The Paleo diet which was founded by Loren cordain, has become the new hollywood trend in
recent years, with some celebrities swearing by it. When Jack Osbourne was diagnosed with
Multiple Sclerosis he decided to eliminate grains, gluten and dairy, because these food cause
inflammation in the body. Actress Megan Fox attributes shedding her postpregnancy weight to the
diet, and Uma Thurman says it helps to keep her slim and healthy. The Paleo diet is what our
Stone Age ancestors survived on. It contains meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, olive oil and seeds.
Processed foods, dairy products, potatoes, salt, refined sugar, grains, legumes coffee,and alcohol
are avoided. There has been controversy about how beneficial it is to our health, with some
researchers claiming that our predescors only lived to be 35 years old, and if the diet was really
healthy then they should have lived longer than this. However, new research by Chad Dolan, of
the Laboratory of Integrative Psychology at the University of Houston, TX, and colleagues found
that healthy adults who switched their conventional diet to a Paleo diet experienced an increase in
interleukin10 (IL10) levels, indicating a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. The findings were
reported at the American Physiological Society’s Inflammation, Immunity and Cardiovascular
Disease Conference in Wesminter, CO.
The researchers asked eight adults who usually eat the standard Western diet, which is rich in
saturated fats, grains and processed foods, and low in meat, vegetables and fruit to swap to the
Paleo diet for 8 weeks. They were given recipes and told that this wasn’t a caloriecounting diet,
and that they could eat as many of these foods as they wanted throughout the 8 week period. The
participants were given blood tests before and after the diet and after 8 weeks of following the diet,
they had a 35 percent increase in levels of the molecule IL – 10. The researchers explained that
low levels of IL10 can cause heart attacks among people who have high inflammation levels. The
individuals inflammation levels were not checked, but the researchers speculate that because their
IL – 10 levels were higher after consuming the Paleo diet, that this could reduce inflammation,
thus decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Chad Dolan says “This study’s findings add to the possibility that shortterm dietary changes
from a traditional Western pattern of eating to foods promoted in the Paleo diet may improve
health or, at the very least, the diet does not have negative health implications in terms of
the parameters we studied. If our research continues to show that the Paleo diet produces
detectable changes in healthy individuals, it will substantiate claims made by those
supporting this diet for the past few decades and provide preliminary evidence for another
therapeutic strategy for cardiovascular disease and coronary artery disease prevention.”
