Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

Rice > Wheat. Seriously!

14
July

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With all this talk about the right things to eat, what’s best for the body in the long run, how to approach sus­tain­able weight loss etc. on my blog, I get a repeated ques­tion from clients and read­ers — Why do you pre­scribe rice in your diet plan and ask me to refrain from my oh-so-nutritious whole wheat bread? Well, let me explain my stance, and you can make up your own mind after that.

[divider] Hello, brown bread

This weird brown lump is bread!?

My first intro­duc­tion  to “healthy” foods was back when I was 11. I am sit­ting down for break­fast, and there’s a oddly-coloured lump of bread. It might be nor­mal today, but after years of see­ing white-coloured bread, brown bread looked very alien. I inquire about this new thing, and my dad pro­claims that this is way health­ier. Listed some of the same rea­sons we list today — more nutri­ents, whole grain, less processed etc. So, I ate it, and it tasted awful, when com­pared to the oh-so-delicious reg­u­lar bread. But as any 11-year old would do, I piled on the jam, and every­thing was fine. And ever since then, con­tin­u­ing into my gym, I was indoc­tri­nated into “Wheat is bet­ter than rice”. Am sure you have a sim­i­lar story!

[divider]Is wheat nutri­tion­ally superior?

We are wheat and whole-grain crazy today. Let’s just look at whether that’s a good place to be or not. Let’s start by com­par­ing rice and wheat, nutri­tion­ally. The data is from Wikipedia,

Energy in kJ and not calo­ries — for­got to men­tion that. Thanks to Raj for point­ing it out.

Looks to be a no-contest, huh!? Wheat is nutri­tion­ally supe­rior. Maybe my dad was right all along.….…..  Not so fast. What about ‘em anti-nutrients?
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Anti-nutrients — blow­ing up your small intestine

Anti-nutrients? Does that even exist? Or are you clutch­ing at straws? Is this like that anti-matter thing that every­one says exists but we cant see?!
Oh no, anti-nutrients def­i­nitely exist. Accord­ing to Wikipedia, they are nat­ural (or syn­thetic, but we dont care about this yet) com­pounds that inter­fere with the absorp­tion of nutri­ents. But before we talk about them, let’s talk about evo­lu­tion. All liv­ing organ­isms want to repro­duce, and spread their seed, so to speak. They do not want to be eaten, coz that kinda puts a wrench in the works. So, they develop sur­vival and defense mech­a­nisms. Chameleons can cam­ou­flage them­selves, zebras have stripes, pos­sums play dead, skunks spray a foul smell, height­ened senses to detect preda­tors — just to name a few. Plants are more pas­sive but retain the same goal — they do not want to be eaten. A rose bush has prick­les (thorns) to pre­vent being eaten.[divider]
Bro, you going any­where with this (while tap­ping your watch vigourously)
Almost there. Take fruits — mon­keys eat the deli­cious fruit and spit/poop out the seed. Which is exactly what the tree wants! The tree gives the ani­mal some­thing (nutri­tion), in return for the ani­mal spread­ing its seed (which is ined­i­ble, espe­cially com­pared to the fruit). And finally, we come to grains. Grains are the seed! Why would the plant design its seed to be con­sumed? It would cease to exist, right? Seeds have their own defense mech­a­nism (Did you know apple seeds con­tain cyanide?), and thus we arrive at anti-nutrients in grains. Almost all grains have their fair share of anti-nutrients, but we are here to talk about wheat, and the infa­mous gluten![divider]
Uhhh, so, is this all coz that Djokovic dude went on a gluten-free diet? Is that seri­ously what all this fuss is about?!

Yes — Djokovic went gluten-free, and it is no coin­ci­dence that he is feel­ing sharper and fit­ter. But just like I told you about one fat guy los­ing weight by eat­ing Sub­way not being enough evi­dence, nei­ther is Djokovic! Let’s see this gluten thing in detail. Coz, like I said already, wheat is high in gluten.

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How Does Gluten Affect People

The core of the post, and why I think you should reduce/avoid wheat. It all has to do with diges­tion, and the gut.[divider]
Gluten dam­ages your gut lining
Your Gastro-Intestinal (GI) track is the part of your body that absorbs nutri­ents from food. It does by using tiny hairs called villi — the pointy things in the image below, from this arti­cle from T-Nation, about gluten. This is how your gas­troin­testi­nal track should be

From T-Nation

But this is how it ends up being,

From T-Nation

You are always hun­gry, coz you are not get­ting enough nutri­ents out of the food you are eating.
By basi­cally rup­tur­ing your GI tract, it allows par­ti­cles to sneak into your blood stream. This sets off your immune sys­tem, which goes to destroy these alien par­ti­cles. It leads to
  • a leaky gut
  • your body turn­ing on itself, via mol­e­c­u­lar mim­icry — these alien bod­ies into the blood stream have a sim­i­lar pat­tern to reg­u­lar tis­sue. When your immune sys­tem attacks it, it could poten­tially lead to attack­ing healthy tis­sue later.
  • It can poten­tially lead to autoim­mune dis­or­ders as well.
So what if I have a leaky gut, and it leads to these autoim­mune responses?
From Robb Wolf’s awe­some book — The Paleo Solu­tion,
  • Infer­til­ity
  • Type I diabetes
  • Mul­ti­ple sclerosis
  • Rheuma­toid arthritis
  • Lupus
  • Vitiligo
  • Nar­colepsy
  • Autism
  • Depres­sion
  • Huntington’s
  • Non-Hodgkin’s lym­phoma
  • Hypothy­roidism
  • Pory­phyria

[divider]But I don’t have any of these diseases

Almost every­one is sen­si­tive to gluten though. While only 1% of peo­ple are diag­nosed with celiac dis­ease, The degree of how bad gluten sen­si­tiv­ity affects a per­son depends on the indi­vid­ual. Think of peo­ple you know who’ve had trou­ble con­ceiv­ing a kid, or had their gall blad­der removed, or suf­fer from diges­tion issues, or depres­sion — they get treated for the symp­tom, rather than the cause. Like­wise, there are could be cer­tain symp­toms you are suf­fer­ing from. For example,

  • If you have trou­ble poo-ing, or say you’ve had diar­rhea, or any diges­tive issues
  • If you suf­fer from chronic fatigue — when you have to sneak in that nap with­out which you can­not function
  • If you suf­fer from Depres­sion, schiz­o­phre­nia — or plain fog­gi­ness in the head
  • From Charles Poliquin’s site, “The gliadin in wheat gluten causes crossover acti­va­tion and again leads to decreased cor­tex and mid­brain acti­va­tion, lead­ing to even­tual neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.“
    Another arti­cle, about inflam­ma­tion, from his site “We’re also find­ing that a lot of inflam­ma­tion can be traced to the con­sump­tion of wheat, corn and soy and pos­si­bly dairy. Gluten is a major prob­lem, because gluten con­tains a pro­tein to which 1 in 100 peo­ple are out­right aller­gic, and for which about 40 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion show anti­bod­ies.”

It could be coz of gluten sensitivity!

Stephan Guyenet, at Whole Health Source, con­ducted an awe­some sur­vey — where a bunch of peo­ple tried out a gluten-free diet, and reported back with answers to sev­eral ques­tions, like “Did you note a weight change at the end of gluten free Jan­u­ary?” and “did you have a prob­lem with tiredness/lethargy? If so, did your symp­toms change dur­ing the month of Jan­u­ary?”.  It is a very quick read, with sim­ple graphs. I highly rec­om­mend that you check it out.

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Yay, or Nay

Dude, am quit­ting your blog. I can­not deal with “no wheat”

Please don’t! While I cer­tainly do believe you will do bet­ter with­out wheat, the point of a sus­tain­able lifestyle hinges on it being sus­tain­able. So, if wheat is some­thing that can­not be removed, here are a few things you can do
Am game. I will give it a go
That’s awe­some! Good for you. Avoid wheat for 30 days, and rein­tro­duce it after. See how you feel. You might have with­drawal symp­toms though!
With­drawal symp­toms!? What? It is not like am giv­ing up heroin
Actu­ally, it is. Grains acti­vate the same recep­tors in your brain as opi­ates. No won­der we want to cling to our bagels eh! Rein­forces your want to give it up, doesn’t it? Update: You should check out Raj’s awe­some ques­tions, and my sub­se­quent reply (in the com­ments sec­tion) for more on this topic![divider]

“Rice over wheat — you *$*@#&*% south Indians”

Ah c’mon! I love (present tense) my wheat as well. But it con­flicts with my goals, and my health. From choco­late crois­sants, to donuts, to brown­ies — there’s just so many things to miss out on. But miss­ing out on them on a reg­u­lar basis = much bet­ter health. And it also means when you occa­sion­ally indulge, every few weeks, it makes it even better!

On to rice then

Most of the tox­ins in white rice is in the bran — that’s why white rice is bet­ter than brown rice as well. Cook­ing white rice ren­ders it toxin free. So, while it is not a good source of nutri­ents, it doesn’t do any harm.
Sweeeeeeeet, so I can eat a kilo of rice a day?
The best source of carbs are starchy veg­eta­bles. Rice is a great source of quick carbs. And like I already men­tioned, cooked white rice does not do any­thing “bad” for you, but at the same time is not a great source of nutri­ents. Eat rice as a filler. A quick 4-step checklist
  1. Did I eat enough vegetables?
  2. Did I eat enough protein?
  3. Did I eat enough starches?
  4. Did I cook in coconut oil (or but­ter or ghee)

If you answered yes to all, then eat rice. That’s what I mean as a filler. Tra­di­tion­ally, rice (and grains) forms a sta­ple — the cen­ter of atten­tion. And that is a problem.[divider]

While you’re at it, can you talk about lentils, pulses, and legumes? Do they also have anti-nutrients?

Sim­i­lar deal. Stick around for another post! But basic idea remains the same — they do con­tain anti-nutrients, but prop­erly prepar­ing them, and eat­ing them in rea­son­able quan­ti­ties, and not as a replace­ment of grains. In fact, con­sum­ing them in rea­son­able quan­ti­ties is totally fine, and the next ver­sion of the nutri­tion tem­plate will reflect that.

A note about other grains, and pseudo-grains

From oats, bar­ley etc. to quinoa, buck­wheat, and the rest. Apart from rice, buck­wheat is the other grain that can be rec­om­mended. I will put up a recipe for buck­wheat pan­cakes, over at Eat Real Food soon. The rest of them con­tain one anti-nutrient or the other. If any of the prob­lems men­tioned here, from sim­ple to severe, match some of yours, and you’ve already given up wheat — well, you could try cut­ting out all grains, and see if it does some­thing for the bet­ter. Worth a shot!

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To sum­ma­rize

  • Humans are not adapted to eat­ing grains
  • Grains con­tain anti-nutrients And wheat has the worst of them — gluten.
  • Gluten sen­si­tiv­ity and intol­er­ance leads to leaky gut, inflam­ma­tion, autoim­mune dis­or­ders — a myr­iad of issues!
  • If you are going to avoid, or reduce con­sump­tion, of a grain — it should be wheat. And if you are going to eat a grain — it should be rice.
  • Grains being sta­ple = undernourished.
  • Your pri­mary source of carbs = starchy veggies.
  • Eat veg­gies, starchy veg­gies, pro­tein, and add some grain. not the other way around
  • Prop­erly pre­pare grains, if you are gonna eat them. To reduce the anti-nutrients in grains, you can employ sev­eral meth­ods, like soak­ing, fer­ment­ing etc. — check out this post from Whole Health Source, and this one from the Weston A Price foundation.
  • Don’t eat any­thing that is “gluten-free” and expect it to be healthy. The gluten-free food indus­try removes gluten, but adds in other stuff, which will end up mak­ing you fat and dia­betic.
  • Post-workout meal tip: 1 cup Rice + paneer/chicken tikka = awesome!

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Share this post please! And give it a try! What do you have to lose by giv­ing your­self a shot at get­ting health­ier? If you still are not con­vinced, let’s talk. Make your argu­ment — that’s what the com­ments are for.

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Posted on by Arvind

35 Comments

Category: Busting Myths, ERF, Nutrition Tags :

  • Smita

    Great post Arvind, thank you!

  • Vas­anti

    I really like your writ­ing Arvind! Am not too fussed about either rice or wheat, but I do like my rotis(phulkas) and sabji as opposed to bread and its vari­a­tions. Is that a no-no then? :-(

  • Swar­brat

    Awe­some blog you should write on SpiritzandMore.com … u ll get rewarded for this m sure!!

  • Karthik Pad­man­ab­han

    Ok. So Gluten is not that butt muscle. ;-)

    Oh Damn. Now, I got to deal with telling my wife — all that I’ve been telling her all along is wrong, and that she’s right and… Wait. Maybe i’ll tell her that i miss her orig­i­nal food­style.. what­ever. Back to good ol’ rice. Thanks :-)

  • Lavanya

    Rice > Wheat I get, but White rice > Brown rice? Seriously?

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks Smita, appre­ci­ate the feedback.

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks! The no-no is your call. If you like where your diet is, or if you turn into an ogre when you dont get your rotis, do eat them. But if you have cer­tain symp­toms — men­tal or phys­i­cal — which could be gluten-related, you could try to lay off and see how you feel. It is your call — my main point here was to stop the “I want to be healthy. I am gonna eat wheat over rice”.

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Yes, same prin­ci­ple. In brown rice, you have the husk/bran — which con­tains phy­tates. From Mark Sis­son,
    Phy­tates are a prob­lem, too, because they make min­er­als bio-unavailable, thus ren­der­ing null and void the last, remain­ing argu­ment for
    cereal grain con­sump­tion. So, white rice > brown rice. Cool?

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Yes, same prin­ci­ple. In brown rice, you have the husk/bran — which con­tains phy­tates. From Mark Sis­son,
    Phy­tates are a prob­lem, too, because they make min­er­als bio-unavailable, thus ren­der­ing null and void the last, remain­ing argu­ment for
    cereal grain con­sump­tion. So, white rice > brown rice. Cool?

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Hahaha. Nice one.

    Well, that’s the thing with nutri­tion. Rapid changes and dis­cov­er­ies are being made today, and there’s a whole bunch of research flow­ing. My goal is to ensure me and my read­ers keep up with it, and to rec­tify cer­tain lifestyle changes that can have a large impact on our lives!

  • awry­mag

    Hey Arvind, Hilar­i­ous and enter­tain­ing post as usual. I’m always fas­ci­nated to read a dif­fer­ent approach to nutri­tion than the one I am used to. May not be giv­ing up all grains (as a vegan I think I might starve) but will start avoid­ing wheat and see what happens…

  • http://www.rajganpath.com Raj Gan­path

    Yo! Amaz­ing post! Long post but no short way to explain the concept.

    So heres a ques­tion for you about the addic­tive nature of grains. How rel­e­vant is this to rice?

    And another ques­tions… how rel­e­vant is this to food in gen­eral? Arent we wired to crave food and, espe­cially, energy dense food? It makes evo­lu­tion­ary sense to crave some­thing that has a lot to offer ‘cos the crav­ing  (+ hunger) will drive an organ­ism to con­sume copi­ous amounts of energy which results in bet­ter lep­tin sig­nalling which in turn dic­tates the over­all well-being of the organ­ism which results in bet­ter repro­duc­tive capa­bil­ity etc etc. Thoughts?

    One small note — in the nutri­tional info sec­tion, the calo­ries are in kJ (as opposed to kcal). So if any­one goes ‘wtf! 100 g of rice has 1500 cals’.

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks Jane! Ha, yeah — being vegan and avoid­ing grains is cer­tainly a problem :)

    There’s a book by Bren­dan Bra­zier, for­mer Iron­man com­peti­tor, who is vegan (even while com­pet­ing). It is called “The Thrive Diet”. It is a book you could find use­ful, espe­cially since per­for­mance on the field is impor­tant to you, and not just health.

  • http://profiles.google.com/aaronh Aaron Houss­ian

    There is so much hap­pen­ing about how what you eat (espe­cially wheat and dairy) can affect your health, the way you think, etc.We are prepar­ing to do the GAPS (Gut and Psy­chol­ogy Syn­drome) diet in our house for our old­est who is autis­tic. We’ve been gluten-free in our all of this year, though when out of the house I’m known to eat bar­ley or rye.I just received an inter­est­ing email from my dad which I’ll paste below form a Dr. Mark Hyman on how what you eat can directly affect your mind.—pasted—AN YOUR BODY AFFECT YOUR MIND?By mak­ing dif­fer­ent food and lifestyle choices, can you rid your­self of depres­sion, boost your mood or even improve more seri­ous con­di­tions such as ADHD, autism and more?In my expe­ri­ence, the answer is YES and I’ll show you pre­cisely how in just a second.But first, let me tell you about one of my patients, Sarah.She’s a very vibrant, smart young woman of 18 who had just fin­ished high school with hon­ors and was admit­ted to a top university.Even more excit­ing, her pas­sion for the­ater and act­ing had recently landed her the lead role in a real movie.The future ahead of her was bright and full of possibilities.So why had Sarah’s dis­traught mother brought her to see me?Well, over the pre­vi­ous few weeks, she had sunk into a debil­i­tat­ing depression.It had got­ten so bad that she wouldn’t go out, didn’t respond to friends’ calls, and couldn’t even get out of bed to watch tele­vi­sion — which is pretty bad for a teenager!Sarah couldn’t con­cen­trate or read. Worse, she couldn’t learn the lines for her movie, which was the oppor­tu­nity of a life­time, and was to be shot in just a few short weeks.There was every rea­son that Sarah should have been at the high­est moment in her life. Every­thing was going right.Everything — except that she found her­self in a debil­i­tat­ing depres­sion, unable to cope with life’s sim­plest tasks, like get­ting out of bed and get­ting dressed.The psy­chi­a­trist focused on her men­tal state, but I know that the body is con­nected to the mind, just as the mind is con­nected to the body.What was happening?Her mother had already taken her to a child and ado­les­cent behav­ioral psy­chi­a­trist, who con­firmed the depression.His solution?To start get­ting out and walk­ing for five min­utes a day — and then return the fol­low­ing week to con­sider options such as anti­de­pres­sant medication.But the movie was to be shot in two weeks and Sarah was about to leave for col­lege in three weeks.Desperate, her mother brought her to me.I look at depres­sion a lit­tle dif­fer­ently than other doctors.You see, in med­i­cine we are trained to see cer­tain prob­lems as “psy­cho­so­matic” — that is, prob­lems that are “all in your head.”It means that your mind can affect your body.These prob­lems include irri­ta­ble bowel syn­drome (IBS), mus­cle aches and pains, headaches, and pre­men­strual syn­drome (PMS). They have no phys­i­cal basis or proof that we can see on an x-ray or other screen­ing test.Unfortunately, this is often because we don’t under­stand the more-subtle under­ly­ing imbal­ances that actu­ally cause these problems.However, I believe that there is an unex­plored area of heal­ing and medicine.I call it “somato-psychic med­i­cine.” That is, that your body can affect your mind.And in Sarah’s case, this was the problem.The psy­chi­a­trist focused on her men­tal state, but I know that the body is con­nected to the mind, just as the mind is con­nected to the body.I asked myself if Sarah’s apa­thy, depres­sion, and fatigue had some­thing to do with what was hap­pen­ing in her body.First, I looked for clues.I am a med­ical detec­tive, search­ing always for pat­terns and con­nec­tions and links between symp­toms and the answers hid­den within the WHOLE story of a person’s life.So I didn’t just ask Sarah about her men­tal symp­toms — I wanted to know everything.And I uncov­ered a lot.I learned that she had had low-grade aller­gies and sinus con­ges­tion for years.Over the last few years, she had wors­en­ing IBS with bloat­ing and con­sti­pa­tion, and her peri­ods were ter­ri­ble, pre­ceded by very bad PMS with fluid reten­tion, sugar crav­ings, salt crav­ings, headaches and irritability.She had devel­oped severe mus­cle pains and aches, headaches, poor mem­ory and con­cen­tra­tion, and insomnia.She was cold all the time, felt short of breath, anx­ious, and just gen­er­ally miserable.A few months before, Sarah had tried to lose about 15 pounds she had gained by eat­ing very well and exer­cis­ing reg­u­larly. But she was very dis­cour­aged because all her efforts led to no weight loss.Clearly, some­thing was wrong.To con­firm my thoughts, I ran some tests for nutri­tional defi­cien­cies and imbal­ances in her diges­tive, immune, and hor­monal systems.That’s because I no longer treat “dis­eases” like IBS, PMS, depres­sion, and headaches. Instead, I try to under­stand the under­ly­ing imbal­ances that lead to the symp­toms, which are only clues to some­thing deeper.So what did I find with Sarah?I found that she had a vit­a­min D defi­ciency, which can cause thy­roid prob­lems, depres­sion, and mus­cle pains. And she had a mag­ne­sium defi­ciency, which can lead to mus­cle pain, headaches, con­sti­pa­tion, fatigue, and insomnia.She also had an omega-3 fat defi­ciency — some­thing well known to be asso­ci­ated with depression.Her thy­roid wasn’t func­tion­ing prop­erly, which is why she had so many symp­toms like fatigue, depres­sion, con­sti­pa­tion, mus­cle pain, PMS, and prob­lems los­ing weight.She also had food sen­si­tiv­i­ties to gluten and dairy. These con­tributed to her IBS, aller­gies, and sinus congestion.So did I give her an antidepressant?No. Remem­ber, depres­sion is not a Prozac deficiency.But when the under­ly­ing imbal­ances in her immune, diges­tive, and hor­monal sys­tems were cor­rected and her nutri­tional sta­tus was built up, her body was able to recover.What did I do?I had Sarah improve the qual­ity of her diet and stop eat­ing the foods she was sen­si­tive to, like gluten, dairy, eggs, and yeast.I got her eat­ing real, whole foods, not junk, refined, and processed foods.I told her to have three reg­u­lar meals and at least one after­noon snack at about 3 or 4 pm.I encour­aged her to eat lots of veg­gies and pro­tein, such as chicken, salmon, hum­mus, and nuts, with every meal. I asked her to snack on nuts.Then I helped Sarah get her diges­tive tract back on track by giv­ing her a spe­cial antibi­otic to clear out the over­growth of bac­te­ria in her small intes­tine, which had caused the bloat­ing. She fol­lowed that with an anti­fun­gal drug to treat the yeast in her sys­tem (she had a fun­gal scalp infec­tion, too).Next, I started her on Armour Thy­roid med­ica­tion to improve her thyroid.And I gave Sarah some basic nutri­tional sup­port — a mul­ti­vi­t­a­min, cal­cium, mag­ne­sium, vit­a­min D, fish oil, aci­dophilus for her diges­tive tract, and herbs to help her PMS.I told her to start exer­cis­ing slowly, to get into a reg­u­lar rhythm of going to bed by 11 pm, and to get at least 8 hours of sleep. To ease her insom­nia, I had her take a relax­ing Epsom salt bath with laven­der before bed every night.I also asked her to see a phys­i­cal ther­a­pist and neu­ro­mus­cu­lar ther­a­pist to work on her neck and mus­cle pain.There’s no doubt about it. Sarah was on the accel­er­ated “get bet­ter right away” program!So how did she do?Well, in two weeks, she came back a dif­fer­ent person!She wasn’t tak­ing anti­de­pres­sants, yet she was hap­pier and more alive than she had been in more than a year.She lost 15 pounds in two weeks.Her energy, con­cen­tra­tion, and focus were fantastic.Her diges­tive prob­lems and mus­cle pain were gone.And she was sleep­ing very well.Renewed, Sarah learned all her lines, did her movie, and went off to col­lege vibrant and alive — quite remark­able con­sid­er­ing she was nearly in a cata­tonic depres­sion only a few weeks before!So what’s the secret to the astound­ingly fast improve­ment? Heck, even anti­de­pres­sants take six weeks to start working.It’s simple.Just by get­ting rid of the things that cause imbal­ances in core sys­tems (in this case, the immune, diges­tive, and hor­monal sys­tem), and by giv­ing the body things it needs to heal (like good food, vit­a­mins, min­er­als, omega-3 fats, and hor­mones when nec­es­sary), the body will repair and heal very quickly.This prin­ci­ple is sim­ple and cen­tral to the med­i­cine I prac­tice, which is called sys­tems med­i­cine or func­tional medicine.Are you depressed or have other men­tal health issues and look­ing to get better?Here are a few things to think about and explore.You still may need ther­apy or med­ica­tion, but don’t assume these will cure the prob­lem if you have any of these under­ly­ing issues:1. Do you have low thy­roid func­tion?§ Ask your doc­tor to check for the fol­low­ing blood tests: TSH, free T3, free T4, and thy­roid antibodies.2. Do you have a vit­a­min D defi­ciency?§ This is espe­cially likely if you’re depressed dur­ing win­ter. So have your doc­tor check for 25 OH vit­a­min D. Your level should be over 50. If it isn’t, take 2,000 IU of vit­a­min D3 a day.3. Do you have a folic acid or B12 defi­ciency?§ Ask your doc­tor to test your homo­cys­teine and methyl­malonic acid lev­els to check for those defi­cien­cies. And take an extra 800 mcg of folic acid and 1,000 mcg of B12.4. Do you have a defi­ciency of omega-3 fats?§ It’s likely — 99 per­cent of Amer­i­cans do. Eat more wild salmon and sar­dines and take 1 to 2 grams of fish oil a day.5. Do you have gluten aller­gies?§ Con­sider test­ing for gluten antibodies.6. Are bugs in your gut affect­ing your brain or immune sys­tem?§ If you have irri­ta­ble bowel syn­drome, sup­ple­ment with probiotics.Try tak­ing these steps and see if your health improves as Sarah’s did and you may find that your “men­tal ill­ness” wasn’t so men­tal at all and was really caused by nutri­tional issues.And remem­ber, you can both change your mind to change your body, but you can also change your body to change your mind!For more infor­ma­tion on how the body and mind are con­nected and for a com­plete sys­tem that will help you heal your brain by heal­ing your body first, see my book The Ultra­Mind Solution.Now I’d like to hear from you:Have you had any expe­ri­ences of cor­rect­ing a phys­i­cal prob­lem and notic­ing that your men­tal health changed as a side effect?Have you noticed that a change in the foods you eat or the sup­ple­ments you take chang­ing your atti­tude or mood?If you’ve gone to your doc­tor or psy­chi­a­trist for any men­tal health prob­lems, what was your expe­ri­ence? Did they look into nutri­tional issues at all or sim­ply rec­om­mend you take drugs?Have you noticed that dif­fer­ent foods affect your mood, and if so, how?Please let me know your thoughts by adding a com­ment below.To your good health,Mark Hyman, M.D.

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks for shar­ing Aaron!

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks! Great ques­tions, took me a while to answer them. On a related note, I am begin­ning to see why read­ing com­ments of posts I like, after a few days of the first read, is extremely essen­tial! And thanks for point­ing out the kJ v calo­ries — updated it.

    Addic­tion and Rice: In wheat, we have the opi­oid pep­tides cross­ing the blood-brain bar­rier — which is why the addic­tion is pretty bad! But can def­i­nitely be over­come. Rice does not have this fea­ture, another rea­son why rice is markedly bet­ter. And this segues into your sec­ond ques­tion — about food in general.

    Addic­tion and Food: Food crav­ings come from the reward value asso­ci­ated with foods. Wheat, as I explained, has a high reward value asso­ci­ated with it. And most of the calorie-dense processed junk foods today have the same. You wanna get your fix, lit­er­ally. But they dont really have a lot to offer, nutrient-wise. Con­sum­ing copi­ous amounts of bad calo­ries even­tu­ally leads to impaired lep­tin sen­si­tiv­ity — a vicious cycle that involves you want­ing to eat more and more! The best resource on the inter­net for learn­ing more about food reward — Stephan Guyenet’s 8-part series — http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/07/food-reward-dominant-factor-in-obesity.html

  • Swarna Mani

    Excel­lent arti­cle. This is all so true…I just went of all grains except white rice for last 6 weeks and reap­ing a lot of ben­e­fits health wise already.…

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks for the feed­back, Swarna!

  • Gaya

    Very inter­est­ing and infor­ma­tive Arvind!

  • Dhanya

    I always thought wheat is bet­ter than rice. And brown rice bet­ter than white rice. i have always felt eat­ing even a lit­tle rice makes me feel full and slug­gish while wheat feels light.

  • Dhanya

    So, rice > Wheat. Would you know which is the bet­ter way of cook­ing rice? There are dif­fer­ent schools of thought about one being bet­ter over the other. The 4 forms I know of are:

    1. Pres­sure cook­ing
    2. Cook­ing in a microwave
    3. Boil­ing rice in a ves­sel and remov­ing excess water ( claimed to be bet­ter by peo­ple as it removes excess starch)
    4. Fry the rice a lit­tle in 1 tsp of oil and add boil­ing water to it and cook for 15–20 mins so that the rice is cooked and the water is gone! 

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks Gaya!

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Dhanya,
    Do what works for you. Now you know some of the intri­ca­cies behind what goes on — and make your own deci­sions based on it. Try rice-free for 30 days, see how you feel. Try gluten-free for 30 days, see how you feel. But you need to clean up other things, besides rice/wheat too — like oils etc. Min­i­mize the amount of crappy vari­ables, then rein­tro­duce one of those — go from there. Make sense?

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Pres­sure cook­ing is a great method — a lot of ben­e­fits, and pretty easy too. The best method of con­sum­ing and prepar­ing white rice is by fer­ment­ing it — what we do for mak­ing the idli/dosai dough. Pol­ished white rice has less of the anti-nutrient issue — so any form of cook­ing should be fine.
    Let me research more about best meth­ods to pre­pare grains, and pos­si­bly write a post on it. The links to Weston A Price and Whole Health Source do offer a bunch of methods.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=543204877 Swathi Bhaskaran

    I have always hated chapatis/rotis, for which my mum chided me all the time, and now that I have this arti­cle as a proof, she thinks we are a crazy bunch. :D
    BRILLIANT post.

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Haha! Thanks!

  • Rahul

    Thanks for the infor­ma­tive post. Look­ing for­ward to the post on other grains — ragi, oats, etc

  • Vizeet

    Gr8 Post Arvind!!! I am among few who never faced any issue going gluten free. In-fact I always pre­ferred rice over wheat. For me rice has been more addic­tive then wheat. My diet is also low in legumes and I did had with­drawal effects with “tur daal” (A pulse).

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks Rahul!

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks Vizeet! That’s inter­est­ing — all of us do react dif­fer­ently, and yours is a great com­ment to reflect that.

  • bee

    i stopped gluten a year ago. no more joint pain after a hard taek­wondo kick­ing and jump­ing ses­sion. much higher energy, much bet­ter sleep. i used to be a bread snob, bak­ing gourmet whole-grain sour­dough ones at home. i was one of those “can’t live with­out bread” types. now, i won’t touch it ‘cos my life has improved so dra­mat­i­cally. no more sen­si­tive gums either ‘cos the lectins are not leach­ing min­er­als out of my bones and gums. 

    i was not aller­gic to gluten, but it cer­tainly was affect­ing me badly. 

  • http://twitter.com/arv43 arv43

    Thanks for shar­ing! I think a lot of peo­ple will see ben­e­fits, like you have and I have. A sus­tained period of being gluten-free, fol­lowed by a planned rein­tro­duc­tion might con­vince peo­ple to stay on the plan. Like you say — much higher energy, and bet­ter sleep — and this will go down once they eat gluten.

  • Abc

  • Pingback: The Truth Behind “Health Drinks” « Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

  • praveen

    very infor­ma­tive post!!! Thanks for shar­ing coach.