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The Health and Wellness show on the SOTT Radio Network covers topics of health, diet, science, homeopathy, wellness culture, and more. Tune in weekly!

Raw meat diet for cats and dogs: Links and videos

Raw Meat Diet for Dogs and Cats by Dr. Karen Becker

Cats:
http://www.catinfo.org/

Dogs:
How to: Raw Feeding Dogs Part 1 (Natural Meat Diet) Whole Prey Model BARF
A Lesson In Raw Feeding
Raw Feeding Basics

Running Time: 01:20:00

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Jonathan: Welcome to the Health and Wellness show on SOTT radio network where we expose the lies of our modern world. My name is Jonathan and I'll be your host today. Joining me in our virtual studio from all over the world we have our co-host Doug, Erica, Gaby, and Tiffany. Welcome guys.

Jonathan: Today our topic is wheat, the Staff of Life. We're gonna talk about how good it is; how bad it is. Some of the myths and truth surrounding the topic of wheat. We know that wheat is a giant industry. We know that people are eating wheat products all day, every day. A lot of people think that wheat is good; it's necessary, and there's this phrase that's been floating around for some time called "The staff of life" and we were talking about this and just kind of a metaphor came to light that it actually is the staff of life, because if you look into how a staff with use by a shepherd. When a shepherd controls his sheep and new 'hew' or baby sheep is born this shepherd uses the staff to interact with that baby sheep so that he won't get his human smell on the baby sheep and taint it with the smell of the human. So that it can still bond with its mother. If you look at that from a certain perspective that the staff is what masks the influence of the controller; of the shepherd, and so if wheat is actually the staff of life, the wheat is used, to a certain extent, in our society to control the masses. To control the way people think to keep docile. Then it really is this staff that those quote unquote above use to keep us in our place. I know that sounds kind of like an extreme idea, but we're gonna go into why that is and how it works.

So we wanted to start a little bit with Tiffany has got some statistics about wheat that she has at the ready. She has some information about what are called, "The gods of agriculture". Tiffany do you wanna go into that?

Tiffany: Sure I have a few stats. Like you said wheat is really ubiquitous. People all over the world eat it every day, several times a day. There's about 700,000,000 tons of wheat produced in the world every year, second only to maize or corn. It's as staple food and it's grown on more land area on the earth than any other crop. So wheat was first cultivated about 12,000 years ago. It was thought to have originated in Southwest Asia or the Levant region.

It was introduced into the Americas in the late 15th century by everybody's favorite explorer Christopher Columbus. Throughout history different civilizations have their agricultural Gods. Many different cultures have these gods that allegedly taught them agriculture. William Bramly in his book "Gods Of Eden", he mentions briefly about the God Iea, teaching agriculture. The ancient Egyptians they had the god Osiris. He taught people how to sow seeds and harvest what the soil could produce. There's Kronus from the ancient Greeks. He taught the people the ways of agriculture. Then the Nordics had the God Alder. he was also an agricultural god. So the question is, who were these gods? And why did they teach us how to do agriculture? Because if you look at the history of humanity and when agriculture came along there really wasn't much of a benefit. After agriculture our health declined, we got shorter; our bones became weaker, there was less free time because most of the time was spent cultivating these crops. There was warfare and hierarchical structures

So what really was the benefit of agriculture to human beings? Why was it introduced to us at this time? I don't know the answers to those questions. This is something I wanted to figure out because it's very strange. One of the interesting articles called "The Origins Of Wheat: A Civilization Arises To Deliver A Fix". The authors of this article speculated that it was the opioid properties in wheat. So opiates are drugs like heroin or morphine. Wheat has these properties and it affects the reward centers of the brain; it produces craving and withdrawal. Interestingly enough, pre-agricultural foods don't have these properties. They don't cause cravings; they don't cause you to withdraw; so these Opioid properties, and cereals and also dairy products. They affect our feelings of reward and motivation. So when we go out and seek these foods they cause us to be less anxious and they increase our sense of well-being and they are also addictive. So those are just some interesting things about wheat and how it sprung upon us so suddenly 12,000 years ago or so.

Gaby: That is interesting you know most people do not think of the neurological effects when we speak of wheat. Not necessarily, they will think about digestive issues; digestive problems. For example, thinking as, you said they can have neurological effects. These neurological effects can be reversed by medication used in emergency room as an antidote for opioid toxicity. These drugs are now sold. They are used to counter the effects of narcotic drugs. That's because wheat has a narcotic effect.

Jonathan: It's fascinating to consider the history of this and how we can see it throughout past cultures. Knowing that you don't want to take all your information from one source. If you're really trying to learn the truth about a subject you have to look at all the different sources, weed out the truth from the lies. Take the archetypes, take the myths, the things that might not be so literal and other things that might be literal, so you can see where the connections are together so you can see how it all fits together.

We have some really interesting information. If you're looking at our blog talk radio page right now you can see a picture of the book, "Wheat Belly", which has a lot of really crazy information. Erica is going to go over some of that next, and talk about how wheat has changed. We're talking about wheat historically, but you know during the "biblical times" wheat was completely different. The grains themselves were completely different. They weren't hybridized, they weren't genetically altered and they have been drastically changed over the years to what we have right now. Erica do you want to go over some of that information?

Erica: Yeah sure, so I really recommend Dr. Davis's "Wheat Belly" book because he gives a really good introduction to this whole idea and then goes into the health issues. As Gaby explained the toxicity in the brain and body. It was published in 2011. It became one of the New York Times top-selling books within nine days of publication. It was very interesting to read the negative responses he got from the grain cartel, if you will. At one point on Amazon they called him the David Koresh of medicine. If you go through and read; and he talks about this in an interview with Fathead (it's just called "Interview with Wheat Belly" author) about how every single negative review on Amazon didn't really address what he was saying. They slandered him and talked about how he has no experience and no expertise.

He's been a cardiologist for the past 25 years so I'd say he does have some expertise. Anyway, I wanted to cover the agriculture aspect. Basically the argument is "well we've been eating wheat for thousands of years". It's good for us, the staff of life, the food of the gods and such. But what people don't realize and what Dr. Davis goes into in his book about is how it's changed. How it's not genetically modified yet but it's gone through massive breeding changes. There's this doctor called Norman Borlog. He's called the father of the Green Revolution. A bit of history about him because he plays a significant role in the breeding of modern wheat. Dr. Borlog worked for DuPont in the 1940s and in 1941 when the bombing of Pearl Harbor happened. His DuPont lab was set up to devise adhesives or glue and basically they wanted a glue that they could develop that could withstand the warm seawater of the Pacific Ocean so that it wouldn't dissolve. He devised this glue to make this adhesive so that his military containers could be sent to soldiers and they wouldn't fall apart in the ocean. Thought that was kind of interesting. We'll get more into the glue aspect of wheat, but in 1944 he moved to Mexico and started devising high yield varieties of wheat, so smaller plants but more yield.

At the time his group made 6000 individual crossings of wheat and it resulted in the doubling of wheat production, but also at a drastic increase in the use of agrochemicals and water. It doubled production of wheat but it also requires twice as much water to grow these dwarf wheat plants. So, they worked on that about 10 years and then they imported it to India. In 1970 Norman Borlog received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the world's food supply, and thus came about the green revolution.

When he gave his acceptance speech he said "It's wonderful to be selected as an individual that symbolizes the vital role of agriculture and food production in a world that is hungry for both bread and peace". That's interesting how bread came before peace, but Dr. Borlog, is synonymous with the green revolution. There's a lot of criticism against him because although he's producing, or his genetics is producing more food, it's also rapidly increasing the use of chemical agriculture products, pesticides and herbicides. Other concerns are their crossing genetic barriers and the inability for crops to get the nutrients that they need because of this intensive chemical inputt into the soil. Also, decreased biodiversity, so mono-cropping. We talked about, last week, with the vegetarian myth, clearing huge swaths of land to produce all this wheat. It hasn't really addressed to the hunger issue as we know. So, if any in listeners are interested you can read more about Norman Bolog in a book titled: (it's available for free online) "The Violence Of The Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics". It was published by the Third World network in 1991 and it's written by Dr. Vandana Shiva and you can find it at travel.org. It's a scathing commentary on what this green revolution has done in India and the amount of problems that have come up since then.

Just two more things on Norman Borlog that I found really interesting, aside from receiving Nobel peace prize. In 1986 he developed the World Food Prize and in 2013 the world food prize laureate named Monsanto Executive Vice President and chief technology officer, Dr. Robert Fraley, as their receiver of the award for the year.

Jonathan: Well it's just another example of centralizing production as opposed to diversifying. People might say 'well how exactly is this bad"? I think even though we are doing some research on the topic and we have made ourselves familiar, a lot of people may not be familiar with why you might consider Monsanto bad or their practices to be bad. You can see even if you just look at what Borlog did, again the argument might be made by someone "that he was just trying to feed people", but the ultimate result of this are the benefits in business, they benefit giant industries, they don't benefit the individual. Its centralizing of all this stuff and changing the landscape in such a way that people are losing the knowledge of how to take care of yourself; to get yourself proper nutrition; to eat the proper kind of food. It's almost lost.

I mean it's coming back in small ways, but for the majority of the population it's just not even something that they touch on. So I think that it's really important for us to talk about this and why agriculture wheat would be a bad thing, as opposed to a good thing. Doug and Gaby both had some information here on the toxins that are in wheat and some things that have resulted from this hybridization. Doug you want to go into that for a minute?

Doug: Yeah, Sure. I find it really ironic that the agricultural boom that started around the 70s or so is dubbed as the green revolution, when really it's anything but green. Like Erica was saying it requires more resources; more use of pesticides; and does more damage on the planet, it's just really ironic. Anyway, going into some of the toxic properties of wheat, just so people can actually see what is so bad about it that this the staff of life has come around to basically be the feeder of the entire planet when it is actually quite toxic. So there's a couple different components in there the protein component gliadin, which is component of gluten. There is a glycoprotein known as lectin, wheat germ agglutinin, a component of gluten. There is protein known as wheat germ gluten. There's also gliadorphin, as well as the excitotoxins aspartame, glutamic acid, that's all found in wheat. That's not even getting into things like anti-nutrients, like phytates; enzyme inhibitors and things like that you'll find in all grains; legumes, even some nuts too. So first off; gliadin causes an immune response in all individuals, it's not just celiacs. Celiacs tend to have both an innate and adaptive immune response, and non-celiacs tend to only have an innate response. So that's why you see such a strong reaction from celiacs, whereas you don't see much of it in non-celiacs, but there is an immune response in everyone. It up-regulates a substance called Zonulin. Zonulin is a substance that modulates intestinal permeability. So it regulates how big particles can get into the bodily system in whole form.

So usually those junctures that allow the different particles in are pretty small and only allow digested particles in, but Zonulin actually regulates it so it can let bigger particles in. Because it's not just the body regulating these, wheat is regulating it, it lets in a whole host of foreign particles into the body that shouldn't be there. That includes undigested food particles, that can cause an immune reaction, to viruses and bacteria.

The big one is WGA, the lectin, wheat germ agglutinin. It actually causes non-immune mediated damage to the intestines. It will subsequently get into the bloodstream and cause all sorts of damage to the organ systems. It binds to a monosaccharide, called N-acetylglucosamine, which is like a sugar molecule that coats our whole digestive tract and all the mucus membranes. It will bind to that. It subsequently causes increased shedding of the intestinal brush border membrane. So, it increases how quickly you're turning over all the cells of your digestive tract.

It increases cell loss and shortens the villi by binding to the surface. It can also mimic the effects of epidermal growth factor. Which is at the cellular level what causes you to reproduce your cellular lining. There's some speculation that a lot of the damage that you see in celiacs disease, the crypt-hyperplasia, as it's called, may be due to WGA and not actually the gluten itself. It's implicated in obesity and leptin resistance by blocking a receptor in the hypothalamus that blocks your sensor for appetite satiation, so what actually tells your body that it's not longer hungry. Which can lead to overeating all sorts of problems with that. It also mimics the action of insulin. This can lead to your body thinking that it has more insulin than it actually does. Which can cause weight gain, insulin resistance and all sorts of things like that. It also increases proinflammatory substances in the body. The chemical messengers, a couple of forms of interleukin, slowly causes an immune response in the intestinal and the immune cells. It can atrophy the sinus, that was shown in rat studies. It also cross reacts with other proteins showing that it may contribute to autoimmunity. It's also neuro-toxic and passes through the blood brain barrier and could be causing brain damage as well. So it could be resulting in all kinds of different cognitive problems. It's excitotoxic to cells and induces apoptosis, which is programed cell death.

They're also doing cancer research on this and trying to inject WGA into tumor cells to try and force them to kill themselves, but it does this to all your cells. It interferes with gene expression and may prevent DNA replication. It disrupts endocrine function, mimics insulin. It has an affinity for thyroid tissue and interferes with the pancreas. It also attaches to sperm and ovary cells and may play a role in infertility. It may be cardio toxic by inducing platelet aggregation.

Tiffany: So that's the clog that causes heart attacks and strokes.

Doug: Absolutely. Wheat also contains high levels of glutamic and aspartic acid which are amino acids. Your body actually needs these, but in high doses they have an excitotoxic effect. Which is an over-activation of the nerve cell receptors. So that's making the nerves fire much more than they are supposed to. Sometimes to the point of them even burning out because they are over firing so much, but we get a charge out of this that causes kind of a buzz so a lot of the time that will increase the addictive potential. This is one of the problems with things like MSG, which is monosodium glutamate, which has glutamic acid in there, which is also an excitotoxin. Aspartic acid is one of the main components in aspartame, the artificial sweetener. So you can see all of the detrimental effects of having too much of this stuff in your system. These amino acids may contribute to neurodegenerative like MS(multiple sclerosis), Alzheimer's, Huntington's and maybe even epilepsy; attention deficit disorder and migraines. That's it in a nutshell.

Tiffany: Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, I think I remember reading a case study. Of course they haven't done any double blind controlled studies with actual schizophrenics where they test them on a truly gluten free diet, but there was a case study where the women had all the symptoms of schizophrenia, like hallucinations, odd behavior and the dissociation from reality, and they tried her on a completely wheat free diet and her symptoms went away completely. They didn't just improve, she didn't need any medications or anything. Her symptoms were gone just from a wheat free diet.

Doug: Wow, amazing.

Gaby: Now more and more mainstream medicine, the first thing you have to do when there is a person with schizophrenia or autism disease is to remove gluten. Remove it. Just because of the toxic effects of the proteins, of everything that we covered so far, it's basically extremely toxic to the neurological system. It can be reversed in some cases when you remove gluten early enough before damage is done.

Jonathan: In my own experience I used to, I certainly wouldn't have classified as a schizophrenic, even in the DSM. If you wanted to go by that, but I did have anxiety every day all day just a few short years ago. I just started simply by getting off of bread and that was it. And even for a time there I was still drinking beer, which has gluten in it. Then I learned that that also contains gluten, yeast, and a number of other things. So it's this process that you go through where you weed out all these things that are bad for you. I can say in the very beginning when I just cut out things that had gluten in it such as bread, I instantly felt better. It took some time to affect some other healing by removing some other aspects of my diet. If anyone still eating bread who was still listening to us right now I would just say try it out. You don't even have to go nuts or go whole hog with it. Just cut out bread for a week and see how you feel. You'll have withdrawals for a few days but I would be willing to bet that you'll feel markedly different after a little while.

Tiffany: Yeah, Jonathan like you I was eating wheat. I had a lot of anxiety, like excessive worry all the time over the smallest things. Just depression, pretty profound depression most of the time point of feeling suicidal. I'd say that the benefits to mood are probably the greatest thing I noticed since going gluten-free. I mean, put aside weight loss and skin improvement in all that like that I think that the mood aspect was worth the price of admission.

Jonathan and Doug: Right.

Erica: It's interesting in Dr. Davies book how he says that mutant wheat doesn't kill you suddenly it's more like slow torture.

Doug: And it's really interesting that there are these opioid properties to wheat. When part of the wheat is partially digested it forms a chain that can actually get across the blood brain barrier and mimic opioids so it has of pain relieving medicinal quality to it. So all this damage that you're doing a lot of the time, like Gaby mentioned before, you don't even notice it. It's like Jonathan mentioned, the withdrawal symptoms there are these opioids that you're taking it in small amounts all the time. It's almost like taking a pain killer in small doses all day every day. Yeah, it's pretty interesting that the damage that is being done is so masked by the properties of the wheat that are in there. So, it's kind of like a package, you get your damage in your painkiller at the same time.

Tiffany: Yeah, it's also taken a not so small doses because when I was eating wheat my stomach was a bottomless pit and I can eat and eat and never be satisfied. In two hours after I'd eaten I was wanting something else, you know the pasta, is just anything that was creamy and wheaty. That's what I wanted. All the time.

Doug: Yeah, that's probably from those lectin properties mimicking insulin and messing with your leptin resistance, so that you can't tell when you're satiated, you're still hungry even though your stomach is full.

Jonathan: And the feeling of irritability as well when you're ingesting opioids over a period of time and you become addicted to it then the slightest-- it a withdrawal symptom. The slightest absence of that and you become irritable. And it's kind of a double whammy with wheat because it's damaging, as Doug listed in his litany of problems, it's damaging the lining of your intestine. For instance, serotonin to my understanding, is mostly produced in the colon and not in the brain. So if you're gut is messed up your mood is going to be messed up. On top of that you're addicted to an opioid and it is awful it's a cascading list of awful things that are all chained together.

Doug: I was just going to say that it brings new meaning to the word comfort food.

Jonathan: I know, last time I went on a vacation I slipped, and had a burrito. I regretted it right away. I'll tell you what, I had actually been good up to that point in the day after I was so hungry. I felt like I was starving. Obviously I'm not starving why don't I feel that way and it was just that little bit of a glutinous tortilla and the rest of it was actually pretty good but it was the gluten in the tortilla I believe that caused the offset. It took me about three weeks to recover from that.

Gaby: I was going to say that wheat nowadays produces a huge spike in blood sugar because it has amylopectin, like a linear glucose chain amylose, that get's broken down to sugar very readily just by contact with your saliva(amylase) in your mouth. It converts to sugar so much in the body that whole wheat bread increases blood sugar to a higher level than table sugar. We know that table sugar is very addictive by itself so eating wheat bread is basically as bad as or even worse than drinking soda or eating candy bars. Whole wheat bread is basically what the American Diabetes Association is recommends to eat for diabetics. It's absurd!

Jonathan: Yeah it's almost like they want you to get diabetes. I mean, I'm sure that a lot of doctors would be offended by that. They're like "No, of course we don't want you to get sick". Then you're like, "How come you keep recommending things to me that make me come back to you"?

Gaby: Do you know that some diabetes even reports that they reduce their insulin treatment dose by 50% on the very first day they reduced the amount of wheat in their diet.

Tiffany: I was going to say that beats chasing your blood sugar all over with your insulin all day long, but interesting thing about your gut broken down. I don't know how many of our lives his practice EE, but the vagus nerve runs from your brain down into your gut. If you gut is irritated that's gonna irritate your vagus nerve and cause brain dysfunction as well. It's not just the neuro toxic properties of wheat itself, it's also what it does to your gut and thereby your vagus nerve that causes these mental health issues.

Erica: Yeah, I'd like to add to that briefly. It was mentioned that a lot of people don't have the physical reactions to wheat, the stomachaches or whatnot. For me personally about seven years ago I was a migraine sufferer, terrible migraines. I went to a naturopathic doctor and she said to me just what you suggested Jonathan; stop eating wheat for a month and see if the migraines go away. Sure enough no more migraine headaches and like you and the burrito story, if I'm somewhere and I eat something that has wheat in it and I'm not aware of it, within an hour or two I'll start to feel a migraine coming on. So, there's definitely some super toxic properties there. It affects different people in different ways. There's the response you hear from people "You don't eat wheat". "What do you eat"? and "I can eat it and I don't get a stomach ache. It doesn't affect me". I think each individual has their own kind of response to it and it may not be something real noticeable right away. Whether it's bad mood, headaches, for other people it's the skin issues, breaking out in eczema. So, there's a lot of different ways that it can affect people. So, I think sharing this information is so important.

Doug: One of the big ones actually that people never associate with diet is joint pain. A couple of interesting couple of articles written by Sayer Ji that you can find on SOTT is called "Opening Pandora's bread box: The Critical Role Of Wheat Lectin In Human Disease". Also "The Dark Side Of Wheat: A New Perspective On Celiac Disease In Wheat Intolerance". A popular supplement for treating joint pain is glucosamine. Glucosamine is a chitin that is found in a lot of insect shells and crustacean shells and things like that. It's a hard substance. Well one of the main sugars in that, one that I mentioned before N-Acetylglucosamine. The WGA, that lectin that's found in wheat, has an affinity for this sugar, it will bind to it. What's actually happening when people are taking glucosamine is that they are stopping the WGA from attacking their joints, which has a lot of N-Acetylglucosamine in it. It's just binding to the N-Acetylglucosamine that they are taking or the glucosamine that they are supplementing. So they're really just kind of diverting the WGA away from their joints by taking in this supplement. So I found that really fascinating anybody who's having joint pain and finding some relief with glucosamine should ditch the wheat, that would get to the root of the problem there

Jonathan: Yeah for sure, that's the same thing I mentioned in a previous show. I had that. I used to have just crippling joint pain and I thought I had rheumatoid arthritis and come to find that I didn't. Come to find that it was caused by the toxins I was ingesting. I have a friend here in town who has a young son and he's diagnosed with arthritis and he's in his teens. Really? I'm finding more difficult to trust a doctor's diagnosis because they believe in this information as well, when the truth when you look at this is that a lot of these issues are related to diet and nutrition.

Gaby: The level of mainstream medicine is that they will only recognize celiac's disease. But will show that we're missing about 90% of all gluten intolerant diseases. It has been linked with over 300 conditions, from epilepsy, depression, numbness in the legs, idiopathic kidney diseases, everything. Truly every disease you could think of the person can be linked, by just removing gluten from the diet. I just wanted to clarify something very basic about gluten because we have spoken about wheat but gluten or gluten-like proteins are found in all grains, all grains. It's like the hydra monster with hundreds of heads. That is a fraction of proteins in all of them containing a fraction of these proteins. To a large extent or to a lesser extent. If you're sensitive to these kinds of nutrients; to these proteins; then even five parts per million can produce an immune reaction in you. That's an effect from person to person. So that's something to think about.

Doug: There are a lot of people with naturopaths recommended diets that are essentially like elimination diets, where you eliminate foods that could be problematic. So often they've got brown rice on their as being safe. I'm always like "it's not safe". Any grain has these components in it. So, if you're going to go you may as well go whole hog can eliminate all grains.

Gaby: Part of the reason why genetic testing for gluten intolerance doesn't make much sense, because when you have so many components in gluten, and we don't have lab markers to test and also, you don't need genetic susceptibility to be adversely affected by gluten, then there's really no point in testing for gluten intolerance. You know it's toxic just remove it; it's addictive. It will destroy your health sooner or later, it will.

Jonathan: In my own experience to when I started when I first did the gluten-free thing. I got into the whole idea of ancient grains, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and other things like that. Especially quinoa for me, I still had a reaction to it. So, I was eating nothing else that was labeled as having gluten but I was making cookies and cupcakes out of quinoa and my joints felt exactly the same and then when I finally stopped doing that I started so better.

Doug: That's the thing with these gluten-free foods. There are things that are sold as gluten-free foods that are breads made out of bean flour, buckwheat flour, or something like that. It's the same thing it really is you're paying ten bucks for a loaf of bread and really are not avoiding anything.

Gaby: Yeah, you have to be very suspicious about the food industry, especially the gluten-free food industry. They make billions of dollars by selling something that is just as bad as wheat. They don't tell you that it's equally bad or that it's made with grains, especially rich in carbohydrates, it's really not worth the money.

Jonathan: Well I'd say don't even trust the label, because I've read numerous accounts recently between organic food or gluten-free food where the company will basically take something that has gluten in it label it gluten-free, sell it, get caught. End up paying a 10 or 20 million dollar fine and keep selling something else until they get caught doing that. They do the same thing with organic foods you know they take process foods slap an organic label on it and sell it as organic get caught pay the fine keep going if the same thing the pharmaceutical companies do.

Doug: Yeah it's more worth their while to pay a fine then actually practice good business practices.

Jonathan: I certainly don't want to talk dirty about some of the smaller companies that are actually trying to sell organic food or are trying to sell gluten-free foods. There really are good ones out there but it's up to you as the consumer to do your research about what you're getting. I tend to feel it's better to just back away from the entire system, get your very basic ingredients make sure you know where they're coming from and then learn how to cook with those.

Gaby: Going back a little bit about how we spoke about how the landscape has changed with hybridization. I remember a patient in his 70s, I think 72 years old and he remembers specifically the wheat fields have changed so much. He remembers playing in the field when he was a kid the fields were completely different, this reminds me of what Dr. William Davis said in his "Wheat Belly" book small changes in the wheat protein structure has spelled the difference between a immune response versus no immune response at all. It's interesting I want to read this quote from from this book just to give an idea how much it has changed you know microscopically and at a molecular level as well. He said that "The average yield of a modern North American farm is more than ten times greater than that of only a century ago. Wheat gluten proteins in particular undergo continual structural change with hybridization. In one experiment fourteen new gluten proteins were identified in the offspring that were not present in either parent plant; moreover when compared to the century-old strains of wheat, modern strains of wheat express a higher quantity of genes for gluten proteins that are associated with celiac disease. Multiply these alterations by the tens of thousands of hybridizations to which wheat has been subjected, it has potential for a dramatic shift in genetic traits such as gluten structure. We have really no idea of the franken-grain. That's why we have a health catastrophe.

Jonathan: The quantity, the sheer quantity of this stuff that is being ingested by people throughout the day, you know these opioid and toxins. It's like you're going out working really hard in the fields and having a sandwich with a couple pieces of bread and then going back out and working really hard until sun goes down. Hardly any people do that, eat very little, people are eating wheat products for breakfast for a snack, the second breakfast and then lunch snack in the afternoon dinner then you're eating chips and stuff before you go to bed. It's just all day every day and it's no wonder that a large majority of people are addicted to this and don't even realize it and then on top of that the pharmaceutical industry is giving you SSRIs, other antidepressants, anti-inflammatory steroids, and it's just like you gut is a disaster zone. It's so sad.

Erica: There's a major backlash too, like it was saying earlier when Dr. Davis wrote this book and put it out there, it was amazing, within a couple of weeks the grain cartel stepped in and they even produced a five page paper called "Wheat Improvement The Truth Unveiled". It's free at: bestgrains.com and it goes through his book and they try to debunk all these things he's saying. It's amazing how the grain cartels really are trying to do damage control. We carried a few articles on as SOTT about it. One is a really interesting read, it was produced back in 2011 by Tom Naughton. It's "The long knives are out for "Wheat Belly", bring out the "cult" accusation!" and this is where it was mentioned about the Amazon review calling Dr. Davis the David Koresh of medicine. It's just amazing how they don't address anything he said in the book. Just basically character assassination saying he had no credibility and he's just offering suggestions to people like you are talking about eliminating wheat and see how you feel. It's not like he's going out proselytizing, he's just sharing his 25 years of research. He even responded to the wheat organizations, such as the Grain Foods Foundation and The National Wheat Improvement Committee that he would like to have a discussion and address these attacks and so he launched press releases and wanted to have a publicity campaign and in response no one even addressed him. They don't want to have the discussion, it's like let's just not talk about it. Just keep defaming him and anyone who doesn't eat wheat is paranoid.

Tiffany: They'll say you're almost anorexic,that you have an eating disorder because they don't want to eat wheat.

Erica: He calls it the perfect chronic poison.

Gaby: For me personally this curious new data we collect about all the evils of gluten. We have covered the worst nightmare, is that actually gluten can shut down blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, leading to ADHD and depression. 70% of celiacs patients have impaired blood flow to their brains. The prefrontal cortex just happens to be part of the brain which allows us regulate our emotions, see the wider picture. To focus, realize the consequences of our actions. It allows us to think, so if we are eating the staff of life, no wonder we are not able to think our way from this reality.

Jonathan: It makes me think about a lot of kids that are in school these days. These poor kids, like you said, they're having the blood flow to their prefrontal cortex shut off and then they're pounding Red Bull or Monster drinks just to feel like they're brain works again. Just to feel like they can think and then taking Adderall or Ritalin or anything, again just to feel like they can think it all. It's like a complete disconnect with what it feels like to have your brain work normally.

Gaby: There's a really good book written in 2013 by neurologist David Perlmutter, it's called the "Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, And Sugar Your Brain's Silent Killers".

It's a really great source for the average person who can't really cover a lot of research because he has a lot of the research distilled in a very simple format. All backed up with really good research and it's a really good option to give to friends, family. It goes to great length to see how gluten and sugar affects your brain, but also heart disease, cancer, every single disease in general for that matter.

Jonathan: Well the funny thing about the debunkers and not to paint it with a broad brush, but the people who were trying to debunk 'Wheat Belly' I would like to see them put their sub sandwich down and go do blood and lab work up against someone's who is grain free. I promise you that the tests would be totally conclusive as to which one is better. Instead they're going to throw out a bunch of logical fallacies and try to say "well you're stupid" instead of actually arguing the point.

Doug: It's kind of similar to the brick wall that Jeffrey M. Smith has run into a number of times with his anti-GMO campaign. When he gets attacked it's very rarely on any of the facts. It's all, the same thing William Davis has come up against, it's all character assassination. They'll say "oh, you're not a scientist, therefore you don't have a right to comment on it". Similar thing you find in vaccines as well basically saying "you're not a doctor and you don't have the right to say any of this stuff", or to comment on it at all. It's like these high priests that guard the information; nobody is allowed to have an opinion because they are not well informed enough. Which is nonsense really, anyone can do their research.

Jonathan: Yeah, if a doctor goes to a diabetes fundraiser and eats a hotdog and drinks a soda, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna listen to him.

All: [Laughter]

Erica: Well Dr. Davis says that in his book. He says that the conviction of writing this book was that wheat is one of the biggest issues of our time. Then he would say that elimination of wheat is one of the most incredible and consistently effective strategies that he has ever witnessed for improving health, as he's been practicing medicine for 25 years. His ideal solution is to say goodbye to it completely. So being on the top ten new york times best seller list you can see that people are buying this book, it's a very easy read. It's really disturbing, you can see how the grain cartels would come after him because basically there goes their market.

Tiffany: It's not they're gonna say "we're sorry guys, we made a mistake, wheat really is bad for you. We care more about your health than our profits".

Erica: Or spending time and resources developing a wheat that doesn't have, all the things that Doug and Gaby shared, in it. I mean, if they can create it with more than they can create it with less. It's mad science.

Jonathan: As long as the money keeps flowing in, right? It's the snake eating its own tail. It's out of control, they call these banks too big to fail well there are too big agricultural companies now. When they fail hundreds and thousands of people are going to lose their jobs. I can say that I have the personal opinion that these industries should not exist, but what are those people gonna do for themselves when they lose their jobs, if this were to go away? We are kind of stuck, it's a really sad situation. I think that the best thing we can do right now is try to educate individuals, and be like "just stop eating bread for like two weeks and see how you feel and move on from there". Or try supplementing some very basic nutrients instead of relying on pharmaceuticals. There's really basic things you can do to start this process. It's hard and I find myself skeptical about the possibility of real change on a large scale.

Gaby: It is really important advice because there are people with very debilitating diseases like diabetes. They say I just can't imagine my life without bread. Really!? Just give it like a month; two weeks and people will see the difference. Then you realize how well you feel and say that's enough and then you learn about it, it creates a positive feedback. You feel good and you are more motivated to eliminate it for a longer term basis.

Johnathan: I hate to use this word, but in some sense we're evangelists for good health. As proponents for good health it's really important for us to have the data at hand. Sometimes you can use a scared straight tactic. If someone says "i can't put my bread down", then come and sit with me for a half hour and read off the list to you about the toxins that you are putting in your body. The reason that you are taking the anti depressants, and the reason you can't get up in the morning. The reason why you wake up at three in the morning and can't sleep. If you can show people the data then you have a better chance to have them realize what's going on. Other than that it's "I'm not gonna put my drugs down".

Doug: Yeah, that's really what it is. It's really funny when you try to put it into perspective. You just have to say, listen it's bread! the world isn't gonna stop turning if you don't eat bread. It's not a big deal. It's the same with any food that people want to eliminate. It's just food! Your not gonna starve yourself there's lots of alternatives out there. So trying to put it into perspective for people can be helpful. I'm asking you to go a month without grains. Is that really such a big deal?

Tiffany: It's big deal when your body doesn't see it as food. Your body sees it as an opioid. A drug so, how hard is it to get someone to put down the crack pipe or the heroin needle?

Jonathan: That's the way this needs to be approached in that kind of mindset. It is about rehab. You have to go to food rehab.

Erica: Having resources and support, as we shared in past shows, knowing that you can go to the Health and Wellness section on SOTT and read about it, or on the forum and get recipes and alternatives. And read people's stories about it. It's like the AA for bread addiction. Having the discussion provides relief for people because, like me I take medication every time I got a headache or can I just change the way that I eat and prevent the headaches all together. A lot of people say "Isn't it hard because I worked in the food industry to not eat it". I say to them I would rather not eat it. I would rather feel okay than not. I know what's gonna happen when I eat it. I know the symptoms, and it's not worth it. I don't feel like that.

Tiffany: Yeah, a piece of bread is not worth it is not worth a three day headache. That's my reaction to wheat, headaches for three straight days. One time I had a sinus headache a month straight.

Jonathan: Wow. That touches on a point that Erica brought up earlier too where people say "Well I eat bread and sandwiches and my stomach doesn't hurt". It's essentially the same as if I were to inject my forearm with novocaine and cut my skin with an exacto knife, then I can't feel it because there's Novocain in their. The stomach doesn't hurt because if the nerves are damaged then you can't tell.

Gaby: We're actually anesthetizing ourselves against the evil effects of gluten because of the opioid, drug like properties that cut down the pain. So were still medicating ourselves against the effects of grain and with bread itself.

Erica: That's what Sayer Ji said in that article "Opening Pandora's Breadbox". Basically wheat is a form of biological co-option and control of the human body. It feeds the disease establishment, which feeds the FDA. Then the food makes you sick and the drugs make a killing.

Jonathan: We are coming up on our one-hour mark here and Zoya, our lovely veterinarian from the far East sent us a segment, and we wanna play that for you. She's also going to be talking about the effects of gluten on pets. So, stay tuned and we'll be back to tell you how to make bread out pork rinds.

Zoya Pet Health Segment Of The Health And Wellness Show

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the natural pet health segment on the Health and Wellness show. Today we are going to talk about nutrition. How to feed your dog and cat in ways that will contribute to their health and long life. Before we get into the proper way of feeding your pet; first let's talk about dry food and why it is the worst food you could give to them.

Okay so what is dry food? It's a highly processed meat ground to a powder it is comprised of various meats including the non-meat parts from cattle and chicken. Such as feet, lungs, spleens, unborn fetus, diseased livers, cut away tumors, and other parts unsuitable for human consumption. Or it can be restaurant waste or out of date supermarket meat. And yes, also so-called road kill or cows that have died on the farm but never reached the slaughter house. I myself, when studying for the viral diseases exam saw in the book that according to regulation meat that is not suitable for human or even animal consumption can still be used to create dog or cat dry food.

Some manufactures try to cut costs by adding ingredients like corn, gluten meal, soybean meal, plan protein concentrate to get the protein up to acceptable levels. Other ingredients include carbohydrates or starch, vitamin and mineral premix, and water. All this mix goes through hours long processing at high temperature. The problem is the proteins tend to denature; to be distorted by heating; and these abnormal proteins may be a factor in the development of food allergies as the immune system reacts to their unnatural shape.

What about carbohydrates? Dogs and cats are carnivores. Dogs considered to be optional carnivores. While cats are obligatory carnivores, meaning both of them are meat eaters. Their natural diet is high protein and high moisture. Carbs constitute 1-8% (maybe 9%) at most. The carnivores ideal diet is essentially the Paleo diet, lots of protein and fat and a small amount of complex carbohydrates from vegetables. The average dry food contains 35 to 50% carbohydrates. Some of the cheaper dry foods contain even higher levels, so basically dry food, no matter how expensive, cannot be considered optimal for dogs and cats.

While optional carnivores have certain biochemical pathways that are designed to deal with carbohydrates. Cats are simply not built to process carbohydrates. Cats preferentially choose protein for energy and these pathways are mandatory. Felines have very limited ability to process carbohydrates and are programmed to turn cabs directly into fat. They also lack specific enzymatic pathways that are present in other mammals and they lack a salivary enzyme called amylase. It's an enzyme that catalyzes the transformation of starch into sugars. Dogs also don't produce amylase in their salivary glands but we humans do.

Both cats and dogs produce amylase in the pancreas and so since both cats and dogs have no real dietary need for carbohydrates, diets high in carbohydrates can be detrimental to their health. It is being made worse by the fact that corn, one of the main ingredients in dry food, has a high glutamic volume. Grain that is also being used contain gluten and it doesn't matter it if a pet has gluten intolerance or not. Because of the specific physiology of carnivore mammals any grains, wheat, barley, soy is an allergen. And, yes dairy products trigger allergic reactions too.

The well-known notion that cats need milk is the biggest myth there is. The same as with fish but that's another story. Coming back to grains, wheat and soy are the worst, while oats and rice are less harmful. People in poor countries that can't afford to feed their pets with meat only do use porridge and mix them with cheap meat cuts and while isn't ideal it is still better than dry food. Even if it is expensive gluten-free or corn free dry food.

The simple fact is that animals require their food to be moist, otherwise it gets stuck in the digestive tract leads to formation of [indistinct] crystals and other problems. As it came out in the beginning dry food contained only corn, then after many complaints, manufacturers replaced this with wheat. Then some veterinarians noticed that pet health experienced an even further decline, not to mention the fact that one of the leading cat health issues has to do with kidney problems. Specifically renal insufficiency, why do you think this is? The answer is right before us. You don't add number one dog and cat food allergen to the diet without having some major repercussions. Apparently, the veterinary profession is shortsighted just as the medical profession because 60-70% of the modern diet is comprised of cow milk product and of wheat. Well there is a price to pay for this sort of ignorance and it is heavier than most realize.

The main cost is the disruption of proper tract function. Once the essential nutrients have been mal absorbed for a long enough time there is no way back. It depends on the individual pets immune system if they will become sick in childhood or adolescence or adulthood, but the bottom line is, when of a pet consumes dry food it is a matter of when they will develop problems, not if. Gluten will eventually affect every pet with its nutrient blocking qualities. Here is an example of how exactly the damage occurs. Take conditions such as hip dysplasia, elbow and shoulder problems, intervertebral disk syndrome, ligament ruptures, and even the heart valve failure. All these problems are caused by failing cartilage and connective tissue, both of which are structured similarly and made up of calcium and collagen.

Collagen is the building block of the most of your skeletal support structures, the principal components of collagen is vitamin C, therefore when is it is understood that calcium is absorbed mainly by the duodenum, first part of the small intestine, while vitamin C and other vital vitamins and minerals are absorbed by the duodenum and the rest of the small intestine, then it is easily seen that inadequate amount of this in the diet or failure of their absorption will compromise the integrity of all these structures.

There are also other problems associated with dry food consumption, like Diabetes, Kidney disease, Urethra blockage, urinary tract infection, development of crystals, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, fatty liver disease, dental health, asthma, general poor health, and including weak immune system. Okay so now you understand that you shouldn't feed your pet with dry food, but you're probably asking yourself what to do instead, and surely canned food is better than dry but still the quality of the meat is questionable and there are cats and dogs that still develop various problems including neurological ones so it appears that a raw meat diet is most optimal.

There are many sites and videos that provide detailed explanations and instructions about feeding your pet was a raw meat diet. There are various techniques and ingredients, unfortunately expanding on those techniques isn't in the scope of this segment and I also encourage you to do your own homework. Read articles and watch videos, each pet is unique and so is each situation, you need to find the best one for you, but several most interesting and informative links will be included on the page of this show, so you can start with that.

Please take a look at them and that's it on the topic. I hope you found it useful, but before I go I promised a friend to talk about possible reasons for excessive drinking in dogs. This is a big topic, more appropriate for a separate segments, but I will mention several key factors and conditions that can also be caused by bad diet, like eating dry food. So it can be Diabetes, Cushing's syndrome, Addison's disease, or kidney disease, in all these situations better to take the dog to a Vet for a series of various test determine the nature of the problem.

As was already mentioned, first of all make sure that you feed your pet properly and not dry food. Another condition that is characterized by excessive drinking and increased urine production may affect female dogs and it's called Pyometra. Pyometra is a uterine infection and considered to be serious and life-threatening condition that must be treated quickly and aggressively. So if you have a female dog that suddenly drinks and pees a lot, and less active, and inflated stomach take her to the vet immediately.

Thank you for listening and goodbye.

Jonathan: Wow, that's awesome think Zoya for bringing that to our attention. Here in our house we've been doing research into the raw diet for our dog and she's really been taking well to it. I hesitate to say that we've seen any concrete results yet, but I will say that I've seen some small result and it's only been about four days so far but I'm hoping that as we move forward we'll see some even better results.

Tiffany: My cat is on the raw food too, but I I can't say that I've seen anything definite. I've seen some small improvements. He's a bit old, about 17.

Jonathan: Well my dog had arthritis and she had these inflamed lumps on the top of her hips in the back and some of them were lipid tumors. The Vet diagnosed other ones as just arthritic inflammation and those have actually been decreasing in size. Even in the last couple of days which is very promising.

Here at the end of our show we're going to go over our recipe for bread made out of pork rinds. I can hear some people who might be listening going "pork rinds"! All you ever think of when you hear pork rinds is the pork rinds in a bag that you see down at the gas station, but these are not the pork rinds you have known for your whole life. These are a little bit different. So Tiffany is gonna clue us in on this recipe and these guys have already made it. So, we have some experience here.

Tiffany: Yeah, "Pork Rind Oven Pan Bread" and it is delicious. This is not my recipe, this is Karen's she's another SOTT editor. She came up with this recipe so here it is.

Recipe: Pork Rind Oven Pan Bread

8 x 8 glass baking dish - you're gonna to need a food processor for this recipe.

6 eggs

7 tablespoons of bacon fat (or instead of bacon fat or use 5 tablespoons of Ghee or unsalted butter) You can use that along with 2 tablespoons of bacon fat, if you want to decrease the amount of bacon fat that you use in this bread.

6 ounces of pork rinds

2.5 tablespoons of xylitol

1.5 tablespoons of baking powder

Any kind of spices that you want. If you want a sweet type of bread you can use cinnamon, allspice, pumpkin pie spice, or orange peel.

For a more savory type of bread you can use rosemary, thyme, garlic, onion whatever you choose.

About 1 tablespoon each of whichever type of bread you want, If you do make this savory bread you want to cut down on the xylitol. Cut that down from 2.5 tablespoons to 1.5 tablespoons.

So get get your food processor and your pork rinds. You want to use the highest speed on the food processor and process the Pork rinds down so that they have a 'flour like' consistency and then add in your baking powder, your xylitol and your spices, then blend.

Set all that aside and then in a large bowl whip your eggs into a froth then add in your dry ingredients along with your ghee in your butter, or bacon fat mix it well and let it sit for about five minutes. Depending on how thick it is, if it's overly thick, mix in a little dab of water just to thin it down a bit.

This is going to be in the 350°F oven. You want grease your glass baking dish with bacon fat on the bottom and the sides. Then transfer your batter into the dish, you can sprinkle a little dried onion flakes or rosemary or any other spices of your choice on the top.

Then you want to bake that in a 350°F oven for 40 to 45 minutes until you can pull out a toothpick clean and your bread feels solid and this makes a very, very ,very yummy bread. It's not the only thing you can make with pork rinds, you can make pan cakes and cookies and brownies. So, there is life without bread!

Gaby: Yeah, I made the brownie one with pork rinds and it was absolutely delicious. I was so happy.

Jonathan: That's awesome. Just to clarify for our listeners if they might under any illusions about pork rinds. All pork rinds means, is the skin of the pig.

Tiffany: It's the skin, there's no fatty in there. You wanted to be as dry as possible. So, it's the flour consistency.

Jonathan: Right so I don't want to encourage people to go get the processed bag of pork rinds like we said from the gas station or anything like that. Talk to your local farmers and local butcher. You could find them and ask them about pork skin, pigskin, and see if you can find it. They can be use in really inventive ways to make pork rind bread. I believe you guys made a pork rind pizza to recently is that correct

Tiffany: Yeah, Karen made a pork rind pizza recently and that was yummy, maybe that could be a recipe for another day, but yeah that was yummy. It had a pork rind crust, no cheese either, but it tasted just like pizza.

Jonathan: Well, I think we've gone over quite a bit of information today and I encourage everyone who listens to take your notebooks out if you missed anything listen back to the show. Write it down, look it up, look up your own primary sources, get the information in your own head, so that you understand the truth about the food that you are eating. You understand how to talk to people about it because we want to get this information out there and help people be more aware of the conditions that are plaguing you. It's totally possible, totally doable, and you don't have to cram pharmaceuticals down your throat to get there. So, you've been listening to the Health And Wellness Show on the SOTT radio network. My name is Jonathan and I was your host for today. goodbye.