Stanford Geneticist Stops Diabetes in Its Tracks - Examining His Own Body

[Evermont]

I like the part that says: The scientist later became infected with respiratory syncytial virus, and his group saw that a sharp rise in glucose levels followed almost immediately. "We weren't expecting that," Snyder says. "I went to get a very fancy glucose metabolism test at Stanford and the woman looked at me and said, 'There's no way you have diabetes.' I said, 'I know that's true, but my genome says something funny here.' "

Michael Snyder has taken "know thyself" to the next level—and helped heal thyself.

Over a 14-month period, the molecular geneticist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, analyzed his blood 20 different times to pluck out a wide variety of biochemical data depicting the status of his body's immune system, metabolism, and gene activity. In today's issue of Cell, Snyder and a team of 40 other researchers present the results of this extraordinarily detailed look at his body, which they call an integrative personal omics profile (iPOP) because it combines cutting-edge scientific fields such as genomics (study of one's DNA), metabolomics (study of metabolism), and proteomics (study of proteins). Instead of seeing a snapshot of the body taken during the typical visit to a doctor's office, iPOP effectively offers an IMAX movie, which in Snyder's case had the added drama of charting his response to two viral infections and the emergence of type 2 diabetes.

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[jwags]

Interesting. I remember several years ago going out with some friends one of them was a doctor. We were eating at an Italian restaurant. He noticed I asked them to swap the pasta for some green veggies and leave off the bread. He looked at me and said you don't need to lose weight , why are you eating that way. I told him I was diabetic and he responded , " there is no way you can be diabetic". I think there are lots of us thinner diabetics out there. I can't remember ever getting sick with a virus or anything that could have pushed my DNA in that direction. I have 5 siblings and none of them are diabetic. My dad also thin became diabetic at the age of 89 after 15 years on Prednisone. So I am the wierd one. My brother is a research scientist at MIT in Boston and works with DNA and human genome. I'll have to ask him what he thinks. Normally when I ask a science question I get an answer I can't understand.