Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre: Don’t Gamble with Your Health

up you and Welcome back. Jason McIntyre, host of the Straight Fire podcast, is the go to person for bold opinions on the biggest stories in sports today, including the day's biggest sports betting topics. As an avid sports gambler, Jason knows the most valuable commodity for someone placing bets is information. You can't make decisions on games without knowing all the proper intel, and he believes the same is

true for his health. As a weekend warrior, it's important for Jason to have as much information as possible to keep him active, healthy, and competing in the sports he loves. So Jason decided to take a twenty three in me test to see what his DNA could tell him about his health and using that knowledge how he could make the right bet on his future. Jason learns his biggest

challenge might be changing his diet. As active as he is, the information contained in his health insights might make him think twice about his stay active, eat what I want lifestyle. Let's listen in as Jason breaks it down and maybe you two will be inspired to see what you can parlay from twenty three and me. This is Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre. What is up Straight Fire? Our fam We have a special episode of the podcast today stepping

out of our comfort zone, trying something new. We partnered with twenty three and me two kind of get some information on my health. Um, you guys know I play a lot of sports. I'm very active. I like to think of myself as a weekend warrior. And you really have to know what your body is about and know your background and what you made of and where you come from if you want to optimize fully your body and your health as you age out of your twenties and thirties and get into uh I'm leally even say

middle age. But um, you guys, when we do a lot of sports gambling on the podcast, obviously, and the most valuable commodity you can have is information. I talk all the time on the podcast about how you know, look at a injury reports, you look at weather reports, everything throughout the week, every day, and the lines are moving and you gotta jump on it and take advantage to get the best number. And you can't just make decisions all willy nilly if you want to be successful

in gambling without getting all the information. And I feel like the same is true for my health. Um, and you guys know, listen, I am trying to live my best dad life playing tennis. I joined the tennis ladder one of my first match, which was nice. I played in the basketball league in the summer one a championship. Little humble black brag the humble brag flex for you right there. Um. I've played in some more soccer tournaments in the last three years than I had geez in

the last twenty. I did play competitive sports growing up, and I think I've talked about it a little bit on the podcast. So as I was growing up, I was like a pretty good youth athlete, more soccer than anything, because I had the speed and kind of the the will and the desire to just want to get to the ball and raise up ahead and score. And soccer was my best sport. I loved basketball the most. My parents would not let me play football for understandable reasons,

you know, concern over injuries and what have you. And I realized pretty quickly soccer was my best. So I did some club soccer, and I was pretty crushed. As everybody started to mature and you know, hit puberty. I was like a late bloomer and you go to try out for the high school sports teams and you don't make the teams, and you're kind of stunned because you've been playing sports all these years growing up and excelling

in some of them. I mean, I wish I had been a better basketball player, but what could I do. I was a small guy. I couldn't really um. I didn't have the handle to be a point guard, and I was too small to be a shooting guard. But I loved hoops, so I kept playing and you know, doing sports or what have you. Um, But it was recreationally.

And my parents knew I always had loved sports, and they could see that I was ticked to tell my friends made the team and I didn't, and so they were like, well, you still like sports, why don't you like go work for the local newspaper. This was when newspapers mattered way back when and they were relevant. So I like called up the local newspaper. It was like a weekly, and I was like, hey, you guys need me to do anything, and they're like, sure, you can

come take calls for high school sports games. And that's kind of how my career got started in sports media. And you know, went from the newspapers to college and I majored in Media Arts and Design, I think was the exact name. Local newspaper got out, went to a newspaper, saw newspapers at that time, we're starting to crumble, pivoted

to magazine, started a website, sold the website. Get scooped up by fox In and I come west and I had played in some basketball leagues in New York, but I was never like a healthy eater, and so I was always like in shape because I would work out

and run. I'll never forget me. And my wife moved, well girlfriend at the time, moved to Brooklyn and we were close enough to the Brooklyn Bridge that Saturday mornings, we would wake up, go to the gym, and then after the gym, she would add home and I'd run across the Brooklyn Bridge and back and it was just incredible. You know, the weather is amazing, and I wanted to be healthy again. The diet was always an issue for me, and you you can only go so far when you're

just doing one and not the other. Right, And played in some basketball leagues in New York that we moved out of Pennsylvania, played in some basketball leagues, and I it was it was basically a better athlete late into my you know, twenties and thirties than I was as a kid, because I'm just in better shape. And eventually I did, you know, run a little track, well not track.

I read a couple of races like mile and five k, and I started to realize my strength is in the short term, like a one mile sprint as opposed to a five k, which I think is six point two or three miles whatever it was. And all this is leading up to, you know, how do I optimize what I've got going whatever that is, How do I optimize that?

And which enters twenty three and me and what they're able to do is provide like a deep dive into my health background, my traits, my wellness, and it can be a pretty instrumental factor in giving me an edge and staying fit and healthy. UM as I age, and again I hate using the word as I age, because I still feel like I'm in my twenties. Like I can guard young guys playing pick up basketball, I can

outrun guys in soccer on the field. You know, Like I come West, and it's weird because everybody's in ridiculously good shape out here in California. You know, I'm not gonna say I got into all the hippie dippy avocado toast stuff. Um, I've dabbled. I've dabbled, but by and large, diet has been my big weakness. And in twenty three and Me, you're able to dive into your health and wellness to a level that I just couldn't get researching

myself online. And one of the things UM, in terms of uh, the in depth profile three and Me provided was, you know, they do look at genetic muscle composition. And I know that's going to sound like a weird phrase to some people, but once you do the twenty three and me deep dive and you look at it, You're like, holy cow. And of course at the same time, I start telling my parents and siblings, my brother that yeah, I'm doing twenty three and me and obviously I have

I'm sure you guys know. My background is mixed. Um My, my mom and dad come from the Caribbean. Long story short. My mom's from Guyana in South America, and so she's mixed with mostly Indian, but a bunch of other stuff. And then my dad is from a tiny island Dominica and the Caribbean. It's not one of these built up um tourist traps if you will, in the Caribbean. It's one of the greener spots in the Caribbean. They don't have a lot of cruise ships pulling up pretty cool

island that I've never been to. Actually, my dad's told me a lot about it. And given that background, you know, my brother and I growing up, we were like, well, we we kind of hang out with a lot of my mom's family. We called them Indian jams. And then of course, you know, we had other stuff in us. So twenty three and me is able to give us

the detailed background. Hey, you are this percent Indian and this percent African American and this percent European, and it's a pretty cool breakdown and that, and that's like the starter for knowing your background. But when it comes to the health and wellness, like, you can't really get that until you jump into twenty three and me and when I told my Dada that that I looked into it. I'm like, hey, I've got this weird muscle composition. It's

actually pretty good for athletes. He's like, well, yeah, you know about your grandfather, And of course I knew a little bit about it, but you know, it's not like Dominica and Guyana are similar to America, where you can just look back at several generations fairly easily, and it's documented.

This is the Caribbean different speed. So it turns out my dad puts me onto a book which is written about soccer in Dominica and generally the islands over there, and it turns out my grandfather was like an amazing soccer player in the in a book that chronicles the history of soccer in Dominica and largely the Caribbean. It talks about my grandfather being like one of the best scoring forwards of his generation back in like the nineteen twenties and one of his siblings was also on the

team and just incredible. And so after going into twenty three me, I go into you know, my dad with this and he sends me the book and it's like just kind of mind blowing stuff, like, wow, this is kind of where you know, I like to find out where I came from. And I don't know if a

lot of you guys have that. Um, I know some friends I've talked to, you know, they look into their parents background and their parents parents and just the idea as you get older and now there's probably some twenty year olds thinking about this like I don't know, I don't really care about where I came from, because you know, when you're in your twenties, you're living for them. Now when you get a little older, you get some perspective

and want to maybe look back a little more. And just knowing that, you know, my grandfather was an awesome soccer player kind of spurred me. And that actually had me bring it to my kids and say, guys, just so you know, your dad's not some whack job who just talks about sports on TV and on podcasts. He likes to play sports. And oh, by the way, where do I get this from? Because my parents, you know, they came to America, um, mostly the fifties and sixties,

and they were not huge sports fans. They were more into cricket, which is not an American sport. And how does Jason end up loving sports and talking about NBA all the time in NFL constantly. Well, it's sports are clearly in my background and playing sports obviously more than talking about on television or whatever. But you're able to look into thanks to twenty three and your entire health background, which is actually pretty cool because, um, you know it

can help me. Now, I don't know that it's gonna help everybody, but it can help you kind of focus in to a to an extent, play to some of your strengths. But that's just like one aspect of it. Um. And I talked about diet being like a major issue for me. I'm definitely the kind of guy who at dinner will slow play the main course because I need to save room for dessert, whether it's uros. I'm not huge on ice cream, um, but whether it's Churo's like

chocolate lava cake, doughnuts, all that stuff. I just love it. And eventually I go into twenty three and me and I'm I'm looking and I'm like, well, wait a minute, all the sugar cheez um? Am I eating? Am I eating right? And you figure out you're not really eating right? And then it's like, oh, wait, I have I am predisposed for one variant of chronic kidney disease, which is a little bit scary, but then you read it and say, well, you're not really in trouble unless there are two uh

two variants detected. So not that I'm in the clear, but it actually got me thinking more about my diet. Um. I for a while there, I had totally cut out caffeine. Twenty three and me has a whether or not I'm likely to be a large caffeine user or not. I I promise you this. I never had a first cup of Starbucks until I was like maybe like thirty years old. Just never been a coffee guy. My parents obviously, I mentioned their background. Tea was a big factor for them.

So I had been like a tea drinker, but not regularly or anything. Um. And then I started to try coffee and got into it, and then I again twenty three and Me has a coffee breakdown. Um whether or not that's something that you can kind of get into, uh, I don't know, you'll have to try it on your own. But I also looked at the aspect of sleep. Now. I don't know about you guys, but as someone who is on a screen a lot, unfortunately and constantly busy

too young kids. We now have a dog, You're juggling a lot of stuff, and sleep for me has been a massive issue, um, especially you know in the last like fifteen years. So just you know, there's just a lot going on. And falling asleep not a problem. Staying asleep is a struggle. And you know, you wake up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom and next thing you know, it's like, oh damn, I gotta do this, that and the other tomorrow should I opened my phone and put this in a note to

our mind myself. But if you look at the phone, you know it's game over. You can't really go back to sleep for a while. And they have a section UM called sleep quality in twenty three and Me that says that I am less likely to be a deep sleeper, so to me thought it was me. It was my issue that I just could not stay asleep. Well, twenty three and Me kind of cleared that up a little bit, a little bit, just a little and no, no, fully

definitive one cent. But it's pretty clear that this is like a problem that's kind of genetic, not I don't want to say a problem that might be too strong, but this is something genetic in me that I'm just gonna have to deal with. UM And you know, twenty three and Me has a section on sleep, which is kind of cool. They have a wellness section on gaining weight. UM. Fortunately, I'm predisposed to weigh about average, which is always nice

to hear. UM And I gotta say it was just a great experience to be able to dive into the health and wellness and UM kind of helped me try to be the best version of me that I can from a health perspective. You guys already know I'm gonna be prepared for sports and to talk about Aaron Rodgers and the Packers and Tom Brady and the crumbling Bucks and Ken Lebron win one more title in the Lakers.

I'm going to be able to do all the homework on that but to do the homework on my health and background and wellness, I needed twenty three and me. So it's it kind of was an invaluable tool that helped me diet, exercise, sleep. Um, it was really an outstanding decision. And uh, I think if you guys are interested in trying to be the best you, I would give the recommendation to twenty three and me and that's it.

On another dope show, did this episode inspire you to take a closer look at your health history, your genetic makeup. Who new DNA could reveal so much about our past while also holding the keys to certain health insights that may impact our future. I continue to be inspired by these stories, and I hope you do as well. Catch you next time. Listen to Spit, an original podcast from Art Radio and twenty three in the on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Yeah h