EST Alternative Health BLOG

Inflamation Free Diet Plan

‘The Inflammation Free Diet Plan: The Scientific way to Lose Weight, Banish Pain, Prevent Disease and Slow Aging’
by Monica Reinagel & Julius Torelli, MD
Published by McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 2006
ISBN: 0-07-146471-9

Reviewed by Don Gillmore, LMT

If you have read my earlier book reviews concerning the Blood Type diet work of Dr. Peter D’Adamo, you know that I highly recommend his books and his theory of right diet by blood type.  Well, I am not abandoning his theory by recommending this book by Monica Reinagel.  It is another layer of improving your health through understanding how foods influence your ability to loose weight, prevent disease and promote healthy aging.  Reinagel explains what systemic inflammation is, how it may exacerbate daily pain and how chronic inflammation may lead to serious chronic conditions such as Heart Disease, Alzheimer’s, Cancer, Obesity, Diabetes, Autoimmune disease, Asthma, Allergies, Arthritis & Prostate disease.  Then she discusses how certain foods encourage systemic inflammation and how to balance those foods with others that reduce the inflammation response of our bodies using the ‘inflammation index’ for each food. 

The bottom line here is that although certain foods do increase inflammation in your body (high inflammation index), they should be balanced by other foods that are more neutral or even tend to reduce inflammation (low inflammation index).   She provides tables with foods listed alphabetically and separately by category listing portion size and ‘inflammation index’.  She also provides some healthy, low inflammation index recipes you can use.

This book presents extremely useful information in a straight forward manner that makes it easier to use.  Do yourself a favor and find out your blood type.  Read ‘Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type’ & ‘Live Right 4 Your Blood Type’.  Then read this book.  Incorporate the information in all three of these books into your daily life. This is something you can do for yourself, without doctors or pharmaceutical drugs.

Don Gillmore, Licensed Massage Therapist(15 yrs), B.S.- Life Sciences

Live Right 4 Your Type: The individualized Prescription for Maximising Health, Metabolism, and Vitality in Every Stage of Your Life
by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo with Catherine Whitney,
G.P. Putnum’s Sons, New York, NY, 2001. ISBN 0-399-14673-3.
Reviewed by Don Gillmore, Licensed Massage Therapist

Everything I said in an earlier post about Dr. D’Adamo’s first book Eat Right 4 Your Type applies here.  Dr. D’Adamo is a second generation Naturopathic physician and in his first book he presented the case that there are four broadly defined diets, exercise regimens, and personalities, which correlate to the four major human blood types of Group O, A, B & AB. This book is the result of further in-depth study of the relationship between food, personality, and health risks to the four major blood groups and sub-types such as secreator vs. non-secretor and Lewis factor.  Where applicable, he also refines his dietary advice by stressing differences for young children, older children and seniors from the general advice for that blood group.

To use the refined information in this book effectively, it is important to determine one’s secretor status. This is especially true if the basic dietary advice for your blood type isn’t working for you or you already have serious health issues. He explains that secretor status can require an expensive lab test or be done “quick & dirty” with a test for your Lewis group when your basic blood type is determined.  This is not 100% accurate, but it does have a high probability of correlation to secretor status.  If you don’t know your blood type or secretor status, Dr. D’Adamo offers kits for home blood type testing & secretor saliva swab kits at his internet store site.

The Eat Right & Live Right diet books are the first dietary advice that makes sense to me. I have never bought the ‘One Vegetarian Diet’ fits all idea.  I have recommended this book to several friends.  Many have lost weight without restricting calories. Some have cleared up life-long digestive system symptoms.  An ongoing informal survey of my massage clients suggests that the broad guidelines outlined by Dr. D’Adamo are valid.  It isn’t absolutely necessary to read the Ear Right book before you read this one, but I think it makes sense to do so as it lays down the philosophical as well as scientific basis for this dietary approach. I highly recommend this book.

Don

Eat Right 4 Your Type: The individualized diet solution to staying healthy,
living longer & achieving your ideal weight
by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo with Catherine Whitney,
G.P. Putnum’s Sons, New York, NY, 1996. ISBN 0-399-14255-X.
Reviewed by Don Gillmore, Licensed Massage Therapist

Dr. D’Adamo, ND really stirred up a storm in the natural healing community when he wrote this book.  Not only did he have the temerity to suggest that a vegetarian diet was not the only healthy diet, he went on to say that depending on your blood type, protein or dairy may actually optimize your metabolism!  It is bad enough when MDs ( Allopathic physicians, who are not trusted by true believers in natural healing) make such statements, but Dr. D’Adamo is a second generation Naturopathic physician.  Actually he presents the case that there are four broadly defined diets, exercise regimens, and personalities which correlate to the four major human blood types of Group O, A, B & AB with variations based on RH factor (+ or -) and MN Group.

Where did he get such ideas and what does he base them on?  Apparently his father, Dr. James D’Adamo, N.D. began to suspect a correlation between blood types and how his patients responded to a strict vegetarian diet in the late 1950s.  He kept careful notes which supported his theory, but it took another generation and the interest of cancer researchers in food lectins to provide the proof of his theory.  Dr. P.J. D’Adamo also provides a fascinating anthropological explanation for this correlation based on what human beings were eating and how we were gathering our food at the time the various blood types evolved.  I have taken several college level courses in anatomy, physiology, genetics and developmental anatomy, yet Dr. D’Adamo was the first to tell me when the various blood types evolved!  Did you know for instance, that the AB blood type didn’t exist a little over 1,000 years ago?  The author lays out four diets based on your basic blood type with foods that are either highly beneficial, neutral or to be avoided.  Even if you should be a vegetarian there are probably certain fruits, nuts, and vegetables you should avoid.  Read this book and find out why he recommends that Bs avoid chicken.

He admits that individual diet is more complex than that and if you really want to know you need a comprehensive test.  This is the first diet book that makes sense to me. I have never bought the ‘One Vegetarian Diet’ fits all idea.  I have recommended this book to several friends.  Many have lost weight without restricting calories.  An ongoing informal survey of my massage clients suggests that the broad guidelines outlined by Dr. D’Adamo are valid.  I highly recommend this book.