If you haven’t gotten Dr. D’ Adamo’s new book, “The Genotype Diet: Change Your Genetic Destiny to live the longest, fullest, and healthiest life possible” then … what are you waiting for?? It is a very interesting, exciting, and new body of work to explore.

Dr. D’ Adamo now takes us beyond blood type to explore our genetic heritage and its interplay with our own individual physiologies and how to further maximize our genetic potential in all the right ways. This new paradigm incorporates the basics of The Blood Type Diet at its core, and adds 6 new GenoTypes that refine and incorporate Dr. D’ Adamo’s interest in epigenetics: the study of how environment impacts which genes are engaged and which ones are silenced. Your own GenoType is easy to determine. If you know your blood type, Rh type and secretor type, then all it takes is a few simple measurements and you’re there!

Of the six Genotypes , persons with blood type B can be one of 3 types: the Gatherer, the Explorer, or the Nomad. I am a Nomad. And I must say that from the very beginning, my journey through the Blood Type Diet, and now the GenoType Diet has been a fairly easy one for me to integrate. When I began the BTD almost 10 years ago now, I had already been eating so-called “healthy” foods… it is just that some of them were not healthy for me. I knew what millet, spelt, quinoa, tamari, etc. was so it was just a matter of… ‘Oh, I should be eating more of this and less of such and such’ for optimal health. And I was also eating organic whenever possible and free-range/grass-fed meats. Adjusting to the B diet was not that big of a change for me. But the beauty of the B diet was not the “permission” to eat dairy. For me it was that for almost every avoid there was a suitable replacement… for chicken there was turkey, for cinnamon, nutmeg, for tomatoes, red and chili peppers, etc.

And now with the Nomad diet, I feel doubly blessed because of the 6 GenoTypes, it seems to be the closest to the B Secretor diet which I had been following. Yes, there are some changes… some very interesting changes that I am excited to explore further… but I’ll get more into that in another blog. For now I will just say that the some of changes I had already begun to shift toward intuitively. And I think that is the real gift of Dr. D’ Adamo’s work… giving people the knowledge of what real health feels like, the tools to get there, but most of all permission to “go with their gut” (pun intended :-) and trust their inner knowing in matters relating to their own health and wellness.

I’ve been struggling with eczema once again, as I have since I was a teenager. It cleared up considerably shortly after I started the BTD about 9 years ago. Since then, it has only come back in a mild form on rare occasions. This time though, I have had it for several months. I think that stress plays a big role in its recurrence. I tried to find out what food was aggravating my system since eczema can also be linked to food intolerances. In the past, it was tomatoes that was the trigger. But I couldn’t find anything. I cut out almost all dairy as that also has been a mild trigger but to no avail. I decided to return to the membrane fluidizer cocktail, or membrosia as it is called in the SWAMI program… a much more appealing name, I think. I haven’t done the membrosia for several years, preferring to use flax meal ground fresh daily in my yogurt rather than flax oil which has such a high rate of rancidity. Plus… I am not a big juice drinker and having fresh juice on hand was a chore. Ideally I would juice a small amount daily… I do have a juicer and maybe someday I will incorporate fresh made juices into my daily routine. But for now that is just a dream…

So I prepared and drank the membrosia daily. I had a gallon of pear/apple juice that I had bought before Thanksgiving and which (thankfully!!) did not spoil. I put one tablespoon of flax seed oil and one tablespoon of lecithin in an old jelly jar that I poured half full of juice and the other half with water. After shaking vigorously, the lecithin begins to dissolve and emulsifies the oil. I did this for about a month and experienced a huge improvement. Yea membrosia!!! But I still could not get my skin to heal completely.

I then read on the forums about the zinc connection and eczema. Ah yes…. zinc! I even recommended zinc to my aunt about 15 years ago for eczema that was troubling her. How easily we forget! I looked around the house for zinc and saw a considerable amount in a mega-flavonoid supplement and began taking 2 tablets daily. In less than a week, the eczema is now almost completely healed except for a faint pinkness. An added benefit is that my skin overall is looking and feeling much better. Perhaps the flavonoids helped as well… sometimes intuition works wonders that way.

Returning to the basics is often highly beneficial. :-)