Dr. D'Adamo states that the GT-6/Nomad is particularly "sensitive" to changes in barometric pressure. I confess I haven't understood what he means. But when I consider my tremendous zest for wind and fog, and penchant for weather others consider lugubrious (cf. my 7/20/06 blog: "Lugubreity"), I think I get it. "Sensitive" in a positive way! Boredom with long stretches of unchanging blue California skies. Give me a thunderstorm, by gum!

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the temperature is almost always between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We have no snow, almost no thundershowers, very low humidity -- in short, few of what most consider "extremes". But within the spectrum we do experience, there are marvellous phenomena.

The first and my favorite is Fog. Great billowing clouds of it blasting eastward from the Pacific. To suffer a July or August 3-day heatwave (read: Temperature over 75F) is to look westward, scanning the low skies, the Bay surface, for a hint of that blessed sheet of downy whiteness sure to blanket the city with its chill. Talk about a pressure change!

The second is: Post-Rain: The dark slate-skyed backdrop to an afternoon sun-bathed ivory cityscape, when all is clear, sharp, and brisk: Perfect for rainbow watching: The Major Kind that arches over the entire city, sometimes double- or even triple- or (I kid you not) quadruple-arched. Another pressure change.

Sometimes we get hail, and sometimes a quake, but within our narrow temperature parameters, it's generally fog and rain that punctuate barometric shifts. Hence we learn to "be sensitive to" those shifts, and by "we", maybe I mean we Nomads! Most people aren't as soul-bound to the phenomena as I am, but I have met quite a few who fell under the spell of them while visiting and decided to relocate here.

The indigenous bloodtype maps show something I've often wondered about: The strange surge in the incidence of B bloodtype in Scotland, as opposed to England, Ireland and Scandinavia. Scots will confirm the greyness and drear of their homeland's climate, but also the thrill of the pounding surf on rocky crags, and the bracing gusty gales across the heath, and you wonder: Why the Nomad taste for such barometric drama? And why the little B outpost in Scotland?

And here's another conundrum for you: Dr. D'Adamo says that multiple sclerosis is more prevalent among those of bloodtype B. Anyone studying that disease locationally has been puzzled about the veritable MS hotbed in the Faeroe Islands (62N, 6-8E) way north of Scotland, north even of the Shetlands.

It may now be apposite for me to have a look at the barometric/weather patterns of the Eurasian steppe, Caucasus and Carpathians, whence My People migrated to America, and where B is customarily found.

B in Scotland?
MS in the Faeroes?
This B and the moody heath?
Melancholy weather, shrouded in mystery: And you thought this was just a diet.

I'd like to see a psychiatry book by Dr. D'Adamo. There's certainly enough data on the bloodtype link to fill one; his Encyclopedia contains much of this, and his other books mention it as well.

Psychiatric symptoms are all too common in our world today, and the field could use all the help it can get in the diagnosis, classification and treatment of these. Happily, I've met two San Francisco psychiatrists who are familiar with, and praise, Dr. D'Adamo's work. Another one, specializing in the postpartum, uses nutritional therapy. And all three are USSR-born.

The most common and well-documented connections I've seen between bloodtype and psychiatric symptomatology are bloodtype O/bipolar/aggression and A/anxiety/depression. Those of bloodtype O or A (together constituting the vast majority of Americans -- about 86%) would do well to follow D'Adamo's Live Right 4 Your Type diet/fitness/lifestyle/supplement guidelines to see if symptoms do not abate or disappear. The B and AB bloodtype/psychiatric classification connection is not quite as clear.

I hold the opinion that the understanding of the psyche really requires an anthropologic knowledge of the individual's bloodtype's roots. Thus the energy expenditure patterns, overall life rhythm and orientation to the world can be respected, so that an A does not try to drug himself to function as a healthy O, for example. As long as psychiatry holds out only one model for a healthy American psyche, the majority of Americans will be seen to lack it; the healthy O and healthy A should NOT appear identical. A bloodtype-educated psychiatrist can assist patients in adjusting to life's challenges in ways commensurate with their genetic inheritance, so as to evoke behaviors and responses reflecting their individuality. Clinically, options for pharmacology and style/program of psychotherapy can be explored far less randomly and differential diagnoses refined according to bloodtype-geared parameters.

Finally, psychiatrists are rather more likely to acquaint themselves with alternative models than are other MDs. I've had a few of them as clients; they tend to be (of bloodtype B and) open to the paradigm. A focussed compilation of bloodtype data and case histories, showing nutritional/fitness/lifestyle/supplementation AND pharmacology recommendations would be, as I see it, well received by many of them. If there's any way to bring them on board, including via research published in their journals, society may actually grow saner!

Once upon a time in Oriental climes, there languished huge populations of exhausted progeny of migrants and nomads. Now largely settled in China, Korea, SE Asia, Siam, and India, they received travelers from the West hungry for their silks and spices, curious about their ancient and enigmatic ways. The West was in temporary ascendancy, crossing the high seas using largely eastern technologies.

In their lust for routes to the East, Europeans sailed westward to the Americas, bringing to these virgin cultures their bacteria and sugar cane, dogs and horses, trading these for gold, silver, emeralds, cacao, vanilla, potatoes, tomatoes, and hot peppers. Their hosts were decimated.

You see, the Western Hemisphere, certainly South of the Rio Grande, was populated exclusively by those of bloodtype O, with no immunity to the yellow fever and malaria carried relatively easily by their A "discoverers". Surely it baffled the Europeans that these natives were so strangely fragile and short-lived.

Arriving back in Europe, the New World's bounty was appreciated. "Che bello frutta!" exclaimed the Italians over the pomodoro/tomato. "OLaLa! Les pommes--de terre!" marvelled the French over potatoes. Dessert was certainly never the same after chocolate's and vanilla's arrival. But --- What to do with this succulent spicy vegetable? "Too hot!" gasped alarmed Europeans, choking on peppers large and small.

In Europe's fringe areas of North Africa andHungary/Balkans, however, where Oriental/Arab/Black influence was stronger, the flavor was found intriguing, even marvelous. Turks, Persians, all were excited, but the Great Awakening took place in Goa, South India, when the Portuguese for the first time brought the new discovery for trade in the early 16th century. The Indians bought America's hot peppers from these Europeans, and the cuisines of south India, of Siam, Burma and China were forever changed. A fire was lit under an introspective culture in preparation for its re-emergence on the world -- global -- scene.

Peppers. The B bloodgroup, of specifically Asian provenance, though represented moderately in Africa, Western Russia and the Balkans via westward migrations, began to thrive on them, but had lived for thousands of years without them. European A's, finding themselves in possession of a food item so nourishing to the native O population whence it had come, found that they themselves simply could not stomach it! Probably recognizing that the Easterners in their midst seemed to have no problems digesting peppers, these A's cannily carried them to the Asian market as a (hot) novelty item. (And how many Spaniards and Portuguese died of scurvy on their return voyages in the 15th-17th centuries because this amazing vitamin C source burned their throats!)

As a B myself, I'm quite grateful to the O's and A's who gave their lives, whether on their own soil or on the high seas, that I and my outlying people might be delightfully energized.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You may not (yet) understand the role of the hot pepper in the inevitable Asian/B-allele's ascendancy. That's fine with us. We don't mind a cloak of mystique; we can see over the next dune.

Modernity -- industrialization, technologizing, virtualizing, pharmacologizing -- has perpetrated a divorce between our biological state and our lifeviews. I deal with this gap as a standard part of my work with first-time postpartum careerwomen in a major American city. And we all manifest it insofar as we are ignorant of our deep genetic ancestry. Medicine's established ignorance of the central role of such genetic markers as ABO bloodgroup has been but one example of this phenomenon. We are embedded in biological realities, yet the cultures and individuals we deem successful are those most alienated from those very realities.

For my clients, successful transition to motherhood usually entails a period of disorientation, as years of competent breadwinning and progeny-free sexuality are suddenly completely replaced by the sheer physicality of childbirth, breastfeeding, and the waste products of a tiny bundle of pure need. It comes as a shock to the modern woman, whose past contact with such matters has usually been limited to the mediation of movies, photos and jokes. Pregnancy, with its out-of-control body expansions, its nausea, olfactory sensitivities and gustatory cravings, is but a mild foretaste of the utter immersion of the puerperium and "fourth trimester", especially as pregnancy is usually loaded with such distractions as outfitting the nursery, buying the layette, finding obstetrician and then pediatrician, arranging for maternity leave, etc. Suddenly and starkly, it's all about Biology.

Similarly, we who study bloodtype anthropology and/or who take an interest in our DNA geneology, find ourselves confronting our long lost biological identities. And we wonder, "How could I have lived so long without knowing this? How can we as a society have ignored this?" much as new moms often feel anger toward a zeitgeist that had heretofore duped, or anesthetized, them.

My work with new mothers involves, among other things, facilitating an optimal psychological and physical passage to a state of acceptance of, and joy in, their new identity, an identity which ushers them to a level of reality upon which society has always been based, depsite their former lifestyle's blindness to it: Good Morning!

I see Dr. D'Adamo's having publicized blood type medicine and anthropology as quite similar: Assisting the public's transition from biogenetic ignorance to our understanding of ourselves within the vast and ever-present human story. People of all ABO bloodgroups are changed in profound ways when their psychological features and medical histories are perceived as genetic imperatives, sourced in the adaptations of their hitherto unrecognized ancestors. Just as the new mom thrills to discover her community of mothers, the bloodtype-anthro student is often excited to profoundly understand his lifelong fascination with, say, Plains Indians, Mongolian horsemen, Gypsies, or things Japanese, which he now studies with more personal urgency. He furthermore connects his high-acid stomach with all Os and their hunting prehistory; she understands the link between her vulnerability to stress and all As, with their community-building/maintaining forebears.

The Physical has immediacy. It appears to reign in this life and is in fact ignored at our medical and social peril. There is, however, that which trumps the Physical -- in the spiritual realm. Understanding what we are raises the question of what we, mere humans, aren't. Coming to terms with the lesser reality, ephemeral and limited as it is, leads some to seek the Greater and eternal one. Good morning indeed.

I've come to the realization that I find the 3-meals-per-day model oppressive. And I think it may be bloodtype-related.

We B's are outsiders, not settled village folk. Gathering 'round the breakfast and lunch tables may be ideal for farmers and shopkeepers, and even for some trappers and gatherers, but those of us on the move just reach down into our mounts' saddlebags - whenever - and grab a stick of jerky or a few dates or fermented milk.At day's end there's the more sociable fire, and, if the saluki dispatched a gazelle, there's a feast around the platter, otherwise a bunny, a lamb chop, or, most often, just some grain/bread and curds/whey and, later, coffee.

If you run the demographic numbers, you'll find that modern Bs are far less likely to be 9-to-5'ers than are As or Os. Bearing this in mind, you'll understand why those of us who do adapt to the standard workday struggle with what's called "meal skipping" until we (fitfully)adapt to essentially alien ways. But those of us out in the open pasture, the mountains, the deserts, aren't stopping the caravan midday to throw together what you'd call a meal.

So if you're type B and this is your (modern) situation, you might want to experiment with reconnoitering the portions into two real meals and a snack, or one real meal and two light ones. You may not be shepherding cattle down from the highlands or seeking an oasis in the Sahara, but maybe you're a freelance consultant visiting clients or an artist in a studio on your own natural timeclock with no mandated schedule. It's only my opinion and B-experience, but maybe, like this seasoned B, you've found yourself maladapting to the sit-down Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner standard on a permanent basis.

I float the hypothesis for you bloodtype health practitioners: Scan your files for B cases with meal-skipping tendencies. And bear this in mind: A number of ABO personality theorists remark that many B's are driven to focus on a project/task ( I call it "burrowing") for very long uninterrupted stretches, hours on end. Rather than simply notice it and smile about it, maybe we should be respecting it, not expecting Bs to break for a workout, as an O might, or a nap or yogic pose, as would an A, let alone for a meal.

I posit that Bs mealskip because of deeply rooted anthropologic-genetic factors, and that diets, and especially portions, should take this gene-linked tendency, this ingrained adaptation of a small percent of our population, into account. From my B point of view, we're not skipping anything. Though devotees of the currently dominant cultus chastise us ("You call that breakfast?!" or "Don't you want to stop for lunch now?"), it's only because they haven't eyes for the vast steppe we're traversing.