A couple of weeks ago I did something that was pretty disgusting but potentially very interesting. I filled a tube with spit and then I took a sample of my own poop.
Even better, I then put both of them in the post.
You want to date me RIGHT NOW DON’T YOU?
I’m not going to go into too much detail about how exactly I did it, suffice to say that it wasn’t the most glamorous of occasions. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being receiving an award at a glitzy ceremony and 10 being the time I accidentally pooped a little bit on a midwife whilst giving birth, it was a strong six. However, when my samples arrive at the Atlas Biomed lab for analysis I’m going to find out some very interesting things about my DNA and my gut bacteria.
It’s kind of weird really that those are both something that for nearly 40 years I’ve known pretty much nothing about, given how key they both are to how my body works. Both are unique, and important factors in things like disease risk, and yet we wander around, oblivious to what’s going on behind the scenes.
As well as warning you about your predisposition to vast numbers of diseases, the tests drill down into seemingly endless levels of detail – exactly how well do I process caffeine? What are my vitamin A levels? What about my sensitivity to pain or earwax type?
I didn’t even know there WAS more than one earwax type.
As I sealed my poo into the very discreet packaging, my mind was boggling with just how much information was soon to be at my fingertips.
The question is of course – why? Why exactly would I want or need to know these bizarre things about myself? How much does anyone really need to know about their sweat odour or photic sneezing reflex?
I guess the simple answer is change.
Once you know these things about yourself, you can make changes to your lifestyle to help your body run as efficiently as possible. If the tests show that I need a particular amount of dietary fibre to function at optimal levels, then I can adjust my diet accordingly. If it’s highlighted that I’m at particular risk of Borjeson-Forssman-Lehmann Syndrome then, well, I guess the first step there would be Google.
So it turns out that my poo can really say quite a lot about me. Watch this space in a couple of weeks to find out exactly what.
Find out more at Atlas Biomed.
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Was the genetic test just to establish if you have a genetic predisposition to certain disorders,or did they also give you insight and information into your ancestry, where your ancestors came from, etc?
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I think they can tell you certain things about ancestry but I’m not entirely sure what – we’ll have to wait to see what results come back in a couple of weeks!