Many years ago, when I was wandering around from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong with me, I happened to visit one of the Dr. D’Adamos (there is more than one Dr. D’Adamo pushing the blood type theories) at the suggestion of my then yoga instructor, who I liked a lot. That’s probably why I followed up on her suggestion. She seemed to know a lot about health and a lot of doctors didn’t seem to know anything at all about my health in general and my many physical complaints in particular. Plus, his office was not very far from my home.
The Dr. D’Adamo I saw said I had Type O blood and therefore I should eat meat. I was getting desperate, so I did begin to eat a lot of meat. At that point, I was avoiding a lot of food items thinking they made me ill, so the meat I ate was probably plain and therefore gluten free.
But I didn’t get any better because what I really had was celiac disease. Dr. D’Adamo did not advance my health one bit. In fact, he set me back while I experimented with the idea that eating meat would make me better.
The blood type theory arises every few years or so but to be honest, I don’t think it ever pans out in any helpful way. I vaguely remember a quote we had in one issue when a reader wrote in asking about the Blood Type theories. The doctor said (and I am paraphrasing from memory), if that were true, meaning blood type can guide treatment, then wouldn’t we all be much healthier than we are today?
I have been diagnosed with celiac disease for 20 years. I will agree that there are still, in 2010, medical doctors who don’t know squat about celiac disease. But I do know that theories I might term “outré” can delay a celiac disease diagnosis.
Certainly Dr. D’Adamo did me no good and some harm while I toyed with his theories. So I take issue with the idea that knowing your blood type will help you manage your gluten-free life. Frankly I don’t think it will do you any good at all.
Ann
2 comments:
Hi there,
thanks for your post..very interesting.
I had a couple of family members who jumped on the blood type bandwagon and they were told they were both type b blood, their blood had toxic elements etc and were both put on wheat free, dairy free diets. Anyways, I decided to do some research to find out if there was any actual research out there proving any benefits from this blood type diet and found none. Also I found out that according to D'adamo and his theory ...it would seem that we should all be stroking at the age of 30 for those of us not on the diet??? Anyways, my point is that when I looked up the diet, I couldnt find any scientific evidence showing that it works. Yet its interesting to see how many people 'jump the wagon' with little or no research.
shell :)
www.glutenfreenotebook.com
interesting. i wondered if blood type really had anything to do with the celiac thing. yeah i would have to agree with you the doctor issue because no one had a clue what is wrong with me. sadly doctors say that i had it since i was little and a cause of that was type 1 diabetes. so now i have to things to deal with. i definitely notice a difference though if i eat gluten and when i don't. my blood sugars definitely spiral out of control when i do get gluten. I have had celiac disease 9 years now. it's nice to know that there is others i can talk to it about. thanks for the blog.
Katherine
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