Are You a Wheat-aholic?

As an example, let me tell you about Leslie, a patient I saw in my office just last week.With a heart scan score of 1222, Leslie could be in deep trouble in short order. Heart scans measure the amount of atherosclerotic plaque in the heart's coronary arteries. A score like Leslie's is high, high enough to pose a risk for heart attack as great as 25% per year (unless effective preventive action is taken).

At 64, Leslie had gained nearly 40 lbs since she'd given up many activities caring for a husband who'd developed health problems. A tall woman at 5 ft 9 inches, she held her 202 lbs well, but her cholesterol patterns were a disaster:

LDL cholesterol of 248 mg/dl

HDL 38 mg/dl

Triglycerides 241 mg/dl

Moreover, blood sugar was in the pre-diabetic range at 112 mg/dl, C-reactive protein (a measure of hidden inflammation) was high at 3.0 mg/l, blood pressure somewhat high at 140/84.

Most importantly, 90% of Leslie's LDL particles were small, the variety much more likely to cause heart disease, a pattern that is magnified 30-70% by indulging in wheat products. (In fact, small LDL particles are the number one cause of heart attack in the U.S.! More in a future post.)

Leslie's diet was dominated by processed wheat products: whole wheat bread, pretzels for snacks, whole wheat pasta. Leslie admitted that she loved these products and couldn't seem to get enough of them.

Leslie was a helpless "wheat-aholic."

Leslie was skeptical, worried that she would be hungry all the time and would have virtually nothing left to eat. Instead, when she returned to the office three months later, she reported that choosing healthy foods was easy, the insatiable and uncontrollable hunger pangs she used to suffer were gone, and she felt great, finding more energy than she'd had in years.

She also lost 30 lbs.

Leslie's cholesterol patterns also reflected the weight loss and elimination of wheat products: she dropped LDL cholesterol by over 100, HDL skyrocketed over 20 mg, small LDL shrunk dramatically, blood sugar and blood pressure plummeted back into normal ranges.

I see results like Leslie's several times every week. For those of us with patterns like Leslie's, or just obesity that accumulates in the abdomen, going wheat-free is among the most powerful single strategies I know of-contrary to the USDA Food Pyramid and AHA recommendations.

In reality, I do not believe that all fibers and carbohydrates are bad. Flaxseed, ground and used as a cereal or added to other dishes, can be a healthy food, since very little or none is metabolized to sugar. Oat bran is another great choice. However, in my experience, whole wheat foods are an enormously evil factor in diet.

That's not what the Heart Association says!

None of this jives with the American Heart Association Total Lifestyle Changes or the USDA food pyramid.

In my experience practicing cardiology for the past 15 years, a small quantity of whole grains may be good for children, slender people, and the extremely physically active. But not for the majority of Americans.