Meredith added her story of relief from years of severe acne by eliminating all wheat.
I noticed a huge difference in my skin after going wheat-free.
When I was a teen, I had hardly any acne. But after having my daughters, my face broke out and stayed that way. I tried covering it up with makeup, but it was just too bad. I tried almost every over-the-counter cleanser, even the high cost ones out there, my doctor prescribed antibiotics, but nothing worked.
I have been so embarrassed to go out in public, ashamed that people thought I wasn’t cleaning myself properly. I even had people state that straight out, or some, even medical professionals, ask if I had chicken pox or shingles!!!!! I felt bad for my now teen girls having to be seen with a mom who looked like this, but there was nothing I could do.
About 4 months ago I finally listened to my dad and read the “Wheat Belly” book and changed my eating habits.
One of the first things I noticed was my face changing, this was after only a week of no wheat! I was so excited but also couldn’t believe it. There were many other changes, weight loss being one of them (30 pounds so far) but I wanted to know for sure that it was the wheat removal responsible for it, so we ordered pizza one night. Within half an hour, I was running to the washroom with an upset stomach and the very next day I had new acne pop up. Yes, many people could say this is a coincidence, so I did this test a couple more times and the same thing happened every time!
With going off the wheat, my face has almost completely cleared (yes I have fallen and had a bit of wheat here and there so I know I have to pay the price for the indulgence). I have people who have known me for years comment on just how different I look now. I don’t have to wear makeup any more to cover up and my kids have even found their teen acne clearing!
It is a whole new life.
People in primitive cultures that consume no wheat (or other grains) have no acne, teenagers included. When they consume wheat, they get acne galore. When us modern people living modern lives, including consumption of commercial processed foods like wheat–because the Dietary Guidelines for Americans told us so!–we also develop acne. And some, such as genetically-susceptible Wanda, can experience severe problems.
It’s the wheat, the food that was never suited for human consumption in the first place, made much worse by the introduction of semi-dwarf wheat crafted for increased yield–increased yield-per-acre and increased human illness.
Wow! I’ve never thought wheat maybe responsible for acne! Does it include whole wheat also? Today it’s really hard to avoid wheat products. Wheat seems added to everything! It seems all our problems come from within. How we eat and drink, so we look like. I read a lot that for solving our skin problems you need to recheck your eating habits. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Yes: ALL wheat, including whole, half, white, enriched, sprouted.
Glad dad you finally have conquered acne in your life. Wheat is really the main culprit for my acne too, however, I was too late to discover it. Glad that I’ve got aloe vera gel to heal the redness and the scarring it left me.
Try dropping the refine sugar, some are very sensitive to it. After eliminating refine sugar my wife, daughter and my acne cleared up in a matter of months. If I slip and eat something with refine sugar I would get two or three zits. I wish I had this knowledge when I was a teenager gorging on twinkles, Suzy Q’s, Candy bars and other sweets.
I also feel that one of the biggest problems to overcome acne is going out, some people are not aware of what it is or anything about it.
People wont come near you even though its not contagious.
Although this method may well be good for you, it has no impact or only a slight impact on others, but looking at your diet is the first place I would look at as with most cases the food you eat is the root of your problem.
Other than to spam a link to your acne treatment product, it’s not clear what point you were trying to make.
Of course, once people stop eating gluten-bearing grains, and switch to low-carb diets, there will be zero market for acne treatment products. And eliminating wheat gets results faster, at virtually no cost.
ETA: I have been doing wheat free for about 2 months…
Hello, Im 32 year old female and have had mild acne for 10 years. Its been a week since ive gone wheat free and im breaking out more than before! I have moderate Acne now! Im eating chicken,nuts, string cheese,eggs,greek yogurt,veggies,apples,decaf coffee with sugarfree coffemate hazelnut…..i dont know whats causing my skin to break out o badly!!! Help! Im ready to go back to eating wheat b/c my skin wasnt this bad(mild acne before)
I’m having this same problem and eating similarly (minus the decaf coffee/coffee mate- I drink full test with half and half). Lost 15 pounds but have stalled for a couple weeks at that point and the acne has definitely kicked up a notch which makes me sad cause others are saying their skin cleared.
> Its been a week …
Just based on the basenote, where relief came after a week, perhaps you need to give it more time.
> … since ive gone wheat free …
But perhaps not sufficiently low carb. Do you know your net carb intake per day? The yogurt and apples can be pretty high.
> … decaf coffee with sugarfree coffemate hazelnut …
On the non-dairy creamer, see some remarks at:
https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/2011/10/wheat-belly-quick-and-dirty/comment-page-9/#comment-73375
I would love to recommend your book to some French, German and other non-English speaking folks. Any chance of some translated versions in the future?
Wheat belly book in french… the book I bought at Costco in Quebec Canada… and you may see it on Amazon…
http://www.amazon.ca/Pourquoi-bl%C3%A9-nuit-votre-sant%C3%A9/dp/2761933222/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1358863269&sr=8-3
Since I read it, I changed all food and meal for all my family…
thank you Mr Davis!
(At this moment, Wheat belly cookbook is not available in french)
Dr Davis, they’re worrying about diabetes in France too!!
http://sante.journaldesfemmes.com/nutrition-digestion/diabete-de-type-2-prevention-traitements-signes-des-complications/
Et oui, c’est triste …
Yeah, I believe even my own brother, who still lives in France, is pre-diabetic, lots of visceral fat, big weight issue, he is consuming a lot of wheat every day. He is so stressed by his work that he is not even aware of his eating habits. There is always some piece of bread or high carb food at hand that he ingests without even being aware of it while he is writing an article for his demanding work, or whatever. And dieting is simply not something he has on his mind. His wife’s eating habits are also questionable and they often eat tons of bread and potatoes at almost every main meal. Their kids are still very slender but for how long ? …
I still have to tip him on the WB and low carb lifetyle before it’s too late …
J.
Yes, they are. The “French Paradox” is becoming less paradoxical!
Hi Doc,
I thought you might enjoy this:
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/19/corn-products-fortune-1938/
By day Corn distributed up and down and across the U.S. millions of “Candy Is Delicious Food-Eat Some Every Day” stickers. Then it offered to subsidize for the Confectioners’ Association a pretentious something called “The Educational Bureau.” This was, of course, nothing more than a hardboiled, high-powered publicity department, and one of the first things it did after Corn Products set it up was to file a $500,000 suit against Twentieth-Century Fox because of a slurring remark about candy bars made by a character in the Shirley Temple picture Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. This backhanded attack on America’s Sweetheart at once shot onto the front pages. Shirley after a time let it be known that she just loved candy bars, and Shirley’s mother said she too liked them. This disarmed the candy men and they agreed to drop the suit, issuing to the motion-picture industry a stern warning never to let this happen again.
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/87783/Rebecca-of-Sunnybrook-Farm/notes.html
According to news items, the National Confectioners’ Association filed a $500,000 libel suit against Twentieth Century-Fox claiming that a scene in the film did members of the association irreparable damage. In the scene in question, after Rebecca has arrived at Sunnybrook Farm, Miranda asks if she has had anything to eat. Rebecca says that her uncle bought her a candy bar, whereupon Miranda says, “Candy bar! Gwen, take the child into the kitchen and get her something decent to eat.” According to a news item, the association claimed that the scene “libels a bar of candy and holds up the candy profession to ridicule and shame.” According to the legal records, the suit was soon dropped.
It’s sobering to see just what evil Big Food has been capable of over the years, Dan.
Thanks for an interesting historical insight!
The End of Pasta
Dec 10, 2012 12:00 AM EST
Temperatures are rising. Rainfalls are shifting. Droughts are intensifying. What will we eat when wheat won’t grow.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/09/bakken-oil-boom-and-climate-change-threaten-the-future-of-pasta.html
Makes me wonder what a mass case of wheat withdrawal would look like, thousands or millions of people deprived of all wheat, all fatigued, with headaches, nausea, and incapacitated by depression, craving just one more bagel?
My face acne improved probably from low grain diet, but mine scalp acne is present still
Hi W, check the ingediants of your shampoo, could be wheat or other grain causing head sores. I had them till I switched to grain free/gluton free solution.
Hope that helps.
I have close to zero pimples on my back by cutting out wheat. Great thing, some of them used to grow very big and painful.
Is this perhaps related to modern wheat?
AS HEALTH scares go, the idea that sperm counts are plummeting across the industrialised world, probably as a result of chemical pollution that has an adverse hormonal effect, takes some beating. In 1992 a meta-analysis of 61 papers, published in the British Medical Journal, suggested they had fallen by half in the preceding half-century, from 113m per millilitre of semen to 66m. Since then, the decline has apparently continued. The most recent paper, just published in Human Reproduction, by Joëlle le Moal, Matthieu Rolland and their colleagues at France’s Institute for Public Health Surveillance, is also one of the most comprehensive yet.
Its conclusions are stark. The sperm count of the average Frenchman, say the researchers, fell by 32.2% between 1989 and 2005. At the same time, the proportion of properly formed sperm also fell, from 60.9% to 52.8%.
The above post of mine is taken from The Economist magazine. here is the link to complete article
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21567879-yet-another-study-suggests-sperm-numbers-are-falling-rich-countries-countdown
Dan,
Regarding the breakfast cereals.
At your age, and beyond, I was working a job that started early and got me home by mid afternoon. My wife was working a job that got her home by 5-6:30 depending on the day. I would arrive home HUNGRY after a long day, and knowing that it would be a while before we would have dinner, I would eat a bowl of cereal. You know, healthy, heart smart cereal, with 2 percent milk on it. Maybe one more bowl, because it’s gonna be a while before we eat. I think that’s when my weight (I was never a small person) really started to come on. Thinking back on the indigestion from eating those 1 or 2 bowls, plus I was still hungry, probably should have told me something.
Basically the stuff was like eating a cr@ppy dessert before dinner. So many calories wasted!
You should ve had dinner waiting for her…since you arrived home in the afternoon
Yeah, I second that!!!!!
I am a 66 year old, 6’ 2” guy, and thought I was in reasonable shape “for someone my age”. But, I bought and read “Wheat Belly” a few months, and was stunned. I have been eating, what I call the “Wheat Belly Way” since.
I had my first official physical yesterday (6 Dec 2012) since I started eating Wheat Belly, and I thought you might like to hear the results. My last official Doctor workup was in late February (2012)
I have been taking 6 different prescription meds daily for years, but stopped taking all of them a few weeks ago, in order to rebaseline myself for this physical, not knowing what to expect for my measurements.
Results:
Weight – down 38 lbs., so far (265 to 227 – shooting for 205)
Waist down at least 4 inches, so far
BMI (Body Mass Index) – down 20% (44% to 24% – and dropping)
Heart Rate – down 10 bpm (81 to 71 – and dropping)
Blood pressure, good normal 120/80, with NO meds, while I was still marginally high (130’s/90ish) WITH BP meds in Feb
Cholesterol – good (no meds)
Blood Sugar – good (no meds)
EVERYTHING normal and good.
Doctor has directed me to now STOP taking ALL prescription medications.
ALL measureable physical parameters are in good/normal ranges, ALL
I have gone from taking 6 prescriptions to ZERO…
And, I am still going. This truly is a lifestyle change, NOT a diet per se.
Not bad for an “Old Fart”.
My Doctor and staff were stunned.
I have had several friends also buy the book, are now eating the “Wheat Belly Way”. One of them, a female in her 50’s, who has suffered severely with Fibromyalgia for years, says she has not had ANY Fibro symptoms, nada, nil, zilch, since three weeks into eating “Wheat Belly”.
Thank you so much….
Rob Glasier
Madison, Alabama
wow, congratulations on that.
“I have gone from taking 6 prescriptions to ZERO…”
I am aiming at cutting out gluten, it has been rough but I really have been convinced by Wheat Belly. I would love for my husband to also cut out gluten as he has a whole host of little annoying illnesses and general not feeling well that I think would be cleaned up by going gluten free. If I can convince him of doing this can anyone tell me about how long he would start seeing some changes? If I read the book he could start seeing some improvements within a few days. Has that been the experience of others?
Yes, but remember, Jennifer: By cutting out wheat, you are not just cutting out gluten. You are cutting out gliadin, glutenins, amylopectin A, wheat germ agglutinin, alpha amylase inhibitors, and other factors, all found in this conglomeration called modern semi-dwarf wheat.
How much gliadin and the other evils of wheat are in 100% rye bread?
what are glutenins and what they do ?
Sorry I am not 100% with the lingo yet! Yes I mean wheat not just gluten. I’ve been snacking on nuts today to stay out of the cookies and crackers. Success!!
I have also suffered in the past, especially during the dryer months, from dry shins and dry skin in general.
I have been grain free for a couple of weeks.
My scalp is still dry, not as it was before, but the rest of my skin is not dry. Maybe it’s the shampoo that I’m using?
And another thing, my hand used hurt to quite a bit when I wrote, at 36 years old, it’s been this way for at least five years. One of jobs requires occasional heavy use of small tools that would cause the pain as well, but since going grain free, this has all stopped. I hope I am not imagining it.
Sounds very real to me, Dan, as these are among the most common observations in us wheat-free folk!
Are you obtaining sufficient fats? We don’t restrict fats in this lifestyle, as we reject the entire notion of “cut your fats, eat more healthy whole grains.”
Hello Doc, thanks for the reply!
I am 6’1″ and have a big appetite, but am one of the lucky lean people that have a hard time putting on weight, even from carbs. However, over these last couple of years (35-36 years old), I had started to build a gut.
I hope I am obtaining sufficient fats, here is the breakdown of the fats:
eggs scrambled in butter 1x a day, fatty chicken thighs and some kind of beef cooked in a wok with olive oil 1x each per day, one avocado and one-two ounces of macadamia nuts, also daily. I stopped drinking milk and cut out all grains, never was a big rice or potato eater, but was a HUGE bread and pasta guy for 30 years.
and breakfast cereal. My god, I lived on that stuff.
One mistake – I am also eating a couple of ounces of cheese (fat!) every day, so not totally dairy free, but I stopped buying jugs of milk to drink or pour with grain cereals.
Cooking with oils supposedly tends to make them toxic, even if they were healthy before.
Fat from 1. dairy (cheese should be better than milk — less lactose)/eggs/meat, 2. raw walnuts (omega-3), and 3. extra virgin olive oil (drink a little of it) should provide a balance. Don’t know about the ratio or amounts, though. Also, try not to eat the same things day after day.
Vitamin C might help with your skin, as it supposedly helps keep various tissues (skin, blood vessels, gums, maybe tendons and ligaments) healthy. It should also help reduce problems with cholesterol deposits. Try 6-10 grams a day. If it upsets you stomach, you are taking too much, unless you want a laxative. . . . Read Udo Erasmus and Philpott & Kalita for more information.
Add me to those-whose-skin- is-still-a-mess list, for me it’s rosacea related acne, it’s nasty. I’ve only just realized dairy is a trigger. I’m sad to have to give up coffee and tea, which is really the only other trigger foods I ingest. I have also noticed some troubles with my digestive system again, the cramping and bloating wheat used to cause. We have a raw milk supplier locally, so I am going to experiment this winter to see if perhaps I can tolerate that. If not, then it’s the dairy free way for me.
I have still acne at the age of 51 and it went worse a year ago, especially on my nose. Since february 2012 I am glutenfree there is a huge improvement, overall I am much more content with my looks.
Great, Loekie!
Just as a story kind of related to this. My workmate has been suffering from rashes on her body for several months. I Just as a story kind of related to this. My workmate has been suffering from rashes on her body for several months. I suggested again looking into eliminating wheat. Blood tests at dermatoligist were inconclusive. I decided not to bug her anymore. Then she found out the reason for the rash. Bedbugs!! ! again looking into eliminating wheat. Blood tests at dermatoligist were inconclusive. I decided not to bug her anymore. Then she found out the reason for the rash. Bedbugs!! !
Sorry about double entry. This tablet acts weird at times or operator error. Ha
Goes to show you that wheat elimination can’t cure EVERYTHING, including BEDBUGS!
Yep! I’m 35 and have always fought acne. Cutting out wheat has made a huge difference and any little slip-up immediately brings on a pimple or two. I had a tiny bit of my mom’s good stuffing on Thanksgiving and my face is FINALLY recovering from it!
OT: A psychiatrists blog post about gliadin and schizophrenia: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201212/more-links-between-wheat-and-schizophrenia
“… however, in this study, it was the 10% of folks who had the highest IgG signal to gliadin whose offspring had increased risk of schizophrenia.”
Another nail in the coffin:
https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/2011/12/nails-in-the-coffin/
It’s little wonder that Big Grain(TM) is in a panic to re-engineer an ingredient-free wheat.
I wish this was the case with my acne! I’ve been zero carb for 4 years and it hasn’t put a dent in my acne. Of course, the other benefits of kicking wheat and carbs speak for themselves. Just no help with my acne.
James, some folks find removing dairy helps with acne.
Nancy, I don’t eat dairy at all. My zero carb diet is composed entirely of beef, beef fat and water. No dairy to speak of.