James D’Adamo, a naturopathic doctor, in the 1980s and then popularized by his son and fellow naturopathic doctor, Dr. But does your blood type really have anything to do with customized nutrition recommendations, or is this just another fad diet? Is there any scientific basis for eating for your blood type? Or is the Blood Type Diet as unproven as (although far less hazardous than) trying to cure insanity with lambs’ blood? What Is the Blood Type Diet? /kitzcorner
This way of eating has attracted millions of people looking to optimize their diets, lose weight, and improve their overall well-being. Its core thesis is that you need distinct diet, lifestyle, and even personality advice to achieve your best health and life - based on your blood type. The Blood Type Diet has been around since the 1980s. It’s also given rise to a movement that claims your blood type is a key factor in determining what kind of diet you should eat, how you should move, and even what baseline personality you will exhibit. This discovery has saved a lot of lives, making possible the safe transfusion of blood for people in a wide variety of dire circumstances: serious injuries, surgeries, some cancer treatments, high-risk childbirths, and blood disorders. He named these types A, B, and O (and a fourth, AB, was identified a year later). In 1901, biologist Karl Landsteiner discovered different kinds of antibodies in human blood, which gave rise to different blood types. Which is to say, the man’s immune system rejected the infused blood, killing the red blood cells as if they were dangerous foreign invaders.
After a trial and inquiry, the practice of transfusion - even human to human - was prohibited, and it remained a rare occurrence for the next 150 years.Īlthough the reasons for the man’s death were not understood until the late 19th century, it’s pretty clear that the problem was what’s known as a hemolytic transfusion reaction. When the second procedure proved fatal, with the subject shaking in a violent fit and dying the next day, Denis was arrested.
The court physician to King Louis XIV, an ambitious experimenter named Jean-Baptiste Denis, tried in 1668 to cure an infamous Paris “madman” by giving him serial transfusions. The British had done some dog-to-dog transfusions, and their archrivals, the French, decided to up the ante by transfusing lambs’ blood into human beings. In the 17th century, the European medical world was abuzz with the possibility that blood could be transfused from one organism to another.