Eat Right Stories

Many of you have already heard the news, but I’ll be hitting the road this Summer to collect interviews for Eat Right Stories.

The plan is to buy a grip “truck” (van) and the necessary camera, audio, and lighting gear, then hit all lower 48 states with my film crew of one.

I’m super excited, because I love to travel; especially by myself.  It’s weird, but I find it tremendously relaxing.  Also, the costs will be decreased dramatically by not flying a film crew around, so I can keep the budget focused on quality and post-production (my expertise).

Once this gets moving, and depending how fast I can edit, you can expect to see at least a video every week, of interviews, updates, and possibly roadside shenanigans.  :)

p.s.

I’m still in search for investors and/or sponsors!  If you know anyone who can see this as a great opportunity both socially and financially, please contact me directly:

ericscottmorrison@gmail.com

Thanks!

I belong to a skeptics group on Facebook, and someone recently posted this image.  You’re likely to have one of a few reactions; you absolutely agree, and you wish everyone understood how true it is, you absolutely disagree, and you wish everyone understood how untrue it is, you may not care, or perhaps there’s some middle ground.

From the skeptic’s side, I can totally understand where the argument holds water.  If you broke your leg in a car accident and needed immediate attention, you’d want medicine to numb the pain while the doctor fixed the fracture.  Later, that leg wound gets infected, and you’ll want antibiotics to kill off the potentially lethal infestation.

There are few people who would take a native ritual dance in place of western medicine in this, or any other similar situation.  But I think most of us reading would agree that medicine is in fact not always the best answer.  For the skeptics out there, let me help you understand our position.

Modern medicine is great at treating acute medical conditions.  We can replace a missing hormone with a drug and get that patient bouncing back home to live an otherwise unlikely 20 years.  But what about the other scores of health conditions that people go see the doctor for?  Unfortunately for the millions of chronic disease sufferers of the world, pharmaceuticals have their share of shortcomings.

Let’s look at chronic fatigue.  Every day medical doctors scratch their heads in response to someone whose blood work shows no abnormalities, yet they’re constantly complaining about a lack of energy.  Will a cocktail of chemicals really revive their strength, or is there something more?  The doctor may prescribe an anti-depressant, anti-inflammatory, anti-this, or anti-that… but introducing these drugs along with their side effects is really only perturbing the body further, and and denying the patient what they need, or ignoring what they need to change, in order to allow proper healing to take place.

Naturopathy is growing tremendously in popularity because these are exactly the areas of health that NDs (Naturopathic Doctors) address.  They don’t (usually) look at a set of symptoms and try to find a drug to target each one.  Rather, they look at the body as a whole, and seek to intervene with lifestyle changes that will give the patient’s body an opportunity to restore its own, innate, hard-wired code back into robustness and health.

In fact, the rivalry is dying down in the 21st Century as Allopathic and Naturopathic medicine seek common ground.  Medical doctors understand the importance of diet and stress, just as Naturopaths understand the need for antibiotics.  It’s becoming less black and white, and the sides are joining forces in response to patients’ demands.

So I suppose that in some cases, yes — medicine absolutely is the best medicine.  But in the majority of daily health complaints from average Joe’s, I would wager that there is a better solution.  A much better and easier solution, in fact, that only requires a little patience, knowledge, and dedication.

Let medicine be medicine.  Let food be the cure.

Stress is bad, and it’s bad for everyone; although my body seems to take it especially hard.    No matter how well I’m eating or exercising, sleeping, or meditating, if I’m stressed out, things start to fall apart.

Not too long ago I was experiencing an unusually high level of stress, and began searching for alternative coping methods.  I know what the standard protocol is, since I’ve read the Eat Right for Your Type Encyclopedia from cover to cover.  But because I’m curious and anxious to explore, I wanted to try something new.

St John’s Wort kept popping up on the internet as the best herb for stress, anxiety, and depression.  I’d never tried it though, because it’s an explicit “avoid” for blood group O.  This is because, as Dr D’Adamo explains in his literature, St John’s Wort acts as a Monoamine Oxidase (MAO) inhibitor.  MAO inhibitors are bad news for type O because we already have low levels of MAO.  By inhibiting it further with drugs or plants, we actually worsen the problem and completely screw up our neurotransmitter balance.  It’s not a problem for blood type A, because their chemical physiology is the opposite in terms of stress — which is why St John’s is actually recommended for them.

Well, I’m naturally a little rebellious, so I decided to try the herb anyway.

Wow… holy disaster!

I can’t call it a placebo effect, because I was actually expecting to feel great after taking it.  When my body dove into a dark, depressing pit of anxiety and misery, I knew I should have listened to the good doctor.

I felt so terrible, that nothing seemed hopeful.  But I had an idea.  First, I tossed the St John’s in the garbage.  Then I took a handful of Catechol, the stress supplement created for all blood types, and then got on my bicycle.  I hit the foothills and pedaled the daylights out of myself.  I was about to die as sweat was dripping off my face, but kept pushing uphill as hard and fast as I could.  After I reached the top and regained my breath, I began the descent back down.

Then like a switch, my entire biochemistry flipped back to normal.

I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life — I went from feeling probably the worst I had in years, to feeling like a champion.  Everything was suddenly lit up and happy.  Optimism returned, and life was great once more.  Such a dynamic contrast, that occurred within minutes.  I was stunned, and thrilled!

There are a few morals to this story:

1.  Peter D’Adamo knows what he’s talking about

2.  Catechol is a wonderful, wonderful supplement

3.  Exercise and eat right for your blood type to eliminate stress

and

4.  Even when in the pit of despair, don’t lose hope, because things   will always get better.

This month marks my 6th year on the Blood Type Diet.  Each year has been a leap of improved health, reaching levels of strength, energy, peace, and optimism that I never could have foreseen in my younger days.

Though stress is an inevitable part of life, I’m just grateful that Dr D’Adamo has provided so selflessly the knowledge necessary to overcome these difficult challenges of daily strain and turmoil.

I try so tirelessly to spread the word, because life’s too short to not feel great!

I was informed by a dear friend that my last blog sounded more like a term paper than a blog post.  I had to laugh, because it’s funny, sad, and true.  My entire “legit” writing experience has been nothing but college essays, and so my undergraduate training must be leaking formal writing styles into current compositions.  See, there I did it again — alliteration.  So I’ll work on that.

But speaking of nerdy realizations, the whole topic of this blog started two nights ago on the Khan Academy.

Since I’m in the process of creating an LLC for my documentary, for reasons of fiscal and legal protection, I need to know something about business.  I was a science major in college, and so corporate structure and finance is all new to me.  Upon learning about balance sheets and accounting equations, I let my mind drift away into scientific parallels, when I was visited by the ghost of Albert Einstein.

“Eric… vant to know somesing cool?”

“um… ja”

I don’t have the energy to continue with cheeky dialogue, but I realized that the famous accounting equation, A=E+L, is essentially the same thing as the famous science equation, E=MC2.

Basically, accounting says that your total assets (things that are valuable or can make money) are equal to the amount of equity (money you have) plus liabilities (money you owe).  Or in simpler terms, assets = money.  With debt being the variable or “constant”.

In even simpler terms, the equation would be, “Potential money is the same thing as real money.”  You say your lemonade stand is worth $100 because you know you can make $100 by selling lemonade.  Thus, when you go to your grandpa for a $100 lemon loan, the equation is satisfied.  Your lemonade stand (asset) equals your profits (equity, $0) plus your loan (liability, $100).

$100 = $0 + $100

thus

$100 = $100

When you start making money and finally pay back grandpa, the equation should still be happy.  Instead of the liability being $100, the equity (money you own) is now $100, and liability = $0.  So you’ve just switched around a couple of pieces, but $100 still equals $100.

Geez… and that was supposed to be the simple one.  But fear not, Einstein’s ever quoted equation is not actually that difficult.

Let’s ignore the “C2 (squared)” part, because that’s simply the constant that you need for mathematical purposes.  The beauty lies in the “E equals M”.  Energy equals mass.  Or for everyone who didn’t excel in physics (including myself), let’s say “matter” instead of mass.

Doesn’t sound all that impressive until you consider what matter and energy are, and how we think about them based on our daily experiences.

Mass/matter is stuff.  It’s things.  It’s objects and pieces, particles, skateboards, cats, and sewing machines.

Energy is fields.  It’s waves.  It’s intangible forces like microwaves, atomic radiation, gravity, and heat.

What Einstein discovered is that matter and energy, though viewed and experienced as entirely different things, are actually the same thing.  It was this discovery, in fact, that led to the the invention of the atomic bomb, which Einstein was part of.  You can make energy out of matter by splitting the atom, but you can also make atoms by converging energy (theoretically).

So, imagine capturing the radiation from your cell phone and turning it into a popsicle.  Then imagine turning that popsicle into electricity to power the entire country of France for three years.  That’s what E=MC2 is all about, and why it’s so cool.

How the deuce did I deduce a parallel between Einstein and Warren Buffett?  I’ve been spending a lot of time recently watching videos about Astrophysics on YouTube.  So when I switched genres to learn about economics and saw an equation with three variables (A=E+L), I immediately wondered if there was a connection to E=MC2, since I hear it so often in science.

This is just my own observation, mind you, so don’t go hatin’ if you disagree.  But if you think about assets as energy (potential money / potential matter) it comes together quite nicely.  You can turn an idea into profit, just like you can turn energy into matter.  You can also turn profit back into an idea by poor business decisions or a bad market, the same as you can convert energy into matter (think Big Bang).

It sounds tremendously nerdy to get excited about something like that, but the reason is simple:  It helps me learn.

I don’t typically go out of my way to study arbitrary information, but when I feel like it can be applied to me directly, it becomes of much greater interest.  Einstein does it for me, because I love observing the physical world, and enjoying the fruits of technology; like bicycles and digitally recorded music.

Now economics is doing it for me, because I’m learning how to structure a business and raise money to fund my documentary.  The more I can know about finance, the better I’ll be at handling money and ensuring the greatest level of monetary efficiency.  I want investors to trust me, after all — especially at the beginning stage when businesses are seen as most risky.

I talked about my half-science, half-artist brain in the last blog.  I can get the science, but I need the art to make it stick.  This is why I like metaphors so much, and why I’m continually drawing seemingly obscure and random parallels.  E=MC2 is more conceptually solid than A=E+L, so by tying them together, I can remember what the latter means.  That’s really what it all comes down to.

Visualization is the king of learning for me, which is probably why I like Khan Academy so much.  Sal Khan not only explains things in great simplicity, but he makes metaphors and literally draws examples on an electronic blackboard.

And so when it comes to the Blood Type Diet®, I realize that the concepts about lectins, glycosylation, immunology, and serum flocculation are not exactly second-nature.  Peter D’Adamo does a great job of creating metaphors for mental illustration, which has helped his readers and myself “get” the concepts much easier.  But one of the purposes of this documentary is to provide supplemental visual illustrations to help the lay person who’s never heard of Eat Right for Your Type better understand what’s going on.

I admit I probably won’t be using physics equations to help people understand food, because each person is familiar with different things — and most are not familiar with advanced science concepts.  I also admit that I haven’t thought about what kinds of metaphors I’ll use in the documentary, because I’m still at the pre-stage of production.  But what I hope to deliver is a series of “a-ha!” moments with parallels and animations that stick with the viewers.  I’m researching digital artists and figuring out a budget that I can set aside for animations, as I believe this will be a key part in the documentary’s success.

Another dear friend of mine ushers me to keep the movie about people and emotions, and not about science and research.  As much as it pains the science-lover in me, I realize she’s ultimately right.  Scholars, academics, researchers — don’t watch too many health documentaries.  If I want the message to get to them, I have to appeal to the ones who do watch these movies, who are the rest of us.

I’m a big believer in balance though, and I can see room for both the hard-science facts about the Blood Type Diet®, and the personal stories of those who are trying to live by its tenets.  That’s why I’ve started an entire series called Eat Right Stories.  Let’s give everyone who’s willing a chance to express their views, and appeal to the raw human emotions of moviegoers.  If I can make someone laugh, cry, or ball a fist in anger, I would call it a success.  But if I can do that and enlighten someone with practical knowledge they can take to their doctor, I would call it an epic success.

After all, that is the ultimate goal.  If I can entertain through personal conflict and triumph, and educate through metaphors and fancy art, there’s a good chance people will walk away from the movie wanting to talk to their doctor about the Blood Type Diet®; thereby providing the fuel for AMA-satisfying statistical analysis and eventual mainstream acceptance of Peter D’Adamo’s work.

All that from E=MC squared.  Next time I’ll try to leave the pocket protector at home.

When I tell someone I’m making a documentary, the first thing they say is, “Oh neat, what’s it about?”  After I give the verbal movie trailer, the question of “why” never seems to follow.  I suppose it’s naturally assumed that the documenter’s fuel is her interest in the subject; otherwise, why invest so much time and energy?

Though a filmmaker may pick from a wide tray of motivational hors d’oeuvres like fame, money, industry connections, or making a positive change in society, I would wager that most do it for their passion.  At least that’s why I’ve chosen to feature Dr D’Adamo and his influence on millions of peoples’ lives through individualized diet.  If you haven’t seen my promo video yet, now’s a good time to check it out.

But I’d like to dig down a little farther and uncover some of the deeper pieces of the story.  You know that I’m making a documentary about the Blood Type Diet®, and that I want to “spread the word” and get others’ attention about it – namely, but certainly not restricted to, bodies of research organizations capable of conducting proper peer-reviewed studies.  But why would I put a college degree on hold to swim upstream a river of personal and economic turmoil just to prove whether the blood groups diet works or not?  Especially when I know the diet already works for me…

The answer:  Science.

When I’m not playing guitar or taking pictures, I’m actually quite the opposite of an artist.  The left-brained skeptic and scientist inside doesn’t allow me to reap satisfaction from simple answers and anecdote, and so I’m compelled to research.

Science, in its purest sense, unlike other ideologies, is not a belief system, but rather a tool kit.  Today in the 21st Century we don’t “believe” that germs cause disease, but rather we accept it.  Before science, however, people believed that demons, curses, and witches made you sick.  When Louis Pasteur came long, he applied the tools of science to prove otherwise, which led to the “germ theory of disease”.

That’s how science works; it’s a 4-step program for figuring things out in the natural world.  Step one is observation.  Step two is hypothesizing, or coming up with a good guess.  Step three is testing that hypothesis with repeatable experiments, and step four is to call the validated result a theory.  Even though we commonly say “theory” to mean our personal speculation, the scientific use of the word theory is synonymous to calling it a fact.

This brings me back to the Blood Type Diet®, and why I don’t call it a theory, but a hypothesis.  I know this sounds heathenous for someone like myself who’s such a strong promotor, but hear me out.

I believe strongly that the diet works, and I would even dare say “I know” it works.  My personal anecdote is enough to keep me eating my Type O non-secretor diet for the rest of my life, while promoting it until every last breath.  But the problem skeptics and scientists have is that same anecdote.

And it’s not hard to imagine why.  People can make up all kinds of fabulous stories about things they’ve done to improve their health, but if nobody calls them on it, who’s to stop us from accepting that a tablespoon of kerosene a day is the best cure for arthritis?

As a real-life example, before better medicine came along, the most common treatment for syphilis was mercury.  It worked, and it worked well.  The problem, naturally, is the toxicity of mercury and ultimately leaving the patient with side-effects far worse than the disease itself.  It took society a long time to figure out a system of preventing the sorts of catastrophes that arise from unproven protocols, but eventually we figured it out.  Granted our system is far from perfect, and I’ll be the first to speak out against the corruption in the medical-political industry, but because of rigorous scientific testing, we generally keep people safer and healthier than ever before.

So I say “blood type hypothesis” instead of “blood type theory” or “fact”, not because I’m unconfident in Peter D’Adamo’s research, but because I like to stay consistent with the accepted jargon of the scientific community.  As a scientist, it’s my duty.

Now that was a long-winded explanation just to get to this point, but I hope I’ve provided some helpful insight.  And this is what it all comes down to:

Finding the Blood Type Diet® had changed my live so dramatically, that I would me remiss not to devote a significant portion of my energy to its promotion.  It is literally because of Peter D’Adamo’s work that I have the physical and mental faculties available to be living the sort of life I enjoy.  Thus, I feel it would be hypocritical and selfish to merely take what I’ve learned and live my healthy life without giving back.

However, since I’m a scientist and an artist, I have to give back in a big way.  In a creative way.  And nothing is bigger and more creative than a feature-length movie seen by millions of people worldwide.

But it doesn’t stop there.  The artist in me may, but the scientist will not be satisfied by popular approval and merely knowing that Peter D’Adamo’s diet system is based in good research and evidence; for it truly is.  All of his writings are backed up by peer-reviewed medical literature, which lead to astoundingly clear conclusions about the association between blood type and disease, exercise, and nutrition.

No, I must live to see the Blood Type Diet® become accepted as a scientific theory, and no longer a hypothesis.  And the only way this will happen is by the scientific method.  It must be tested in a controlled, randomized, placebo-based study over and over again, to verify on paper the very things Dr D’Adamo has found in his clinic and years of observation.

The results will not surprise anyone here, but it will astound the medical community.  They will say, “a ha!” while we reply, “I told you so!”

We’ve told them so for decades, but until it passes through the same rigorous process that every other mainstream-accepted advancement in science and medicine undergoes, it will forever remain on the shelf at your local health food store.

That is, until somebody else comes along with an MD behind her name and claims the breakthrough, because she got the right people to support and patent it.

Of course, I don’t mean to propose a “false dilemma” argument, because there are a number of possible outcomes.  I’m simply hoping for the best, which is to see Peter D’Adamo, N.D. be handed the Nobel  Prize in Medicine for his groundbreaking and awe-inspiring research.

Big dreams?  You bet.  But as long as I have the health to continue, I will work tirelessly until Peter D’Adamo becomes a household name. Or at least a familiar ring.

So there you have it.  I feel like I’ve been granted the gift of moviemaking and science understanding for this very reason.  It is the ring I must carry to Mordor, lest the world be taken captive by the Sauron of nutritional ignorance.

Thanks for reading, and I promise future blogs won’t be nearly this tireless in length.  We just had a lot of ground to cover  Until next time…

Hello friends!

I am Eric Morrison; a long-time follower of the Blood Type Diet® and emerging documentary filmmaker.  I have been involved with Dr D’Adamo’s work as a certified instructor through the Institute for Human Individuality since 2008, and am excited to announce that I’ll be writing a weekly blog.

You can expect to read a collection of thoughtful, semi-entertaining, and well-researched posts about topics ranging from personal discoveries to cosmological epiphanies.

I’m a huge fan of science, and a huger fan of science education.  As I continue to learn, I bubble with excitement as I yearn to share new information with others.  I anticipate this blog to be a channel to express new and interesting ideas, while I keeping readers updated with information about my other projects – namely, my first feature documentary called Eat Right.

I hope that you will be able to gain something from every post, and await the next with energetic anticipation.  I’m very open to feedback, criticism, or suggestions, so please share, subscribe, and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to this exciting new journey!

Best wishes,

Eric