Just my own take on this. As I said in an earlier post, I got into the
paleodiet because of high blood pressure problems, finding that staying
away from starches, grains, etc. brought my b/p down to normal. No one
has responded to my earlier post on this so I guess most of the List
members are on here because of general health concerns or weight loss
goals. I will report on my success or failure with the b/p as they
occur.

One thing I found unhelpful in my reading on b/p was the extremely
detailed accounts of the interplay among all the elements in the body.
There were a thousand points of disagreement with one authority saying
cowpies were helpful and another saying they made no difference and
another saying they were addictive.

The parallel I draw is with strength training. I can take a claim to the
guy I trained with and he can give you the rundown on what is right or
wrong about it. His view often clashes with that of other experts. I
trust, and I use that word advisedly, his view simply because of his
results (not with me, unfortunately.. after years of working out I went
from a 90 pound weakling to a 95 pound weakling - enough progress to
please me greatly but not enough to make me a showcase). His workouts
are so bizarre that once when my son and I were following his program in
a big health spa type gym, a guy walked over to us and asked us if we
were doing Jay's workout. It is distinctive and involves an extremely
complex mixture of levels of energy, etc. requiring bizarre schedules
and manner of execution.

So what attracted me to paleo was the same thing only backwards: what I
like about Jay's approach is the results he gets; what I like about
paleo is the results it got i.e. the evidence that pre-agricultural man
and contemporary hunter-gatherers did well on a pre-agricultural diet
and only after the introduction of agricultural products, not to mention
processing with chemicals and hormones, did we get the chronic diseases
like high b/p. As an undergraduate anthropology major I was aware of the
health of hunter-gatherer people and the evidence presented about early
man in books like The Paleolithic Prescription was convincing.

My point in all this is that I don't think we can ever settle issues of
what this element in the body does or doesn't due. What counts is the
results of getting back to an evolutionarily proven diet - if my b/p
goes down, it MIGHT be because of that diet. It also could be other
factors like simply eating less as a by-product of restricting my diet.
But if it works, do it.

I really like this List and certainly don't mean to discourage all the
interesting discussions about the effects of various elements in our
diet. I just wanted to reaffirm the basic reason we all seem to be here
and to express my admiration for the reasonableness and restraint of you
all; I am on other Lists where folks get a little testy.
And if anyone does have any experience with high b/p, let me know.
[log in to unmask]  Pat Barrett