Teya Skae explores why the "one diet fits all" approach is doomed to fail.

Are you still searching for that "right" diet? Or maybe you are feeling tired and frustrated because despite doing everything "right", eating "healthy foods - fruits and salads - drinking filtered water, and practising meditation or yoga you are still feel tired, spacey or just not right?

Perhaps you constantly crave sweets and sugars and your willpower is not working? You are not alone in this very common phenomenon of the 21st century whereby our nutrition has become a science. And with so much information overload about what is right and what is wrong, most people are confused and even overwhelmed.

As a nutritionist, the questions I most often get asked are, "How can I have more energy?" "What should I be eating?" and "What is my ideal breakfast, lunch and dinner?" In each case, it depends on who is doing the eating and their metabolic profile.

This nutritional approach is based on individual biochemistry or your Metabolic Typing.

What is Metabolic Typing?

Metabolic Typing (MT) is unique as it doesn't promote one right diet for all. Instead, its primary goal is to identify your biochemical individuality before nutritional recommendations are made.

Metabolic Typing is based on the fact that we are all unique, so totally individual that not even identical twins share the same fingerprints. Each of us is also biochemically, and thus, metabolically unique. For this reason, food will behave differently, having different effects in different metabolic types. It's only logical that dietary recommendations will vary greatly from a protein type to a carbohydrate type individual.

For this reason it makes sense to identify your metabolic profile and take the guesswork out of finding your ideal nutrition for life.

This extract from an article by Nina Planck titled "Death by Veganism" (http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/articles/veganism.htm New York Times; May 21 2007) gives an extreme example of the dangers of diagnostic nutritional approaches that people impose upon others.

"When Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was six weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty. This particular calamity - at least the third such conviction of vegan parents in four years - may be largely due to ignorance. But it should prompt frank discussion about nutrition."

Indeed, and this article is not intended to criticise veganism or any other diet for that matter. The emphasis here is on our biochemical individuality as a starting point in identifying what is right for us and what is not. MT is very different because it simply confirms that what works well for one person - in terms of nutrition/supplements - can be completely ineffective or even harmful for another. So the only so called "right nutrition" is the one that is based on your biochemical or metabolic profile.

As Lucretius (c 99 BCE-c 55 BCE) summed it up eloquently: "What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others."

The History of Metabolic Typing

What is interesting about this approach is that it is not a trend, a fad nor a diet based on one study or experiment from one authority. Rather, it is a customised system of nutrition put together as a result of over 70 years of cumulative efforts and pioneering discoveries by a series of doctors, researchers, physicians, biochemists, clinical nutritionists, dentists and psychologists. These contributors include Drs George Watson, William Donald Kelley, Royal Lee, Weston Price of Weston Price Foundation, and Roger Williams, all of whom were giants in their respective fields, yet their contribution to Metabolic Typing was mainly ignored by the mainstream medical and nutritional community.

As just one example, Dr Roger Williams, a professor at the University of Texas from 1939 to 1986, discovered Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B 5), the stress vitamin, in 1933. He noticed that when, during a medical procedure, he was injected with morphine, instead of feeling drowsy as expected, his mind became quite racy. The doctors gave him more morphine to sedate him, but Williams' mind became even racier. As a medical professor, Williams did not accept this episode as idiosyncratic. Instead, he put it down to "biochemical individuality", which became the title of his 1956 book that was largely ignored by his medical peers at the time.

Another significant contribution to Metabolic Typing came from Dr William Kelley in the late 1960s. Diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer, Dr Kelley adhered to a vegetarian diet, including lots of enzymes/minerals, and adopted a more holistic lifestyle. At the time, Western medicine had no means of treating this type of aggressive cancer. Fortunately for Dr Kelley, he cured himself and, soon after, stopped seeing patients in his prominent dental practice and instead became a highly sought after nutritional authority.

Some time later, his wife became extremely ill after being exposed to toxic paint fumes and was literally withering away despite her husband's efforts to save her. Dr Kelley tried everything on his wife that had seemed to work for him, with no positive results.

In his futility he asked himself, "What have I not tried with her yet?" The answer astounded him. Meat! For someone who advocated and lectured on vegetarianism, he was open minded, or maybe desperate enough, to try anything in order to save his ailing wife.

After sipping on some organic beef broth, Mrs Kelley sat up in bed within 24 hours after being almost comatose. This was the sign Dr Kelley had hoped for and he continued to feed his wife small strips of organic beef. Within just a few days, she was well on her way towards recovery.

The Kelley's story ended on a happy note, as well as providing a significant scientific contribution to Metabolic Typing, because Dr Kelley had discovered the importance of autonomic types in nutrition, based on the Autonomic Nervous System.

What is the Autonomic Nervous System type?

The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is the master switch of your metabolism. It is divided into two branches: the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic. Each branch works in opposition to the other, yet they work together to maintain metabolic balance and efficiency.

Your Sympathetic branch speeds up your heart rate so you can run away from a dinosaur and other dangerous situations, while the Parasympathetic branch slows down your heart rate, so you can enjoy that candlelight dinner and savour the experience.

As an example, Dr Kelley was a Sympathetic type and could benefit from a more vegetarian diet, whereas his wife was a Parasympathetic protein type and needed red meat and animal protein daily for health and longevity.

Isn't animal protein too acidic?

This leads the metabolic typing discussion into one of the most misunderstood topics in the area of nutrition to date, the Acid/Alkaline myth.

Many nutrition books, articles and authorities to date advocate a diet based on 20/80 Acid/Alkaline intake of foods. Put simply, this translates into avoiding acidic foods such as meat, cheese, eggs, and fish and increasing alkaline foods, like vegetables, fruits and juices. This approach does not apply to everyone and will lead to severe metabolic imbalances in some metabolic profiles. Let's examine why.

The "assumptions" that animal protein causes people to become more acidic and vegetables more alkaline were scientifically shattered by Dr Rudolph A Wiley. In his book "Biobalance", Wiley concludes that some people become more alkaline after eating meat and more acidic after eating vegetables.

The ongoing misunderstanding related to acid/alkaline is probably due to the fact that most books do not address our unique biochemistry as the factor that determines what happens to food in our body. It is really important to understand the fact that any food - meat or vegetables - can cause different reactions in different metabolic types. Either meat or vegetables can shift a person's pH levels towards acid or alkaline depending on the metabolic type of the person, not the food itself.

For example, John, a carbohydrate type, and Mary, a protein type, eat the same tomato/ cucumber salad with lemon juice dressing for lunch. Soon after eating it, John's metabolic profile shifts alkaline, while Mary's shifts towards acid. This is what Metabolic Typing helps you to understand, that any food can have the opposite effect in different metabolic types.

In his groundbreaking book, "The Metabolic Typing Diet", Bill Wolcott, universally recognised as the authority in developing the concept of Metabolic Typing, explains the acid/alkaline connection further. Wolcott was Dr Kelley's researcher for many years and was thus able to put the final link of the nutritional puzzle together by identifying what is called the "dominant factor" of your metabolic profile.

In identifying your "dominant factor", this system allows you to balance your complete metabolic profile. This factor is the key to understanding your biochemical weaknesses, and how to use food to balance these weaknesses. This does not happen overnight, but it does happen over time.

Another important reason for knowing your "dominant factor" is that when it is nutritionally balanced, the other fundamental biochemical systems will balance in turn, over a period of time. Yet, if your "dominant factor" is not biochemically addressed, your body and brain chemistry will be out balance, resulting in symptoms such as tiredness, sweet/sugar cravings, fogginess and feeling mentally scattered. This is because everything we eat and drink affects our brain chemistry.

How many types are there?

There are three distinct categories, Protein, Carb and Mixed, and they each have three possible types within each category, making nine possible combinations. We have room here for a brief outline.

"Protein types" are very sensitive to carbohydrates and require specific protein requirement daily, especially at breakfast. Cereal for brekky will not work for these people as it literally turns them into a "fat factory" or Insulin Resistant. Hence, the obesity epidemic.

"Carb types" normally feel best when 50 per cent of their diet comes from vegetables and very lean sources of protein. They need to be careful with the amount of fat and sugars in their diet as something like nuts could slow them down and make them feel heavy.

Some Carb types benefit greatly from a little vegetable juice first thing before their meals to get their digestion going. This is not your typical apple, celery and carrot or beetroot, more like cucumber/tomato or zucchini/tomato. Please note, that if a classic protein type followed this nutritional plan they would become acidic or feel ravenously hungry, even shaky, with strong cravings for salty and or fatty foods.

"Mixed types" really need to eat like a protein and carb type combined, as they can vacillate between the two groups and shift out of biochemical balance if their diet is not broad enough.

For each person and metabolic profile, the typical nutritional recommendations go into more specifications and finetuning over time and the above basic outline is a starting point to give you an idea of how different we really are even at a glance.

In summary, we are all biochemically unique and for this reason there cannot be just one diet that would suit everyone. Identifying your metabolic type takes the guesswork out of searching for the "right nutritional plan" for life. In essence, this becomes your biochemical platform upon which optimum health and longevity is built.

In Wellness,

Teya Skae
Nutritionist/Kinesiologist/Health Coach
MA, BA, Dip Health Science,
Dip Clinical Nutrition.

References :
The Metabolic Typing Diet, Wolcott, William and Fahey, Trish. Broadway Books, 2002
One Answer to Cancer, Kelley William D. Kelley Foundation, 1969
The Metabolic Types, Kelley William D. Kelley Foundation, 1976
Biochemical Individuality, Roger Williams, Wiley and Sons 1956
BioBalance, Wiley, Rudolph. Life Sciences Press, 1989.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this column are those of the writer and are intended as an informed contribution to people seeking to pursue holistic health and lifestyle. For medical advice, always be guided by your own healthcare professionals