Not everyone benefits from the same diet

This is taken from a recent article and thought it is good reading for any still with doubts about all the diet propaganda posted in the last several weeks (or is it months?)

Two Physicians’ Experiences with Using Vegetarian Diets for Everyone

After finishing my family practice residency in 1985 I read the book Fit for Life. The book made some very compelling arguments encouraging the consumption of raw fruits and vegetables. So I started its recommendations and had fruit for breakfast. After a few weeks I tested my blood work and was shocked to find my fasting triglycerides were nearly 3,000. That is not a typo. Nearly three thousand...This was surprising because they had never been over 100 in the past.

Clearly this diet was killing me and I am convinced I would have died long ago had I remained on it. I now realize that this approach probably helps some, but was a disaster for me personally.

Dr. Eades is another nutritional physician. He and I have never met and do not personally know each other.

However, we both started our medical practices about the same time and were both passionate about helping people with nutritional interventions and helping them with alternatives to drugs and surgery.

We had no predisposition to the outcome and were impartial observers to the results of our nutritional interventions. We were both busy clinicians and never had the luxury to take months out of our lives to publish our observations in the medical literature. Nevertheless the lack of publications does not make the observations any less valid.

Interestingly we both observed the same results, namely that large numbers of sick people failed to improve when they implemented vegetarian or vegan diets.

This shocked us as we were compelled by many of the arguments that Campbell makes and believed that all our patients should have improved on this regimen. Initially I questioned their compliance and believed many of them were “cheating.” But after this started happening to more and more people, it became clear my approach was flawed.

Many of these patients significantly worsened and nearly died. Many even left our practices because they lost faith in our ability to use diet as a tool to help them regain their health. What we both realized after these well-intentioned efforts is that . . .

There is No Perfect Diet that Works for Everyone

Most of the confusion in this debate results from this reality. Vegetarian diets described by Campbell do work for large numbers of people. From my observations, perhaps about one third of the population would benefit from it. These people thrive on these foods and have spectacular health. The problem is that there is an equally large, or even larger, population whose health is devastated by restricting animal protein and fats.

About ten years ago I was exposed to concepts that helped me understand this shocking observation. I realized that there is an enormous level of biochemical and genetic individuality that essentially guarantees that there is no perfect food plan that will work for everyone.

What I gradually came to appreciate is that we are all uniquely designed and require customized plans.

I eventually adopted a program called Nutritional Typing, which is a central part of my health plan and is available for free on my site.

This plan categorizes people into three different groups:

Protein: High amounts of healthy fats and protein and lower amounts of vegetables
Carb: High amounts of vegetables and lower amounts of protein and fat
Mixed: Somewhere between the above options
The population is divided equally between the groups, with about one third of the population of the US in each group.

If you go to certain countries however, you will find high percentages in one group, but the US is a wide mixture and has a widespread heterogeneity.

Nutritional Typing Produced Dramatic Improvement

Once I began implementing Nutritional Typing in my practice I noticed a remarkable decrease in those that did not respond favorably to dietary changes. Nearly everyone seemed to notice improvement, and for many it was quite dramatic.

One of the underlying principles of the program is to "Listen to Your Body" and adjust your foods based on how you feel mentally and physically after consuming them. Many who claim to have tried nutritional typing and report feeling worse, have clearly missed this most essential point.

If, after a meal, you feel sluggish, tired, nauseous, or depressed, your meal was not ideal. If you are indeed following the nutritional typing program, this will be a giant clue that you need to modify your diet.

You make a great mistake if you simply take the test once and strictly follow the food choices recommended for that type – you must continuously check in with yourself and keep modifying your food choices until you find the right balance of fats, healthy carbs and protein for you.

Nutritional typing is a way to determine what YOUR customized diet is, and it is not even a one-size-fits-all within each nutritional grouping. If you take nutritional typing seriously, its guidelines will help you modify your food intake until you find the right balance.

That said, some of the most dramatic improvements I saw were from individuals who were protein types but were eating mostly carbs, in the way of vegetables. It was very common for these people to have strong ethical positions about refusing to eat animal products.

I would never ask someone to eat animal foods if they had spiritual convictions against doing so. However, many in this category were just confused about this issue – thinking this is what was healthiest for their body. They couldn't understand why they felt so sick and had so many health problems. Once we were able to clear up that confusion, and experiment with the program, the result was typically quite impressive.

~ Dr. Mercola

Mercola is bald, not have any credibility

Back when Mercola was losing his hair, his diet was not really that great and he didn't have this knowledge. In any event, he is just giving examples in this post of others who have tried the diet.

To my recollection, he blames his excessive grain intake for the loss of his hair.

Also, I hadn't realized that being bald means you lose all credibility. Hopefully I can nip this hair loss thing in the bud before it forces me to lose the ability to make a credible argument.

yes mercola blames his hair loss back on his high carb / vegetarian based diets...

Theres dozens of bald, pale, weak vegans... in fact most of them are one of the 3.

CS, if no one benefits from the same diet, why do you advocate the Atkins-diet (high-fat/high-cholesterol/high-protein) diet so much and tell people grains are bad and fiber is a "fraud"?

SMFH