Why Eating Grains Can Drive Obesity, Heart Disease, Autoimmune Issues, And More

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

We're going to talk about why grains are such a controversial food, how to look at the pros and cons of whether or not they should be in your diet, and which grains are actually probably okay to eat.

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Week'S episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and that's Farm Center, a place for conversation that matter. If you're confused about whether you should eat grains or not, you're gonna love this podcast. It's one of our new series called Health Bites, little bites of health information and take small steps daily. they can make big differences over time in your health. So let's get into the grain conversation. For so many years, we've been told by experts to eat a lot of grains. In fact, the infamous 1992 Food Pyramid told us, in no uncertain terms, to eat 6 to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal, and pasta every day. Okay, that's crazy. And we now know that's crazy. And when you see that pyramid and the data was introduced and the increase in obesity since then is just a total correlation. Right now, causation, correlation, you could argue, but essentially the truth is over the last, how many years now? 30 years? That's a lot of time. 30 years. We've basically been following that instructions and eating a lot of grains. And that's why 75% of America is overweight and 40 2% is obese and 93.2% are metabolically unhealthy, which means they have some degree of insulin resistance, prediabetes are on their way. Now, the Bible says we should be eating bread, right? Staff of life and all that. Sounds great. Makes sense. But that's a different kind of bread, right? The staff of life, the wheat that was used in biblical times was very different. I went to Zara Icaria or Karia, we like to say it in Greece, which is one of the blue zones. and I got to eat an ancient bread there called Zea wheat. Zea wheat was eaten by Alexander the Great. Super high in protein, very low in gluten, very nutrient dense. And it was what fueled a lot of his campaign. So we are, say, bread, but we're not eating anything like the bread that our ancestors ate. And one of the messages that we're getting is to eat a lot of grains, eat whole grains. And in fact, it hasn't been taken up by the food industry in a great way in marketing. ways that are pretty pernicious. And basically, we've got phrases like whole wheat goodness, that it must be a healthy choice. But it's nuts when you look at actually what they do. They basically put a whole grain, sprinkles of some fiber in some processed food and they call that a healthy food. It's absolutely crazy. We'll go into some of the studies on that and the research on that. So, as much as anything else, grains made America. I mean, it's even in our national anthem, right? The, whatever, the Amber fields of grain or something like that of wheat. And that was a very different kind of wheat. Now, we have huge amounts of acres that are dedicated to wheat and corn and barley, sorghum. And, and we promote so much grain, we export a lot of the rest of the world. Grain-based foods are the number one source of calories in the American diet. And the grains that go into these foods, which are highly processed foods, we call Ultra processed foods, wheat, corn. and so forth are crops that are highly subsidized by the federal government, billions of dollars. The taxpayers dollars are devoted to keeping us on a grain based diet with things like bread, rice, pasta, cereals, cookies, cake, pizza, oatmeal, crackers, you name it. Now, many of these crops like corn and so forth are fed to livestock. So it's not only are they feeding us, but they're also feeding the cows and the chickens and all the other animals that we raise. and our Americans are getting grains indirectly too, from all the grain fed beef, chicken and dairy we consume. The average American consumes about 133 pounds of flour in there every year. Now it used to be 146.8 pounds in 1995, but 133 pounds from the USDA data is a lot of flour. And by the way, that's about a third of a pound per person per day. Some of us have a lot more. And that's going to include all the other grains and all the other potatoes and all the starches and sugars, which is about 152 pounds a year. so I wrote a book called food, what the heck should I eat? Because people are so confused about what to eat. And even me, I get confused because it's research is all over the place. And, and I talk about in, in, in the book food, what the heck should I eat? That whole grains can be a good source of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and, and it's okay to eat them. But I talk about what and how and why. Right now, they taste pretty good, but the toxic amounts we eat. the pharmacologic doses we eat are huge drivers of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia. And most of the grains we eat are not like whole grains, right? They're not like we're not eating wheat berries, we're eating white flour predominantly, and even whole wheat flour. But the way we mill it and grind it, it's just so fine. Essentially, it's like white flour. Maybe a little bit better as a few extra vitamins, a few extra minerals, a little extra fiber. but essentially its effect on your blood sugar is bad. In fact, the glycemic index of whole wheat flour is higher than table sugar, meaning it raises your blood sugar more than table sugar. If you look at most things that have whole wheat in them, you've got to read all the ingredients. It's not just the whole, they can put whole wheat, but it can be filled with sugar and all kinds of stuff. So we're going to talk about why grains are such a controversial food, how to look at the pros and cons of whether or not they should be in your diet, and which grains are actually probably okay to eat. so first thing you should know is this, and this is really important. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. There are essential fatty acids, right, the Omega-3s, and there are essential amino acids, which we need in large doses from protein, but there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Even the National Academy of Sciences Dietary Reference Index says there's no biological requirement for carbohydrates. Now, that's not to say they're not okay to eat. They're not good for us. I mean, vegetables are carbohydrates. Broccoli is carbohydrate. There's carbohydrates and nuts. Not that they're bad, but it depends on the type of carbohydrates. So, first of all, there's a myth that we have to eat grains to be healthy. We do not. We do not need to eat them. Now, you can eat them. And we'll talk about how and why, but basically don't buy the propaganda that we need them. In fact, for most of human history, we haven't had grain until the agricultural Revolution, 10, 000 years ago, 12, 000 years ago. we never had any grains, we never had any beans, we basically were hunters and gatherers. Our bodies worked very well without them. And yes, there are plenty of vitamins, minerals, fiber, nutrients in whole grains, but you can get all that from other sources including vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, and other foods that don't have the same baggage as grains. Now, there are some cases where patients and people can eat grains and be healthy, but I'm going to talk about how to be very careful about that. particularly people who do not do well with them are people who have insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, people are overweight, obese. Now, how many people is that? Well, one in two Americans is pre-diabetes or diabetes, 75% overweight, 93% are metabolic and healthy. So maybe 6% of the population can tolerate them and not get into trouble. I mean, that's not, they're good. So I think we'd be very smart about what we're doing and actually talk about what kind of grains how we're eating them and how different grains affect us differently. Now in terms of whole grains, that's just a bunch of BS, right? If you look at the marketing propaganda from the food industry, it's talking about whole grain flours, we think where it's healthy, it's just a bunch of nonsense. For example, I want you to read labels carefully so you can tell whether what you're buying is actually truly healthy or not or just marketing hype. For example, you can get a whole grain Cookie Crisp cereal. Sounds great. Whole grain Cookie Crisp cereal. Well, the Cookie Crisp doesn't sound healthy, but it's got 22 grams of sugar. How much is that? That's five teaspoons, five and a half teaspoons of sugar in your serving of cereal that you give your kid in the morning. Not a healthy, right? Not a healthy. Just because they put a few flakes of whole grain flour doesn't make it healthy. Also, understand your body. Below the neck, your body can't tell the difference between a bowl of cornflakes and a bowl of sugar. Sugar and flour are the same in the body. I mean, actually flour might be a little worse because it has only glucose, whereas sugar has fructose and glucose, which are different metabolisms, but they're both bad. Basically eating two slices of whole wheat bread can raise your blood sugar more than having two tablespoons of table sugar. Think about that. So whenever you eat something containing whole wheat flour, you might as well be mainlining sugar unless certain caveats are taken into consideration, which we'll talk about in a minute. So also you're not eating the same grains that we used to eat, right? We're not eating ancient grains, heirloom grains. We're eating these new hybrids that are developed. For example, like dwarf wheat. Dwarf wheat was a very important innovation. in agriculture led to the Nobel Prize being awarded to the scientists who were able to hybridize, not GMO, but hybridize wheat so that it was short and stubby, not tall and thin, and then it produced much more starch and much more drought resistant, much more resilient, and could help, you know, feed the world, which all sounds great. Except for one thing. There's a starch that's produced there called amylopectin, which is a super starch. It's the worst. and it's basically the wheat we're eating today. Not only that, they spray with glyphosate often at the end to desiccate it so it's easier to harvest and basically just bad news. And the new hybrids have higher amounts of gluten in them and more likely to cause autoimmune disease. So basically we want to be very careful. Now, heirloom strains like Zia wheat, like I was talking about, might be okay, or other types of whole grains like farro, which have gluten, might be okay. But they're more ancient grains that people are not consuming. And by the way, they're not eating, I said whole wheat berries, right? I used to make wheat berries something like we have wheat berries and salad, we cook them up and do that. But that's not that common, right? So we have so much flour, it's mostly dwarf wheat, it's mostly sprayed with glyphosate, it's super high glycemic index, high gluten antibodies, definitely not helpful, definitely not helpful. and definitely not something you should be consuming. Even healthy grains may be problems. Like if you over consume grains that are, quote, healthy grains, even if it's like amaranth or brown rice, right? When they turn into flour, they're basically pulverizing it and the surface area is much higher and it's quickly absorbed and it spikes your blood sugar. So even if it sounds like, oh, I'm having brown rice bread or something, it's actually maybe even worse. So make sure you're, you're really smart about what you're reading, look at the labels very carefully and look at the where the food is on the label. If it's, by the way, I think most people shouldn't eat food with labels. I mean, it basically, you know, it's a can, it has sardines and olive oil, salt, fine. But if it's, you know, has 45 ingredients, you should just not even put it back. What about oatmeal? Oatmeal is such a health food, right? Mmm, meat, not really. No, it's, you know, It actually raises your blood sugar and most of the oatmeal we eat is actually pretty refined oatmeal. It's not steel cut oats, it's not whole oats. Those might be a little bit better. But when you eat oatmeal, it basically spikes your sugar. In one study, they looked at kids who had oatmeal, eggs or silken oats, basically same calorie, right? Same calorie. And the kids were a little overweight and they basically said, okay, if you're hungry, just tell us and we won't give you food. And when they looked and they put a catheter in their vein and basically on their blood every hour and what they ate. And the kids who ate oatmeal had 81% more food in the day because they were hungrier and their blood sugar spiked more, their insulin spiked more. They had more adrenaline, more cortisol, more stress hormones. So basically eating oatmeal is stressful for the body and led to all these things that cause weight gain. So I'm not a big fan of starting the day with oatmeal. Now, it depends if you have whole oats and you put nuts in there and fat and other things, it slows the absorption, it might be okay. you're quaker oats, definitely not. No, what about gluten? Now, you all heard about gluten free, gluten's bad for you and it's not. And generally, it's pretty new in the human diet, especially the dwarf wheat, which I mentioned, which has much more gliadin proteins that are much more inflammatory. Now, some people are fine. If you have, if you're healthy, if you have, if you don't have a leaky gut, not everybody's sensitive. About a third of the population has the gene for celiac. About 1% of the population has celiac. and by the way, there's been about a 400% true increase in celiac disease in 50 years, right? Because of the damage we've done to our gut. And part of that damage is from the new wheat and the gluten and antibiotics and other things. But basically, we have a society that is now rampant with gluten sensitivity, which probably affects up to 20% of the population, whereas true celiac is about 1%. But your body really doesn't know what to do with gluten, right? And celiac disease is an autoimmune disease and it can cause over 50, maybe 100 different diseases like type 1 diabetes, like rheumatoid arthritis, like osteoporosis, like colitis, like iron deficiency anemia. I mean, the list goes on because of how it affects your gut. Now, a lot of us, like I said, have this non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and basically our body starts reacting inflammation. And so we don't want that. And sometimes it's worth doing a trial of a gluten elimination diet. basically to see how your body does. Do it for three weeks, see what happens, add gluten back, see what happens. You might be fine. For example, I don't have a reaction to gluten. I do the dairy, but I don't have a reaction to gluten. I've checked, I don't have antibodies. My gut was okay. So basically I can eat gluten, but I don't eat that much of it because it's mostly flour, right? I don't eat the wheat berries. But there are other grains now. Now, one of the problems is that Dr. Alessio Fasano at Harvard, the world expert in celiac and gluten, basically talks about how everybody who eats gluten has some little damage to their gut because gluten increases something called zonulin. Zonulin is a protein that produces in our bodies which actually causes damage to our gut lining, creates a leaky gut, little tight junctions which are like Legos that are stuck together, come apart, it's only one cell thick between you and a sewer, and then you end up flooding your body with all these foreign proteins and antibodies. I mean, foreign proteins and antigens. and also bacterial toxins and proteins that are really quite bad. And so basically 60 to 70% of our immune system is right under our gut. So a lot of our inflammatory diseases are caused by gut. I mean, I was reading about insomnia recently that there's been a big correlation between dysbiosis and balances in the gut flora, leaky gut, and sleep disorders. So even sleep, for example, may be a factor. Now, when we have these leaky gut food particles, antigens, microbes leak through our protective lining, they activate our gut immune system. and that creates systemic inflammation and obesity, heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, but also obviously allergies, skin disorders, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. So I think everybody who's gluten has some degree of leaky gut, but some people kind of manage it and can tolerate it, other people can't. And so I think we have to really take stock of the fact that gluten and celiac is a real problem. And if you don't look for it, you don't find it. I started a company called Function Health.com where we do full celiac testing, often your doctor won't order it, they won't do the right one. So you can go to functionhealth.com and learn more. So now gluten free, by the way, isn't necessarily healthy either. Gluten free cake and cookies is still cake and cookies, right? So remember, you know, we had fat free yogurt. Well, fat free yogurt, your yo play fat free yogurt has more sugar per ounce than a can of soda. Right. Doesn't make it healthy, right? Remember what we call them? Snackwell cookies, right? Fat free, but full of sugar doesn't mean they're healthy. So just because it says gluten free doesn't mean it's healthy. I saw a package of potato the other day that had gluten free on the COVID right? Coca-Cola is gluten free. Doesn't mean it's healthy. So the word gluten free doesn't mean anything. It just means that the gluten's not there and that's fine if you're celiac, but it doesn't mean it's a health food. And usually it's replaced with something more more harmful in terms of maybe other refined grains that are more glycemic in nature, additives, tons of sugar, high glycemic flours, refined oils, so just remember, gluten-free cookie, sell a cookie. So. And by the way, not all grains are bad. In food, what they should I talk about the ones that I'm concerned about, like oatmeal, corn, wheat, and yes, gluten is a real issue for people. Other forms of grains are, are not so problematic. Right. So, for example, quinoa is a South American grain that's very, very helpful that actually has a lot of protein in it, has good amino acids in it. It's problematic as we're taking the food from the indigenous people in South America, which is their staple, and now they can't even afford it. So that's a whole other problem. Even other grains, for example, like Himalayan tarty buckwheat, which is from the Himalayas, super dense in nutrients, 132 phytochemicals, lots of protein, lots of fiber, lots of magnesium, lots of minerals. That can be fine. So I also want to make pancakes from Himalayan buckwheat flour. but we don't want to eat all the traditional grains we're eating that are in Twinkies and cookies, pizza, not good. So also, you know, you can start to make other things with, like, for you know, I make the buckwheat pancakes, which are actually quite good. You make buckwheat breads. You can, and by the way, buckwheat's not even a grain, so it's a flour. What about bread? Do we have to give up bread? Well, no, not necessarily. There's lots of bread made with whole kernel grains. not just a flour or no flour, you can make it with nuts and seeds. Rye bread, rye can be healthy, that's gluten for many people, but it can be problematic, but actually it's super helpful in many ways. And in Germany, I went to visit a friend once and they had a meat slicer in their house. And I'm like, what's that for? Like, you know, what they have in a deli to slice the, you know, whatever, the meats. And they're like, oh, that's the cutter bread. I'm like, what do you mean? Yeah, we can't cut it with a knife, it's too dense. so literally this fresh bread comes out and basically my rule for bread is if you can stand on it and it doesn't squish, you can probably eat it. So basically if it's made from whole kernels and it's made from nuts and seeds, other types of flours, it can be actually fine. I have recipes in my book, food, what the heck should I cook for non flour breads? And they can be quite delicious. And how often should you eat whole grains? By the when you're eating grains, only whole grains, right? Get away from flours, whole grains. So brown rice, quinoa, black rice, you know, stay away from flour, but eat whole grains, right? Brown rice, black rice, red rice, quinoa, other grains can be fine. Farro, barley, if you want, if you're not gluten sensitive. And even, you know, pimentary buckwheat, it's not something you eat as a whole grain, but that that flour is okay because it doesn't have a high glycemic load. And you mixed it with eggs and other things, it can be great. so you shouldn't be eating a lot, particularly if you're diabetic, pre-diabetic, insulin resistant, overweight, you probably want to cut them out for a while until you're healthy and then you can add them back. Probably, you know, half a cup a day is fine. I think that's okay. If it's whole grain, probably once a day. So what are the things that I talk about? And it can be, again, not the main dish. Right. You know, in some countries, they do eat a lot of grains, right? In China, oh, they eat rice and they're thin there, you know, in India, they eat brown rice. Well, you know, I just came back from Nepal and they were eating a lot of rice, white rice. But, these guys were literally carrying 70, 80 pounds on their back up and down the Himalayan mountains all day long. So, they needed the energy. But, if you're not doing that, I would stick away with a lot of grains. Buckwheat, the Himalayan Tartary buckwheat is my favorite. You can go to bigbolthelp.com and learn more about that. Whole kernel rye for not gluten sensitive. Quinoa. Also, it's not a grain, it's actually a pseudo-grain. Black rice, red rice, sorghum, teff, millet, amaranth, all can be great. What about white rice? White rice is something that a lot of cultures eat. Now, white rice doesn't always have to be bad. There's a research that's been done on white rice that if you cool it and then you reheat it, not too hot, but just if you basically cook it and even potatoes, and then put it in the fridge, let it get cold, and then kind of reheat it gently, actually causes something we produce called resistant starch, which helps resist the digestion of it. It's lower glycemic. It actually can help with your microbiome. It's great for as a prebiotic and maybe even improve metabolism. So you can use that. So what grains should I avoid if I might be gluten sensitive? Well, all the gluten-containing grains, wheat, barley, rye, spelt, Kamut, farro, Bulgur, oats, semolina, couscous, any refined grains, all these you want to avoid. And I think grains can be part of a healthful diet, but only if you're metabolically healthy and only for eating the right grains and only if they're whole grains. So in general, we need to recognize grains for what they are. They're a recreational treat, not a staple. An occasional indulgence fine, not an everyday thing for me. I'm not a fan of most grains. It's fine to include them in small amounts of your diet, but only if they're whole grains, only if they're organic, only the gluten-free. By the way, if you're not gluten sensitive, you may be able to tolerate a little bit of the healthier gluten grains, but for most people they're problematic. And if you're wondering who should not be eating them, well, if you have type 2 diabetes or high blood sugar, pre-diabetes, if you have weight issues, cravings, if you have food sensitivities, digestive issues, autoimmune diseases, if you're bloated after you eat, our blood tests show you have high levels of inflammation markers, probably not great to eat. a lot of grains at all. And sometimes there's a period of time getting off them can be very helpful. I wrote a book called the 10 Day Detox Diet. It talks about elimination diet, how to take stuff out and reintroduce stuff or do another podcast on that. But that's basically the principle. So grains are not all they cracked up to be. Whole grains can be fine, but the right ones. And make sure you listen to your body and see what happens when you eat them and how you feel when you get off them and reintroduce them. So that's the best test. Anyway, that's it for today's Health Bite. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you loved it, share it with your friends and family. Tell us how you do with grains and what you've learned about including ones in your diet that work for you or how you problems with them. We'd love to know. And we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman.

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