So one of the great things that 23andme told me – before it was destroyed by the United States Food and Drug Administration – was that I’m a caffeine “slow metabolizer”. I wrote a while ago about an experience I had in which I was engaging in vigorous physical activity which resulted in my heart going into an overdrive state which really scared me.
That experience occurred when I went a trail on my bicycle after having consumed a cup of tea that was oversteeped and had a high caffeine content.
That incident was the second that I clearly remember like that. The other was a time when I was leaving a cafe and walking up a very steep hill at a very strong pace and a similar thing happened. My heart went into overdrive and I felt lightheaded, faint, and nauseous.
Investigating this further, it turns out that caffeine slow metabolizers like myself have a significantly higher risk of heart attack.
In a study that was done, among slow caffeine metabolizers those who drank two or more “cups” daily had a 36 percent higher risk of having a non-fatal heart attack. I put “cups” in quotes because often you read about studies with no real quantification of “cup” although I suspect a typical cup of coffee from many cafes may contain the equivalent of many “cups” used in studies. No mention is made of the risk for fatal heart attacks but obviously this is very serious news.
Unfortunately your federal government has told a private company (23andme) that they don’t have a right to sequence your DNA and tell you the result. I’m lucky that I was able to get my full results before this outrageous violation of a basic human right.
Knowledge about your own body is deemed to be a “medical device” that is too dangerous for you to know.
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