Send in the Clown

**Names and some details have been changed to protect the anonymity of patients.

Jane, our first patient, is a professional clown and 45-year old the mother of four daughters ranging in ages from 11 to 19. Jane’s friend Angela, who is a nurse and longtime patient and proponent of Dr. D’Adamo, has urged her for years to see him to address a myriad of mysterious health concerns. When I greet her in the lobby, I shake her hand and begin to size her up, as you can tell as much if not more about a patient’s health from what she doesn’t tell you as from what she does. Jane, who is about 70 pounds overweight, strikes me as a free spirit: a flowy purple sweater over a grey and blue striped tank top, black jeans, grey Pumas with a rainbows on the sides, and a necklace of pretty multi-colored gems. Her skin was sallow and her eyes had bags beneath them. She was cheerful, but her energy radiated weariness, as well. Her gray is wavy around her face and she greets me with a big, if not slightly tentative smile. With that, we headed upstairs to get her started on her intake.

On a patient’s first visit to the Clinic, we focus on a few things. First, we take a comprehensive patient history and do a modified physical exam that involves assessing the patient’s lungs and abdomen, as well as doing a Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis. Dr. D’Adamo has advised us that much can be gleaned from just a simple look at these three things. And then the fun begins: we begin GenoType measurements. Jane’s main concern is weight loss, but she is also tired all the time and has had chronic back pain for 15 years, as well as difficult rashes in her groin area and on her feet. She’s tried a number of weight loss programs from Weight Watchers to Weigh Down, with limited success, mainly because she has trouble with consistency. But with Angela’s help, she has been following some of Dr. D’Adamo’s protocols and has lost twenty pounds. Our task now was to assess what her GenoType is and put her on an appropriate regimen that would address her concerns.

Last week, I talked about how genes affect our health, the basic idea being that we are born with a set of household genes and a set of luxury genes and it is through the latter that we can affect and improve our health. In fact, humans have 30,000 genes and, as D’Adamo points out, this is fewer than most plants, which have 60,000. So, why are we humans so complex and varying? The reason lies in epigenetics: the way your cells affect your genetic activity, which is then passed down to your kids and your grandkids.

A little science lesson is in order here (believe me, I’ll make this as painless as possible). A lot of epigenetic programming happens inside the womb. If you go back to the town hall analogy I used in my first posting, you’ll understand Dr. D’Adamo when he says, “Right from the beginning, your town meeting is under way, with diet, environment, and genes beginning their lively debate. This debate has enormous significance for the being who will emerge into the world nine months later.” When you’re born, your GenoType materializes as a result of this prenatal environment, your preprogrammed genes and whatever occurred within the womb. This is when diet and environment — what the individual can control — begin to have an effect on health.

How exactly can we affect change on a gene? There are two ways. The first is called methylation. When a gene becomes coated with methyl groups, it winds up, effectively silencing it. Methylation is what determines your eye color, and a bunch of other things, before you’re born. But once you’re set free in the world, methylation continues, and this isn’t necessarily a good thing. For example, you want to methylate genes that cause you to store fat or have an asthma attack but demethylation can occur when you’re stressed out or eating the wrongs things, resulting in the wrong genes getting up to the microphone and wreaking havoc on the town meeting. “We don’t know everything about what causes either the beneficial or the detrimental methylation process to occur. But we do know that diet, supplements, and exercise play a huge role in quieting the genes we most want to silence,” says Dr. D’Adamo. (See The Economist article “The Origin of Diabetes: Don’t Blame Your Genes” for the more on gene methylation at http://www.4yourtype.com/distributor_links.asp under the heading Genomic News.)

The second way we can tinker with how our genetic destiny plays out is through histone acetylation, which is similar to methylation. An unwound DNA strand is six feet long; histones are like little spools that wind DNA into your cells. When DNA is all wound up in a histone, it’s silenced but if the histone is acetylated it — you guessed it — is no longer quiet and the problems start. Specific enzymes are needed to remove the acetyl group, spool up the DNA around the histone, and make everything nice and noiseless again. These enzymes are controlled, again, by diet, exercise and lifestyle. None of these elements are as important as what happens in the 9 months you spend as a fetus but, as Dr. D’Adamo says, “Diet and exercise can play a big part in altering our genes, especially if they’re geared, as the GenoType Diets are, to our existing genetic and epigenetic programming.”

So just how exactly do you figure out your GenoType, whether you’re a Hunter, Gatherer, Warrior, Nomad, Teacher or Explorer? That’s what our dear patient Jane wanted to know, as she was ready to start taking the weight off and addressing her rashes and fatigue. But it wasn’t as easy as having a quick look and making a diagnosis.

Here are just some of the measurements we took during our time with Jane that go into determining GenoType, the meaning and significance of which I’ll explain in next week’s posting: height, weight, waist circumference, hip circumference, somatotype, trunk length, leg length, upper leg length, lower leg length, upper leg length, tendon visibility, write encirclement, handedness, presence or absence of carabelli cusp, presence or absence of incisor shoveling, cranial width, cranial length, gonial angle, blood type, secretor status, body type, and caffeine sensitivity. We also took her fingerprints to examine them for patterns, did a urinary analysis to examine for any irregularities as well as presence of free radicals and administered a hydrogen breath test to determine the level of bacterial overgrowth in her gastrointestinal system. All of these figures are fed into Dr. D’Adamo’s SWAMI software, which does well over a hundred thousand calculations and feeds out not only her GenoType, but also a comprehensive diet and exercise plan, complete with menus and recipes.

But that would have to wait until next time, as we needed to send some of Jane’s labwork out before we had all our data in place. Needless to say, our little clown Jane left in a bit of a daze, but armed with a few supplements including Gastro-D to reverse bacterial overgrowth and Deflect for Type A to get help her cells fight off lectin assault and help her metabolism. (See below for details on the supplements).

Next week, we’ll examine why these mysterious measurements are taken and we’ll profile the 6 GenoTypes, as well as meet our next patient.

Some of you have been asking about Dr. D’Adamo’s take on H1N1, or swine flu, and what he recommends to both prevent and treat it. Please see http://www.dadamo.com/science_bloodgroups_influenza.htm.


Supplement Info (From 4yourtype.com):
Gastro-D: The DGL assists in protecting the stomach lining, and in combination with seven other synergistic ingredients, Gastro-D Complex is an essential supplement for individuals with occasional stomach problems.

In addition to DGL, Gastro-D Complex includes Mastic Gum, which may help to protect the gastric mucosa; Safflower Tops may help to provide additional support against H. Pylori infestation, especially for blood type O non-secretors; Bentonite Clay assists in attracting and soaking up environmental toxins; the inner bark rind of Slippery Elm protects the GI tract from excess acidity; and Bismuth helps protect the lining of the stomach from stomach acid.

Deflect for Type A: This contains N-Acetyl D-Glucosamine, Chondroitin Sulfate, D-Mannose, Cranberry concentrate, Pineapple concentrate, N-Acetyl Cysteine, and Fructooligosaccharides. Dr. D’Adamo has specially formulated this combination to correct previous lectin damage and remove lectins currently adhered to the body’s cells.