Epilepsy And The Blood Type Diet :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Epilepsy And The Blood Type Diet Are people with certain blood types more susceptible to chronic seizures than others? Can a simple diet reverse this medical condition? And why didn't anybody think of this before? There's a myriad of fad diets out these days: Atkins, the fruit juice diet, Russian Air Force diet, and the Zone to name a few. However, the most recent craze is, "The Blood Type Diet", based on the book, Eat Right 4 Your Type by Doctor Peter D'Adamo. The diet focuses on an individual's genetic makeup (blood type) in determining which foods are best digested. D'Adamo heads up the Institute for Human Individuality (IfHi), which "seeks to foster research in the expanding area of human nutrigenomics. The science of nutrigenomics (naturopathic medicine) seeks to provide a molecular understanding for how common dietary chemicals affect health by altering the expression or structure of an individual's genetic makeup" (1). On the website, the "five basic tenets of nutrigenomics" are listed as: 1. Improper diets are risk factors for disease. 2. Dietary chemicals alter gene expression and/or change genome structure. 3. The degree to which diet influences the balance between healthy and disease states may depend on an individual's genetic makeup. 4. Some diet-regulated genes (and their normal, common variants) are likely to play a role in the onset, incidence, progression, and/or severity of chronic diseases. 5. "Intelligent nutrition" - that is, diets based upon genetics, nutritional requirements and status - prevents and mitigates chronic diseases. (1). The Blood Type Diet is founded upon the microscopic observation of how ABO types break down different foods, suggesting that one person's nourishment may be another's poison. The book examines the demographic distributions of different blood types, and proposes that "the variations, strengths and weaknesses of each blood group can be seen as part of humanity's continual process of acclimating to different environmental challenges" (2). D'Adamo asserts that blood groups "evolved as migratory mutations," with type O being the most "ancient" of the ABO group, and housing the largest population (40-45%), second to type A (35-40%), dwindling in B (4-11%), with the rarest being AB (0-2%). People with type O blood (hunter-gatherers) are encouraged to be carnivores, while type A's can survive solely as vegetarians. Explaining the origin and spread of blood type B, D'Adamo states, "Two basic blood group B population patterns emerged out of the Neolithic revolution in Asia: an agrarian, relati vely sedentary population located in the south and east, and the wandering nomadic societies of the north and west" (2).