Longevity, Healing and Wellness Book Breakdown
Lately, I have been devouring (pun intended) healthy eating books geared toward decreasing inflammation. As we get older, or at least as I have gotten older, it seems everything becomes inflamed: the gut, the face, the scalp. I have even had mysterious pain issues since I was 20, but chalked them up to stress and only stress. When I turned 40, I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease and have been researching functional medicine therapies ever since. I did get some allopathic medication, which I thankfully am no longer taking. Functional medicine aims at finding your own root cause to a laundry list of auto-immune diseases. Mine are a mixture of gut issues and nerve pain, so I don’t expect traditional science or medicine to have my answer because everyone’s microbiome and symptoms are unique.
I have been reading several anti-inflammatory life-style books and have visited a functional medicine specialist. I have noticed that in my effort to reduce new inflammation, I am on a path to curbing what might have also been a result of old inflammation. Here’s a quick summary of the various books I have read geared toward solving auto-immune symptoms and promoting longevity.
My list includes Live Right for your Blood Type by Peter J. D’Adamo, The Autoimmune Solution by Amy Myers, Eating Well for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, and The Plant Paradox by Stephen Gundry.
What they all have in Common
All the books explain why certain foods are toxic and lead to inflammation. Generally speaking, packaged and processed foods aren’t good for anyone. We’ve all heard that. Refined sugars are bad. The only sugars that are all right are generally those from fruit, but should also be eaten in small doses. Be careful with grains, they contain GMOs and/or have been exposed to Round Up or contain arsenic.
From an autoimmune perspective, these books go deeper into explaining why seemingly healthy foods might actually be bad for your particular microbiome and the best way to figure out which ones are the culprit are to cleanse the gut, heal the gut and then add food back in, one at a time.
How they Differ
Weil discusses inflammation in his book and suggests you start with the elimination of nightshades which include tomatoes, white potatoes (yams are ok), chili/bell peppers, and eggplant. But his book isn’t hyper-focused on people suffering from an autoimmune disorder, rather it is focused on eating well, eating clean and eating all foods in moderation. If you don’t have an auto-immune disease, this is a great book to live by.
Myers, a student of Dr. Weil, focuses primarily on autoimmune diets and goes beyond the elimination of nightshades. Her cleanse is 30-days and even to me (who has already eliminated several foods) felt it was just too hard and boring to jump into.
D’Adamo’s diet and lifestyle books are geared around what foods your body will not like based on your blood type. In other words, certain foods (based on your blood type) will cause your body to attack itself. It categorizes foods based on your blood type into three categories:
(1) Beneficial, your body will treat it like good medicine
(2) Neutral, your body will treat it as food
(3) Avoid, your body will treat it as poison
I am a Type O. According to D’Adamo, Type O’s do well with a grain-free, legume-free, dairy-free and high protein and fat diet. I followed this for a bit and noticed that several foods on his Type O Avoid list were foods I had already realized I needed to eliminate (namely grains and legumes). But he eliminated a few more that were harder and sadder for me to say good-bye to….namely coffee. (Nonetheless, I gave it up and have stayed off because I don’t really need it although I miss the ritual of smelling the grind and making a pour-over). His theory is that there are lectins/proteins in certain foods that certain blood types are more sensitive to than other blood types. A quick google search based on your blood type will reveal what your body should or shouldn’t be eating.
Gundry’s book is all about lectins. Lectins are plant proteins that are nature’s defense against predators, like us, from eating them. They should be avoided or prepared in a very specific way before they are eaten. He doesn’t categorize them by blood type though, rather he advocates for cutting out all lectins to start but eventually adding them back in IF prepared properly and IF they suit you. He also eliminates eating the animals if they are fed lectins unnatural to their diet. For dairy he doesn’t entirely eliminate it. Water buffalo, sheep and goat dairy are ok. But cow dairy is not unless it comes from an A-2 casein cow. The nice thing about Gundry’s phases is that his cleanse phase is only 3 days. As opposed to Myers’ 30-day cleanse which even eliminates eggs for 30 days. Gundry makes you eliminate eggs for 3 days. For me, eggs are a daily staple and I don’t feel bad when I eat them. Plus, I eat eggs from the Farmer’s Market (Menos Farms and/or Lily’s are my favorites) and they are from pastured chickens who only eat organic, non-GMO and are soy, corn and grain-free.
After Gundry’s cleanse phase, he has a Yes List and a No List that should be followed for at least the next 60 days. This is where I am, but well beyond 60 days. I am happy staying here for now. But after the 60 days he says you can slowly add certain lectins in, one at a time with a 4 day interval between new foods. Certain lectins, like legumes when cooked properly, can become lectin free. For me, legumes cause gastrointestinal distress, despite my auto-immune issues, so I haven’t bothered adding them back. However, in phase 3, you can add legumes and tomatoes and other seeded vegetables back after you have prepared them properly. For legumes, they need to be soaked for 24-hours and then pressure-cooked. For tomatoes, you need to cook them like the old-school Italians did. Boil, skin, de-seed them and then make tomato sauce. You can find the Yes and No Lists here. His website and podcast are both informative as well.
After reading all of these and based on my past experimentation before I read them, I am pretty much following the phase 2 of Plant Paradox, which is very similar to the well-known “Whole 30” Diet.
Our Grocery List:
The good news is that we can still eat lots and lots of avocados. Our family shops at the local Irvine Mariner’s Church Farmer’s market every Saturday and sometimes the Laguna Hills market in Fridays. Our favorite vendors are Dry Dock Fish, Buy Ranch Direct, Menos Farms, Lily’s Eggs, Ken’s Top Notch fruit-stand, and Golden Sun Ranch for yams and greens. We also get some other more basic items at Costco or Sprouts - avocados, arugula, grain-free crackers, and dark chocolate!
Eggs:
Pasture raised only, preferably organic and non-GMO. Cage-free doesn’t mean cage-free or that the chickens roam. It just means they are in a cage, and the cage door is open. Usually, it’s so crowded in that cage that none of the chickens can make it to the door! If you are local, my favorites are Lily’s Eggs and Menos Farms at the OC Farmer’s Markets. They are both pasture raised and organic. Never fed and corn or soy. If not local, look for Vital Farms eggs at the grocery store and choose the pasture raised variety.
Chicken:
I eat it rarely. When I do I look for pasture-raised from Da-Le Ranch or Buy Ranch Direct both have stalls the OC Markets. I have not found pasture-raised at Whole Foods yet. The reason you want pasture-raised is because they are free to roam and eat what they would naturally eat. These farms feed their chickens their organic vegetables and then the chickens eat the grubs they find.
Turkey:
Buying turkey is generally safe. Turkeys are wild. Turkey can be dry though, so I only cook it in an Instant Pot. I love the turkey breast from both Buy Ranch Direct and Da-Le Ranch, I haven’t had a dry one yet! It’s better than chicken and less inflammatory.
Grass Fed Beef:
Make sure its 100% grass fed and grass finished. Buy Ranch Direct and Da-Le Ranch are both great local vendors and they aim to conserve water. Da-Le Ranch will have fresh, never frozen meat selections at the market too. Most grocery stores have grass fed ground beef too. Da-Le Ranch frequents many SoCal farmers markets, Buy Ranch Direct comes to the Irvine market but for my anti-factory farm friends out-of-state, Buy Ranch Direct ships nationwide as well. Other farms for poultry and grass-fed beef I found in Texas who ship include: 1915Farm in Austin; Houston Farm to Table; and Hood Family Farms (which is a regenerative farm too!)
Bison:
Bison I have learned is tastier and more tender than beef. Bison are naturally grass-fed as well. I made bison tenderloin for my kids and they prefer it over regular beef.
Wild Fish:
We eat A LOT of fish. Most of my recipes to come will be fish-centric. We want to make sure we eat wild, fatty and high in Omega-3 fish. We do’t want to eat large fish because they contain heavy metals. So my go-to fish list is Wild Salmon, Wild Scallops, Sardines, Black Cod, Steelhead Trout (farmed but sustainable) and Sole. I do eat some farm-raised fish though, but only when I am out, usually for sushi. My local go to fishery is Dry Dock, who attends several farmer’s markets all over SoCal and a shop in Fullerton.
Vegetables:
Most vegetables are great according to Gundry, unless they have seeds in which case they are actually fruits. My favorites are all the greens such as bok choy, kale, collard greens, arugula, fennel, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots. However, I prefer to eat cooked cauliflower and broccoli in small doses as they are both high fodmap vegetables and cause GI distress.
Fruits:
You can eat all the avocados you want, which are technically a fruit. But Gundry says fruits are basically just candy, but when you do eat them, eat them while they are in season and local so that they contain less lectins. His position is that fruit is a summer crop because humans needed to store fat in the summer so they could survive the winter. Which works for me because plums, pluots, nectarines and mangos are my favorite. Ken’s Top Notch at the OC Markets has amazing customer service and the most delicious fruits EVER.
Good Fats:
My favorite healthy fats are, you guessed it, avocados! But I also love pouring olive oil on everything. For extra virgin everyday olive oil we use Kirkland. But we are members of Pasolivo from Paso Robles and I love all of their oils, especially the Tuscan, Citrus, and Lemon.
Resistant Starches:
My favorites are yams and Japanese yams. They make everything you eat taste better! They are high in fiber and nutritious, but Gundry says to eat them in moderation. I roast several yams every Sunday so that I can sprinkle them into my egg or veggie dishes once or twice a day.
Grains:
Don’t eat them. Almost every book in the list above goes into great detail about why grains aren’t good for you, especially today and especially in the U.S. Yes, many grains contain gluten, but they also, according to Gundry, contain wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) which is an insulin mimicking lectin. Grains, soy, corn and the like are also all treated with Round-Up. All of these new “gluten intolerances” that have been popping up might not be the gluten’s fault, but rather the glyphosate in Round Up or the WGA. Notably, many people from European countries eat bread all day long, but when the come to the US and eat our bread they can’t digest it. Glyphosate is banned in Europe.
So that’s my quick summary for my friend’s and family who have been asking me for a synopsis of it all!. Hopefully it is also the start of new conversations with many of you. If you have any questions, comments or contributions please comment below. Hope it helps you shop healthy and live longer! Anti-inflammatory recipes to come soon! And if you have any you want to share, I would be happy include your contributions and share them here!