Are you a secretor?

My Dear Sexy Readers,

As you know, here at Science is So Sexy, I asked my Sexy Readers what they want to read about! It's all very well to write about Science but if no one reads your articles, it's just internet clogging isn't it? So as part of Science is So Sexy Request Time, I'm focusing on a question that fellow blogger, Chelle, has been asking herself:

"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

Composition of our blood

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, the elements that determine your blood type are called antigens and are formed by linking 4 types of sugar:

The ABO blood type system - Specific sugars on red blood cells

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.

ABO System

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.

Each person possesses a type of red blood cell with antigens, and antibodies in plasma

For example:

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).

For these reasons, we can say:

Universal Donor is O-

Universal Recipient is AB +

What more?

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

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

See you Soon for more Sexy Science,