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Sunday, January 27, 2013

What does "No Wheat" do for you?

Yesterday Novak Djokovic won the Austrailian Grand Slam for the third time.  He went gluten free two years ago and his career in tennis took off like a shot. Not that he was a bad player before going gluten free.  But he is now number 1 in the world.

Tennis is very physical, of course.  It also is very much a mental game.  Gluten can affect mental stamina and clarity as well as physical.  Clearly, Djokovic's mental and physical games have improved.

I just mention the above for it's nice to find some media mention about devil wheat, rather than always touting the healthiness of whole grains.  They are not.  Humans have several million years of living with no grain in their diet.  They were strong and robust.  With the advent of agriculture, humans get smaller, less robust and less healthy.  But lots more of them.  With the advent of agriculture, the soil that animals, nature and weather had created over millenia, started eroding away.  With the advent of agriculture, humans went to war to get more land to denude since all they had was no longer productive.  Strong case I think.  It is outlined comprehensively in "The Vegetarian Myth." 

So what can getting off gluten (and grains) do for you?  Probably you do not want to win any grand slam tennic matches.  But do you want to be mentally sharper?  Would you like to have less painful joints?  Would you like to lose weight?  Lower Blood pressure?  Get off medications?  Getting off wheat (and other grains) might do some of those for you.  I found arthritis abated dramatically.  And I was so sure wheat was not a problem for me.

There's invisible stuff too.  Wheat ties up minerals so your body cannot use them.  So while all the conventional wisdom touts the minerals in wheat as one of the healthy things about it, they do not do YOU any good.  Wheat and baked good and other cereals are just very condensed packets of sugar.  They raise your blood sugar, trigger insulin release, make you hungrier, and thereby contribute to a host of the diseases of civilization.

What do you have to lose?  A 2 week elimination diet of no wheat or grains costs you nothing, absolutely cannot hurt you, and might make you feel a whole lot better and be a whole lot healthier.  Not particularly easy, I admit, for wheat is in everything it seems.  And I hear this so often--"Well what do you eat then???"  Wow, if wheat is the staple of your life, I guarantee you're not doing as well as you should--both mentally and physically.  Eat more protein, vegetables, animal products, some fruit and nuts.  There is a lot of great food that is not grain!!!  Try it, you'll like it!

1 comment:

  1. It's worked for me... although it did take the better part of a week as I recall to figure out what to eat instead of the breads, cereals, etc.

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