For many years prior to 2004, I bought into conventional wisdom regarding diet and nutrition and ate lots of whole grains, as did many of my acquaintances who were striving for good health. The results were disastrous across the board: weight gains, gastrointestinal problems, skin problems, atherosclerosis, insulin resistance, autoimmunity and more, a cascade of unaccountable chronic issues. We could not understand how we could be eating such "healthy whole grain goodness" and yet become so sick and fat. Dr. Cordain's original pioneering Paleo Diet book led many of us, including me, to greatly improved health. The science that has been unfolding since has essentially all been pointing in one direction, supporting Dr. Cordain's theories. The scientific support is so strong that you see little of the back and forth, the contradictory study results, that usually accompany unfolding science in peer reviewed journal articles. Yet as always seems to be the case, few of those practicing medicine or nutrition in the trenches seem to have recognized the truths and effectiveness of the principles.
The Paleo Answer is a much welcome update to The Paleo Diet and The Paleo Diet for Athletes. Several years ago, I'd suggested such an update and was told it was in the works. The original book, The Paleo Diet, good as it was, contained some understandable errors of the time that needed revision, such as the suggestion to use flaxseed oil for cooking, when flaxseed oil is far too fragile for that purpose.
Dr. Cordain tends to be a relative purist when it comes to paleo diet principles, and many readers will be daunted when they read the new book and find that so many of their favorite foods are seriously deleterious. Yet there is sound science backing up Dr. Cordain's assertions, and it all makes great sense when you consider that the foods that science documents as deleterious are those that would have had no place in human diet during the eons over which the human race developed. Other authors and proponents of primal diets tend to compromise more in terms of accommodation for popular conventional foods such as dairy, nightshades, and legumes. I've endeavored to follow the science as reported in journals preceding Dr. Cordain's new book and so far as I can see, he gets the science right, and more important, it works in practice, in real life application.
Following Cordain's relatively strict paleo diet principles, I lost 35 excess pounds in about six months and have not gained any of it back in the 6 years that have since passed. I eat as much in terms of food quantity as I feel like and I never have a problem feeling excessively hungry, so the weight loss and maintenance have been relatively effortless so long as I limit my food selections to those that fit the Paleo profile. GI problems disappeared, skin rashes cleared, obstructive sleep apnea resolved, cardiac arrhythmias normalized, and a recent electron beam coronary artery scan showed a calcium score of zero in my coronary arteries, no measurable arterial plaque. Yet years prior, even conventional CT scans showed mild arterial calcium buildup.
The diet and lifestyle can be especially beneficial for those tending toward autoimmune disorders, lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren's, scleroderma, autoimmune hepatitis, autoimmune thyroid disease, and others. The few autoimmune patients that I know of who have been willing to institute Cordain's Paleo principles strictly have had exceptional improvements and sometimes complete resolution of all symptoms and signs. Without question, a considerable amount of diligence, study, effort, and expense are involved in maintaining a strict paleo diet and lifestyle. Most restaurant fare and most quickly prepared processed foods are off limits. For many of us, myself included, great efforts must be made to avoid consuming even the tiniest amount of wheat gluten at the risk of provoking a return of symptoms that can last a couple of weeks.
In the big picture of things, we can look at the history of medical science and see that in the period between 1900 and 1960, many acute and infectious diseases were conquered. But since then, in terms of real results, there have been few breakthroughs that treat patients truly effectively for chronic diseases such as heart disease, autoimmune disorders, diabetes or asthma. Incidence of many of those disorders is actually increasing. Something has been missing in the focus of all the admirable science that has been directed at those disorders, possibly because so much has been focused on developing profitable patentable "pills" to provide relief. Dr. Cordain is leading the way to what are and will be a new series of breakthroughs in avoiding and treating disabling chronic diseases. Relief will not be as simple as popping a pill, and only a relative few will be willing to make the considerable effort and to sustain it indefinitely. But the rewards for them will be well worthwhile.
