Suzanne Graham

No matter how good the BTD is, it cannot cancel out the normal aging process. I see this in myself as I struggle to maintain my muscle tone in my 50s. I see it even more dramatically as my 93 year old mother tries to regain movement in her right side after her stroke.

DD does a morning Bible Study from a book by Sarah Young called Jesus Calling. The author quotes scripture passages, and then paraphrases as if Jesus were talking in first person. I’m conservative about how people translate the Word of God, and am normally suspicious of personalized translations. But DD sends me excerpts that mean a lot to her, and I have to admit that Sarah has done an excellent job in her book.

DD sent me an excerpt this morning with a note that it had depressed her. That is because she is 20 years old, and thinks that she will always have the beautiful body she has now. I read the same passage and am greatly encouraged. Life on earth is a prelude to a far greater life in Heaven with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A life where there is no more pain, no more sorrow, and no more aging.

I follow the BTD, NOT to live forever here on earth. Who would want to do that? I follow the BTD so that I can live the most energetic and productive life here that I can. But truly abundant life – that is still to come.

Here is the quote that depressed DD and energized me.

“I am your living God, far more abundantly alive than the most vivacious person you know. The human body is wonderfully crafted, but gravity and the evitable effects of aging weight it down. Even the most superb athlete cannot maintain his fitness over many decades. Lasting abundant life can be found in Me alone. Do not be anxious about the weakness of your body. Instead, view it as the prelude to My energy’s infusing into your being. As you identify more and more fully with Me, My Life becomes increasingly intertwined with yours. Though the process of again continues, inwardly you grow stronger with the passing years. Those who live close to Me develop an inner aliveness that makes them seem youthful in spite of their years. Let My Life shine through you, as you walk in the Light with Me.”

I was feeding my Mom her dinner in one of the common rooms and the television was on. I heard the word stroke, and started to pay attention. An ad was on, that listed risk factors for strokes: high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, obesity, and age. I looked at Mom and said, “Well, except for age, you didn’t have any of the risk factors. She grinned and shrugged her shoulders.

I have learned a little about stroke in the month since Mom’s event. First I went to the BTD Encyclopedia where I learned that there are two kinds of stroke - ischemic stroke when blood flow to the brain is impaired by the blockage like a blood clot and hemorrhagic stroke which is a rupture of a blood vessel in the brain. The Encyclopedia says that Type As have a higher risk for ischemic and Type Os have a higher risk for hemorrhagic.

I did a little more research on the internet and learned that 80 – 85% of strokes are ischemic. Family history is also a factor. Neither of Mom's parents ever had a stroke, though one of her sisters did.

In the hospital, after Mom was identified as a stroke victim, they immediately put her on aspirin and a blood thinning shot. She is Type O, and I wondered if that had been the right thing to do. I have since learned from her doctor at the Rehab Facility, that her blood work indicated that her clotting factors were out of balance. He tested her several times a week until he got the right levels of medication. He has not put her on blood pressure or cholesterol medication, so evidently those readings are still normal, as they were before the stroke.

Mom is a Type O, but evidently she had an ischemic stroke anyway. It makes me wonder why.

I remember when Hall of Fame Blogger Sharon had a stroke in 2007. She also had minimum risk factors, and she followed the BTD a lot closer than my Mom did. In one of her final blogs, she also wondered why.

Everybody has heard prune jokes. People snicker at the mention of prune juice. Referring to a recipe like Prune Whip will draw gales of laughter. Even a nationally advertised soda once became suspect because of a rumor that prune juice was an ingredient. It astounds me that people who pride themselves on speaking of sexual activity in the most graphic terms without a blush, act like adolescent boys when it comes to elimination.

What a shame that such a nutrient-packed food is so maligned.

Plums (ie fresh prunes) are beneficial for every blood type. Prunes are beneficial (even super beneficial in some cases) for Type As and Type Os.

I like prunes. They naturally taste as sweet as a dessert without any of the disadvantages of refined sugar. They are delicious chopped up in my morning breakfast mix. They quickly restore my blood sugar if I’m late eating a meal. They are essential when traveling throws my normal body rhythm off.

I was happy to see that Reader’s Digest did an article in their health section on prunes, and I learned something new. Recent studies have shown that prunes are one of the best fruits for strengthening bones! They not only prevent bone loss, but animal studies indicate they may reverse it. Preliminary studies indicate that benefits come from as few as three prunes a day.

Not only do they contain bone building nutrients like boron, potassium, and vitamin K, but they are also high in disease-fighting antioxidants – a good thing to know when Swine Flu is daily in the news.

I had three prunes for breakfast this morning, and that’s not a joke.

It seems to me that there is a natural tendency for cholesterol levels to drift higher and higher every year as people get older. I haven’t read this in a study, but I talk to people whose cholesterol numbers were nicely balanced when they were 30 years old. However, the numbers were moving upward by 40 and in the warning zone at 50. By 60 they are on statins.

My own cholesterol numbers were drifting higher when I started the BTD. There was a marked improvement when I first went on the diet. But the last two years they had started to drift upwards again. My ratio was still good, but my LDL drifted above the high mark for the first time ever.

I wrote a blog in April about what I was changing in my diet to try to stop the drift.

Spinach, Okra and Cholesterol

I am thrilled to say it worked. Here are my numbers from my July cholesterol test.

Total Cholesterol: 215
Triglycerides: 60
HDL: 86
LDL: 77
Ratio: 2.5

I am not at all concerned about a total cholesterol number 15 points over the 200 level when my ratio is so good. My total cholesterol reads high because my good cholesterol is so high.

Prescription for the future:
Stay on BTD.
Stay on Niacin and Vitamin B6.
Maximize cholesterol lowering foods like grapefruit.
Never neglect exercise.
Don’t get complacent. The tendency to drift will surely continue. Like all forms of aging, it is the result of living in a decaying world with a body irrevocably marred by sin.

Pears confuse me because they are superbeneficial for Hunters, a black dot avoid for Gatherers, and neutral for Type Os. Because I’m fairly confident that I’m a Hunter, I tell myself I should eat more of them, but because they have never been one of my favorite fruits, I usually choose something else. However, in the past three weeks, I’ve eaten three varieties of pears.

My Mom always liked trying new things. Some of her finds are healthy, like cherry essence prunes - which are beneficial as well as heavenly tasting. Other finds are not so healthy, like marshmallow cream – which has no redeeming value as a food product, but it sure tastes good.

When I went to visit her three weeks ago, she had a box of apple pears. According to the box, they have been grown in California for 20 years, but they have just now made it to Texas grocery stores. Mom had been saving them until I arrived so that we could try them together. They were very crisp like a fresh apple. The flavor was more like a pear, but without any of the grittiness that pears usually have. They were very good. I wouldn’t be surprised if they grew in popularity

I went back to her house this week to clean out the refrigerator and set up an alarm system. I went to her grocery store to buy food for my two-day stay. I wanted bananas, a peach and a pear. Most of the pears were hard and green, but at last I found a bin of ripe yellow pears.

At check out, I noticed the one pear cost $1.35. I questioned the checker and was told that it was a French Butter Pear. Whatever - that was pretty expensive for a pear ($2.99 per pound)! But on impulse, and perhaps in honor of Mom, I kept it. This pear was outstandingly good. It was very juicy and very sweet. If the price on French Butter Pears went down, I’d buy them regularly.

Today I am back home. After I fed Mom her lunch – pureed beef, green beans and potatoes – I went to the grocery store. I came home with two Bartlett pears. Perhaps pears are becoming a habit with me.

I’ve followed the Blood Type Diet since 2003, and I’ve written this blog since 2004. Clearly I think the BTD matters. I’ve talked to friends and total strangers about the difference it has made in the way I feel. There should be no question in anyone’s mind that I know the BTD is important.

I’ve blogged on many occasions about restaurants and certain social situations where it is difficult if not impossible to eat right for a meal. I have advised to always be kind and gracious, never to be offensive, and to do the best you can in those complicated but brief situations. The real evidence of how much you believe the BTD is not your public posture, but what you eat in the privacy of your own home. If you eat right at home, an occasional avoid in public will do you no harm (unless of course you are celiac or have serious allergies – obviously I’m not talking about that).

But there are three circumstances when the BTD doesn’t really matter. All of those are when the desperate need of your body for calories trumps everything else. Poverty is one. People who are starving don’t think twice about potatoes in the soup, or avoid foods in a care package. Prison is another. People imprisoned or in concentration camps, may care about what they eat, but they have no leverage. They must eat what is set before them in order to stay alive.

The third is the condition my mother is in right now – critically ill. Sure it would be better for her Type O body if she ate only beneficial meats, vegetables, and fruits. If she did, it probably would give her a better chance of recovery. If I requested it, the rehab center would take away her dessert and give her double portions of meat. But the pleasure foods keep her eating, and she is as desperate for calories right now as the poorest of the poor. If a few spoons of ice cream in between the spoons of pureed meat keep her opening her mouth for more, I’ll feed them to her.

She has trouble swallowing, and liquids give her the most trouble. We have to mix a cornstarch product into her drinks to make them a honey consistency so that she doesn’t choke. Do you think I am worrying about cornstarch as an avoid? Absolutely not. She must have fluids to survive, and choking on organic pineapple juice or pure spring water could give her pneumonia. The thickener in water must not taste very good. She would rather have orange juice or cranberry cocktail. Guilt free, I spoon those juices into her mouth.

DD is home for Labor Day weekend. She went with me last night to visit her Granny. When she saw the menu she raised her eyebrows as if to ask, was I really going to let Granny eat all of that? Some of the people around her refused to eat any of their dinner last night. There is not an avoid so bad that I would not use it to keep calories and fluids going into her body. She relished the thickened milk stirred into pureed brownie. There will be time to improve her diet later on. Right now she has to have calories, and the will to work with her rehab team.

If you are reading this hoping for a way to make the Blood Type Diet practical, I’m afraid you will be disappointed. The BTD is, in my opinion, the best diet out there. It is logical. It explains why people are different and why a diet that works for me doesn’t work for my best friend. It doesn’t require a lot of special purchases to make it work. A person can shop at their local grocery store and follow the BTD.

But practical – now that’s a different matter. Dealing with multiple blood types in one family is neither practical nor easy. It is, in my opinion, well worth the effort. None of that, however, is the subject of this blog.

Two years ago we moved to the country. For a year I commuted back to the city to teach journalism at the school where my daughter was a senior. When she graduated, I resigned my teaching job and began looking for a writing, photography, or graphic design job closer to home. My timing couldn’t have been worse. I started looking about the time the markets fell apart. During the year that I have been unemployed, friends and professional contacts have told me on multiple occasions that I should go into business for myself.

Neither my husband nor myself was enthusiastic at first about starting a business, but about a month ago I began floating some trial balloons. I got some contract work that has been fun and creative. While we were on vacation, we thought and prayed about the decision, and I have launched my own business.

It is called Practical Photography & Publishing. It reflects my core belief that if you want to stay within a budget for wedding photography, if you want to have a simple, user-friendly website for a small business, or if you want to preserve valuable family pictures and documents, it should be practical for you to do so. I am not in competition with high priced photographer/artists or big name advertising agencies. I want to serve ordinary folks and help them protect their memories and grow their businesses.

I have a web site. I hope Dr. D doesn’t mind my mentioning it.

PracticalPhoto-Publishing.com

Obviously I can’t come to Ohio or Florida to photograph your wedding. But many of my services can be handled through e-mail or UPS. If I can serve you in a practical way, let me know.

I introduced my book club to the Blood Type Diet yesterday. All of the ladies were interested and receptive.

Book Babes got its start when two friends became disillusioned with the immorality and dirty language in the books they were asked to read and review for a local book club. They began a club for ladies with a little more conservative world view. Rather than assign a book for everyone to read, each lady brings two or more books from her personal collection to the meeting. You tell a little about your book. Other members can borrow it for a month.

Yesterday I took Atlas Shrugged, Lord Change Me, and Live Right 4 Your Type. The hostess served fudge, spiced cookies, strawberries, quiche, and coffee. As we were eating, one of the ladies said something about wishing she could lose some weight, but always being hungry.

I jumped in saying that was the perfect segue to one of my books. I talked about all of the popular diets and how each had statistics to prove that it was right, yet they were all in conflict. I then said that the Blood Type Diet was the best predictor of what kind of diet you would do best on. A Type A who has often wanted to be a vegetarian, but has been scared to try it because she didn’t think it was a “balanced diet” took my book. Two other ladies wrote down the title and said they were going to buy it on Amazon rather than waiting for next month.

I warned them that this was not an easy diet, pointing to my plate and explaining why I hadn’t eaten the crust to my quiche and why I had declined the fudge and cookies. I also said that I had been on this diet since 2003 and that the health benefits had been far greater than I could ever have imagined.

A quick glance at the Type O/Hunter food lists could be overwhelming because of the abundance of choices. A closer look can be disappointing, because many of the foods are not locally available, and many others are too expensive. Lamb and bison used to be in that category.

Lamb was available at my grocery store – if I wanted to pay $10 per pound for a bone-in chop. (which I will emphatically say I did not!) I well remember the day I found boneless leg of lamb at Sams Club for about the same price as a roast. Suddenly it was possible to enjoy this Type O beneficial on a regular basis. Not only that, the package says that the lamb is 100% grass fed. I know that grass fed meat or yard raised poultry is better for my body, but it’s not usually good for my budget.

Interesting, while lamb is not a popular American food, once I found a good source for it, the quality was superior to the easily available beef.

I’ve eaten bison when we’ve vacationed in Colorado and Wyoming. However for years I could not find it in Texas where I live. Once I got really excited when I saw buffalo sausage in a store, but my enthusiasm vanished when I read that the top two ingredients were buffalo and pork. No way! Last year I found buffalo hot dogs in the freezer section at the Health Food store. But they were expensive and very salty.

This week I answered an ad for a used bicycle in town 30 miles from where I live. It sounded perfect, and I drove over with every intention of buying it and going for a ride that afternoon. What a disappointment, the “like new” bike was rusty, and the seat was frozen. I couldn’t even have taken it for a test ride.

On the way home I passed an HEB grocery store in another town. I went in to pick up food for the weekend. In their meat department they had ground bison and bison steaks. Ground bison was $5 per pound; bison steak was $5 per 8 ounce package. I got two packages of ground bison and one bison steak. The package says that the bison is guaranteed natural grass fed and no hormones. I have never found grass fed beef for that price!! There is an HEB in my town, and I’m hoping they will also start carrying bison. If not, I think it would be worth a drive once every couple of months to stock my freezer with bison.

The price of the steak was more than I usually spend on meat, but I really wanted to try it. In it’s defense, it was very lean and well trimmed - no visible fat. So there was no waste. I sprinkled it with Braggs liquid aminos, and cooked it at 400 degrees in the oven. It was delicious.

Once again, when I finally find an unpopular beneficial, the price is more reasonable than many readily accepted cuts of beef. Some day perhaps I will find canistel for the same price as pears or Jew’s ear in the produce section next to mushrooms.

It is so much fun when in the middle of an innocent conversation I correctly guess someone's Blood Type. They look at me like I'm psychic. The resulting conversation is always interesting.

I am at my Mom's house for a couple of days. Her caregiver had to go out of town. The last time I was here Mom said she thought she had a cavity. She was right. Actually she had three. All are small. Two were filled today, and we'll go back for the third in March.

While I was waiting I asked the receptionist if there was a place nearby where we could get barbeque for lunch. Mom and I - both Type Os - were hungry for some good brisket. The receptionist rolled her eyes. It turns out that the dentist loves meat, but she doesn't. When he wants to take the office staff out for a treat, he takes them for barbeque. She said, "They have really good sauce, but I just don't like to eat meat."

I said, "Do you have Type A Blood?" She looked at me like I was crazy, and said, "Yes, but how did you know that?" I had fun telling her about the Blood Type Diet, and I wrote the web address down for her.

Then the dentist came out, and the conversation got even more interesting. He loves meat, and he feels guilty about it. He believes meat is bad for everyone, but he can't help craving it. I kept thinking that he had to be an O, but when I asked, he said he didn't know his Blood Type. Rats, I wanted to be two for two.

After the appointment, Mom and I drove to the restaurant. The line was long, so I felt sure that the barbeque would be as good as the dentist promised it would be. We were not disappointed!

When I look at what Dr. D says about Type Os and Vitamin E, I see the explanation of the near disaster in both of my pregnancies. I am very much aware that anecdotal evidence is not proof in science or medicine. I can't prove my theory. I can only speculate what might have happened if the BTD had been written 25 years ago.

When I found out that I was pregnant with my first child I was thrilled and delighted. I was following the best Health Food plan that I knew of at the time, and I was committed to sticking to it without compromise for 9 months. Fortunately, I had come across a pregnancy diet that stressed high protein as a way to avoid for pre eclampsia. It would have been a disastrous diet for a Type A, but it was really good for me. Unfortunately I had read that Vitamin E was important for pregnant mothers. I bought 400 iu capsules, and was taking two a day.

When I was about 8 weeks along, HH and I went to see his parents. They were as thrilled about this pregnancy as we were. HH has two sisters, but he is their only son. The day after we arrived I began spotting. They took me to the doctor, and after an examination, he told me that I was having a miscarriage, and that all I could do was go home and wait. I lay in bed all weekend, committing myself and the life of that precious baby to God. I continued spotting and we drove back home. The spotting continued for a week or so and stopped. I went back to my own doctor and he could hear the baby's heart beat. The rest of the pregnancy was trouble-free, and SS had an easy and natural birth.

Being interested in all things natural, I planned to breast feed for a year. One of the vitamins recommended was Vitamin E. Everything was going well, except that I never stopped bleeding after childbirth. Vitamin E was again the recommended treatment, so I increased my dosage, I think I was taking two or three 800 iu capsules a day. Eventually I had to have a D&C to stop the bleeding.

When HH and I began to think about another baby, I reread all of the best material I could get my hands on. Nothing I read cast aspersions on Vitamin E. When I became pregnant, I increased my Vitamin E. I didn't want spotting like I had had before. I was careful about everything - I knew I was at risk because I was now 36 years old. I well remember the sinking feeling I had when the spotting started again. It lasted a couple of weeks. I lay on the sofa all day, trying to take care of a toddler, and trying to trust that God knew what he was doing. The spotting stopped, we celebrated hearing the baby's heartbeat, and the rest of the pregnancy was a joy.

I bled a lot during childbirth. Vitamin E was universally recommended, and I took it. My doctor was perturbed that I continued to bleed, but he was more patient this time. We waited 3 months, but eventually I had another D&C. I continued to have very heavy periods, and I continued to take Vitamin E. I never made a connection between the two.

SS was 18 when I first read the BTD. I immediately recognized the connection between my chronic stomach inflammation and the "natural" wheat and dairy products I poured into my Type O body. It has taken me much longer to realize that the BTD is also right about Vitamin E and Type Os. When he was in his 80s my Type O father began to bruise easily. A little bump would leave him with a huge red and purple mark on his arms and legs. He was taking Vitamin E to protect his heart. Because of Dr. D's recommendations, I convinced him to stop the Vitamin E and take bioflavonoids instead. The bruising went away within weeks, and he never had that problem again.

I am past the age where I can experiment with Vitamin E for pregnancy or periods. However, I do not knowingly take any supplemental Vitamin E. What I get from beneficial oils and nuts will have to be enough.

I see that this blog has been linked to a pregnancy website. Because of that I need to add that while Vitamin E is avoid for those with Blood Type O, it is beneficial for Blood Type A.

This is one of those cases where someone does a study and finds out that a food or a nutrient is helpful for a high percentage of people. They don't stop to think why their technique helps some and harms others. The answer often turns out to be related to Blood Type.

Type Os with their already thin blood are harmed by substances like Vitamin E that further thin blood. Type As with their thick blood are helped by it. While I do not take Vitamin E, I do give it to my Type A husband and daughter. DD tells me that Vitamin E lotion really helps her skin. Someday when DD marries and is pregnant, I will encourage her to take Vitamine E.

DD has gone back to her university full of hope and enthusiasm. She has had several bits of really good news, and she said, “Mom, you need to blog about this.” I thought about several Type As who have written on the Forum that they wish they could gain weight. I thought about several others who deal with thyroid problems. I said, “DD, why don’t you write about it from your perspective. Your experience could be an encouragement to someone.” So today’s blog is from my Darling Daughter.

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As Marvelous Mom has blogged, I have been struggling with gaining back weight. My “Daring Experiment,” seems to be working, and I am getting close to what my weight was a year ago. I have two more pounds to gain. Then, I can level off for a while and see if my hormones will start up again. My new diet was very easy to stay on while at home for Christmas break. I was slightly worried about going to back to school though. I brought a blender back with me to make my tasty soy shakes.

The second day I was back at school, I suddenly dropped two pounds. It scared me. I began to think that the weight gain had been a fluke and that my experiment had failed. I continued to plunge ahead with the plan—eating mini-meals every 2-3 hours and emphasizing egg white protein and vegetable proteins like nuts, nut butters, and soy.

I get fresh veggies from the University dining hall every day. They have an excellent salad bar that is quite accommodating for my new eating habits. My fellow students do not think that I am eating enough—since they just see me eating fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch, and a nut butter soy shake for dinner. However, they just do not understand that I am literally eating ALL day long. I am sure that my roommate finds it strange that I drink a shake for dinner (she is much too sweet to say anything though).

The next day, after my scare, my weight was up a little, and the day after that, I was back to where I had been when I left home. My morning temperature has been in the low 98s three of the last five days, which is a huge improvement. Then I got the best news - the doctor’s office called Friday to say that my latest lab report showed my thyroid is within the normal range. I was so excited. I had a lump of happiness swell up in my throat. I immediately e-mailed my Sunday School teacher and told her of all the AMAZING and unexpected blessings that God had showered down upon me. Who would have thought that having my wisdom teeth extracted would lead to weight gain, which led to a diet breakthrough, which led to my thyroid going back to normal?!?!?!

As much as I have learned this past year about my physical, as well as spiritual, weaknesses and strengths, I ought not be worried about my weight gain. I know with all of my heart that God is going to take care of me. He has said so in so many ways—especially through this new diet.

I found this verse in my daily Bible study: Deuteronomy 8:3
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Prior to Christmas break, I was eating meat in an attempt to gain weight. I have never liked the way a whole serving of meat makes me feel. Forcing myself to eat 3 ounces of meat was very stressful, and I looked for any excuse to cut back. I knew I could gain weight by eating more bread and grains, but that's how I ended up with an unattractive kind of fat. While I can admit that I lost too much weight, if I have to gain it back, I want to gain muscle, not lumpy fat.

It was not until I came before the Lord desperate for His answer to my problem, that I finally began to see that I needed soy, egg white, and vegetable protein to gain healthy weight, nourish my thyroid, and feel better all the way around.

Paul, one of the Hall of Fame Bloggers, first introduced me to the concept of “Thinking like an A.” He helped me realize that the way to be happy on the Blood Type Diet is not to look for substitutes for avoid foods, but to embrace the way I am made and relish the foods that build health. He got me “Thinking like an O” and constantly reminded me that my Type A husband and daughter were made differently. I thought I had learned the lesson well, but DD is carrying me to the next level.

DD and I had the same fear about getting her wisdom teeth out – the fear that she would lose more weight. Since the day that she got the lab report about her thyroid not functioning correctly, she has been committed to gaining weight. We worked closely together, planning beneficial meals based on the portions outlined on the BTD and the GTD. There were areas of conflict. We would look at a portion of meat or fish and see 2-5 ounces. She pushed for 2; I pushed for 4; we compromised on 3 – neither of us happy. The same was true of grain portions. However, I never had to urge her to eat nuts or fruit or salad. She was adamant that she would not eat high sugar foods, high fat foods, or other avoids in order to gain weight. In two months she had painfully put on two pounds. We were both terrified that she would lose that much and more by being on a liquid diet for several days.

I fixed protein shakes every two hours – fruit juice with egg white protein, soy milk with Spirutein, soy milk with egg white protein and peanut butter. We added lecithin to everything. I juiced carrots, beets, celery, and other vegetables. What we thought would be a few days on a liquid diet stretched to almost two weeks. Amazingly, she did not lose weight. She began to gain. We decided it was because she was not exercising. Just walking through the house made her stitches throb, so going to the gym or jogging was out of the question.

Gradually she added soft foods, and gradually she began to walk for exercise. Still she gained weight. She began to add little bits of salmon and chopped turkey to soft vegetables. After a good report from the surgeon, I pushed her to up her meat intake to 3 ounces again. Within days she lost 2 ½ pounds. Perhaps it was just a fluke, we hoped, but her weight stayed down. We were both devastated.

On January 2 she called me at my Mom’s house and said. “Check your e-mail. I want to try a daring experiment.” She had gotten up early to do her Bible study; then she began praying and rereading everything she could about the Type A Diet. She wrote, “Could it be that as an A, upping my meat and grain portions aren't going to help me gain weight, because they are not the best for my body. Could it be that if I started adding in more soy, nut, fruit, bean, and veggie servings instead of the meat and bread that I might gain?" She went on to quote line after line from Live Right that supported her hypothesis.

As I read, it just had the ring of truth. I called her back, and said, “Do you have a plan for the day?” She did, and I said, “Go for it.” The next morning she had gained a half pound. She has now regained everything she lost after Christmas, plus another half pound.

She has lost the gassy, bloated feeling in her stomach that had bothered her since she had increased her meat portions. She is enjoying her food. I actually caught her licking the knife the other day after she made a peanut butter sandwich. “This does not look like a girl with an eating disorder,” I said. She laughed at me.

She has a long way to go to get her hormones back to normal, but somehow I feel she is on the right track. I have a lot to sort out about understanding a daughter who really is “thinking like an A.”

Studies show that people under stress are statistically likely to get sick. The day after I got home from the funeral, I got a scratchy throat. I looked in the BTD encyclopedia. Dr. D recommends astragalus, l-glutamine, and kutki as antiviral remedies. I didn’t have any kutki, but I started attacking the sore throat with the other two immediately. I also began taking Coldeze. The Encyclopedia recommends zinc for non-secretors, and I’m a secretor. However I seem to have had good results with Coldeze in the past, and I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I am moving through every stage of a typical cold virus. But it is very mild. Just a scratchy throat, not one that is burning sore. Just sniffles, not heavy congestion. Just a dry cough that responds to menthol, not a deep cough that takes codeine to get relief. Nothing stops a virus, but I’m glad that the Type O protocols are keeping it from raging out of control. Perhaps I need this cold to slow me down a little. Otherwise I might be frantically trying to make up for time missed shopping and decorating.

DD had her wisdom teeth out on Monday. Her mouth is so small, that they had a hard time getting them out. She was is a lot more pain than she expected on Monday. Today she doesn’t hurt as much, but she is really swollen. She’s sleeping a lot. I tease her that her first semester grades were so good, and I hope she doesn’t slack off now that her “wisdom” has been removed!

Dr. D. once wrote this in his Q&A column, “Generally 70-80% total compliance works well in most people (out of 10 food choices, 7-9 being neutral or beneficial choices)” When I am at home, I am more compliant than this. I probably eat 70% beneficials and 29% neutrals. Avoids are very rare. But when I’m not at home, this rule allows me to relax and enjoy myself with friends without feeling unnecessary guilt or anxiety.

When my Honorable Husband was in Viet Nam, he had three close Christian friends. These four young men encouraged each other, prayed for each other, and pulled each other through a difficult time of their lives. One of them has passed away; the others have remained friends for 40 years. We all live in different parts of the country, but every five years or so, we get together for a reunion. This weekend, we are together in Oklahoma City.

The wife of the fellow veteran in whose home we are meeting knows I am on a “different” diet. She wrote before we came to ask what I could eat. Her husband is diabetic, so I told her that I could quite happily eat what he ate. I knew that he limited bread and potatoes as well as sweets. I figured that left meat, fruits, and vegetables. This has worked out great – actually even better than the 70% rule. I’ve had a few sauces that I wouldn’t have eaten at home. I enjoyed a small serving of fried okra. Tonight I’m looking forward to a surprise dessert.

Right now everyone has decided to go to a local mall for a walk since the weather is cold. They’ve given me four minutes to post this blog and get my coat. I’ll continue tomorrow or the next day.

We have three or four pairs of cardinals that live in the trees behind our house. I’m sure they have suffered along with the other wildlife during this incredibly dry summer and fall. The last time I remember it raining was sometime in June. However, today while I was fixing lunch, we had a brief shower. As I watched out the back windows, the cardinals came out and perched in the top branches shaking their feathers and enjoying the rain. That has nothing at all to do with today’s blog, but it was such a beautiful sight.

The first time I tasted flax oil I was sorely disappointed. It tastes like fish. In fact I remember looking at the label on the bottle, thinking that perhaps I had picked up cod liver oil by mistake. I use flax oil once in a while because I know it is highly beneficial, but I have to coax myself to do it.

A while back someone gave me a recipe that called for toasted sesame oil. It was ok, but I wasn’t wild about the taste. So that bottle of oil has been neglected in the back of my refrigerator. I knew that if I didn’t use it soon, I’d have to throw it out, and I hated to do that since sesame oil is beneficial for Hunters.

One night last week I mixed half and half of these two oils that I don’t like on my salad. Don’t ask me why – it must have been a masochistic moment. Incredible! The combination was good – not fabulous like the flavor of a newly opened bottle of extra virgin olive oil – not heavenly like a spoon of freshly made ghee – but good.

I thought it might have been a fluke, and I tried it again yesterday. Somehow the flax oil is less fishy, and the toasted sesame oil is less overpowering when the two are mixed together. As I’m typing this blog, I’m eating turnip greens with grilled onions and canned salmon, topped with a half teaspoon each of flax and toasted sesame oil. It’s a surprisingly tasty combination. In addition, it is very beneficial for Type Os who are Hunters. If you are not a Hunter, experiment! Perhaps you will find another tasty combination using an oil that is beneficial for you.

I was reading Reader’s Digest last night. There is another study out about low fat diets and cancer. The author of the article was clearly frustrated. One study establishes a relationship; the next study says there is no link; then the next study says… There is no end to the studies, and there is no end to the conflicting information.

Those of us on this website know that there can’t be a one size fits all study about cancer and low fat diets because each of the four blood types handles fats in different ways. Wouldn’t it be great to have four studies – one for each Type? Then we might get something that would really be useful.

My husband watches a lot of TV news. I can’t believe how many diets are being promoted on TV. Every time I walk through the living room there is another before and after picture and a high pressure sales pitch.

It must be very frustrating and discouraging to be looking for a diet that works and be faced with so many contradictory choices. It’s why I often say that finding the Blood Type Diet was providential. I was at the right place, at the right time, with a need. Here I am 5 ½ years later fully convinced that this is the only diet that addresses the fact that we are all uniquely created individuals.

On a different subject, I heard a good analogy about the bail out plan. It came from John Cornyn, a Texas Senator. He was on a talk radio program, explaining to a host who was opposed to the plan, why he had voted yes. He said that voting for the bailout bill was like being a fireman and being called to the scene of a fire. When you get there, you realize that the fire is at a derelict’s house. The owner inside is a liar and a thief, a drug pusher and a drunkard. You ask yourself, if you are going to risk your own life to go in and rescue this derelict and save his property. Then you realize that if you don’t, that the fire will spread and burn down the whole neighborhood.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had been listening to Dr. D’s interview with Dr. Oz on my MP3 player. Someone wrote to ask where to find the interview, and I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t answered that question yet. This is the most frantic part of my year. I have one deadline after another racing at me. On top of that are DD’s graduation activities. I’ve sadly neglected my mail – both my BTD mail and my personal mail. I’ll get caught up when school is out. In the meantime, I’m going to return to the Dr. Oz interview today, so I will give everyone the link.

Dr. D & Dr. Oz

Toward the end of the interview, Dr. D’Adamo said something I found to be quite profound. It may become my third favorite quotation about food. (The first two are in my blogger biography) Here is what he said in context. What I found so helpful is in bold.

“I’ve been in this naturopathic thing for 25 years. That actually was the way I was taught. You get the patient and start taking things away until they get better…I was looking at the wall one afternoon because a patient cancelled, and I got this brilliant break through that it wasn’t what I was taking away from people that was going to make them better. It was what I isolated that they should consume that was going to make them better…Where you should start is not where the book tells you avoid foods. Go straight to were it says, eat this stuff. I think it’s a good idea. And try to actually get a few of those things in your life. You will only get slightly less sick if somebody takes food away from you, but you will not get more healthy. You will get more healthy by eating stuff.”

This was precisely the direction my thinking about the BTD and the GTD was taking. But I was reluctant to go out on a limb, until I got some confirmation.

When I think of myself as a Type O and Hunter, I’m both. I’m not one or the other. If I look at the BTD that I’m familiar and fond of and the GTD that I’ve had fun experimenting with, and focus on avoid foods, my diet becomes restrictive and legalistic.

Just take greens for example. On the BTD I could eat all greens except mustard greens. On the GTD collard greens, beet greens, and spinach became black dot avoids, but mustard greens were super beneficial. If I focus on avoids I stop eating all four because I’m not sure. That limits the variety of greens I can eat, even though I know that greens are good for me. However if I look at the beneficials, I see that mustard greens are super beneficial on the GTD; spinach and collard greens are super beneficial in the Type O Health Library. Turnip greens, beet greens, and Swiss chard are beneficial. I am surrounded by greens that will build health for one aspect of my self or another.

As I peruse DD’s and my database, I am looking for beneficials – both Type O and Hunter beneficials. I am both. And if it’s beneficial or super beneficial for one, in some way it is beneficial for me.

I can be comfortable with this view of the diets, because they are a work in progress. The next book or the details behind the food lists will add another layer of knowledge and understanding. Until then, my focus is going to be building health. And as Dr. D said, “You will only get slightly less sick if somebody takes food away from you, but you will … get more healthy by eating stuff.”

I've come back from paradise... or at least Saint Martin.

It was good to get some time out in the sun and swim in the beautiful blue Caribbean. I also rediscovered the pleasure of reading from books, versus all the reading that I do from computer monitors. With proper lighting it is just so much easier on the eyes. Everyone at the hotel was reading different books... except that they were all written by someone named Gresham.

I've never cultivated much of a taste for fiction, since you have to work so hard at populating a mental space to hold all the necessary components; the setting, theme, characters. I find that many people who do like fiction seem to have a type of RAM memory in a certain part of their brains that they can fill with all the plot details, then erase for use with the next novel. I feel sometimes that if I did too much of that it might push some of the other stuff out, so in the midst of all those murder mysteries, there I was with Paul Kennedy's ‘Freedom From Fear' (a 900 page thriller on US history during the 1930's depression) and Larry Wall's ‘Programming Perl' (made especially interesting by the fact that none of us took our computers with us).

I'm in the process of completing the SWAMI GenoType software (which is mostly written in Perl) and in a blitz of activity since my return it is now at the point where we can beta test it in the clinic. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. It takes between 90 and 230 individual client parameters (blood groups, asymmetries, etc) and analyzes 700 individual foods according to 200 nutrient parameters (antioxidants, propensity to foster microbial overgrowth, acetylcholine content, etc.) For all those 12,600,000 individual calculations, the program is quite fast, though I do admit to a perverse pleasure sitting there for about 30 seconds watching it groan under the strain.

One of the mottos of Perl is that ‘There is more than one way to do it' (TIMTOWTDI, usually pronounced "Tim Toady"). The more that I think about it, there is a lot of Tim Toady in my nutrition research as well.

Probably because at heart I am fundamentally a post-modernist.

Post modernists believe in AND more than OR, whereas modernists tend to give OR precedence in their lives and thoughts. The folks who get all bent out of shape about ‘the GTD versus the BTD' are probably modernists and think that there is only one path to the truth. There is certainly one truth (or fact, or whatever) but that is not the same as saying that there is only one way to find it.

Twelve years ago when I was writing Eat Right For Your Type I used to Google (although there was no actual Google at the time; I used Excite) the phrases personalized medicine and personalized nutrition. At the time there were virtually no references. Now they number in the tens of thousands. However, Eat Right For Your Type was among the first books to ever use this concept.

With the The GenoType Diet, I've been instead googling the phrase Intergenerational Medicine and seeing about as much. Mark my words: in ten years you will see this phrase also appearing in the tens if not hundreds of thousands.

I often quote these citations when I lecture. Of course it would be most interesting to eventually learn what the author of the last abstract might consider an enriching experience.

Environmental influences can be inherited even without any mutations in the genes themselves. If genetic mutations are ‘typos' and relatively easy to test for, epigenetic changes are analogous to the formatting of the text (e.g. font, size, and color) and are much less well understood.

• Montague T. A New Way to Inherit Environmental Harm. Synthesis/Regeneration 39 (Winter 2006)

Mother rats exposed to hormone-mimicking chemicals during pregnancy gave birth to four successive generations of male offspring with significantly reduced fertility. Only the first generation of mothers was exposed to a toxin, yet four generations later the toxic effect could still be detected .

• M. Anway, A. Cupp, M. Uzumcu, and M. Skinner, Epigenetic Transgenerational Actions of Endocrine Disruptors and Male Fertility, Science Vol. 308, June 3, 2005, pp. 1466–1469.

Conceivably the cancer you may get today may have been caused by your grandmother's exposure to an industrial poison 50 years ago, even though your grandmother's genes were not changed by the exposure… or the mercury you're eating today in fish may not harm you directly, but may harm your grandchildren. These inherited traits can continue to influence the onset of diseases like diabetes, obesity, mental illness and heart disease, from generation to generation.

• Montague T. A New Way to Inherit Environmental Harm. Synthesis/Regeneration 39 (Winter 2006)

Global decrease in methylation levels is commonly observed in aging cells, as well as in neoplasia (early event.) The causes of this hypomethylation are not known. Contributes to chromosomal instability in cancer and to increased expression of selected affected genes. Unlike defective genes, which are damaged for life, methylated genes can be demethylated. And, methyl tags that are knocked off can be regained via nutrients, drugs, and enriching experiences.

• Asim K. Duttaroy Evolution, Epigenetics, and Maternal Nutrition 2006 Darwin Day Celebration.