 Hello, good morning. I am so glad that you guys chose me over Stefan, quite an A. I thought there's gonna be three people here all of whom I bribed. So I really appreciate it and I know that it's early in the morning for a lot of you and you're still waking up. But for starters I have a really important question that I would like everyone to focus on. Are we ready? Ready for focus. Okay, what is this? Someone say it loud. This is, this is Bologna. Do you know what else is Bologna? This God-awful book. Okay, seriously. I want I want everybody to know that I'm not here to defend this work of fiction. How many people are here? I'm curious though how many people are here because they feel like maybe there is something to it or maybe you hear about it so often that you want to learn how to critique it. So latter, do we have any brave people who are like, oh but I'm a blood type A and I kind of eat less meat? Raise your hand. I won't judge you. Just kidding. I will judge you. I'm glad no one raised their hand. Okay, so here we are. You know this thing is just a load of, a load of hooey and I'd like to start before I get to the the bigger points of my talk here. I would like to explain what exactly is wrong with this book. Has anyone taken the time to actually look up how to debunk it? A few people, maybe? So I want to explain my stance on that. So for starters, what is a blood type? Do people have an understanding of this? Blood type is basically, it's differentiated based on the antigens that are expressed on the surface of your red blood cells. And for blood type A, that is acetyl galactosamine. For blood type B, it's galactos. AB has both of those sugars and blood type O only has fucose, which is the base sugar for all of these antigens. And so maybe some of you have heard like blood type O is the universal giver or donor. Blood type AB is the universal receiver. You know, there's some some issues there. Of course, if they got married, it'd be a standard dysfunctional relationship. So giver and receiver. So anyway, this is a very brief overview of this, but it's not central to our point right now, because where diatomus theory kicks in is this idea that these blood groups were created, you know, based on dietary pressures during the time of early human history. For blood type O, he considers this the original blood type. Very conveniently, the O is also corresponding to the word original is in that very nice synchronicity that just worked out that way. And it stands for hunter in another sense, because he believes these people do best on a paleo diet that's higher in protein, maybe a little higher in fat and devoid of grains. This is about 45% of the US population. So 45% of the people in this room, diadema would be like, Hey, you guys are eating the right diet for your blood type. So right away, we know that maybe this diet is working for reasons other than the fact that it is supposed to be the original blood type. Blood type A, on the other hand, also stands for agriculture or agrarian. Here we have a country bumpkin. Now, this is where it gets interesting. His belief and what he states over and over in his talks is that this blood type emerged during the agricultural revolution, which was very recent in human history. 40% of the population, including myself, are blood type A. And his belief is that these people will thrive best on a vegetarian diet, because it corresponds to when we started domesticating grains and eating more of them. Just ignore the fact that we also started domesticating livestock and eating more animal products in that sense. It just doesn't work if you think about it too hard. Blood type B is the nomad. Here, we're only at 11% of the population, so it's a little less frequent. Supposedly, this emerged when we were herding yaks and whatnot. These people are supposed to do best with dairy, but also some meat, legumes, vegetables, whatever they're eating in Siberia. I really don't really understand it. So, this is blood type B. Again, this was going to be emerging in his theory after blood type A was first created. So, again, very recent in human history. Blood type AB is the enigma. Supposedly, this is what occurred when blood type A and B intermingled and had babies. We had AB occur. This is only 4% of the population. I tried so hard while I was preparing this talk to get an understanding of what blood type AB diet would be, and it makes no sense to me. It's like tofu, dairy, legumes, vegetables, maybe some meat, but not chicken. My theory is that this is only 4% of the population, so AB is in the room. Nobody cares about you. You're very infrequent and you can eat whatever you want because your absence won't be missed. That is my takeaway from his diet. No offense, I'm sure your mother loves you. So, the other component of his theory is that when we consume certain foods with lectins, those lectins enter our bloodstream and cause our blood cells to glutinate and cause all sorts of problems as a result. Now, here's one example from an actual study showing that a lectin in soybeans does have an affinity for the sugar in blood type A. This is the kind of research he's drawing from. According to his idea, once a blood type A eats soybeans, those lectins are going to agglutinate, aggregate the blood cells and cause those problems that he ascribes to an improper diet. According to this lectin idea, this is why people like the paleo blood type O folks aren't supposed to eat wheat or peanuts because of the lectins. Meanwhile, people who are agricultural fellows, the blood type A, can't eat bananas or a cantaloupe. Are you with me so far? This is his theory. So, you can see maybe in a pop culture standpoint, it would make sense because it's very simple and it sounds sciency. But there's just one problem and there's really only one problem with this theory which is that the entire thing is wrong. It is bad. It is more baloney. Here is what's going on. Diadomo. He believes this is where our blood groups first diversified. Very recent in human history. Science, on the other hand, puts it about 20 million years ago when we first saw evidence of the ABO blood group system emerging. And he has been attacked for his claims many, many times. And I was watching some YouTube videos and he repeatedly falls back on a study showing that at one point, blood type A did go extinct within the human lineage. And it reemerged later from a recombination of blood type B and O. The only problem again, this happened about 260,000 years ago, well before anatomically modern humans were existing, well before the advent of agriculture. So this would still say that blood type A should be the original, the paleo eating people. So there's so many things wrong with the timeline on this. Even when we look at geographical distributions of blood type, it doesn't make sense. Up in northern Scandinavia we have indigenous populations that are up to 90% blood type A who are supposed to be vegetarians who eat very little vegetable matter and they're doing all right. Australian aborigines are also a really high concentration of blood type A and they also are more paleo style eaters. Meanwhile, blood type B, supposed to do well with theory, 92% of the Chinese who are some of the highest blood type B concentration ethnicities in the whole planet, they're malabsorbers of lactose, same with the Thai, 47% of them are lactose intolerant and a large percent are blood type B. So again, this is just bad all around. So that brings us to the question of why do we have different blood types if it wasn't from dietary pressure? Why do we see unique geographical and ethnic distributions? Anyone who says they know the answer to that is lying to you. What our best theories are at the moment is that there is protection conferred by blood type diversity. There's infectious diseases that will specifically target different blood types, wipe them out much easier than other blood types and so it helps the species survive. Do you have diversity in general? Now the other problem with his theory is this whole lectin thing. Yes, lectins exist, yes they can enter our bloodstreams, but the problem is his entire research foundation involves petri dishes, blood, adding plant extracts with lectins to that blood in the petri dish and seeing what happens. This says the movie Carrie for anybody who's like what is that old movie. So the problem with this is there is a cardinal rule of science which I just invented so maybe it's not a cardinal rule. What happens in the petri dish stays in the petri dish even if it's a Vegas wedding. I don't care. There's no way to extrapolate the results of test tube petri dish studies to what is going on in the human body. So bottom line, there is no evidence that dietary pressures in any way affected what our ideal diet is. So I know what you're thinking now, you're thinking great, this book is bogus, that was our really short presentation. There's still time to see Stefan who actually has things to say. So but no, no, no you guys, you're stuck with me because there's still a baby as a creepy looking baby. That was supposed to be a cute baby. It's like hello Clarice. So there's still a baby in the bathwater that needs to be rescued because there are some amazingly interesting legitimate links between blood type and different health outcomes for humans and some of those may affect the way we live our lives and eat food. First one, gummy worms, no, microbiome, bacteria. What is super interesting is 80% of us, so about four out of every five people in this room are secretors. That means we express our blood cell antigens on the surface of other places of our body including saliva, mucosa, different body fluids. The other 20% do not. So this whole thing is governed by how well our FUT2 gene functions. And if you ever get lost in chromosome 19, that's where the party is right down there. How many people here know if they're a secretor or not? Have a couple. Cool. So how many people would like to know? Because this is actually pretty interesting. How many people have their 23andMe data done? Oh, this is great. This is why I love talking at these conferences. So many nerds in one place. You are awesome. So take notes if you're interested in looking this up because if you have a 23andMe account, I'll go slow here so you can take pictures. There you go. So what you want to do is you want to go to 23andMe, log in, go to tools, go to browse raw data, and enter this number in the search box, RS601338. And this is the SNP that corresponds with being a secretor or not. For most people, there's one exception which I'll get to. So you enter that, it's going to give you down here, your results. And what you're going to be looking for is if you are carrying at least one G allele. Because if you are, you're a secretor. And if you're a AA, you are not. You're one of the lucky unicorns who is a nonsecretor. One exception is if you're a Japanese ancestry. Unique genetic work. For you guys, if there's anyone in this room who's Japanese, you want to enter RS1047781. And that will tell you if you are a secretor or not, what you want to look for there is if you carry two T alleles, that will make you a nonsecretor and make you special. So what happens when you are a secretor? This is where it gets interesting. So you're going to be expressing your blood cell antigens in your saliva, in your gut mucosa, as well as various other places in your body that have mucus. And what this does is it essentially creates a specific campground for different bacteria that have a liking for the type of sugar that's at the end of your antigen. So you're going to be attracting specific species to those different locations in your body that are expressing those antigens. And not only are you giving them a place to attach to you, you're giving them some food. And what that will do, in theory, if you think about it, you have more of this food, more campsites for bacteria, and you're going to end up with a higher population of specific bacteria than people whose blood type is different than yours. And this is actually panning out in research. Got microbiome. There's about three studies done so far, and I'm waiting for more, looking at the effects of different blood types on what that does to your populations of bacteria in your gut. So far we see there are some unique signatures, including for blood type A people a high diversity of bacteria families in general. There's a number of certain bacteria that I am not going to try to pronounce, but you're welcome to in your free time that is higher, represented in higher proportions in blood type A people. And there's a few lactic acid bacteria that are being shown to adhere to the A antigens in the gut for blood type A carriers. Meanwhile, blood type B, there's a high diversity of multiple bacteria that are associated with protection against certain gut disorders. And what this would suggest to us is that blood type B people might have some innate protection against things like IBS, IBD, ulcerative colitis, possibly Crohn's disease as well. So these are for secretors. For people who are not secretors, we see an entirely different picture. There are lower levels of Bifidobacteria in the studies that we have so far for non-secretors of any blood type. Also higher levels of various bacteria that are associated with gut disorders. So that would suggest to us again, maybe non-secretors have a higher representation of certain problems just because they're non-secretors. There's also a very interesting link with type 1 diabetes and celiac disease for non-secretors. So now everyone can go home and look up and see if you're a secretor or non-secretor and how well this matches to your health history. Now, I want to say again, there's only about three studies looking at the microbiome in connection with the ABO blood group. And this diatomo has capitalized on these three sparse studies by again boldly designing products like probiotics that are targeted for each blood type. Don't buy it. We don't know yet exactly what this means for human health and it's going to take a long time for us to figure it all out. But the point I want to drive home is there is some effect on the microbiome from your blood type and that in turn is going to affect many things in your body. Microbiome is all the rage right now and we're going to just keep learning in a deeper and deeper way how that is influencing our health and how it should affect our choices. Dummy. You also have if you're a secretor blood type antigens expressed in your gastric mucosa and for people with who are secretors who do secrete their blood type, you're going to see a higher tendency for H. pylori, the bacteria that causes ulcers and increases your risk of gastric cancer. You're going to see a higher incidence of people getting infected just because they are secretors. So non-secretors are actually protected in this sense. And blood type O pretty universally has been identified as being at high risk of ulcers in general. In fact, here's one study that used one million blood donors and we can see over here blood type O had the highest risk out of any of the groups. And we're not quite sure why exactly that is. It might be an issue of infection rate but it doesn't seem to be that way. So there's something specific about this thing that's going on right here that we're still teasing apart. Now when it comes to gastric cancer, which is also associated with H. pylori and among other things, what we see is that blood type A is actually the most likely to get infected. And again, we don't fully understand why. Probably has to do something to do with the affinity of this bacteria for the antigens expressed on blood type A people. It could be a difference in gastric, the secretion of stomach acid to blood type A people seem to have less of that. And it could be that blood type A people have a slightly reduced response to invaders in the body, which again, very preliminary research showing this right now. But it does seem to be there. So here's the same study looking at blood type A and AB people showing that they again have a statistically significant increase in gastric cancer rates compared to the rest of the population. And this is a pretty good large group of people to study. So it's probably legitimate length. What about the mouth? The oral microbiome does not get as much attention as the gut microbiome, but if you're a secretor of your blood type, you're also going to be affected by those antigens attracting different bacteria to your mouth. And so what we know so far, and there are more studies on this than there is on the gut microbiome, people who are non-secretors are much more likely to have advanced gum disease in general. It's a pretty strong correlation. Blood type O and B people are also more likely to have periodontists than people who are blood type A. And blood type AB people, I said earlier, no one cares about you. I lied. Your dentist loves you. You are best at dental things. You generally have a really good oral health outcome just because of your blood type. And here just for anyone who is not familiar with dentistry, gingivitis is inflammation of the gums. Periodontitis is when that goes deeper, starts affecting the soft tissue around the gum, the bone of the tooth, you lose bone basically. So here's another cool study showing people who are O and B tend to have the highest rates of periodontitis. And people who are AB, look at that. You guys are the safest in terms of protection against this disease. Another study with more people also showing that there's a very linear correlation between blood type O having the highest percentage of people with any type of gum disease and then again people with AB being the most protected. So I find this very interesting as someone who did have a lot of dental health problems in my life. I like to pay attention to this stuff personally. So what would be causing this? Esmitons is a bacteria that's generally ascribed to causing cavities in the mouth. ABO antigens will differentially affect the adherence of this bacteria. And it looks like Esmitons is a galacto specific specific to blood type B. So for whatever reason it has an affinity for that blood type. And I'm not going to get too into the weeds with this research right now because it's kind of all over the map. But what we're seeing is that if we get larger studies, it should help us take down like the confusion right now and start seeing what different bacteria are most attracted to different mouths based on blood type. One more vaginal microbiome. Who here's had a yeast infection? Who's brave enough to raise their hand? Come on. Thank you. Wow. You guys are awesome. So it's a very common problem. And this is also something that seems to be linked to your blood type. People with non-secreting genes. You do not express your antigens significantly more likely to get yeast infections. And the reason for that is that non-secreters, when you are missing those antigens, it makes it much easier for the yeast to adhere to the epithelial cells and cause problems. So if you're somebody who gets like recurrent yeast infections, you might want to look up and see if you are a non-secreter because there are different probiotics that could be helping with this that you personally are lacking because of your blood type as one factor. Now this one was really interesting to me. Heart disease. Has anyone here heard of the link between blood type and heart disease? Has anyone here heard of the Framingham study? Who here doesn't like that study? What? Nobody really knows why they don't like it except for some quote about cholesterol. Oh, if you have cholesterol under 150, you'll be protected from heart disease. So there's one, a few sound bites from this study that made it into public awareness. But one of the most interesting ones that got lost was that this study was the first one to find that blood type A people are significantly more likely to get heart disease. And blood type O people are significantly more likely not to get heart disease. And there's some evidence showing that for non-blood type O's, the reason is you have higher levels of certain plasma lipid inflammatory markers. That part is borderline. What's really interesting is the fact that non-blood type O people have about 25% higher levels of two clogulation factors in the blood. One is von Willebrand factor. One is factor eight. So these are clotting proteins. Just by being a non-blood type O, your levels of two clotting proteins that are implicated in thrombosis and blood clots are going to be higher. In fact, this was a cool study that I found looking at thrombosis risk based on blood type. And what it found was that if you are a non-O blood type, your risk compared to type O bloods is about 2.2. So you're almost doubling your risk. If you have a condition that is mostly known for causing in thrombosis, inherited thrombophilia, your risk compared to the rest of the population is 2.8. So this is similar. But then if you combine being a non-blood type O with this inherited disorder, 700% increase in your risk of getting a blood clot. Now why is this important? Blood type O's, I know that you're probably thinking right now, I am so awesome. Who's a blood type O? Let's see it loud and proud. You guys have problems too because guess what? You guys may, maybe you have better heart disease outcomes, but you totally would have died first on the Oregon Trail. So let's just level the playing field here and say we all suck, okay? So back to the idea of blood clots. Why is this important? Most of us don't think about this too much because it's not very often that people report getting blood clots. It's usually one of those things on medications that's listed after 300 other problems you could get. But there are some issues here that some of us could be encountering. Obesity, smoking, being pregnant, sitting for a long time, long flights. Who took a long flight to get here? Got a few people in the room who took long flights. So there are some things that will collectively increase risk on top of having this genetic pre-distribution to clotting. And so it's important to know also that saturated fat, and this is the part that interests me, saturated fat has a well-known tendency to increase the risk or the levels of another clotting factor, which is factor seven. I'm not going to make any sort of claim saying that this solo piece of evidence is a reason that saturated fat is bad and that people shouldn't be eating it. But imagine you have some of these factors going on in your life that you're a non-type O blood person and that this is your diet. Could that hypothetically cause problems and a cumulative effect make you have higher risk of heart disease? Maybe. I'm going to speculate and say it would be awesome to have some studies done on this just because I'm curious. And just because this would be one accidental finding of Diademos theory that actually pans out to be true, even though the rest of his ideas are bogus, because he tells blood type A people to eat less saturated fat and less animal products. So is there a potential that people who switch to a blood type A diet based on his recommendations are reducing the risk of heart disease accidentally based on really crappy logic, but that it somehow works out? It could be true. And that's very interesting to me. So some quick tips. If you are a non-blood type O person, if you have long flights, such as some of us in the room to get here, get up and move frequently, especially do not sit for more than four hours because your thrombosis risk does go up, especially in the air. It doesn't matter if you look ridiculous, you will. People will laugh. They're just jealous that they don't get a piece of that. So if you drive a truck, if you're a CDL truck driver, if you drive for Lyft or Uber, if you spend a long time on the road, same thing. Do not sit for very long because your risk of thrombosis, especially if you have other factors going on that are going to increase risk, goes up. Again, four hours or beyond you start seeing a significantly higher risk of getting a blood clot. Get up, take a break, go to the restroom, dance, be awesome, do whatever you need. This one's very interesting too. Hormonal birth control. Ladies of the room who are premenopausal. Birth control, hormonal, does increase your risk of clotting. And for blood type A people in particular it increases your risk significantly more than everybody else. So if you're in a situation where you're figuring out your reproductive freedom, maybe you should lie in the grass looking up at the sky wondering why there's a bottle of birth control pills hovering in front of your face while considering your options because this is an issue that people should face. Again, if you also tend to have a history of blood clots in your family, if your genetics have revealed any other clotting disorders, this is going to add to your risk and bring it higher and higher. So take home points. The blood type diet itself, that book is, say it, baloney, never forget this. If somebody comes to you trying to defend that work of fiction, please tear it apart on my behalf. It is awful. However, the ABO blood system still has an impact on our health in ways that we often don't look at largely because we dismiss that whole book because its whole premise is so bad. But again, baby in the bathwater, there's some stuff here that's very interesting and in my opinion probably deserves some research. Some of those things include the effect on the microbiome, all of our microbiomes. There's a lot of them in the body. All of them seem to be affected in different ways based on your blood type and whether or not you're a secretor. Non-bloy type O people again have a much higher risk of heart disease and thrombosis. This is again something that needs to be considered carefully in light of your own context, your other genetic risk factors and basically it's something that I think should also be pursued with more research. Now, although our understanding is really preliminary with all of this stuff, I'm going to encourage everyone to keep their thumb on the pulse of this kind of research and also maybe just as one factor as you're considering your personalized nutrition and lifestyle, maybe think about some of these things in light of your blood type, especially the heart disease stuff, but also the microbiome stuff, especially secretor status. If anybody out there has been, even during the course of this presentation, looking up to see if you're a secretor or not, if you're a non-secretor, your risk of so many diseases does go up that it would behoove you to know if that's something that's in your genes. Bottom line, you guys, I know you're all awesome and smart, so carry the torch forward, bash the book, but support the research that might be legitimate. Thank you so much again. Questions, comments, concerns, lies, gossiping, you know, and Joe's statements of that fiction, anybody? Yeah. Thanks for the talk. You mentioned the ABO blood type, but you didn't mention the resus factor, negative positive. Have you seen any correlations with that? And also, I wondered where that came from. When I've tried to look it up, nobody kind of knows. Did we have some little fun with a resus monkey at some point? I really don't know. So have you encountered any effects about that? Because I'm a negative, so the blood donors are constantly going off to me. I just wanted to know. You have the same blood type as Steve Jobs. That's cool. So FYI, random fact. So he asked about RH factor. I cannot give an explanation for how that came about. I haven't seen anything definitive about that. It's one of those universal mysteries, but as far as its impact on health, there are some studies, including ones that I cited here, that show it also adds some nuance to disease risk. It doesn't seem to be as powerful as the creator status, but it is relevant. So that's a really good question, and unfortunately, I can't tell you more than that. More questions? This is kind of nonsense, but I have a relative close family member actually who's decided the blood type diet is real. He was at the banquet the other night, and he was saying, no, blood typo. Can't eat noodles or whatever. Anyway, because he's my son, I did look at it. I did look at the book and think, well, maybe. And I was feeling pretty good because he's typo and he eats paleo stuff, so he's pretty much okay until he starts talking about it. But it seems to me, in the book, it did suggest that there was a belief that Jesus Christ was an A, B, and I'm just curious if you ran into that and what you think about. Based on the author's scientific credibility and every other respect, I have zero faith that any of that is true. And I would very much wonder how he reached that conclusion. But there is, he does make arguments, DeOtomo does make arguments that blood type influences personality. So maybe he was like, all right, we got somebody who's like, Jesus, so let's figure out. I honestly have no idea, but that's a good question. And anecdotally, I want to tell you guys, so I used to work for NUSI, the company that Gary Tobs and Peter Atia started. And Gary told me in private one day that he was completely baffled that one of his friends had just switched from a lower carb diet to a type A blood type diet and was losing tons of weight, and he was really baffled about it. So Gary Tobs, you guys, has been wondering about this. And that is my anecdote, which means nothing to most of you, but I find it hilarious. Any other questions? Questions? Are we good? Thank you. Oh, sorry, don't clap. No. Got a question. If people wanted to know more about your interpretation of blood types, where would they go? I am working on a blog post, which means sometime within the next 10 years it will be online. No, it's actually half done, so next five years. So I do have some more thoughts on it that I couldn't fit into the presentation, but watch this space. Any more? Thank you, guys.