmful as we’re led to believe?
  • What’s the connection of wheat consumption and heart disease?
  • Can 2 slices of wholewheat bread raise blood sugar levels higher than a snickers bar?

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Full Transcript

Stu

00:03 Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and welcome to another episode of the health sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long lasting health. Now I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right, we’re into whole food nutrition, and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is, 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show. 00:44 This week, I’m excited to welcome Dr. William Davis. Dr. Davis is a cardiologist and author of the New York Times best-selling book, Wheat Belly. He’s known for his stance against modern wheat, and believes that it’s the single largest contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic. Fascinating stuff. In this episode, we discuss how he witnessed over 2000 patients regain their health, after giving up wheat. Also, get this, while eating a Snickers bar is less unhealthy than eating two slices of bread. You guys have been asking for this interview for a while now, and I’m truly honored to chat to Dr. Davis today. Let’s get into the show. 01:25 Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and I am delighted to welcome Dr. William Davis to the show. Good morning Dr. Davis, although, it probably isn’t morning for you is it? It’s probably the afternoon.

William

01:36 It’s dinner time around here Stu.

Stu

01:37 Oh okay. No problems. Look, firstly thank you so much for sharing your time. For all those that may not be familiar with your work, and there probably won’t be that many people that aren’t, I would love for you to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do.

William

01:53 I practiced cardiology, interventional cardiology for about 25 years. Became very disenchanted, disappointment what that meant, and practiced preventive cardiology, but truly tried to stop and reverse coronary disease. Did it in many people, and that led to the writing of my Wheat Belly series of books, and then more recently the undoctored book.

Stu

02:16 Right. Fantastic. We started our journey with 180 Nutrition many years ago, and kickstarted I guess our curiosity with a book by a lady called, Nora Gedgaudas. You’re probably familiar with, she wrote, Primal Body Primal Mind. Then that led us onto Wheat Belly. Wheat Belly was astounding. It just through a [spanner 00:02:38] in the works, and everything that we thought we knew about health and nutrition. I read, and re-read, and re-read that book multiple times just to keep I guess familiarizing myself with all the information in there. My question to you Dr. Davis, is wheat really has harmful as we’re led to believe?

William

03:00 No, it’s much worse.

Stu

03:02 Okay.

William

03:03 Stu, when I did all the work, to understand what in the world was going on, truly. I thought, as you know, every official organization, American Heart Association, it’s parallel agency in Australia, the US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Canada, Natural Health Service, and the British Heart Association, they all agree you must eat grains for heart health, bowl health, prevention of diabetes, weight management, etc. When I started to see how powerful to ignore that information and remove it, I thought I must’ve been overlooking something fundamental. I am overlooking something. I’m going to be [inaudible 00:03:47]. 03:48 The deeper I dug, the more it became clear, not only were those agencies completely in the dark, that they were guilty of an astonishingly large mistake. I would equate the consumption of grains is on a par as something as horrible as human enslavement.

Stu

04:07 Oh my word.

William

04:08 Human sacrifice, it is that bad. People don’t believe that, till they actually hear what it really does and when they see what happens when you remove it.

Stu

04:16 Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny, because in many people’s lives the consumption of grains and wheat trigger the most amazing cravings as well. I remember as a youngster in England, we had a bakery in our local village. I can remember to the very day, the smell and the taste of these beautiful loaves of bread that were warm as I took them out of the shop. I can remember the feelings of just devouring this loaf. Crikey, my mouth’s watering just thinking about it right now. Certainly, after reading everything you’ve told me, I actually understand what’s happening now in the brain. What I was particularly concerned about was, the connection of wheat to heart disease. I’d love for you just to explain a little bit about that please.

William

05:09 Sure, that’s of course how it got started, because I had people with heart disease and I wanted to give them better solutions. The conventional answers for heart disease are ridiculous. It’s, cut your fat, eat more healthy whole grains, take statin drugs, and then when you get chest pain or a heart attack, we’ll deal with that in the procedure room. There’s many reasons why that’s unsatisfactory. Really got driven home to me when my mom died of sudden cardiac death a few months after her successful coronary angioplasty procedure 05:43 Of course, I took care of thousands of people on low fat diets, Lipitor, etc. I can tell you, those things do not achieve the kinds of ends that we want. As a cardiologist, it pays very well to allow people to get sick. American healthcare is the worst at that in the world, because it is the most profitable. The doctors in the hospitals make a lot of money by bundling it up. I thought that was a terrible answer, so I sought better answers. If you look for real causes of heart disease, not this ridiculous notion of cholesterol testing. Cholesterol testing should’ve been thrown out 40 years ago. It’s so outdated and so crude, but it just so happened an industry was created that supports those ideas, that statin drug industry.

Stu

06:33 Yes.

William

06:34 Even though the data are clear, they hardly work at all. The data are clear. What people hear is the marketing, really. I realized how ineffective the conventional answers were. In fact, low fat diets increased many of the causes of, real causes of heart disease. If you do, not cholesterol testing but what’s called, advanced lipoprotein analysis, and some other testing, you’ll see that by far and away the most common abnormality that leads to heart attack and heart disease is an excess of small LDL particles. Not LDL cholesterol, small LDL particles. Only two foods cause explosive quantities of small LDL particles, grains and sugars. That’s it. 07:19 Not fat. Not pork chops. Not bacon. Grains and sugars. I asked my patients to take gains and sugars out of their diet, and they did it. Small LDL particles would drop something like from 1900 nanomoles per liter, that’s how it’s measured, to zero or something like that. It was an absolute elimination of this heart disease cause. In combination with that, triglycerides would drop, HDL cholesterol would go up, blood sugar would come down, many diabetics became non-diabetic, pre-diabetics become non-pre-diabetic. It was all the other stuff that followed. “Why did my rheumatoid arthritis disappear? Why did my psoriasis get so much better? I stopped my medications. You didn’t tell me I’d lose 63 pounds, and lose six inches off my waste.” 08:10 “Why did my ulcerative colitis get so much better? I stopped three drugs. Why did my irritable bowel syndrome go away in the first week? Why did my joint pain in my wrist and fingers disappear?” That’s when it became clear that I had stumbled onto something that was completely overlooked, and I tried to understand why. Had we changed? Is it the same as it was 40 years ago, 1000 years ago? What were the reasons behind all this? Why would we take away the food that every official agency endorsed and told us to make the dominant part of every diet? Why when we remove it, do people get so much healthier?

Stu

08:48 Unbelievable. I’d love to talk to you in a second about how wheat has changed, and how that potentially could be part of the problem. First up, is the consumption of wheat like smoking, in terms of I want to quit smoking and I want to reduce wheat, so I’m likening these two together? Can I just have a little bit of wheat, or is it like just having the occasional cigarette? You’re still hooked. You’re still triggering all the inflammatory pathways that occur in your body by doing so.

William

09:23 You made a perfect parallel Stu. It’s just like smoking, or like alcohol. An alcoholic can’t just have an occasional drink and get away with it. Very few can, right? Same thing here. Because of the glidden protein in wheat, and similar proteins in rye, barley, and corn, those proteins are not digested well by humans. They’re broken down only into pieces, not into amino acids, but to small peptides or pieces. These have opioid properties on the human brain. They cause, as you described, this addictive relationship. It takes control over your behavior. It increases calorie consumption. 09:58 There are people who have obsessive relationships with food. Some of these people have binging disorder, or bulimia. They’re driven, they can’t get enough. This is a 24 hour day process. Here’s one thing that can happen. Let’s say you do this, you lose 47 pounds and you’re feeling great. Your blood pressure’s now normal, and your blood sugar’s now normal. Your skin is back to normal, and your stomach’s all fine. Then you say what the heck, I’m going to have a slice of birthday cake. It’s my son’s birthday after all. I’ll have one little, couple of bites. You have it, and you open the flood gates on appetite, and you can’t stop. I’ve seen so many people do this, not expecting how powerful it can be in regaining 20, 30 pounds in a month.

Stu

10:49 Right.

William

10:49 I call that the, I ate on cookie and gained 30 pounds of fat.

Stu

10:55 Yes, the domino effect.

William

10:57 Just a small indulgence brings back what I call, re-exposure reactions. You’ve been grain free for let’s say a couple of months, and you have a whatever it is, slice of birthday cake, few bites of a bagel. You’re dealing next with diarrhea, bloating, abdominal pain, a return of joint pain, a recurrence of skin rashes if you got rid of an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis. It’ll come back. I’ve seen rheumatoid arthritis go away many times on this lifestyle.

Stu

11:28 Wow.

William

11:28 It’ll come back for six months when they had an indulgence. Not everybody has those kinds of effects, but some of the re-exposure reactions can be very serious business.

Stu

11:41 That’s fascinating isn’t it? Now, on the back of your, or maybe the front or back I can’t remember, of your book Wheat Belly it shows a picture of two slices of whole wheat bread. This is just an amazing statement and an analogy as well, that two slices of healthy whole wheat bread. Healthy whole grain is recommended by huge amounts of health professionals out in the planet today, and many industries as well, but two slices raise your blood sugar level higher than a Snickers bar. Surely not.

William

12:19 You know, all we have to do is look at a table of glycemic index and you’ll see that a Snickers bar from that measurement is much lower than whole wheat. Whole wheat has a higher glycemic index than white table sugar. I encourage people to do finger stick blood sugars, because it’s very easy. All you do is you have to check blood sugar just before eating the bread, and then 30 to 60 minutes later. Not two hours like my colleagues often advise, because that’s for people with diabetes to see if their blood sugar’s controlled. You want to see what the peak is. 12:56 You do that one day, another day do it before, and then 30 to 60 minutes after eating a Snickers bard, and you’ll see that the blood sugar rise after two slices of whole wheat bread is much higher than it is for a Snickers bar. You can do that. By the way Stu, one of what’s going to be a game changer in diet, is if Apple or some of these other companies ever come out with that continuous glucose monitoring watch.

Stu

13:20 Yes.

William

13:21 Because that’s going to be … People will say, “You know what? I think Davis is full of nonsense. I’m going to eat my bowl of organic stone ground oatmeal, no sugar.” They see their blood sugar go from 100 to 240, or something horrible. They realize, oats will give them diabetes in just minutes.

Stu

13:42 Oh boy, oh boy.

William

13:43 That’s going to be a game changer, because it’ll make people so effective and smart in understanding and navigating a truly healthy diet. I encourage people to do finger stick blood sugars, lots of people don’t like to. It’s a little cumbersome, it costs a few dollars.

Stu

13:57 Yeah, look totally. I completely support that because I did that. I bought a little blood glucose meter from the chemist a couple of years ago. Opened up an excel spreadsheet and just tracked stuff for a couple of weeks. What happens if I do this? What happens if I have sourdough compared to spelt bread, compared to white bread? Yeah, I completely agree that the results are astounding. It’s just crazy. What are your thoughts then on pseudo or ancient grain? If we’re going back to a time perhaps when we didn’t mess with the structure of the grain, and we can dial into some of these old school grains that people are still producing today, are they any better?

William

14:45 Every step we go back, every decade, every century wheat and related grains become less harmful. There’s no point at which they become harmless. It would be like trying to take your full tar, unfiltered cigarette, and then manipulating it. Use organic tobacco, put a filter on it, remove some of the tar. You don’t really disable all the negative aspects. If one strain of modern wheat is much more like, and this is true, to give you celiac disease for instance, some of the ancient strains are less likely but they still do. They raise blood sugar, just not as high as modern wheat. They are less harmful. 15:27 Stu, I find that’s a very common flawed sequence of logic in nutritional thinking. If you replace something bad for you, with something less bad for you and there’s an apparent benefit, in the logic of nutrition a whole bunch of less bad thing must therefore be good. I’ve seen that applied over and over again. Obviously that’s flawed logic. The silly analogy I often make is, if I replace unfiltered, not full tar cigarettes with filtered low tar cigarettes, and there’s an apparent reduction in heart disease and lung cancer, does that mean we should all smoke lots of low tar cigarette? Obviously that’s stupid. It’s unbelievable to me. Over and over again, that is the kind of logic used in nutrition.

Stu

16:14 Yeah, totally. I guess then you could apply that logic to many gluten free products, because they’re kind of doing the same thing aren’t they? In terms of, you’re still producing a product that has very little nutrition, next to nothing, will still mess with your blood sugar, but you’re just masking it in a healthy guise I think. What are you thoughts on gluten free breads for instance?

William

16:43 Yeah, it’s almost a cruel joke isn’t it? In order to let you be gluten free, they try to make reasonable facsimiles in taste and texture, with cornstarch, rice flour, tapioca, starch, and potato starch. As you already know, wheat flour raises blood sugar higher than most other foods. Very few foods raise blood sugar higher than wheat flour. What are the few foods that raise blood sugar even higher? Corn starch, rice flour, tapioca, starch, and potato starch, because they’re dried pulverized starches with very high surface area for digestion. They raise blood sugar than anything else. 17:24 Some people say, “Well I went gluten free, and I gained weight. I became a Type II diabetic. My tummy got really big. I had a lot of gas intestinal problems,” because it disrupts bowel flora. That’s the cruel joke here. The gluten free industry is acting like everyone’s savior, and of course they’re not. It’s a corrupt industry, or it’s a very ignorant industry. I know some of the people in that industry, and a lot of them actually know that they’re doing the wrong thing, but they can’t resist the explosive sales. Unfortunately, the Wheat Belly message has inadvertently fueled that. I didn’t mean to do that.

Stu

18:01 Boy oh boy. I think that the consumption of grains in whatever guise it might be, whether it be our oats, or our two slices of bread for toast for breakfast is so ingrained, excuse the pun, in our psyche that people still want to do that stuff. Now I know that online, you’ve got so many recipes and so many different strategies to be able to produce maybe seed breads, things like that. Are we okay with seeds? Is that a better move?

William

18:35 Seeds of non-grasses. Grains are of course the seeds of grasses. Humans just don’t have the digestive apparatus Stu, to consume any component of grasses. That’s why when you see a field of grass like your lawn, you don’t start salivating, you think that it would look good on your dinner plate.

Stu

18:57 No.

William

18:59 Because as you know, the [inaudible 00:19:00] of the earth, the herbivores like cows and goats, and sheep, they eat the grass and they live almost exclusively on grass and other to forage, and do just fine but they have very extreme adaptations that allow them to do that. Such as a four compartment stomach, with unique microorganisms that are spiral colon, and all these unique that we don’t have. We’re simply incapable of eating the seeds of grasses. I learned in my practice years ago, that I would tell people, ” Stu don’t eat the muffins for breakfast, and the breakfast cereals.” 19:35 I say, “Great.” I say, “How about three eggs and bacon, with lots of butter?” They say, “Well, but I want variety,” or, “It’s Christmas. I want something nice and special.” “I’m going to have dinner with friends. Can I serve something that they’re going to enjoy?” I learned long ago that you had to recreate foods, so I showed people how to make foods like pizza, cheesecake, muffins, cookies, and recreate these kinds of things without the seeds of grasses, wheat flour, and related grains. We use things like coconut flour, almond flour, and ground golden flax seed. As you know, there’s lots and lots of these seed meals and flours to choose from, and you can have delicious pizzas for instance, or cheesecake, or muffins.

Stu

20:22 Yeah, fantastic. I had a look on your website, boy there’s so much in the way of resources. You can totally eliminate this one thing that seems to be holding back our health. We’ll pop those links in the show notes as well. One thing that I wanted to talk to you about was, with the cravings. They’re so powerful, and in myself as well as a billion other people. How do we tackle carbohydrate cravings that are so ingrained? There’s that word again. Do you use supplementation, any strategies? What do we do?

William

21:05 First, I would say is grain elimination. Wheat and its related grains: rye, barley, corn, oats, millet, anything in the grain family because they share many characteristics including the amylopectin A carbohydrate that’s responsible for the high blood sugars. That gets rid of a ton of cravings, because you got rid of the opioid effect, glidden derived opioid peptides that stimulate appetite. Typically cause most adults who take in 400 to 800 calories more per day. If you remove the source of amylopectin A, amylopectin A is that carbohydrate that’s responsible for higher blood sugars in even white table sugar. 21:50 If you take away that, the amylopectin A, you don’t have these big swings in blood sugar. There’s the blood sugar highs are followed by blood sugar lows, and that also triggers cravings. We also take steps to cultivate a return of healthy bowel flora. A high potency multi-species of probiotic. Lots and lots of fermented foods every day. Prebiotic fibers, because people who’ve been consuming grains and sugars, and gained weight, and become diabetic etc. have completely disrupted bowel flora that also enters into the picture. I encourage to ignore this nonsense about cutting fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol. No, save the oil from your bacon and use it to cook. Use lard, use tallow, eat the fatty cuts of meat. Never buy lean cuts of meat. Buy the fattiest cuts you can.

Stu

22:42 No, of course not.

William

22:43 More olive oil, more coconut oil. Indulge in your oils. That does it for most people. If you’re still left with cravings, a little unusual but some people do, then we have some other tricks like MCTs, and a recent trick I’ve been using, making yogurt cultivated with lactobacillus reuteri, ATCC-PK-6475. A very specific strain that augments release of oxytocin from the hypothalamus.

Stu

22:43 Fantastic.

William

23:13 You get dramatic of what’s called, anorexigenic effect. You have no interest in food at all, but that’s a very powerful strategy, but not a starter strategy.

Stu

23:26 Got it. Yeah, fantastic. Children. Children specifically for breakfast. We’ve got lots of parents say, “Well, my kids they got so much energy, they need carbohydrates. We’re going to start them off with a big bowl of hot porridge in the morning.” How resilient are children in that they’ve got these hormones that help fix them up when they’re young, which really work against us when we’re older? Do children have any more requirements for carbohydrates say, over adults? How do we feed kids in the morning? Because it’s so hard when there’s-

William

24:10 As you know the parents have been drinking the kool-aid, and have fallen for that nonsense. As you know, grains entered the human diet just a moment in time ago. Humans did not consume grains like breakfast cereals for the first 99.6% of our time on earth.

Stu

24:28 Wow.

William

24:29 This fiction, this fairytale that we need breakfast cereals or muffins, or something, is completely fabricated. That’s not true. I don’t restrict fruit in kids, because they are more resilient when it comes to handling carbs and sugars. The more active, the more hormone sensitive, etc. I think it is untrue that kids somehow need grains. The great things too, is parents who’ve done this … Now I should mention that both adults and kids often go through opioid withdrawal syndrome when you first do that. There’s a week’s worth of nausea, headache, fatigue, and depression. 25:12 Then you get through it. Now the kids who’ve gone through this successfully, all of a sudden ask mom and dad for brussel sprouts, and more pork chops. In other words, these poor kids who live on chips and cookies, and don’t want real food, that’s what happens when you feed kids grains and sugars. Their taste sense is distorted. Their physiology’s all messed up. Their bowel flora’s disrupted. Theirs is listing internal signals. If you can turn that off, and let them have restored taste perception, restored bowel flora, and they really will ask, “Hey mom can we have ribs? Can we have spinach?” They’ll as for real foods. It seems almost strange, because it doesn’t happen too often in the modern world, but I’ve seen it happen countless times in parents who have gotten their kids to do this.

Stu

26:05 Yeah. It’s great to see as well, because the more you understand about this world of nutrition and all its broken principles, you can see every single day that these poor kids are subjected to all this chemical frankenfoods. They head off to school with their blood sugars up here, and their attention all over the place. It’s no wonder we’ve got these little buggers running around us 24/7. Crikey. We’re eliminating grains, and it’s working really well for us. We’re focusing on our gut flora, in terms of prebiotics, probiotics, and just trying to get better culture I guess in our gut. Where would we, what would we look to do to bring us to the next stage of health? Should it be exercise? Should it be … I guess, what do we do, what should we focus on as part of this health journey once we’ve done the elimination of grains?

William

27:12 Once you’ve eliminated grains, unfortunately you haven’t eliminated all the consequences of grains. One standout is magnesium deficiency, as you know. When you consume grains, about 60% of all magnesium is bound up by the phytates of grains, and you pass it out in the toilet.

Stu

27:29 Oh wow.

William

27:30 Throw into this that modern water filtration. No we can’t go to the stream or river anymore to drink, because there’s sewage, and farm run-off, etc. All our water is filtered, and filtration removes all the magnesium. Modern produce, mass produced produce is depleted in magnesium. It’s about 40% to 60% less magnesium. We all start out with a rather profound magnesium deficiency. It gets better with wheat elimination, and grain elimination, but doesn’t go all the way back because of those other issues. We have to catch up. There are three other nutrients that are bound up by the phytates: calcium, zinc, and iron.

Stu

28:08 Right.

William

28:09 Those usually don’t need attention, but sometimes do. Some ladies for instance who continue to menstruate, they may need special attention to iron. Though I have seen many instances of iron deficiency anemia improve. It’s one of the most common causes by the way Stu, of iron deficiency anemia, is grain consumption. Even to profound degrees, I’ve seen many ladies getting iron injections and blood transfusions, along with iron supplementation because they had iron deficiency anemia. It went away within two weeks of grain elimination, it’s very common.

Stu

28:42 Crikey.

William

28:44 We also address the common deficiencies. Not from grain elimination, but from modern life. Vitamin D as you know, is a very common deficiency. Iodine, particularly if you’re an inland area, like I’m in Wisconsin. Iodine deficiency is rampant in the Illinois, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis because we’re not near the ocean. All the iodine on the earth is in the ocean, or it’s concentrated by animals’ thyroid glands and we’re supposed to eat their thyroid glands, but modern people don’t like that idea.

Stu

29:17 No, that’s right. Just the muscle meat.

William

29:21 We have tango omega 3 fatty acids because we’re supposed to eat the brains of animals.

Stu

29:25 Yes.

William

29:26 Modern people, once again. Imagine telling the nice lady down the street she’s got to eat brains. She won’t. We do the second best, that is we take fish oil tablets. Because eating fish in a modern world means getting mercury contamination, mercury poisoning. Unfortunately, becoming very common. We take these nutrients to compensate, not so much for the deficiencies of not eating grains, but because modern life has allowed these kinds of peculiar situations to occur. The biggest struggle of all Stu I find, is bowel flora. That’s a big one. 30:01 Many people do find, with this idea of high potency, multi-species probiotics to seed the intestines. Then fermented foods like kombucha, [kafeers 00:30:11], yogurts, fermented veggies. You make it on your own, it’s very easy. That helps. Prebiotic fibers to nourish those bacteria. It helps. There’s so many people Stu I find, whose bowel floras are so disrupted, or they have a condition called, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO. I have to admit to you Stu, I was guilty of underestimating just how common that was. Now that I’ve been looking for it for the last year, year and a half, I’m finding it everywhere. 30:43 People with fibromyalgia, psoriasis, partially responsible autoimmune diseases. Here’s a common situation. You have rheumatoid arthritis. You have disfigured fingers and arms, and you’re on three drugs. You go grain free. You restore vitamin D to a good blood level. Take omega 3 fatty acids, and take [inaudible 00:31:01] bowel flora. You say you know what, it’s 70% better. I’m off two drugs, but it’s not totally gone. I’m still on one drug, and I occasionally have some flareups. That is often SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. You take special steps, address it. It’s tricky. It’s more complicated than I’d like, but we’ve been doing it. In fact, I’ve been having people do it on their own. Very successfully treating their own SIBO.

Stu

31:27 Wow. That leads me then onto another question that actually also jumps me into my question regarding your … You’ve got a new book. It’s not out right now is it? It will be very soon I think, Undoctored.

William

31:44 It’s been out for about a year.

Stu

31:45 Oh, really? Oh crikey, sorry. I got my dates wrong. My question is then, at what base level should we be tracking the changes that occur when we make these big dietary interventions? In terms of I need to know what’s happening with my gut flora, my bloods, my hormones, my cholesterol, all of the above. I go to my doctor, but my doctor doesn’t really know too much about this. He doesn’t believe in leaky gut. He doesn’t really understand too much about these mood swings that I’m going through. He just thinks I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. Where can I go, because it just seems there’s a real void at the moment with conventional medicine versus functional medicine? Don’t really know where to go to track all this stuff, so I don’t know whether it’s actually working. William: 32:41 Isn’t that something Stu? If you’re sitting in an office with your primary care doctor, or your gastroenterologist, or and endocrinologist, or a cardiologist the dumbest one in the room is the doctor about health.

32:53 Yes. William: 32:54 He knows how to schedule a CT scan. He knows how to prescribe an antibiotic. He knows how to give you Humira, or Enbrel. He knows how to get you into the hospital for a procedure, but if you just want information on health, losing weight, cultivating bowel flora, the doctor knows virtually nothing. It’s in a shocking situation to me that the doctors have abdicated their responsibility, and are not doing their job, because helping people become healthy doesn’t pay. I tell people, “Become absolutely useless to the healthcare industry and be healthy,” because they don’t care to talk about healthy people. They like sick people. Sickness makes a lot of money.

Stu

33:37 Yeah, it sure does.

William

33:38 That’s a corrupt equation of healthcare. That’s why you and I, what we’re doing now is why I think people have … Your listeners, need to hear these kinds of things. They need to realize that you go to the doctor, his interest is not health. His interest is Lipitor, Enbrel, Humira, or some other awful drug, or a procedure. An imaging procedure, a therapeutic procedure, they have no interest in talking to you about diet, or vitamin D, or bowel flora cultivation, or SIBO. That’s why we do it on our own. 34:13 The reason I wrote the Undoctored book, was I saw over and over again as the Wheat Belly program got better and better, and I added iodine, I had got some better strategies for bowel cultivation, things like that. People would do it. They go to the doctor, and doctor say, “That’s stupid. You’re cholesterol’s going to go up. You’re going to have a heart attack. Don’t come crying back to me.” The person does it. Loses 73 pounds, gets rid of their hormone diabetes drugs, gets rid of depression, skin rashes, acid reflux, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, long lists. I’ve seen people get rid of 10, 20 medicines.

34:52 They go back to the doctor. They’re thinner. They look younger. They’re vibrant. They’ve gotten rid of most or all of the conditions the doctor was treating, and the doctor is completely stupefied. What I saw happening Stu, is people were doing it in spite of the doctor. Why do we even need the damn doctor? If all he wants to do … If the doctor is the one getting in the way, that’s why I call it the Undoctored. Oddly, big media in the US, is supported by the drug industry. About half of all TV advertising now is drug ads. It’s astounding. When you watch TV, network TV, cable TV in the US, it’s commercial after commercial for drugs. These are not nice drugs. Some of these are $10k a month.

Stu

35:43 Oh boy.

William

35:44 Nasty drugs. Side effects like kidney failure, liver failure. Yet they advertise them. In the US, messages like yours, no longer entertained on network or cable TV. A lot of us have been black-balled from major media, because in effect big pharma has bought big media. That’s why what you’re doing, blogs, social media is so critical, because it’s like having an oppressive dictator who says, “I’m going to tax you at 70%, 80% what you make, and we’re going to make you live in poverty while I have 14 cars and a big palace.” That’s what’s happening. It’s worse here, because of the dominance of directing consumer drug ads on TV.

Stu

36:33 Right.

William

36:33 What you’re doing, I understand what you’re doing is very important.

Stu

36:37 Yeah. We’re so blessed to be able to tap into, and we always tell our audience the best brains on the planet. The latest thinking, the latest science. Science and research that won’t really reach us through the conventional channels for 10 years after the government needs to run long term studies, and figure out that they’re actually going in the right direction. Yeah, for everybody that’s listening, podcasts, and like this are an excellent way to become curious and find out, and dig deep, and do your own research. Great place to start. 37:16 I’ve just little bit aware of time. I just wanted to ask you a few personal questions as well, because clearly you know exactly how to eat for optimal health. What are your daily non-negotiables? Things that you do every day, to keep in the best shape? William: 37:41 I try to eat a lot of fat. I don’t care about protein that much, because I think protein takes care of itself. If you’ve gotten rid of all the odd things in your diet like grains, obviously no grains and no sugars. Some vegetables, preferably organic, or something you grow yourself. Some berries. I have to admit to you, I’ve been doing this crazy thing with the lactobacillus reuteri yogurt, because I’ve been indulging in this notion of … I’m not advocating caloric restriction, but it’s a way to enjoy caloric restriction, because it makes you completely indifferent to food. 38:21 Right.

William

38:22 By the way, that yogurt we make, it’s dairy. You can do non-dairy also, but it’s the best yogurt you’ll ever have. It’s the thickest, richest, it’s 18% fat the way I make it. Stu: 38:34 Fantastic. 38:35 It’s thick like cream cheese, and it’s delicious. You have all these wonderful benefits. Ladies will love this, it increases skin thickness dramatically. It reduces wrinkles. It increases libido. It increases testosterone in males. It increase bone density. It accelerates healing, skin healing and elsewhere, dramatically. Hair, and not consistent, I’m not getting this effect, but some people get thicker hair, both on the head as well as elsewhere. It’s a really cool strategy. It’s a more advanced strategy. It’s not part of my basic program, but I’ve been doing a lot of this. In fact, later tonight I’m doing a webinar on that. A symposium on just that topic.

Stu

39:20 Right.

William

39:22 I just eat real foods. No grains. Eggs, etc.

Stu

39:27 Yeah.

William

39:28 I think you’ll find on this lifestyle, though I never say to people, “Cut your calories, cut your portion sizes.” People will find that they eat far less. Somebody’s like, “Well I eat meat, organic food, and free range meats it’s going to break my budget.” What most people find is that over time, your food intake is so much less that actually you can save money this way. Because you’re not being driven to eat incessantly, by craving this-

Stu

39:54 Absolutely right. I’m guessing that your medical bills will be reduced dramatically as well, because there’s no need to go to see the doctor when you are functioning optimally because you’re fueling your body with the things that it absolutely needs. William: 40:09 Absolutely, yeah. You look at other people around you who don’t get this, with their big bloated faces. Their big abdomens, and their big bags of prescription drugs. Some people do want it. That’s why I love it. They see someone like you and say, “Stu, how are you so thin and slender? You look so good.” That’s how you convert people. If you tell somebody who is overweight, diabetic, “You really got to change,” most people don’t want to hear that. It’s always a challenge to try to educate people around you.

40:43 Yeah. No, brilliant. That is great advise. I think stick to real foods. More than likely you’re not going to break your hormones. When your hormones work for you, you’re going to be in far better shape than you’d ever wished you could be. Just a wrap up question then, before we go. I already know the answer to this, so I don’t even know why I’m asking. Top tips that could make the biggest impact on our overall health.

William

41:15 There are six items in my Undoctored strategy. It’s maybe a little longer than you had in mind, but it’s very easy. It’s wheat and grain elimination, and sugar elimination. It’s vitamin D restoration. Omega 3 fatty acids supplementation. Iodine and thyroid optimization, because the thyroid gland as you know is the most vulnerable of all endocrine organs. In the US, 20% to 35% of people now have disrupted thyroid status, so it’s out of control because of herbicides, pesticides, plasticides in agents, lack of iodine, prior inconsumption. Restoration of magnesium. Then last of those efforts, we talked about cultivating healthy bowel flora. That’s the hardest part admittedly.

Stu

42:03 Yeah absolutely. Not a quick fix, but probably the most … Well I wouldn’t say the most important, but a critical step in optimizing-

William

42:12 Stu, I don’t know how we did it before we started fussing with bowel flora. I don’t know how we got as good results as we did. I think what happens is over time, a lot of bowel flora issues will solve themselves on this program. Now I’m recognizing just why some people only got 80% better, or some people psoriasis only got half better, but it’s still persistent. Why some people still dealt with cravings, why some people still had fibromyalgia. We’re seeing a wave of fibromyalgia go away Stu, within days.

Stu

42:43 Wow.

William

42:44 I had a woman recently who had 20 years of incapacitating fibromyalgia, go away within five days, just by taking the right steps in bowel flora. Now we’re seeing a wave of … What I love about this Stu, is people are doing it from their own kitchens and living rooms. They go to the doctor and say, “Doc, I think I have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. What should I do?” He says, “I don’t know what that is. Don’t bother wasting my time. I’ll send you to the gastroenterologist,” who then says, “I’ll do an [inaudible 00:43:11], and colonoscopy. Good news Stu, you don’t have colon cancer. See ya.”

Stu

43:17 Oh boy. It’s really so sad to hear about these individual cases of people that are suffering for so long, unnecessarily. When things can turn around so quickly as well. Just love the information that you’re putting out. You’re an absolute renegade health professional. Just a pioneer in what you’re doing, and I cannot wait to share everything that you’ve told me today to our audience as well. Just before we go, what’s next? What have you got in the books?

William

43:50 Stu, it’s really, despite all my bitching and moaning, it’s really an exciting time. Where the information, the tools like smart phones, and biometric watches, devices that track your sleep, and your sleep phases, checking your own blood sugar, we have access to so many new tools. Every day something new comes out, new and exciting. It’s going to make us smarter, and I think what we’re going to have, is a heavily empowered individual in personal health. Let the doctor stay in the hospital. He’s there if you have a car accident, or bust your hip. If you want real health, don’t ask him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Start engaging in these kinds of conversations. Listen to your broadcast. Think about measuring your own health tools. I’ve actually been in conversation, cultivating with the Undoctored book and websites. I have a website called, Undoctored Inner Circle, where we … It’s a membership site, but that’s where we’re going to have this symposium after I get off your broadcast. There’s Undoctored blog, Undoctored Facebook page. There’s still a very vibrant and a live Wheat Belly Facebook page, Wheat Belly blog. Of course the Wheat Belly books. 45:07 Because this is, your way, my way of not allowing big pharma to squash information. Not allowing the ignorance, neglect of the medical system, to keep you from being healthy. Because as you know, the health that you can achieve on your own, is not almost as good as the health from the doctor, it’s superior.

Stu

45:26 It’s far better.

William

45:26 It’s superior to the health the doctors recommend you.

Stu

45:29 Yeah. Fantastic. For everybody that wants to find out more, where would I send them? Where is the best address to find out all of the information?

William

45:40 I think a good starting places would be the Undoctored blog, the Undoctored book, the Wheat Belly blog. I’ve written seven Wheat Belly books to try to suit every learning style and need. There’s Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox, that gets people started very quickly. There’s the original Wheat Belly, which recounts the history of how this all happened, and what aggro business did to wheat. There’s Wheat Belly Total Health, which addresses the things like vitamin D, iodine, etc. I try to address as many different learning styles as possible. There’s a big choice.

Stu

46:14 Brilliant. We will put all of those links in the show notes as well, so people will know exactly where to go. Dr. Davis, thank you again so much for sharing your time.

William

46:25 My pleasure Stu.

Stu

46:27 Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s fantastic.

William

46:29 You likewise. You’re doing a great job.

Stu

46:31 Fantastic. Thanks so much. Take care.

William

46:33 Thank you Stu.

Stu

46:34 Bye bye.

Dr William Davis

This podcast features William R. Davis who is a Milwaukee-based American cardiologist and author of health books known for his stance against "modern wheat", which he labels a "perfect, chronic poison."This view had previously been rejected by the medical and agricultural industry based on conjecture, minimal controlled studies, and... Read More
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