Dr. James D'Adamo: The Blood-Type Lifestyle

James L. D'Adamo, N.D., D.N.B., is the founder and director of the D'Adamo Institute for the Advancement of Natural Therapies. He originated the Blood Type Diet based on the idea that there is a correlation between a person's blood type and their dietary requirements, physical exercises, inherent strengths and weaknesses, and what assets and liabilities one was given at birth.

Dr. James L. D’Adamo has been a certified naturopath for 50 years. Trained in the
United States, Germany and Switzerland, he has worked in New York, Montreal and Europe. He currently operates two highly successful clinics in Toronto Ontario Canada and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Dr. James L. D'Adamo has given numerous television and radio interviews exploring his blood type theory, and has lectured in the United States, Great Britain, Belgium and Canada. He is a teacher and researcher as well as the author of One Man's Food . . . Is Someone Else's Poison (1980) and The D'Adamo Diet (1989). His third book, Just an Ounce of Prevention...Is worth a pound of cure was released by Hay House on April 15, 2010.

Dr. D’Adamo decided during his studies that he wanted to do things a natural way. Originally studying pre-med, Dr. D’Adamo is a naturopathic physician with a chiropractic degree. Along the way of his studies he had a change of heart. "I decided what I wanted was to do things in a natural way, and consequently I went into chiropractic and into naturopathic medicine, which I have been practicing now since 1955,” says Dr. D’Adamo. Along with his practice in New York City and his position as co-director of the Naturopathic University in Toronto, Dr. D’Adamo has traveled to Montreal and even London to examine patients.

Dr. D’Adamo found that each individual needs different food to be healthy. “So I began to think also, ‘gee no two people have the same fingerprints, or footprints, or lip prints, or ear prints, your voice is unlike any other voice in the whole world’. Could it not be that food that energizes and gives my body health, could cause sickness in someone else?” remembers Dr. D’Adamo.

With his strong background in blood pathology, Dr. D’Adamo looked to the blood for answers. “You can live with one arm, you can live with one leg, you can live with one lung, you can live with one kidney, but you cannot live without blood,” he explains. It seemed important to him that there are four different blood groups. From his research, he discovered that Type O’s are the hunters, A’s are the gatherers, and B’s and AB's have the best of both kingdoms.

Sub-blood groups opened an even deeper understanding for Dr. D’Adamo. “Maybe your blood group is O, because your predominant parent is O, but it could be if your other parent is A and you have a small trait of A in your blood. That tells me so much more about what it is your body wants and what it needs and how you relate to the world and how the world relates to you,” states Dr. D’Adamo. The blood groups allow Dr. D’Adamo to know what foods and exercises are good for individuals and how his or her mind should process information when he or she are healthy.

Dr. D’Adamo restructured the way he examined the body. He says, “Treating symptoms does not cure conditions.” Dr. D’Adamo explains that food is fuel to the body and if someone puts the wrong food into his or her body, it will break down. His goal is to locate the weakened organ in the body because the weakened organ produces that symptom, and it is the symptom, rather than the organ, that is typically treated.

Vitamins and herbs are momentarily used the process. Since eating correctly cannot strengthen a weakened organ, Dr. D’Adamo suggests momentarily using vitamins and herbs to help. He says, “I see vitamins and herbs of drugs…each blood group's nutrient requirement is different…we are only giving the body exactly what it needs, never what it doesn’t need.”

Dr. D’Adamos hopes that natural medicine will take its place in America. “I'm not saying there isn’t a need for allopathic medicine, but I am saying there should be greater acceptance of natural medicine. I think that they can coexist,” says Dr. D’Adamo.