Your Brain on Wheat: Does the ‘Staff of Life’ Wreak Havoc?

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Wheat Belly is a fascinating book, and a ‘must read’ if you ever experience the deplorable condition known as ‘brain fog’ or if you’re concerned about gluten in your diet. But it doesn’t stop there: if you have diabetes or celiac disease this book could save your mind or even your life; likewise, if you or someone you care about has arthritis, digestive problems or even schizophrenia you’ll want to know about the possible implications of eating wheat.

Better Brain Better Life recently interviewed Wheat Belly author, cardiologist Dr. William Davis from his office in Milwaukee, WI.  This article focuses on Davis’ observations about the relationship between wheat and brain function…but first some background.

Wheat Belly author, William Davis, M.D.

It was the fact that 80 per cent of his patients are either diabetic or pre-diabetic that got Davis wondering how their diet might be affecting their health. “It was a pretty simple conclusion,” he explains. “I learned about the gylcemic index, and realized that two slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar as much as or more than table sugar or even many candy bars. So when I was devising a strategy to help my patients reduce blood sugar most efficiently, I could see that the quickest and simplest way to get results would be to eliminate wheat. I gave my patients a handout explaining how to replace wheat-based foods with other low-glycemic whole foods to create a healthy diet.”

The results were astounding, says Davis. “Patients came back with incredible stories: ‘I lost 30 pounds’, ‘my arthritis is dramatically improved’, ‘I’ve been able to stop taking acid reflux medicine’, ‘my gas and cramps and diarrhea have stopped’, ‘I don’t need half the medication I was on before’, and so on.”

Initially, Davis attributed many of the reported benefits to coincidence: “How could ulcerative colitis go away just because the patient stopped eating wheat? But the link became very persuasive of causation when increasing numbers of patients reported similar wide-ranging benefits. And they would test it out by going off wheat and then on again, finding that their symptoms disappeared and then returned.”

According to Davis’ well-referenced book, the brain is influenced by wheat in several ways. One is the effect of the gliadin protein, a component of gluten. “The digestive by-products of gliadin protein are probably responsible for the addictive relationship many people have with wheat,” notes Davis.

Wheat — addictive? Most definitely, says Davis. “Digestion of wheat yields exorphins, morphine-like compounds that bind to the brain’s opiate receptors. Exorphins induce a mild euphoria. When the effect is blocked or when no exorphin-yielding foods are consumed, some people experience a distinctly unpleasant withdrawal”.¹

Interestingly, wheat-eating people consume substantially fewer calories of any type of food, and significantly fewer wheat-based products when given opiate-blocking drugs. Davis says that drug companies are researching this relationship, presumably eager to sell weight loss drugs rather than have people remove addictive foods from their diets.

The work of the late F. Curtis Dohan, an endocrinologist based in Philadelphia was essential to the discovery of the wheat-brain connection. Dohan scoured then-extant research and found a connection between wheat consumption and schizophrenia in various populations, including hunter-gather societies in New Guinea, where, before the introduction of wheat, schizophrenia was virtually unknown. After grain was introduced to their diet this population saw the incidence increase from two out of 65,000 to numbers typical of the Western grain-consuming populations: one in 100.² Dohan also researched the effect of a wheat-free, milk-free diet on veterans admitted to the locked ward of the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Coatesville, PA., in the late 1960’s. He found that patients on the controlled diet were released into open wards roughly twice as fast as those on a conventional diet.³ When gluten was secretly reintroduced to the diet of these patients, the fast release to open-wards did not occur.[i] In a later study, Dohan also found that those schizophrenics on the restricted diet while in locked wards were also released from the open wards sooner than those who had been on a conventional diet while in locked wards.⁴

While some effects of wheat consumption are easily reversible (as in the diverse symptoms mentioned above), Davis claims that wheat may also contribute to irreversible brain damage.

Cerebellar ataxia (CA) is a sign of an underlying condition in which brain cells in the cerebellum become diseased or injured. CA, which affects physical coordination and balance, speech, eye movement and the ability to swallow, can be caused by alcoholism, stroke, cerebral palsy and many other conditions. CA Davis posits a connection between CA and wheat consumption, referring to studies that show abnormal blood markers for gluten in 50 per cent of those afflicted with ataxia for which no other cause can be identified, and in 20 per cent of people with all forms of ataxia. Furthermore, 10 to 22.5 per cent of people with celiac disease are at risk of developing nervous system problems such as cerebellar ataxia, which may also cause impaired memory and verbal abilities.⁵

In his telling of the CA/wheat story Davis leads the reader to conclusions that appear overstated. The description of CA and the lack of any background on the condition led me on first reading to assume that CA has no other causes than wheat consumption and that the condition is always fatal. Further research reveals a variety of causes, as mentioned above, as well as the fact that CA is most common in young children, following a viral infection such as chicken pox[ii]. The National Institutes of Health website states that while permanent symptoms are possible: “People whose condition was caused by a recent viral infection should make a full recovery without treatment in a few months.”⁶

Unfortunately, hyperbole, such as the statement that the horrible death likely from CA is ‘due to the muffins and bagels you so crave’⁷, weakens Davis’ book. However, the fact that wheat consumption can lead to this dreadful condition is certainly worth publicizing.

Gluten encephalopathy is a brain disease that shows symptoms similar to those of cerebellar ataxia. Davis recounts, “one particularly disturbing Mayo Clinic study of 13 patients with the recent diagnosis of celiac disease in which dementia was also diagnosed. Of those 13, frontal lobe biopsy…or postmortem examination of the brain failed to  identify any other pathology beyond that associated with wheat gluten exposure….Of the 13, nine died due to progressive impairment of brain function.”⁸

As mentioned earlier, eating wheat spikes blood sugar, typically leading to a burst of energy followed by a precipitous decline in blood sugar that leaves one feeling enervated. This is where brain fog comes in. Dr. Davis was no stranger to brain fog himself. “I struggled with brain fog and overwhelming sleepiness during the day for over 20 years,” he explains. “I would eat whole grains, drink coffee and constantly struggle to maintain focus and attention. I was shocked to realize that my blood sugar levels were in the diabetic range even though I supposedly ate well and exercised almost every day. I have none of those problems now. I can go on three hours of sleep and feel fine.”

The fatigue caused by eating wheat can be more than just a blood sugar effect, notes Davis. “For me, it can take 36 to 48 hours for the effect of two slices of bread to wear off. That is well beyond the time needed for blood sugar to stabilize. I don’t know why that is. When one begins looking at the effects of wheat there are a lot more questions than answers.”

Davis is eager to see more research conducted into the relationship between wheat consumption and health. As he has observed, both personally and professionally, “The tangle of health consequences associated with wheat consumption is truly impressive.”

Overall, Davis has written an excellent book that raises important questions. Individuals who choose to follow his advice have little to lose (except weight) and stand to gain in terms of mental and physical health. While this article has focused on the wheat-brain connection Wheat Belly is much more comprehensive in its discussion of a wide range of health issues, including diabetes, irritable bowel, celiac disease, arthritis, dermatology and aging.

Dr. Peter Dohan, a Cape Breton, Nova Scotia-based surgical pathologist and the son of aforementioned pioneering researcher Dr. F. Curtis Dohan, while expressing a few problems with the representation of his father’s work in Wheat Belly (including the fact that Davis wrong states that F.C. Dohan was a psychiatrist, instead of an endocrinologist) is a big fan of the book. “I am a very well informed physician and I read it four times. I keep reading it because every time I learn something new. It reads like a medical textbook in many ways, providing a lot of information to the general public that isn’t well known. It is a marvelous book.”

Notes:

1. William Davis M.D., Wheat Belly, (New York: Rodale, 2011), pg. 50.

2. Personal communication from Dr. Peter Dohan, son of C.F Dohan. “My father scoured the research with his assistant but did not do original research on this topic.”

3. F.C. Dohan, et al. Relapsed Schizophrenics: More Rapid Improvement on a Milk- and Cereal-free Diet, Brit. J. Psychiat. (1969), 115, 595-6.

4. F.C. Dohan, M.D., and J.C. Grasberger, M.D., Relapsed Schizophrenics: Earlier Discharge from the Hospital After Cereal-free, Milk-free Diet, AM J Psychiatry 130:6, June 1973.

5. Davis, Wheat, pg. 168.

6. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001397.htm

7. Davis, Wheat, pg. 169

8. Davis, Wheat, pg. 173.