Blood Group Diet

The blood group diet is said to have originated from two American Naturopaths, Dr James D'Adamo, and his son Dr Peter D'Adamo, who believe that your blood group type is the key to how you burn your calories, which foods you should eat and how you would benefit from certain types of exercise.

They recommend that eating to suit your blood group may, help you to lose weight, help you fight disease, boost your immune system and slow down the ageing process.

It is believed that a chemical reaction occurs between your blood and foods as they are digested. Lectins, a diverse and abundant protein found in food, may be incompatible with your blood group and adverse side effects may occur. The avoidance of these Lectins which can agglutinate (adhere or stick to one another) can be important if your particular cells-determined by your blood type,may react with them.

There are 4 blood types: A, AB, B, and O

Blood Type O

The O blood type was the first blood type to evolve from the hunter-gatherer era around 50,000 BC. Here the diet was high in red meat and virtually void of grains and dairy. The type-O thrives on a meat-eating diet. As the diet is high in animal protein, the type-O requires intense physical exercise to help burn off the meat.

Type-Os are prone to digestive disorders resulting from over-secretion of stomach acid. They can also be more susceptible to arthritis and thyroid disease due to overactive or hyper -immune system.

Wheat and dairy also promote inflammation in this blood type which can trigger an imbalance in the immune system.

Blood type O individuals can gain a significant amount of weight following a high carbohydrate diet, as their bodies cannot properly metabolize these foods.

Blood Type A

Type-A blood group formed when man began to develop an agricultural lifestyle between 25,000 and 15,000 B.C. People with blood type-A do best on a vegetarian diet for weight loss especially the macrobiotic diet.

The type-A individual hardly produces much hydrochloric acid and therefore does poorly on meat and dairy diets such as the Atkins Diet.

Type-As are generally more prone to cancer, diabetes and heart disease, if they do not take charge of their health. The gene for alcoholism is also found in type-As.

Blood Type B

Type B also evolved from the intermingling of blood type O with the blood type A. This occurred between 15,000 and 10,000 B.C due to man traveling further.

As a result, the type-B individual does best on a dairy diet with some meat (no chicken) and few grains.

The type-Bs suffer from the highest incidence of bladder and urinary tract infections. They are also prone to viral diseases when their immune system is compromised.

Since B blood types can metabolize dairy products and most foods, they will usually lose weight effortlessly as long as peanuts, corn, wheat, and lentils are eliminated from the diet.

Blood Type AB

The rarest and newest blood type to evolve (1500 years old) was the AB blood type. This blood type is the most well adapted to a moderate diet. The type-AB individual benefits from both the A and B type diets.

Meat is not as well digested as seafood, dairy, wheat-free grains and soy foods.

The type-ABs are prone to either diseases encountered by the Type-As or the type-Bs. By undergoing further metabolic typing, it can be determined which diseases they are most likely to be vulnerable.

For weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight, AB's do best on seafood, dairy, nuts and grains.