"What does it mean when you are a secretor in your blood?"
Blood Type
Our blood is composed of, among other things, of White cells and Red cells
Cells can have elements stuck on their surface, it can be proteins, sugars or any variation of these.
In the case of red blood cells, some of these elements are called antigens and determine your blood type.
The most common blood type systems are the ABO and the Rhesus (+- for Antigen D) systems and are the most important when it comes to blood transfusion.
For example:
A person with Blood group A has the antigen A on their red blood cell surface, and antibodies against B antigen in their serum so can only receive blood from people with blood type A or O and can donate to A and AB.
A person with Blood group O doesn't have antigens A or B and has both antibodies against them in their serum so can only receive from O but donate to all types (A, B, AB, O).
Universal Donor is O-
Universal Recipient is AB +
There are actually 30 blood-group systems recognized by the International Society of Blood Transfusion, meaning there are many more other antigens stuck on the surface of your red blood cells than A, B and D.
This is something you inherit from both your parents.
Secretor Status
A secretor is defined as a person who secretes their blood type antigens into body fluids and secretions like saliva in your mouth, the mucus in your digestive track and respiratory cavities, etc.
A person can be either a Secretor or Non-secretor, and has nothing to do with your blood type A, B, AB or O. In the US, about 80% of the population are Secretors.
Another blood group system is the Lewis Blood group (a or b) and relates to salivary Secretor status.
By testing his saliva, a Secretor person usually is Lea- Leb+, a non Secretor being Lea+ Leb-.
It can happen that a person be a partial or weak secretor meaning it has reduced quantity of its Antigens in his saliva.
A few studies have shown that being a Secretor might be beneficial, protecting at least partially to certain malignancies or allowing to have less aggressive disease
Blood type Diet
Before you read any further, do not get excited by the title, this diet is all B@llsh!t
This diet is a nutritional diet advocated by Peter D'Adamo, a naturopathic physician. He claims that ABO blood type is the most important factor determining a healthy diet. However, the consensus among dieteticians, physicians and scientist is that the theory is unsupported by scientific evidence.
For example, one if his book Lectin: The diet connection, says that lectins which interact with the different ABO antigens are described as incompatible and harmful therefore different foods for A, B, AB and O are chosen to minimize those interactions with lectins.
But not only a search on Pubmed (a website where ALL scientific articles are published once they have been approved by experts in the respective field) doesn't yield any article but actually lectins are not ABO specific.
If you are interested in more information about this blood type diet, click HERE
Thank you so much for answering my question!
ReplyDeleteI remember when the doctor told me I was a secretor, he seemed so mysterious about it. LOL! :)