Sep 13, 2006
Metabolic Typing Body Chemistry and Diet
Of all the millions, if not billions, of web searches being carried out across the net every day, there are approximately 54 looking for this quite spectacular string of words: the metabolic typing diet customize your diet to your own unique body chemistry
It was the word chemistry, that brought it to near the top of a recent keywords trawl I was carrying out to help find new topics to offer visitors to the Chemspy site.
Turns out to be a book. I should’ve guessed, why else would so many people search on such a specific string of words. You can buy it here.
The book’s blurb explains the gist of author, William Linz Wolcott’s diet theory: “People are unique in more ways than we can see. Stomachs and other internal organs come in many different shapes and sizes. Digestive juices, too, can vary dramatically from one person to another…it stands to reason that different foods have very different effects on different people.”
Wolcott believes that tailoring your diet to your body’s particular chemistry – metabolic typing – will improve digestion, circulation, immunity, energy, and mood. To determine your type, he has you take a 65-question test (the questions range from nose moisture to how you feel about potatoes), then place yourself in one of three categories: protein type, carbo type, or mixed type.
Sounds like this will have great potential for those who really cannot bring themselves to let go of the remote control, get up off the sofa and do some exercise. Once they realise it doesn’t actually work for them (usually takes about two weeks for that to happen), this tome will be find its slot on the book shelf alongside Atkins, Cabbage, and F…
..yeah and if you’re eating too many puddings you ain’t gonna lose weight Mr X
I love how someone condemns some “theory” while never actually testing it to see if it might hold some weight or not; I thought the whole point of scientific inquiry is testing the hypothesis through experiments to see if it has any validity. Mean while my friend tells me how many times he sees people at Columbia University “fitting the data” to their hypothesis.
Anyway, the survey in the book is only a beginning – you are only scratching the surface. But, if you want the real deal, you have to do a hair and urine analysis in conjunction with the survey to give you a more comprehensive and accurate information as to what your type is and what supplements and diet you should be on. Does it work? The proof is in the pudding…
It’s the cookies and pastries (and beer) that are most people’s downfall when it comes to eating healthily.
I tried the test provided by Dr. Mercola, which found (alledged) that i was a strong protein type. I upped my proteins and reduced sugars, especially in the morning and I felt a lot less groggy. The spaciness disappeared, as did the extreme light sensitivity. Does this prove the theory has merit? No, but I have upped the protein in my diet, and stopped worying about the amount of red meat in my diet. My blood profile, taken two weeks after I tried this diet (routine annual exam) showed no change in total cholesterol from last year (200, HDL 59) but a slight increase in LDL at the expense of VLDL). My triglycerides dropped from 145 to 85. Only negative is a slight increase in uric acid.
If I could just stay away from the cookies and pastries, as this and every other diet would recommend, I would keep the triglycerides down. I have trouble being a strict adherent, but I guess I don’t care that much, as long as my cholesterol/HDL ratio remains fairly low., and my triglycerides and uric acid are not out of line.