I know this may be a little anti South Beach, but -- anyone read this book?

http://www.amazon.com/Wheat-Belly-Lo.../dp/1609611543

Your thoughts/opinions? I'm thinking about ordering the book and giving the "eliminate wheat" way of thinking a shot, since my stomach is definitely my trouble area. I don't eat a lot of grains now, but I do have the occasional whole grain slice of bread.

I haven't read the book but after trying a food elimination diet we have mostly eliminated wheat. It definitely causes my inflammation to flare and makes my tummy very grumbly.

Why anti SB? Personally I only eat about 2-3 grain servings/week though I do eat lots of winter squash this time of year and some fruit, more in season.

Ah, just what I thought, MurphMitch read Wheat Belly. Hopefully she will see this thread

Haven't read it yet, but plan to...one day.

I'm number 154 in the queue at my library!

Well, since SB focuses on whole wheat items, I kind of figure it might be a little different than SB.

Whole wheat is just one whole grain choice. You can certainly choose brown rice, quinoia, millet, amaranth, barley, etc. or no/very limited grain.

Even before starting SB I rarely ate wheat or barley (potatoes were my starchy downfall). About 18 months ago I began breaking out in a super itchy rash on my arms, legs and stomach any time I ate wheat or barley. Tons of tests later my internist, dermatologist and allergist have no clue why I get the rash. T-day I went off-plan and ate dressing and squash casserole (made with cream of chicken soup) and I had a rash on my arms 30 minutes later (but no doctor will say that wheat causes the rash...hmmmm).

I feel soooo much better and "lighter" if I just avoid wheat and barley. I think it is definitely worth trying.

It's worth a try and you can totally do it on SB. I've also flirted with giving up wheat, as it really seems to be a trigger for me. Case in point: even super plain, cardboard tasting Wasa crackers have become a trigger for me!

I did an elimination diet a few years ago, after the holidays. It's kind of a pain but was definitely worth it for me. I was also happy to discover that nothing else seemed to cause me problems. I think I eliminated wheat, eggs, dairy, and nuts. There are actually more scientific ways to approach it, I was pretty casual and I didn't eliminate soy because that was just too difficult with everything else. I'm thinking of doing another round with soy and artificial sweeteners.

That book sounds like an excellent read.

I do not do well with wheat products, they cause tummy gumbling big time. On SB I am able to eat other grains and I eat sprouted grain bread, which helps. (after all these years, our dog is also on a grain free diet, no wheat or corn, and it has helped so much)

So, grains with gluten cause problems for everyone. In my case I think age caused my body not to handle these as well as it use to. So, I try to stay away from them as much as possible.

I've had the book reserved at the library for a very long time. I'm curious to read it and see what I think.

The author also has a blog:
wheatbellyblog(dot)com

I think I'll give this a try in the new year and see what happens.

I am a regular follower of Dr. William Davis and his blog:

http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog/

I bought his book and do recommend reading it. It is at odd with SB for several reasons, besides avoidance of all wheat and products containing wheat. Dr. Davis does not believe in the glycemic index as such. He totally believes that any blood glucose over 100 causes glycation and inflammation in the body. He believes oatmeal is a terrible choice (causes postprandial hyperglycemia) and all other grains, beans, sweet potatoes etc. Carbs should be kept at 100 gms per day or less and fruit should only be a handful of berries occasionally. He also believes occasional fasting is healthful to the body. He advises everyone to get a glucose meter and regularly check your BG one hour after eating. He believes that even those who can "tolerate" wheat and grains without symptoms (which include dermatological problems and neurological symptoms as well as GI ones) are still doing damage to their bodies by the production of AGE's (advanced glycation end products) that result in arthritis, cataracts, cancer, hypertension, etc. as well as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He supports his theories with lots of research and backs it up with his own results in treating patients for years in his cardiovascular practice. He also writes about the fact that due to genetic modifications, our modern "wheat" is vastly different from the ancestral kinds when man first began eating grains. He has many historical references to health problems in civilizations that ate even early grains. He talks about the addictive properties of wheat and correlates it to an opioid effect on the brain. I'm sure a lot of our cravings we talk about on SB relate to this effect.

He also advocates having some advanced lipid testing that I am very interested in. Dr. Agatston writes about the difference between "large fluffy" LDL molecules and the "small dense" ones that cause atherosclerotic plaque which lead to heart disease. Dr. Davis recommends this same testing (which I would love to have done). It's not enough to know your cholesterol level. That doesn't really tell you anything (although most with high HDL's and low triglycerides have the "large fluffy" harmless LDL's).

I'm not sure I'm totally on board with a lot of his recommendations, but I loved this book and am very interested in the possibility of a lot of it being dead on. We keep seeing heart disease, cancer and diabetes rates increasing and when I look around, I see people eating huge amounts of carbs in their diets. Fat is villified, yet a lot of the current research is finding that this is not substantiated. Gary Taubes book "GCBC" is a great read about the poor and faulty conclusions from the 1960's that is still the foundation of current medical school teachings. Dr. Weil did a column recently about "rethinking saturated fats" and they may not be bad for you after all, especially in dairy foods. I also recommend reading "Sugar Nation" that recently came out. The author really bashes the American Diabetic Association and their high carb diet recommendations for diabetics. He cites again the huge increases in the number of diabetics and the failure of their current recommendations to halt the acceleration of this disease. The more I read, the more interesting the debate gets. Also, a lot of stuff I am reading supports Vitamin D supplementation (a lot higher than the current recommendations) as a crucial factor as well as normal thyroid functioning in all these diseases. Dr. Davis addresses all these issues regularly. As you can see, I'm really passionate about learning more about these topics.

MurphMitch, I recently that that advanced cholesterol testing you are talking about. I forget the acronym for the test, I think it might be "VAD." The test is about $300 if you pay on your own but it seems that my insurance is covering it. It does indeed give you information that you would not get with a conventional test. On conventional testing my profile is very good but on the advanced testing one of my levels (lpl? I have to look it up) was high so the recommendation was that I try to reduce my LDL cholesterol even more (my LDL is about 100, my HDL is 74).

The good news is that I did find out that my particle size is large and fluffy. I have some genetic traits that mean I have to be very careful of heart problems connected to cholesterol. It is one reason I decided to change how I was doing South Beach and reduce my fat/animal product consumption and up my whole grain consumption. I will have a standard cholesterol test in a couple of months to find out of my LDL has gone down. I like Dr. Davis and his blog, but I keep coming back to "moderation in all things" as the way to live. I guess we'll see.

Some very interesting thoughts, ladies. I am ordering the book today

It's called the VAP test. I'm going to ask at my next check up for this. Dr. Davis says if you want to lower your cardiac risk, you need to consume less grains, increase good fats, especially fish oil and lower carb intake. He says eating more whole grains will only add to the problem. You want to have the smallest number of the small dense cholesterol particles. There are other components of the test too and some are affected more by genetics, so different dietary recommendations for those folks.