A Diet From a Different Point of View

Every year around the holidays, people take a look at themselves, their personality and their actions and decide that they are going to change in the New Year. The most popular resolution made is to eat better and get in shape. When you consider that recent studies show that we are all living longer, but we are doing it in worse health conditions, it becomes the utmost priority in most of our lives to start getting this whole “healthy” thing right.

The problem is that there is so much noise when it comes to diet and exercise. Everybody has a different way to go about it and they all swear by amazing results in short periods of time. Whether it’s “Sweating to the Oldies,” “Tae-bo,” Atkins, the South Beach Diet or any other trend, it all comes down to time, effort and discipline. A diet does not mean having a diet Coke with your Big Mac meal.

My goal is to help educate and make every reader think for his or her self. Not every idea is perfect for every person. With that, I would like to discuss another type of diet. This one is called “The Blood Type Diet.” Naturopathic physician Peter D’Adamo has written several books on this subject and believes that the most important factor in what kind of diet a person should use is based on their blood type. There are separate diets for individuals with each of the different blood types.

D’Adamo continuously refers to the work done by biochemists and glycobiologists on blood groups. His claim is that their research supports his theory. His books state that human blood type is “the key to the body’s ability to differentiate self from non-self.” In D’Adamo’s view, Lectins or sugar binding proteins, in foods react differently with each of the blood types. There is also a difference with an individual’s secretor status. He claims that these lectins interact with the different blood type antigens can be “incompatible and harmful.” It is this philosophy that has created the different diets for A, AB, B, and O types.

This revolutionary theory is based on work by William C. Boyd, an immunochemist and blood type anthropologist. His worldwide survey of the distribution of blood groups is contained in his book, Genetics and the Races of Man: An Introduction to Modern Physical Anthropology. It is here that Boyd shows that, by genetic analysis of blood groups, human races are populations that differ according to their alleles. An allele is any one of a number of alternative forms of the same gene occupying a specific position on a chromosome. This is just part of the make up of what makes each of us different.

Boyd then divided the world population into 13 geographically distinct races with slightly different frequency distributions of blood group genes. D’Adamo groups the thirteen races by blood type, to create the different diets:

* Blood type O: “The Hunter” – the earliest human blood group. D’Adamo claims that this group should eat a higher protein diet. He bases this on the premise that this was the first blood type, originating 30,000 years ago.

* Blood type A: “The Cultivator” – dating back to the dawn of agriculture, 20,000 years ago. This diet emphasizes vegetables and is free of red meat; a vegetarian-based diet.

* Blood type B: “The Nomad” – This group is believed to have a strong immune system and a flexible digestive system (estimated arrival 10,000 years ago). D’Adamo claims that this group is the only one who can thrive on dairy products.

* Blood type AB: “The Enigma” – This diet is treated as a hybrid of the blood types A and B. This blood type evolved approximately 1,000 years ago.

Each blood type has specific food groups that are positive, neutral or foods to ideally avoid.  I usually ask my patients to highlight those foods they gravitate towards or tend to eat a lot of. The easiest thing to do is focus on the “avoid” category, as positive and neutral categories are not ones to be concerned with.  We systematically go through this negative group until we discover which food may be the culprit for their health issue whether it is allergies, headaches or even muscle pain.  Of course, this is all taken with respect to their lifestyle and also any medications they may currently be on.

Like any other breakthrough, there is controversy tied to this diet. The major consensus among dieticians, physicians, and scientists is that this theory is unsupported by scientific evidence. Many of D’Adamo’s claims are unsubstantiated and there is a complete lack of any published clinical trials by the physician.

I have used this diet myself and found it to be very helpful for diet related allergies I was having and have introduced it to several patients where about 85% of them reported great results when following the diet.

An internet survey conducted by D’Adamo’s website with 6,627 subjects claimed that people following the Blood Type Diet for one month or more, had significant improvement in a variety of health conditions in 71-78% of cases. The most common reported improvement was weight. The issue here is that the results are “self-reported,” and there is no statement on how this information was gathered.

This is a very interesting concept, but you must make sure to do your own research. Look it up online, read D’Adamo’s books and decide for yourself. No matter what you do, try to at least make your New Year’s Resolution last until Valentine’s Day.

For further information about this topic, please contact Dr. Lynn Kerew directly at drlynn@lynnkerew.com or visit her website at http://www.lynnkerew.com.