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DNA test for carbs

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JMyrtle

JMyrtle

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Hi there
While I was away someone told me it is possible to take a DNA test which will tell you which foods particularly carbs, will up your blood glucose and which ones you can eat safely.
Apparently it costs about £200.00 but the lady who told me and had it done couldn't remember how, where or who organised it.

Has anyone else come across this?
 
That has just got to be a scam. What’s wrong with trying things yourself for free?
 
Apparently there is a blood group diet too - I am blood group A and should eat carbs - so that is right then. Obviously - not.
 
kentish maid said:
I put it in the search engine and came up with these 2 articles
https://steemit.com/life/@kiwideb/to-eat-carbs-or-not-to-eat-carbs-that-is-the-question
https://steemit.com/health/@kiwideb/my-dna-test-results-are-in-can-i-eat-carbs-or-not

Interesting 🙄
Click to expand...
What a complete pile of poo. Salivary amylase has virtually no role in carb metabolism, most is in the exocrine excretions of the pancreas. That’s why I take Creon tablets - to replace the amylase and other “...ases” that my pancreas doesn’t produce because of chronic pancreatitis. I’ve got plenty enough saliva, but that doesn’t stop the bowel symptoms of pancreatitis.

I’ve seen some whacky stuff on the web, but this takes the biscuit for pseudo scientific idiocy.

So, Jmyrtle, hate to disappoint, but you’d be better off spending your £200 on Elephant dust to spread on your doorstep to protect your family from being trampled.
 
Last edited:
mikeyB said:
What a complete pile of poo. Salivary amylase has virtually no role in carb metabolism, most is in the exocrine excretions of the pancreas. That’s why I take Creon tablets - to replace the amylase and other “...ases” that my pancreas doesn’t produce because of chronic pancreatitis. I’ve got plenty enough saliva, but that doesn’t stop the bowel symptoms of pancreatitis.

I’ve seen some whacky stuff on the web, but this takes the biscuit for pseudo scientific idiocy.
Click to expand...
Succinctly put @mikeyB , I was wondering what you would make of it 🙂
 
Well having read both the attached links I think the second one more or less ties up with what we already know and in the most part follow.
When I did my Home Economics training ( although over fifty years ago now) I was certainly told that sugar begins digestion in the mouth using an enzyme if I remember correctly called ptyolin or something similar which is why if you drink a sweetened drink or suck a sweet the sugar reaches your blood much quicker than if you just swallow something sweet.
You meet all kinds of people on a cruise ship, this lady lead me to believe she had been given a list of what carbs she could and couldn't eat by doing the DNA analysis in the same way as you would get the results for a food allergies test, which funnily enough was also a service offered by the medical centre on the ship.
For me it would certainly be worth it to take the test for carbs if it gave me a detailed analysis of what I could and couldn't eat without going thru the faff of eating alls manner of processed carbs to find out if I could eat say wheatabix but not shreaded wheat.
Much easier to spend the money and save the bother of doing it yourself, provided of course the results are accurate which is why I asked if anyone else had gone down that route.,
I also have to take something called Questran after meals because my liver was damaged after gall bladder surgery so I have to have a blood test every year to check my liver function including belarubin but I don't think that is involved in the digestion of carbs, I will have to Google and find out.
Might explain a lot as I have felt much better restricting my carbs although to be honest I had not considered there might be a. Connection until now.
 
Questran is used for two purposes. One is as a cholesterol lowering medication, and the second is to sequester bile acids - that is, to bind them so they don’t get absorbed and cause itching in the skin. You’re right - it has nothing to do with the digestion of carbs.

Ptyalin in saliva starts the breakdown of starch into simple sugars, but that’s not the reason that the sugar in a sweetened drink reaches your bloodstream quicker. Glucose, the basis of most sugary sweets, is absorbed directly by the lining of the mouth, as are other simple molecules like nicotine. (That’s why pipe and hookah smokers don’t inhale)

And because all carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars like glucose or fructose before they ever get absorbed into the bloodstream, or anywhere near cell DNA. It is simply physiologically impossible for your DNA to notice or care whether the energy supply came from a potato or pasta. Your cells run on glucose, not spuds.

So there are no possible DNA tests that can distinguish which carbohydrates you can eat. This is, as I said before, a complete and utter scam, to cream money off credulous folk. The easiest way to see this is it’s too cheap. £200 is just a random price that makes it sound pricy, but not so pricy that it would put people off. It’s still a sight cheaper than a real DNA analysis.

I’m not telling you not to do this, but just appreciate that any information you get back is pure invention, and nothing else. It’s a lot of money for a fairy story.
 
I'm sure someone made a car once than ran on spuds.
 
Thanks Mikey
I need the Questran because the bile salts irritate the lining of my stomach and give me terrible cramps and "whoopsies" much in the same way I understand Metformin can, the management of cholesterol is just a rather useful add on.
It's fifty years since I did my training so I've forgotten most of it over the years and certainly the science of food has changed a lot over that time.
I must admit I was not entirely convinced myself but this lady said it enabled her to manage her diabetes easily without having to test everything she ate which seemed to good an opportunity to miss it it was true.
Never mind carry on with the codefree and put the money towards another cruise I suppose.
 
At £12 for the meter, the rest of the £200 would get you 1150 strips with change. Are there any non hypo/insulin using diabetics who've used nearly that many strips?
 
You could put the money towards a Libre with a couple of extra sensors, so you could do two months of no finger prick tests to check which carbs affect you most.

Mind you, if you do that you’ll end up addicted to it🙄
 
Nah!, another week on Fred Olsen is much more appealing
 
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