This is almost beyond belief but a 2 year bout of insomnia is over & I've had tremendous weight loss

[snagglepuss]

by giving up wheat.

About 1 1/2 months ago I gave up bread for several reasons neither of which had anything to do with weight loss or sleep.

The reason I gave it up is that I had become too reliant on bread since developing insomnia 2 years ago - being too tired to cook,I was eating mostly sandwiches and as a result put on a lot of weight. I knew if I didn't have bread around I would have to cook regardless of how exhausted I was. The other reason I gave it up is that I've unemployed for quite some time, and bread had become really expensive compared to stuff like brown rice.

The type of insomnia I had was waking up after 5 1/2 hours and unable to fall back to sleep. I spent a night in a sleep disorders clinic but they couldn't determine what was causing the problem, they only confirmed that I was only getting 5 1/2 hours of sleep. Medications didn't help, sleeping pills knocked me out but didn't keep me asleep. I was in a perpetual state of exhaustion and by 5:00 pm each was flat out in bed.

About 3 weeks ago, I began falling back to sleep after I awoke after 5 1/2 hours. I couldn't believe at first I thought it was an anomaly but it wasn't and since then weight has been falling off and my appetite is more even than it has ever been. I'm not having unbearable cravings. Two weeks I went back to exercising, doing a treadmill 1 hour a day which has helped but I've only been able to do that because I'm getting enough sleep. I've lost 2 dress sizes since giving up wheat.


A couple of weeks a ago the Daily Mail had an interesting article about bread. Yeah yeah I know its a tabloid but the doctors it quotes are specialists and what jumped out at me was a doctor explaining how people who have been on a lot of antibiotics or have had a stomach bug often end up having a difficult time digesting wheat. Earlier this year I was diagnosed with H-Pylori which I would have had for some time prior to the diagnosis, the treatment required massive amounts of several antibiotics for 10 days.

Did H-Pylori make me intolerant to wheat? I have no idea. I have over the years read about people claiming to have food sensitiviteses but until now I shrugged off food sensitivities as being something faddish. Not now.







http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2064447/Obesity-Bloating-Bowel-problems-Headaches-Its-blamed-days--stop-eating-bread.html

[sharp_stick]

1. Probably not the bug's fault but the antibiotics...

H. pylori works in the lining of the stomach and should have no real connection to a wheat sensitivity. The antibiotics that you took for the pylori will however also destroy a goodly number of the beneficial bacteria colonizing your gut. Wheat, not being the easiest thing to digest for humans requires a lot of these bacteria in order to provide its nutrition to you. If you are unable to successfully recolonize the good bugs back into your system it's possible that you no longer are able to digest wheat properly. Over time however, with a good diet, your gut flora should renormalize. A poor diet consisting of a lot of convenience foods may not have allowed your gut to properly recuperate.

Now I'm just guessing but it could simply be the much healthier lifestyle you've got by increasing your intake of things like brown rice may finally be allowing your gut to get back to normal, it could also be the weight loss and increased exercise that improves your sleep. I lost a lot of weight several years ago and my sleep improved dramatically.

Congratulations on getting back to sleep and getting the excess weight off.

[snagglepuss]

3. I wasn't eating convenience food. I was eating stoneground whole wheat

bread made with different grains and seeds and the sandwiches were either egg or peanut butter. I never have used butter, margarine or mayo. I still eat eggs, boiled though rather than fried but gave up the peanut butter. I mention this because my diet wasn't by nutritional standards all that bad as I ate salads, fruits and veggies. As for the exercise, I didn't start exercising till 3 or 4 weeks after my sleep got back on track and it was the weight loss that happened prior to exercising that got me inspired to start exercising.

Like I said I have never given much credence to food intolerance but I can not think of anything else that can account for a massive improvement in my health other than giving up wheat.

[ellenrr]

17. interesting. Apparently a lot of people have wheat intolerance and don't know it.

A friend of mine gave up wheat, and she had lots more energy, and she stopped falling asleep, which she would often do, in the middle of the day, and once even in a car.

[marybourg]

2. Welcome to celiac disease. nt.

[snagglepuss]

4. I haven't been diagnosed with celiac disease however as a doctor states in the

article, he sees a number of patients who seem to be on the cusp of celiac disease meaning they don't test positive for the disease but they have an intolerance for wheat.

[Rambis]

5. 46 years

I was just diagnosed with Coeliac disease recently. I had a massive dose of antibiotics last October for a diverticulitis event. However, I have had a bad stomach, sleep problems, bad skin, spontaneous arthritic swelling and just not felt "right" for years. In three weeks of eating a gluten free diet I can't believe how much better I feel. The thought of running made me tired now I am running three miles three times a week and I actually have the energy to do it! I don't care what caused it, I don't care that I have to eat certain things and avoid others. The only thing that has been hard is beer. I am a beer snob and love the black, brown and red beers. I have found Greens red ale and I am a happy camper accept the price of 5.99. As for food in general, I was eating food with a list of ingredients as long as your arm and everything had wheat gluten.

[snagglepuss]

6. I only recently found out how many things contain wheat gluten. Other than

bread and wheat germ, my only other source of wheat was bottled salad dressing which I had only recently started to buy and I gave that up as well when I gave up bread for bugetary reasons.

What you may find is interesting is that I came across a reference to a Scientific American article about American wheat production. It seems that in the late 1990s, a new type of wheat was introduced that was resistant to rust disease, the only problem is that the newly introduced wheat has 14% more gluten than the wheat that had been previously used.

[Rambis]

7. toothpaste, lip balm, hair care products hidden everywhere (nm)

[snagglepuss]

8. omg those items have gluten? That is surprising.

[Emillereid]

9. A cardiologist, William Davis routinely takes his

patients off wheat and other gluten containing grains and has found that they experience many remarkable health benefits including weight loss. http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/
He has written a book called 'Wheat Belly.' He asserts that the wheat we eat today is not our grandmother's wheat -- the gluten fraction has been altered dramatically. I have been reading Dr. Davis' blogs (http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog/) for a couple of years and his promotion of a grain free life is not new or just to push a book.

My daughter can not tolerate either wheat, etc. or corn -- it turned out that they were responsible for her so-called ADD.

According to Peter Green none of us evolved to eat wheat. We haven't evolved the necessary enzymes to break down a 33 amino acid fraction found in it.

http://www.northbayceliacs.org/petergreen.html

[snagglepuss]

12. I have come across his blog but I avoid doctors who appear to be selling something

and I've always thought that food intolerance was faddish. It seemed impossible that something as nutritious as whole wheat could be detrimental. To say that I am kicking myself for dismissing this is an understatement- two years of my life have been profoundly affected by a perpetual exhaustion and lack of sleep.


Though in my defense my skepticism is not exactly unwarranted as I once followed advice from a nurse and ended up severely anemic, my doctor said that I was days away from needing a blood transfusion. The advice the nurse gave me is advice that can be found online, namely blogs cautioning people to avoid iron supplements. Some people need to avoid iron supplements but others like myself require them. After being anemic I have been very reluctant to avoid any food that I've thought was a nutritional powerhouse.

[closeupready]

10. Thanks, I've had a lot of the same problems. How long did it take

for the change to take effect?

[snagglepuss]

11. I would guess about 3 weeks. It;s hard to remember because the decision

to stop eating bread was spur of the moment so I didn't pay attention to the date. From what I have since read it takes anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to determine if one has a food intolerance and to avoid that one particular food completely so no wheat or anything with wheat gluten.

The change in my sleeping is what made me sit up and take notice of my weight loss which wasn't all that apparent to me until I started trying on clothes I haven't worn for ages. (Being out of work all I've been wearing is athletic pants and loose fitting cotton pullovers so it was really shocking to suddenly realize I'm down 2 sizes.)

Another poster below mentions Dr William Davis and recently I found out he wrote a book called Wheat Belly. I subsequently read a review by a nutritionist in the UK Telegraph that dismissed his ideas but given what I've experienced I have to believe that Davis and other wheat critics are on to something. What continues to strike me is that I did not have any pre-conceived ideas about wheat being harmful, in fact, I thought my eating stone ground whole wheat bread and wheat germ was keeping me healthy.

[sense]

13. There are a lot of people giving

up grains, processed food and sugar and discovering that many different illnesses (especially auto-immune) can be reversed or cured by doing so. Our wheat supply, in particular, has been corrupted and now contains far fewer chromosomes than it used to. It not longer even resembles the wheat we used to eat. It's called paleo or primal eating and it's helped me reverse diabetes in less than 2 months! I've lost quite a bit of weight, without trying or ever being hungry, lowered my blood pressure, increased my energy and lifted the depression I've dealt with for years. There are many really great websites, books, etc. that explain what it is and the science behind it. I'll post a good video from a swedish doctor that explains the huge experiment that was performed on the american people for the last 40 years.... and which resulted in a enormous increase in obesity, heart disease, diabetes and general ill health.

http://vimeo.com/couchmode/ancestralhealthsymposium/videos/sort:newest/29464690

Wheat Belly is a good book to start with as are Primal Blueprint and Paleo Solution.

[truedelphi]

19. Hadn't heard of this book. Thanks for the mention.

Will try and get a hold of it.

When you look around at society, it almost immediately becomes apparent that eating wheat equals increased weight gain for certain portion of the population.

It is said that Scandanavians have trouble eating wheat - until four hundred years ago, they didn't grow wheat or have it in their diets.

And of course, the same can be said of people who came from Africa. And Native Americans.

If I ever an into Oprah, one of the first things I would ask her is if any of the nutritionists she has worked with ever mentioned that she just might not be able to handle wheat. Alol her youyou dieting, and yet she always ends up either struggling to keep the wieght off, or else relapsing into thebigger sizes.

[housewolf]

14. Congratulations to you, Snagglepuss

That's wonderful to hear, I'm happy for you and excited to hear of your success.

[snagglepuss]

15. Heavens to murgatroyd a compliment, even. Thank you.

:hi:

[Frustratedlady]

16. My daughters have gone thru that and gave up on all carbs and sugars.

Their energy soared. They had gone thru every test imaginable with no answers or improvement. Meds made it worse. The dr. said that some people develop an allergy to carbs and the carbs turn on them like a poison. Within 3 days, both were greatly improved. (This happened a few years apart...they weren't both sick at the same time.)

One daughter was on vacation and decided to eat a roll. Within a few hours, she was sick in bed for 8 hours before she was back to normal. Crazy, but I've seen it happen and am a believer.

[truedelphi]

18. You won't get any argument from me here.

I thought I was dying, before I was offered a diagnosis of gluten intolerance.

I immediately lost six pounds - the weight just fell off. It may have all been gas, for all I know.

Unfortunately, the diagnosis didn't come about until after I had MRI's and scans and X rays. Luckily I was insured at the time.

One of the things that helped was having a great General Practitioner who gave me the pain pills I needed to stay alive. The inflammations from eating the wheat left me with the feeling that a squirrel was inside me, eating me from inside out.