I ordered a 23 and me kit yesterday after reading this. A bunch of my family has done it and I have been procrastinating it forever. It also gives this result with the ‘health’ option.

---

Dimond Bikes Superfan

windschatten wrote:

People here are like flies on honey regarding the performance benefits of coffee.

Did you read the thread? (potential) Performance detriment of coffee is mostly what this thread is about.



You are an inspiration.



Yeah, I'm sure Big Coffee, Big Pharma, and Big Supplement are clamoring for "trail's" CYP1A2 results. Big bidding war brewing. I'm not so much worried about being inundated with ads for the latest ethically-sourced Colombian dark roast and mid-race pep pill, but how I'm going to be stripped of all the profit I could make by selling the information myself.

Hey trail- How many days/weeks were you on BA?

I feel I am one of those where it is a detriment. My adrenals must be shot. I love the taste of coffee

I have deep experience with both DNA test data (23andMe) and also gut microbiome data from Ubiome. I would highly recommend getting a 23andMe test, downloading the raw data file when your results are in, and connecting your file to GENOtation (http://genotation.stanford.edu/). There are numerous free sports, lifestyle, health reports that will be very educational. There are great explanations and references in Genotation if you want to dive deeper. I think it's great to learn more about yourself.

Ubiome is interesting, but the science is still emerging and it is difficult to find any actionable benefit (right now). It is interesting when I read of a certain study that describes findings of groups of people for particular bacteria(s) and looking to see if your sample(s) have that present and in what amount. It may be more beneficial if you have a difficult gut to see what is in there and see if you can modify it with diet changes and if you notice your symptoms changing.

Thanks. Can you get actionable results from the Stanford website? I had a look at the sample reports from 23andme and it was all stuff like people with your DNA tend to weigh less if they don't eat red meat, don't eat fast food, sleep for 8 hours and exercise regularly. Which doesn't tell me much that I don't already know!

I guess it depends on what you consider actionable and what your specific results yield. For instance, knowing your genetic predisposition to Vit D metabolism could be actionable if you didn't know it already through careful tracking of blood test results. As it turns out, some low metabolizers just need more Vit D to push them into normal ranges. Getting Vit D right can yield high gains in health and fitness. These and other tests could explain what you already may know (for instance if you have the "sprinter" gene or not), or they can shed more insight on areas you should dive deeper within if you haven't figured them out optimally through your experience. BTW, some of the research around the sprinter gene ACTN3 doesn't just revolve around speed of contraction, but muscle, tendon and ligament structure, damage and recovery which could yield actionable insights on what type of training you may adapt to better than others.

Hello windschatten and All,


Wind shadow is a zone of lower wind speed on the leeward side ( lee ) of a flow obstacle. The historical use of the wind shadow consists in the plant of rows of trees or hedgerows in the field corridor , where the slipstream - in six- to seven-fold length of the tree height - prevents erosion . In a broader sense, slipstreams are also used in calm conditions to denote the zone behind a moving object. The slipstream behind moving objects plays an important role in various sports. In a moving object with additional crosswind the slipstream is according to the vectorial addition of the wind speeds (see: parallelogram of forces) obliquely behind the object.



Thanks for posting ... interesting article. Interesting comments following the article too.

One of our family members is in the biomedical business working for a large company .. (Some great cures are in the pipeline if they test OK.)

At dinner the other night the same topic came up .... should you keep your DNA secret? And how can this be accomplished?

Not by patent ... From Wiki ....

"US Supreme Court Strikes Down Gene Patents but Allows Patenting of Synthetic DNA. NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The US Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that human genes are not patentable, but synthetic DNA, or cDNA, is patent eligible because it does not occur naturally.Jun 13, 2013"

For me, the ship has sailed, as I have had medical tests while in the USMC that are probably on file, 6 month physicals and drug tests while working for an airline that are in the database, medical tests in other countries when traveling and sick, and my wife has been doing genealogy for a long time and comparing our DNA with others on Ancestry, 23 and Me, and probably other DNA companies too.

I plan to continue DNA testing to learn as much as possible about what makes my body tick .... if somebody profits from my information .... so be it .... perhaps the information will help cure some physical maladies for other humans.

Also for our triathlon sport (for pros) with biological passports, out of season location reporting with unannounced urine and blood tests, and for age groupers blood or urine tests at races, 'all of our precious bodily fluids' are becoming public record.

General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. [Film Dr. Strangelove]



https://www.theguardian.com/...ncer-research-genome

Excerpt:

"The astonishing story of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cancer in 1951 but whose still living cells are now the basis for much medical research, has captivated America for the past two years – and there is no sign of the debate, or its controversies, abating.

As revealed in the bestselling 2011 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is a tale of a poor black tobacco farmer who never consented to having her tissues taken but whose cancer cells have proved so important they have formed the foundation for work leading to two Nobel prizes.

Yet Lacks's family never knew about it – even as the cells were used around the world in research, or when they themselves were asked for blood samples two decades later. The book described the indignity of the family's ordeal even as giant corporations profited hugely from Lacks's cells – known as HeLa in medical parlance. Her children, again without their knowledge, had their medical records studied and even published. It was a story of the complex intersection of medicine, race and profit that seemed to have a happy ending as the book, written by Rebecca Skloot, became a bestseller and Lacks's contribution to medical science was recognized."

"It speaks very widely to genetic privacy," Kroll said. After all, Kroll argued, if researchers were still blithe enough to publish a genome as well known as a HeLa cell, then they might be even less bothered by people whose identities are – now – less famous. "The whole Henrietta Lacks case has been a blessing in disguise. Often mistakes can lead to advances and correcting behaviour," said Kroll."

---

Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

The study I was on gave me a single acute dose, presumably large though I don't know the details. I know that runs counter to current practice of "loading" beta-alanine. But I don't do use it as a supplement.

Yeah exactly where I was headed with that. BA shouldn't have any effect unless you load it every day for at least 4 weeks, so one acute dose shouldn't do anything (not saying it didn't, just that it's not supposed to). In addition, it's not supposed to do much for races like outdoor time trials. Research shows an effect for efforts of 1-10 minutes, and maybe sprints at the end of a long race. It's probably good for things like pursuit, and maybe the surges in road/crit racing.

Pretty sure it's the opposite: CC genotypes (europeans, basically) drink more coffee, but it's been a while since I looked into it and I don't feel like verifying that so treat it with a grain of salt.

Spending $99 for genotyping at a single locus is absurd. If you want to know your CYP1A2 (or any other gene of interest) genotype, you can pay $99 for genome-wide coverage through 23andme. Ignore the report, download your raw data, and upload to Promethease for another $5. You now have access to look at your genotype at any of 640,000 SNPs (see my example below for rs762551).

Edit: It appears 23andme has a newer feature where you can search through raw data based on gene name or SNP ID, so you don't have to go through Promethease. But I'd still highly recommend Promethease if you're interested at all in looking more through your raw data because it integrates with SNPedia to give way more information about frequency in the population, published literature, etc.

Hello windschatten and All,

Looks like larger genetic databases are already under construction:

http://www.sciencemag.org/...first-pilot-projects

Excerpt:

"President Obama’s huge 1-million-person long-term health study is getting started. Today, the White House and National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced several pilot projects, including one to work out how to recruit hundreds of thousands of volunteers online. A Google company, Verily, will offer technical help.

Obama announced the cohort study just over a year ago as part of his Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI). Today, he will attend a White House summit with 170 participants to promote the PMI, which attempts to tailor medical treatments to individuals. The cohort program is the largest piece of the PMI: A 1-million-volunteer health study that will probe the interplay among genetics, lifestyle factors, and health.

Vanderbilt University in Nashville has won an award to perform a pilot study on how to recruit about one-third of the participants directly—anybody will be able to “raise their hands,” said NIH Director Francis Collins in a call with reporters. The university will work out how to engage participants with a website and a phone line for signing up. Verily, the former Google Life Sciences (renamed in December 2015), in Mountain View, California, will advise the project."

and
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27903831


Excerpts:
"Iceland's record of low immigration and its genealogical records going back 1,000 years make it a paradise for geneticists. A third or more of the population has already donated a DNA sample - but a new push to increase that figure is meeting some resistance.

"No!" says Alda Sigmundsdottir, raising her voice and waving her arms around emphatically.

"I will not be emotionally blackmailed into giving my DNA - it's my own private and personal information and I am not going to give it to anybody!"

Icelandic writer and journalist Alda and I are sitting in my hotel room in Reykjavik, talking about her latest blog in which she describes the attempt of the country's leading genetics company deCODE to recruit volunteers to give DNA samples. The company already has over a third of Icelanders in its database but now it wants to double its count.

Earlier this summer, it sent out swab packs in the post with information informing households that couriers would be knocking on doors in the near future to collect the samples from willing participants."

...........................
"On my way back from deCODE, I chat to people lunching at the university cafeteria and ask if they have given a DNA sample to deCODE. Almost all of them have done so, and shrug when I ask them if they had concerns about privacy.

One man in his mid-40s is emotional as he replies to me and his soup-spoon trembles as he talks.

"I have a family member with a genetic condition who has suffered a lot," he tells me quietly. He meets my gaze.

"Why should he suffer a lot if we know we have information that can help him? What is it to do with privacy?"

---

Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

Hello grassy and All,

Thanks for that info .... Unless I find a better deal I will give your advice at try.

---

Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

Right, misinterpretation of genetic data without a real understanding of what it means is a huge problem in the general population. Part of this is how the "reports" from 23andme etc are advertised - "you have this genotype so you should eat this diet!" Which is really satisfying for a lot of people to feel like they have this understanding, but not at all representative of the complete picture.

What people need to really understand is that most traits are highly complex - polygenic (influenced by many genes) in nature, with strong environmental effects. Many of the genes that have been identified from large genome wide associations studies only explain a small fraction of the heritable phenotypic variance, and only a portion of the variance is even heritable.

Take ACTN3 for example - this is the most well studied gene that has come out of genome wide association studies looking at elite sprinting performance. According to the literature, the C;C variant is more highly represented in elite sprinters compared to the T;T variant, which codes for nonsense mutation. What you'll read about ACTN3 is that C;C at C;T individuals are "sprinter" types whereas T;T individuals are "endurance" types. People will check out their ACTN3 genotype, see they have a "C" allele, and think "dang, I should be sprinting instead of doing this long distance stuff!".

This is a total overreaching conclusion, given that ACTN3 has only a very small effect size that's been identified in a small subset of the population (elites). Almost 80% of Europeans have a C allele ("sprinter") allele - it's not some special genetic gift. While there certainly in a genetic pre-disposition for sprinting, ACTN3 is just a small part of the much larger picture, much of which has yet to be discovered. But it's the only one we've characterized well so it gets touted around as the "sprinting gene." In reality, environmental effects (think: lifestyle and training) way outweigh the effects of this single gene.

Thanks for the pointer to Premethease. I was having trouble understanding the 23&Me Caffeine report, because it talks about C & T variants rather than C & A, and their descriptions of the C variant sounded more like the A variant in the links described further up in this thread. The 23&Me report lists me as type C:C (as opposed to C:T or T:T), but when I imported the data into Premethease it lists me as A:A.

That's because the 23andme report is based on different markers than the literature referenced above (rs4410790 vs. rs762551). Both are in CYP1A2 but they are in different locations within the gene.

Keep in mind the studies using caffeine usually use 3-4mg/kg. That's a lot of caffeine, 2-3 times the amount of typical cup of coffee. I'm a CC, but before I knew this, I knew too much coffee makes me jittery and nauseous. This would not be the way I'd want to feel before/during a race. 1 cup of coffee however makes me feel fantastic, so I've dialled in what feels right for me. After learning that I'm CC, I think it just confirms what I already knew through experience. So, I don't think a CC withdrawing completely from 1 typical cup of coffee for better performance is the correct conclusion. Rather, a CC that takes too much caffeine (4mg/kg) will benefit from NOT taking that much (because they cannot metabolize it quick enough), whereas different genotypes will benefit from these amounts (because they metabolize faster).

What you say makes a lot of sense, Russ. And it makes me think the DNA tests are probably a waste of money.

I had a caffeine withdrawal headache all day yesterday. It was brutal!

I was so happy to hop out of bed this morning and have a cup of coffee. I celebrated by running 5 instead of 3. Even assuming I'm CC, there is a place in my life for just the right amount of caffeine.

That's plausible, but a bit of an n=1 leap of faith since nothing in the abstract can really confirm the theory that it was a subjective feeling of "jitteriness" that resulted in the decreased performance. We don't even know if any of the CC subjects felt jittery at all. The abstract doesn't report what happened to the CC's at 2mg/kg. I'd like to read the study, but don't want to pay the $59, which seems a bit steep for a single article.

OK, I sucked it up and paid $59. Kind of interesting.

There was no difference at 2mg/kg for the CC's (vs. either 4mg/kg or 0).

In terms of facts, the CC's at 4mg/kg had a 2% decrease in heartrate vs. placebo and 2mg/kg. They also had a non-significant increase in RPE (vs. a significant reduction in RPE for those with improved performance).

There was no questionnaire on subjective feelings, unfortunately, so we can't say anything about jitteriness.

However, the pre-study questionnaire showed no significant difference between AA, AC, and CC in either dietary caffeine consumption or performance-motivated caffeine consumption. So no type appears to prefer caffeine innately.

The study did conjecture on mechanisms for the impaired performance of the CC's. The conjecture was based around a theory of vasoconstriction and therefore decreased myocardial bloodflow. This is consistent with the other data showing increased risk for myocardial infarction for CC's who ingest caffeine.

Far from proof. And the lack of mention of a subjective feeling of "jitteriness" doesn't disprove that theory.

But I'm not disappointed that I ordered the testing to see which type I am.

Frankly who cares what happened generally to the participants of the study! What is most important to you is not generalized knowledge but specific knowledge on yourself. Everyone is different and that's why testing on yourself is the most relevant experiment right?