Blood Type Diet: Why I Made the Switch
Recently, I learned about the blood type diet and, after reading the book, I am convinced that this is the diet that all of us should follow. The blood type diet is not like any other diet I have heard of. The main factor that sets it apart is its ability to be tailored to each person who applies it. Two people could be eating according to the blood type diet and be eating totally different foods, because they have different blood types. Learning this was monumental for me because there was no way that my digestive tract agreed with a uniform diet for all of humanity. Take a look at the journey I took to get to this conclusion.
The Beginning
Ever since I was little, I suffered from various health issues. There was strep throat every year, digestive issues and my parents said that I had a lot of mucus and cried every night all night long, formally known as colic. These were the early signs of an improper diet.
When I was in high school, I took an alternative gym class for girls, and we learned how to strength train for women, do yoga, make smoothies and listen to our bodies. This knowledge allowed me to slow down and observe how certain foods made me feel. And what I felt on a daily basis was bloated, gassy, itchy and brain-fog induced confusion. Having brain fog was not the best state of mind for the success of a high achieving high school and college student. So I put the knowledge I learned in my high school health class to use outside of school and changed my unhealthy habits of eating junk food, fried food, candy and soda.
As time went on, it became clear to me that I definitely had poor digestive health, as I noticed my body react negatively to certain foods. I literally would get bloated and full-body itching right away after eating anything with gluten, dairy and sugar. Coffee would weirdly make my body vibrate and itch (as it should according to my research) and send me straight to the bathroom. And pork would upset my monthly cycle. I was happy to finally match these foods with the symptoms, but I was unhappy to experience them.
My family and friends could not understand what I was going through and I had to fend for myself by buying and cooking food that I could handle in order to not feel sick. I’d even have to bring my own food to gatherings and find ways to concisely and respectfully explain why I could not eat the dishes my family and friends were so proud of. It was all like poison to me and I just did not understand what was going on and why I was the only one dealing with this.
Connecting the Dots
With any spare time I had, I’d research my symptoms on the internet and try to connect dots. I bought countless amounts of supplements and herbs in an effort to heal myself and feel better. Throughout my research, I came across a course that taught me about Candida. Candida is a yeast that lives naturally in all humans and some animals in small amounts. Its function is to digest heavy metals and excess sugar in our digestive tracts. However, Candida can get to a point where it has to multiply due to the high amount of “food” it has to consume from our diets. This causes Candida to overgrow and wreak havoc on the health of the body.
Now you must understand that sugar is in almost every prepared food item you buy from the store (which is why I prepare most of my own food now). So until I made this connection, I was overloading my system with sugar at every meal, giving the Candida so much to consume that it had to multiply itself to complete the task.
However, once I learned about probiotics through this Candida course, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Probiotics are the beneficial bacteria that our gut needs to help us in so many ways including keeping “bad bacteria” like Candida in its place. However many of us have a small amount of probiotics, and we are not feeding them enough of the food they need to survive. So off I went buying probiotics, brand after brand, confused again about how many million cultures I needed and whether I needed the refrigerated kind or the kind that could stay on the shelf. The health and fitness industry is just as bad as the fashion industry, always changing what’s right and what’s wrong.
All I knew is that I needed relief and my doctors weren’t doing much to treat the cause of my health issues. So I had taken matters into my own hands. I had developed skin issues, digestive issues, nail issues, scalp issues, ear issues. My whole body was being affected and they wanted to send me off to different specialists for each problem. I couldn’t understand why the wouldn’t try to find the root cause which made me lose faith in them. Needless to say, I didn’t go.
So I diagnosed myself with Candida overgrowth since my symptoms matched what I had learned online, and I followed the vegan anti-candida protocol in the course I purchased. However, starving the Candida with a juice fast, loading up with probiotics and following a vegan anti-Candida meal plan only gave me a small amount of relief. I didn’t really get the healing that I so badly needed.
Searching for more answers, I learned about CCWS (Candida Cell Wall Suppressor) through a Candida support group I found on Facebook. It felt good to see other people trying to heal themselves from the same disease that I was suffering from. I began using the CCWS to kill the candida that was in my body. I probably finished about 7 bottles, and I still have a few capsules left on my shelf now. That protocol had some side effects due to the toxins that were released from the Candida dying, but finally it was something that did help me start to feel better in my gut.
The next thing I did was get a colonoscopy to see what an actual gastroenterologist would advise me to do to heal my gut and stop the gas and bloating. The doctor told me that I had an inflamed colon and to consume yogurt and kefir to benefit from the probiotics they contain. I thought kefir and yogurt were one in the same so I tried the kefir once but stuck to the store-bought yogurt. I was confused about which yogurt I should use because dairy gave me a sour stomach at times. So I stuck with dairy-free yogurt for a while, just to be on the safe side.
Later down the line, I came across a young woman on YouTube, Montreal Healthy Girl, who spoke about healing the digestive system from leaky gut syndrome and mentioned that kefir needed to be a staple food product. So back to kefir I went, learning all that I could about it. I came across a podcast called Cultured Food Life and listened to almost every episode. The host, Donna Schweck, had such a caring and nurturing voice and genuinely wanted everyone to heal themselves with the probiotics from fermented foods as she had done for herself and had helped so many others do.
I learned to make my own dairy milk kefir from her website and even got my mom to make and drink her own which yielded amazing results on her depression. The lactose in the milk didn’t bother me like it usually did because the good bacteria in the store-bought kefir I added to the milk had used the lactose as a food source and consumed it.
Drinking kefir daily and staying away from the foods that gave me bad reactions helped with my excess mucus, digestive health, mental and emotional well-being and more. It was the beneficial bacteria being restored in my body that were either depleted, low in count and/or not being nourished that gave me an extra health boost. This was great! But I still had some issues, mainly gas and bloating. My body had improved but I still was not as healthy as I wanted to be. (Later I learned that kefir is a food that I should avoid because it is made from milk which is also to be avoided for my blood type. Upon learning this, I have stopped consuming it.)
Guidance and Structure: I Found the Book!
One day when I was getting a smoothie from one of my favorite shops, I found a book on their shelf next to some blood type tests. The book was entitled Eat Right 4 Your Type. I sat down and read a little in order to see if it was worth reading further, and I found that it absolutely was. Later, I got the book from my library (support your local library and save some money on books), and poured into it like I had never done with any other book. I felt that it was telling me about the missing piece of my identity, and it was.
From the very beginning of the book, I had a feeling that I was blood type O because of the health tendencies and the need to restrict certain foods. They all validated what I had experiencing for my whole life! I couldn't wait to take that blood test.
And I was correct!
The missing part of my diet that I was not considering was my O+ blood type. People with Type O blood have a tendency towards Candida overgrowth and should stay far away from foods with gluten, dairy, coffee, and pork. But the one thing that was a complete shocker to me, was that people with type O blood are carnivores! I am naturally a meat-eater!
All my adult life, I have tried to stay away from meat, going days without meat and being proud of it. And if I did eat meat, it was chicken or turkey. I even tried vegan and vegetarian diets before, but I was unsuccessful because I craved meat. I never imagined, though, that lean red meat would be a requirement for my diet, even beneficial for my gut microbiome.
This is what I have been needing, a diet with guidance and structure that doesn’t just starve and kill the Candida and patch the symptoms, but provides me with what I need to sustain a healthy diet that naturally keeps Candida where it needs to be at all times, while helping me to balance all other areas of my life.
Before, I was left with questions like:
Why do some foods bother me and not others?
Should I drink dairy or not?
Which one of these probiotics and supplements are the best for me to take, because it can’t be all of them like they claim?
But in the blood type diet book, all of my pressing questions were answered. It was satisfying to learn that everyone is different, so our diets will also be different. Since we have different blood types, the foods we eat and the ways we approach certain health issues will be different as well.
With this knowledge, now I know that it is not wise to follow every new diet that comes out. I truly believe that most of these diets were created by people who got results mainly because the diet was good for their own blood type. Then they went telling everyone else to follow their exact steps. This diet could be detrimental to most because it may not match their blood type. I know for a fact that veganism has been everyone’s goal in life. It used to be my goal as well. But in the book Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type, I learned that 44% of the US population have an O blood type. So a lot of people are suffering on the wrong diet. Meanwhile, Dr. D’Adamo’s blood type book has been on the shelves for more than 27 years (since 1996) collecting dust and his father’s research even longer.
Moving Forward
Well, now I know. At the very least I will give the Blood Type O Diet a try and put my all into it. (I go hard for my health.) According to Dr. Peter D’Adamo, the author and co-founder of this diet with his father, blood type is the best diet for me. I couldn’t deny his ability to read my dietary history without even knowing me, even suggesting and providing blood type O specific probiotics, enzymes, vitamins, minerals and herbal remedies. I feel like I’m all set and that I have everything I need to continue on this journey.
I don’t look at my past as a waste of time, but as stepping stones to get where I am now. It’s like I was in a dark cave with a flashlight trying to make my way to the light, and now I can see clearly! I have no problem cutting out the foods that I should avoid because I have already cut out most of them just by listening to my body. I feel that I have an intermediate level of understanding of probiotics and enzymes due to my past research, and now I can incorporate the ones that Dr. D’Adamo provides on his site into my new regime with ease.
It’s like I was preparing myself for this moment. Now my new lessons to master are making a yogurt or kefir out of the probiotic strains that my blood type allows, and to learn how to properly cook a steak.
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