Metabolic Healing

Greetings from the mostly cheese-less, carb-free world.  I have been here a while and I am still alive.  The Blood Type Diet has entered my life.  Here’s how it happened.  In reference to my last post, it was after over a month of gastrointestinal discomfort after a stomach flu that I happened to see a great Chiropractor.  She uses muscle testing and a form of manipulation so gentle you’d think she was just touching your shoulder.  My hips evened out in one visit.  I was with her so far!  But then she recognized my GI distress as inflammation and advised trying the Blood Type Diet.  As a type O who has been basically carb-free for a little over a year now, the remaining hurdle was giving up dairy.  Friends, you know that I love Nourishing Traditions and was reveling in my dairy over the past year or so.  I was so happy to tolerate it, as I had been intolerant for about 7 years previous.  In my mind I always suspected it was too good to be true.  Perhaps I had reduced the overall inflammation load in the short-term by giving up grains, so that the dairy was OK for a while.  But it certainly caught up with me.  I had reached critical mass once again.  Thinking about it, I wondered if I could have a new benchmark for feeling good if I didn’t just manage my inflammation but got serious about avoiding all causes.  I decided it was worth a shot.  I can tell you that I do feel better so far.

Supposedly, goat cheese, feta, and mozzarella are OK for my diet, so I haven’t entirely given up cheese.  I have even tried goat yogurt, which is OK, but not an everyday staple.    I have lost some weight, of course, but it is too soon to tell if that is permanent or just temporary due to the flu and its aftermath.  The struggle I still have is balancing carbs with enough fat to keep the symptoms of insulin resistance  under control.  I used to eat fruit with cream, ricotta or some form of dairy.  Goat cheese is fine, but it doesn’t go with fruit in the same way.  And peanuts and coconut are on my “avoid” list.  So now when I have fruit, I may get a little too manycarbs hitting my bloodstream.  I am trying to make up the difference with loose almonds and almond butter.  My strategy still needs work.  I can tell you I have never looked at a stick of butter before with quite the same urge to eat it.  And I do cut off a slice as if it were cheese now and then.

Yes, I can see there are a lot of things in the Blood Type Diet that I question.  The Dr.’s stance on saturated fats like coconut oil being one.  And I wonder if he has investigated what happens to the proteins in certain foods when they are naturally fermented.  Do they interact differently with the blood proteins than the original food? 

What I have taken away from reading the book are two valuable points.  1) There are a host of other negative effects of eating things that don’t agree with your body besides upsetting your digestion.  They range from skin conditions, muscle fatigue, to brain fog.  If wheat acts as a poison in your system, you might not immediately have a stomach ache but you could eventually disrupt your insulin response, for example.  2)  Why should we expect that there is one ideal diet for everybody?  Humans evolved over time and geography, in response to different lifestyles.  The dawn of agriculture, with grains and animals was relatively recent so that some groups could have adapted while others carry metabolisms that are suited to a pre-agricultural diet.  It sounds reasonable to me.  The “why” of things has always been fascinating to me, but life on this earth is brief.  Ultimately, I’d rather find a way to eat that works for me than to try to be right about how everybody should eat.  I will keep you posted.

About the Author...

Audrey's first love is massage. She is currently a student of energy work but is always up for a new challenge on "earth school." Audrey works part-time in the food and wine industry and is in the process of re-evaluating her relationship to food. She strives, above all, to be authentic as she finds her own way to health.