Even though Peter D’Adamo’s book on the blood type diet came out almost 20 years ago, patients still ask me if they should follow this diet for themselves.

I also have recently come to learn that one of my prominent medical doctor colleagues is recommending this diet to all his patients.

This is obviously still a subject people are talking about.

So, I decided to write this article so that my patients know my position on this diet, and hopefully see that there is no science to it.

When the Book Eat Right For Your Type first came out in 1996 I was attracted to the concept that our blood type might indicate how we should eat. This is based on the long-held assumption that different blood types have originated in different parts of the world over the eons of time. Therefore, the logic goes, you should eat the foods that were available in the part of the world where your blood type originated.

As I said, this idea was at first interesting to me. However, as I looked more closely at it, the logic of this made less and less sense. There are indeed hundreds of other markers on our red blood cells besides the simple ABO typing. This additional testing of markers is done in blood banks when a patient’s blood is “cross matched” with their donor’s-before it is infused- to make sure that the blood will not produce a reaction in the recipient.

Furthermore, when I looked at the diet that was recommended for my own blood type, it was a diet that I had rejected years before, as a diet that made me sick and get recurrent sinusitis.

Over the years, I have watched some of my patients try this diet. Most give it up after a few weeks as not being for them. I would estimate that between 5% and 10% of my patients who have tried the diet do find that it helps them. But I’m not sure if the benefit comes the food they are eating, or rather the food they have stopped eating, in order to accomplish the diet. In other words, for some people, stopping dairy, sugar, and eggs will lead to an improvement in their health. These people might attribute the benefit to following the blood type diet, rather than realizing that they were allergic or senstive to the sugar, dairy, and eggs.

I was very happy to find an article in the medical literature addressing the blood type diet. In this article, they searched over 1400 references and they concluded that “No evidence currently exists to validate the purported health benefits of blood type diets.”

Another article was also published looking at the blood type diet and cardio-metabolic risk factors and concluded that “the findings do not support the ‘Blood-Type’ diet hypothesis.”

And so in summary, the blood type diet book provided significant financial success for the publisher and the author. However, my own practice and the medical literature, shows that it provides no benefit to patients’ health.

I was recently delighted to see that my colleague and friend Michael Greger had put together all the data on the blood type diet, into one of his five-minute brilliant video summaries. You can watch it below.

In addition he wrote a summary article called “Blood Type Diet Perceived as “Crass Fraud”. You can read it here.

Drop me a note on Twitter or Facebook let me know if you’ve tried the blood type diet, and what your success has been. What are your thoughts about this diet?

Watch Dr Gregor’s excellent video here.

References:

Blood type diets lack supporting evidence: a systematic review.

ABO genotype, ‘blood-type’ diet and cardiometabolic risk factors.

Blood Type Diet Debunked

Image Credit: Zappy’s Technology Solution /flickr

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When the human genetic code was cracked about 10 years ago,it brought with it the expectation of immediate application to human disease. Pronouncements that there would soon be a cure for cancer and heart diseaes, now that we knew the genes causing them were everywhere.

Integrative doctors advised a cautionary approach to the expectation that one gene can cause disease. We reminded our patients that any given disease is not caused by one gene. That there is no such thing as a “cancer gene” or a “heart disease gene.” That was not explained to us by the researchers who cracked the genetic code.

Over the last 10 years, it has come to public knowledge that genes do not necessarily have to express themselves. Integrative doctors have brought to our patients’ attention that genes are turned on or off by our environment. Our environment includes the food we eat, the nutritional supplements we take, the thoughts we have, the exercise we do. The science studying how genes are impacted by outside environmental influences is called Epigenetics. Epi means “above the gene”, and reflects our recognition that many factors affect the expression of our genes.

As most of my readers and patients know, I wrote a book about vitamin D several years ago. Vitamin D is one of mother nature’s strongest epigenetic molecules. It is not really a vitamin at all, but a type of hormone. Vitamin D is known to talk to over 250 and some say over 1000 genes directly. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with over 17 types of cancer. Men with significant vitamin D deficiency have a 200% higher risk of heart attack than men with a normal vitamin D level. That is the power of epigenetics.

And so, in spite of our disappointment that one gene does not cause one disease, several new genetic tests are becoming available that have immediate clinical application to daily medical care. One of the most powerful of these applications is in the field of Pharmacogenetics.

[Read more…]

I am delighted to announce to my readers and patients that the world-famous Cleveland Clinic has opened a Center for Functional Medicine in Cleveland Ohio. My longtime friend and colleague Mark Hyman, M.D. is the director of the center. One of the patients who recently received tremendous benefit from the center, has already created an endowed chair for the center, which Mark Hyman sits in.

As most of my patients and readers know, functional medicine and integrative medicine are essentially synonymous.

The term functional medicine emphasizes that the goal of the physician is to restore proper organ function and a proper relationship of balance between all the organs in the body. This allows the patient to be brought back to health. As is commonly said functional medicine clinicians “think and link” instead of “naming and blaming”.

Remember that there is a weblike interaction between all the organs in the body. It is essential for a physician to look at the interactions between the different organ systems. Unfortunately, conventional medicine has broken organs into “silos”, where the doctor only knows about his or her silo. Attention is not paid to the interaction of that one organ system and the other systems of the body.

In creating this new Center, the Cleveland clinic is the first academic medical center in the United States to embrace functional medicine. Four research projects have already been started, comparing standard treatment for asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, type II diabetes, and migraine with functional medicine treatment. The results will be published in a major medical journal when the studies are finished. [Read more…]