Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about how incredibly complex I SPIT is.
Speaker 1: It may only be water, but just aliva isn't simple.
Speaker 1: That remaining one holds incredibly meaningful information that could change everything.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about your family treat Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm barretton Day Thurston and on this season of SPIT
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio podcast with twenty three and me,
Speaker 1: we explore how DNA isn't just about ancestry, it can
Speaker 1: also be key to understanding your health. Hey, you welcome back.
Speaker 1: We've had some really great conversations on SPIT, but today's
Speaker 1: episode is truly something special. On Hood Politics, rapper and
Speaker 1: author Propaganda discusses geopolitical topics from the perspective of urban life,
Speaker 1: and today he's using that perspective to talk about health
Speaker 1: and how it relates to your family history. Prop discovering
Speaker 1: more about his own health from his twenty three test reports,
Speaker 1: sits down with his mother to help him better understand
Speaker 1: what his DNA could be telling him about his past
Speaker 1: and his future. Together, they slowly peel away the layers
Speaker 1: of props family history, looking back at family members who
Speaker 1: have gotten ill or sadly passed away. How can the
Speaker 1: information from props twenty three and me test help him
Speaker 1: stay healthy in the future. Together, these two learn more
Speaker 1: about the awesome power of genetic testing when it comes
Speaker 1: to understanding your health, as well as some other family
Speaker 1: secrets and a few surprises. Hopefully this episode will inspire
Speaker 1: you to learn more about your own family history and
Speaker 1: maybe even inspire you to reach out to your own
Speaker 1: mom or dad or grandma or grandpa or whoever else
Speaker 1: you might owe. A phone call too, and I mean
Speaker 1: a phone call, not a text. Let's listen in Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: so check this out. The politics this my mom, Mom, Yes,
Speaker 1: you'll know what's called me. Hello. Hello. I'll call you
Speaker 1: Jason when I'm close to you in case I need
Speaker 1: to pop you one. But I give you your propers
Speaker 1: to call your properm in. Okay, I appreciate it, you know. Okay, y'all.
Speaker 1: So this is a special hood politics. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: in partnership with spit and twenty three and me. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about little family issues and how it kind
Speaker 1: of hits the hood and he hits us and what
Speaker 1: we could possibly do about it. So a little background,
Speaker 1: um I had at some point I feel like I
Speaker 1: made this like off hand comment off of listening to
Speaker 1: another podcast about Dolly Parton Believe it or not. She
Speaker 1: had said in this podcast, like, and you know, you
Speaker 1: kind of never really know your parents. And I thought
Speaker 1: to myself when she said that, like, dude, that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of don't. And let's sners. No, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm boring to raise Los Angeles. My mom is not though.
Speaker 1: My mom Southeast d C. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: northwest Southeast, you feel me? She Obama right there, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And uh came over here to
Speaker 1: l A. You know, actually got married as kids, married
Speaker 1: my dad as kids, stayed there until we were grown
Speaker 1: and they split up and eventually she went back home.
Speaker 1: But is itching to get back to l A because
Speaker 1: you got grandkids now in my life? Come on now,
Speaker 1: and okay, okay, I appreciate it. But there's an entire
Speaker 1: history you know, with your parents that like you just
Speaker 1: don't know, you know what I'm saying, And how could
Speaker 1: you you were in there and just the reality that
Speaker 1: like she was an entirely different person before kids, Like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like marriage and kids changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was put on your heart to write me
Speaker 1: a letter, right, that's right, Yeah, so you can take
Speaker 1: over from there a little bit like what you want
Speaker 1: to talk about in a letter, not specifics obviously because
Speaker 1: that's between us, but just kind of what you wanted
Speaker 1: to inform well in the letter. I first of all,
Speaker 1: it you had come on a surprise visit to me,
Speaker 1: and when you made that comment, it was the look
Speaker 1: on your face and almost like a dagger in my
Speaker 1: heart for a couple of different reasons. That one was
Speaker 1: because you and I in your growing up years were
Speaker 1: very very close and we had a special bond that
Speaker 1: you used to share with me some things that were
Speaker 1: actually t m I for me. But but as a kid,
Speaker 1: you were as just as curious as you are now,
Speaker 1: very curious and inquisitive and either not I don't want
Speaker 1: to say you demanded an answer, but you inquired until
Speaker 1: you've got one that who ever you were speaking to
Speaker 1: thought they had given you a sufficient answer. So when
Speaker 1: you said you didn't know me, and I had taken
Speaker 1: you to the airport, and it just haunted me and
Speaker 1: was in my spirit the whole time coming back home
Speaker 1: that I thought, well, you know, he really he knows me.
Speaker 1: He doesn't realize that he knows me because the am
Speaker 1: the person that I am in my heart and in
Speaker 1: my spirit. I have always been that person because that
Speaker 1: was how God made me. But the fact that you
Speaker 1: really didn't know my background on my childhood and specifics
Speaker 1: because I would only tell you or we only would
Speaker 1: discuss certain things when they came up, as to, well,
Speaker 1: you know, your dad was in the house, your dad
Speaker 1: drove a cab, you know, speaking to my dad, my
Speaker 1: dad smoked a cigar, my dad. You know, my mom
Speaker 1: and dad had nine children. We lived in a certain place,
Speaker 1: and some of the things that went on is we
Speaker 1: were children. But I never really really told you anything
Speaker 1: about me as a child. And the funny thing about
Speaker 1: that is that I always had a curiosity and still
Speaker 1: do about how my parents were as children. By the
Speaker 1: time you really know them or actually realize anything about them,
Speaker 1: you're a little person, or you're a teenager, or you're
Speaker 1: an adult. But you fail or I feel, or we
Speaker 1: felt sometimes I realized that our parents were little people
Speaker 1: at one point too, you know, they were they were
Speaker 1: little people that played on the playground and they go
Speaker 1: to bed when their parents told them to go to bed.
Speaker 1: Maybe played top Scotch or whatever they played in the
Speaker 1: areas or the cities where they lived. Because my mother
Speaker 1: was born and raised in Washington, d c. She's a
Speaker 1: blood Washingtonian, but my dad was raised in the South,
Speaker 1: in South Carolina. So I always, you know, I used
Speaker 1: to reflect and think a lot about I wonder what
Speaker 1: they were like as little kids. You know, what did
Speaker 1: they think about when did they get hurt themselves, or
Speaker 1: when did somebody pick on them? Or you know, what
Speaker 1: were the things that they did that they didn't want
Speaker 1: their parents. It's just little people's life. And so when
Speaker 1: I was going over all that and I said, well,
Speaker 1: my son, you know, he doesn't he didn't. My my
Speaker 1: children they don't know that about me. It was just
Speaker 1: something that came up. Nothing that wasn't that, it wasn't important.
Speaker 1: It just was something that never presented itself. So in
Speaker 1: writing the letter, which you know, I started when you
Speaker 1: left in February, and I was writing the letter and
Speaker 1: writing the letter, then we were hit with COVID or
Speaker 1: COVID came and I stopped. Then I had a little
Speaker 1: issue with one of life. I slipped and fell and
Speaker 1: hurt my finger naturally, so I couldn't type on the
Speaker 1: computer as I wanted to, and then one thing happened
Speaker 1: right after the other, then more COVID, and then I
Speaker 1: got kind of like, okay, I wanted to. Once I
Speaker 1: got into it, everything opened up. And even now the
Speaker 1: letter that you have is only what they say, half
Speaker 1: of the story, because there was so much and you
Speaker 1: know so um yeah, you came back a lifetime into
Speaker 1: a letter, yes, a letter, and then individuals that touched
Speaker 1: your lives, what they meant to you, the little, small,
Speaker 1: little things that you go through. So what I did
Speaker 1: in the letter was trying to give to you whatever
Speaker 1: God brought into my heart to give to you. That
Speaker 1: was about me, And it wasn't about trying to make
Speaker 1: the letter all about me, but in essence, I wanted
Speaker 1: you to know all about me, the things that you
Speaker 1: didn't know, Like how was I in junior high school?
Speaker 1: And I told you about that where I started off,
Speaker 1: you know, a brainy ac and then what happened and
Speaker 1: so those things that you probably you never you never
Speaker 1: knew those things. So I went in writing the letter
Speaker 1: and it got longer and longer, not only chronologically but
Speaker 1: in the duration of the letter. And finally I gave
Speaker 1: you the letter with something still unfinished, and probably some
Speaker 1: things that I thought were very important left out because
Speaker 1: I thought you got tired of waiting, And I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: how much longer is this going to be? Because it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a letter it ended up being
Speaker 1: over forty page. Yes, it ended up being a novel.
Speaker 1: And then I went through, Okay, well do I the titles?
Speaker 1: Do I call it everything you wanted to know about
Speaker 1: your mother? And you didn't know? Or he was going
Speaker 1: he was getting creative. Yeah, I was just getting creative.
Speaker 1: And then you kept hearing the phrase in this pop
Speaker 1: culture is that you know your narrative? What's your narrative?
Speaker 1: Let's somebody right? So I thought, you know what, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna call it. I'm writing my own narrative
Speaker 1: so that my son, my daughter, and whomever they choose
Speaker 1: to share it with. Yeah, family wise would would know.
Speaker 1: And so here we are now you're sharing it on
Speaker 1: a podcast. Yes, not the specifics per se, because some
Speaker 1: of that stuffs like I'm still kind of processing, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. There's some things that I really loved,
Speaker 1: like I knew, but like didn't know you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like ideas about like like granddad and and
Speaker 1: you know, the the running the numbers and the card
Speaker 1: games and the gambling and stuff like that, because which
Speaker 1: is just hood life. You know what I'm saying, right,
Speaker 1: And you know you get it. How are you living?
Speaker 1: You call it hood life now? But for us, it
Speaker 1: was survival. For them, it was survival. For them, it
Speaker 1: was doing what you know to do the best way
Speaker 1: you could do it and stand away from the popo. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you get it. How you're living trying to stay out,
Speaker 1: stay stay under the radar, you know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Yeah. But what I what I found interesting
Speaker 1: specifically for why I wanted to tell that story as
Speaker 1: background for this was, um, I took a twenty three
Speaker 1: and me DNA test right, and it gives you not
Speaker 1: only like your ancestral heritage and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: it also talks about the part that we're interested in
Speaker 1: is like is our health background right, and like a
Speaker 1: wellness stuff, you know what I'm saying. And one thing
Speaker 1: that like that stood out for me in your story
Speaker 1: in that story is like there's an assumption and and
Speaker 1: it's a true in most situations that like you know,
Speaker 1: the projects, you know what I'm saying, Like in the
Speaker 1: in the sense that y'all actually experienced is a food
Speaker 1: desert that you're just not eating well and making like
Speaker 1: good choices for your your health, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because you're just trying to survive. And what I noticed
Speaker 1: your story, it seemed like that wasn't the case, Like
Speaker 1: y'all ate, all right, It's exactly we were at all right. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that we weren't exposed to the chidlins
Speaker 1: and the hog mad and all of that, because we
Speaker 1: had it, and I ate it and we ate it.
Speaker 1: But basically, I don't know if it was because and
Speaker 1: it probably was because of my father's background being in
Speaker 1: the South. My mother used to say rabbit food. That
Speaker 1: he loved rabbit food. And out of the nine of
Speaker 1: us of their children or nine of us are still
Speaker 1: eating well, you know, my two brothers are deceased, but
Speaker 1: the seven of us still live off and love rabbit food. Now,
Speaker 1: the fact that nobody is in a vegetarian, I'm a Presbyterian,
Speaker 1: and um, they love meat, they love their ribs. I
Speaker 1: stay away from that because that was my matter of
Speaker 1: choice after a few years after I got grown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's something I wanted to ask you about. Yeah, okay, okay, no,
Speaker 1: but go on. Yeah, but generally rabbit food is in
Speaker 1: like y'all eat fruits and vegetables. We eat fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: I mean I would sit by as a little girl
Speaker 1: my mother watching her make potato salad and before she
Speaker 1: would People in the black community, and I'm sure another
Speaker 1: another races, uh, ethnic backgrounds, they may potato salad differently,
Speaker 1: but my mother A lot of people peel the potatoes
Speaker 1: and then this is just a side peeled potatoes and
Speaker 1: then chop them up. But my mother would boil the
Speaker 1: potatoes first before she chopped him up. And I was
Speaker 1: always there sitting beside her with my elbow on the table,
Speaker 1: waiting for a piece of raw potatoes before it even
Speaker 1: went in the pod. My dad used to come and
Speaker 1: he would give us rud Baker's. We would eat raw
Speaker 1: sweet potatoes, anything that was. It was like right out
Speaker 1: of the garden, and we all loved it. And to
Speaker 1: this day, my sisters and my brother, we and you
Speaker 1: will know in your and our family, when we all
Speaker 1: lived as a family together. You always had a what
Speaker 1: there was always a salad. There was always there was
Speaker 1: always a salad. There was always we would come home
Speaker 1: and always green, something green. You had to have something
Speaker 1: green on your plate. So that's the way we were raised,
Speaker 1: no matter what. And even now it's like any any
Speaker 1: family functioning or gathering, somebody's going to make a salad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy because, like like I said, like
Speaker 1: in you know, in a macro sense, like living in
Speaker 1: like inner cities are considered like we said, food deserts
Speaker 1: where you can't really get fresh food. It was like
Speaker 1: just what you said, like whatever decisions you made, that
Speaker 1: wasn't the case in our house. There was always fruit.
Speaker 1: You always had it. We come home and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like there wasn't a bag of chips. It was oranges, right,
Speaker 1: we sat down and we ate oranges we had. That
Speaker 1: was just a decision you made. And some of those
Speaker 1: decisions were around like when I when I go through
Speaker 1: these results, like I'm really interested in I want to
Speaker 1: hear your reaction because some of the stuff you you
Speaker 1: said you just kind of like made these food decisions
Speaker 1: for us because you was watching what seemed like was
Speaker 1: hereditary what was just happening in our families where we
Speaker 1: was dying over getting sick over and so. And you
Speaker 1: said it in the in a story too. But I
Speaker 1: remember you telling us all the time like, yoll watch
Speaker 1: out for this because this in your family, this in
Speaker 1: your blood, and it's crazy without you doing any tests,
Speaker 1: this was just the stuff that you was just like,
Speaker 1: well it just keep having it, you know what I'm saying, right,
Speaker 1: So tell the folks what what What were some of
Speaker 1: those things that you just kind of picked up and
Speaker 1: was like, we can't eat this because this in our family.
Speaker 1: Well I don't, I don't know you. You didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I said you couldn't eat
Speaker 1: because the entire choice was not my own. You know,
Speaker 1: your father was there and he had things that you
Speaker 1: know that he believed that weren't detrimental, but they ended
Speaker 1: up being detrimental. You can probably being detrimental. So um,
Speaker 1: the thing is that I tried not to of you
Speaker 1: a lot of sugar. Remember I used to say you
Speaker 1: couldn't have right because of the diabetes that you I
Speaker 1: didn't want you to have a lot of sweet sweet cereals,
Speaker 1: those sugarcoated cereals that you couldn't have, which was torture,
Speaker 1: which was torture. And as a matter of fact, when
Speaker 1: I wanted to give you a treat, you could have
Speaker 1: your captain crunch that. Yeah, and they and that was
Speaker 1: because that the diabetes was running in the family. My
Speaker 1: my grandfather, my my maternal grandfather had suffered from diabetes
Speaker 1: that put him in it in a in a chair
Speaker 1: towards the end of his life. My uncle on my
Speaker 1: mother's side was diabetic and it took him put him down.
Speaker 1: And aunt that came to live with me as my
Speaker 1: sweetie Luna caused her on n t Helen on Helen.
Speaker 1: When she was here living with me, it was always
Speaker 1: sugar and my mother was a sugar candy fanatic. And
Speaker 1: my sister, who later in years late in life, found
Speaker 1: out she was a diabetic, would always we would always
Speaker 1: have sweets. That part of it became and so you know,
Speaker 1: I realized that these things just they weren't good healthy wise.
Speaker 1: It had nothing to do with what you may hear
Speaker 1: quote some people talk about generation curses. I don't believe
Speaker 1: in generation curse. I don't believe in that. I believe
Speaker 1: in our bloodline and the things that we are susceptible
Speaker 1: due to because of our bloodline. And so I feel
Speaker 1: that it's it's wiser to make the choices when you're
Speaker 1: able to make the choices, then wish later on you
Speaker 1: hadn't made the choices. Like I have an aunt that
Speaker 1: passed away, and when I had spoken to her when
Speaker 1: she had became ill, the one thing she said to
Speaker 1: me was that I'm not afraid to die. I'll miss
Speaker 1: the family, but I wish I had made better choices
Speaker 1: in the way I ate. And so these were this
Speaker 1: was almost her dying doxology that she had wished she
Speaker 1: had made a better choice. And the things that she
Speaker 1: ate because she loved to eat. And I mean it's fatty,
Speaker 1: fatty stuff like raw ground beef and raw bacon. And
Speaker 1: so you know, when I used to see a member
Speaker 1: of our family delving into that, it would just it
Speaker 1: would just make me cringe because there's no purpose in it.
Speaker 1: You know, vegetables will well suffice in and keeping you
Speaker 1: and keeping you healthy. And I and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I had tripping that I don't brag. I thank I'm
Speaker 1: thankful for the grace of God on my life. But
Speaker 1: you know where I am in life. You know how
Speaker 1: old I am. You know what I have suffered physically
Speaker 1: and what I haven't suffered physically. And I attribute all
Speaker 1: of that because of the choices that I said. Not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of ship since I was a child,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, not a lot of fats. And
Speaker 1: for the past two years, I haven't had a piece
Speaker 1: of fried chicken. Now you're talking crazy, okay, uh no. Um,
Speaker 1: So what I noticed what our family was like kidney cancer,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And then but some of
Speaker 1: these weird things. So so the aunt that she talked about,
Speaker 1: my Helen, which is my great aunt, that's my grandmother's sister.
Speaker 1: My mom's direct hunt was like, I mean, she was
Speaker 1: a two packet day smoker and she outlived everyone more
Speaker 1: than that, more than more than two packs to see,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm say. And so like there was these
Speaker 1: weird like things where you just like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: is that just that's just in our blood? Like why
Speaker 1: how come that ain't? And of all the things that
Speaker 1: actually killed it was the sugar, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So we like, how is it that you know? Say it?
Speaker 1: So so there's these things that are like our diet
Speaker 1: and then these things that are in our blood. So
Speaker 1: but there's one thing I want to interrupt to say,
Speaker 1: then this could be an inspiration to someone who may
Speaker 1: have been or know someone that had been a three
Speaker 1: packet day smoker, is that she had a stroke. After
Speaker 1: the stroke, she gave up cigarettes at eighty eight years old,
Speaker 1: so she had been smoking from her twenties until in
Speaker 1: her eighties and still not a not a thing, not
Speaker 1: a drop of cancer in her blood. She um was hilarious, y'all.
Speaker 1: Like the one thing that is in our DNA. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this some twenty three and me thing is
Speaker 1: going to prove is that we have sarcasm in our
Speaker 1: DNA and for some reason, like everybody really good at it.
Speaker 1: You know my right now, y'all, my mom is being
Speaker 1: very well behaved, but she being real nice. But Helen
Speaker 1: was hilarious. She was remarkably sarcastic and uh and would
Speaker 1: say stuff like that like smoke to me, facts, I
Speaker 1: won't you being prejudiced against my age exactly to say that.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna read through a few of these things
Speaker 1: can get your reactions on this. Some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you thought maybe like you was like yep, or
Speaker 1: are surprised about. So the first thing I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: at is like, once you get this result, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look at like the my wellness thing. Right, So how
Speaker 1: my DNA responds to like diet, exercise, and sleep. Right,
Speaker 1: So your boy's genetic weight meeting, like in my predisposed
Speaker 1: to become overweight or stay pretty pretty thin. What you
Speaker 1: think you're gonna stay thin? Yep, that's predisposed to weigh
Speaker 1: less than average. That's what this monk said. So you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And it's funny because you know,
Speaker 1: even as a kid, I'll try my best. Remember we
Speaker 1: bought all the weights, never worked and oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: just did not work, right, So all the variants in
Speaker 1: my blood are associated to like that you're just gonna
Speaker 1: be thin? Right? Well? Can I say something there too, though, yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it. Is that you know that out of
Speaker 1: my eight siblings, I was considered the runt. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I was the only one five five. I say five too,
Speaker 1: but I'm five one and a half. I never got
Speaker 1: any bigger. Then, you know, I've always kept my weight down.
Speaker 1: And then your father was tall and slim. It's tall
Speaker 1: and slim, so I can see how that would happen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I look good now, but he's yeah much older anyway.
Speaker 1: And also your choices too. Yeah yeah, totally. Uh, lactose intolerant.
Speaker 1: It's in my blood and it's true. Here's what's funny.
Speaker 1: Here's a funny one caffeine consumption. I am likely to
Speaker 1: consume less caffeine than anyone else. Really, ain't that weird?
Speaker 1: That's what it says based on my DNA. It says
Speaker 1: that if you consume caffeine. The current Guidelines of Healthy
Speaker 1: Adults says adults should drink no more than three twelve
Speaker 1: ounce cups of coffee or eight ounce cups of tea
Speaker 1: per day, which is crazy because I drink probably for yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't be getting jittery, but I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm defining my DNA here. Muscle composition, it's my muscle
Speaker 1: composition is common for elite athletes. Okay, I can see that.
Speaker 1: I can see that totally. Yes, let's see. Now, let's
Speaker 1: go to like the not so fun stuff health highlights. Okay, dementia, Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: What do you think do I think that? In your DNA,
Speaker 1: you're prone to it. Yeah, uh possibly, yeah, so slightly
Speaker 1: at risk. Yeah. And and I say that because of
Speaker 1: my paternal side of the family. Yeah, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's happening now on in my on this
Speaker 1: side of the family, but basically not not on my
Speaker 1: maternal side. Yo. And here's what's crazy is according to this,
Speaker 1: like the variant I have generally comes from people of
Speaker 1: European descent, So thank you again, trans Atlantic slave trade.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, we're just reaching into our blood causing problems
Speaker 1: age related macular degeneration, which I don't even know what
Speaker 1: that is that has to do with your vision. Oh yep,
Speaker 1: two variants detected, which is crazy because I'm the only
Speaker 1: one of everybody related to that don't wear glasses on
Speaker 1: both sides of my family. And it has nothing really
Speaker 1: to do with with your vision. It's something that happens
Speaker 1: to the eye, the eye itself. And um, I can
Speaker 1: see that because my mother and one of her sisters,
Speaker 1: two of her sisters, as far as I know, had
Speaker 1: what's called LACMA. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to say names. Look at us. Well, I just
Speaker 1: wasn't saying that, yeah, um, kidney disease, which you think, no,
Speaker 1: I got one variant, Okay, yeah, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: more variance in there. That's my DNA that says that
Speaker 1: you should probably like watch your kidneys. Okay. And then
Speaker 1: the last one, which you probably already knew this already,
Speaker 1: is a sickle cell. Yes, of course we do. That's
Speaker 1: that's paternal also. Yeah, and uh, fun thing about sickle
Speaker 1: cell is that comes from Africa and it's part of
Speaker 1: why we can a lot of us. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: a it was a reaction to mosquitoes and malaria. It
Speaker 1: was like with sickle cell, which I think is pretty dope,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, now let's see. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see some other stuff in here that's pretty crazy
Speaker 1: so far as my gut health. Things that will set up,
Speaker 1: like uh, colon cancer. Okay, I ain't got it. Okay,
Speaker 1: McColl is good. Mcguts are good. Let's see here, genetics
Speaker 1: of like cilantro version. According to this, I have a
Speaker 1: slightly higher loads of disliking cilantro which is not true
Speaker 1: because it's not true, and I love it. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: Let's see sleep movement. It says, I'm about average. I
Speaker 1: sleep like everybody else. Mosquito bite frequency. You know how
Speaker 1: black people say you got sweet blood, it's really a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's from your grandmother. No, I have about the
Speaker 1: same as everybody else. But like some people got sweet blood. Nikki,
Speaker 1: my sister, she got sweet blood. Who news the thing?
Speaker 1: Ain't that crazy? That's crazy, that's crazy. That's actually used
Speaker 1: used to say that, yeah sweet blood that you actually
Speaker 1: do got sweet blood. But yeah, uh type two diabetes
Speaker 1: that we talked about before, Yeah that's huh. I got
Speaker 1: thirty seven chance. Yeah. So it's like, so the choices
Speaker 1: that you're saying is like, of all the things that
Speaker 1: are here, that's the one thing I can do something
Speaker 1: about exactly. And what's crazy is like you being wise
Speaker 1: enough paying attention. Before we knew how to take no DNA,
Speaker 1: nothing that was just looked around. It was like, look,
Speaker 1: let's make these changes now, observation, you change in the narrative.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to add to when you talked
Speaker 1: about us being raised in the projects, and this is
Speaker 1: not an effrontery on anyone else that was raising the projects,
Speaker 1: but my mother, well in the projects. Anyone that who's
Speaker 1: ancestors or family, grandma and grandpa, anybody lived in the
Speaker 1: projects knew that they used to have uh a community
Speaker 1: center where they would give you government food, government cheese,
Speaker 1: government peanut butter. But government this government that my mother
Speaker 1: never took it. Yeah, we never received anything from them
Speaker 1: because she chose not to. And one of the reasons,
Speaker 1: probably as as I got older, I used to tell
Speaker 1: people that raising nine children. First in what I realized now,
Speaker 1: which our normal reminded me of, is that when we
Speaker 1: lived in southwest Washington, d C. When I was very
Speaker 1: little and born down there, it was considered the slums.
Speaker 1: Right now, it's the warf everything is exclusive, but back then,
Speaker 1: when they had black people running around in there, it
Speaker 1: was the slums. But to raise a family like that
Speaker 1: and not get any government assistance, that talks of the
Speaker 1: struggle of h And I'm sure my dad wasn't the
Speaker 1: only black man that went home, went out of the
Speaker 1: house in the morning and returned back home in the
Speaker 1: evening for the betterment of his family. And so we
Speaker 1: just we just were never exposed to those things. And
Speaker 1: so that's how we grew and that's how I wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted us as a family to eat just good,
Speaker 1: healthy food. And you know that's that's that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I remember the time that I that I suggested to
Speaker 1: the three of you, let's go vegetarian. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that conversation? And when I got so much opposition that
Speaker 1: the three of you looked at each other as if
Speaker 1: to say, oh you talking about And then and then
Speaker 1: somebody said, you mean I can't have any more ribs?
Speaker 1: And then somebody said no more steak, and you said,
Speaker 1: oh no, ma, And I said, okay, well then you
Speaker 1: guys just go ahead and do But this is how
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat. And I didn't go vegetarian, but I
Speaker 1: just I just cut out a lot of stuff. Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you did, you know? And I mean I've made similar choices,
Speaker 1: like I haven't gone full of it starian, but um,
Speaker 1: for the most part pescatarian, you know, in as in
Speaker 1: as best as I can be. Uh. But I think
Speaker 1: one thing that we do here is like you know,
Speaker 1: my wife is like super good at like if we
Speaker 1: are buying beef or chicken, it's like the high end stuff.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Like she'll like she'll break
Speaker 1: bread for that. That's like you know, no nitrates, like
Speaker 1: you know, completely organically and what's crazy about like the
Speaker 1: Latino community to which like again it's just a different
Speaker 1: narrative than you know, which is posed to us. Is
Speaker 1: like you know, in Acapulco, like they was dirt poor,
Speaker 1: you know, no running water styles, but like you got
Speaker 1: fresh fruit every day. Yeah, there was. You got up
Speaker 1: in the morning and you went and bought the food
Speaker 1: for the day. So it was fresh fruit, fresh vegetables.
Speaker 1: She's always eight like that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: They when they were kids, she talks about this too,
Speaker 1: like they didn't get fast food, like her mom didn't
Speaker 1: do it. She was just like no, they cooked every
Speaker 1: day and it was like but you go to the market,
Speaker 1: you buy the beans, boil the beans. You know they
Speaker 1: bought you go to the corner where there was like
Speaker 1: the fruit lady right exactly in the corner like eating
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So you just they always ate like that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So you know, of course
Speaker 1: they was you know when they got to l As,
Speaker 1: you know, you had your you had your talkies and
Speaker 1: hot cheetos like they did, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But it was like no, we like we chopped vegetables
Speaker 1: every day, made beans every day. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: what can you know what that that that's a beautiful
Speaker 1: thing though I don't mean it interrupted, but that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing because when you think of people living in poverty,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that have lived that way and
Speaker 1: have I don't I don't want to say that have
Speaker 1: been their lifestyle has been governed because of poverty or
Speaker 1: mid level poverty. They go for the cheapest things or
Speaker 1: whatever it is convenient. But when you sign a family
Speaker 1: like hurt, like almost background in my background where no,
Speaker 1: that was no go that that was just no, it
Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't an option, you know. So and um,
Speaker 1: it continues on, it continues on, and the girls eat
Speaker 1: well and you do too. Very yeah, it's true. It
Speaker 1: just continues on. The one thing that did like for her,
Speaker 1: She's like, what kills us is is there's a tortilla
Speaker 1: with every meal. So we're just so it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's like sugar, yeah, I mean, so we try to
Speaker 1: do the we try to do corn instead of flour,
Speaker 1: you know. But whatever we're doing, we're doing the best
Speaker 1: we can. Anyway, Mom, thank you for your transparency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is fun. Yeah, and thank you to twenty three
Speaker 1: and me for letting us do this. And then there's
Speaker 1: like all the other like that you are on my
Speaker 1: maternal side, like the ancestry stuff, like on the maternal side,
Speaker 1: your blood is Bantu. Did you know that African? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You from the Bantu reason according to it this Okay,
Speaker 1: I know that one of my sisters had told me
Speaker 1: one time that my my dad was from Angola? Is
Speaker 1: that part of that now my my dad's dad because
Speaker 1: of like how close that angling is to our to
Speaker 1: our line, like since he's like your grandfather, he takes
Speaker 1: up a lot of the percentage because that just threw
Speaker 1: through that DNA in there. But but we're essentially we're
Speaker 1: essentially like subsepharent East African, Okay, you know, which is
Speaker 1: like not average for you know, slave descendants. Most slave
Speaker 1: descendants are mostly West African. But which we're that too,
Speaker 1: because any slave descendant is everything, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But Bantu and Fulani. Hm. Well, I used to get
Speaker 1: a lot when I was in California where you know,
Speaker 1: especially when I start wearing my hair down and I
Speaker 1: used to get comments about how was I from the Islands,
Speaker 1: and it was like, you just don't look like you're yeah,
Speaker 1: that you're all from that. Yeah, and my comment is
Speaker 1: that none of us are all black anymore. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's that, right, yeah, yeah, all the mistaken for Ethiopian stuff,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, maybe you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Uh, mom,
Speaker 1: you want to give everybody your socials? I'm just kidding,
Speaker 1: just kidding. Please get nobody. Do not follow my MoMA
Speaker 1: on Instagram. I slap and playing man. So checking out
Speaker 1: from Maryland from the d n V. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying from you know, pre GC Prince George County
Speaker 1: as a gentleman, my dukes does go. Thank you very much, Mama. Alright,
Speaker 1: so my pleasure eat? Well, yes, that's right. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you got any words of wisdom for these folks, Well,
Speaker 1: my only word of wisdom would be to make wise
Speaker 1: choices when you eat, because you aren't always gonna be
Speaker 1: thirty five. You're always gonna be forty, God will and
Speaker 1: you aren't always gonna be sixty one day, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be seventy or eighty. And you want to still be
Speaker 1: able to walk around the block without having your shortness
Speaker 1: of breath. You want to be able to run a
Speaker 1: half mile without shortness of breath. You want to be
Speaker 1: able like me to do sit ups and push ups
Speaker 1: and leg binds and all of that. It's all in
Speaker 1: our choices, not only what you eat, but your life choices,
Speaker 1: in the things that you expose yourself to. I don't
Speaker 1: know where that came from. Just the depths of your soul.
Speaker 1: Eat your veggies. There, they're the good Earth. There's there's
Speaker 1: from the good Earth. Then, and stay away from that fried,
Speaker 1: greasy food. You broke up? You broke up? Okay, looks
Speaker 1: good as smells good. But no, I'm being silly. You didn't.
Speaker 1: I just didn't want you to drop the gym's I know.
Speaker 1: But all I'm saying is that you'd be surprised at
Speaker 1: what you can ove and fry and enjoy it. So
Speaker 1: just just stay healthy. If you want to stay alive,
Speaker 1: stay and eat healthy. You will be thankful when you
Speaker 1: get over. All right, And that's it. On another dope show,
Speaker 1: did this episode inspire you to take a closer look
Speaker 1: at your health history, your genetic makeup? Who new DNA?
Speaker 1: Could reveal so much about our past while also holding
Speaker 1: the keys to certain health insights that may impact our future.
Speaker 1: I continue to be inspired by these stories, and I
Speaker 1: hope you do as well. Catch you next time. Listen
Speaker 1: to Spit, an original podcast from I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: twenty three in the on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast