Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health (35 page)

THE PATH I TOOK
to wheat-free enlightenment was anything but a straight line. It was, in truth, a zigzagging, up-and-down struggle to come to terms with what has got to be one of the biggest nutritional blunders conducted on an international scale. A number of people were instrumental in helping me understand these issues and deliver this crucial message to a larger audience.

I owe my agent and friend, Rick Broadhead, a debt of gratitude for hearing me out on what, I knew from the start, sounded like a kooky idea. Within the first few moments, Rick was behind this project 100 percent. He catapulted my proposal from speculation to full-fledged, full-steam-ahead plan. Rick was more than a dedicated agent; he also offered advice on how to craft the message and how to most effectively deliver it, not to mention unwavering moral support.

Pam Krauss, my editor at Rodale, kept me on my toes, transforming my rambling prose into its current form. I’m sure Pam spent many long nights poring over my musings, pulling out her hair, brewing up yet another pot of late-night coffee while wielding her green-inked pen on my rough draft. I owe you a year’s worth of evening toasts, Pam!

There is a list of people who deserve thanks for providing unique insights. Elisheva Rogosa of the Heritage Wheat Foundation (
www.growseed.org
) not only helped me understand the role
of ancient wheat in this 10,000-year-long trek, but also provided the actual einkorn grain that allowed me to experience firsthand what it meant to consume the direct ancestor of grain consumed by Natufian hunter-gatherers. Dr. Allan Fritz, professor of wheat breeding at Kansas State University, and USDA agricultural statistician and lead wheat analyst, Gary Vocke, PhD, both assisted in providing data on their perspectives on the modern wheat phenomenon.

Dr. Peter Green, director of the Celiac Disease Center of Columbia University in New York City, through both his groundbreaking clinical studies as well as his personal communications, provided the groundwork that helped me understand how celiac disease fits into the larger issue of wheat intolerance. The Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Joseph Murray not only provided enormously clever clinical studies that have helped make a damning case against the modern version of agribusiness-generated wheat, but offered a helping hand to assist in my understanding of issues that, I believe, will prove the ultimate undoing of this Frankengrain that has infiltrated every aspect of American culture.

Two groups of people, too many to name but nonetheless near and dear to my heart, are my patients and the followers of my online heart disease prevention program, Track Your Plaque (
www.trackyourplaque.com
). These are the real-life people who have taught me many lessons along the way that helped mold and refine these ideas. These are the people who demonstrated to me, over and over again, what wonderful health effects develop on removal of wheat.

My friend and chief IT guru, Chris Kliesmet, saw me through this effort, allowing me to bounce ideas off him for his nobody-else-thinks-like-this brand of thinking.

Of course, I owe an infinite number of reminders to my wonderful wife, Dawn, that I will indeed take her on many well-deserved getaways after I sacrificed many family outings and evenings together during my preoccupation with this effort.
Sweetie, I love you and I am grateful that you allowed me to undertake this very, very important project.

Thanks to my son, Bill, just starting his first year of college, who patiently listened to my chattering on about this issue. I am impressed with your courage to argue these ideas with your professors! To my daughter, Lauren, who declared her professional tennis status while I was laboring away at this book, I will be sure to now be courtside at more of your matches. Forty-love! Finally, I offer a piece of gentle advice to Jacob, my stepson, who endured my endless admonitions to “Put down that bread stick!”: It is my desire to see you succeed, prosper, while enjoying the moment and not suffer through decades of stupor, sleepiness, and emotional turmoil due to nothing more than the ham sandwich you just ate. Swallow hard and move on.

CHAPTER 2

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. Ibid.

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6
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and common wheat.
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7
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. Shewry.
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CHAPTER 3

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CHAPTER 4

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CHAPTER 5

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4
. Klöting N, Fasshauer M, Dietrich A et al. Insulin sensitive obesity.
Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab
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5
. DeMarco VG, Johnson MS, Whaley-Connell AT, Sowers JR. Cytokine abnormalities in the etiology of the cardiometabolic syndrome.
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. Matsuzawa Y. Establishment of a concept of visceral fat syndrome and discovery of adiponectin.
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7
. Ibid.

8
. Funahashi T, Matsuzawa Y. Hypoadiponectinemia: a common basis for diseases associated with overnutrition.
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9
. Deprés J, Lemieux I, Bergeron J et al. Abdominal obesity and the metabolic syndrome: contributions to global cardiometabolic risk.
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10
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