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Sourced from: Infinite Health Blog, by Dr. Davis, originally posted on the Wheat Belly Blog: 2011-10-21
In the South Beach Diet, Dr. Arthur Agatston brought legitimacy and mainstream popularity to the limited-carbohydrate notion. Cast into the spotlight of trendy, sexy South Beach, Miami, along with the weight-losing advantages of an Atkins-like carbohydrate restriction, many people lost weight, some substantially.
But the problem came in phases 2 and 3 of the South Beach Diet in which Dr. Agatston caved into conventional dogma and added back “healthy whole grains.” And that’s when many people regained the weight they lost . . . not to mention re-experienced all the health disruptive phenomena of wheat, such as acid reflux, leg edema, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, mental “fog” and depression, etc.
It appears that Dr. Agatston might be inching towards the notion that adding back “healthy whole grains” might not be such a good idea, after all. See his comments about “gluten sensitivity” on an interview here (CBS, 2011, page no longer found).
Of course, anyone on these pages knows that it’s not just about gluten sensitivity, it’s also about the gliadin protein that stimulates appetite, the lectins that create abnormal intestinal permeability and allow access to all manner of unwanted foreign proteins into the bloodstream, the lectin effect that blocks leptin receptors and leads to obesity, the amylopectin A that accounts for wheat’s ability to increase blood sugar higher than table sugar and candy bars, and the thousand or so other components of wheat which have been fingered as causing such diverse conditions as exercise-induced asthma to death. And don’t forget neurologic deterioration, including ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, and dementia from wheat gluten in addition to the intestinal destruction it wreaks.
South Beach Diet would achieve far greater–and long-lasting–benefits if Dr. Agatston would make a wholesale embrace of complete elimination of all things wheat, gluten sensitivity or no.
Wheat Belly is not about gluten elimination for the gluten sensitive. It’s about wheat elimination for everybody. I hope Dr. Agatston catches on, else he’ll end up with dough on his face.