Go Primal & Lose Weight With Caveman Cuisine

MIAMI (CBS4) -- If you're looking for a new way to lose weight, lower your cholesterol or lower your blood pressure, all you need to do is go primal. Caveman cuisine is all the rage. Way back in the day, it was just what everybody ate. Now it's called the Paleolithic diet.

Dr. Igor Mitrovic is a neuroscientist who follows the Paleolithic diet; eating only what prehistoric man ate half a million years ago.

"You can eat anything that would be able to be eaten without being processed," explained Dr. Lynda Frassetto. That means no grains, no bread, and no dairy but does include lots of fruits and vegetables, some nuts and oils and lots of fish, poultry and lean meats.

Mitrovic says he loves eating Bison and Elk and said he decided to try the culinary Stone Age diet when he noticed his cholesterol going up. Exercise didn't work and neither did a statin drug. When he went "Paleo" for just two weeks, his cholesterol plummeted and in a few months, it was normal. Mitrovic said he was stunned.

Dr. Frassetto and her team at the University of California in San Francisco tested the Paleo-diet on out-of-shape volunteers. The group ate lots of food without losing any weight or exercising.

"In two weeks, everybody's blood pressure went down and everybody's cholesterol and triglyceride levels got better. The average drop was 30 points, which was pretty amazing. It's the type of drop you get by taking statins for six months," said Dr. Frassetto.

Dr. Frassetto says Paleo foods, also known as the caveman diet, works by keeping your body's chemistry in better balance.

The goal of the caveman diet is to reduce excess body fat, aid in the normalization of blood sugar levels and reduce toxins and anti-nutrients.