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 percent holds incredibly meaningful information that could
Speaker 1: change everything. And I'm not just talking about your family
Speaker 1: treat Hi. I'm barretton Day Thurston and on this season
Speaker 1: of Spit and I Heart Radio podcast with twenty three
Speaker 1: and Me, we explore how DNA isn't just about ancestry,
Speaker 1: it can also be key to understanding your health. What's
Speaker 1: up you and Welcome back. Jason McIntyre, host of the
Speaker 1: Straight Fire podcast, is the go to person for bold
Speaker 1: opinions on the biggest stories in sports today, including the
Speaker 1: day's biggest sports betting topics. As an avid sports gambler,
Speaker 1: Jason knows the most valuable commodity for someone placing bets
Speaker 1: is information. You can't make decisions on games without knowing
Speaker 1: all the proper intel, and he believes the same is
Speaker 1: true for his health. As a weekend warrior, it's important
Speaker 1: for Jason to have as much information as possible to
Speaker 1: keep him active, healthy, and competing in the sports he loves.
Speaker 1: So Jason decided to take a twenty three in me
Speaker 1: test to see what his DNA could tell him about
Speaker 1: his health and using that knowledge how he could make
Speaker 1: the right bet on his future. Jason learns his biggest
Speaker 1: challenge might be changing his diet. As active as he is,
Speaker 1: the information contained in his health insights might make him
Speaker 1: think twice about his stay active, eat what I want lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Let's listen in as Jason breaks it down and maybe
Speaker 1: you two will be inspired to see what you can
Speaker 1: parlay from twenty three and me. This is Straight Fire
Speaker 1: with Jason McIntyre. What is up Straight Fire? Our fam
Speaker 1: We have a special episode of the podcast today stepping
Speaker 1: out of our comfort zone, trying something new. We partnered
Speaker 1: with twenty three and me two kind of get some
Speaker 1: information on my health. Um, you guys know I play
Speaker 1: a lot of sports. I'm very active. I like to
Speaker 1: think of myself as a weekend warrior. And you really
Speaker 1: have to know what your body is about and know
Speaker 1: your background and what you made of and where you
Speaker 1: come from if you want to optimize fully your body
Speaker 1: and your health as you age out of your twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties and get into uh I'm leally even say
Speaker 1: middle age. But um, you guys, when we do a
Speaker 1: lot of sports gambling on the podcast, obviously, and the
Speaker 1: most valuable commodity you can have is information. I talk
Speaker 1: all the time on the podcast about how you know,
Speaker 1: look at a injury reports, you look at weather reports,
Speaker 1: everything throughout the week, every day, and the lines are
Speaker 1: moving and you gotta jump on it and take advantage
Speaker 1: to get the best number. And you can't just make
Speaker 1: decisions all willy nilly if you want to be successful
Speaker 1: in gambling without getting all the information. And I feel
Speaker 1: like the same is true for my health. Um, and
Speaker 1: you guys know, listen, I am trying to live my
Speaker 1: best dad life playing tennis. I joined the tennis ladder
Speaker 1: one of my first match, which was nice. I played
Speaker 1: in the basketball league in the summer one a championship.
Speaker 1: Little humble black brag the humble brag flex for you
Speaker 1: right there. Um. I've played in some more soccer tournaments
Speaker 1: in the last three years than I had geez in
Speaker 1: the last twenty. I did play competitive sports growing up,
Speaker 1: and I think I've talked about it a little bit
Speaker 1: on the podcast. So as I was growing up, I
Speaker 1: was like a pretty good youth athlete, more soccer than anything,
Speaker 1: because I had the speed and kind of the the
Speaker 1: will and the desire to just want to get to
Speaker 1: the ball and raise up ahead and score. And soccer
Speaker 1: was my best sport. I loved basketball the most. My
Speaker 1: parents would not let me play football for understandable reasons,
Speaker 1: you know, concern over injuries and what have you. And
Speaker 1: I realized pretty quickly soccer was my best. So I
Speaker 1: did some club soccer, and I was pretty crushed. As
Speaker 1: everybody started to mature and you know, hit puberty. I
Speaker 1: was like a late bloomer and you go to try
Speaker 1: out for the high school sports teams and you don't
Speaker 1: make the teams, and you're kind of stunned because you've
Speaker 1: been playing sports all these years growing up and excelling
Speaker 1: in some of them. I mean, I wish I had
Speaker 1: been a better basketball player, but what could I do.
Speaker 1: I was a small guy. I couldn't really um. I
Speaker 1: didn't have the handle to be a point guard, and
Speaker 1: I was too small to be a shooting guard. But
Speaker 1: I loved hoops, so I kept playing and you know,
Speaker 1: doing sports or what have you. Um, But it was recreationally.
Speaker 1: And my parents knew I always had loved sports, and
Speaker 1: they could see that I was ticked to tell my
Speaker 1: friends made the team and I didn't, and so they
Speaker 1: were like, well, you still like sports, why don't you
Speaker 1: like go work for the local newspaper. This was when
Speaker 1: newspapers mattered way back when and they were relevant. So
Speaker 1: I like called up the local newspaper. It was like
Speaker 1: a weekly, and I was like, hey, you guys need
Speaker 1: me to do anything, and they're like, sure, you can
Speaker 1: come take calls for high school sports games. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of how my career got started in sports media.
Speaker 1: And you know, went from the newspapers to college and
Speaker 1: I majored in Media Arts and Design, I think was
Speaker 1: the exact name. Local newspaper got out, went to a newspaper,
Speaker 1: saw newspapers at that time, we're starting to crumble, pivoted
Speaker 1: to magazine, started a website, sold the website. Get scooped
Speaker 1: up by fox In and I come west and I
Speaker 1: had played in some basketball leagues in New York, but
Speaker 1: I was never like a healthy eater, and so I
Speaker 1: was always like in shape because I would work out
Speaker 1: and run. I'll never forget me. And my wife moved,
Speaker 1: well girlfriend at the time, moved to Brooklyn and we
Speaker 1: were close enough to the Brooklyn Bridge that Saturday mornings,
Speaker 1: we would wake up, go to the gym, and then
Speaker 1: after the gym, she would add home and I'd run
Speaker 1: across the Brooklyn Bridge and back and it was just incredible.
Speaker 1: You know, the weather is amazing, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be healthy again. The diet was always an issue for me,
Speaker 1: and you you can only go so far when you're
Speaker 1: just doing one and not the other. Right, And played
Speaker 1: in some basketball leagues in New York that we moved
Speaker 1: out of Pennsylvania, played in some basketball leagues, and I
Speaker 1: it was it was basically a better athlete late into
Speaker 1: my you know, twenties and thirties than I was as
Speaker 1: a kid, because I'm just in better shape. And eventually
Speaker 1: I did, you know, run a little track, well not track.
Speaker 1: I read a couple of races like mile and five k,
Speaker 1: and I started to realize my strength is in the
Speaker 1: short term, like a one mile sprint as opposed to
Speaker 1: a five k, which I think is six point two
Speaker 1: or three miles whatever it was. And all this is
Speaker 1: leading up to, you know, how do I optimize what
Speaker 1: I've got going whatever that is, How do I optimize that?
Speaker 1: And which enters twenty three and me and what they're
Speaker 1: able to do is provide like a deep dive into
Speaker 1: my health background, my traits, my wellness, and it can
Speaker 1: be a pretty instrumental factor in giving me an edge
Speaker 1: and staying fit and healthy. UM as I age, and
Speaker 1: again I hate using the word as I age, because
Speaker 1: I still feel like I'm in my twenties. Like I
Speaker 1: can guard young guys playing pick up basketball, I can
Speaker 1: outrun guys in soccer on the field. You know, Like
Speaker 1: I come West, and it's weird because everybody's in ridiculously
Speaker 1: good shape out here in California. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say I got into all the hippie dippy avocado
Speaker 1: toast stuff. Um, I've dabbled. I've dabbled, but by and large,
Speaker 1: diet has been my big weakness. And in twenty three
Speaker 1: and Me, you're able to dive into your health and
Speaker 1: wellness to a level that I just couldn't get researching
Speaker 1: myself online. And one of the things UM, in terms
Speaker 1: of uh, the in depth profile three and Me provided was,
Speaker 1: you know, they do look at genetic muscle composition. And
Speaker 1: I know that's going to sound like a weird phrase
Speaker 1: to some people, but once you do the twenty three
Speaker 1: and me deep dive and you look at it, You're like,
Speaker 1: holy cow. And of course at the same time, I
Speaker 1: start telling my parents and siblings, my brother that yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm doing twenty three and me and obviously I have
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys know. My background is mixed. Um My,
Speaker 1: my mom and dad come from the Caribbean. Long story short.
Speaker 1: My mom's from Guyana in South America, and so she's
Speaker 1: mixed with mostly Indian, but a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1: And then my dad is from a tiny island Dominica
Speaker 1: and the Caribbean. It's not one of these built up
Speaker 1: um tourist traps if you will, in the Caribbean. It's
Speaker 1: one of the greener spots in the Caribbean. They don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of cruise ships pulling up pretty cool
Speaker 1: island that I've never been to. Actually, my dad's told
Speaker 1: me a lot about it. And given that background, you know,
Speaker 1: my brother and I growing up, we were like, well,
Speaker 1: we we kind of hang out with a lot of
Speaker 1: my mom's family. We called them Indian jams. And then
Speaker 1: of course, you know, we had other stuff in us.
Speaker 1: So twenty three and me is able to give us
Speaker 1: the detailed background. Hey, you are this percent Indian and
Speaker 1: this percent African American and this percent European, and it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool breakdown and that, and that's like the
Speaker 1: starter for knowing your background. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: the health and wellness, like, you can't really get that
Speaker 1: until you jump into twenty three and me and when
Speaker 1: I told my Dada that that I looked into it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, I've got this weird muscle composition. It's
Speaker 1: actually pretty good for athletes. He's like, well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know about your grandfather, And of course I knew a
Speaker 1: little bit about it, but you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: Dominica and Guyana are similar to America, where you can
Speaker 1: just look back at several generations fairly easily, and it's documented.
Speaker 1: This is the Caribbean different speed. So it turns out
Speaker 1: my dad puts me onto a book which is written
Speaker 1: about soccer in Dominica and generally the islands over there,
Speaker 1: and it turns out my grandfather was like an amazing
Speaker 1: soccer player in the in a book that chronicles the
Speaker 1: history of soccer in Dominica and largely the Caribbean. It
Speaker 1: talks about my grandfather being like one of the best
Speaker 1: scoring forwards of his generation back in like the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties and one of his siblings was also on the
Speaker 1: team and just incredible. And so after going into twenty
Speaker 1: three me, I go into you know, my dad with
Speaker 1: this and he sends me the book and it's like
Speaker 1: just kind of mind blowing stuff, like, wow, this is
Speaker 1: kind of where you know, I like to find out
Speaker 1: where I came from. And I don't know if a
Speaker 1: lot of you guys have that. Um, I know some
Speaker 1: friends I've talked to, you know, they look into their
Speaker 1: parents background and their parents parents and just the idea
Speaker 1: as you get older and now there's probably some twenty
Speaker 1: year olds thinking about this like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't really care about where I came from, because you know,
Speaker 1: when you're in your twenties, you're living for them. Now
Speaker 1: when you get a little older, you get some perspective
Speaker 1: and want to maybe look back a little more. And
Speaker 1: just knowing that, you know, my grandfather was an awesome
Speaker 1: soccer player kind of spurred me. And that actually had
Speaker 1: me bring it to my kids and say, guys, just
Speaker 1: so you know, your dad's not some whack job who
Speaker 1: just talks about sports on TV and on podcasts. He
Speaker 1: likes to play sports. And oh, by the way, where
Speaker 1: do I get this from? Because my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: they came to America, um, mostly the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: and they were not huge sports fans. They were more
Speaker 1: into cricket, which is not an American sport. And how
Speaker 1: does Jason end up loving sports and talking about NBA
Speaker 1: all the time in NFL constantly. Well, it's sports are
Speaker 1: clearly in my background and playing sports obviously more than
Speaker 1: talking about on television or whatever. But you're able to
Speaker 1: look into thanks to twenty three and your entire health background,
Speaker 1: which is actually pretty cool because, um, you know it
Speaker 1: can help me. Now, I don't know that it's gonna
Speaker 1: help everybody, but it can help you kind of focus
Speaker 1: in to a to an extent, play to some of
Speaker 1: your strengths. But that's just like one aspect of it. Um.
Speaker 1: And I talked about diet being like a major issue
Speaker 1: for me. I'm definitely the kind of guy who at
Speaker 1: dinner will slow play the main course because I need
Speaker 1: to save room for dessert, whether it's uros. I'm not
Speaker 1: huge on ice cream, um, but whether it's Churo's like
Speaker 1: chocolate lava cake, doughnuts, all that stuff. I just love it.
Speaker 1: And eventually I go into twenty three and me and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking and I'm like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: all the sugar cheez um? Am I eating? Am I
Speaker 1: eating right? And you figure out you're not really eating right?
Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh, wait, I have I am
Speaker 1: predisposed for one variant of chronic kidney disease, which is
Speaker 1: a little bit scary, but then you read it and say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not really in trouble unless there are two uh
Speaker 1: two variants detected. So not that I'm in the clear,
Speaker 1: but it actually got me thinking more about my diet. Um.
Speaker 1: I for a while there, I had totally cut out caffeine.
Speaker 1: Twenty three and me has a whether or not I'm
Speaker 1: likely to be a large caffeine user or not. I
Speaker 1: I promise you this. I never had a first cup
Speaker 1: of Starbucks until I was like maybe like thirty years old.
Speaker 1: Just never been a coffee guy. My parents obviously, I
Speaker 1: mentioned their background. Tea was a big factor for them.
Speaker 1: So I had been like a tea drinker, but not
Speaker 1: regularly or anything. Um. And then I started to try
Speaker 1: coffee and got into it, and then I again twenty
Speaker 1: three and Me has a coffee breakdown. Um whether or
Speaker 1: not that's something that you can kind of get into, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you'll have to try it on your own.
Speaker 1: But I also looked at the aspect of sleep. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but as someone who
Speaker 1: is on a screen a lot, unfortunately and constantly busy
Speaker 1: too young kids. We now have a dog, You're juggling
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, and sleep for me has been
Speaker 1: a massive issue, um, especially you know in the last
Speaker 1: like fifteen years. So just you know, there's just a
Speaker 1: lot going on. And falling asleep not a problem. Staying
Speaker 1: asleep is a struggle. And you know, you wake up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, it's like, oh damn, I
Speaker 1: gotta do this, that and the other tomorrow should I
Speaker 1: opened my phone and put this in a note to
Speaker 1: our mind myself. But if you look at the phone,
Speaker 1: you know it's game over. You can't really go back
Speaker 1: to sleep for a while. And they have a section
Speaker 1: UM called sleep quality in twenty three and Me that
Speaker 1: says that I am less likely to be a deep sleeper,
Speaker 1: so to me thought it was me. It was my
Speaker 1: issue that I just could not stay asleep. Well, twenty
Speaker 1: three and Me kind of cleared that up a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit, just a little and no, no, fully
Speaker 1: definitive one cent. But it's pretty clear that this is
Speaker 1: like a problem that's kind of genetic, not I don't
Speaker 1: want to say a problem that might be too strong,
Speaker 1: but this is something genetic in me that I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with. UM And you know, twenty
Speaker 1: three and Me has a section on sleep, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. They have a wellness section on gaining weight. UM. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: I'm predisposed to weigh about average, which is always nice
Speaker 1: to hear. UM And I gotta say it was just
Speaker 1: a great experience to be able to dive into the
Speaker 1: health and wellness and UM kind of helped me try
Speaker 1: to be the best version of me that I can
Speaker 1: from a health perspective. You guys already know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be prepared for sports and to talk about Aaron Rodgers
Speaker 1: and the Packers and Tom Brady and the crumbling Bucks
Speaker 1: and Ken Lebron win one more title in the Lakers.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to do all the homework
Speaker 1: on that but to do the homework on my health
Speaker 1: and background and wellness, I needed twenty three and me.
Speaker 1: So it's it kind of was an invaluable tool that
Speaker 1: helped me diet, exercise, sleep. Um, it was really an
Speaker 1: outstanding decision. And uh, I think if you guys are
Speaker 1: interested in trying to be the best you, I would
Speaker 1: give the recommendation to twenty three and me and that's it.
Speaker 1: On another dope show, did this episode inspire you to
Speaker 1: take a closer look at your health history, your genetic makeup.
Speaker 1: Who new DNA could reveal so much about our past
Speaker 1: while also holding the keys to certain health insights that
Speaker 1: may impact our future. I continue to be inspired by
Speaker 1: these stories, and I hope you do as well. Catch
Speaker 1: you next time. Listen to Spit, an original podcast from
Speaker 1: Art Radio and twenty three in the on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah h