Coconut is not an “avoid” across the board for all blood types. It is neutral for BT A’s who are non-secretors, and it falls into different categories in the SWAMI personalized diet app. If someone is passionately driven towards coconuts they are going to fight for it tooth and nail. Dr. Brody’s stance has always been that he provides his guidelines, and you can choose or not choose to follow them. Many people believe that when a study comes out touting the benefits of a new medication (or in this case–food) that it must be great for everyone. This, however, is not the case.
Coconuts might be good to eat every now and then, but that doesn’t mean one should be consuming it every day for the rest of their lives. There is a plethora of information about coconuts and its saturated fat content. Saturated fats, which are high in coconuts, cause the body and liver to produce more serum cholesterol via the slowdown of the liver cells making LDL (“bad cholesterol”) receptors. With the lack of LDL receptors, the body is blind to the amount of LDL circulating in the body. Put this into a Blood Type A who has a lot of inflammation in their vascular system, and you have the perfect storm. PNM’s goal for treating patients is to prevent diseases, not slowly wait for them to appear.
Lectins
The other area of the coconut debate that must be addressed is the consequences of dietary lectins. Lectins can cause unnecessary changes to the cellular surface. This has to do with a phenomenon called receptor capping. This capping causes the receptors on cells to group together. When this occurs, agglutination can happen which can make people more sensitive to other foods.
The last area of the debate is coconut water. As this is not listed in the SWAMI diet, please consider this beverage a neutral.
Dr. D’Adamo wrote a blog post that has additional information, that can be found here.
To schedule an appointment, please contact the front desk of the Personalized Natural Medicine Clinic, located in a beautiful Victorian house in the heart of Newtown, Connecticut.
