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Originally Posted by WereBear
Yay! I love Dr. Davis' writing style. He can put humor in, for instance. Not everyone can do that.
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I agree. I've read some criticisms of Wheat Belly which seem to have validity to me, but on the whole I agree with his message, and he has a light and humorous touch to his writing which I think makes it more accessible to a large audience.
Funny and true story: I was at a meeting yesterday. This was NOT a diet-related meeting, but a meeting of a pastel society we belong to. One of the women, during our social part of the meeting, was saying that she had suffered for 20+ years from allergies - allergy testing showed her to be allergic to just about everything under the sun. She was on all sorts of medications and nothing helped. She had constant sinus issues, postnasal drip, constant coughing and sneezing, painful itchy eyes. And she felt, completely unrelated she thought, stiff and arthritic and in serious pain most of the time. She suffered through all sorts of medical tests and doctors basically said there was not much more they could do for her, basically telling her that since many of her allergies seemed to be to plants and grasses she should just avoid the outdoors as much as possible
Then her young teenage daughter wanted to go on the Atkins diet. The mom thought it was a dangerous fad, but the girl begged. So the mom finally decided that since she would be doing the cooking anyway she would go on the diet with her daughter to show support, and to try to get a feel for what the diet did to you. Well she went on Atkins inductions and in TWO DAYS (she said it was literally just two days) all her allergic symptoms vanished. Not only that but her arthritic aches and pains vanished too. She was dumbfounded. Food experimentation eventually made her realize that the culprit was wheat - although that was NOT one of the things her allergy testing showed up as an issue.
Anyway that was some 10 years ago, she still avoids wheat, and says in all these years her allergy symptoms have never returned, nor her aches and pains. And now when she recently had allergy testing it didn't show her to be allergic to anything!
Second woman said that in her early fifties she began suffering from severe GERD, and her belly had terrible bloating most of the time. Quite accidentally (I missed part of her story) she discovered that when she eliminated wheat the GERD and the belly bloating vanished. She works at the Mayo Clinic so she asked the top gastroenterologist there if it was really possible that wheat was the cause of her symptoms. Amazingly (yay the word is getting about among the medical field) he told her absolutely yes it was possible, especially if she was of Celtic or northern European descent. When she told him she was mostly Irish he said, "Well that's almost certainly your problem then. Skip the wheat and stick to potatoes".
And he even went on to say that the wheat we eat here is genetically modified and highly processed, and very different from what they eat in Europe where folks who have problems here often find they can eat bread in Europe with no problem.
However neither of these women had read Wheat Belly, though one had vaguely heard of it. I urged them both to read it. Of course they both already have an answer, but I find Wheat Belly very affirming for those who want to avoid wheat, myself among them!