Can Supplements Help Fight Celiac Disease?

A World Journal of Gastroenterology study recently found that Celiac patients who regularly take B-vitamin supplements were able to reduce their homocysteine levels.

The study looked at the effects of taking daily vitamin B6, vitamin B9, and vitamin B12 supplements on the homocysteine levels of patients with Celiac disease or gluten intolerance. Homocysteine is a harmful amino acid associated with a higher risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. Newly diagnosed Celiac disease patients frequently experience hyperhomocysteinemia or abnormally high homocysteine levels in their blood.

Researchers also noted that B-vitamin supplements may help protect against the effects of villous atrophy or intestinal damage.

What is Celiac Disease?

Celiac disease or gluten intolerance is an autoimmune condition that attacks your intestines and entire digestive system. It occurs when a person is unable to digest gluten, a common protein found in barley, rye, wheat, and other grains.

The symptoms of Celiac disease are manifested differently in each individual. Abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, malabsorption of nutrients, and nausea are some of the most common symptoms. Celiac disease can also cause non-gastrointestinal symptoms like anemia, depression, fatigue, infertility, and weight issues -- either weight gain or loss.

Malabsorption is often associated with Celiac disease. Those suffering from gluten intolerance may often struggle with several nutritional deficiencies, including lack of:

• Calcium
• Essential fatty acids
• Folic acid (folate or vitamin B9)
• Iron
• Magnesium
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin K

Fight Celiac Disease with the No-Grain Diet

Avoiding gluten in your diet is the most effective way to deal with Celiac disease. Not consuming gluten for a week or two typically results in significant improvement.

But it’s not enough for you to avoid grains if you are gluten-intolerant. It’s also important to pay attention to the quality of all the other foods you eat. You should also avoid processed foods, which often have hidden gluten.

Food manufacturers are not required by law to list all possible sources of gluten on their product labels. Gluten may be present in processed foods like candies, cold cuts, low-fat and zero-fat products, ready-made soups, and soy sauce, just to name a few, under labels such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), malt, natural flavoring, starch, and texturized vegetable protein.

A gluten-free diet like Dr. Mercola’s No-Grain Diet helps keep Celiac disease under control. The No-Grain Diet will also help you avoid the other dangers of grains and sugars. Grain-based and sugar-rich foods are inherently pro-inflammatory and will worsen any condition that has chronic inflammation at its root--not just inflammation in your gut, but anywhere in your body.

How a Good Night’s Sleep Can Boost Your Weight Loss Efforts

Get enough sleep. This may be one of the easiest weight loss tips you’ll ever get.

A new University of Chicago study suggests that lack of sleep may reduce the effectiveness of typical dietary efforts for weight loss and against metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors associated with obesity.

The study involved 10 sedentary non-smokers between the ages of 35 to 49. The participants had a body mass index of between 25-32 (overweight to obese). They stayed in a closed environment for two weeks. They ate the same diet, took multivitamins, and did the same type of work or leisure activities. Six were asked to sleep for 8.5 hours, while the other four slept for 5.5 hours.

Those who had more sleep lost more weight and were able to maintain a fat-free body mass. Compared to those who had less sleep, they also felt less hungry throughout the day.

Another 2010 study found that subjects who slept less than six hours had a 32 percent gain in visceral fat, compared to a 13 percent gain among those who slept six or seven hours and 22 percent among those who had at least eight hours of sleep.

Visceral fat is the type of fat linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and other chronic diseases.

While these two studies do not prove that lack of sleep directly results in fat gain, they support the proposed link between sleep duration and weight gain, as well as an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Sleep deprivation decreases the production of leptin, the hormone that tells your brain when you’re full and signals you to stop eating. It also increases ghrelin, the hormone that triggers hunger. Additionally, lack of sleep appears to affect energy metabolism and how your body uses fat and glucose. All these factors decrease your ability to achieve weight loss.

But given the stress and pressures of everyday life, how will you manage to get enough sleep?

Use the basic tools of Dr. Joseph Mercola’s No-Grain Diet to establish a healthy sleep pattern. Regular exercise prepares your body for relaxation at bedtime, while the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) helps you address your tension, worries, and other discomforts that prevent you from getting restful sleep.

Finally, Solid Evidence that Water is Good for Weight Loss

Water has always been Dr. Joseph Mercola’s beverage of choice as it is the best way to rehydrate. It’s a no-brainer because a big part of our bodies are composed of water, including bodily fluids like blood, digestive juices, lymph, sweat, and urine.

Water was also long believed to help aid weight loss, which many consider as an old wives’ tale. But now this often dismissed dieting tip has the science to back it up.

A research team led by Virginia Tech nutritionist Brenda Davy conducted the first randomized controlled trial looking at the link between water consumption and weight loss. Davy’s year-long trial was a follow-up to a 12-week trial published in early 2010 suggesting that drinking water before meals leads to weight loss.

The researchers divided 48 inactive people, aged 55 to 75, into two groups. The first group was told to drink half a liter of water shortly before eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, while the second did not receive any instructions on what to drink.

The participants had been consuming between 1,800 and 2,200 calories daily before the trial. When the study began, men were limited to 1,500 calories while women were allowed 1,200 calories.

After three months, the group that drank water before the three meals lost an average of 7kg (15.4 lbs) each – about a 44-percent increase in weight loss – while those in the second group only lost 5kg (11 lbs).

The weight loss effect appears to be long-lasting because the participants were allowed to eat and drink what they wanted in the succeeding 12 months. But those who drank water before meals during the trial stuck with the habit and continued to lose weight – about 2 lbs over the year – while the others put the weight back on.

Davy attributed the weight loss to the fact that water makes you feel full without giving you any calories.

Water consumption is a vital component of Dr. Mercola’s No-Grain Diet. When you’re dehydrated, your body prompts you to eat food when you should be consuming water, and this triggers weight gain, Dr. Mercola explains. The No-Grain Diet will also help you avoid soda and other sweet, calorie-loaded beverages.

Drink a quart of water for every 50lb of body weight, gradually increasing the amount to give your bladder and excretory system time to adjust. Sip on water continuously throughout the day since your body can only process a glass per hour.

Gluten-Free Diet More than Just a Trend

The gluten-free diet is gaining popularity and getting more publicity nowadays. More restaurants and caterers are offering gluten-free meals.

Chelsea Clinton’s nuptials featured a gluten-free wedding cake as the former first daughter was said to have gluten intolerance.

While dieters may think that going gluten-free is just another food trend or diet fad, the truth is, many people will benefit from eliminating gluten from their diets, Dr. Joseph Mercola points out.

About one percent of Americans – one out of every 133 people – are allergic to gluten, a protein found in grains such as barley, rye, and wheat that damages the small intestine and prevents your body from absorbing nutrients.


Why You Should Avoid Gluten and Grains – Even if You’re Not Gluten Intolerant

Dr. Mercola believes that many people, perhaps even the majority of the population, are adversely affected by gluten on some level. These people may not have full-blown gluten intolerance or Celiac disease, just minor reactions to gluten.

But despite its rapidly increasing prevalence, gluten intolerance is still commonly misdiagnosed and even missed. On the average, it takes as long as four years to reach a diagnosis, provided that you’re symptomatic, Dr. Mercola explains.

He also warns that the delay in proper diagnosis can dramatically increase your risk of developing autoimmune disorders, cancer, neurological problems, and osteoporosis.

Gluten may also be one of the causes of grain addiction. When digested, gluten produces addictive, heroin-like substances called exorphins. This could contribute to appetite disorders and mental disturbances often associated with food-related illnesses.


Beat Gluten Intolerance with the No-Grain Diet

Abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, and nausea are some of the common symptoms of gluten intolerance. Celiac disease may manifest clinically with an array of non-gastrointestinal symptoms, such as anemia, depression, fatigue, infertility, organ disorders, and more. A blood test can confirm if you’re gluten intolerant.

But a gluten-free diet may not be enough for you to avoid all traces of gluten. A new study discovered that even naturally gluten-free flours, grains, and seeds can still be contaminated by gluten.

Only a grain-free diet like Dr. Mercola’s No-Grain Diet will help you deal with Celiac disease and eliminate gluten completely. Taking a probiotics supplement while going grain-free can also help reduce the inflammation associated with gluten.

Can a Gluten-Free Diet Help You Beat Grain Addiction?

Grain addiction is an often overlooked health issue because it’s hard to believe that something you eat regularly is not good for your health. Most people don’t know that bloating, brain fogginess, depression, excess weight, fatigue, and frequent sleepiness are a result of eating too many grains and sugars.

But why are grains so addictive?

Advertising, emotions, habit, and social pressure all contribute to grain addiction. While this type of addiction has an emotional component, there are other lesser known factors behind food cravings.

Exorphins: Another Reason Why You Should Avoid Gluten

Grains like barley, rye, and wheat contain gluten. When digested, gluten produces exorphins--substances that can have addictive, heroin-like effects.

Exorphins tell your brain to keep eating food containing gluten, which could contribute to the appetite disorders and mental disturbances that often accompany food-related illnesses.

Exorphins, endorphins, and morphine all function through opioid receptors found in many different cells in your body, particularly on nerves and smooth muscles in your intestines. When a compound triggers these receptors, it results in a sense of euphoria, happiness, and sleepiness, and dull pain.

Though more conclusive studies are needed to directly associate exorphins to food cravings, grain addiction is a likely reaction to consuming gluten. Many people who consume grains struggle constantly with their food cravings which contribute to weight gain. But they don’t know how to deal with them because they’re unaware that gluten is addictive.

A more serious potential problem with exorphins is schizophrenia. Studies show that many schizophrenics improve if they stop consuming wheat and get worse if given wheat or gluten.

Dr. Joseph Mercola’s No-Grain Diet is a gluten-free diet designed to help you avoid the dangers of grains. He believes that well over 75 percent of Americans would benefit from severely limiting or eliminating ALL types of grains, whether they are whole, refined, or sprouted.

Those who are overweight and suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol will also greatly benefit from avoiding all grains.

A Grain-Free Diet is Best for Celiac Disease

About 1 percent of the U.S. population is affected by Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder triggered by gluten. Gluten is a type of protein found in grains such as barley, wheat, and rye.

When a person with Celiac disease eats food containing gluten, an immune reaction attacks the small intestine and prevents nutrients from being absorbed by the body.

Certain flours, grains, and seeds are naturally gluten-free, including:

• Amaranth seed
• Buckwheat
• Flaxseed
• Millet
• Oats
• Quinoa
• Rice
• Sorghum
• Soy

This means Celiac sufferers can eat them, right?

Gluten-Free Food Can Still be Contaminated by Gluten

Wrong. A new study analyzed 22 naturally gluten-free flours, grains, and seeds off supermarket shelves that weren’t labeled as gluten-free. The study tested the amount of gluten the products contained against a proposed FDA limit for any product labeled gluten-free – 20 parts contaminant per million parts product.

Seven of the 22 products failed the FDA's gluten limit. One soy flour product had a gluten content of almost 3,000 parts per million. Other products contaminated with gluten included millet flour and grain, buckwheat flour, and sorghum flour. Four of the seven products did not even carry an allergen advisory statement.

The researchers believe that some of the products had been contaminated with gluten because they were grown or processed near grains that naturally contain gluten.


Grain-Free Diet is a Gluten-Free Diet

A gluten-free diet is recommended for those suffering from Celiac disease or gluten intolerance. But the study clearly shows that naturally gluten-free grains may still be contaminated.

Food manufacturers are not required by the FDA to identify all possible sources of gluten on their product labels, so checking the label may not be enough to identify other hidden sources. Gluten often hides in processed foods like candies, cold cuts, instant soups, soy sauce, and many low-fat and zero-fat products, under labels such as:

• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)
• Malts
• Natural flavoring
• Starches
• Texturized vegetable protein (TVP)

Visit Celiac.com for more information on label ingredients that typically contain hidden gluten.

Those suffering from Celiac disease know the importance of a grain-free diet because many of them cannot tolerate even minute amounts of gluten. Grain dangers, however, extend beyond gluten intolerance.

Grains and sugars, being pro-inflammatory, will worsen any condition that has chronic inflammation at its root. So if you want to avoid gluten and at the same time reduce your risk of degenerative diseases like cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes, try Dr. Mercola’s No-Grain Diet.


Related Links:

Gut Bacteria Offer New Hope for People with Celiac Disease
Why is Wheat Gluten Disorder on the Rise?

How Grains and Sugar Wreck Your Health

In America, the addiction to bread, French fries, and soda has resulted in an obesity epidemic. It’s not fat that makes people overweight and unhealthy, but the excess carbohydrates from the starch-and-sugar-loaded American diet, Dr. Joseph Mercola points out.

Telltale Signs of Carbohydrate Addiction

We all need a certain amount of carbohydrates. But we’re simply consuming too many grains, sweets, and other starchy and sugary foods. The overconsumption of grains usually causes the following symptoms:

• Bloating
• Brain fogginess
• Depression
• Excess weight
• Fatigue and frequent sleepiness
• High blood pressure
• High triglycerides
• Low blood sugar

Insulin and Illness

Eating any meal or snack high in carbohydrates generates a rapid spike in blood glucose. To compensate for this rise, your pancreas secretes insulin to lower your glucose level. Your capacity to store carbohydrates is limited, Dr. Mercola explains, and insulin converts the excess carbs into fat and stores it in your adipose or fatty tissue.

Insulin, stimulated by the excess carbs, is responsible for bulging stomachs, double chins, and fat rolls on arms and thighs.

High insulin levels suppress two other important hormones – glucagons and growth hormones – that are responsible for burning fat and sugar and promoting muscle development, respectively. In short, insulin from excess carbohydrates promotes fat production and then impairs your body's ability to burn that fat.

The dangers of grains do not end there. Grains contribute to allergies, cause a host of digestive disorders, suppress your immune system, and are associated with many obesity-related chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

Dr. Mercola’s revolutionary book, The No-Grain Diet, will teach you how to reduce grains and sweets from your diet the healthy way. This grain-free diet is not a quick fix to achieve weight loss. The No-Grain Diet is a comprehensive eating plan designed to improve your health by conquering carbohydrate addiction, increasing your energy, optimizing your weight, and more.

Reduce Your Salt Intake with the No-Grain Diet

Ever heard of sugar going straight to your hips? Well, salt can go straight to your ankles and face if you're not careful.

Your body needs a basic amount of salt to be able to function properly. Very low-salt diets can actually be harmful. However, eating too much salt can cause edema, which occurs when fluids in your body tissues cause your face, ankles, feet, and legs – sometimes even your entire body – to swell.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is concerned about the more serious health consequences of high salt consumption. Too much salt contributes to high blood pressure, which increases your risk of heart attack and stroke.

In February, the Institute of Medicine declared high blood pressure a "neglected disease" that costs the government some $73 billion annually.

According to a CDC study, nine out of 10 Americans are consuming too much salt, with most of them getting about 3,466 mg of sodium a day – more than twice the recommended amount of less than a teaspoon per day.

The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend no more than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. New guidelines for 2010 are expected to be at 1,500 mg or lower. The CDC projects that cutting down salt intake to just 1,200 mg a day would reduce the annual number of new cases of heart disease by at least 60,000 and stroke by at least 32,000 cases.

Most of the salt consumption comes from processed and grain-based foods at 1,288 mg or 36.9 percent. Meats, poultry and fish came in at second with 994 mg or 27.9 percent, followed by vegetables with 431 mg or 12.4 percent.

Yeast breads, chicken and mixed chicken dinners, pizza, pasta dishes, and cold cuts are the top five sources of salt in the American diet. These foods usually use common table salt. Table salt contains chemical additives and is processed at over 1200 degrees.

Natural salts such as Celtic or Himalayan salt however, are dried naturally and are not chemically processed. They also contain many minerals that your body requires to function well.

Dr. Mercola’s No-Grain Diet will help you curb your salt consumption by drastically reducing the amount of grains you consume. The No-Grain Diet provides you with a comprehensive food plan – which includes easy-to-make grain-free recipes you can follow for life -- teaching you the right type of foods to eat to stay slim and healthy, and the things to avoid, like processed salt.

Fight Celiac Disease with Probiotics and the No-Grain Diet

Celiac disease is an autoimmune digestive disorder that attacks the small intestine when a person consumes gluten -- a protein found in grains like barley, rye, and wheat. Data from the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center show that an average of 1 out of every 133 otherwise healthy people in the United States suffer from this disease. The prevalence has even been estimated to be as high as 1 in 33 in at-risk populations.

Those suffering from Celiac disease usually experience abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, and nausea. As the small intestine sustains more damage, more serious problems occur.

Undiagnosed Celiac disease has been linked to a nearly four-fold increased risk of premature death. The trouble with Celiac disease is it takes an average of four years to reach a diagnosis. This delay can dramatically increase your risk of developing other autoimmune diseases. Your risk of suffering from an autoimmune condition can increase by as much as 34 percent when you’re diagnosed with Celiac disease after the age of 20, Dr. Mercola warns.

Thankfully, more research is being devoted to Celiac disease, which was previously not given much attention by conventional medicine. A new study conducted in Spain suggests that probiotics may help relieve the effects of Celiac disease and influence the inflammation it causes by decreasing serum CRP (C-reactive protein) levels.

The Spanish study used Bifidobacterium, one of the major “good” bacteria strains that compose your gut flora. An earlier study published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG) found that there are at least two kinds of probiotic bacteria that have even greater anti-inflammatory properties than Bifidobacterium. The WJG study identified Lactobacillus and Propionibacterium as the probiotics that produce the lowest CRP.

Probiotics also help reduce the bacteria-induced production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (small proteins secreted by specific cells of the immune system) while simultaneously up-regulating the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines.

However, if you’re suffering from any inflammatory condition – be it Celiac disease, heart disease, or autoimmune disorders – the first thing you need to do is to avoid grains, Dr. Mercola points out. Taking probiotics while still eating a grain-based diet will not spare you from ill effects. Grains and sugars are highly pro-inflammatory. While probiotics are anti-inflammatory, they cannot completely cancel out the detrimental effects of a diet rich in starchy carbs, Dr. Mercola explains.

Celiac disease sufferers do best with a no-grain diet as they cannot tolerate even very small amounts of gluten. Eliminating gluten for a week or two is often enough to see significant improvement but sometimes, it may take several months. In Dr. Mercola’s experience, about 75-80 percent of all  people benefit from avoiding ALL types of grains, whether you suffer from gluten intolerance or not.

If you’re fighting gluten intolerance or want to optimize your diet, it’s not enough to simply avoid grains. You should also pay attention to the quality of all the other foods you eat. Dr. Mercola’s NY Times best selling book  The No-Grain Diet will help guide your choices and put you on an eating plan that you can stay on for life.

Are Grains More Dangerous to Women?

It seems that women are more susceptible to the dangers of grains.

A national institute for cancer research in Italy determined that women who eat more white bread, white rice, pasta, pizza, and other carbohydrate-laden foods that cause a spike in blood sugar levels double their risk of heart disease.

Researchers from the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori examined the diets of 32,578 women and 15,171 men (diabetics were excluded from the study as they have abnormal levels of blood sugar and insulin) and calculated their total consumption of carbohydrates for eight years.

They found that 158 women and 305 men developed coronary heart disease, and that women whose diets had the highest glycemic index (GI) score were 2.24 times more likely to develop heart disease than those who consumed the fewest carbs.

The Institute, however, admits that they have not yet determined why a high GI diet does not appear to increase the risk of heart disease for men. The researchers suggest that men may process carbohydrates differently. There may also be other factors that could be more important in how men develop heart disease.

Women who develop heart disease usually suffer from forms that affect their blood vessels, while men suffer from forms that affect their heart muscle.

Heart disease is currently the leading killer of both men and women in America and Europe, where high carbohydrate diets are common.

Dr. Joseph Mercola believes that the glycemic index is not a very reliable tool for weight loss or improving your health because its standards are flawed. High fructose corn syrup, one of the major contributors to obesity, has a low GI score.

His NY times best seller, The No-Grain Diet gives you the tools to help normalize your blood sugar and insulin levels by drastically reducing your grain and sugar consumption.

Does Obesity Lead to Brain Damage?

Do you need another compelling reason to stay in shape? A new study warns that obesity can cause you to have less brain tissue, which increases your risk of neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s as you grow older.

It was discovered in 2007 that almost half of Americans of European descent carried a variant of the fat mass and obesity associated (FTO) gene, which is the reason why they tend to put on a few extra pounds of weight, increase the size of their waistline by about an inch, and also increase their risk of obesity compared to those who don’t carry the gene.

UCLA researchers recently found that the same FTO variant, which is also carried by around 25 percent of U.S. Hispanics and by 15 percent of African Americans and Asian Americans, is associated with the loss of brain tissue. This puts around one third of the U.S. population at higher risk of diseases like Alzheimer's.

Using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), the researchers made 3D maps of the brains of 206 healthy elderly people from 58 areas around the country. They found that those who had the gene had decreased brain tissue – 8 percent less in the frontal lobe tissue (the brain's command and control center) and 12 pe cent less in occipital lobe tissue (the part of the brain which controls eyesight and perception).

The findings show that not only that does the prevalent FTO gene make your waistline bulge, it also makes your brain look 16 years older.

Two-thirds of adult Americans are either obese or overweight. The USDA blames fats, but Dr. Joseph Mercola says fructose, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup, and carbohydrates and grains are causing the epidemic.

We all need to consume a certain amount of carbohydrates, but since your body’s ability to store carbs is limited, eating more carbohydrates than what you need turns them into fat and stores them as fat, increasing your risk of bloating, depression, fatigue, frequent sleepiness, obesity, and almost all chronic degenerative diseases, Dr. Mercola explains.

Dr. Mercola’s No-Grain Diet is designed to help you conquer carbohydrate addiction, achieve weight loss, and stay slim for life. Reducing sugars and grains will not only help you lose weight, it will also help drastically improve your overall health.

Seaweed: Weight Loss Wonder or Fat Burning Fad?

Scientists from Newcastle University in the UK have discovered that alginate, a dietary fiber found in sea kelp, one of the world’s largest commercially-used seaweed, could aid in weight loss by helping reduce the body’s fat absorption rate by as much as 75 percent.

The researchers used an artificial gut to test the effectiveness of more than 60 different natural fibers and found that alginate stops the body from absorbing fat better than most over-the-counter anti-obesity treatments.

The Newcastle team is now adding the seaweed fiber to bread to see if they can develop foods that can help you achieve weight loss lose while you eat them. Clinical trials would soon be conducted to find out if such foods would be effective weight loss tools when eaten as part of a normal diet.

Low levels of alginates are already being used to thicken and stabilize many foods. The researchers say that alginate bread is actually better than your ordinary white loaf when it comes to texture and richness. They believe that alginates not only have a great potential for weight loss but in boosting overall fiber content as well.

Dr. Joseph Mercola, proponent of the no-grain diet, explains that eating foods rich in fiber helps keep you feeling full longer and traps cholesterol and fats, thus helping you achieve weight loss and reduce your risk of obesity.

Aside from helping you achieve weight loss, adding fiber to your diet will help enhance your intestinal health by absorbing water and adding bulk to your stool and encouraging the growth of probiotics (which also helps boost your immune system); reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and diabetes; and, slow down your absorption of sugar to improve your blood glucose.

But Dr. Mercola disagrees with the idea of enriching bread with the seaweed fiber, even if it does help greatly reduce your body’s fat absorption rate. One of the lessons he learned in his 20-year experience treating patients is that grains, even whole-grain, organic wheat, are best avoided by the vast majority of the population.

More than 85 percent of Americans have problems controlling their insulin levels, especially those who are overweight and are suffering from diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension.

One of the most important changes you can make to your diet is to limit or if necessary, completely eliminate grains. The no-grain diet will certainly help you accomplish this, as well as boost your weight loss efforts.

A high-fiber diet can provide you with many health benefits, but you shouldn’t get the fiber from enriched bread or grains because your body is designed to consume fiber from fruits and vegetables. Increased vegetable intake is another feature of the no-grain diet.

Why Low Fat Diets Don’t Work

Carbohydrates, fats and proteins are the three main food groups and are all essential for your body to function optimally. Among the three, fats are the most vilified because many believe that eating fat will make them fat.

No-grain diet proponent Dr. Joseph Mercola tells you, “Eating fat will NOT make you fat.” Now, eating too much grains and sugar – that is what’s virtually guaranteed to make you gain weight.

Your cells need to burn fuel in the form of sugar or fat, using up all of the available sugar first before it can use fat. Imagine yourself eating a large plate of spaghetti with olive oil and meatballs. Your body burns off all of the pasta (which turns into sugar) and the fat (olive oil) goes into your fat storage.

The more carbs and sugar you eat, the more you train your cells to become more used to burning sugar for fuel, and after sometime, they will begin to crave it and prefer it to fat, Dr. Mercola explains.

The problem is, your body cannot handle all of the sugar you consume as you continue gobbling up bread, baked goods, crackers, cookies and countless other carbs. You’ll keep on gaining weight as your cells keep you alive by turning the excess sugar into fat. Eventually, even your ability to store fat will reach its limit.

This the reason why obese people almost always end up with diabetes – because there’s no place left to store the excess sugar as fat, it remains in the bloodstream, driving insulin levels up and causing leptin (the hormone responsible for regulating appetite) resistance.

Go No-Grain to Burn More Fat Instead of Sugar

You can help your body burn more fat by eliminating or at least severely restricting your intake of grains and sugars, and eating more healthy fats. This is where Mercola’s no-grain diet comes in.

A grain-free diet composed of natural foods will be naturally high in fat. If you’re eating healthy, you will always consume a lot of fat. No fat and low fat diets DON’T work because you’re forcing your body to act against you by restricting an essential macromolecule.

Consuming fats adds satiety to your meal – that feeling of having had enough to eat. If you eat fat-free and low fat foods, you tend to eat more carbohydrates – and pack on the pounds – because you just don't feel like you’ve had enough to eat, even when the volume of food you’ve consumed has been more than enough.

Fat soluble nutrients such as vitamins A, D, E, K, and B12 are best absorbed by your body in the form of saturated fats. When a food is stripped of fat, many of the fat-soluble compounds – including nutrients –are also removed.

When it comes to fats, it’s the type of fat you eat that matters, not the amount. The no-grain diet will introduce healthy fats like virgin coconut oil, animal-based fats (grass-fed meat, omega-3 fats, and raw dairy products), and nuts and seeds, and help you avoid dangerous and highly refined sources like vegetable oils and trans fats.

The fear of fats is a prescription for disaster. Fats are not the real enemy; grains and sugars are.

Can Eating Too Much Grains and Sugar Make You Blind?

It’s doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that too much carbohydrates and sugars are causing bulging waistlines.

But how is blindness part of the dangers of grains?

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss and affects one in four people as they grow old. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of vision loss in Western countries, and is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in Americans over the age of 60.

The macula, which is composed of light-sensitive cones and rods and essential for central vision, is found at the back of your eye in the middle portion of your retina.

Central vision is what you use to recognize people’s faces and do detailed work. Warning signs of macular degeneration include:

•    blurred vision or a need for more light when reading
•    straight lines slowly start appearing crooked
•    dark or empty spaces begin to block your central vision

The Age-Related Eye Disease Study, which analyzed the dietary intake and other data from more than 4,000 men and women aged 55 to 80, suggests that consuming high amounts of carbohydrates that cause a rapid spike and drop in blood sugar levels – like white bread, rice, pasta and potatoes – could be a risk factor for AMD.

Protect Your Vision with the No-Grain Diet

Whether you’re in your early twenties or approaching your sixties, drastically reducing or eliminating your intake of grains and sugars will help protect your vision and do wonders to your overall health, Dr. Joseph Mercola advises.

Lutein, an oil-soluble antioxidant which occurs naturally and abundantly in raw egg yolks as well as green leafy vegetables such as spinach and kale, has been found to help lower your risk of macular degeneration.

Dr. Mercola’s no-grain diet will help keep your eyesight good by dropping carbohydrates and sugars from your diet and increasing your intake of vegetables to provide you with eye-protective antioxidants such as lutein.

Consuming natural foods like blueberries and foods rich in omega-fats, as well as avoiding dangerous trans fats, are also part of the principles of the no-grain diet and are additional steps you can take to prevent macular degeneration.

Don’t take your eyesight for granted. Modify your diet to preserve your good vision.

The Dangers of Eating Processed Food

“Americans are a people so obsessed with nutrition yet whose dietary health is so poor,” says Michael Pollan, author of the bestselling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He believes that when it comes to thinking about food, America is obsessed with “nutritionism,” which views food as just a sum of its nutritional components. 

“Whatever tentative scientific information is developed, it gets very quickly distorted by the food marketers and manufacturers,” Pollan explains. This is why Americans prefer processed foods. “A banana or potato cannot significantly change its structure. But any processed food can be changed overnight to correspond with food fads.”

Processed food comprises 90 percent of the annual American food purchases, as marketing backed by billions of dollars is constantly working to convince consumers that fast foods and junk foods are the way to go. This reliance on processed food as the main source of nutrition has caused epidemic proportions of diabetes, diet-related cancers, heart disease and obesity.

Delicious Taste, Deadly Diet

Sure, processed foods taste good but are actually “dead foods” and do not provide natural nutrition. These foods are chemically altered to make them more appealing to your taste buds and use unhealthy artificial flavors and additives like high fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener and the single greatest source of calories in the United States.

High fructose corn syrup by itself, is enough to seriously compromise your health. But it’s just one of the dangerous ingredients in processed foods. 

On the other hand, refined sugar, another common sweetener in processed foods, has been found to be more addictive than cocaine!

If you regularly consume a lot of processed foods – particularly sugar-rich ones – you are subjecting the sweet receptors on your tongue to abnormally high levels of stimulation, resulting in an overload of reward signals in your brain, which can override your normal self-control mechanisms and cause addiction.

This is the reason why raw and whole foods seem to taste bland – because processed foods are destroying your taste buds. Your body has been conditioned to think that chemically altered foods should be the primary fuel, when the opposite is true.

Throw in aspartame and other artificial sweeteners, MSG, salt, trans fats and a host of other questionable ingredients and you’ve practically scheduled a visit to your doctor in the not so distant future.

What Should You Eat Then?

Because processed foods are addicting, many people would probably feel deprived if they can’t eat their favorite junk food.  But in reality, the sooner you ditch processed foods and start eating right, the sooner you’ll be in a better mood, boost your energy levels, manage your weight better, and experience improved health in general.

Dr. Joseph Mercola’s no-grain diet will help you conquer your addiction to processed foods by severely limiting your consumption of grains and sugars. This grain-free diet can be likened to a protein diet with a strong emphasis on vegetables, which will provide you with complex carbohydrates that will sustain you with energy throughout the day.

Eating raw and in-season organic, locally-grown vegetables will deliver optimal nutrition to your body because vital elements such as biophotons, enzymes, hormones, oxygen, phytonutrients, minerals and vitamins remain largely intact. Dr. Mercola recommends that you should eat at least one-third of your food consumption raw.

It’s a big misconception that eating healthy means eating bland and unappealing food. You’d be surprised to know that there are many delicious grain-free meals and grain-free recipes that you will surely enjoy.

You can eat great meals and snacks that don’t include processed foods. It would take some getting used to but once it becomes a healthy habit, you will surely notice a marked improvement in your health.

MTT and Kicking the Grain Habit Today

Do you know that you can “tap” your way to overcoming your grain addiction for good?

Top health expert Dr. Joseph Mercola delivers the good news: while a grain-free diet may be a Herculean task for those who have grown accustomed – or addicted, more likely – to their grains and sugars, the Meridian Tapping Technique or MTT (also known as the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT) could be used to recondition the mind and to not succumb to the cravings anymore.

Why the No-Grain Diet Spells Success
Why do some diets fail to deliver their lofty promises of weight loss?

Dr. Mercola recounts that low-carb diets have been around for the longest time, but have remained limited to controlling gram count. Weight loss is thus pegged on the idea of staying below a given number of carbohydrate food’s gram count each day.

Proposing a revolutionary weight loss program in his book, The No-Grain Diet: Conquer Carbohydrate Addiction and Stay Slim For Life, Dr. Mercola believes that to merely address the WHAT of eating and to ignore the WHY of being delirious for pecan pie or that tall stack of pancakes is not the best way to promote weight loss in the long term.

In short, weight loss goes beyond gram count. The No-Grain Diet satisfies this by penetrating cravings, emotional eating triggers, and beliefs, and being able to turn all these around into a positive lifestyle philosophy. 

Recognizing them as interconnected, functioning entities, Dr. Mercola finds the need to harness the body, mind and emotions as the key to successfully shedding the extra pounds. Your weight problems should be tackled on different levels:

•    BODY - Is your digestion and metabolism telling your body to store fat after an overwhelm of excessive grains and sugars?
•    MIND - Do your beliefs state that it is impossible for you to permanently lose weight?
•    EMOTIONS - What negative feelings or situations prompt your system to crave for sweets and to indulge recklessly?

The No-Grain Diet gets to the bottom of the problem, satisfying the questions of what you eat, why you eat, and how your cells are reprogrammed into wanting the proper food.

Fight the Grain Habit through MTT
The Meridian Tapping Technique is one of the basic tools of the No-Grain Diet, which will help you eliminate all the barriers to optimal health.

MTT is a form of psychological acupressure popularly used for concerns such as improving sleep and marital counseling. The practice is akin to traditional Chinese practice, which identifies acupuncture points to help energy flow smoothly through meridians.

MTT is easy to learn. Using all four fingers of both hands, tap five to seven times each of your body’s nine acupuncture points: the top of the head, eyebrows, and the area under both eyes, to name a few. While you tap, identify the cravings needed to be eliminated and form your healing statement, such as “Even though I crave for this slice of chocolate cake, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

MTT may be done whenever your cravings get in the way of your No-Grain Diet. Perform this healing tool as often as 10 to 20 times a day for up to five days, and you will be surprised at how it addresses the very core of your food addictions and gives you a new, grain-free lease of life.

Dr. Mercola says that being escapist is the last thing that can help you in your grain addiction. No matter what craving it is – perhaps an insatiable desire for pizza or doughnuts that has consumed you for years – it needs to be properly recognized to get going on the No-Grain Diet and the journey to weight loss.

Wheat Lectin: Another Reason Why You Should Skip Bread

Bread is a staple food around the world. In America, wheat is the grain of choice and is used for a variety of other foodstuffs besides bread. The wheat that we eat today, however, is not the same wheat consumed by early civilizations.

Pure wheat flour has only been milled into refined white flour during the last two centuries. Modern agriculture and hybridization has turned wheat into something unhealthy. Eating wheat can cause a number of health conditions including problems in the gut, the bloodstream, the brain, and sometimes, even in the joints, cardiovascular system and endocrine system.

Celiac disease or gluten intolerance, is one of the most common forms of food allergies associated with wheat. It affects roughly 2 million Americans or 1 in every 133 people.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. If your body cannot digest gluten, the undigested protein causes your immune system to attack the lining of your small intestine, which can trigger diarrhea or constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain.
When the small intestine sustains more damage, it will be difficult for it to absorb nutrients such as iron and calcium, and this can lead to more serious problems like anemia and osteoporosis.

Besides gluten intolerance, another problem associated with wheat consumption is wheat lectin.

Lectin is the wheat plant’s defense mechanism against fungi and insects. Unfortunately, lectin is also very resistant to breakdown by living systems, interferes with normal biological processes, and acts as an anti-nutrient.

Sprouting and fermenting usually helps neutralize some of the harmful effects of anti-nutrients. Lectins, however, are resistant to these processes. This is why lectins, particularly a type known as wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), are abundant in whole wheat breads and are present even in so-called “healthy” sprouted breads.

There are a number of ways that WGA can wreak havoc with your health as it can:

• promote the synthesis of inflammatory chemical messengers
• bind to and activate white blood cells.
• pass through the blood-brain barrier and may attach to the protective coating on your nerves known as the myelin sheath
• inhibit nerve growth factor, which is important for the growth, maintenance, and survival of certain target neurons.
• induce programmed cell death
• interfere with gene expression
• disrupt endocrine function
• adversely affect gastrointestinal function
• share traits with certain viruses

Dr. Joseph Mercola believes that about 75 to 80 percent of ALL people will benefit from avoiding wheat and all types of grains, regardless if one is suffering from Celiac disease or not. This is where the no-grain diet comes in. Dr. Mercola’s no-grain diet is more than just a wheat lectin and gluten-free diet; this revolutionary eating plan is designed to help you achieve healthy weight loss and stay slim for life by showing you how to beat grain addiction.

If you eat a lot of toast and sandwiches, it may be hard to imagine not eating bread at first but if you’ll give it a shot, you’ll find that a grain-free diet will provide you with a lot of health benefits in the long run.

7 Tips on How You Can Succeed with Your Diet

Are you one of millions of people who’ve set weight loss as part of your New Year’s resolutions? Many are determined to lose weight at the start of the year but the reality is only a few are successful.

But why do most dieters fail? Because they think of diet as a quick fix and something temporary. Many go for the latest fad diets endorsed by celebrities. Many of these diets are unhealthy and once you quit them, your weight will come back and may even make you heavier than when you started.

Diets fail not because you lack the willpower; it’s because you return to your old habits and do what your body tells you to do, Dr. Joseph Mercola explains. Dr. Mercola is the proponent of the no-grain diet, a revolutionary eating strategy designed to help you effortlessly lose weight. Most diets will recommend cutting down on grains and sugars but on the no-grain diet, you will TOTALLY avoid eating grains and sugars for a certain time to give your body time to change the messages it’s sending you.

Mercola’s no-grain diet aims to totally reprogram your system for permanent weight loss. It isn’t easy to give up grains at first but with enough discipline, you’ll find that going no-grain is very achievable. Here are some tips that will help you stick to the no-grain diet:

1.    Do it for yourself – Your main motivation for going on the no-grain diet should be you, yourself and you. Use the diet as your first step to take control of your health this year.
2.    Know the benefits – Familiarize yourself with the benefits of the no-grain diet. Aside from weight loss, the no-grain diet will help you beat your addiction to unhealthy food so you can stay slim for life, thus improving your physical health and how you view yourself.
3.    Commit to the diet – The first phase of the no-grain diet only requires three days. If you can make it through the initial phase, the eating plan becomes easier to sustain.
4.    Constantly remind yourself – Place notes around to remind you of your commitment to the diet.
5.    Stay consistent – The more consistent you are, the easier it will be to stick to the no-grain diet. Set a regular time for your meals and snacks to help you build a healthy habit.
6.    Remove temptation – Restructure your environment to take away the things or obstacles that might tempt you to cheat on your diet.
7.    Know the pain – If you’ve tried diet after diet with little or no success, let the pain of failure motivate you to stick to your commitment. You should also be aware of the consequences of going back to your old eating habits.