Diabetes Ayurveda Blood Type Connections

There are Type 2 Diabetes Ayurveda Blood type connections I’d like to explore here. if you are someone who has struggled to keep your blood sugar in a healthy range, here’s some surprising info that could help you.

An A1C Surprise for Me

All my labs came back normal in late February– except the A1C, a 3-month summary of how well the body handles blood sugar. A high A1C seemed unlikely. I eat healthy foods, little white sugar, have had little alcohol in years, and get plenty of exercise and fresh air. Yet my A1C came back as pre-diabetic, 6.2. A shock. Especially since I tend toward skinny. My PCP said she’d like to check it again in 3 months. For sure, I replied.

About Type 2 Diabetes

In the US, 1 out of 10 people are diabetic, 90 – 95% of them with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). T2D used to be known as Adult-Onset Diabetes, until children and teens started developing it at alarming rates. T2D is definitely on the rise in this country and worldwide. One out of nine people live with diabetes worldwide; 40% of them are unaware of this. Urbanization, aging, weight gain, and less physical activity are risk factors.

The healthy range for A1C is below 5.7; 5.7 to 6.4 is pre-diabetic; 6.5 and above, diabetic. My A1C had always been normal. Suddenly it had shot up. What was going on?

The Ayurveda Solution to Type 2 Diabetes

by Jackie Christensen with Pat Crocker

I turned to The Ayurveda Solution to Type 2 Diabetes: A Clinically Proven Program to Balance Blood Sugar in 12 Weeks for insights. Full disclosure: I wrote a warm review for this book when it came out in 2021. Now I searched through its pages for clues as to how I could have pushed up my own blood sugar, and how to get it back into a healthier place. Certainly, getting older was one of my risk factors.

“Foods to choose” in The Ayurveda Solution include many vegetarian options, yet also eggs, chicken, turkey, and venison, depending on the person’s constitutional type.

The first thing I noticed about “Foods to avoid” for all doshas, was dairy. How very sad. No dairy except ghee, even for Vata?! I checked in with Caraka Samhita, the ancient Ayurveda classic. Sure enough, volume III page 298 states Addiction to the pleasure of sedentary habits, sleep, curds, soup of the meat of domesticated and aquatic animals and animals inhabiting marshy land, milk preparations….all kapha-aggravating factors are responsible for the causation of prameha. (See Additional Reference, end of this column.)

Congestion and increase in Kapha dosha (heavy earth-watery type) primarily contribute to T2D. Yet Pitta (warm fire-water type) and Vata (dry, air-space type) imbalances can also impact T2D. In designing the plans for each dosha, The Ayurveda Solution honors what foods Caraka recommends to choose and avoid.

As I began to bring down my total daily carbs following the recommendations, I noticed that within a given brand like Thunderbird, say, the whole food bars I liked the best had more carbs, 28 – 30 gms. The same company offered some with 21 – 22 grams of carb, so I switched over. Yet it was a revelation to notice that the higher carb ones were the ones I’d unconsciously identified as most entertaining!

But how did I get to this high A1C place after years of no problem?

What’s Blood Type got to do with this?

Last October I made a variety of lifestyle and food changes in an effort to be as sustainable as possible. As the political scene here in the US heated up, I wanted to be able to do whatever I could in my personal life to be a more responsible citizen of our planet. Among these changes, I switched to entirely vegetarian foods again (with eggs, dairy, and a wide range of plant foods), aware of the long-term climate heating costs of animal meats, as well as the karmic implications.

In my experience over the last few decades as a Blood Type O, I’ve found that I do seem to need more protein than other blood types. Yet years ago writing an article about the Blood Type diet and vegetarianism, I interviewed colleagues with blood type O who had managed to stay healthy as veggies. I held this as a positive option.

To back track, what is the Blood Type Diet? All humans have one of four blood types, O, A, B, and AB. Each of these blood types confers slightly different advantages and challenges, from the lens of medical research. In 1996 Peter D’Adamo and his father expanded on this to hypothesize that people with different blood types had different dietary needs. The particular lab method they used to identify specific food-blood interactions is not well-regarded. Yet often over the years clients report to me that the diet has value for them. It has had value for me, enough so that I weave it into Ayurveda recommendations when appropriate. Here’s more info about Blood Type Diets if you’re interested.

Blood type O is most common here in the US; about half of us are Os. This type is said to need more animal meat proteins and little dairy (as compared to India’s population, which has a higher percentage of Type Bs, a more dairy friendly blood type).

For the 6 months before my A1C test, I’d been happily vegetarian, with generous amounts of whole milk sheep and goat yogurt, high-quality cheeses, whole milk, and a wide range of plant proteins. I didn’t miss meat and I was happy about my choice. I did notice I could digest considerably fewer beans well in this Vata stage of life, compared to mid-life, when I was in my Pitta years with higher agni. Dairy seemed easy to digest.

Yet when the lab test came back, and I looked at Jackie and Pat’s book, I thought about my choices relative to being a Blood type O. Following their dietary program made a big difference for me; this included backing off of dairy.

What is the 12 Week Plan for Healing Blood Sugar?

The Ayurveda Solution offers easy protocol specific for each dosha. It includes:

1. Understanding Prameha (the Ayurvedic term for diabetes)

2. Knowing What Foods to Avoid & Which to Choose

They are very specific about these, with tasty recipes to support new choices

3. Upgrading one’s life, particularly adding more movement

4. Enhancing quality of life, including sleep, stress management, and healthy awareness

5. Herbal therapies

6. Monitoring your own blood sugar

7. Timing

The individualized-to-your-dosha plans include 8 weeks of eating and moving with Constitution & Elimination as the focus. This is followed by 1 week of home Ayurvedic detoxification (Pancha Karma) and 3 weeks to rebuild and re-introduce foods, seeing how they work for you.

Monitoring your blood sugar in these last 3 weeks is invaluable to discover what you can add specific to you, and what may be too aggravating to your particular glucose balance. We each are different.

Successes

Coincidentally, a client of mine received a diagnosis of T2D about the same time I got my prediabetic result. They were given three months to find a different approach or be put on medication. Each of us followed The Ayurveda Solution to Type 2 Diabetes, with different foods for our different constitutions.

We’ve both just received our new lab results. Applying this program effectively, we each reduced our A1C levels by 0.5 points in three months, a substantial change. Their values moved from diabetic (6.5) to prediabetic (6.0). Mine went from prediabetic (6.2) to a safer level (5.7). I’m proud of both of us. I heard an even more striking story this week, as I was standing in line at our community clinic.

The man in front of me in the line was jubilant. Ninety days before he’d been diagnosed with diabetes at this very clinic, and put on metformin. In his forties or fifties, he said, I didn’t want to lose any toes! So he really applied himself to making food, movement, and intermittent fasting changes as well as taking the med. It was eye-opening! he exclaimed. In 90 days I went from an A1C of 6.7 to 5.4. We applauded him. He explained he was filling one more month of metformin until he could see his PCP, then he planned to go off it and continue with his healthy life choices. And I lost 30 pounds, he said. To be clear, he made food changes similar yet not identical to the Ayurveda plan described here. A lot can happen in three months is the point.

But to accomplish what I did, I gave up vegetarian diet. I did add chicken, turkey, and fish. As the author of three vegetarian cookbooks. I still aim to have as much vegetarian food as possible. Yet as an aging Pitta-Vata constitution with a Vata current condition, and Blood Type O, this was the best I could do.

Do different doshas and blood types handle vegetarian diet differently?

Am I saying different doshas and blood types can handle vegetarian diet more easily? Yes. In my years of clinical experience, Kaphas seem to benefit most from 100% plant-based diets, especially those who are Blood Type A. Most constitutions can work with a primarily vegetarian diet, yet Vatas have the hardest time with an exclusively vegan diet (as its qualities can be rough, dry, light, gunasthat are challenging for Vata). Because in general Pitta dosha has a stronger digestive fire and more oily quality in their make-up, they can often maintain a vegan diet fairly well, especially in their younger adult years.

The Planetary Health Diet

The EAT-Lancet Commission began in 2019, when leading food and climate scientists came together to see if it was possible to feed everyone on the planet, and stay within safe climate conditions. Here is what they concluded:

We have this challenge of being able to feed about 10 billion people a diet that’s both healthy and sustainable by 2050. In the end, we found it is possible – but just barely possible. The plan they came up with was half fruits & vegetables, with whole grains, unsaturated plant oils and plant proteins being the main choices. One serving of dairy per day and one serving of meat per week could be woven in.

This kind of eating is also healthy blood sugar eating. Yet for some of us, it is easier than others.

How you can heal

The Ayurveda Solution to Type 2 Diabetes has a lot of tasty recipes. Jackie Christensen has a keen eye for what heals, and Pat Crocker is inspired in how she puts together fresh foods and herbs into delicious dishes. They expanded my repertoire with recipes like Artichoke Tahini sauce/dip, Barley and Spinach Breakfast Scramble, Cilantro Pesto, Cauliflower Lime Rice, Aloe Basil Margarita, Blueberry Power Bars, and Mung Bean Patties.

If you, a loved one, or client wants to create a better balance with blood sugar, I strongly recommend The Ayurveda Solution to Type 2 Diabetes.

Additional Reference

Caraka Samhita, vol. III, R.K. Sharma, Bhagwan Dash, Chowkhambe Sanskrit Series office, Varanasi, India, 1988 edition

Amadea Morningstar is a writer and health educator working in the US. Her vegetarian cookbooks include Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda LINK The Ayurvedic Cookbook with Urmila Desai, and Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners.