Blood Type Question

[One Beard]

I've donated blood and plasma more times than I can count, but I only recently requested a frequent donor card from the Red Cross. It turns out that I am A Positive and I'm wondering what sort of things I've been doing wrong or maybe could do differently based on the makeup of my blood. I found this article on bloot type A and wanted to see what, if anything, you all thought about it.

 

-One Beard

[Stosh]

The various factors that could be tested for are many,the options are certainly not limited to the ABO system. It appears there are some considerations beyond blood donorship.. but whether they are actionable .. that is to say , useful to know about ,and can actually do something significant depending on your ABO blood type isnt clear. Its not like you would declare yourself immune to cholera and could then go where the non immune couldnt. Youd still want to be protecting yourself just like anyone else.  Or if you were less tasty to mosquitos, so what ,,, you dont want to get bitten at all. 

So while I wouldnt say , your blood type is of no significance as to what will befall you, I dont think that normally the knowledge of your blood type gives you any advantage over not knowing.    You just are what you are..

 

Specific ABO blood types are thought to be linked with increased or decreased susceptibility to particular diseases.  For instance, individuals with type A blood are at a somewhat higher risk of contracting smallpox and developing cancer of the esophagus, pancreas, and stomach.  People who are type O are at a higher risk for contracting cholera and plague as well as developing duodenal and peptic ulcers.  Research suggests that they are also more tasty to mosquitoes.  That could be a significant factor in contracting malaria.
 

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Well:

 

 

The 'blood-type' diet was popularized in the book Eat Right for Your Type, written by naturopath Peter D'Adamo. The theory behind the diet is that the ABO blood type should match the dietary habits of our ancestors and people with different blood types process food differently. According to the theory, individuals adhering to a diet specific to one's blood type can improve health and decrease risk of chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease. The book was a New York Times best-seller that has been translated into 52 languages and sold over 7 million copies.

 

The U of T researchers took an existing population of mostly young and healthy adults who provided detailed information about their usual diets and provided fasting blood that was used to isolate DNA to determine their ABO blood type and the level of cardiometabolic risk factors, such as insulin, cholesterol and triglycerides. Diet scores were calculated based on the food items listed in Eat Right for Your Type to determine relative adherence to each of the four 'blood-type' diets.

 

El-Sohemy says that a previous lack of scientific evidence doesn't mean the diets didn't work. "There was just no evidence, one way or the other. It was an intriguing hypothesis so we felt we should put it to the test. We can now be confident in saying that the blood type diet hypothesis is false." Last year, a comprehensive review published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found no evidence to support the 'blood-type' diet and called for properly designed scientific studies to address it.

 

 

 

From http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140115172246.htm  The idea that blood type is a significant factor in diet seems to be wrong, or at best just an idea someone had with nothing to back it up. There are a whole load of factors that influence how a person ought to be eating and living, so a 'blood type A should..., B should..., O should...' approach probably doesn't work.

 

Always an interesting exercise to Google 'X debunked' and see what comes up.

 

I guess instead you could try looking at your family history. That might tell you what you're likely to be susceptible to, so you can go from there.

[cheya]

Okay, gotta chime in. 

 

For some time I thought incorrectly that I was type O, and discounted the whole idea, because I was very sure that dairy was great for me, not an avoid. So then I find out I am actually type B, the only type that is supposed to be okay with dairy. It was also something of a shock to find out us Bs are supposedly descended from the "Mongolian hordes."

That caused another cataclysmic self-revelation.  

 

But other than that, a client with terrible pancreatitis for years finally went on her AB type diet, and the pancreatitis has totally resolved. So long as she pretty much follows that diet.

 

It's not just about what your ancestors ate. There are specific antigens to different blood types, and lectins in foods that can make YOUR blood type's blood cells agglutinate (stick together= not good).

 

The only way to really test it is to check the blood agglutination of a person on the diet vs off the diet, that is, eating a lot of foods they are supposed to avoid. That was not done in any study I saw. Not proof either way. They didn't test the critical hypothesis: is that blood negatively affected by those particular foods?

 

Here's D'Adamo addressing the various debunking studies. Fun!

http://www.dadamo.com/txt/index.pl?3001

 

In general, be skeptical of debunks on the web, especially if the debunker happens to be Stephen Barrett. If you read his site quackwatch.org, be sure to check out another site, quackpotwatch.org  As far as I'm concerned, being massively "medically" debunked online, especially by Barrett, is practically a gold star review. This also applies to debunks by vegans, vegetarians, paleos, diet book authors, and anybody else with an obvious agenda.

 

And, my usual disclaimer, if you're healthy and happy, you're probably already "eating right for your type" and you can ignore blood type. If you're not healthy and happy, and you even slightly suspect your diet might be part of the problem, do check it out. (Along with BioBalance, by Wiley, another potentially helpful approach to dietary clarity.)

Edited June 18, 2015 by cheya

[Taomeow]

Bs are 9% of the population and 40% of self-made millionaires.  Welcome to the B club!    Whatever else D'Adamo got wrong (nearly everything, though he's right about food lectins agglutinating blood -- but very wrong about their ability to discriminate between different blood type antigens when doing this, the world's leading lectinologists assert they don't discriminate at all, an agglutinin is an equal opportunity agglutinin, with a few minor herbal exceptions) -- as I was saying, one thing he did get right.  He worships Bs.     (Even though he himself is an A.)

 

The reason Bs get away with things Os and As don't diet-wise is something else and far more complex.  The secret is not their N-acetyl-galactosamine for pattern recognition machinery on the surface of the blood cell, but the fact that blood type is not inherited in isolation -- we inherit the particular antigen (or its O type absence) in conjunction with/linked to hundreds of other traits.  And some of these (or, most likely, a combo of a whole bunch) do play a part in what we can or can't eat with impunity. 

 

E.g., we have vastly different stress-mediating mechanisms that are a linked inherited trait with our blood type!  As go cortisol, Os go adrenaline,  but Bs go NO (nitrous oxide).  A versatile though precarious balancing act that makes Bs both more and less adaptable to stress -- which is a paradox but there we have it: we can do it better, but we suffer from doing it more.  However, when it comes to diet, this fast-metabolic-track adaptability pays off -- food, generally, does not make or break our health, and one kind of stress we withstand without losing happiness is dietary.  But a lousy relationship, social problems, etc., can do a B in where an A or an O will only see a challenge to take on or an obstacle to overcome. 

 

Dairy is indeed something Bs thrive on...  unless they are Asian Bs and can't digest it at all.  And it is predominantly an Asian blood type -- while elsewhere it's the minority of the population who have it (9% in North America and Western Europe), in parts of Asia it's the majority -- up to 40% in some of those parts!  So, no, it's not the blood type that decides about dairy.  But it is something that is linked to it -- something European Bs inherit but Asian Bs don't.  Epigenetics...

Edited June 18, 2015 by Taomeow

[Apech]

Another trait that is nearly universal in modern Europeans (but not around the world) is the ability to digest the lactose in milk into adulthood. As cattle and other livestock have been farmed in western Eurasia since long before, one might expect such a mutation to already be widespread by the Bronze Age. However the study revealed that the mutation was found in around 10% of their Bronze Age samples.

 

Interestingly, the cultures with the most individuals with this mutation were the Yamnaya and their descendents. These results suggest that the mutation may have originated on the steppe and entered Europe with the Yamnaya. A combination of natural selection working on this advantageous trait and the advantageous Yamnaya culture passed down alongside it could then have helped it spread, although this process still had far to go during the bronze age.

 

from:  https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-reveals-how-europeans-developed-light-skin-and-lactose-tolerance-43078

 

... doesn't mention blood type tho' ... 

 

just for info.

[Taomeow]

And thoroughbred Arabian horses also developed lactose tolerance into adulthood, since their traditional diet of many centuries is dates and milk -- provided by humans toward top racing performance.  Horses have eight blood types, of which one is the same as in about 45% of humans -- A, and the rest are letter-coded C, D, K, P, Q, U, and T.

 

I wonder who's been breeding us and toward what goal.

[Stosh]

Well my ancestral homeland lies at the terminus of the Golden hordes westward European extent, My blood is B, I also  have two rare blood conditions one of which leads to excessive clotting the other to too little , and consume dairy with no problems, that being said ,, I just don't see how knowing what my blood type is ,, is of any use to me ,, since my clotting and dairy consumption abilities are not conclusively dictated by my ABO blood type. Nor am I a millionaire. 

I'm not saying what associations with ABO blood types being presented can't be true , I'm just saying it may not of practical value to be aware of it. 

[Taomeow]

It depends on how much you know about it -- e.g. about haptens that can make or break a relationship (airborne and sexually transmitted fragments of your own antigen if you're an A, B or AB), and whether you're planning to kill any Os with a transfusion of your blood or be made violently sick by getting it from an A donor,  and whether you are getting a job interview in Japan where they are more likely than not to hire you or not depending on whether your blood type matches the "hamony" they are looking to create or introduces an "imbalance" into the team.  And a few other odds and ends, like specific risk of certain disease and a very low one for some others.   And, yes, by itself it tells you nothing about your best food choices -- but combined with a far more extensive pool of linked metabolic traits, the awareness gives you a bit of an extra idea of who you are and what to expect of yourself.  Know thyself, you know.  It's really a fascinating area of research, too bad D'Adamo and clones profaned it so badly. 

[nine tailed fox]

i am o negative

 

i have read that rh negative type are considered alien or something because humans must be rh positive

[Stosh]

It depends on how much you know about it -- e.g. about haptens that can make or break a relationship (airborne and sexually transmitted fragments of your own antigen if you're an A, B or AB), and whether you're planning to kill any Os with a transfusion of your blood or be made violently sick by getting it from an A donor,  and whether you are getting a job interview in Japan where they are more likely than not to hire you or not depending on whether your blood type matches the "hamony" they are looking to create or introduces an "imbalance" into the team.  And a few other odds and ends, like specific risk of certain disease and a very low one for some others.   And, yes, by itself it tells you nothing about your best food choices -- but combined with a far more extensive pool of linked metabolic traits, the awareness gives you a bit of an extra idea of who you are and what to expect of yourself.  Know thyself, you know.  It's really a fascinating area of research, too bad D'Adamo and clones profaned it so badly. 

I dont have to worry about getting a job in Japan, since I'm actually a secret millionaire in disguise.

[Taomeow]

Statistics I presume?  is how you made your fortune?

[Brian]

Statistics I presume? is how you made your fortune?

Lottery, maybe? Whatever the source, he was very successful -- be literally became a millionaire overnight!

 

[Brian]

In the FWIW category, I'm B+.

[Apech]

In the FWIW category, I'm B+.

 

 

Don't sell yourself short, I'd give you an A- at least.

[Taomeow]

In the FWIW category, I'm B+.

 

Me too.  Let me guess...  you are somewhat taller than average, and you wear a bright blue jacket and yellow boots.

 

If you know your recessive gene, I will be able to tell you more. 

[flowconduit]

i am o negative

 

i have read that rh negative type are considered alien or something because humans must be rh positive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-qFM0fuCUk

[Brian]

 

Me too. Let me guess... you are somewhat taller than average, and you wear a bright blue jacket and yellow boots.

 

If you know your recessive gene, I will be able to tell you more.

<looks for camera>

Now that's uncanny.

 

Just shy of 6'4", bright blue jacket & yellow boots.

 

Not sure about the recessive gene...

 

EDIT: Which recessive did you have in mind, TaoMeow, and how would I know?

[Taomeow]

Oh, sorry I didn't specify, I meant the recessive blood type gene.  Sometimes you can figure out what it is if you know the blood types of your parents.  That's because we inherit 2 blood type genes, one from each parent, and what we inherit is not necessarily their dominant one -- so, to be a particular blood type, you have four options: get  mom's dominant gene and dad's dominant, get mom's dominant and dad's recessive, get two recessive, get dad's dominant and mom's recessive.  You wind up with a pair that will fight it out for dominance as follows: A or B always win against O; A and B can't win against each other, so if you get A and B, you will be an AB, with both genes sharing dominance.  To be an O, you need to get two Os.  But then a B can be a BB or a BO, and an A, accordingly, an AA or an AO.  The second one being recessive.  

 

So, in my case, I know my recessive gene because my parents are an O and a B, which means I couldn't get anything but an O gene from the O parent, which means that I'm a B with a recessive O.  However, if my parents were an A and a B, or an A and an AB, or a B and an AB, I would be unable to tell if my recessive gene is an O or a B, only that it can't be A if I'm a B.  It's not complicated, just a bit confusing without the habit of sorting those genes out -- I do have the habit, because I've discovered that there's quite a lot you can know about someone's traits from their blood type, and four times as much if you also know their recessive blood type gene.  (In person I can tell, in 9 cases out of 10.)  

 

Oh, and about the taller than average bit -- this is indeed uncanny, but it's a statistical fact: Bs are an average of 4 inches taller than the population they live among, regardless of race or nationality.  I.e. American Bs tend to be taller by on average that much than American non-Bs, and Japanese Bs are taller than Japanese non-Bs, and race, nationality, or anything else biological is not a factor.  So, welcome to the mysteries of epigenetics.  Here's my guess why:

 

Historically nomadic, Bs used to "outgrow their environment" every time they migrated -- so the message to "outgrow your environment" had to be applied to any new environment they found themselves in.   Well, our civilized environment is people -- other people -- many people, that's our chief milieu.  Somehow "outgrow your environment" commanded in the language of epigenetics gets translated into the meta-language of the whole organism (aka its spirit) literally, as "outgrow it physically."  So we grow taller than our environment, on average.  The disproportionate numbers of self-made millionaires may have their roots in the same "semantic fuzziness" of translating the overall message regarding what the environment's demands are today, under current conditions.  And as I said earlier, Bs are the ones who respond to current, right-now conditions much faster, adapt to what's new rather than what they're used to adapting to (that's because NO is faster than cortisol and even adrenaline and gears the whole system to immediacy -- whether actual or relative.  Our stress processing is neither preemptive as it Os nor post-factum as in As -- it's "right now," we run on gas and "now" is the only time we can use it.  However, with a recessive O, the plot might thicken...)         

 

As for the bright blue jacket and yellow boots, that was also epigenetics. 

Edited June 21, 2015 by Taomeow

[cheya]

 

  However, with a recessive O, the plot might thicken...)         

I'm recessive O too! Can you expand on how a recessive O might "thicken the plot" for a B?

I've been wondering about just that for some time!

[Brian]

Oh, sorry I didn't specify, I meant the recessive blood type gene. Sometimes you can figure out what it is if you know the blood types of your parents. That's because we inherit 2 blood type genes, one from each parent, and what we inherit is not necessarily their dominant one -- so, to be a particular blood type, you have four options: get mom's dominant gene and dad's dominant, get mom's dominant and dad's recessive, get two recessive, get dad's dominant and mom's recessive. You wind up with a pair that will fight it out for dominance as follows: A or B always win against O; A and B can't win against each other, so if you get A and B, you will be an AB, with both genes sharing dominance. To be an O, you need to get two Os. But then a B can be a BB or a BO, and an A, accordingly, an AA or an AO. The second one being recessive.

 

So, in my case, I know my recessive gene because my parents are an O and a B, which means I couldn't get anything but an O gene from the O parent, which means that I'm a B with a recessive O. However, if my parents were an A and a B, or an A and an AB, or a B and an AB, I would be unable to tell if my recessive gene is an O or a B, only that it can't be A if I'm a B. It's not complicated, just a bit confusing without the habit of sorting those genes out -- I do have the habit, because I've discovered that there's quite a lot you can know about someone's traits from their blood type, and four times as much if you also know their recessive blood type gene. (In person I can tell, in 9 cases out of 10.)

 

Oh, and about the taller than average bit -- this is indeed uncanny, but it's a statistical fact: Bs are an average of 4 inches taller than the population they live among, regardless of race or nationality. I.e. American Bs tend to be taller by on average that much than American non-Bs, and Japanese Bs are taller than Japanese non-Bs, and race, nationality, or anything else biological is not a factor. So, welcome to the mysteries of epigenetics. Here's my guess why:

 

Historically nomadic, Bs used to "outgrow their environment" every time they migrated -- so the message to "outgrow your environment" had to be applied to any new environment they found themselves in. Well, our civilized environment is people -- other people -- many people, that's our chief milieu. Somehow "outgrow your environment" commanded in the language of epigenetics gets translated into the meta-language of the whole organism (aka its spirit) literally, as "outgrow it physically." So we grow taller than our environment, on average. The disproportionate numbers of self-made millionaires may have their roots in the same "semantic fuzziness" of translating the overall message regarding what the environment's demands are today, under current conditions. And as I said earlier, Bs are the ones who respond to current, right-now conditions much faster, adapt to what's new rather than what they're used to adapting to (that's because NO is faster than cortisol and even adrenaline and gears the whole system to immediacy -- whether actual or relative. Our stress processing is neither preemptive as it Os nor post-factum as in As -- it's "right now," we run on gas and "now" is the only time we can use it. However, with a recessive O, the plot might thicken...)

 

As for the bright blue jacket and yellow boots, that was also epigenetics.

Curious... Just texted my sister to see if she remembers our parents' blood types. She doesn't but is going to see if she can find out. I then asked her what her blood type is and she says it is A+.

[Taomeow]

It means many things, but if the Shroud of Turin is not a fake, it also means that you are the same rare blood type as Jesus.  And that Darwin had nothing whatsoever to do with your coming into existence, since AB is not a product of natural selection, adaptation to environment, evolution or any of that jazz.  AB is the outcome of human migrations and consequent hybridization -- cross breeding of two breeds of the same genus, As with Bs. Have you ever tried any of these?

Edited June 21, 2015 by Taomeow

[Stosh]

I'm recessive O too! Can you expand on how a recessive O might "thicken the plot" for a B?

I've been wondering about just that for some time!

Doesn't that mean you have BO?  

[cheya]

Nope— BO negative.    

[Taomeow]

I'm recessive O too! Can you expand on how a recessive O might "thicken the plot" for a B?

I've been wondering about just that for some time!

 

It's mostly psychological traits, and they seem to be different in BBs and BOs. 

 

BBs adapt to their environment, are very much focused on fitting in a community, accepting its values, following the rules, and consistently seek conformity, harmony, peace.  What is sacrificed toward these goals may be big or small, important or unimportant, whimsical or noble, but whatever it is, it will get sacrificed toward what they see as a greater good -- playing with, and for, the team, no matter what the team is after.  Social success, likewise, is very important to them -- they are ambitious,  work hard, are talented, and often reap the fruits of applying themselves to their task that can be quite sweet.  In trouble, under stress, "uncultivated" BBs implode, and their health suffers.    

 

Now BOs are revolutionary material.  Nonconformists, rebels, but never "rebels without a clue" -- they integrate information like there's no tomorrow and often arrive at unexpected, precarious, unpopular, but usually well-justified conclusions -- and make their lives harder in the process.  Talents, in sciences, arts and humanities alike, are widespread, but success is more elusive for BOs, because they tend to choose justice and truth over peace and quiet, perfection over passability, and being true to themselves over conforming and fitting in.  In trouble, under stress, "uncultivated" BOs explode, and their relationships suffer. 

 

Ring any bells so far?