That's what your hand looks like when you are a fetus, but basically, it's interesting because fingerprint patterns are a combination of genetics and epigenetics. There are some elements to the pattern that are definitely genetically involved, but aspects of how the patterns crunch as the hands change are epigenetically determined as well. So for instance, changes in fingerprint patterns often reflect changes in the development environment of the fetus, acidity, sugar, all things that even go into making you left-handed and stuff.
Basically, I mean, here you can see the three, essentially three basic fingerprints, right? There is a Whorl, looks like a round thing, there is an Arch, it looks like a little hill, and there is a Loop, it looks like a little lasso. We have wonderful films, I have just done in QuickTime that are going to be on the Genotype Diet website to take people through this. I am going to share one with you later.
You can look at your head and see all sorts of interesting things. Is your head long? That means you are Dolichocephalic. Is your hear broad? It means you are Mesocephalic. Head circumference is also a reflection of certain developmental aspects. It turns out that the shape of the head correlates overtime with epigenetic influences on nutrition as well. For instance, in general, our human race, our heads have become more and more elongated if you study skulls. In essence, this is taught to be related to changes in nutrition.
It actually is interesting because if you study skulls from the ancient time to the middle ages, it went the other way, so as people were more and more compromised in terms of their health, their heads broadened. I am not going to spend a lot of time on Somatotypes, but we do as people to understand and be able to predict whether or not they are more endomorphic, mesomorphic or ectomorphic. The reason being is that it turns out that even though Sheldon at that time didn't know it, those basic somatotypes correlate with the relative amount of those three types of germ tissues in the body.
So, for instance, an ectomorph is kind of a more gangly or leaner person tends to have more ectoderm tissue. Of course, you know the thing about Sheldon was, of course, a lot of his characterizations, he was off on the Holy Grail trying to find psychological core with somatotypes, but it turns out that the phenotype manifestations, simply in terms of body planning, those Hox Genes in developmental aspects are far more interesting than anything he could prove with psychology.
Your jaw also influences things, the jaw angle here, whether it's wide or narrow, has reflections. There is lot of work done in the 40s on them. The spaces between the legs, comparing the trunk height to the upper and lower leg height, add it together and then the upper leg to the lower leg tells you a lot about -- trunk to leg is an indication of metabolic thriftiness, upper leg to lower leg is a reflection of insulin like growth factor levels in the first couple of months of life.
Growth factor levels are a big influence on susceptibility to certain types of neoplasms and heart disease. So people who have very -- if you ever look at babies, babies have very long upper legs, but they have little short lower legs, which is why they look so cute when they walk. But when they get older, the lower leg elongates as growth factor level start to enhance the uptake of calcium. Well, those growth factor levels have effects on liver function, they have effects on immune function, they have effects on blood cell and a variety of different things.
The insulin-like growth factors in terms of insulin-like growth factor 1, growth factor 2, have a tendency to remortalize cells and so often by delaying -- this is more for the girls in the back there, delaying Apoptosis you wind up essentially producing cells which essentially have problems with regard to a prolonged resistance to Programmed Cell Death later in life. So that's why there are associations with lower leg length and prostate cancer and breast cancer and stuff.
We grow by a process of Programmed Cell Death. In other words, cells die, other ones get born and that's how we change. But if you've got a lot of growth factor, you actually stop some of that in place and some of those cells that should have died, don't. Then later on in life they continue to grow and that's when the problems arise.
Blood group, when we start with blood group, I am going to take it to the final thing here. Blood group is really one of the other big epigenetic influences on people as well. Sometimes, it has interesting effects that are completely unique and here's one that kind of just is mind-blowing in its own way.
They look to kids with year infections and they ask okay what could predict a second year infection? And they found that if the kid was blood type A and roughly increase the chance of a second year infection in the first year by 50%. But then they looked at the mother's blood type and they found that regardless of the kid's blood type if the mother was type A the rate of second year infections was 28 fall greater. So the relative risk, which is a mathematical term that tells you how many times over one your chances are, 1 to 28.
Now to give you an idea what that means and things that we worry about for lower numbers you can see here that the relative risk of getting lung cancer from smoking is about 11. The relative risk of getting myocardial infarct from having elevated cholesterol is about 2.5 and a little bit higher in women. Having the positive Apley for snip test and getting Alzheimer's is little bit higher but the one there for Otitis media based not even on the child's blood type based on the blood type of the mother. So maternal blood type, maternal-fetal relationships with regard to blood type are powerful indicators of which you may call maternal-fetal hostility or that transducer effect. So our blood type continues to play with own genotype.
By the way, if you look over here which says elevated cholesterol in men, myocardial infarct, being something besides blood type A is only slightly lower than this, although it is never known. So how many people are given drugs based upon the risk factor that they could have a heart attack, because if they don't get their cholesterol down and you have the relative risk of having a heart attack because of elevated cholesterol is 2.2, based on a meta-analysis of a bunch of studies. The relative risk of having a heart attack but be in blood type A is 1.8, not that too dissimilar, nobody knows this though.
Advanced Glycation End products are essentially part of the process of thriftiness. So in essence one of the things that thrifty people do or thrifty metabolisms do is they generate a lot of Glycation End products. Glycation End products are basically carbohydrates and proteins. They got put together in a way that the body can't get rid of them.
So the closest thing I can tell you is if you watch a cooking show and the guy talks about caramelizing onions, those are Advanced Glycation End products. What you've done is you've produced a Glycation product in a non-enzymatic consequently non-reversible manner. Now Advanced Glyacation End products are found in Alzheimer's disease. They are found in diabetes. They found in endothelial dysfunctions that characterize heart disease, hypertension. They are found in kidney dysfunction. They are found in virtually every manifestation of aging.
What is an Advanced Glycation End product? Well, anyone of you reminded of diabetics, but when you check a glycosylated hemoglobin you are measuring the amount of glycation on an erythrocyte. You can measure glycation on kidney cells, brain cells anything else.
So part of what some of the thrifty genotypes when it comes to somebody saying why do I have this thing in my diet? Most of those things are to have effects on inhibiting the process of Advanced Glycation End product formation especially in genotype number two together.
Tell the nearest part of the element of how you age. In essence I think the simplest thing I have to tell you about them is that you have to make copies of your ge
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