Wow!

I've just spent a happy hour surfing Dr D'Adamo's site. Why didn't I know about this before? I am keen to give it a try! So I'll get the book and keep you posted on the results.

Just one more question:
How long was it before you or your friends felt the benefit?

So thanks Mamma and Carol for your input. Good stuff !!

Lisa, did you go to the web-site too? I'm glad it was interesting stuff for you. I always love to learn new things - on a constant quest for knowledge (particularly holistic)that's me


Deb

[This message has been edited by debdell (edited 24 February 2001).]

Before I went on the diet...I used to bloat every once in a while...distended about a foot out(felt like that)..and sometimes I would make the connection to bread. But I never ate much bread in my life because if I ate one piece it would immediately fill me up. Also, I would get terrible gas from dairy products...and I'm an 0 negative.

On the diet its suggested 16 ounces of meat per week...but I didn't see that until 3 months after I was eating meat 3 times a day. I was tired a lot..but I was not eating organically fed cow meat. Thats a must.

I still haven't figured out the relationship between this diet and homeopathy. Would the correct similar still leave me vulnerble to those food products. Very confusing...

My mother is an 0 negative as well. She was addicted to bread all her life...had to have the best french bread or whatever everyday. She has alzhiemers now. Since 3 months ago I'm in charge of what she eats....no bread, no dairy. Ezekial bread is allowed...found in freezer section of most stores.

I can't remember the scientific explaination...but there is a lectin in bread which attaches to the blood in the gut and makes it sticky..digestion becomes poor and then toxins escape through the blood brain barrier or something like that.....????

Like every diet that asks people to avoid certain things, it is simply removing certain aggravating factors. There is no cure going on. If you get burned easily in the sun, then staying inside will stop it from happening, but it does not cure the tendency.

A person who is healthy can eat many "bad" things for them with minor effects, if any effects at all. Treatment, and ultimately cure (if we ever really get there), should reduce or eliminate your sensitivity to certain foods, and lift your energy and mood etc.

My experience with patients that learned to avoid certain foods, is that over time they become even more sensitive to them. Is this a sort of dietary suppression then?

------------------
David Kempson
Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine
Member A.H.A(Australia)

Hi David, all,

Yes, I would tend to agree with you about the concept of suppression of a disease via dietary change--I think this is rampant in North America where the "fat" issue is just such a big moneymaker, and the pressure to always be thin--fat is much more pathologized than even cancer or AIDS--is so great. I've thought about this for a long, long time and wondered why the discussion doesn't come up more often in homeopathy.

I can certainly see suppression in cases where those who are "overweight" are forced into dietary restricitons (eg. putting someone who "needs" to lose 40 lbs on a diet where they only consume 500-1800 calories a day, as most "weight loss" businesses and doctors advise) and told that their weight is an issue around Willpower (which homeopaths must, by their training, find quite interesting all together)--not health! The outcome is usually quite disastrous in terms of what the diet does to the metabolic pace of the body, (often) adrenal exhaustion, and, ultimately, the patients' mental/emotional state when their new physical limitations inevitably lead to weight gain all over again. I have to conclude--perhaps in a flawed way--that diets are at best a palliation of the patient's state; and at worst, a grave suppression. Certainly, anyone who has had to endure an "elimination" process diet to live without allergic complaint is no less dis-eased if they stick to their diet and avoid the foods which set off his/her susceptibility. What usually happens is that a new sensitivity will surface and the number of foods on the acceptable list will keep dwindling! Yet, with homeopathic treatment, exactly the opposite takes place.

Yes, its true, any dietary change which is quite extreme usually brings about a feeling of great improvement--temporarily... but a real change or cure on a much deeper level will act to balance the body permanently, in a way that no diet can. Then, food choices would be more easily accomodated by the body; weight gain/loss would stabilize, and optimum physical and mental/emotional health would be the result. Can't prove it in the allopathical way--but I must say that this has been what I have learned through observation. It just seems to make sense to me that using nutrition as a treatment modality can often have the same effect of allopathic treatment--suppression.

Divina

[deleted post]

[This message has been edited by CRA (edited 27 February 2001).]

Well, to the nay-sayers I say read up my dear friends!

I will say here that I found after eliminating dairy from my diet for three months, I can tolerate it much better. (I did this three years ago)

Same happened with the wheat. I used to suffer from 'ho-hum disease'. Where I felt mildly depressed.... that is gone since minimising wheat.

Notice I say minimising, not eliminating. With three small children it is hard to live in a bubble. An O should not be drinking three glasses of milk a day, as the US food experts would have us think.

I don't think that one can abuse themselves with bad food and still be healthy because they have a properly prescribed homeopathic remedy. Sugar is still bad. Wheat should not be consumed at every meal, no matter what your blood type.

I have lost eighteen pounds since September and I have been able to keep that off painlessly. I am hoping that once the weather breaks and I can get out and walk, another 10 or so pound will melt away.

In any case, Peter D'Adamo's book is an excellent resource. I have known many who started eating one thing or another because they thought it was good for them and wondered why they did not feel better for it. Come to find out, it was an avoid for their specific blood type.

Okay, I will stop rambling.

Hi,

Yes, I've read D'Adamo's book and studied naturopathic nutrition as part of my training to become a homeopath. It is a very informative book and it does offer some excellent suggestions for beneficial, nutrient rich foods--but I particularly found it fascinating to think of homeopathic remedy pictures which would often fit into the "blood type" group depictions. For example, we can see a good deal of the psoric remedies in the Type "O" descriptions--hypoglycemia, hypothyroid conditions. Remedies like phosphorus, natrum muriaticum, and calc carb come to mind readily in the depictions D'Adamo writes of people whose blood lacks clotting agents, who need a great deal of physical exercise and thyroid stimulants like iodine. All this does is confirm, for me, that a well chosen remedy would actually strengthen any blood type so that the susceptibility to certain illnesses that D'Adamo relates to blood type could be lessened all together. This would happen very deeply in the economy of the body, making the necessity to be so conscious about food choices less pressing.

Certainly, the diet could work effectively--but there are a few things to keep in mind when you consider nutrition in our culture. One of them is that nutrition and dieting is BIG BUSINESS--rivalled really only by pharmaceuticals, I think--so we are confronted with new and fabulous diets every few months...and typically whent the "latest" diet takes the media spotlight it always does so by "pointing out" why the other diets aren't effective. Lately, a handful of diets spring to mind--Fit for Life, for example, or the infamous "Zone" diet by Barry Sears (which is really a re-hash of Dr. Atkins' diet from the 70's) and now D'Adamo's diet. I think they are all useful in one way or another, and they could apply to someone very well (but not everyone). And, ultimately, dietary modification is not a cure...just (at best--if the patient is 100% healthy) a palliation of a condition perceived to be "excess" weight. At worst, I'll say it again because it is very important, it can actually remove an important symptom by suppressing it. I would definitely go as far as to say that in our culture, those who are considered "fat" are considered unhealthy because of the fat. True, men suffer from being "overweight" by 15 pounds or more--but women do not. So, other than the great fear people have of fat, and the great bias against the fat, the only "unhealthy" thing about it is that these manufactured attitudes will make the heavier people among us targets for derision.

Mamma, I am glad that you have found a very safe diet to use to your advantage, as a stepping stone to making some lifestyle changes which will be supportive of your health in the future. But I know that a homeopathic remedy would make your overall health much stronger so that you would not have to face many of the possible ailments D'Adamo describes. That is no reason to cut out the diet--just a reminder to consider it some good advice to help you change. Not a cure.

Divina

Diet isn't a cure, but as it says in the org. it can be a bar to cure.

Hi all,
May I add my two cents worth here. It takes 4 generations to change a pattern, be it habitual ones like addictions (alcohol for example) or dietary tolerances. I am adhering to the Type O diet and the whole family is too. (all o's) However, I have Swiss ancestry back to 1251 on my fathers side and northeastern German ancestry on my mothers side The Swiss ancestors were the poor folks who had to eat a lot of dairy and didn't get much meat. The German ancestors were wheat and rye farmers and horse ranchers for generations. I tolerate dairy and wheat way better than my husband who is of Jewish ancestry and lactose intolerant. Interestingly enough, my daughter breaks out in her face when eating American cheeses and tolerates the Swiss imports like Gruyere and Emmenthaler very well. In fact, my mucus membranes dry out completely (to the point of bleeding) when I go without dairy for too long (like over 2 weeks). I do agree with the Type O philosophy, but want to add certain heritage to the picture.
Did anyone else discover such connections ?
Claudia

Eat Right for Your Type has been around since 1996. Peter D'Adamo added to work that his father had worked on earlier.

True, homeopathy can help anyone's situation. But poor diet will create more dis-ease.

Claudia, I think your claims are totally correct. Your poor husband. He's not the only one from Jewish descent that can't tolerate dairy.

I am from a line of dairy farmers. Perhaps that's why I can tolerate dairy better than some. I can't have too much, but enough to make life livable.