Dr. James L. D’Adamo is the originator of the world-famous Blood Type Diet and director of the D’Adamo Institute for the Advancement of Natural Therapies.
Dr. D’Adamo N.D., D.N.B. (Diplomate of National Board), first presented the world with his ground breaking discovery of natural healing based on a person’s blood type with his first book One Man’s Food is Someone Else’s Poison (1980). With his second book, The D’Adamo Diet (1989) he took his research to the next level with the discovery of sub blood types with their relevance to diet and exercise.
Dr. D’Adamo has been a certified naturopath for 53 years and has worked with patients from around the globe. Trained in the United States, Germany and Switzerland, he has worked in New York, Montreal and Europe and currently operates two highly successful clinics in Toronto, Ontario Canada and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Questions and Answers
by Trung Nguyen
You are the originator of the Blood Type Diet. What is the blood type diet? What ideas and experiences led you to develop it?
Over 30 years ago, I wrote One Man’s Food is Someone Else’s Poison about my work correlating blood groups and nutrition. It was my first book—and the first book ever written about my research and the successful treatment of thousands of patients through what was then a revolutionary approach to healing. Today, the idea of blood groups and diet has travelled around the globe, and thousands of people have improved their health by following a diet and lifestyle based on their type blood.
In my second book, The D’Adamo Diet I refined my diagnostic approach as I discovered that sub-blood groups too, played a significant role in determining what a person should eat for their individual needs. After working with and treating over 50,000 patients, I thought it was important to provide the public with my most up-to-date research on blood types, sub blood types, RH factors, A1’s and H1’s. It is my hope that this information can be used to not only treat illness and disease—but prevent them from ever developing in your body.
The Mediterranean Diet has been praised for its healthy components of nutrients. In some individuals, can a diet such as the Mediterranean be in conflict with the Blood Type Diet?
A quick Google search with the key word “diet” will result in 157,000,000 results. I can tell you that most suggest that skim milk, whole wheat bread, and artificial sweeteners are okay to eat, even suggesting that they are healthy. My work has determined that skim milk (all dairy milk for that matter) causes sinus, respiratory and can eventually cause circulatory conditions too numerous to mention. Whole wheat changes the gastric juices in the stomach and in time may proliferate in muscles and joints which would cause aches and pains. Artificial sweeteners such Aspartame is a cold tar derivative cause a variety of degenerative diseases.
In one sentence, how would you define obesity? In another sentence, how would someone overcome it?
Epidemic of poor eating and the thinking that your body would respond exactly like everyone else is what has caused your obesity.
Taking responsibility, educating yourself on the dangers of GMO’s, Corn fructose sugars and starches, understanding hypoglycemia and how this all plays a role in weight.
What are your views on diets that focus on limiting the intake of certain nutrients or calories and over-emphasizing the intake of other nutrients? What about liquid diets?
In general, liquid diets and calorie counting diets are to shed pounds quickly. If that is what one is looking for, it’s a quick loss, which might lead to some pretty serious health concerns down the road. My diet is a lifestyle for health, which for many, weight loss is a result, but for all, the gift of health and abundant energy is far better.
Can you tell us about your new book, Just an Ounce of Prevention – is Worth a Pound of Cure?
My book comes at the height of a crucial national healthcare debate and rising medical costs — sheds light on preventive care as the means to averting chronic degenerative diseases.
With nearly 70 percent of diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyle choices, reports by Partnership for Prevention indicate that “significant underuse of effective preventive care in the U.S. is resulting in lost lives, unnecessarily poor health and inefficient use of healthcare dollars.”
What are your views on extreme diets such as raw vegan, juice diet, fruit diet, Acai berry diet, and high protein diet? Particularly, the raw vegan diet since it appears to provide the body with all the essential nutrients from plant sources.
Before I can answer this question, people need to see themselves as individuals. What might be right for one person maybe totally wrong for the next. This is what my 53 years of treating people have shown me and tens and thousands of patients.
I am not opposed to diets as long as the foods work for that person’s blood type, and that there is no underlying illness. Let’s take for example someone with anemia; they would not do well on an all fruit diet as it could cause damage to the body. They would require a high protein diet to help bring their iron levels up. People who follow a vegetarian diet typically lack of B12 in their body and that’s not entirely a good thing to have either, so it needs to be supplemented somehow. People who are hypoglycemic and are on a heavy starch diet would not benefit as that would only make the pancreas work even harder producing insulin.
My goal is to produce a diet specific to the individual, taking into account their blood type, sub blood type, A1’s and H2’s along with and any illnesses or symptoms the body has developed and customize something not for the masses, but for that individual person.
We’ve heard the expression, “That person is not fat, they’re just big boned.” What is your view that some people cannot maintain the weight they lose due to their genetic makeup or bone structure (related to BMI–Body Mass Index)?
Most people who are obese are because of a chemical imbalance in the body affecting both the pancreas and the adrenal glands. This can result in a condition called hypoglycemia, eventually leading to diabetes. To lose weight under these conditions only results in a quick loss and a quick gain. You need to treat the cause whether large or small framed, you need to look at obesity as a symptom.
Diet franchises and programs such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Isagenix, Herbal Magic, LA Weight Loss, and Shangri-La Diet have become popular. Do you consider those programs as a lifestyle change or temporary solution? And why?
Obesity for the most part is a bio-chemical imbalance in the body which is typically associated with weakness in the pancreas and adrenals which cause symptoms of hypoglycemia. In my opinion, diet franchises are not addressing the cause of the problems, because most people gain back the weight they quickly lose.
Any parting words for our readers?
Your readers should consider my book Just an Ounce of Prevention as their life-long guidebook to healthful living.
It’s not a book you read and put away – it’s a book that becomes part of a daily life, with a prominent place in your kitchen to guide you in food selection, cooking, eating, the selection of minerals/vitamins, and the types of exercise regimens best suited for your blood type. It is not a diet book, it is a way of life. Although following the diet does help you lose weight, my goal is to help you take responsibility for your healthy and experience what abundance health is.
