Food is such an interesting topic. It’s an integral part of our lives and we keep hearing about how it affects our health and well-being. It seems to me that there are always diets touting particular health benefits that all have convincing arguments for embracing that diet. I remember the time I decided to become vegetarian. I was in college and went off campus to have a burger with a friend. The burgers were big—at least a half of a pound and with all the other stuff under the bun, it was a huge sandwich. In fact, when I was finished, I got a terrible stomachache that lasted well into the night. This was an unusual experience for me and soon afterwards, I swore off of meat completely. I just couldn’t bear having that experience again. This was during the time when Frances Moore Lappe had just published Diet for a Small Planet and I was learning the value of fully blended amino acids from eating beans and rice (instead of meat).
Curiously, I have noticed that over the years I have continued to seek out information about the relationship between diet and health. Perhaps not all that unusual, I ended up relinquishing my vegetarian diet. After cooking vegetarian recipes for years, I needed new guidance for cooking non-vegetarian. I tried a number of diet approaches among them being the Zone Diet by Barry Sears. Since cholesterol runs high in my family, this seemed like a good choice and while it was OK, it never did lower my cholesterol. I then pursued the Mediterranean diet with the benefits of seafood, good olive oil and red wine containing resveratrol. I liked that diet but it too was not achieving a reduction in cholesterol for me. For many years I was always leery of eating too many eggs because of the fear they would clog up my arteries (that was and still is believed by many today to be true, even by many mainstream doctors).
In my inquiry process, I came across a book called The New Evolution Diet by Arthur De Vany. He explains the scientific and anthropological reasons (and research) for why this diet is the one we should have. It is called the Paleolithic diet because of its emphasis on eating meat and lots of vegetables with just a bit of fruit and nuts. The most radical part of the diet is the prohibition to eat any grain products at all. Essentially, this is a glucose restriction diet since grain-based carbs are eliminated. These oft-refined flour products quickly break down into glucose and stimulate our body’s insulin response from the pancreas to distribute the sugar (glucose) either into the cells or into the fat for energy storage later. It is the “Paleos’” proposition that the spiking of our blood sugar by the frequent refined carbs eventually weakens the response by and sensitivity of the pancreas that eventually leads to diabetes and a host of other maladies associated with a “Western diet.” As the need for insulin increases, the pancreas gradually loses the ability to produce sufficient amounts needed to regulate blood sugar levels. De Vany’s research (along with other Paleo authors) is compelling and offers clues to the enormous increase of obesity and childhood onset diabetes in our country. Diabetes was generally regarded as a disease of old age (adult-onset). It has been relabeled as type 2 diabetes because it has become one of the most common chronic diseases in children and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19.
I recently read that researchers studying Alzheimer’s disease are finding a new correlation between the increasing frequency of diabetes and its linkage to Alzheimer’s, where chronically high blood sugar is contributing to the beta amyloid plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. This is new research so one cannot draw any conclusions at this time. But what we do know is that presently there is no cure for Alzheimer’s (and no known cause of prevention) and for each patient, there are typically three unpaid caregivers who are often family members. Additionally, one out of every 8 Americans over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s and almost half of those over age 85 have the disease. The projections are for this scourge to even become worse. But I digress.
I have continued on the Paleo diet for about a year and a half. I have had 4 lipid blood tests since then and incredibly, all the tests reveal the very best numbers for cholesterol I have ever had as an adult. My doctor is pleased and so am I. Changing my diet has been more effective than all of the supplements I have taken and all the exercise I have done, and continue to do. I will continue to exercise regularly because I always feel better afterwards and staying physically fit as I age is important. I have to admit though that I miss dunking freshly baked sourdough bread into pools of olive oil for I no longer eat bread (and I really miss it!). I am not perfect and I do cheat—I will usually have a slice of pizza once a week and perhaps a few gluten-free crackers with my favorite Manchego cheese (from Spain) on occasion. I will admit, it is hard to say no to breads and other grains. But since my father ended up with a quintuple bypass surgery from heart disease, I have some legitimate incentive to do what I can to avoid a genetic predisposition to heart disease. Based on my personal history with diet, it is perfectly possible that at some time in the future, I will find yet another diet that I believe is even healthier than the one I am enjoying now based on new research that is always emerging. But as an element of self-care, diet is something we all have control over. As Dr. Barry Sears has said in his book on the Zone Diet, one can apply drug delivery principles to nutrition as his theory treats food as if it were a drug. In essence, he explains that putting food into our mouths is the most frequently utilized drug delivery system we all participate in, daily. Every bite of food generates complicated biochemical and hormonal responses that affect all of our bio-systems. Shall we approach this with consciousness or impulse?
Posted by Howard Brockman, LCSW
November 6, 2012
Howard Brockman
Latest posts by Howard Brockman (see all)
- How To Deal With Difficult And Aggressive People - September 8, 2014
- Mental Health Self-Test - May 8, 2014
- Psychotherapy or Psychiatry? - January 30, 2014
- Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease - August 22, 2013
- Depression, Mindfulness and the Inner Critic - July 27, 2013