The Dr. Hyman Show - What Would Happen If You Stopped Eating Bread For 30 Days?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Modern wheat has way more gliadin proteins, way more gluten essentially, and different kinds of gluten proteins that are very inflammatory. So this is why we're seeing an increase in celiac, an increase in non-celiac gluten sensitivity and wheat sensitivity.

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Starting point is 00:03:22 Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Mark Hyman, and welcome to a new series on The Doctor's Pharmacy called Masterclass, where we dive into popular health topics, including inflammation, autoimmune disease, brain health, sleep, and so much more. Today I'm joined by my guest host, my good friend, my business partner and host of the Drew Perot Podcast, Drew Perot himself, and we're going to be talking about what would happen if you stopped eating bread for 30 days. Welcome, Drew.

Starting point is 00:03:48 It's a great question, Mark. And I think people want to know what your thoughts are about it. So let's jump right in. What are three of the top reasons people might want to consider eating less bread or maybe even no bread for a period of 30 days? Well, that's an easy question for me because I've been getting people out bread for the last 30 years and I've seen miracles happen over and over again. And the top three reasons are one, there is a special type of starch in dwarf wheat, and we're going to get into what the kind of wheat we're eating now is and why it's bad, called amylopectin A, which is a super starch that raises your blood sugar

Starting point is 00:04:26 more than table sugar. So you'd be better off having a bunch of spoonfuls of sugar than you would having a slice of bread. The second reason is that modern dwarf wheat has been hybridized in a way, not GMO, but hybridized bread in a way that has certain qualities that are helpful, like drought resistance, increased yields, and so forth. But it actually, when you breed plants together, they add their chromosomes. It's not like you get, you know, 23 from your mom and 23 from your dad, you get 46. It's like 46 plus 46 is 92. And what that does, that creates more proteins. And it turns out that the modern wheat has way more gliadin proteins, way more gluten essentially, and different kinds of gluten proteins that are very inflammatory. So this is why we're seeing an increase in celiac, an increase in non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and wheat sensitivity.

Starting point is 00:05:13 And the third is it's often sprayed at harvest with glyphosate, which is a weed killer that they use to desiccate the wheat to make it easier to get the grains off. And it's not a GMO food, but it actually gets the harm of glyphosate right at the end. And that causes damage to your microbiome. It basically kills your microbiome. And it also may be linked to cancer. So there's three. There's a lot more reasons I can get into, but those are the top three. Give us a little bit of background.

Starting point is 00:05:40 When did wheat, and specifically bread, start becoming a staple inside of our diet? And was there ever a period of time where bread was a lot better for you compared to the wheat and bread that we have today? For sure. I mean, you know, in the Bible says, you know, bread is a staff of life. We've been eating bread forever, ever. But the Sumerian wheat that our ancestors ate was quite different than the wheat we're eating today uh how it's grown how it's processed how it's milled and i mean we didn't even have refined grains until the flour mills back in the 1800s so we never ate refined grains uh and so there's been a real change uh in in our bread consumption and the quality of the bread and then we had the dwarf wheat uh advance which was a great advance to actually scale up production globally and increase

Starting point is 00:06:30 yields and all sorts of benefits but the downside of it was that it ended up being like a super starch so it ends up being worse than table sugar for your blood sugar and that drives so much of the obesity epidemic and and carbohydrate intolerance and pre-diabetes. And it's not just the sugar in our diet. It's a lot of the flour, which is about 133 pounds of flour per person per year. And that drives this catastrophic metabolic phenomenon that we see in our society today, where 88% of Americans are actually metabolically unhealthy. It means they have preiabetes at some degree, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, which are all driven by starch and sugar. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:11 we, we, we used to think that fat was bad and it's sort of a legacy of why we started to get into this sort of carbohydrate binge essentially was based on very poor science in the sixties that showed that fat was the cause of heart disease, but it really was very poor science in the 60s that showed that fat was the cause of heart disease. But it really was very poor science. It was observational data. It was cherry-picked data. They actually didn't look at the randomized controlled trials when they came up with the dietary guidelines, which actually didn't show that it was harmful, that fat was harmful. So back in the 70s, we were finally looking at the link between diet and disease in America. And the McGovern Report, George McGovern created dietary guidelines for Americans, which basically stated that we should be cutting out the fat and increasing the carbohydrate content of our diet.

Starting point is 00:07:56 And then we got the food pyramid in 1992, which showed we should have 6 to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal, and pasta a day, which is when you look at the graphs of that period of time and the obesity pandemic, we see now the epidemic, we see that is exactly when the hockey stick rise and obesity and diabetes came in. So it's the worst possible thing that happened to us. And, you know, we, we really need to think about how we should, um, if we're going to eat carbohydrates or bread, we have to rethink bread entirely. You recently did an episode on your podcast about insulin and how it's a big driver behind a lot of what's going on and just what you just covered. Can you do a little bit of a review of that? And how does bread fit into that context? So when you look at modern bread, it's extremely finely milled flour and with a lot of surface area. So when you consume at modern bread, it's extremely finely milled flour and with a lot of surface area. So when you consume it, it's quickly absorbed, just like sugar. And in fact, I guess

Starting point is 00:08:52 it's worse than sugar in terms of its glycemic index. And that causes you to spike insulin levels after your blood sugar goes up, your insulin spikes. And that insulin spike causes a cascade of phenomena that leads to all the chronic diseases we see, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and much more. Infertility, I mean, I can go on and on acne. And that phenomena of insulin resistance is driving inflammation in the body. It causes you to store fat around the middle. It causes you to crave more carbohydrates and food. It causes you to eat more overall. It slows your metabolism down. It really is a hormonal immune catastrophe.

Starting point is 00:09:30 And that's really because of the kind of flour we're eating. So we really need to cut that out if we want to stay healthy. It doesn't mean we can't have different kinds of bread. And there's many kinds of bread. And in Food, What the Heck Should I Cook, which is my cookbook, there's a couple of great recipes for seed and nut breads. There's other breads like Lynn's Life, which are made from just pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, psyllium husks, eggs, and the lime milk and lemon juice and baking soda. And it's delicious bread, but it's not made from flour. It's made from nuts and seeds. So I think we really can reimagine bread.

Starting point is 00:10:01 And also that we can look at all kinds of other grains that might be helpful and beneficial and how rich in phytochemicals because basically when you're eating modern white flour it's just completely devoid of any nutrients and the reason they call it enriched flour is because when they first started making it and people started eating it they would get massive nutritional deficiencies because of the lack of the b vitamins that are in the whole grain so they would get thiamine deficiency, berry, berry, pellagra, you know, and it was a terrible time of vitamin deficiency. And it was because of the refining of the flour. That's how we began to actually discover the vitamins because when we started milling the flour so fine, whether it was rice or whether it was other grains or flour, we saw this massive rise in really serious nutritional vitamin deficiencies.

Starting point is 00:10:54 So the question becomes, what's a bigger issue inside of the bread? Is it the gluten? Is it, as you were sharing before, the glycemic index? What is the bigger problem that's there when it comes to bread? I think it's twofold. One is one is the definite the sugar content. So people don't think of oh I'm eating a bagel or I'm having a you know a piece of bread with dinner that I'm actually harming myself. But the truth is we are we are really harming ourselves and we have white flour. Day in and day out. People have it here and there it's one thing but you're talking about having a day in and day out. People have it here and there. It's one thing, but you're talking about having it day in and day out and often for multiple meals in a day.

Starting point is 00:11:28 Dr. Tim Jackson Exactly. You know, we, exactly. I mean, like I said, we eat 133 pounds of flour per person per year. That's like a little, like a, like a, like a third of a pound a day basically, or a little more, right? That's a lot of flour. The second is this, this, this, uh, phenomena of increased gliding proteins in gluten and, and the number of gluten proteins that are inflammatory. And that it combined with all the other stressors in our life that cause leaky gut from environmental toxins to food additives, to chronic stress, to, you know, microbiome changes and antibiotic use and other medication. You know, we know, we're in a

Starting point is 00:12:05 situation where we're seeing rampant leaky gut. And gluten is one of the biggest drivers of leaky gut because it creates a damage to what we call the tight junctions, which is a little sort of Lego lock kind of things that put the cells together and and when you when you consume gluten this is work by alessio fasano from harvard who discovered that it increases a compound called zonulin in the body and the gut zonulin is a very important molecule that will cause a weakening of the tight junctions and it can be helpful like you know if you get certain infections or diseases you want to flush the gut out or but but this actually creates this chronic leaky gut, and you absorb all the bacterial toxins and food proteins, and you can get inflammation in the body and autoimmune disease and allergies

Starting point is 00:12:51 and much worse. So I think those two things, both the sugar content and the leaky gut damage from gluten and bread, are the two biggest real threats. Just to expand on leaky gut a little bit, what are some common signs or signals or symptoms that people might be going through in their life that could be an indication that they're struggling with leaky gut? Yeah. I mean, all of us to some degree have some permeability in our gut. And the more wheat we eat, the more permeable it is. But not all of us are sick. And it's a subtle dynamic that we have

Starting point is 00:13:24 to be in balance with however if you are suffering from allergies autoimmunities asthma you know migraines irritable bowel reflux all these chronic illnesses uh they they really can be linked to leaking even obesity heart disease dementia um all of those things can be linked to damage and leaky gut because it's inflammation. It doesn't even cause inflammation. It will cause you to have these chronic illnesses. So leaky gut and the inflammation that's a consequence of that plus the effect of the sugar content of bread on our biology are the two biggest threats that we face today from eating bread. A topic that comes up often with bread and grains that people have a lot of questions about are the topic of lectins. What's the connection between lectins, grains, leaky gut, and how concerned are you about lectins that people might be getting from foods in their

Starting point is 00:14:25 diet? So lectins are proteins and they can be little markers that are on cells or grains. And they potentially have the ability to cause inflammation throughout the body, to cause damage in the gut. But the truth is, we've evolved consuming massive amounts of different kinds of food, 800 different species of plants. We were exposed to all sorts of toxins in food. I mean, even animals will eat toxins. They'll only eat to a certain amount, you know, like, for example, elk and, for example,

Starting point is 00:14:59 or goats will eat sagebrush, which is not the best food. But if there's not a lot around, they'll eat it. But they only eat a certain amount because they don't want to get the toxin load from the terpenes. So they have to quit eating it when their body's sort of going enough. So we're eating all these foods, which contain a variety of different antigenic particles. There's phytates, there's lectins in food and grains. And grains have lectins, so do certain plant foods. But I'm not a big fan of getting people off lectins universally. I think that the biggest issue is we're eating too much processed food. 60% of our diet is processed food. 67% of kids' diet is processed food. Most of it is starch

Starting point is 00:15:38 and sugar. And that is what we should be focusing, getting people off of eating and eating whole, real food. So I'm very low to tell people to stop eating tomatoes or green peppers or, or, you know, whole grain, real whole grains. If, if, if, you know, if they haven't really first started to eat the, the, you know, the, the whole foods diet. I think, I think the other thing is that if you have, if you have a particular issue, if you have autoimmune disease, if you have certain challenges with your health, it may be worthwhile to do a trial of a lectin-free diet for a couple of weeks, three weeks, a month.

Starting point is 00:16:11 But I'm not a huge fan of this sort of view that lectins are the devil for everybody and we should all be off of them and never eat tomatoes or eggplants or peppers. I mean, people need more vegetables. How many vegetables do people eat? I think that's a good thing. So walk us through this idea. That's the topic for this video, which is what would happen if you stop eating bread for 30 days based on

Starting point is 00:16:34 your clinical experience and also having had thousands of people go through different programs and books where you've talked about removing certain foods, including bread. Take us through like week one, week two, week three. What is the typical person might notice that would happen inside of their body when they are stopping bread for 30 days? Great question. Well, I think really you can break it down into different phenomena, right? So there's the effects of the sugar and starch. There's the effects of the gluten. There's the effects of the sugar and starch there's the effects of the gluten there's the effects of glyphosate and some other things that are in bread but the the reality is that that it's different if you're celiac you'll notice one thing if you're a non-celiac gluten

Starting point is 00:17:16 sensitivity you'll notice something and if you are just sort of weed allergy you might know something different if you're just if you don't have any gluten intolerance, but you're eating it and it's affecting you from the carbohydrate perspective, you're going to notice all sorts of things. So everybody's different, right? If you're celiac and you stop eating it, all sorts of chronic problems might get better. Autoimmune diseases might get better. Headaches might get better. Skin ashes might get better. Digestive symptoms will will get better so people have a dramatic improvement same thing with non-celiac gluten sensitivity people often have dramatic changes in their ability to um you know feel better quickly and it doesn't take a long time it can

Starting point is 00:17:56 be a week or more uh sometimes you know people need to stay off it for three months to really see like i had a patient who had psoriatic arthritis and she really wasn't getting better until it was she had the like 10 week 10 week elimination because it takes about three months for the body to heal from the gut damage that happens when you eat gluten so I think people will have more energy their digestion will get better they'll lose weight they'll get rid of fluid in their bodies their guts won't hurt they might have more normal bowel movements less reflux they might have you know get rid of things like headaches migraines we've done a program called growing a new body or the 10-day detox diet or reset under reset and they're all very similar essentially they cut out all that

Starting point is 00:18:33 stuff they had all the grains processed food sugar and it's amazing in a week in 10 days so we did this i just did this last summer in spain with a group and in one week there was an average reduction in all symptoms from all diseases by 70%. There's no drug on the planet that can reduce all symptoms from all diseases by 70% a week. It just doesn't happen. So yes, they were also doing other things. They were eating healthier food. They were getting rid of also dairy and also gluten, obviously.

Starting point is 00:18:59 But it's sort of striking when you see the power of the food changes to change people's biology. Talk to us about white bread versus wheat versus sourdough versus ancient bread. Well, there's a lot of different kinds of bread. Most of the bread we eat is from regular wheat, dwarf wheat flour. It's highly refined and it's quickly leavened and it's made into all kinds of bread products that often have added sugar and high fructose corn syrup and it's it's bad no one should ever really eat that i hate to say it then you know sourdough bread if you're getting for example maybe an heirloom grain or you get your flour from an organic non-dwarf wheat source, more heirloom grains.

Starting point is 00:19:45 There's einkorn wheat. There's currant wheat, which is a new strain of wheat developed. Sourdough bread can be very good because it helps to digest the enzymes. It may make gluten less of an issue. It's easier to digest. And it's been used for thousands of years with sourdough starter. So that's sort of an upgrade and improvement. But it really depends on the flour you're starting with.

Starting point is 00:20:01 If you start off with crappy flour and white flour from dwarf wheat, it's not a good idea. And then there's some interesting things where we see in Europe, when people go to Europe, they don't have the same intolerance to wheat that they do in this country. And they don't actually use the same wheat. They don't use dwarf wheat. And also their process of making bread is not like a quick one-hour leavening. They make leavening for 12 hours overnight.

Starting point is 00:20:31 And that changes the composition of the proteins and this gluten and allows it to be less reactive. And then there's, you know, all sorts of other sort of grains that you can use that contain gluten. Like in Germany, my favorite breads are those German rye breads or whole grain breads. And they're not made from flour. They're made from whole grains. So essentially you get a meat slicer to cut it because it's so thick. If you stood on it, it wouldn't squish at all. And you can't cut it with a regular knife because it's too dense. That's a really great bread. So nobody's really made that here, but that's made from whole kernel grains. And so, you know, whether you're looking at, you know, sort of trying other kinds of gluten grains like spelt or rye or certain oats, I mean,

Starting point is 00:21:12 you may be able to tolerate those or you might not tolerate the dwarf wheat that is the prevalent wheat in this country. But my typical philosophy is, you know, if you're not celiac and you're not non-celiac gluten sensitivity or you don't have a wheat allergy that you probably should minimize your intake of wheat in general. Although you can have, if you have some of these other forms of sourdough or German rye or einkorn wheat, or you can make your own, that's probably okay from time to time. But again, it also depends on, you know, how, how dense the bread is, how how mild it is, how thin the flour is. Because if you are, forget about gluten sensitivity, if you're dealing with weight and metabolic issues, which is almost 9 out of 10 Americans, it's the devil.

Starting point is 00:21:54 It just spikes your blood sugar, spikes your insulin, makes you gain weight, more inflammation, and you end up in the vicious cycle. Talk to us about how someone can use the reintroduction process to figure out how well they tolerate or don't tolerate a food like bread. Yeah. Well, I think most people, you know, never really do it properly, which is you've got to stop at 100%. And depending on what's going on with you, you might need to do it for two weeks, three weeks, three months, but you need to go cold turkey 150% because even a thumbnail full of gluten in that time period can cause a relapse and leaky gut and a reactivation of symptoms. So the key is to sort of stay off it for a long period of time and then reintroduce it and see how you feel. And then so you just, let's say, have pasta or you have bread or you have something and you see how you feel. And if your gut hurts, if your joints hurt, if you had a headache, your nose rose is runny, if you feel

Starting point is 00:22:52 like crap, if you're depressed, you know, I can go on and on. Then, you know, maybe your body doesn't tolerate it. So you can stop it again and you can try it again. So the best real challenge for assessing food sensitivity is what we call a elimination reintroduction diet. And that's really what we're trying to do is get rid of the symptoms by getting rid of the food and seeing what happens when we add it back. And if we add it back and we feel like crap, well, our body's telling us something. We should pay attention.

Starting point is 00:23:18 Let's talk about a case study from your clinic of maybe somebody that you took off of bread and what you noticed happened for them and their body. Yeah. I just remember a patient who had so many different problems, you know, and in medicine we treat people in silos, right? You know, if you have multiple diagnoses, you see multiple doctors. This woman had psoriatic arthritis. She saw the rheumatologist. She had migraines. She saw the neurologist. She had reflux and irritable bowel. She saw the rheumatologist, she had migraines, she saw the neurologist, she had reflux and an irritable bowel, she saw the GI doctor, she had depression, she saw the psychiatrist, she had migraines, she saw the neurologist. So, and she was on different pills for every single one of her issues. And no one really asked, you know, what is really going on underneath it all.

Starting point is 00:23:59 And clearly she was, you know, systemically inflamed. Every single one of those diseases, depression, migraines, you know, bowel reflux, cirrhotic arthritis, all of that, all of that is inflammation. Even depression is inflammation of the brain. And so we took her off gluten, also dairy, cleaned up her gut. And, you know, it was a miracle. I mean, it's not a miracle because I see it all the time, but it seems like a miracle because it's not what we learn in traditional medicine but she had she had uh elimination of all of her symptoms so no more psoriasis no more arthritis no more

Starting point is 00:24:33 migraines no more depression no more reflux heartburn and she lost 20 pounds she was pre-diabetic as well so she lost 20 pounds and got off all her medications and i didn't tell her stop her medications she just did on her own but that's's how powerful it is. When you get someone off the things that are driving inflammation, it's super powerful. And in her instance, it wasn't that she just stopped bread, although that was a big part of it. She also, it sounds like stopped a few other things that were common triggers in people's diet. What were some of those other things that she either greatly minimized or stopped? I mean, you know, we did a combination of things.

Starting point is 00:25:12 We essentially got her on an elimination diet. So gluten, dairy, sugar, processed food. We cleaned up her gut. We got rid of the bad bugs in her gut. We gave her probiotics, vitamin D, fish oil. And, you know, it was kind of amazing to see how simple the intervention was and how dramatic the results were. And, you know, she was able to get off all these medications, which were, you know, huge amount of money, and they weren't even working. You know, like she was marginally better,

Starting point is 00:25:41 and she just was all better. Is there a protocol or a book or something that people could look up that if they wanted to follow this kind of similar to the program that she followed, they can pull that up or get that book? Sure. I mean, the 10-Day Detox Diet is pretty much the book that was derived from my medical practice where I designed a way of eating that was really universally effective for a whole host of problems from obesity to diabetes to autoimmune disease to digestive disorders, hormonal imbalances, because it really just takes out all the bad food, puts in all the good food and, you know, puts in the structures and things in place to actually help your body survive and thrive. Fantastic. All right, let's go into some community questions that we've gathered together.

Starting point is 00:26:23 So the first one is why does bread in other countries seem to have a different effect on people and their metabolism yeah so we sort of touched on this before but if you go to italy and you pasta or your bread it doesn't even bother people and you know i was in sardinia this summer and they had no crackers and they had their sardinian bread that the shepherds would take it they'd make it in like these giant crackers and they would carry it in their thing and they would just add a little water to it and last for months it was sort of interesting uh but that was made from grano capelli which is an ancient grain that's from sardinia it wasn't modern wheat much more nutrient dense full of phytochemicals full of

Starting point is 00:26:58 really beneficial compounds that have more protein more minerals less starch less sugar um and it's full of phytochemicals, just like the Himalayan tartary buckwheat, for example. So I think it's really common. And also, I think maybe not just different strains of wheat, but also how they ferment it and do the process of actual leavening, which is a much longer process, rather than just being like, you know, one hour in and out American factories. It's really a powerful way to actually get a lot of the harmful effects of bread minimized. So I see this universally. I don't, I've talked to Leslie Fasano about it and different theories, but I think that's really what we've come up with. All right. Great answer. Let's go to the next question from our community that we have here.

Starting point is 00:27:48 What factor does Roundup play in the quality of wheat and does it impact any other crops? I'm assuming that they mean Roundup glyphosate being applied to crops, especially to wheat. Yeah. Well, glyphosate is also known as a weed killer, Roundup. It's used on certain GMO products like soy and corn, but it's basically on 70% of agricultural products, 70%, which is just a staggering number. It's the number one agrochemical used globally. It's been linked to significant damage to the soil microbiome, which our health is linked to, as well as our own microbiome. And that also is very much linked to cancer. And there's been, you know, 14,000 lawsuits and billions of dollars in settlements because of its link to lymphoma and other cancers.

Starting point is 00:28:45 So from my perspective, you know, it's not used on all wheat, but it is often used at harvest to actually drive an easier harvesting process where they desiccate or basically exfoliate the wheat and all you've got left is the grain and all the leaves and stuff is gone. So it makes it exfoliate the wheat and all you've got left is the grain and all the leaves and stuff is gone so it makes it easier to handle but the unintended consequence is that it's destroying the microbiome of the soil which is needed to create you know nutritional density in the plants because if your soil is dead the the microbes and the organic matter in the soil that you're killing are necessary for the plants to extract the nutrients from the soil. So you can look at sort of broccoli today and it's, you know, half as nutritious as it was 50 years ago because of the sort of damage to the soil. So I think, you know, there's a damage to

Starting point is 00:29:35 the soil, there's a damage to our microbiome, the damage to the risk of cancer. So I think it's a problem. I mean, we really should ban it. All right, next question from the community. So this person writes in and says, I feel really hungry when I don't eat breads and carbs with a meal. What can I do? Yeah, so the reason you have hunger, and in a beautiful book by my friend David, what he called Always Hungry,

Starting point is 00:30:02 which essentially describes a process of our appetite regulation. And what really is going on is that your appetite is controlled by your carbohydrate load. The more carbohydrates you eat, the more your sugar is going to be fluctuating up and down. And we work with a company called Levels, which uses continuous glucose monitoring on a little patch under your skin. And you can see, you know, when you eat foods that are not rich in protein and fat, and you're eating rich in starch and sugar, your sugar is going to be up and down like a roller coaster all day long. But if you actually combine protein and fat with your meals, not just carbohydrates, you're going to actually even that out and have a much better balanced blood sugar and you won't be hungry and craving. I'm almost never hungry.

Starting point is 00:30:40 The only time I get hungry is if I really like busy and I didn't bring a snack and it might be like you know 10 hours since i've eaten i might get pretty hungry but i'm amazed at how when i make my protein fat food in the morning shake this morning i had two eggs i had avocados a little olive oil i mean that was a great breakfast or i might have a shake with protein and fat in it so i think we really have to understand that we can't be eating a lot of starch and sugar all day long because we're just going to want more and more and more. And that's what it's designed to do. It really flips your brain into craving more carbohydrates, more sugar. And so it's really a process of shifting your biology to actually more accommodate fat and

Starting point is 00:31:19 protein than accommodating sugar and carbohydrates and starch from bread. All right. Great. Next question. Does Dr. Mark Hyman ever eat bread? And if so, what bread is his go-to? And how does he make sure he doesn't eat too much? Well, I'm pretty good with bread. I've got into kind of some bread hacks.

Starting point is 00:31:41 I like Lynn's Life Bread, which is yummy. I make it myself. It takes 10 minutes to make or less um and you can buy it online i don't have any affiliation with the company but it's just great bread um what was the name of that brand just so that people lynn's life lynn's life and yeah lynn's life bread uh you can just google it and just buy the packets come to these little brown packets of powder you know seeds and stuff i also like the german rye bread so i i'm not really gluten sensitive but but i really like to eat the the german rye bread they have it in america in these packets which are okay but you know they're they're not like the german bread you get in germany it's just fresh so many whole grains so much like rich

Starting point is 00:32:24 rich flavor and texture it's just very different but it's sort of a good standby that you can get in most grocery stores in america and that's what i like to use um sometimes yeah sometimes i'll eat bread or wheat and i'm not fanatical about it but i'm very cautious about not eating too much and not i never go for the bread basket at the table i never you know will deliberately have a lot of bread if i I do, I'll try to eat sourdough or I'll try to make sure it's organic and not sprayed with glyphosate and not dwarf wheat. So I try all that. Fantastic. We'll have the link for that Lynn's life in the show notes for people that want to check that out. Okay. Next question from the community. Can you tell me why wheat affects me so negatively now that I'm post-menopausal? My joints and especially

Starting point is 00:33:11 my left hand ache terribly. I even think it affects whether I snore or not. Yeah, for sure. I mean, as you get older, your gut can break down. You can get more leaky gut. You can get more inflammation. So I think we can get this at any stage of life, but often people will find they're going to be more intolerant as they're more unhealthy as they get older. That doesn't mean you can't maintain your health as you get older. It just means if you don't focus on it, it's going to decline. And that's probably what you're experiencing, that it just creates more leaky gut, more inflammation, and it's probably good for you not to take it at all. All right. Next question from our community.

Starting point is 00:33:48 If I buy pasta or wheat that's made in Italy, does that help me sideswipe the issues with American wheat? Can I have as much bread as I want? Well, yes and no. I mean, I would say if you're going to go for pasta or something, yeah, get the Italian pasta, heirloom pasta, organic pasta. That's great uh as far as eating as much as you want no bread is bread is bread i mean it's it unless you're eating that

Starting point is 00:34:11 german bread that i mentioned where you literally can stand on and it doesn't squish you need a meat slicer to cut it and you can't cut it with a knife because the knife would break then okay the the highly pulverized you know extremely fine flours that we use in this country to make bread are extremely dangerous. Look, if you're like, oh, well, I don't care. I'm just going to drink Coke all day. Well, fine. And eat bread. But like, think whenever you eat bread, think like you're drinking a Coke and think twice about what that does to you. So I would be very cautious about it. Oh, that's great. And I think you recently had an episode with Dan Buettner, who created the Blue Zones and went out and did a bunch of research on them.

Starting point is 00:34:50 And most of those longest living societies, even the one that you visited in Italy, they're not having the bread that we think of on a regular basis. So even if you might find bread from Italy or Europe is a little bit more tolerable. I just was in France. Sure, you might have a croissant here or there when you're on vacation. You don't feel as crappy as you do when you have it in the US, but that doesn't mean that it's a health food that is a staple as a regular part of our diet. No, like if you have dessert once in a while, fine. But like, it's like that. Think of it as dessert or as a can of Coke and then, you know, should not be your staple. All right. Last question from our community here.

Starting point is 00:35:29 If I don't feel bad eating bread daily, do I still need to give it up? Is it still worth trying to give up bread for 30 days? You never know. I mean, I always say people never know how bad they feel until they start feeling good right so you just could have this low level level of inflammation you think it's normal it's how you feel mental clarity energy focus digestion skin hair nails all that can change really quickly when you get off the foods that are inflammatory so i encourage you to do it anyway even 10 days 10 days is amazing that's why i created the 10-day detox and we'll see people have dramatic changes so it doesn't have to be your whole life but but, but try to check it out because you might really notice something changing your health. All right, Mark, somebody watches this video.

Starting point is 00:36:11 They're inspired. They want to try, uh, either an elimination diet or they want to step out of having bread, uh, for 30 days to see if it makes a difference in their health. What are some of the first steps that they take after watching this video? I mean, you know, don't eat flour. Get rid of sugar and flour, I would say is so powerful for people. And just start to notice how you feel. Notice day one, two, three, four. First few days, you might feel bad. Often when people, there are a few other things I didn't really mention about wheat that are a problem. One is that it's preserved with something called calcium propionate in this country which can cause a lot of neurologic effects and it's caused add and behavioral issues

Starting point is 00:36:53 in kids uh and it also contains um you know when you're digesting gluten you create something called gluteomorphins which are pept-like small protein kind of like fragments that go to the brain and act like morphine or heroin. And they are called, literally, they're called gluteomorphins. And they can cause behavioral issues. We see this in schizophrenics and autistic kids, and it can make you a little crazy. So I think nobody knows how we're affected until we stop. And that's really why I encourage people to take a break. So that's fantastic information, Mark. Go ahead and let's conclude out this episode with just a few reminders. Well, I think the big picture here is that the wheat we eat is not the wheat we ate.

Starting point is 00:37:35 And if you're going to eat wheat or any kind of bread products, make sure you're sourcing from organic sources, that you're not eating dwarf wheat that you may be eating. European forms of grains. So you're looking at funky wonky grains like einkorn wheat or currants of wheat. Or maybe other grains like spelt and rye which are less monkeyed with. And then try an elimination diet. If you're really thinking you might have some issue with wheat, it's the best diagnostic test. You can do blood work for gluten sensitivity, but I encourage people to get rid of it. And remember, if you're eating the modern wheat, you're also getting

Starting point is 00:38:06 glyphosate, you're getting more gluten proteins, you're getting calcium propionate, you're getting gluteomorphins. So there's a whole set of problems that occur with wheat that we don't even know we're facing until we stop. So I encourage people to check it out. Also, you know, if you really should have experienced a transformation by stopping gluten and wheat and bread, let us know. We'd love to hear from you in comments. So that's really it for this week's masterclass. If you enjoyed the episode, please share with your friends and family on social media, subscribe for every year podcast, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy.

Starting point is 00:38:45 I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff

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Starting point is 00:39:37 I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey,

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The Dr. Hyman Show - What Would Happen If You Stopped Eating Bread For 30 Days?

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