Is location/heredity a factor?

[binky]

Hello again!

I am the one and only person in my family with any sort of sugar absorption problem. The doctors think that my ancestry was from Iceland or a Slavic nation and I just got screwed in the DNA lot. Has anyone heard of this idea? That only peoples from a certain place on earth have absorption problems?

Side note: where do the good people on this board all hail from? My family is mostly German with a touch of French and apparently Iceland. lol!

Thank you to all who respond-Megs

[meaniejean]

Megs-

A big chunk of my ancestry is Finnish - we think Saami (indigenous people of Finland).
It makes sense really - it just wasn't a disadvantage for people from very northern climates to be unable to tolerate sugar. Nothing grows in northern Finland. Perhaps the most we would have eaten would have been a few berries every now and then. Only in more recent times would it have become a problem.

I was reading somewhere that there are some northern peoples who get their Vitamin C from eating some part of ocean dwelling animals, but I don't remember the details. I have to find that again - it was really interesting.

I think HFI might be a little different, but at least with malabsorption of sugars, the majority are descendants of very northern peoples.

Glad you have found this site!
-Sandra

[tikitavi]

Colormist's blog brought me to this thread! I find this ancestral environment concept very fascinating!

I bought my mom a DNA Ancestry test for Christmas a few years back. We found that she is of Haplogroup T2:
"Haplogroup T2 is one of the older sub-lineages and may have been present in Europe as early as the Late Upper Palaeolithic."

From what genealogy research we have done, our ancestry is from Northern/Eastern Europe. The cold places!

Sandra, I agree. It seems that back in the Paleolithic, there wasn't much besides meat and fish to be had in Northern Europe then. No fruits or veggies or much fructose or sucrose to speak of at all. So not being able to tolerate sugar wasn't a problem until quite recently, with the advent of globalization!

Very interesting, and does help make sense of it all!

[tikitavi]

P.S. Sandra, on your comment about vitamin C from ocean dwelling animals: I know that the Inuit peoples traditionally got their vitamin C from eating muktuk - the skin and blubber of whales. Apparently it is SUPER high in vitamin C. Isn't that amazing how nature provides even in the most harsh environments?

[esmee]

i am 1/4 Irish, 1/4 english, 1/4 welsh, a small amount of other northern european (german) blood, and a smiggen of Native American Cherokee.

i think it is safe to say that very little fructose was available to my ancestors.

[susan]

This subject is very interesting to me since I have been doing family genealogy. I am English, Irish, and German primarily.

On the German side, we can be traced to Rotterdam Germany in the 1700's. My maternal grandmother's side (Mummert) of the family called us "Slop Bucket Dutch" or "Dark Dutch" and even "Dirty Dutch". This could mean many thing such as having Indian, African or Jewish heritage also. One genealogist in the family traces us to the deep regions of the Rhine River. Great Grandmother was an Atterberry. I think that is English.

On my maternal grandfather's side (Filby) we can be traced to Filby England. However, a lot of Red hair (orange) comes out.

My father is thought to be Scottish. But nothing can be proved.

If I understand genetics, if parents carry a recessive gene, then there is 1 in 4 chance that a child would get dominant genes, if there are 4 children.

Well...there are only 2 children born in my family and I have the dominate gene. Interesting.

Human migration is interesting as well. Didn't the Vikings get to Italy? There have been some Italian Fructose problems reported.
Interesting. Susan

[esmee]

Yes, lots of Scandinavian (Viking) blood in Italy.

Vitamin C is also present in the Adrenal glands of all mammals and these organs were known by native peoples the world over to prevent the symptoms of scurvy (though, of course, they did not call it scurvy).

[tikitavi]

I was reading about the Faroe Islands (north of Scotland, in between Iceland and Norway) and came across this which was interesting:

www.ask.com/wiki/Faroe_Islands
"Traditional Faroese food is mainly based on meat, seafood and potatoes and uses few fresh vegetables."

Sound familiar?

[ukbill]

I have been emailing a possibly HFI Pakistani man who's whole family (9 children) and father seem to be HFI!

Edit..

Correction he seems to have some other carbohydrate type problem.

He go's low blood sugar after eating either any sugar (except Glucose) or carbs like white rice.!..

Perhaps a candidate for FBPase deficiency?

(if anyone recognises the symptoms please let me know and I will pass on the suggestion)

end of edit

He said his family originated not in Pakistan but came from Russian Tatars who were a horse based nomadic tribe I think.

Funnily enough someone told me a few years ago that I also have Tatar blood. Apparently they all have a very distinctive triangle of thick hair in the small of the back.. which I have.. (these days its thicker than the stuff on my head thinking of getting skin swapped round )

It would also explain my natural affinity with horses and animals of any kind.

Genetics have a lot to answer for!

[esmee]

Yes, I believe the Tartars more or less lived on mare's milk (kumiss--a fermented milk like kefir) and everything else that comes from an animal (meat and blood), like the Mongolians. You might enjoy The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson.

[tummyache]

Dr. Tolen asks about patients ethincity for his DNA testing, which has something to do with giving clues to which genetic code to check more closely for.

I am a US American , blue-eyed, blond [in my younger days anyway] with Scandinavian coloring, with French/Swiss + Irish on one side and Canadian/English + German on the other. Evidently, I look very Danish because while we were visiting in Copenhagen, in shops people would keep coming up to me speaking Danish. One older lady even admonished me for not having more pride in my "heritage" and said that I need to learn to speak Danish as it was obvious that I have Viking blood.

[susan]

We had talked about porridge at bedtime. Later I thought...
did I spell that right? Could my idea of porridge be different than other people's idea of what is porridge?

I googled porridge and what I found made me chuckle.

"Porridge was a traditional food in much of Northern Europe and Russia." Wikipedia.

[tikitavi]

Susan, you made me curious if oatmeal (porridge) is safe or not....so I checked in the German database. It looks pretty good actually! Maybe I can give it a try!

www.daskochrezept.de/bundeslebensmittelschluessel/naehrwerte/hafer-mehl-gegart_C230022_6.html
Fructose (Fruchtzucker) 0 mg/100g
Saccharose (Rübenzucker) 138 mg/100g

[esmee]

I looked up buckwheat in the fineli database and it too shows very low amounts of fructose, comparable to white rice. buckwheat kashi has been a porridge staple of northeast Europe, especially Russia, for a long time.

[ukbill]

I love the taste of Buckwheat but it seems not to like me very much..

I think its all the fibre in the husk that causes me problems.. although because we eat the whole seed we are getting the buckwheat "germ" as well which contains a little Fructose.

More on Genetics..
I can trace my mothers side of the family to Stafford back to the 1750's when a man with the name of Wynne came to Stafford from London (he was a shoe maker) and set up shop in Stafford.

My fathers family came from the North east of England near the coast, so I think his family (Armstrong) had been there for some time! Moving up form Lincolnshire in the 12th century having first come over from France with William the Conqueror in 1066 from Normandy. At that time the family had a different surname which was changed when one knight lifted our king who had been un-horsed in a battle single handed, armour and all onto his horse and saved him.

Hence was given the name Armstrong.. or so the story goes..

As a "thank you " we were given lands on the Scottish border to defend for the King (and subsequent Kings) from the ravages of the Scots who likes to raid and steal our cattle and women..

I believe we did more than a lot of return raiding over the years and eventually became rather well known for thieving sheep and cattle.. hence a lot of the people "transported" to Australia when it was a penal colony happened to be called Armstrong!

We did not steal horses because you got hung by the neck for that but only fined a shilling (5p) if you killed someone!

How laws have changed in the UK at least

[esmee]

ukbill,

This is completely off the subject (sorry charlie!) of this thread, but your story reminds me of an article i read somewhere or other about the high rate of violence in the South (southeastern United States), which exceeds all other parts of the country. Sociologists believe it is due to the fact that most people who immigrated to this part of the country came from the Scottish Highlands where animal husbandry was the main form of subsistence, which was accompanied by the continual stealing of animals and women as you mentioned. This culture crossed the Atlantic and continues (most famous was the rivalry between the Hatfields and the McCoys) to some extent into the present day even though animal husbandry as a way of living has almost disappeared.

Thanks for sharing the family lore.

[colormist]

My geneticist made fun of my family tree and that was even before I had my tree half-way mapped out. I still only have it half-way mapped out.

My (so far) ancestors include: Native American, Ireland, France, Netherlands, England, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Holland.

I've noted Ireland, Germany, Native American, and England on both sides and one Garrett family from Ireland (on both sides--this was not the only incident of my tree making improper branches).

[flanagan]

I'm seeing a lot of Irish coming up in the previous responses. I'm half Irish, quarter Lithuanian, quarter Italian, and with just a dash of German hiding in there somewhere. Interesting thing is that the Irish ancestry comes from both my mother and father's side. I have two copies of the same mutation,... the 149 one if I'm remembering that correctly (I'll check later), which is common for Northern and Western Europe.

You guys have been talking about your ancestry, but I think it would be more informative to talk about the specific ancestry of both your parents separately, as that carrier mutation had to come down separately on both sides. Also, I'd think it would be interesting to find out which mutations people have. Unless I don't understand how this works at all, those with the same mutation are technically blood relatives, albeit in an incredibly remote way.

*Checked: two copies of the A149P mutation.

[Mimi]

Scots-Irish on both sides, or as I call it, "Purebred Hillbilly."