A while back, I was asked to write an article (Interview style) on the Eat Right for Your type diet, as developed by Dr. Peter D’Adamo. I wrote the article, but never had any feedback from the journalist. So I thought it would be a waste to let the effort go to waste - here it is for you all.
PERSONAL ACCOUNT:
I have been told that you and your entire family are followers of the blood type diet. Is this true? Yes, it is true. Could you share your story...
When my oldest son was born about 15years ago, he became very ill. He would get continual respiratory infections and would run a constant temperature. We went to many doctors who ran lots of tests, all to no avail. We were watching our son wither away in front of our eyes. My wife was a practicing dietician at the time, and I was a bio-medical engineer. We had come to the end of our combined knowledge and the doctors were of no help. The last pediatrician we visited, ran blood tests and said that our son was very allergic but he does not know to what - he said that we need to find out for ourselves.
We started a long and hard walk trying to get to the root of the matter. We met a homeopath that eventually saved our son’s life, cured myself of sinus infections without antibiotics and cured my wife of chronic yeast infections. I was so impressed by natural medicine that I started researching it more. I eventually ended up studying clinical nutrition, which gave me a very good base to do further studies from. In my self-studies, I read many hundreds of scientific articles, books and attended numerous short courses on natural medicine. It was then that the first blood type book by Dr. D’Adamo was published. A friend gave it to me as a gift. I immediately read it and filed the information in the back of my mind.
What made you decide to go on this diet?
By this time my wife just had our second baby Heidi-Mari. She was a ‘colic’ baby. I say ‘colic’ as that was the diagnosis by the doctors, now I know better. She basically cried during the day, and slept during the night. Our diet was still not quite healthy, and due to some of the foods my wife ate while breastfeeding her, she developed eczema.
We discovered that she was very sensitive to wheat, dairy, sugar, MSG and preservatives. Our diet changed dramatically, as we decided to raise our daughter vegetarian, although we still ate some meat.
Two things happened; Firstly we would be ravenous by ten in the morning as we only had fruit for breakfast, and secondly we could see our daughter get exited when we would prepared meat for ourselves.
A few months later my wife was pregnant again and was very nauseas. We then discovered that when she had a full English breakfast, that for some reason, she was not nauseas for that day.
It was only then, that I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together and recalled what I had read in the “Eat right for your blood type” book. We immediately changed our diet accordingly. My daughter stopped crying completely and her eczema disappeared. My son never had a respiratory infection again, and I lost about ten kilograms in period of three months.
Since that day, we have never looked back, we just experienced a constant improvement in our health.
How long have you been on the diet?
Since it was first published more than ten years ago.
How has it worked for you, what difference has it made in your life?
The diet has done wonders for us as a family. We have just had our eighth baby. He is currently three weeks old. My wife already has her figure back and had a very healthy pregnancy and is turning forty one in a few days!
I am not overweight and neither is my wife or any of our children. We never go to the doctor and if we do get an ailment, we cure it with nutritional supplements, and can usually relate it back to something we ate that was not good for our blood type. Our new baby does not cry due to stomach cramps or have any skin rash as my wife eats very strictly according to her blood type. Since we discovered these truths when she was still breastfeeding our first daughter and we have been advocating this to mothers for years now. Unfortunately to this day, many so called health professionals do not recognize diet, as the main cause of the malfunctioning human body.
What blood type are you and what kind of foods do you eat? Tell me about your family and their experiences.
Our family of ten are all O-type blood. This is a huge blessing as we can all eat the same food. It is more challenging to cook for your family when you have different blood types, but Dr. D’Adamo published a “Cook right for your type” book as well. This makes it a lot easier for families with different blood types.
The O-type are mostly meat eaters, and we get organic grass fed meat. Wheat is a huge problem for the O-type and we bake our own bread, using mostly Spelt, an ancient grain and considered to be the mother of the modern, problem causing wheat. Spelt is well tolerated by all the blood types and is an excellent substitute for wheat in baking just about anything. We also do particularly well on some vegetables, and make sure to only buy organic fruit and vegetables. This may sound expensive, but it really is not. If my children eat fruit or vegetables that are sprayed by the farmers with pesticides, I can be sure to spend more money getting them well, that the little bit that the organic produce cost extra.
Do you follow this diet merely as a set of guidelines, or is it a strict rule in your life?
We stay on the diet for the better part of our diet, and though we never make it a strict rule, although life is much easier when we follow the diet. For instance: when we eat chicken for dinner, we will be hungry again before we go to bed at night and the little ones will wake up numerous times during the night, which is not the case when we have red meat for dinner. The diet also become more strict when we are under a lot of stress, or when we travel or generally experience a run down immune system. If you ‘cheat’ too much then, your body cannot handle the extra load and you well fall ill.
Do you ever crave various foods?
Only home cooked food, when I had to travel or eat at hotels for too long.
What are the reasons for our cravings and how do we overcome these?
Part of my practice is doing Live Blood Analysis. This is something that we use extensively, and I specifically use the Sevenpointfive methods. I have found it has a sound scientific base and a superior knowledge base. When someone comes to us for an analysis, food cravings are usually one of their complaints. Although we do find that there are more than one cause for the cravings, I mostly find two causes. The first is a mineral deficiency, lowering the body pH (meaning the body’s intercellular fluids become acidic)
The second may shock you, but it is related to what people have for breakfast, if any.
Most people have a ‘light’ breakfast like fruit, smoothies, cereal or yogurt. This simply raises the blood sugar levels too quickly, resulting in the body secreting too much insulin to lower the fast increasing blood glucose levels. The blood sugar level then drops quickly, to an all time low, casing the brain to go into panic mode. The result is that you crave something to quickly get your blood sugar back up.
This is when you eat the wrong foods (cravings) and the cycle simply starts all over again. And by the way, every time you have an insulin spike, you store fat.... you can read more here.
Do you recommend the blood type diet to the majority of your patients?
Yes.
When people come to us for the Sevenpointfive blood analysis, we help to detox the body and get back to a healthy life style. I find the best I can do to help them to stay healthy as far as diet is concerned, is to follow the Blood type diet
Do you have a patient who is solely on this diet and has shown tremendous results? Would they be willing to share their story? If so, could you put me in contact with them?
I do have, it’s just a matter of looking through about 8000 files, but I will try and get one to write you something.
Maybe I can share this short story with you regarding this matter...
I had a young girl, twenty seven, come to see me with ovarian cancer. One of the most important things about cancer, is that it needs an acid environment to grow, read more here about the pH Anyway, she has heard that red meat is an absolute no-no when trying to fight cancer, and before this experience I would have agreed. We tried for some weeks to get her pH to the desired 7.5 level, but it was responding very slowly. It was then that I had another look at Dr. D’Adamo’s book on blood type and Cancer. The girl was a B-Type and for her, organic grass fed lamb is like medicine. I convinced her to start eating some lamb. One week later her pH was up, and we have been able to keep it there. One year later and her oncologist (cancer specialist) was VERY surprised to see her in excellent health. She remains on the Sevenpointfive program and keeps to her B-type diet.
GENERAL QUESTIONS: (I e-mailed Dr. D’Adamo’s office, and they answered the following)
How does the blood reveal a person’s susceptibility to disease?
Most people in the medical field only study blood type as it relates to transfusions, but if you looked more deeply into the medical literature, you would find that your blood type is the key to your body’s entire immune system. It controls the influence of viruses, bacteria, infections and stress.
What are the misconceptions about the blood type diet?
My critics have said that there is no scientific basis to the diet, however, if you look in the scientific and medical literature, you’ll find a number of studies linking blood type and disease.
I have read that there is no scientific evidence for this diet, is this true?
What are your convictions that the diet actually works?
The thousands of letters from people whose health has improved significantly due to the diet speak for themselves. The fact that the book is still on Amazon’s best seller list after more than 10 years, speaks for the longevity of this program. But, most scientifically, in a self-reported study of 6617 individuals who were following the diet for one month or more, three out of four (71-78%) had significant improvement in a variety of health conditions. Weight loss was the effect most often observed but a number of reports detailed improvements in digestive function, resistance to stress, overall energy and mental clarity. The percentages (71-78%) of visitors reporting positive results are consistent across all the blood types. Type O (following a higher protein lower-carb diet) appeared as likely to report positive results as Type A (following a lower fat, plant-based diet) or types B and AB (following a more omnivorous diet.). The results certainly appear to question many of the standardized one size fits all diets advanced by the diet gurus, governments and agribusiness.
When starting the blood type diet, how would you suggest one goes about it?
Is it a process that should occur over time? It depends on your reasons for starting the diet – are you ill? If so, jump right in and eliminate your avoid foods and stick to beneficial foods. If you are generally healthy, you can start by eliminating a few of your avoid foods and focusing more on beneficial foods gradually.
Why do you feel this diet has not gained popularity by mainstream dieticians, as it has been around for a number of years?
There are many dieticians, MD’s, and other health practitioners who recommend the Blood Type Diet for their patients. Just because something isn’t mainstream, it doesn’t mean that it does not work – just think about all the things that are mainstream that are bad for you.
What advice would you give someone that has heard about the blood type diet, but is skeptical about it?
Try it for one month and see how you feel.
In cases of extreme food allergies, can one undergo specific tests to identify the problem? How do these work?
If you’re allergic to a specific food, common sense tells you not to eat it. Allergists can perform tests to determine allergies or sensitivities to specific foods.
I am convinced that more people nowadays are suffering from stomach conditions and digestive problems, for this reason I have been trying to locate statistics on this matter, but to no avail. Are you aware of any statistics in this regard, and would you say that I am accurate in my assumption?
Many patients at my clinic suffer from digestive problems and have had success in alleviating those problems by eating right for their blood type. We know that a large part of your immune system is in your gut, and there are a large number of studies linking digestive health and blood type http://www.dadamo.com/science_bloodgroups_digestion_references.htm
Would you be willing to prescribe a weekly diet for each blood type, as recommended by Dr. D'Adamo. I am certainly wary about publishing a diet that I have not obtained consent by the creator.
Yes, that would be fine, BUT it would take a lot of work, and I really do not have time for that right now, I just refer my clients to get the book, read it and then cook accordingly. It’s generally very easy this way.
The Dirty Dozen--the list of 12 foods you should eat organic--has been updated for 2010. The new list includes fruits, vegetables, and other foods with a high pesticide residue. It is highly recommended to buy organic when shopping for these foods. So, what are they?
