YOUR BODY KNOWS BEST 1
Why Different People
Require Different Diets Betsy is your typical high-powered Chicago executive. She walks fast, talks fast, and thinks even faster. You might say she’s always on the fast track. Betsy, 35, keeps up with all the latest nutrition information and, therefore, has cut out all fats from her diet and has increased her intake of fiber-rich grains, breads, pasta, and potatoes as the current diet plans dictate. She keeps a diet soda on her desk at all times and, after a hard day at work, treats herself with fat-free yogurt (which tastes even sweeter than ice cream, thanks to the miracle of NutraSweet). Believing that she can “eat more, weigh less,” Betsy cannot understand why she is not losing but gaining weight, is tired all the time, and feels uncomfortably bloated in her abdominal area. Knowing that her diet couldn’t be the culprit, Betsy has increased her exercise program. When that doesn’t help, she becomes convinced that she suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. Her blood type is B and her grandparents come from Eastern Europe.
Monica is a real fitness fanatic. At the age of 42, she is a competitive cyclist in Boston who looks exceedingly fit and has only an 8 percent body fat level. Unfortunately, she doesn’t feel healthy. A family history of elevated cholesterol levels has made her a strict convert to the low-fat, high complex-carbohydrate propaganda, and she has cut all meat and animal products from her diet. But after three years on this regimen, she has begun to suffer from ongoing yeast infections, dry skin, dandruff, chest pains, and, finally, hair loss. Monica is of Irish ancestry, and has type O blood.
Now meet Linda, a 25-year-old hairdresser in Tucson. Linda has become a missionary for vegetarianism, and for good reason. Since giving up all animal products, including meat, chicken, fish, and dairy, she feels lighter and more energetic and has lost 20 pounds. She has no more digestive upsets and can finally jump out of bed in the morning with vigor and vitality. Linda has type A blood; her ancestors hail from the Mediterranean area.
These three women, created as composites from the 7,000-plus case histories I’ve collected throughout my career as a nutritionist, are all following basically the same low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, but with vastly different results. Monica experiences some pretty serious health problems; Betsy has been gaining weight; Linda has been so successful that she tries to get everyone she meets to try her extreme version of the diet. I’ve included the information about their blood types and ancestry for a very important reason: to illustrate that certain biological clues point the way to the kind of dietary information that we need. Why would all of these women on the same diet experience such different results? The reason is that each of their individual chemistries reacts differently to the diet.
Imagine an Eskimo on a low-fat diet. The traditional diet of Eskimos consisted of up to 10 pounds of meat a day, including high quantities of fat, but there is no evidence of cancer or heart disease in their history. Is it possible that through hundreds of generations, the Eskimos actually evolved genetically so their bodies
require a diet high in protein and fat in order to stay healthy in their frigid environment? Now think about the typical Oriental or Indian diet, which has historically centered around vegetables and rice. Would this low-fat, low-protein diet provide enough stamina, endurance, energy, and body fat to withstand the extreme environment of the North Pole? Common sense would lead you to answer “No” and that, as it turns out, is the correct answer.
Personalized Nutrition—Not a New Concept There is no universal diet suitable for everybody. It may seem like a new idea to you, but in fact, the concept of biological uniqueness and personalized nutrition has been around for centuries. Here’s a little bit of international history to prove my point: Ancient Chinese writings and early Egyptian and Greek physicians all incorporated this concept into their healing dietary regimens. Hippocrates, often considered the father of medicine, classified individuals in different categories according to characteristics of their blood and phlegm and the color of the bile. Body structure was another feature Hippocrates told his students to observe when making diagnoses.
Traditional Chinese medicine has developed its own unique system of classifying disease symptoms individualistically. Using tools such as tongue, pulse, and deficiency or excess, yin or yang, and cold or hot patterns diagnosis, Oriental medicine practitioners choose a course of treatment and food therapy for each patient based on the results of their findings in these areas. Some foods and herbs are very strongly indicated and helpful for some individuals but are wrong for others who have different types of ailments. This personalized form of medicine, which was developed thousands of years ago, is still in use today and recently has been gaining renewed popularity in the United States.
Ayurveda is the 6,000-year-old science of India that differentiates individuals in reference to body typing. Color and texture of hair and skin, rate of speech, body size and shape, gait, and even temperament and emotional responses are the clues Ayurvedic physicians look at to determine body type, and assist them in individualizing diagnoses and treatment. Dr. Stuart Rothenberg, national co-director of the U.S. Maharishi Ayur-Veda Medical Center, explains it best. “Western medicine asks what kind of disease the patient is suffering from. Ayurveda asks what kind of patient is suffering from the disease.”
Lucretius, the Roman philosopher, is credited with saying, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” The fact is that the concept of nutritional individuality has been a recognized ingredient of good health since antiquity. In modern times as well, there have been many noted researchers who acknowledged the importance of personalizing health and nutrition. Henry Bieler, in his book
Food Is Your Best Medicine (Random House, 1965), led the way in modern times with his classification of individuals according to the dominance of their adrenal, thyroid, or pituitary glands. Even before Bieler, body structure classifications were identified by Dr. William H. Sheldon in
The Atlas of Men in the 1940s. He divided individuals into three basic types: ectomorph (thin), endomorph (fleshy), and mesomorph (muscular).
Perhaps the most well-known of these personalized health subscribers was the noted biochemist Dr. Roger Williams. He promoted his ideas of biochemical individuality as early as the 1950s, further explaining them in an interview in 1977: “(Biochemical individuality) simply tells us that body chemistries are not the same. Two people of about the same height and weight have about the same total metabolism, but the details of chemical reactions taking place in their bodies may be different. Certain reactions will take place ten times as fast in one individual as another. This makes our nutritional needs different.”
Dr. Williams, the discoverer of pantothenic acid and the namer of folic acid, developed the genetotrophic theory of disease, in which he stated that “each individual has, because of his genetic makeup, distinctive nutritional needs ...,” the lack of which predispose him to certain degenerative diseases. He stated that “individuality pervades every part of the body. From birth, human beings are highly distinctive in both microscopic and gross anatomy, in the functioning of their organs, the composition of body fluids and in nutritional requirements,” and that these permanent, genetically inherited factors extend “to the structure and metabolism of every cell,” and “determine the speed and efficiency with which cells perform their essential functions.” In one of his numerous books,
Nutrition Against Disease, Dr. Williams wrote:
“That malnutrition—unbalanced or inadequate nutrition—at the cellular level should be thought of as a major cause of human disease seems crystal clear to me. It is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the facts produced by decades of biochemical research.
What do these facts suggest in terms of practical application? We need to develop techniques for identifying far more accurately than is now possible the inherited pattern of susceptibilities and resistances that is unique to each individual. Call it a ‘metabolic profile’ or any other name you wish, but plainly it represents a necessary precondition for making rational programs of nutrition tailored to fit each individual’s special requirements.”
Enter Dr. William Donald Kelley. As if in answer to Dr. Williams’ call, in the 1970’s, Dr. Kelley became the first researcher to utilize computer technology in developing a systematized analysis of what he called individual “metabolic types.” Following the lead of research done by Francis Pottenger, M.D., in the 1920’s, and Royal Lee, D.D.S., in the 1950’s, on the relationships of nutrients to the autonomic nervous system, Dr. Kelley developed a one dimensional paradigm, utilizing the influences of the autonomic nervous system as a basis for what he termed “metabolic typing.” He was also one of the early medical proponents of treating the patient based on his or her metabolic type, rather than attempting to treat the disease. More recently, two-time Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling, in his extensive studies of the effects of vitamin C on health, confirmed the principle of biochemical individuality when he discovered that different people required different amounts of the nutrient for optimal nutritional health. For some people, the desired amount of vitamin C to be added to the daily diet (up to 10 grams) far exceeded the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of 60 milligrams.
We are just beginning to understand the tremendous variation in individual nutrient needs and other aspects of biochemical individuality. I am certain that with more research in this area, we will find other factors in our genetic blueprint that affect our health. For example, veteran nutritional researcher Lendon H. Smith, M.D., has observed that blue-eyed blonds, green-eyed redheads, and American Indians develop alcoholism more frequently than other Americans. Perhaps there is something in their genes that make these groups more prone to contracting the disease.
Until more research is done, however, we need to look at what we do know about biochemical individuality. The place to start is with ancestry and heredity—that fascinating collection of unique biological factors that has developed in a group of people over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. We have each inherited a distinctive set of nutritional needs based upon the effects of climate, geography and the indigenous foods of our ancestors. Whole cultures have genetically adapted over dozens of generations to various conditions and their bodies have developed an affinity and dependence upon the specific foods natural to their region. What is most surprising about this fundamental concept of biochemical individuality is that it has been virtually ignored by modern-day nutritionists, who have singularly focused their attention on creating one universal diet without any regard for genetic makeup.
Let’s examine the ancestral diet a bit deeper, so you understand its significance as a key modifying factor in your personalized diet plan.
How Ancestry Influences Our Health Most of us come from families that have been in this country for several generations, which may make our own genetic nutritional requirements seem less obvious than the examples of the traditional Eskimo and Oriental diets. Furthermore, few of us have a one-nationality lineage, making our genetic influences even more convoluted. In our frenzy to find one perfect diet, we’ve forgotten a basic tenet of our American heritage: The United States is a “melting pot.”
While few of us, like the Native Americans, have descended from peoples who have been on the North American continent for dozens of centuries, vast numbers of us have come from other continents and may have lost touch with our cultural—and physical—origins. Most of us, in fact, have been here only for a few generations. Our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents hail from Northern, Southern, and Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. Some of us have come from harsh, unrelenting climates where fresh fruits and vegetables were rare and meat or heavy, cold-water fish were eaten several times a day. Others have ancestors who lived in tropical climates where fruits, fish, and grains made up the bulk of the daily diet. Some of us have learned to harbor our personal resources, slowing down our metabolism to build body fat to keep us warm in cold climates or when food is scarce. Others, who perhaps adjusted to several generations in a warm climate, grew to depend on a diet high in leafy vegetables, fruits, legumes, and fish and seldom ate fatty animal meats.
Taking Ancestry with Us Remember, it’s only been in the last few hundred years that humans have become as transitory as we are now, moving from one continent to another with ease. If we know where our ancestors are from, we’re fairly safe in assuming that several generations remained in the same region back then. Through countless generations, then, our ancestors naturally adapted and biochemically adjusted to become perfectly suited to their own environment and the foods naturally available there. However, researchers have noted that ethnic and genetic conditions persist, even if people have moved from their original geographic location. That means that even though somewhere along the line your ancestors moved, they took the genetic and nutritional needs that they built at their original location with them. The key to where our ancestors came from and the kind of biochemical adjustments their bodies made is now in our own genes: they determine our highly individualized nutritional requirements, no matter where we live. Simply put, if we know our ancestry, we will have a much better idea of what might be the right foods for us to eat.
To prove my point, let’s look at the work of Weston A. Price, D.D.S. Price, a pioneer in medical/nutritional anthropological research, traveled over 100,000 miles to over a dozen indigenous communities around the globe in the early 1930s. He looked at the diets and health of primitive and indigenous tribes in South America, Australia, Africa, Polynesia, and North America (Native Americans and Eskimos)—cultures that were beginning to experience the impact of modern civilization.
Carefully documenting the information he discovered about each population during his 20 years of research, Dr. Price concluded that the best diet for each of the populations he encountered is the diet of their own ancestors. Price’s work showed that even though native diets were radically different from one location to the next, all the people within each tribe were able to maintain a standard of good health
until they began eating foods not native to their own culture, such as processed carbohydrates like white sugar, white flour, and polished rice.
Price’s book,
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (Price-Pottenger Foundation, 1945), is a real nutrition classic that is just as relevant today as it was when it was first published, not only ...
