Live Right 4 Your Type (Hardcover)

by Peter J. D'Adamo (Author), Catherine Whitney (Contributor) "WHAT MAKES ME ME, AND YOU YOU?..." (more)
Key Phrases: epidermal growth factor, omega series fatty acids, active tissue mass, African Caucasian Asian Secretor, Tier One, General Nutritional Supplementation (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The idea that blood type plays a role in health, wellness, and personality wasn't exactly new when Dr. Peter D'Adamo came out with Eat Right 4 Your Type in 1997. The idea had been around for most of the 19th century, and had gained quite a bit of currency in Japan. But it was a startling idea to most Americans, who made the book a bestseller that was translated into more than 40 languages and spawned a similarly successful sequel, Cook Right 4 Your Type.

Now, Dr. D'Adamo--armed with new studies on genetic links between blood types, disease, and behavior--looks at the psychological and medical peculiarities that seem to predominate in one blood type or another. Type O's, for example, have lower than average amounts of a brain chemical called dopamine, leading to poor concentration, hyperactivity, and temper tantrums. A's tend to manufacture too much cortisol, a stress hormone that can lead to hypertension and has even been implicated in Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Type B's and AB's clear nitric oxide out of their systems faster, allowing them to calm down more rapidly than other blood types when stressed.

Dr. D'Adamo offers detailed lifestyle modifications for each type, including exercise programs, long lists of food to either seek out or avoid, and suggested treatment of specific illnesses. Some of this gets pretty arcane, including his recommendation of bladder wrack (a seaweed) for ulcer treatment of Type O's.

A big part of the appeal of this book series is that anyone reading it can become a participant by joining Dr. D'Adamo's blood-type registry at www.dadamo.com. Live Right for Your Type is peppered with testimonials from these registrants, giving the reader a sense that a true transformation in health, appearance, weight, and well-being is just a few diet and lifestyle changes away. --Lou Schuler

From Publishers Weekly
Author of the bestselling Eat Right 4 Your Type, D'Adamo delves more deeply into the influence of blood type in this follow-up volume, claiming not only that it determines the way individuals should eat, but also the way they should live. For each blood type he offers an extensive "prescription" for lifestyle changes, covering such issues as exercise, stress relief and sleep patterns, as well as supplements and foods. Type O, for instance, is advised to eat red meat and engage in aerobic exercise, while Type A is advised to focus on vegetables and try yoga. D'Adamo identifies the medical risk factors for each blood type, pointing out that, for example, As and ABs are at greater risk for developing cancer, while Os may be more vulnerable to mood disorders or destructive behaviors. In addition to his "prescriptions for living," D'Adamo offers a soup-to-nut diet plan for each blood type, complete with explanations of why various foods work for or against the body. While D'Adamo's plan is meticulously researched, readers may balk at the complexity not only of his text but also of the diet itself, which may create kitchen clashes when individuals of several blood types share meals. This comprehensive, fascinating theory will suit the nutrition-committed, but readers seeking a quick fix to weight and health problems may be left in a daze. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (December 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399146733
• ISBN-13: 978-0399146732
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,032 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

238 of 241 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Liked Eat Right for Your Type, You Will Adore This Book, December 28, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

I thought that Eat Right for Your Type was one of the most helpful self-help health books I had ever read. Live Right for Your Type is much more valuable than that one. If you have read neither, read this one. If you have read and liked Eat Right for Your Type, you will find this book a great improvement on that one.

If your life seems strangely out of kilter and you and your doctors can't quite put your finger on what's wrong, I strongly urge you to read this book. It may well contain important clues for creating more "wellness" for you from the correct application of self-discipline in your eating and activities. The basic weakness of most scientific studies and almost all health books is that they look at average results for the whole population. The studies cited in this book are based on seeing major differences in the body chemistries of people with different blood types. In the same way that you can drown in an average of six inches of water (if that average expresses a range from 10 feet deep to half an inch), the average health advice can make your health worse in some cases.

Eat Right for Your Type was first published in 1996. That pioneering book summarized hundreds of research studies to define healthful eating for people with each different blood type. The underlying mechanism for this relationship is that your blood type influences your body chemistry in ways that create vulnerability or resistance to disease and an efficiently operating body. The four blood types are O, A, B, and AB. Type O people need the most animal protein (especially beef. Type A people need lots of vegetables. Type B people should eat a varied diet. Type AB people should eat smaller, more frequent meals.

Based on that book, many people reported remarkable gains in health, vitality, and weight loss after changing what they eat. In my case, my weight is now 31 pounds less than on my old way of eating (one that my Mother, who has Type A blood, had encouraged all my life -- but I am a Type O person). Many such case histories are reported in Live Right for Your Type.

Live Right for Your Type includes all of the diet information of Eat Right for Your Type, and adds to it insights into personality development, stress management, digestion, disease, and aging. Space does not permit explaining each of these links here, but personality traits are related to different ways that brain chemicals are created and processed by people with different blood types. Type O people, for example, are more easily stimulated into "fight or flight" responses and stay in them longer.

Genetic influences are the beginning of how these factors influence you. Your genes for blood type and other traits come from your parents. From these genes, you get a phenotype (one of the four blood types), a secretion status (whether you secrete antigens into your other bodily fluids or not, as well as into your blood), a Rhesus Factor (positive or negative), and your MN blood type (MM, NN, or MN). All of these concepts are well explained in the appendix of the book. There are also instructions for how you can send away to be tested so you will know what your characteristics are (a total cost of $51.40). In the main body of the book are many explanations of how each of these factors have been associated with the different aspects of life.

The heart of the book though comes in four sections where all of the information about each of the four main blood types is summarized. Yup, there I was in the Type O group with my quick temper, inclination to stay stressed out once stressed, oversensitivity to caffeine and alcohol, impulsiveness to create variety, and blissful reaction to exercise. Dr. D'Adamo definitely had me pegged.

To me the greater insight was when I looked at the type for my wife. I had become concerned about some health vulnerabilities she was experiencing. Yup, there they were. And the things that help her were the items listed. I heaved a big sigh of relief. Whew! It's natural.

If you want to take all of this further, there are instructions in the book for how to get more instructional material and to order special food supplements for each blood type. Normally, I find such offerings offensive. In this case, I had the opposite reaction. I don't know where else to get information that will help me, and I want to know more.

Unlike many books that are based on one study or one hypothesis, this book is built on hundreds of studies. These are cited in the back of the book. Although I did not look any of these up, these seemed to be from reputable sources. There is some speculation in the book. I was fascinated to see that some of the brain chemistry related genes are located next to the blood type genes in DNA. We don't know enough yet to know what that means. It may mean nothing, but it is certainly interesting to think about.

After you have finished following advice in this book and feeling better, I suggest that you think about people you care about who are potentially living and eating in ways that don't match their blood types. Please do share this book with them. You will be giving a very precious gift.

Live more naturally, in keeping with your true physical self!

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book details a very effective plan to optimize health, February 15, 2001

By	Edna (Tampa Bay region of Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

Speaking as a person who has been following the diet as put forth in the author's original, now classic book "Eat Right for Your Type" for over three years, I can tell you unequivocally that this diet has the power to profoundly change your quality of life and health for the better! I originally went on the blood type diet in 1997 because I was morbidly obese and needed to lose weight, but I have stayed on it and will stay on it for life because it has given me very deep health benefits that I never could have predicted or realized without it. The new book "Live Right for Your Type" goes into great detail on how to further refine the diet and exercise plan in order to minimize weaknesses inherent to your blood type and maximize your strengths, resulting in achieving optimal health. It provides greatly expanded food lists that also offer even more further fine-tuning of the diet with secretor/non-secretor lists (read the book to find out what the heck I'm talking about there!!!), which can be an important key in the diet as well. Whether you start out on this journey in order to lose weight, you have a specific chronic problem that you want to try to address through diet (and the book goes into detail on overcoming many health challenges by customizing the diet to treat these, instead of using drugs as orthodox medicine so often resorts to without trying simple dietary means first), or you are healthy and you just want to support your health in the best way possible for a lifetime, I highly recommend this book. I went on the blood type diet to lose weight, which I have, but it has given me so much more-it has helped me overcome previously uncontrollable food cravings, made my menstrual cycles regular and helped alleviate PMS symptoms, helped tremendously with an upper-respiratory problem, given me great energy, and returned my body and mind to a feeling and sense of balance and deep health. And that's just the tip of the iceberg! I can't say enough about this book-do yourself a favor and buy it, read it and put it into practice! You'll never want to look back!

44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I got a lot of benefit from Dr. D'Adamo's books, March 23, 2001

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This book is a welcome addition to the original Eat Right For Your Type (ER4YT.) I am so used to ER4YT method, where you select foods based on your blood type) that it is almost second nature to me.

Now Dr. D'Adamo adds more information about life style, degenerative diseases, more info on minor blood types and secretor versus non-secretor to fine-tune the ER4YT way of eating. This theory has a lot of proponents in Japan (where they have a similar theory that tries to predict actual behavior from blood type.) I don't think blood type is a solid indicator of behavior, but I definitely feel much, much better if I follow these guidelines. And maybe I will avoid some health problems down the road.

It isn't hard to avoid the foods and select from the list of beneficial or neutral foods. Beneficial foods are ones that actively will help your health; neutral foods are ok to eat, but have no special benefits. You can even indulge in the occasional "avoid" food once in a while if you are healthy. If you are ill, however, you can maximize your recovery by sticking to the beneficial and neutral foods. This is not a difficult way of life and this book has done me more good than any other diet or health book I ever read.