Category: Personal Stuff
Thoughts on The GenoType Diet
December 27th, 2007 , by adminWell, the cat's officially out of the bag. The GenoType Diet ships to all locations from here on in. I can't help wondering how it will be received. Like anything with beginnings an endings, you have to make see possibilities even in that which you compromise.
- The book had to be accurate and truthful, but you can't bury people with every single fact. Metaphors and parables can often be used to animate complex principles so they can be seen as the commonplace occurrences that they are.
- The book was written from a non-defensive standpoint. By that I mean, if it was important that something be said a certain way so as to make the point more intelligible by a larger audience, it was. Early on I decided to not write a book to please skeptics or critics of my earlier works. They would never be happy no matter what I would be willing to do, and besides, they wouldn't buy the book anyway.
- The book had to be helpful and prescriptive. It is not very useful to write a tome on how epigenetics interacts with the environment and not make it relevant to the reader in some simple way: perhaps the repurposing of a food or supplement, perhaps a whole new perspective on looking at their diet and lifestyle.
- The book had to be in sync with the past, but also unafraid to change as new facts and methods of analysis developed. Most long term readers will see a direct thread from GTD back to my earlier work with BTD. Others may be somewhat shaken by the difference that result from the new ways of analysis and classification. There are differences. Blood Type Dieting is a more 'idealizing model' and the GTD is a more 'abstracting model'. They get at their information from fundamentally different avenues of approach. Hopefully everyone who has an interest in this type of work will be able to find a spot along the continuum that is just right for them.
I think this is the most profound book I have authored, and it is the work I would like to be most remembered for. To take nothing away from the "Right For Your Type' books, I'm just a more mature author at this point in my life, and many things came together for this book that are dependent on being alive long enough to have a certain number of dreams. It was certainly the most difficult book I have every written. I felt from the beginning that this book had to be as perfect as I could get it, and I was lucky to have people around me who felt the same way. Whether any degree of perfection was actually achieved will have to wait for the test of time.
2.
Spent a pleasant morning yesterday with Mehmet Öz, his lovely wife Lisa and Michael Roizen. Mehmet has a radio show on XM that I was a guest on. I think it will air sometime mid January. Michael is the author of the 'Real Age' series of books, and together with Mehmet, they wrote a bestseller called YOU: On A Diet. Mehmet's wife Lisa was also part of the show. It was an interesting hour, and I was surprised by how much leeway I was given to go into some of the more technical aspects of the book. Both these guys are doctors and when their gears are turning you can see that they almost forget that they are doing a radio show.
3.
Christmas day dinner was delicious and made more pleasant by the return of our guests from last year. Jon Humberstone is the head of NAP customer service but in reality does incredibly much more than that. He does a lot of the back-end programming for the NAP e-store, and was critical in aligning the new NAP GenoType store with the genotypediet.com site. Keith McBride is our marketing wizard who made the liaison with Random House so breezy and effortless.
The guys gave me an unexpected but entirely welcome gift: Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence having read in a prior blog that I was especially fond of his earlier great work The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I am so looking forward to curling up with this baby.
Habanera
December 4th, 2007 , by admin1.
Review of The GenoType Diet from Publisher's Weekly:
The GenoType Diet: Change Your Genetic Destiny to Live the Longest, Fullest and Healthiest Life Possible
Peter J. D'Adamo with Catherine Whitney. Broadway, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-7679-2524-2
Broadening his approach to diet and health beyond the four blood types, naturopathic physician D'Adamo (Eat Right 4 Your Type) profiles six GenoTypes and explains how readers can reprogram gene responses to lose and maintain weight, repair cells, avoid illness and age well. D'Adamo draws on epigenetics, the study of the interaction between genes and environment, to argue that tailoring diet and lifestyle to "GenoTypes� (genetic survival strategies that predate ethnicity and race and correspond to such external traits as body type, jaw shape and teeth patterns) is the most effective means to achieve optimum health.
While conditions in the prenatal environment--our own and our ancestors--have profound effects on our genes, D'Adamo contends, readers can take control of their inheritance by turning on positive genes and silencing negative ones through methylation, histone acetylation and other biological processes. He provides methods for readers to determine their types; these include body measurements, fingerprints, and personal and family history. D'Adamo's dietary recommendations are flexible and consist of lists of foods that enhance each GenoType and foods to limit or avoid, but readers can find meal plans and recipes on the author's Web site.
D'Adamo's engaging writing style, enthusiasm for his subject and personalized advice will appeal to those who enjoy taking a hands-on approach to their health and exploring new theories. (Jan.)
2.
The GenoType Diet website has a splash page up. You may want to have a look around. I think it goes 'live' sometime late this month.
Waterfront Media, the folks doing the website, have really impressed me with their dedication to maintaining the highest quality standards. Coming from someone who (until very recently; see #3) has personally programmed every single line of code on this website, that probably says something. Some of the specialized software that will be on the site (such as their diet tracker) are unique widgets that they have developed over the years, so I'm interested in seeing how these tools will work with The GenoType System.
3.
I'd like to take a moment of your time to tell you about a wonderful man who helps me on this website. Don St. John has helped countless confused and wide-eyed newcomers successfully navigate around this
www.dadamo.com</em> site. He has clocked in countless hours selflessly administering the BTD Forums, pruning, guiding and tweaking so that these bulletin boards remain family friendly, supportive, and reliable. An IfHI Fellow, Don has recently dusted off a few of his old programming neurons and jumped into directly coding the site.Not just HTML mind you, but Perl and PHP (the real stuff).
Thanks, Don.
There are so many people who contribute on a daily basis to making this site wonderful.
Hopefully, you know who you are and know that as I celebrate one of your own, I thank you all as well.
Habanera
December 4th, 2007 , by admin1.
Review of The GenoType Diet from Publisher's Weekly:
The GenoType Diet: Change Your Genetic Destiny to Live the Longest, Fullest and Healthiest Life Possible
Peter J. D'Adamo with Catherine Whitney. Broadway, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-7679-2524-2
Broadening his approach to diet and health beyond the four blood types, naturopathic physician D'Adamo (Eat Right 4 Your Type) profiles six GenoTypes and explains how readers can reprogram gene responses to lose and maintain weight, repair cells, avoid illness and age well. D'Adamo draws on epigenetics, the study of the interaction between genes and environment, to argue that tailoring diet and lifestyle to "GenoTypes� (genetic survival strategies that predate ethnicity and race and correspond to such external traits as body type, jaw shape and teeth patterns) is the most effective means to achieve optimum health.
While conditions in the prenatal environment—our own and our ancestors—have profound effects on our genes, D'Adamo contends, readers can take control of their inheritance by turning on positive genes and silencing negative ones through methylation, histone acetylation and other biological processes. He provides methods for readers to determine their types; these include body measurements, fingerprints, and personal and family history. D'Adamo's dietary recommendations are flexible and consist of lists of foods that enhance each GenoType and foods to limit or avoid, but readers can find meal plans and recipes on the author's Web site.
D'Adamo's engaging writing style, enthusiasm for his subject and personalized advice will appeal to those who enjoy taking a hands-on approach to their health and exploring new theories. (Jan.)
2.
The GenoType Diet website has a splash page up. You may want to have a look around. I think it goes 'live' sometime late this month.
Waterfront Media, the folks doing the website, have really impressed me with their dedication to maintaining the highest quality standards. Coming from someone who (until very recently; see #3) has personally programmed every single line of code on this website, that probably says something. Some of the specialized software that will be on the site (such as their diet tracker) are unique widgets that they have developed over the years, so I'm interested in seeing how these tools will work with The GenoType System.
3.
I'd like to take a moment of your time to tell you about a wonderful man who helps me on this website. Don St. John has helped countless confused and wide-eyed newcomers successfully navigate around this www.dadamo.com site. He has clocked in countless hours selflessly administering the BTD Forums, pruning, guiding and tweaking so that these bulletin boards remain family friendly, supportive, and reliable. An IfHI Fellow, Don has recently dusted off a few of his old programming neurons and jumped into directly coding the site.
Not just HTML mind you, but Perl and PHP (the real stuff).
Thanks, Don.
There are so many people who contribute on a daily basis to making this site wonderful.
Hopefully, you know who you are and know that as I celebrate one of your own, I thank you all as well.
Blog 11/30/2007 » Words and lyrics
November 30th, 2007 , by admin1.
If any readers are in the Boston MA area this weekend, consider stopping by for the lecture I'll be giving at Newton Wellesley Hospital 12/01/2007 at 2:00 PM
Click here for more information
2.
I received my first hard copy of The GenoType Diet. Beautiful cover. Felt like crying a bit, as waves of feelings came over me. This was a hard, hard, book to write. Two years, two co-authors, two editors. But it had to be written. In fact, it almost wrote itself. Pre-orders have sent the book up to #74 on amazon.com, which is pretty good considering that it doesn't officially come out until December 26th. GTD is probably my most readable and lyrical book since ER4YT. I hope you like it.
3.
Speaking of feelings, can you listen to Steve Job's address to the 2005 graduating class at Stanford University and not be touched on some very deep level?
Why not watch it and find out?
4.
Added a new channel on YouTube for the GenoType Diet Videos. Three have been uploaded already. The link is on the right, under 'Blogroll' but for all you lazy-bones, here it is:
Least Resistance
July 27th, 2007 , by adminI've been working pretty much non-stop on the SWAMI GenoType software, mostly the truly nefarious ‘human interface' and ‘file input-output� parts of the program. Although crucial to any software, these are usually the most difficult parts of any software package, since you have to anticipate the myriad ways that any user could possible wind up doing the wrong types of things in the wrong places. Also, many interfaces are very unfriendly, without help screens and all the bells and whistles that are great to include but do eat up time and neurons.
Unlike the super-forgiving human interface stuff, file input-output, on the other hand, is the most unforgiving of things. It mostly has to do with conceptualizing the future structure of your data, often at the same time you are trying to ask yourself what types of information the program you are in the midst of writing will need. A reasonable metaphor might be an architect who has to start drawing his plans when the work crew is already at the construction site. Also, because you are writing to files on a server's hard drive, it is often difficult to detect errors ('bugs') in your program since you can easily write incorrect things 'successfully' to files on a hard drive.
Yesterday was my first day back in the clinic (other than a few sporadic appearances during July and August). Dr. Natalie Colicci, our new staff physician, has done a great job holding down the fort in my absence and yesterday's reentry couldn't have been easier.
Been reading a bit about the Warburg Effect, the notion that cancer cells respire differently that normal cells. Increased aerobic glycolysis in cancer has been tossed around for decades in alternative medicine circles (and vilified for just as long by ignorant quackbuster types) but is increasing being looked at by research oncologists as a major avenue of approach to the treatment of cancer. No doubt we will hear much more about this approach in months to come.
Apparently cancer does have a sweet tooth after all..
The GenoType Diet is now in copy editing, which is one of the last places you can perform any sort of corrections on the text. I've seen some preliminary galleys of the book and was very happy with the layout. Very clean, much like Eat Right For Your Type.
Other GenoType Diet news: I've signed on with Waterfront Media (WFM), a company that provides website content for a variety of health authors. WFM really does a nice job of things, such as producing phenomenal meal planning and recipe software. I think they will do a great job of things, especially since it is getting more and more difficult for me to put the kind of time into administering a busy website.
The sails on Long Island Sound have been phenomenal these last few weeks, with lots of consistent winds, especially from those wonderful directions which allow you to both sail out and back close-hauled.
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