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

Product Description

Maximize Health At Every Stage of Your Life

In Live Right 4 Your Type, physician and New York Times bestselling author Peter J. D'Adamo distills the voluminous data on blood type, physiology and metabolism into a series of fascinating observations and simple guidelines. Since his Eat Right 4 Your Type was published, new research has indicated that there is a blood-type profile for almost every aspect of our lives, and that knowing our profiles can help us each live a better life. Live Right 4 Your Type offers individualized prescriptions according to blood type and details:

• New data that looks at the importance of "secretor subtype" as a refinement to the blood type theory

• The use of blood type genetics to help understand the mind-body connection

• Extensive new food lists

• New prescriptive recommendations

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!


Probably good advice, but it has some discrepancies   March 20, 2001
 68 out of 80 found this review helpful

I'll admit to being a health nut. In fact, I wrote for health magazines for years. I read my blood type carefully in this book and also in ER4YT, and the diet recommendations don't exactly jibe. ER4YT tells us that a type AB should drink coffee. LR4YT says avoid it at all costs. Confusing for a coffee lover. I'd give it up if I really believed it was dreadful for me, but which book do I believe?

Both books say that type ABs lack stomach acid. I have too much. Both books tell me to eat a great deal of soy. I don't like it and neither does my digestive system. D'Adamo doesn't really discuss exceptions to his rules...he just plunks them down like they're the word of God.

Under the section on seasonings, both books list ONLY curry and parsley as beneficial for ABs. However, none of the individual ingredients in commercial curry powder are listed as beneficial and some are in the avoid column. That's true of curry powder from health-food stores too. I read dozens of recipes for curry powder online and they all contain "avoid" ingredients. So how can curry be beneficial?

In this book, the lists of beneficial, neutral, and avoid foods are listed in small type on tables covered with a dark grey screen. I find them difficult to read and the pages unattractive. ER4YT was presented in an easier format. I'm also put off by the gloom-and-doom prognoses D'Adamo gives for ABs. He assumes he's talking to sick people, not well people. I'm much healthier than he thinks an AB has a right to be, and would much prefer it if he would concentrate on positive suggestions to improve my health in general. He does list some supplements that are good for ABs, but doesn't go into enough detail about how much to take.

I'm inclined to believe that blood types matter, but because of these and other discrepancies, small but significant to me, I think Dr. D'Adamo's theories are a work in progress. I am following the diet for my type about 90% of the time. But the book does not give me any perspective on whether following 90% of its suggestions mean anything whatsoever. Is it all or nothing? If you eat one "avoid" food does it throw you off altogether, or can you make up with it by eating 3, 6, or 12 beneficial things?

This book presents a ton of supposedly scientific evidence, but it sorely lacks reader-friendly touches that would endear it to me.


This book details a very effective plan to optimize health   February 15, 2001
 59 out of 65 found this review helpful

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!


I got a lot of benefit from Dr. D'Adamo's books   March 23, 2001
 43 out of 48 found this review helpful

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.


This Book Will Change Your Life   January 15, 2001
 41 out of 48 found this review helpful

If you follow the guidelines in this book, you will find your life changed for the better! Most people look at a book like this for weight control only. However, this book will not only provide that, if needed, but, more importantly, give you the guidelines to your optimum health.

I have lost weight (55 pounds), following the "Eat Right 4 Your Type" guidelines, and have kept it off for over 2 years. This is without any hunger, calorie counting, fat gram counting, or carbohydrate counting. Just balanced eating of the foods that are good for my particular blood type. This new book, "Live Right 4 Your Type," gives even more in-depth refinement to those food lists.

My greatest benefit, however, has been in the area of my general health. I have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis since 1986. My neurologist considers me "one of the lucky ones," because my ms has not progressed as fast as most patients he sees. I give much of the credit, to my stability, to following the guidelines put forth by Dr. D'Adamo. Perhaps I would have stabilized anyway?? I don't know for sure, but one thing I do know is that whenever I stray into eating foods that are listed as "avoids" I suffer the effects. For instance, wheat will cause numbness and tingling in my extremities to flare up, along with migraine headaches. This is only one example.

Give the guidelines in this book a chance. You only have your good health to gain!!