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Archive for the ‘Eat Right for Your Blood Type’ Category

Multiple antigens make Type ABs sometimes A-like with weak stomach acid, and sometimes B-like with genetically programmed for the consumption of meats. Type AB do best when their muscle tissues are slightly alkaline. Type ABs can’t metabolize meat efficiently because of low stomach acid, so it is important to watch the portion size and frequency. Chicken has lectin that irritates the blood and digestive tracts of Type ABs also. Tofu is a good protein supplements for Type ABs. Nuts, seeds, beans and legumes present a mixed picture for Type ABs. Eat nuts and seeds in small amounts and with caution.

Type ABs can tolerate dairy foods fairly well. But watch out for excessive mucus production.

Generally Type ABs do well on grains, even wheat, but keep in mind that the inner kernel of the wheat grain is highly acid forming in the muscle for Type ABs. Type AB benefits from a diet rich in rice rather than pasta.

Type ABs has a weaker immune system, so you will benefit from the vegetables, which are high in phytocheicals and the more alkaline fruits, which can help to balance the grains that are acid forming in the muscle tissues. Tomatoes do not impose any ill effects on Type ABs.

Type AB should begin each day by drinking a glass of warm water with the freshly squeezed juice of half a lemon to cleanse the system of mucus accumulated while sleeping.

The sturdy and alert Type Bs are usually able to resist many of the most severe diseases common to modern life, such as heart disease and cancer. In fact, a Type B who carefully follows the recommended diet can often bypass severe disease and live a long and healthy life. Type Bs are more prone to immune-system disorders such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

The Type B Diet is balance and wholesome, including a wide variety of foods.

For Type Bs, the biggest factors in weight gain are corn, buckwheat, lentils, peanuts and sesame seeds. These foods have different lectin that affect the efficiency of the metabolic process, resulting in fatigue, fluid retention, and hypoglycemia. The gluten lectin in wheat germ and whole wheat products also adds to the problems cause by other metabolism-slowing foods.

It is important to leave off chicken for Type Bs. Chicken contains a Blood Type B agglutinating lectin in its muscle tissue, which attack the bloodstream and potentially lead to strokes and immune disorders. Type Bs thrive on deep-ocean fish, but should avoid all shellfish. The shellfish contain lectins that are disruptive to the Type B system.

Type B is the only blood type that can fully enjoy a variety of dairy foods. Most nuts and seeds (especially peanuts, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds) are not advised for Type Bs., they contain lectins that interfere with Type B insulin production.

Wheat is not tolerated well by most Type Bs. They contain a lectin that reuce insulin efficiency and failure to stimulate fat “burning”. Rye contains a lectin that settles in the vascular system, causing blood disorders and potentially strokes. Corn and buckwheat are major factors in Type B weight gain, they contribute to a sluggish metabolism, insulin irregularity, fluid retention, and fatigue.

Eliminate tomatoes completely from Type B diet. It has lectins that irritate the stomach lining. Fruits and vegetables are generally well tolerated and should be taken generously.

Type As flourish on vegetarian diets Type As are predisposed to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. It is particularly important for sensitive Type As to get their foods in as natural a state as possible: fresh, pure, and organic. When you get on the Type A Diet, you will naturally be thinner. If you are accustomed to eating meat, you’ll lose weight rather rapidly in the beginning as you eliminate the toxic foods from your diet. And when you follow the Type diet, you can supercharge your immune system and potentially short-circuit the development of life-threatening diseases.

When Type As eat meat, they experience sluggishness. Type As have low stomach-acid content, therefore they have a hard time digesting meat. Since Type As eat very little animal protein, nuts and seeds supply an important protein component. Type As also thrive on the vegetable proteins found in beans and legumes, except those mentioned for the “Avoid” list. These beans can cause a decrease in insulin production, which may cause obesity and diabetes. Tofu should be a staple in the Type A Diet.

Dairy foods are also poorly digested by Type As, and can cause metabolic slowdown. Type As can tolerate small amounts of fermented dairy products such as yogurt, kefir, nonfat sour cream, and cultured dairy products.

Vegetables are vital to the Type A Diet, providing minerals, enzymes and antioxidants. Type A are very sensitive to the lectins in potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, cabbage, tomatoes and peppers. They aggravate the delicate stomach of Type A. Type A should eat more fruits that are alkaline, avoid mangoes, papaya and oranges for they are not good for your digestive tract.

Blood Type Diet – Type O

Type Os thrive on intense physical exercise and animal protein. Unlike the other blood types, Type Os muscle tissue should be slightly on the acid side. Type Os can efficiently digest and metabolize meat because they tend to have high stomach-acid content. The success of the Type O Diet depends on the use of lean, chemical-free meats, poultry, and fish. Type Os don’t find dairy products and grains quite as user friendly as do most of the other blood types.

The initial weight loss on the Type O Diet is by restricting consumption of grains, breads, legumes, and beans. The leading factor in weight gain for Type Os is the gluten found in wheat germ and whole wheat products, which interferes with insulin efficiency and slow down metabolic rate. Another factor that contribute to weight gain is certain beans and legumes (lentils and kidney beans) contain lectins that deposit in the muscle tissues making them less “charged” for physical activity. The third factor in Type O weight gain is that Type Os have a tendency to have low levels of thyroid hormone or unstable thyroid functions, which also cause metabolic problems. Therefore it is good to avoid food that inhibits thyroid hormone (cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, mustard green) but increase hormone production (kelp, seafood, iodized salt).

Several classes of vegetables can cause big problems for Type Os, such as the Brassica family (cabbage, cauliflower, etc.) can inhibit the thyroid function. Eat more vegetables that are high in Vitamin K, which helps the clotting factor which is weak in Type Os. The nightshade vegetables can cause lectin deposit in the tissue surrounding the joints.

Because of the high acidity stomach, Type Os should eat fruits of alkaline nature such as berries and plums..

Type Os should severely restrict the use of dairy products. Their system is not designed for the proper metabolism. If you are a Type O of African ancestry, you should eliminate dairy foods and eggs altogether.

This article is a summary of D’Adamo theory about the relationship between blood type and the things you eat.

Dr D’Adamo believes that because blood types evolved at different times throughout history, we should eat a diet based on the types of foods our ancestors typically ate at the time when our blood type was first recognized!

When did the blood types evolve?

Blood Group O was the first blood type to be identified, although how we know this is anyone’s guess – we’re talking about our hunter-gatherer ancestors who were around in 50,000 B.C! Nevertheless, Dr D’Adamo believes because our type O ancestors survived and thrived on a high-protein, meat-based diet, that’s the type of diet blood group Os should follow in the 21st century.

Next came the emergence of blood type A, sometime around 15,000 B.C! By this time, our ancestors’ hunter-gathering days were over and instead they started to settle into farming-type communities. The creation of blood type A around this time meant our ancestors did well on a vegetarian-based diet. And again, Dr D’Adamo recommends that blood group A’s should today follow a veggie diet.

Blood type B supposedly evolved around 10,000 B.C thanks to our nomadic ancestors. They left their farms and started wandering the land, constantly moving from place to place. Consequently, Dr D’Adamo’s theory goes, blood group B’s today can get away with eating a varied diet that consists of most foods including meat, dairy, grains and vegetables.

Finally, came blood type AB, which evolved just 1,000 years ago! Dr D’Adamo thinks this blood type helped our ancestors make the transition to modern times. Meaning that people with blood group AB can eat a mixture of the foods suitable for both blood group A and blood group B.

What you can and can’t eat?

Blood type O

Blood type A

Blood type B

Blood type AB

Now The Controversy

1. Evolution

   The blood type diet hypothesis proposes that ABO type determines the individual’s diet as each type evolved in response to available food sources; therefore the O type is a hunter-gatherer, the A type is dependent on cultivated crops, etc. This premise states that ABO type A appeared between 15,000-25,000 years ago, type B appeared 10,000-15,000 years ago, and type AB appeared only 1000-1200 years ago.

   FACT:All human ABO blood types existed as of several million years ago. From the time of the earliest humans, all ABO types existed as hunter-gatherers until the advent of agriculture. The earliest possible date for agricultural practices is 10000 BC (beginning of the Holocene era), from current research. Through core samplings of ice and the ocean it has been shown that the climate could not have supported agriculture earlier than this date. The climate was too variable during the last ice age, with dramatic changes in as short a time period as a decade, there was a scarcity of free water for irrigation, and atmospheric CO2 levels were very low.

   Agriculture Origins

   Interestingly enough, the A blood type appears to be the original and oldest human type, not O. This information has been available from microbiological research and analysis of DNA since 1990. The first blood type diet book, “Eat Right 4 Your Type”, published in 1996, did not make use of current research, but instead used earlier works to establish its anthropological premise that O’s should be on a meat-based diet as they were the original hunter-gatherers. In any case, since all ABO types existed and lived on the hunter-gatherer diet much earlier than the development of agriculture, there is no supportable evidence to have certain groups as vegetarian and others as meat-eaters based on emergence of ABO type.

   Yamamoto F, Clausen H, White T, Marken J, Hakomori S, Molecular genetic basis of the histo-blood group ABO system, Nature 1990 May 17;345(6272):229-33

   Naruya Saitou and Fumi-ichiro Yamamoto, Evolution of Primate ABO Blood Group Genes and Their Homologous Genes, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 14(4):399-411, 1997.

2. Lectin

   The blood type diet hypothesis proposes that lectins in foods are specific to ABO blood types, and that different blood type people should eat different diets.

   1. What is a lectin?
      
      FACT: It’s a protein that binds to sugars on sugar containing proteins (or glycoproteins). Glycoproteins tend to be associated with cell surfaces, or cell membranes. Lectins recognize specific sugars on cell surfaces, and if they match, bind to that particular sugar. Agglutination caused by lectins is inhibited by a specific sugar. This is what distinguishes lectins from antigens which are produced by all mammals. Some lectins can identify blood cells and can cause cell division in white blood cells.
      Lectins are present in nearly every organism, plant or animal, including humans-we produce lectins too.
   2. Which lectins react with, or agglutinate human blood cells?

      FACT: Surprisingly few lectins are blood type specific. Surprisingly fewer of those that are blood type specific are found in foods we eat. The vast majority of lectins in foods agglutinate all or no ABO types.

      This chart shows many foods, herbs which have lectin activity towards the human ABO blood group, showing the reactions to each blood type.
      Wheat germ agglutinin (wheat germ lectin) for instance, will agglutinate all human and animal red blood cells. It is not specific to only one ABO type. Soybean lectin is the same, it agglutinates all human ABO blood types and several animal species blood as well. So does rye lectin, so does chickpea lectin…

      Lectins can, and do, attach to antigens in the gut, primarily in the small intestine, and it does occur throughout the entire digestive system, from the oral cavity all the way to the ‘end of the line.’ Since the vast majority of lectins are NOT ABO specific, they are attaching to something other than your ABO antigens. And what they are attaching to is pretty species specific throughout humans-basic sugars, which are found in many antigens throughout your body, and even in the mucin lining your digestive tract….in other words, we can all eat basically the same, or a similar diet as far as regards lectins.

      Read what Dr. Arpad Pusztai, a famous lectin researcher, has to say about ABO blood type type specific lectins

   3. Just because a given food agglutinates my blood, does that necessarily make it a bad thing?

      FACT: If most food lectins agglutinate all or no blood types, why would anyone be able to eat tomatoes, or soybeans, or any of many different foods under this diet plan? Yet the blood type diet is set up that way, supposedly because the lectins are going to do bad things in your body. Since lectins are in almost everything, if you wanted to totally avoid all lectins there would not be much left to eat. As humans have been ingesting lectins since the beginning of their existence, it’s hard to blame all the problems on foods which contain them.

      Take Wheat germ lectin, for instance. There is no plausible reason to exclude a food like ‘wheat germ’ from the diet of all humans except AB Lewis type secretors (which are less than 4% of the general population) based on lectin attachment (as directed in the second blood type diet book, “Live Right 4 Your Type”). The right reasons for excluding wheat from a human diet would be based on something else, such as allergy to wheat (less than 2% of the adult population, approximately 4% of the child population), or Celiac Disease (a genetic disorder which affects a tiny segment, 0.3% of the population… and the classic presentation of Celiac Disease is chronic diarrhea, with abdominal bloating, sometimes pain, weight loss, iron deficiency and other evidence of nutrient malabsorption).

      Intolerance or sensitivity to wheat has received much attention from the media recently. Perhaps as a direct result the number of people self-reporting an allergy or intolerance to wheat is increasing dramatically. However, there is no evidence that the true prevalence of wheat intolerance is on the increase and self-diagnosis or a flawed diagnosis from an unqualified alternative therapist can often do more harm than good, particularly if it results in poorer nutrition.
      Wheat has also been linked with gastrointestinal symptoms (people experiencing these symptoms are likely to have other intolerances such as a reaction to cows’ milk protein), asthma, urticaria (skin rash) and eczema. There is no evidence to show wheat is a causal agent in such conditions. In some cases, a psychological aversion to wheat may be responsible for the reported symptoms. Such an aversion can have a powerful impact on both perceived symptoms and perceived relief of symptoms when wheat is avoided.??

      WHEAT INTOLERANCE: WHAT’S THE REAL STORY?
      

3. What about the digestive differences between the various ABO types?

   FACT: There are many ways scientific information can be presented, giving the impression that a certain premise is totally supported, when it may not be at all. For instance, here is some information on IAP (intestinal alkaline phosphatase) which is proposed as the reason As cannot digest foods as well as Os or Bs. The level of IAP as measured in the blood, therefore called “serum level of IAP” shows that Os and Bs do achieve higher levels, but then here is the trick–what we have not been told is that in the intestines, where digestion takes place, the amount of IAP is pretty much the same for each ABO type. From Human Blood Cells: Consequences of Genetic Polymorphisms and Variations. London: Imperial College Press, 2000.

   “Alkaline phosphatases are a group of (iso)enzymes that are present in many human tissues…. Serum alkaline phosphatase is derived from the liver, bone and the intestine. Intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP), found in all individuals, is believed to be required for the normal resorption of fat, particularly after a fatty meal (containing long chain fatty acids). This isoenzyme is not known as a serum marker for any pathological condition….. The IAP response to fat ingestion is ABO- and secretor status-dependent, with secretors of blood groups B and O having about five times more serum IAP than group A secretors or non-secretors of all groups, although they all have similar amounts of enzyme in the intestine.” p 49-50

4. With the Blood Type Diet, information is presented that due to A’s weak body systems, they live the shortest lives.  O’s on the other hand, live the longest, B’s & AB’s somewhere in between. Is this data true?

   FACT: No its not true. Actually, all the existing medical and scientific research has shown that ABO blood type has NOTHING TO DO WITH LONGEVITY OR LIFESPAN!

   For instance, there is a very large ongoing study of over 8000 men called the ‘Honolulu-Asia Aging Study’ where the researchers have followed these men for 30 years so far. They had full data on the men in the study including their blood types. Qwenfoundation contacted Dr. Lon White who was one of the researchers in this study (an epidemiologist) and requested ABO info from him in February of 2000. At that time, the men in the study were all 80 years old or more.  Dr. White responded that he had checked, and there was NO ASSOCIATION BETWEEN ABO TYPE AND LONGEVITY. There were still over 3000 surviving members, and their blood types were a match for the percentages of ABO types in the beginning of the study. In other words, it did not matter if you were an A or an O, or a B, survival chances were equal, and therefore dependent on factors other than ABO type.

   Then there is another interesting recent study, done in 2003 which examined centenarians in Italy. The result of this study was published and it shows that the percentage of O’s were equal to their percentage in the general world population, 43%.  The remaining 57% of centenarians were A’s, B’s and AB’s.  So another valid survey showing there is no truth to the claims that O’s live longer, and A’s, much shorter lives. Actually, this Italian study is quite appropriate in showing the lack of validity of the blood type diet.  Wheat pasta and tomatoes make up a daily part of the life in Italy, and are cited in the blood type diet as being two of the worst possible foods for A types, yet it did not kill them off early!

   You can access the full article by going thru the abstract at pubmed linked below:

   Von Willibrand factor in Italian centenarians.

Article Reference:  Owen Foundation