Discussion sur le web
du 18 janvier 2000
avec Dr J. D'Adamo, ND
ABO VIE sur www.abovie.com

> Choix "Chat" <

La source du texte anglais est la suivante : www.barnesandnoble.com/community/archive/transcript.asp?userid=3MF5Y9F1CU&srefer=&eventId=2097

On Tuesday, January 18th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Dr Peter J. D'Adamo to discuss his latest book, EAT RIGHT 4 YOUR TYPE.

Cary from bn.com: Good evening, Dr D'Adamo, and welcome to bn.com. How are you? Where do we find you tonight?

Peter J. D' Adamo: I'm fine, thank you. Trying to deal with the one-degree temperature in Connecticut, which is interesting, because it hasn't been this cold in a while.
___________________
Lee from New Canaan, CT: How and when did you first discover the connection between blood type and food? Have you met with much resistance from the medical community?

PD: The link originated with my father, who actually had looked at blood type from the perspective of diet almost 40 years ago. He had just simply noticed that, as long ago as then, people didn't always do well on what would have been the type of spa diets that were prescribed for various illnesses. I took his observations and built on them by looking into science research and giving it that kind of a basis. As far the idea being accepted by the medical community, I think it sounds absurd to most medical professionals, since many of them are unaware that blood type is as significant in the body as it is.
___________________
Maurice from Boise, ID: What exactly are glutens and lectins? What do they do?

PD: A lectin and a gluten are proteins. Gluten is in one type of protein found in many plants. I think the person is implying something about agglutination, which is different than gluten. Agglutination is the process of cells kind of getting stuck together. This is produced by many lectins, which are found in common foods. A recent study showed that 36 out of 80 foods tested had some lectin in them. And what makes it all so relevant to this discussion is that many of these lectins are blood-type specific. So when you eat foods that contain a lectin that is reactive with your blood type it can cause problems.
___________________
Gillian from Sacramento, CA: How does blood type relate to what we eat?

PD: Well, there's the lectins in foods that we just discussed. But there's also metabolic influences that are under the effect of one's blood type. For example, blood type O is known to have elevated levels of stomach acid when compared to the other blood types. They also have higher levels of enzymes in their intestines, which are there to break down fat. One could ask why your blood type could influence a secretion from your digestive track. In reality, it's not necessarily your blood type that could influence how much acid you have in your stomach, but the gene for your blood type linking with other genes and doing seemingly unrelated things.
___________________
Nadine from New Haven, CT: What about diabetics? How does this program affect us? Is there any research about which blood types are more likely to be diabetic?

PD: There are several studies which show that an increased number of people with type 1 or juvenile diabetes have type A blood. There's probably some evidence to suggest that this is related to two events which are not easy to explain in a paragraph! Suffice it to say that there is an interaction between certain components of cow's milk and cells of the pancreas which may be more pronounced in people who are type A. It's also been noticed that type A children of type O mothers have higher rates of diabetes, and this probably represents an immunological incompatibility, since people who are type O (the mother) can carry antibodies against people who are type A (the child). As far as diet is concerned, the appropriate diet for each blood type is designed to optimize insulin efficiency and glucose metabolism. Strangely enough, I've also noticed a very high percentage of my patients of African descent who are type B have diabetes. One can only wonder if the genetics of one's race may represent a good or bad fit with the genetics of one's blood type, since the beneficial aspects of certain racial characteristics designed for one geographical area of the world may be problematic in a blood type for a blood type designed for a different.
___________________
David from California: On the updated food lists, Saw Palmetto is "unknown" for type As. Has that changed?

PD: The updated food lists tend to go a bit beyond the lists in my book EAT RIGHT 4 YOUR TYPE. If I've never released any data on a particular fruit or herb, many times it is listed as "unknown." The book that I am writing now is much more extensively focused on supplements of this sort. In general, Saw Palmetto can be considered "neutral" for type A, as it has no harmful aspects as per your blood type, nor does it enhance any beneficial aspects of your blood type either.
___________________
Lilo from Bradenton, FL: It's a little difficult to cook right for a husband, type 0, and for myself, type AB. Does your new book have menu suggestions addressing this dilemma?

PD: COOK RIGHT 4 YOUR TYPE is designed to provide recipes that allow for overlap between different blood types, so when you see a particular recipe, at the top will be listed whether or not it is usable by all blood types or any combination of blood types. Sometimes advice is given with regard to meal planning also. Fortunately there is a considerable amount of overlap with food from the neutral category, although it is a dilemma that we face as well in the D'Adamo household.
___________________
Bobby from Buffalo, NY: My wife, a type B and a vegetarian of several years, cannot stomach the thought of eating any formerly living creature, and as such, soy burgers, soy chicken patties, et cetera, have long constituted a majority of her diet. In EAT RIGHT you suggest that type Bs avoid substituting benign soy foods as main courses instead of eating the highly beneficial meats. What can she possibly do?

PD: I think a choice has to be made, and I, for one, can respect how a person can choose to consume or not consume a food based on philosophical or moral considerations. I can only provide somewhat objective data which I feel is not morally tinged in one direction or another. This is a common problem in many type Os who are long-term vegetarians. I am often confronted by vegetarian type Os who feel impelled to tell me that they feel wonderful, to which I reply, "I am very happy for you," since there are a lot of ways one can be healthy. The question of whether one should change a philosophical or moral view to me is one of necessity. Very sick people who are type O vegetarians are often quite amenable to changing their diet and these are the people who do really need to do the deep think. So my answer to your wife is to take from the system what she feels comfortable with and if she needs more because of a health condition she can deal with that later.
___________________
Lynne Schuler from Virginia: When will you be publishing the results of your ten-year trial of reproductive cancers and ER4YT?

PD: Much of that is still in nascent form. The results are encouraging; however, the longer I track cancer cases the more convinced I am that as many people as possible need to be followed for a period of time that is greater than ten years. It is difficult to "tease out" the effects of ER4YT and other interventions. So we are left only to compare very simple survival rates and to ask if ER4YT has the effect of influencing these. In terms of breast cancer, a very crude estimate of the data shows that following the recommendations of ER4YT and prudent conventional treatment produces an increase in survival percentages of 15 to 35 percent, depending on the grade of cancer and its stage. The major difficulty is that this type of analysis should be done by independent researchers, since my doing it will be viewed askance by critics whose response will only be, "Of course he got those results, he's the one who came up with the theory!
___________________
Cindy from Vancouver, BC: Hi Dr D'Adamo. I have been on this way of eating for just over a year now. I feel way better! Thank you so much. I am O+ and was a "starchaholic," eating no meat (only seafood) for about four years prior to reading your book. I have "unexplained fertility" and wonder what ideas you may have for supplementation to assist in getting pregnant. And yes, we are having sex, teehee! Thank you in advance, Cindy

PD: Although this is not an advice column (!), there is some great evidence suggesting that vitamin C and green tea should be taken by people desirous at greater success of conception. It is important that the vitamin C be food derived, rather than synthetic vitamin C. Studies show that in doses as little as 250 milligrams per day, green tea contains polyphenols, a type of antioxidant which apparently assists the early cells in dividing efficiently. I would definitely recommend very good adherence to the blood-type diet, which you seem to be doing. The reason for this is that many foods which are "avoids" for a blood type can "inoculate" a woman to react to the husband's sperm if he has a blood type different than hers. This is called "cervical hostility" and the avoidance of cervical hostility is probably the major reason that conception and the avoidance of miscarriage is a common enough effect of the blood-type diet.
___________________
Dianne from California: Do you have plans to do any personal appearances in the U.S. this year following the release of your third book, LIVE RIGHT 4 YOUR TYPE?

PD: Oh, I suppose they will stick me on an airplane at some point! The web site -- www.dadamo.com -- has a calendar, which I will update typically when I'm on the road. As far as LIVE RIGHT is concerned it is almost done at this point. It has taken the better part of two years to write and has some studies of blood type and personality which featured sample sizes of more than 20,000 people. Much of the new stuff I've learned in the last four years will be interesting to people who have mastered ER4YT. The nice thing is that LIVE RIGHT will take off where EAT RIGHT left off.
___________________
Larry from Ramapo, NJ: Do calories matter on this diet?

PD: The answer is that they do and they don't. For example, a food containing a lectin capable of interacting metabolically with the body is important in that respect more than it is with respect to its calorie content. This is important because if we simply looked at dieting as calorie restriction, we would lose the one major benefit gained by dieting according to one's blood type, and that is the maintenance of something called "active tissue mass." When people diet solely on body restrictions, they lose body fat but they also lose body tissue mass, which is the part of the body that burns calories, which is muscles, brain, et cetera. Losing weight by losing body fat is great, but losing weight by losing active tissue mass is terrible because your metabolic rate will be lower after the diet than it was before. If you follow the diet for your blood type, you weight loss will be consistent, though slower, than a drastic calorie restriction diet, but you will maintain or increase your active tissue mass.
___________________
John from Flint, MI: Is there any blood type predisposed to be lactose intolerant?

PD: No, there's not. And one can also find lactose intolerance in blood types such as B, for which dairy products are recommended. Thus if a food is recommended by virtue of blood type, one should be cognizant that there may be other considerations as well.
___________________
Pearson from Rochester, NY: I read something in your book about exercising right for your blood type. What does that mean?

PD: Exercise takes on some additional significance if viewed from the perspective of blood type. The reason for that is that blood types have been shown to have different chemical reactions to stress. This is probably also more of a genetic link than a physiological link. For example, when exposed to stress (the researchers used a tape loop of a baby crying), blood types A and B respond to very high levels of a hormone called cortazol. Cortazol has in general bad effects almost everywhere in the body, but some of its major effects are on your metabolism and cardiovascular system. Exercises like yoga have been shown to lower cortazol. Type O tends to respond to stress with higher levels of catecholamines, such as adrenaline, when they are stressed. Catecholamines are best lowered with aerobic cardiovascular exercise, so with blood type we can go a step further than simply saying "exercise is good for you"; we can use a specifically tailored strategy to lower chemical mediators of stress particular to that blood type.
___________________
Rhonda O- (INFP) from Circleville, OH: I am concerned about my son's eating habits; he is a O like myself and likes pasta food. How do you suggest integrating Italian food into an O's diet while still sticking to the ER4YT diet?

PD: I think the important thing is to explain to your son that pasta that he's eating in 2000 is very different than his ancestors might have eaten in the old country. Thirty years ago, wheat was about 2 percent protein, but now through hybridization and genetic engineering we have increased the protein content of several strains of wheat to almost 14 percent, in the misguided notion that all those people in the Third World will benefit from that in their diet. The problem is that all the bad things in wheat are in the protein portion, such as the lectins, glutens, and gliadins. Reactions to wheat are now so common that 80 percent of the population carries antibodies to gliadin. Many have no symptoms, but in years past this would have been considered diagnostic of celiac disease. The link between the overconsumption of these lectin-containing grains and obesity should be apparent to anyone, since about 40 percent of an average person's calories come from some form of wheat product. Most people don't realize this because many people think a bagel is made of the same thing as a bowl of spaghetti.
___________________
Cary from bn.com: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. Before we go, do you have any final thoughts for the online audience?

PD: I thank you for the quality of the questions. I hope the answers have done them some justice. Sometimes a subject as broad as this raises more questions than we can answer. But it is a pursuit well worth following. I bid you all good night and continued health and happiness.

 

horizontal rule

ABO VIE sur www.abovie.com