The Real Truth About Genetic Testing, Why 23AndMe Is Not Enough (& The Most Advanced Genetic Test Y

Oh hello friends. That was my best Mr. Rogers impersonation. I'm gonna try that again. Oh hello friends. Won't you be my neighbor? Take off my sweater and my loafers here. Actually, I heard this new Mr. Rogers documentary was actually quite profound. So this podcast is not brought to you by the Mr. Rogers documentary. This is Ben Greenfield by the way too, and not me, Mr. Rogers. Although I know you're all fooled. I can also do a pretty good Kermit the Frog by the way. Hey ho, Kermit the Frog here. And a variety of other voices that I don't have time to get into right now because I want to blow your mind with today's guest. This podcast you are about to hear was one of the most game changing from a health standpoint discussions that I've had with a physician in a very long time. It is all about genetics and personalizing your nutrition, your supplements, your exercise and beyond using genetics. But man oh man, it's far beyond this whole like 23andMe DNA fit thing.

That's old news. This is cutting edge shiznat, so I think you're gonna dig it big time. This podcast is brought to you by as every podcast is the supplement website that exists on all of the Internet. Because I'm being a little bit self serving narcissistic here. It contains all the supplements that I personally have designed and formulated for you. Everything from Kion aminos, which is the best way to maintain a high state of anabolism, muscle maintenance and muscle building without a calorie load even when you're in a fasted state. A complete shotgun formula for your joints called Keon. Not an actual gun but in fact every element from cetyl myristoliate to turmeric to glucosamine, chondroitin to tart cherry. Everything that can heal your body like Wolverine. I have jam packed into that supplement. One other that I would tell you about is Kion Lean. You take two of these before any carbohydrate containing meal and it will manage your blood sugar better than the diabetic drug metformin. This stuff is crazy. So there is a whole lot more over at Kion, but you just go to getkion.com getk I-O-N. To peruse all the fantastic goodies that I have over there for you. This podcast is also brought to you by something I had for breakfast this morning. Actually just posted this to Instagram. I'm on a week long liver cleanse right now and it involves among other things me drinking a giant glass of celery juice at breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I have a juicer. I juice my own celery. But what I've done is I stack on top of that celery juice not only the kion aminos that I just talked about, so it kind of turns it into like a, a extremely low calorie protein shake. But I also put a scoop full of this stuff called greens into it, made by a company called Organifi. What Organifi did was they took a whole host of extremely nutrient dense greens and shoved them all into this greens powder that gives you everything from organic protein blends to digestive enzymes to whole food, vitamins and minerals. It's like drinking a salad, especially when you combine it with celery juice. Organifi is offering all of us a 20% discount. That's pretty big. It is code Greenfield. You just go to Organifi.com it's Organifi with an I Organifi.com use discount. Code GREENFIELD. This green stuff is so versatile to have around. Plus, unless you're like me and you're mixing it with celery juice that you've juiced, there is no need to actually blend or juice or chop anything. You just put it into water and you're good to go. It's really tasty too. So check that out. Organifi.com with an I use code Greenfield and let's go join my brilliant guest. He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And I guess it was about three months ago that hunched over my kitchen table, along with my twin 10 year old boys, I dripped a bunch of saliva into a tube, which I've done before for genetic testing. But this was for something different. Some newfangled genetic test that doc who I met down in Miami convinced me to take. So I decided to take him up on the offer. Drip the saliva into my tube. Taught my boys how to get the saliva flowing by. Our trick is sniffing a jar of peanut butter that seems to do the Trick. And we got the saliva dripping. We sent off our saliva to this lab in Canada for a more advanced form of genetic testing than what you have probably been exposed to or read about or ever heard about. And frankly, I was blown away by what I learned from my report and also what I learned from the physician who oversaw that entire procedure for me and my boys. And in today's podcast, we're going to take a deep dive into genetic testing. The real truth about genetic testing, why tests such as 23andMe might not be enough, and how you can actually personalize your diet, your supplement regimen, your lifestyle, your exercise, everything based on your unique genetic profile. My guest is Dr. Karim Dhanani, who I had the pleasure of meeting. Well, Karim, do you remember where we met? Actually, it's kind of a funny story.

Yeah, it was great. We met in Miami at the Carillon at a wonderful retreat, health and fitness spot. I loved it there. And I try to make sure I get out there at least once a year for about a month, partially to run away from the winter here in Toronto, but mostly to get into some sunshine and to be with very, very much like minded individuals.

Yeah, the Carillon Resort in Miami, it's kind of like the Canyon Ranch on the east coast. And you and I had a personal trainer there and wound up doing like this crazy mesh of what was, it was like a mashup of rock climbing and rowing and these kinesis machines. Yeah, our friend.

Most of the time I ended up on the ground. You killed it though. You did a fantastic job.

It was right up my alley. It was hybrid strength and endurance training overseen by our friend, Shout out to our friend Adam, personal trainer down there at the Carolina Resort in, in Miami. But anyways, as we were training in between during our rest periods, we had a chance to catch up a little bit and I learned that you are, you're, you're really big in the world of what's called biological medicine, which really was not part of my vernacular at that point, but based on some books that I've read recently that I'll tell folks about as we go through the show today is something that I find extremely interesting. You're the chief medical director at Toronto's center for Biological Medicine. And for those of you who are not familiar with biological medicine, you're going to be by the end of this show. And his, his clinic, Dr. Danani's clinic, which I haven't been to yet, is supposed to be pretty cool, like this ecologically sound, specially designed facility set up in some pristine Canadian woodland somewhere. But it's this global mecca for a of people who really want to optimize their health. They actually travel to see Dr. Danani from all over the world to get their lives and their health set straight. So we're going to talk a little bit more about biological medicine and Dr. Danani's history. And then during today's show also we will be covering DNA testing results. I will link to my results should you like to view them or download them for yourself to follow along or to look at after today's show. And I'm going to put everything over at, @BenGreenfieldFitness.com GeneTictesting that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com GeneTactesting that's where you can find the show notes and access pretty much every book, every website, anything that we talk about today. So Dr. Dhanani, first of all, welcome to the show and second, I want to hear a little bit more about biological medicine. All these trips that you take to Germany to take a deep dive into what they're doing over in Europe, specifically when it comes to biological medicine and how you came to do what you do now in the realm of genomics.

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. Of course, Ben, I appreciate it. I got to say that I'm fairly lucky, I'm fairly fortunate. I had the ability and the capacity once I graduated naturopathic medicine to spend some time with some brilliant people in the world of biological medicine. And essentially biological medicine is a framework that encompasses utilizing natural supplementation but also the most cutting edge technology to be able to differentiate with patients what is truly at the root cause. And we always, for the most part, a lot of people tend to say that the root cause is because of a pain syndrome or because of a lack of a biochemical reaction. But we really, truly want to get at the deepest, deepest, deepest layer of this. In order for us to be able to do that, we have to use a wonderful diagnostic tools coupled with innovative, innovative thought processes. It's not just looking for what is within the box, it's always looking at what's outside the box that's influencing what's within the box.

Now, is biological medicine similar to what's called bioregulatory medicine? Because I just read this book and I'll link to it in the show notes I haven't talked about it on the recent weekly roundup. It's called Bioregulatory Medicine, An Innovative Holistic Approach to Self Healing. And that book, I don't know if you've heard of it, it goes into the neurological system and the respiratory system and the endocrine system and kind of does the same thing. Talks about discovering the root cause of disease and then delivers all these different non toxic diagnostics and treatments from around the world that people can use to detox and to improve their oral health. Which apparently has a pretty significant role in biological medicine. Mind body medicine. Amazing book. But is that the same regulatory medicine and biological medicine?

Yeah, it's extremely, extremely similar. It's just using different vernacular. It is again looking at the body's resonance, the body's capacity to be able to want to heal. I often use this very simple example. If I walk up to you and I punch you really hard, my expectation is that you're supposed to do something in response to me. You either punch me back or you run away. Well, if you don't do anything, then the body has some kind of a dysregulation. There's a lack of communication with what's happening within the body. Well, if I go and I punch you a second time, and again you don't do anything, then there's something that is rigid within your system. Something is not only broken with regards to the communication, but your response to that punch is also challenged. Well, if I then do something a third time, then your body is completely blocked. Meaning no matter what I do to your system, there is a lack of communication, there's a lack of regulation, and there's a lack of function happening within your system. So in order for us to determine what stage, what level you are at, we need to do these non invasive energy type testing, genetic type testing, and looking at your blood under a microscope, checking your saliva, checking your blood, checking your urine to be able to determine what stage you are at. So if I throw a supplement at you and you are blocked, your body's not going to accept the supplement. If I, if I provide your body with a mechanism that is in line with how your system will receive that information, then we are now speaking the same language. It's really interesting, you know, when you talk about how cells communicate with each other. We had believed, and we often still do believe, that we speak via biochemistry, that a white blood cell chases after a bacteria because there's a chemical that is released by that bacteria, right?

Either an antigen or like we talk about exosomes now, as these little vesicles that get released or even free radicals now are considered to be signaling molecules.

And so now when we look at this sort of conceptual framework, we say well, there is something called a chemotaxis. A chemical is released by this bacteria and the white blood cell then recognizes it and chases after. Well, we have seen with Dr. Fritz Albert Popp's work, who is an absolute genius in this field. He coined the term biophotons in 1976. How cells communicate, there actually is a different resonance, there's a different frequency that is released by that bacterium that is recognized by the white blood cell. So if that bacterium turns the corner, makes a left hand turn, the white blood cell doesn't follow behind it. It actually cuts the corner to wall off that bacteria faster than if it were chasing behind it. Because bacteria are much, much faster than white blood cells. It's actually quite interesting that the bacteria will send off a chemical. We used to believe that this was how the system works, but it's actually not true. It is now an energetic field that is released or, or mitigates from that bacterium. That's what signals the white blood cells to go after it when it comes.

To that biophotonic signaling of cells. What was the name of the guy you just mentioned?

Dr. Fritz Albert Popp. P O, P, P. Absolute genius when it comes to the, to the world of biological medicine and how cells communicate with each other. It was amazing. We had the. I've been going to Germany at least once, sometimes twice a year for the last, oh gosh, 18, 19 years. And it was about 10, maybe 11 years ago where we had the opportunity for Dr. Popp to lecture to us. It's a group of English speaking doctors from around the world and we travel out to Germany once a year for the oldest, largest, most prestigious medical congress in the world. It's called Biological Medicine Week and it's held in Baden Baden in Germany the last week in October, the first week in November. And it's my mecca, it's where I go every year. And there he was.

What's it called again?

It's called Biological Medicine Week and it's held in Baden Baden in Germany.

Okay, I'll hunt it down and link to it in the show notes. It sounds fascinating.

It's absolutely outstanding. Brilliant. People from around the world, they get together and they talk about outside the box approaches of healing patients. And because truthfully, if I see patients for pain syndromes, they're in my office because Tylenol did not work for them. If Tylenol worked for them, I wouldn't have any pain patients. But because it doesn't work for them, because there's a biological byproduct that causes inflammation in their system or it just doesn't have the analgesic effect that we want it to have. That's the reason why they come into my office. So my job is to figure out a different way of mitigating symptoms for my patients. And I learned the vast amount of information at this Biological Medicine Week. And so of course, Fritz Albert Popp, he walks into this auditorium, there's about 20 of US English speaking doctors, and we're sitting there and I've got two pens, I've got 19 pages all ready to start scribbling every single word that he says. And he walks in a half an hour late with a cup of tea and a cookie. His shirt is hanging out, he's got a sports jacket on and jeans. And he writes. He begins his conversation with us. It's a two hour lecture by writing Planck's constant on the board. It's a complicated physics equation. And he begins his lecture. I would say it took me about six years and several emails back and forth to his associate to get an understanding of what he was talking about. He was so physics related and so physics oriented. It took me by surprise. And of course I had a prepared question for Dr. Fritz Albert Palm. And so my prepared question, I asked it and he simply looked at me, he said, well, that's easy. And he writes down a physics equation on the board, throws the chalk against the board and then walks away. He responds, in physics he is absolutely brilliant.

Wow.

About three, four years ago I got, I was walking down outside Biological Medicine Week outside the main auditorium, and myself and a friend from Spain, we were walking down the street and we noticed Fritz Albert Popp at about noon in a pub in a bar right beside the Congress hall. And so we kind of peered in, we said, is that Dr. Pop? We're like giddy school children.

Yeah, his coffee and his cookie, right?

And so we, we walked in, we thanked him for the work that he was doing and was about to leave and he said, no, sit with me, let's have a chat. His English is good. It's not outstanding, but it's very good. It's better than my German, that's for sure. And so we sit there, we have a two hour conversation about physics and how cells communicate with each other and how we got into the role of biophysics, how he got nominated for the Nobel Prize for looking at biophysics and how cells communicate with each other. And so he tells myself and my friend, well, you guys kind of know what you're talking about. You must come to My next congress, and it was an invitation only congress for physicists and mathematicians. He calls it summer school. And literally it is a school bus picks us up, takes us. This was up in Noyce, takes us to this auditorium where he then has the brilliant minds from around the world again come and speak to the small group of 100 people that were invited only to this lecture. People that were nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics were present. The fellow that was nominated for. Oh goodness. For the theory of non locality. When you think of your best friend and the phone rings. Well, he proved in physics.

That this occurs not by chance, not by random, but strictly by physics. You put it out there and it will take time, but it will come back. It was absolutely brilliant. Showing that energy medicine has a larger, bigger role to play than what we call, quote unquote, physical medicine.

Yeah, I mean that in very simplistic terms is, you know, when you look at the ability of cells to produce biophotons and to, to literally almost like communicate using optical light or ultraviolet light, it's one of the reasons people feel so freaking good when they get out in the sunlight and they have adequate water and minerals on board when they do so to support that bio photonic communication. I mean, it's a fascinating realm. You talking about getting invited to that congress and this event that you go to, this conference, you go to the Baden Baden. These are the few times that I kind of wish I was a doctor or at least a fly on the wall in some of these places because I find this stuff absolutely fascinating. I want to hear about how this eventually led you into your foray into genomics and the type of personalized genomics we're going to talk about today. But I also wanted to ask you. I am bringing a whole group of people to Europe next next year. Time this podcast gets released next year in June to July of 2019 to this place called the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland, which is like this 50 year old clinic where we're going to be undergoing a lot of these cutting edge technologies in biological medicine. Have you heard of this place before? Paracelsus?

Absolutely. Again, very, very fortunate to have to have studied with some of the best people in the world in biological medicine. One of those people who is a grand master is a fellow by the name of Dr. Thomas Rao. Dr. Rao studied under again, one of my other mentors, Dr. Conrad Wirthman, who is a, I believe he practiced up until the age of 89 or 91 in Austria as a pediatrician. Just brilliant. And he Taught Thomas Rao, and they ran this beautiful clinic called Paracelsus Clinic. And he is just, like I said, a grand master when it comes to biological medicine. He has a variety of courses that he teaches as well, both in personal and online. But he is a wonderful, wonderful, kind, caring, compassionate man that has spent his lifetime teaching biological medicine. And he has a very, very successful practice out there in Switzerland. I've gone to visit him a number of times. Absolutely wonderful man.

Awesome.

All right.

That makes me feel good about this conference or this clinic. What are some of the coolest technologies that haven't hit the US yet that are big in biological medicine in Europe right now?

Wow. I would say there's a device out there called a Mora machine. M O R A by Dr. Morell and Dr. Rashe.

Absolutely brilliant when it comes to how cells communicate with each other. Now, as we are using words to speak with each other, certain bodies require light to speak with each other. Certain is sound, certain is electronics. This device uses electronics and sound to drive specific frequencies into the system. So if I wanted to measure and increase the amount of, for example, iron in your body, if you are a very poor absorber of iron, and we've done this before on patients where if you take orally iron, the body still can't absorb it, their ferritin levels or transfer levels are still very, very low in their system. If I drive the frequency, the resonance of iron into their body using either sound or electronics, because like we said, every molecule has a resonance or a frequency that it vibrates at. Iron vibrates at a very specific frequency. We know this. We've measured this. We can drive that frequency into the system, then give them oral iron, and their body will accept it better. Their numbers go right back up. We have seen this on a variety of cases where we can increase the amount of glutathione in your body just by giving the frequency of glutathione without you taking any substrates or actual glutathione orally.

When you say the frequency of glutathione, you mean that glutathione or GSH actually oscillates or vibrates the molecules do at a specific frequency. You match that frequency prior to administration of the actual substance itself, and you see enhanced absorption or utilization.

Absolutely. Because what you're doing is you're priming the body. You're setting the body not by driving it inconsequentially into the system where the body has no choice, but now you're providing a mechanism to carry that molecule energetically. Into the patient.

Is that the type of thing, that MORA machine that would be overseen by a medical practitioner or are these the type of things people would purchase for home use?

These types of devices are fairly expensive and so if you can afford it, you can use it for home use. But it does require a fair amount of training and we do have a lot of medically trained professionals, practitioners.

And I've been pretty surprised at what my listeners will buy. There's people out there going out and buying, you know, I've talked about like gains wave acoustic sound wave therapy for your crotch to enhance your, your erections or your orgasms. And I've had people go off to Germany and you like buy 30,000, $40,000 units to give themselves their own go naddle treatments at home. So I'm always surprised at what people will purchase. So more, more therapy. That's fascinating.

It's pretty impressive. You know, we. There's the next innervation of the Moira machine and that is the ones that we have in the office here. We've got four of them. We have what's called the universal detox program as an example. There's a variety of programs, pre programmed sets that we can run patients on. But the MORA machine, the universal detox program, what it does is we can actually take a urine sample from you pre. We derive the frequencies into your system to allow your body to unhinge and pull out things like heavy metals, plastics, herbicides, pesticides. We can then. It's a 24 minute program. We can then take another urine sample from you after send both samples over to a lab. The lab will tell us there are more toxicants in the second sample than there is in the first sample. So we've actually proven that it does pull toxicants out of the system.

Variety of machines, a variety of programs on that machine can do this. One of my other favorite devices is a laser device. Dr. Weber has this fascinating machine where we can use this topically and if some choose, can also do it intravenously. Intravenously, putting light into the system. It's picked up by the red blood cells and white blood cells and traverses the entire body, thereby enhancing the quality of the red blood cells. You can also do it topically as we spoke about earlier. You can use red light, you can use green light, blue light, you can use infrared light. That has a deeper penetration. And all it does is it allows the cells to communicate with each other better. It's not using led.

That's what I was going to ask you about because Right now, here in my office, I have these joovv lights that are. They're red and near infrared LED lights, but this is different.

Yes. And so the depth of penetration of LED lights are not as wonderful as, as some people would lead you to believe LED lights. They have a wide dispersion field, but they don't. The depth of penetration isn't outstanding. When you look at it from, from the German perspective, they are very precise, very poignant, and it is pointing a finger directly at one specific frequency and driving that frequency into the system using lasers. So it's like dropping a pebble in a still pond. You get a point of impact, but then you get a ripple effect. That's the way that they so choose to do it. As opposed to the dispersion field with a poor penetration, they would rather have a deeper penetration and get a ripple effect from there.

And what's happening when you do that, what effect are you going after?

The depth of penetration to heal tissue from an inflammatory perspective, it is drastic.

So this would be for like a soft tissue injury.

Yes, but they've also done these studies on stroke cases, post stroke cases, and the research on this is actually quite astounding. Where they've taken two groups of people that have had similar, like strokes. The first group, they put a crown of 12 fiber optic leads into the skull, topically on top of the skull in various positions. The second group, they do not do these treatments for. The first group responded walking faster, talking faster, and responding so much quicker than group two. The only difference was doing this treatment. And so because the depth of penetration of these infrared lights penetrates through the thickness of the skull, you actually get it moving into the brain and helping the brain to regenerate. Just as we were speaking to when we were talking about how cells communicate with each other, it's done through light. That light is a beautiful carrier of information. If we can drive that information, that carrier of information, and we can put healing frequencies into that carrier, then we. That resultant impact that we're going to have to that cell that we are touching is so much more drastic. It is so much more healthy than we otherwise would have.

What's that form of laser called?

Weber W E B E R laser.

The Vber. So it's spelled Weber, but you pronounce it Vber because you have your cool German accent.

I get it.

Okay, cool. I'll find links for more information to all of these treatments and even a couple of things you've already mentioned so far, like the book on bioregulatory medicine and Dr. Fritz Albert Popp's website, this conference I'm leading in July, etc. I'll put all this stuff over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com GeneticTest Speaking of which, let's jump into personalized genomics. So, basically, long story short, you told me that 23andMe was giving me essentially a fraction of what I actually really needed to know about my body and my genes, and you had me do a different test instead. So walk me through what this test is that you had me and my boys do and why it's different than something like 23andMe.

Sure. Well, again, very, very fortunate to have studied and lectured from around the world. Got a pretty diverse group of patients, everything from sports athletes to chronic diseases such as cancer and autoimmune. Having access to the best technology and diagnostic equipment, including the ones that I have from Germany, allows me to perform and get the absolute best results for my patients. But I am only as good as a technology that is present in front of me. The success that I have is solely relevant upon the accurate quantification and the quality of the testing mechanism that I have. I need to make sure that any test that I use has to be accurate, has to be reproducible, and has to be very, very functionally relevant. So when we look at things like 23andMe, which are these direct to consumer tests, and I'm looking at this strictly aside from 23andMe being what was called initially Google Genetics and those conspiracy theories about who owned 23andMe and who they were married to, and the fact that it is pretty much a public record when you do your genetic testing. Stepping aside from that.

I know that the information that they use for 23andMe is strictly using SNPs and what they look for, which are single nucleotide polymorphisms and what they're looking for, they're looking for small variations in base. These pairs, and Most of these SNPs have absolutely no functional relevance whatsoever. They're basically good for data collection and for ancestry, perhaps, but they have no actual function in the body. For example, the mthfr, the one that we always keep hearing about, there are a lot of variations of mthfr, but looking at MTHFR by itself itself is similar to looking at a tree in a forest. And if that tree is unwell, you're making an assumption of the entire forest based on that one tree. It's not the way we should be looking at things. We have to look at associations of SNPs. We have to look at the way these SNPs work together in congruency with each other. The MTHFR is one of several SNPs involved in methylation. If you look at one in isolation, you are not getting the big picture. And so what we want to do is we want to be able to look at all of this information in context with other SNPs. So we need to know what your COMT gene is, which is your methylation, your catecholamine methylase transferase genes. We have to look at your serotonin receptor genes, if we're looking at just methylation itself. So for example, with 23andMe, they're looking at hundreds of different SNPs they're putting into one large PCR plate and they're running a bunch of tests on those individual SNPs and they send out what's called a primer. And that primer is looking for a specific set of base pairs and they're looking for the base pair that is looking identical to the primer. Now, with a lot of SNPs, especially with, for example, methylation SNP, SNPs, these SNPs look very, very similar to each other. And because you're looking at 100 SNPs plus 100 SNPs at the same time, the primer can make a mistake. They can pick the similar but not exactly identical SNP. This is why some of the research is stating 15% error rate. Other research is stating 40% error rate with these direct to consumer tests. That's my biggest problem, the error rate with these. The second concern I have is these CNVs. We really need to study things like copy number variance. We also have to look at things.

Like insertions or copy number variants.

Yes, cnv. So as an example.

When we're looking at a primer, if we're doing a typical 23andMe or these direct to consumer testing, they're looking for whether or not these base pairs are similar to the glutathione base pair. And if it is present or if it is not present, you'll get the resultant result. If it is not present, they will actually. I'm sorry, they will suggest that it is present. They don't tell you whether or not you have one copy of this gene or two copies of this gene. Okay, so with, with glutathione, if you have one copy of Glutathione, you detoxify. Detoxifying at about a 50% rate.

Now, they're just going to assume that you have that copy. So you are going to walk away thinking, I am detoxifying at a 100% rate. But they don't know if you have one copy of that gene or two copies of that gene. Now, with CNVs, we look at three different types of CNVs. We look at the GST, we look at its backup to the GST, which is the GSTM1, and we also look at something called the UGT2B17 gene. So we're looking at the glutathione gene, its backup, and then another gene altogether. So let's, for example, look at glutathione. Glutathione. If we have one copy of the GSTT one and one copy of the GSTM one, we're actually looking at a 50% and then a backup to that is 50%.

But if we have two copies of it, we could be two copies of each. We could be functioning at 100%. In terms of detoxification, there is a huge difference between that. It's a massive difference. That that difference plays one of the biggest roles with regards to our health in terms of detoxification. If we look at the UTTAR.

Gene, I'm going to look at this example in terms of hypotheticals. If, for example, you are a Slavic Russian, Slavic Russians don't carry the UGTB217 gene. That gene is particularly responsible for eliminating testosterone and DHT dihydrotestosterone out of the body. If you do not have this gene and you take testosterone for whatever reason, for whatever Olympic result you want to get, and the Olympic Committee goes in and tests.

There's no Russians taking testosterone, by the way.

No, no, no. Zero. Right. And they keep getting tests in their urine over and over and over again. But because they don't have that gene present, their body does not pull the testosterone out of the system, so it cannot be measured. So their results keep coming back negative all of the time. Hmm. Interesting. When they flipped over and they tested the blood, that's when they found material that they should not be using.

So this has implications even for things like doping control, whether you're going to test urine versus blood.

Absolutely. Wow. And interestingly enough, those individuals that don't have that gene and also produce another type of estrogen called 2 hydroxy estrogen. I'm sorry, 4 hydroxy estrogen. Those are the ones that are more responsible for things like prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian uterine, cervical cancers. Knowing this information, if you genetically have a tendency of not getting rid of your testosterone, converting that testosterone to the bad testosterone, the DHT, and not eliminating the 4 hydroxytestosterone or 4 hydroxy estrogen, we stand a higher chance of having bad cancer start to develop. So prostate cancer for men, ovarian, uterine, cervical and breast cancer for women. This information is vital to know whether or not you are a 14 year old or whether you're not, you're a 60 year old. Having that information is good to know. This way you can treat prophylactically preventatively before you run into a problem down the future.

And 23andMe doesn't test for any of this stuff. These multiple SNPs or these other things. You call them CNPs, CNVs?

Yes. Copy number variants. Yes. Okay. They also don't test for what's called indels or insertions or deletions. These are specific for executive function genes. So what's called the ADRA2B gene or the serotonin gene known as is the 5 HTTLPR gene. These ones are responsible for things like stress, post traumatic stress disorder. The serotonin ones is mood, anxiety, response to SSRIs. They don't measure these types of genes. They measure to see whether it's present or not present. But if they have then been subsequently deleted and they're not present in the body, wow. We need to know this information.

Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about my balls. I have been bathing my balls in photobiomodulated light for two years. My testosterone. And I published the blood work on my website last week to show this has gone from a touch above 300 to nearly 900. That's my total testosterone. And one of the main things that I've done consistently recently, in addition to not competing in Ironman triathlon anymore, which I think also made a difference big time, is I've been using light therapy on my gonads. Those are my testicles for those of you who don't know what gonads means. And I use this thing called a joov j o o v. They have demonstrated in research that a wavelength of about 600 to 800 nanometers activates the mitochondria in the leydig cells of your testes to increase testosterone production. And it doesn't involve injections or gas station dick pills. So this thing also, when you shine it over your thyroid, it can increase thyroid gland activity. You can do a full body treatment and it can increase collagen production and muscle recovery. The list of uses for this goes on and on. My kids even have one that they use before bed while they're reading, called a Joovv Mini. Well, what Joovv is giving to all of our listeners is a special gift. Upon your order from Joovv, very simple. You go to Joovv.com that's J-O-O-V-V.com Ben that's Joovv.com Ben not all photobiomodulation is created equal. This thing's low EMF, very powerful. So you need to use it for 10 to 20 minutes per day. And I even have a podcast with them. If you go to my website and search for Joovv, you'll find it. But in the meantime, for the gifteroo, go to j O-O-V-V.com Ben this podcast is also brought to you by the complete absence of explosive diarrhea. What do I mean by that? Before you gasp in horror, I actually eat bread. I eat gluten, but I avoid any of the inflammation or gut irritation and even the neural inflammation and the brain fog that can come with gluten because I pop about four capsules of this stuff called gluten polypeptidase. That's the active enzyme that breaks down gluten in your body, my friend. Actually, the guy who developed this stuff, Matt Gallant, he's shown that you can sprinkle this gluten polypeptidase on bread and literally witness the bread being digested before your eyes. It's crazy. So his supplement is called Gluten Guardian. The enzyme is technically, I think I just called it gluten polypeptidase, but it's also called dipeptidyl peptidase is another name for it. Dpp4. Anyways, it breaks down the exterior coating of the gluten protein that would normally present your body with the the texture of basically human hair. If you've ever tried to. I don't know how many of you out there eat hair, but it winds up in your crap because your body doesn't digest it. Gluten is similar, except it inflames your gut, but not when you take this stuff. You get 10% off the already discounted price. So it's 10% on top of their existing discount. Very simple. You go to glutenguardian.com greenfield that's glutenguardian.com greenfields don't go to Subway without it, please. Actually, you know, just don't go to Subway. But, you know, Anytime you're at a steakhouse and they bring that wonderful bowl of bread out to the table with the butter, dark yellow, orange, grass fed butter, you don't want to be that person who's just like eating the butter. You want to spread the butter on the bread and the gluten guardian lets you do that. Glutenguardian.com Greenfield okay, so with 23andMe, can you take your raw results and just export those somewhere else to get this type of information? Or are you saying like the actual results itself in terms of the raw data, even those you can't harvest to get these type of, these type of variables that you're talking about right now?

Right, and that's, and because the basis is incorrect, because the raw data is wrong, any further evaluations that are utilizing this pool of data, they also become flawed.

Okay, what's, what's the, what's the, is there like a name? Because for example, I've interviewed Naveen Jain from viome that they do microbiome testing and they have a special form of biome testing that they do, that's genome sequencing analysis that's different than I think, what's called a meta transcriptome analysis that other companies do. So they get better results or more complete results. Is there a similar type of differentiation in terms of what you would call the genomic evaluation that you favor versus something like 23andMe?

Well, the concern that sometimes, and although I love those other tests, I think they do a wonderful job. It turns out to be a very, very slippery slope. We have 10 times more bacteria in our system than we have active human cells. They say that we are 99% non human. When we look at DNA, we actually have, have 10 times more viral DNA than we have bacterial DNA. That is an incredible amount of DNA and RNA. To be able to assess it becomes an extremely, extremely difficult thing. What we tend to focus on is the human being, the human body. We tend to focus on its impact, functional impact, on the variety of genes that we look at. Looking at one gene or one SNP by itself is absolutely, absolutely erroneous. You are, and by that same token, looking at certain Virome genes or bacterial genes and how they interplay with the human, that is absolutely important. But we haven't seen any functional relevance to this as yet.

Right. So what do you call the type of sequencing that you do?

It is still also considered SNP testing. So we do SNP testings, but in addition to that, we add on the CNVs and we add on the indels so it's still considered genomic testing from the human. And it provides us with the largest database, we have, the largest database for CNVs and Indels in the world.

Okay, got it. I think it would be really interesting for people to be able to see what you have gleaned from the results of my genetic testing. Because just from the brief discussion that we had, I was intrigued and it was honestly just, just in a few minutes that we were able to talk. I got more health information out of you than I have gotten from almost any doc I've ever worked with. So what I would love to do, if your game, is to jump into some of the things that you specifically noted from my results. Because some of the things we found I think people should really know about because these were issues I was completely unaware of.

Yeah, sure. I think one of the things that I love about this type of testing is that it's not, not done in some backdoor lab somewhere. It's done at what we would consider to be an Ivy League university out here in Canada called McGill University.

Oh yeah, I've heard of McGill.

It is the best. It is the only one that's certified by Genomics Canada to do all the genetic testing. So we do all the genetic testing or they do all the genetic testing for sick Kids Hospital and all of the major hospitals here in Toronto, but also provide the same facilities for us to do our testing in. It is a sealed envelope, so to speak. So it's not for public record. This information is strictly yours and of the practitioner that you so choose to have part of this system and I would suggest to be one of the most important aspects of this. It's not just here's the genetic information, congratulations. Now you have to get a mini degree in genetics to figure it out, but we also can sit down with you and go over acid during the cons consultation. What those results mean by linking all of these different components together to be able to provide a fulsome discussion about what your genetics are. Once we figure out what that is. This is part of that life cycle of that patient. Once we figure out what that is, we then take that next step and we say, here's the supplements that I think would be exceptionally helpful for you to be able to utilize on a daily basis to plug some holes that might be present in your genes that in addition to the epigenetics lifestyle changes that we would recommend provide a really wonderful full diagnostic mechanism for you moving forward to become exceptional when it comes to your health. So we have something like 75 different ingredients that we can then customize and blend together specifically for that patient. So it's not just here are 19 or 20 different supplements. Go off to the retail health food store and buy whichever ones you see fit. We actually can take those individual ingredients and we can blend them together and we ship one bottle, or, sorry, several bottles of all of those ingredients mixed together of where you take some in the morning and you take some in the evening and that becomes your customized formula.

Here in the States, a lot of companies have talked to me about doing this. They've even had me like send over my 23andMe results. There are other companies doing it with my poop. Like, I forget the name of this one company. It's like Thrive or something along those lines. They're trying to do like customized probiotics. There are other companies doing. I have some up in my pantry from a company who looked at my 23 me results and sent me customized vitamins. But what you were saying is that if the actual data itself is flawed, that I'm not going to get what I need. And is there something different about the way you're creating these vitamins or something? Supplements too?

Right. And so one of the best parts is it's a perfectly certified GMP facility that Health Canada takes a look at and make sure that we're running it all correctly and properly. The quality of the ingredients that we have. As an example, the Malaysian government invited us out to look at their facility of how they are manufacturing a specific form of tocotrienols. This type of tocotrienols, the only type in the world that you can get in a powdered form that shows a better absorption rate than any oil version of tocopherols or tocotrienols you can possibly get.

This is a government funded facility out in Malaysia. The quality of supplementation that we have is by far without a doubt absolutely outstanding. It becomes then customized for that patient. And we look at things that are very, very relevant in terms of the genetics. It's not here you have an MTHFR problem. Take a methyl donine group. Because we find that people overmethylate and people that overmethylate, they tend to get more anxious, they tend to get more reactions than if we were to provide folinic acid instead as an example. And so we become very, very specific to lifestyle of the patient. That's why we do anthropometric tests before when you do a screener. But then we also make sure that we've got the proper genetic information, and then we can customize it specifically for the patient. And I will say that when you're looking at something like genetics for stool analysis, I gotta tell you, and as well as for blood, there's a lot of companies, even Canada, that do an analysis on your blood and then provide you with customized supplementation. If I follow a specific diet, my entire microbiome will change. And then does my supplementation change? If I change my diet, my blood chemistry will change. Then do I have to change my supplementation? And so it becomes, again, I keep using this term slippery slope. If we can focus on the tendency of the human, human being, if all things left equal, will you be producing more 4 hydroxy estrogen? And if that's the case, your tendency for hormonally dominant cancers is increased. All things being equal, if you are that producer, you need to take D glucarate.

Right. Because your genes aren't really going to change unless you decide you're going to go out and do CRISPR or something.

Absolutely. And that's just it. We only do this test once. Because your genes are your genes. They will not change.

Yeah. By the way, you mentioned a total rabbit hole, but you mentioned tocotrienols. I recently did a podcast that I think will be released by the time folks are listening into this one. About this GDF11. GDF11. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but apparently GDF11MRNA has these really robust DNA repair mechanisms, particularly in things like senescent stem cells. And two of the best ways to naturally increase your levels of GDF 11 are supplementing with quercetin and also tocotrienols.

Yeah, yeah. The impact of tocotrienols on hair follicle growth, on non alcoholic fatty liver disease, on the. What's called the 9p21 gene, which we'll speak about with regards to your genetics and the boys. It's imperative to have something in your system as a protective mechanism.

This is notwithstanding, it's an absolute importance to know that if I have inflammation, if I have vascular endothelial inflammation, I need to be able to do things to help to protect myself against that.

Okay, cool. So a little rabbit hole there. But I will link to the podcast episode with Tom and Gogli where we Talked about this GDF11 stuff. That was my podcast I did with the guys who run the NAD injection clinic down in. Down in San Diego. Okay, so, Dr. Dhanani, let's jump into some of the things that you gleaned from the results that you Saw from me. I think one of the first things that you talked to me about that just blew my mind was vitamin D and absorption of vitamin D. Can you get into that?

Yeah, sure. So one of the things that we look at when we look at vitamin D is we think of either the sunshine vitamins or it's something that we have to take orally. Now, with the vitamin D, it is not even considered to be truly a vitamin. It's actually considered to be a pro hormone. It's one of those things that are absolutely important when it comes to the health of our brain function, but also to our immune system. And we measure not just do you. So when you go for a blood test, they're looking at do you have an adequate amount of vitamin D in your system? When we do the genetic test, we're not looking at blood markers. We're looking at your body's tendency for vitamin D. We measure two different components when it comes to vitamin D. We measure to see whether or not you convert vitamin D from sunshine directly into the, what's called the125 hydroxy vitamin D, the actual component of vitamin D. So we have to convert it from sunshine to vitamin D and then once it's converted to vitamin D, because vitamin D is fat soluble and our blood is water soluble, we need to have a carrier molecule that carries vitamin D throughout the system. Well, genetically we also measure that as well. And so with regards to yourself, you could walk around completely naked, Ben, in the sunshine, and you cannot absorb very well vitamin D from the Sunshine to the 125 hydroxy vitamin D. Your system. Wow, you just can't do it.

That's crazy. And, and that also, by the way, and you and I have talked just very briefly about things like my wellness FX results. I spend a lot of time in the sunshine. Like a lot of, a lot of people know me as the guy who doesn't put on a shirt and honestly doesn't probably put on pants enough either and spends a lot of time outdoors. And my vitamin D is like, you know, it's 40, 45, something like that. So it's not through the roof. It's not what you would expect from someone who is as exposed to sunlight as I am.

Right. And so now part of that concern is the absorption of vitamin D. Thankfully, you transport it very well. So people that don't transport it very well and errors have been made in the past where people say, go ahead, take 10,000 IUs of vitamin D if you have a cold or a flu, go ahead, take 50,000 IUs of vitamin D. If you don't transport your vitamin D very well, you're only going to be absorbing 2, maybe 3,000 IUs of that vitamin D. And so that becomes one of the concerns is you could be not converting it or you could not be transporting vitamin D very well. And we need to know that genetically, if we don't know that, then we may not be supplementing very well. So as an example, if you have a poor transporter with vitamin D, it would behoove you to take vitamin D two times in the day and not just once in the day. Because if you take it once in the day, you will fill your transporters and the rest will pass right through you and get stored in fat tissue.

And a lot of people who are just using the sun and maybe not using vitamin D or only using vitamin D in the fall or winter, as I've been prone to do, they would still not be getting enough vitamin D if they happen to have the same genetic issue that I do.

Absolutely.

But if they supplement with it, they can translate transported just fine and they.

Will get enough in through their system and passed out to the cells that require it.

Yeah. By the way, I've been using the, the Thorn liquid vitamin D, vitamin K blend since we talked. I take 2000 international units a day now, interestingly. And I realized that we're putting health information out there on the Internet, but this is just, this is what I do to help people out. So I don't mind even if my health insurance premiums are gonna go up, should my, should my insurance adjuster listen to this show. Both of my children happen to have the same issue. So my kids now are supplementing with vitamin D too, along with a few other things based on our discussion. So this was very valuable for me and my wife too, to be able to look at our boys and hopefully stave off health issues with them in the future. Even just let them optimize things like their bone development or their muscular development or even their neural development, which we know are all associated with vitamin D availability. So that was really interesting for me to know and influence my decision to start supplementing with vitamin D. What else did you learn? I think another thing was glutathione was a big one.

Right, Right. And this is a bit of a pause for question here. I totally agree. If there's a, if there's a concern with, for example, glutathione, both with yourself and your wife, for example, what about the kids? Are we trying to play God, are we trying to play a role that we're not supposed to be playing here or are we just trying to maximize and make the system as efficiently as humanly possible? If, for example, 100 years ago you had a glutathione system that was working at 50%, 100 years ago there weren't a tremendous amount of toxicants present and so you could probably search, survive and dare I say, thrive in that case, if you had a 50% functioning Glutathione system now in today's day and age, I would suggest that chronic disease would pass into your system fairly, fairly easily.

Just because of that especially. And I take pretty good care of my personal environment. You and I have talked about this, how I live out in the forest and I optimize my air and my water and my light and my electricity and then basically I go f stuff up every time I step onto an airplane and you know, fly to LA or fly to Tokyo or walk through the, the jet fuel infused, you know, Runway down to get onto the airplane or, you know, step out and go for a run when I'm in a big city along the roads where all the brake dust and the exhaust is. So, yeah, I mean, even if I'm tweaking my own personal environment, there's a lot going on living in this post industrial era that I think amplifies at least my own glutathione needs pretty highly.

Absolutely. Which is a great segue. When we look at things like glutathione. It's not just the one gene that we look at with regards to glutathione. And I just want to be clear, when we're talking to glutathione, we're not talking about the actual production of glutathione, we're talking about the utilization and the recycling of glutathione. So there's a variety of genes that are responsible for being able to recycle glutathione. The first is the GM GSTT one, the second is the GSTM one, and the third is the GSTP one. And so when we look at the GSTT one, the example that I use is on Wednesdays in my neighborhood, it's where the trash day is. And so Wednesday in the morning, there's a big lumbering trash truck that comes through, two big men, they come out and they grab our trash bins, they throw it into their truck and off they go. Well, a couple of hours later, the recycle guys, they come by smaller bins, smaller guys, smaller truck. They also take the trash, they toss it and off they go. And a couple of hours later, there's a guy that cycles through my neighborhood on a bicycle and he's looking around for things that might have been thrown out that are of value. There's some that throw out a sofa, there's some that throw out a washer dryer. He calls up his buddy who has a van, they swing by and they grab the sofa, they grab one and off they go. A couple of hours later, the neighborhood school.

You must live in a pretty clean neighborhood.

I'm telling you. This happens only once a week though. The grade fours, they have a class project to beautify the neighborhood and so they let out early and a bunch of kids go running around the neighborhood and they pick up little pieces of trash off the lawn. So in my neighborhood, there's four ways to, to clean that neighborhood up once a week. Imagine that happening thousands of times in every single cell in your body every single hour. That is incredible. How much we utilize glutathione to make toxicants water soluble to pull it out of the system. When we look at the first two main genes, the largest two main genes to be able to recycle glutathione, that is the GSTT one and that is the GSTM one. Those are the two that are responsible for pulling out the majority of the toxins out of the system. And for fun you can Dr. Google this and you can type in any type of disease process.

And link that to low glutathione and you will see a very strong correlation between whatever can cancer, whatever autoimmune disease that you type in to low levels of glutathione. Now I'm not suggesting that low levels of glutathione cause that disease. What I am saying there's a very interesting correlation that perhaps your body is trying to desperately detoxify becomes unsuccessful for whatever reason that might have been the causative agent, but for whatever reason becomes unsuccessful and hence you end up with a chronic disease.

With glutathione. The first two that we measure, we look at this as CNVs copy number variants, which means we are looking at to see if one gene had been passed over from mom and one gene had been passed over from dad. And in your case, Ben, you've got one copy of that gene. So one of your two parents did not have a copy to pass over to you. So you are working. That's considered to be somewhat average, meaning that 15% of the population has at least one of these two genes deleted. The backup to that gene is called the GSTM1. And of that you don't have any copies. Now. It does not mean that that gene is less efficient. It means that that gene does not exist. There is no blueprint, there is no backup for where your body can go back to and say, how do I recycle glutathione again? What can I draw upon to recycle glutathione? There is no, there's no blueprint for your body to be able to manufacture the mechanism to recycle glutathione in your system. It is completely missing that paragraph on the 23 page book that we have. That is our genome. That paragraph is actually missing.

Yeah, I'm looking on page 37 right now of my results and it says, yes, zero copies of GSTM1. And apparently that is putting me at risk for poor estrogen metabolism, the. The elimination of potentially harmful estrogen byproducts, which you'd get from plastics and shampoos and soaps and things like that. And it is interesting because if you look at my Wellness FX blood results, which I don't know if I'll have released them by the time this podcast comes out, but pretty, pretty close to the time this podcast comes out, I'll be putting my blood results out there for people to look at. My estrogens tend to be a little bit high, almost as though my body is building up some of these estrogens that I get exposed to from my environment.

And that becomes one of the sort of secondary concerns is not just from a hormonal perspective. It is the backup of the main detoxifier. So if you walk into an environment where you are breathing in a chemical, you will run through your GM GSTT one fairly quickly because you only have one of those two copies. And then the reliance falls to the GSTM one, its backup to be able to pick up the slack that the first main gene is not able to acclimatize to. And that's where you don't run into the copies.

Sorry to interrupt you, but like, like underneath this it says ingredients that enhance GST function are. And then it lists N acetylcysteine and alpha lipoic acid, selenium and milk thistle. So when I'm reading through my report like this, or for example, when you or the folks at your lab are reading through it, does this then come down to that personalized genomics that you talk about regarding supplementation? Like you would put together a compounded formula for me that includes things like.

That based on anthropometrical results based on your height, your weight, your sex. Yes. We would customize a formula that would include not just limited to nac, lipoic acid, selenium, muck thistle.

So I don't have to go to Amazon and buy bottles of all those. You just basically create me a formula specifically for you.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, gotcha. So in terms of glutathione, the bottom line here is that I fall into the category of somebody who needs to be supplementing with some form of glutathione.

And that's because if you had one copy, you could probably get by. But because that second GST M1 is not even present, it's what's considered absent or deleted. You don't have a blueprint to be able to recycle glutathione. And so one person that can receive glutathione, your body can manufacture it. One person may recycle it several times. You will recycle it much, much less than that before you blow out of your glutathione and need another source of glutathione.

I've got my boys now taking glutathione every day. They're doing like a sublingual glutathione called. Right now they're using one called ALMS Bio. It's like this liposomal glutathione in an oral syringe that has some mitochondrial support and it's got like CoQ10 in it and PQQ, which are really good mitochondrial antioxidants. But based off the fact that they also have that same missing snip as I do, they're. They're supplementing with glutathione as I am. But one of the things that you told me, because I was already supplement with glutathione, when you and I chatted briefly about my results, and I told you that one of the things that I do is I actually get an injection of it about once a week. And you mentioned that that might not be a good idea depending on the source of the injection. And I think you were talking about like a liquid versus a powder and the stability of glutathione. I know some people are doing injections or, or injectable glutathione or other substances that come to them in a powder form. What's the issue with that in terms of stability?

Yeah, because glutathione is extremely ubiquitous anytime you utilize it, it is something that is so active in our body. And it is such a, I would use the word complete system of detoxification, that any type of toxicant that is present there, it can react to. And I'll preface this by giving an example. So there I am in Germany, in a clinic. In a clinic that deals with Parkinson's cases. And so, of course, Parkinson's patient walks in with a typical pill rolling tremor, with a shuffle gate, sits down in the IV chair, and we take a powdered version of glutathione, we reconstitute it in the office, and we inject that glutathione into the patient. The patient then gets up and walks away. No pill rolling tremor, no shuffle gate. Perfectly, perfectly stable.

Oh, you mean like instant.

Instant. Within 10 seconds. That patient needs to come back every three weeks to get that IV. And it's a very fast, but yet a very competent way of manufacturing and reconstituting that glutathione. So now I'm back in Canada, and I'm all excited because I'm about to get my first Parkinson's case. This is, goodness, 12, 13 years ago. And I get my glutathione in a bottle, in a liquid. I draw it into the syringe, I inject it into the patient. I get nothing. I apologize to the patient. And I said, wow, this is awkward, because I was expecting this to work really well. I have them come back the next week, I rejig my formulation, I get an approval from the guys out in Germany. I do the exact same thing, and I get the exact same response, which is nothing. The way that we manufacture glutathione here in Canada, dare I say in North America, is in a liquid form. It's manufactured in the facility, in the lab. It's already reconstituted in the lab.

Yeah, that's how mine comes. It's in liquid form. The stuff they ship to my house, right?

And then DHL or FedEx puts it in a box and sends it over to you. And it gets moved around, it gets shifted, it gets opened, it gets exposed to sunlight, it gets shaken, and then it's put in a refrigerator, for example, and we pull it out again and then we inject it. It is already reacted by that time. It is already in a oxidized form. So what you're injecting what I have been injecting into patients way back when was expensive saline. So what we are doing now, what the ideal is to be able to do now is to be able to get a powdered version of glutathione that you can get from Germany and some labs can manufacture it here. I'm sure you can get some labs in the States to be able to do that. And I've got a couple of contacts that I can provide over to you. They can give you a inert powdered form of glutathione, which then you can reconstitute at home by adding some saline in this syringe with this powder, glutathione. And that will be the active component of glutathione that you will then inject into your system. It's a vastly different system. Wow.

Okay, that's really good to know. So it, it looks like maybe this liquid injectable glutathione that I, and I know a lot of other people use, like a liquid injectable. It's not, not really doing much good at all.

And I think that, you know, the best way to be able to, to get glutathione in your system is have your body manufactured on its own. Should you be deleted in that gene, then you have to look at an extra source.

And that's why you recommend things like N acetylcysteine and alpha lipoic acid. Milk thistle and selenium.

Absolutely. Because then what you're doing is you're training your body to be able to recycle it on its own. Tertiary to that you could get a oral source or an IV source. And the oral source source I would recommend, if you are going to pick an oral source, is to pick something that's liposomal. It is more stable than any other mechanism out there. It's not clearly as good as the iv, nor the components that are utilized to recycle glutathione like the N acetylcysteine, the lipoic acid, the selenium or the milk vessel. But it's nonetheless a very, a very decent mechanism.

Yeah. Stuff I use tastes like a. Tastes like a, an orange creamsicle. So there's that too. It's tasty.

Yeah.

Okay. I want to talk about endothelial function and blood sugar. You brought up some genetic markers that are specifically related to that. We took a pretty deep dive into that and even how that might influence things like exercise choices, cardiovascular health. And you also, when we discussed some of the endothelial issues, you talked about something called endopath as a good self quant method, HRV as well. Go ahead and walk us through this whole idea of genetic testing and endothelial function.

Well, there are a couple of things that I found Very intriguing about your test results. One of them is what's called the 9P21 gene. And the second one is called the T CCF7L2 gene. The 9P21 gene is looking at endothelial or vascular inflammation. This is independent. So I just want to be clear about this. This is independent of lifestyle. This is what your parents had gifted you. If you were eating foods that are. That are causing inflammation to your system. That can be usually easily measured on blood tests. However, what this 9p21 gene suggests is that your mom and your dad, either or both of them, have provided you with the genetics to have a preordained inflammatory dysfunction or inflammatory level that's present already within your vasculature system at the start. So you're already starting with high levels of inflammation in your vasculature.

That'S present without even eating anything, without even altering diet, without even having looking at epigenetics. This is a genetic predisposition. You could obviously make it much, much worse by doing specific things. But from an initial, you're first out of the gate. You start off with a tremendous amount of vascular inflammation. So when we measure this, we look at this as a 9P21 from 0 to 4, 0 being very little, if any, vascular inflammation. 4 is the highest that we measure, and you sit at a four. This is also one of the best indicators for cardiovascular, so both cerebrovascular and cardiovascular issues. So things like heart attacks and strokes are fairly prevalent in people that have the 9p21 gene. I do not have a crystal ball. I do not have a magic wand. I do not know if this will develop for you, but I do know that the predisposition is there.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks, dad. Okay, so I carry a naturally high level of risk for vascular inflammation is what you're saying?

Yes.

Okay. What can I do about that?

And because that's there, if you are to do other things that increase that vascular inflammation, well, you're setting yourself up for. For bad things to happen, I would say.

And people who carry this issue, what kind of things would. Would cause a.

So very, very high intensity intensive exercise, if you think about it.

Yeah, I don't do any of that.

If you do the quick hitt, if you do a really high intense exercise for, let's say four minutes, and then you stop for two minutes and you go again hard for two minutes. What you're doing is you're creating a massive amount of blood flow that runs through the system and then all of a sudden stops and then you're creating another massive flow of blood flow that happens through the system and then again it stops. What that does is that flow of blood can create more inflammation, more nicking and more breaking of that vascular.

Really? See, I always thought that high intensity exercise or high intensity interval training was, was good for cardiovascular health.

You're right in the sense that it does help to increase the size of muscle. It does increase the, the cardiovascular tone. However, if you're a 9p21 gene, those are the ones that know those, those guys that have, that run a marathon and have a heart attack the next day. Yeah, Those are the nine p21 genes. Genes, you know, those guys that end up.

Are you just saying that or. These folks have been tested.

They've actually been tested.

Wow.

Those people that die of chemotherapy then because of cancer. Those are the nine P21s. Because when you introduce something into the system that is toxic like chemotherapy. Now I understand the reason for the chemotherapy and I'm not going to debate that because that's a whole conversation for another time. Time. But that toxic element that's put into your system is creating more inflammation. So those people that already have a preordained amount of inflammation and you add more inflammation to the system, you're running to a really big disservice. Those people that walk into an environment where there's a bunch of smells and they react to those smells more often than not. Those are the nine P21 individuals because they already walk into the area with a bit of vascular inflammation to begin with. Then they smell in a toxin and that toxin goes into their vascular system and irritates it further. They already start off at a level where they're irritated and now it becomes exponentially. So.

Remember that the largest organ in the body is not the skin, but it is the endothelium. So you can have vascular inflammation just by breathing something in, just by over exercising a certain way and by exposing yourself to some toxins via food, be it aerosolized. Those are the people that we need to be a little bit more concerned of when it comes to things like cardiovascular risk and cerebrovascular risk.

So you're saying that for me personally, being for example, a pro athlete right now, racing in a sport that involves a very large amount of high intensity interval training, if I were looking at things from a pure longevity or vascular health standpoint, that's a poor choice for me. Okay. What could I do to mitigate the damage? You're saying watch toxins. I know that Blood sugar can be an issue when it comes to endothelial function, and I do a pretty good job watching my fluctuations in blood sugar. But, I mean, are there other things I can do or other tests or tracking methods that I could use to see whether or not I'm okay in that department?

Well, yeah, you mentioned a really good point with regards to blood sugar. This TCF7L2 gene, which is the best independent marker for type 2 diabetes. It's looking at whether or not your pancreas, the islets of Langerhans, if they are producing the right amount of insulin in response to the starch that you are consuming, and if you are producing the right amount of insulin in response to that starch, then your level, your chances of having type 2 diabetes is lowered. You actually have a. What's called dysregulation in the amount of insulin that you are producing. So if you are consuming carbs or starches in high quantities, you are going to create more vascular inflammation. So I know that you are a star when it comes to the amount or keeping an eye on the quality, the quantity of the amount of carbs that you're putting into your system.

Yeah, I wear a continuous blood glucose monitor.

Had you been anybody else, truthfully, had you been anybody else that is not tracking to the level that you are tracking it, that person given the same activity would have probably run into some kind of a cardiovascular event or a concern.

Geez. Well, back when I was racing Iron man, that's what got me into a lot of this, like biohacking and blood and biomarker testing was when I thought I was super healthy racing Iron Man. And some of the first basic blood panels that I got showed rampant insulin and fasted blood glucose above 100. So I had some pretty serious. And I was exercising a lot. So it all had to do with diet and diet timing and carbohydrate timing. But, yeah, I mean, I witnessed this on my own blood and biomarkers even when I was, what you could argue, more fit or even aerobically than I am now.

And going that one step further, yes, it was the genomic predispositions that we have that led us to those kinds of blood results that then told us to say, we need to be a little bit more cautious as to how we are exercising to the degree and the intensity that we are actually exercising because of those blood markers, which, again, is because of these genetics. So there's certain supplementation that you can use to help to mitigate or protect this endothelial Lining. The first thing that I've seen clinically, and some of these are the tocotrienols, the essential fatty acids, et cetera, et cetera. But what I have seen in my office clinically is I have not met a 9P 21.4G person that does not have high levels of heavy metals. Because what happens is the body says, I have not a Teflon coat on the inner lining of my blood vessels. I have a cheap knockoff. Sorry Ben. I have a cheap knockoff of endothelial protection. I need to strengthen this lining. I need to get some kind of a material that is more Teflon like. So what it does is it will draw upon any type of heavy metal that you might have consumed, you might have breathed into the system. It will sequester that and it will use that as a protector, if you will, on the inner lining of the blood vessels. And so if you do some form of a heavy metal challenge, I will bet you a gluten free, dairy free, healthy meal that you will have high levels of heavy metals if you're not already trying to pull them out of your system.

Now, I've already fixed that because I did. I mean, you're spot on. I had high levels of mercury, high levels of lead, even my, my iron was kind of high. I think copper and I want to say cadmium was another one. So I've done some of these tests, some of these, what do you call the, the urine test tests. It's like a 24 hour provocation.

Yes, there are a couple of them. And the one that is mostly recommended is what's called the DMPS DTA challenge.

Yeah, I did that challenge test and I've since done follow up tests that have shown my metals to be under control or even pretty low. And what I started doing for the past, well, it's been three years now, I'm doing a detox program from this guy, Dr. Dan Pompa. It's like this thing, this full metal detoxification program. I do it every year, it takes three months. But because of all the travel that I do and all the metals I get exposed to, and I'm guessing it's this genetic issue that, that influences the fact that I need to keep doing it. I go back and I do this, this three month process where you know, he's got these different supplements that, that help to take metals out of the body. And it's a whole, you know, I told you this. I use the infrared sauna almost every day and I do a coffee enema once a week. I do a lot of things to try and cleanse my body of metals, but I would imagine if I weren't doing that, I would be a candidate for being in pretty serious trouble.

I would agree. I would agree. With absolute intensity. Yes, it's lovely to know. It's lovely to know what your glutathione levels are. It's lovely to know what your 9p21 gene is. It's also fantastic to know what your blood sugar tendencies are. All of those things are all sort of independent standalone genes. But if we take them all in context, meaning they can be a single tree of those forests. But if we take them in context, see how we wrap it together and say these are what we really need to be cautious of. And so there are outside objective measures, not just genetic tests, but there are outside objective measures that you could utilize on a regular basis. So just keep an eye on what your levels are. I still suggest doing every so often a DMPS EDTA chelation challenge. And as a side note, what you might want to look for is you might want to look for a spike in your aluminum. We tend to store, we have what's called superficial, middle and deep storage sites. Superficial is considered to be the blood. It's actually not even a storage site. It's more of a transport medium. The middle storage site is considered to be more fat, maybe organs, some muscle restore heavy metals in there. The deepest storage site is more brain, spinal cord. And so how we know we are in the deepest storage site is because aluminum tends to be stored in the brain for some interesting reason, tends to have an affinity towards the brain.

When you get a spike in your aluminum, when you do a DMPS in, that tells the practitioner that you are at the deepest storage site. In order to get to the deepest storage site, you have to clear out the superficial, you have to clear out the middle to get to that deepest storage site. So if you see a spike in aluminum, then we know we're at the deepest storage site and we know that we've cleared things out from the middle and superficial and we have a few more sort of clean cleanses to do. And then we should be clean, meaning that everything is out of your system. Then you just have to consistently do a coffee enema every so often. And Dr. Pompa's work, which is fantastic, it's sensational, follow that mechanism as a let's keep them out of your body.

Gotcha. By the way, for just home testing for something like toxic metals and this provocation test we're talking about is this pretty much very similar to a doctor's data kit that you could order and oversee yourself at home. Because I know there's, there's like 24 hour urine collection kits you can order from companies like Direct Labs, for example.

Yeah, I think those are, those are decent mechanisms. However, you need something to provoke the heavy metals to come out of your body. And, and there used to be an oral DMSA challenge that they did out of Germany. They don't do this anymore. And the reason for that is that the absorptive capacity of DMSA is not fantastic. I would suggest the last I read was around 30 to 40%. And so, and DMSA doesn't pull out lead, does not pull out cadmium very well out of the system. You need to, I would suggest go and visit a practitioner that has the capacity of doing that test where you get, based on your height, based on your weight, you get injected with DMPs and EDTA.

And then you sit in a chair and you pee into a cup and you take that over some, some time and you send it over to doctor's data. But doctor's data is an excellent, excellent lab. That's the one that is used by most practitioners in North America. They do a fantastic job. However, the in home kits of the DMSA oral doesn't do justice as an IV of DMPs and EDA.

Okay, good to know. The other thing that you had mentioned for monitoring your vascular health in addition to hrv, I think it was called endopath. What is that?

Yes. Yeah. So there are a variety of different testing mechanisms that you can utilize as an objective measure to see what your vascular system is doing. There is the pulse wave velocity device, there is an endopath, there's also a coronary artery scan. So the endopath and the pulse wave velocity, what they do is they actually measure the endothelial lining to see the level of inflammation that is present in that area. The concern sometimes that I have with those systems, although they are wonderful rapid tests that you can perform, they can also change. Just like doing a blood test for supplement status, they can change over time. So as you are improving, those numbers should get better, as they will. But if you eat a meal or two meals that are more influential, inflammatory in nature, that can alter your endopath, that can alter your pulse wave velocity score. So just keeping it in mind that you need to compare apples to apples.

Okay. So you need to basically be in the same state from a diet and activity standpoint. Anytime that you go in and do something like an endopat test.

Absolutely.

And, and can most doctors run that? It's called N E, N D O P A T. That's what. That's how you would describe this?

That's correct, yes.

And any doctor can do that?

Absolutely, yes.

Okay. PAT stands for Peripheral Arterial Tone.

Tone. Exactly.

Okay. All right. And that's a pretty quick test that I could just go in and get. What would you say, like once a year to evaluate vascular function or.

I think so. I think once the genetics are put into place and you're on a supplement program that really keeps things mitigated and you are to forced following the correct diet and supplementation, obviously, and lifestyle, so the epigenetic components are put into place, then I think once a year is just fine.

Is there anything to this idea that phosphatidylcholine, it's like something you can get as an IV or as an injection, that that can somehow the phospholipids in that can somehow cause the vascular lining to become more slippery or to effect change that would decrease inflammation. Is that something that could be added to an IV and used regularly?

I think that that is a wonderful mechanism of approach. My only pause for concern on something like this, Ben, is that if you have heavy minerals already laden within the endothelial vasculature, and you're using phosphatidylcholine or phosphatidylserine, or even the precursor to that phosphatidylethylamine as an iv, you end up up patting that heavy metal deeper into the vasculature. What you would like to, what you should do first is remove, use the Drano, clean out the pipes first, then do the phosphylcholine, ethylamine and the serine into the system.

Okay. All right, Gotcha. Okay, so I want to talk about a couple of other things specifically related to neural function and the brain. You briefly had mentioned neurotransmitters earlier when you were talking about serotonin. And I know another one that you're able to test for with some of these analyses is bdnf, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor. Can you get into some of the brain and neural issues that you were able to elucidate from this test?

Yeah, I'm really quite happy with.

What they consider to be executive function. As part of this testing. They're looking at not only genetic, just the COMT gene, the catecholamine methyltransferase gene, but they're also looking at dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, and then the impact of BDNF on the serotonin. So BDNF is considered to be brain derived neurotropic factor. And that is something that we tend to think of with sports athletes, with people that have had some kind of a trauma or a head injury, if you will.

It's the way the brain can rewire itself. If there is a trauma that happened in a certain area of the brain, the brain has to rejig itself. They have to repurpose new different neural inputs to offset that one pattern that has been damaged. And so the brain derived neurotropin factor that allows the brain to be able to produce the chemicals necessary to rewire the brain.

If your 9p21 gene is on the lowered end, there are certain things that you can utilize to increase that. One is known as intermittent fasting. Far infrared saunas is a second and low intensity exercise. So again, not the high intensity interval training. Those three things generally tend to increase BDNF. But remember that with yourself best.

When you have the 9P21 gene. And also as a second note, you have the low sod. So superoxid dismutase is not being produced in large quantities. So your tendency of having high levels of pro oxidants in your system, especially after a workout, is higher. So the higher level of pro oxidants, the 9P 21.4G that you have, that can lead to a lot more endothelial inflammation. So you just have to be cautious with, with the amount of, again the extreme activity that you used to do and now are no longer doing. So that was a good, it was a good move.

I suppose you mean delving away from like the extremely long voluminous and difficult like, like Iron man triathlons and marathons. Absolutely like that. Okay. Okay, gotcha. Now when it, when it comes to comes to bdnf, what you're saying is that I don't naturally produce as much as I could or should, correct?

Yes. And so what this BDNF is supposed to do is when we have a presynaptic A connecting to postsynaptic B, there's supposed to be a memory file. So it's kind of like that ET Go home. Neural synaptic discussion. That's supposed to happen that creates a memory file. When you have that memory file and there's a trauma or a damage that happens with there, you need to create a new file. You have to become elastic. You have to have more plasticity in your brain to find an alternate pathway. Now, if you have low BDNF and low serotonin, you run into a sort of a different concern. If we're to backtrack and look at your executive function, your dopamine is fantastic. I have no qualms about dopamine with regards to dopamine. This is something that allows us to be able to.

Find not only just pleasure, but also joy. These are people that tend to have the get up and go. They want to be able to find a mechanism to be able to have happiness in their life, to have drive, to have determination. You're to going BDNF is without question fantastic. I have no qualms at all with this one. When we look at your noradrenaline, also fantastic. No qualms at all. You have what's called a shortened reduced sensitivity when it comes to noradrenaline.

Noradrenaline. And by the way, just a second ago you said no issues with bdnf. I think you meant dopamine.

Right, I'm sorry. With dopamine. I apologize. Yeah, yeah. However, when we look at serotonin, serotonin is what we call a reduced reabsorption. So that means that you don't produce enough of the presynaptic serotonin in your system. There isn't enough serotonin floating around in your body. And when that happens, now when we look at serotonin, serotonin is considered to be the seat of executive function. This is not speaking to intelligence at all. This is speaking to how does your body find a way of eliminating all the peripheral nagging that's going on in your system? When we think of serotonin, for example, we think of it as a. As a neurotransmitter that is responsible for allowing us to feel calm, to feel relaxed, to feel sort of chill, if you will. The reason as to how and why that happens is because it allows us to mitigate and push away all of the components that are irritating to us, that are nagging at us from the side, that are all those, those other thoughts about.

You know, I'll give you an example. At nighttime, if I'm working on an email that is quite intense, it's quite important, and I'm there. It's 11 o' clock at nighttime and I'm just, I'm typing away and my wife comes up to me and she says, you know what? I give up on you. I'm going to bed. But don't forget that you have to turn on the dishwasher. Don't forget, you have to throw out the trash. And oh, by the way, remember to make sure that the garage door is closed when you throw out the trash. Great. If I have low levels of serotonin, I will have to stop my email because these other extraneous things that my wife asked me to do now are no longer extraneous. They are now at the forefront of my thinking.

They're like things that you would ruminate on.

You won't be able to let it go.

I have that problem.

And although clearly the most important thing for you at this moment is finishing that email because it's drastically important, these other things that your wife asked you to do are now nagging at you. Now, I don't have a nagging wife, so let me just be clear. I love her to pieces, but those thought processes are.

Mrs. Danani is listening in.

Those thought process are now at the forefront of my thinking. I will not be able to let it go. So what I then have to do is one of two things. I either write down on a sheet of paper, do not forget to turn on the dishwasher, do not forget to throw out the trash, and do not forget to close the garage. Don't. That's one option. The second option is just to go do those darn things. So there I go, I get up and I do them. I throw out the trash, I turn on the dishwasher and I shut the garage door. I make sure it's closed. Now I'm sitting there and I'm typing away and I finish that email. Now I can go upstairs to bed. There is something also with low levels of serotonin that's called a mental echo.

When you get up to the top of the stairs, one might think, wait, hold on a second. Did I actually close the garage door? Hmm. No, I probably didn't. Let me just go double check. And there you go bounding down the stairs again, checking to make sure that that garage door is closed. If you don't do that, and sometimes for people that have that mental echo, or what they call a ripple, they can actually be in bed ruminating about those things.

Yeah, I totally have this issue. I've. I've found that for me to be able to function day to day with a clear head, and it was my friend, it was Ari Meisel, who first.

Kind of introduced me to this concept of, in his book, less doing, more living, creating some kind of an external dream, dream catcher, or some way that I could actually Keep a clear head by writing down or. Or getting onto paper or digitally what it was that was ruminating in my head. And now I do that. I constantly have an Evernote document open on my computer, on my Kindle, and on my phone. It syncs across all three devices. And anytime anything flits across my head that I need to remember, I jot it down in that Evernote document so that I can come back to it later and revisit it. Because otherwise I spend nearly the entire day ruminating on little things I'm supposed to remember.

And that is exactly my point. When you have low levels of BDNF and you have low levels of serotonin, you create that exact situation that you were describing where you will ruminate over something and you will not let it go. Now, again, I'm not speaking to a intelligence. In fact, I would go one step further, that those people with lower levels of BDNF and low levels of serotonin, they actually can connect and link things better than people that don't have that genetic variance. As an example, if you have had a conversation with somebody today, and then, sorry, three weeks ago, and then today we're having another conversation because you haven't truthfully let go of the conversation that you had three weeks ago about some extraneous piece of material, and then today you have a conversation with me and we then talk about some other piece of extraneous material. You can actually remember that old one three weeks ago, remember the current one, and link them together and say, wow, oh, wait, hold on, I never thought about that. Let me see if this works. Because of those low levels of serotonin that you don't let the extraneous things actually dissipate. And you can sometimes have them playing maybe not in the forefront, but in the background. When something to the forefront is exposed to you, you will then bring that background out and you will say, wow, I'm going to connect on that. I'm going to make sure that these two people that don't know each other make sure that they connect. And I'm the one that will connect the two of them because they're both talking about interesting things that are separately unrelated but can be connected together. So, in fact, people in your stance actually end up doing better because you don't let anything go. You hold on to it. Now, it can give you trouble with sleep, of course, because you will ruminate over things. Like if you have 20 things to do in the, in the day and you've done 10, you will not sleep.

It drives. Drives my team nuts too, because. Well, not. Not only are you correct, I do lay awake at night unless I have that clear head. And by the way, the. So the one thing that I don't do is open up the Kindle or the iPhone or the computer while I'm in bed. But what I have in bed is one of these pilot pen lights and a blank piece of paper. So if I wake up during the night, I flip on that pilot pen light and the, the pen produces a very, very small amount of light, much less than the actual screen. And it doesn't distract me or put me into work mode versus when I, when I take out my actual device. But yeah, I have to do the same thing. I have to write things down. It's called a night rider. I'll link to it in the show notes. I think it was Tim Ferriss who first alerted me to the existence of this LED pilot's pen that you can use for writing at night. But the other thing that'll happen is I annoy my team sometimes, for example.

At Kion or my assistants or my virtual assistants, because I remember things incessantly. Like I'll remember a task that I assigned to them six months ago or eight months ago or a year ago and follow up on it out of the blue. Just because I constantly have these little things coming across my mind, my mind never shuts down.

And it also allows logic, thinking, deep thinking and connectedness to different, different parts, which is pretty outstanding when it comes to memory. So it's clearly not an intelligible thing. It is a focus, concentration and ability to multitask thing of which of which you do a really, really good job with. The second thing that BDNF is also responsible for is circadian rhythm. So sleep is also really important. So if there is an issue with lowered amount of bdnf, one may have difficulty, difficulty with falling and maintaining the sleep. So it will have some trouble, you will have some trouble in telling your body it's now time to fall asleep. Because with low levels of bdnf, it will consistently. Your brain will consistently be on, and some might even call it the hamster wheel, right? Where your brain just keeps repeating things over and over again until either you write it down or you get it taken care of.

Yeah, the mind on a hamster wheel. My boys also, apparently, from what you informed me about, have the same BDNF and serotonin issue. And so one of the things that we've really started to go out of Our way to do, and I just have a few boxes of this on the kitchen counter now, is lion's mane mushroom extract. Because apparently, and it's very interesting, if you look at it in nature, it looks like a whole bunch of axons and dendrites perhaps sprouting from some kind of a, some kind of a brain. But this lion's mane mushroom is apparently very good for BDNF support.

It is, it's excellent. Along with, as part of the supplementation, it would be things like Ashwagandha, Gaba, Rhodiola, 5 HTP, all of these things that tend to increase your natural serotonin production along with things that will increase bdnf. So that is the infrared saunas that we spoke to. Low intensity interval training. Sorry, low intensity exercise and intermittent fasting. But this is where we run to a little bit of a concern when we have to take all of these different components with regards to your genetics and put it into one happy bow for Ben Greenfield. And that is very simply, one gene is saying something which is intermittent fasting for your BDNF. However, your blood sugar, the TCF7L2 gene, is saying you need to be having small, frequent meals because your blood sugar levels are off. So when we look at. That's why we also look at other metabolism genes like the FTO gene. So clearly in your case, the type of diet that you should be. So from an epigenetic perspective, the type of diet that you should be following is small quality meals with low levels of saturated fat. And I don't like to give, I don't like to name diets because we tend to be very specific to the patient. But I will name it a specific type of a diet for you. It'll be similar to the Paleo Mediterranean diet with fibrous vegetables. You can use avocado, but no bulletproof type phenomenon, no coffee and butter. You can't do the saturated fat in your system.

Now, just backing up for a second. When you're talking about the saturated fat thing, that has to do with, with more than just the serotonin and BDNF we were talking about. Doesn't that have to do with the APO genes?

Yes, the APO A gene, absolutely. So there's a genetic profile. Yeah, sure. There's a genetic profile that we've got with your system that measures whether or not you should be consuming saturated fat. And I sit in the same stead for you. What I did was I did a DEXA scan and I didn't like my percentage body fat. So there I did intermittent fasting and I would have the cup of coffee just like all of us used to do. Buttered coffee in the morning and then not eat until 2 o' clock in the afternoon. My first meal would be at 2 o' clock in the afternoon. My last meal would be at 8 o' clock also in the evening. And I would feel fantastic.

That's a very popular protocol.

Yeah. And I felt lovely. I felt fantastic on it. I did that for 16 months. 18 months later, after I initiated this program, I decided to do another DEXA scan and I did. I lost 11 pounds. I felt great. I lost 17 pounds of muscle. My percentage body fat actually went up when I did my genetic test. I'm the same as yourself, Ben. I cannot have saturated fat. So when I have saturated fat, or.

At least you have to have very.

Low percentage of.

Gets stored for me as fat. So we recommend around 7 to 10%. If you fall in the same category as both you and I, the APO A2, 7 to 10% of fat of our diet should be of that saturated type fat. So you can have avocados, but you cannot have things like coconut oil or MCT oil. Those fats actually get stored as fat and can create inflammation in your system.

When you say those fats get stored as fat, you mean that rather than getting shuttled through the liver for the production of ketones, they would more easily be converted to potentially inflammatory triglycerides and also shuttled into also potentially inflammatory storage adipose tissue.

Absolutely. And so it would get stored as a. Adipose tissue tends to be an organ. It produces quite a bit of inflammation and also can be hormonally dominant. So when you consider consume saturated fat, it does not get utilized as a source of fuel for us. It gets stored and then can become inflammatory in nature.

And the gene that is responsible for.

That is what again, it's called the APOA2 gene.

The APOA2. And I possess the variant of the APOA2 gene that dictates I would do better on Mediterranean style monounsaturated fats with an intake of saturated fats as a portion of my total dietary intake being less than about 7 or 8%. Yeah, okay, absolutely. Interesting. How many other people tend to have an issue like that because ketosis and high fat diets are extremely popular.

It's interesting though, I see quite a few patients like that and they range from people like myself who are southeast Asian to people that are eight that are just, just Asian, to Caucasians. To goodness, everybody. I see them across all walks of life. I can't look at, you know, as we were saying with the, with the Slavic Russians, they don't have the UGTP217 gene. I can't say the same for APO A2s. I can't look at an archetype of an individual and say you have an APO A2 variant. I can't say that. I see that across the board. I've seen probably about 30% of my patient face. I'd have this.

Interesting. Okay, so you, you got into that. As you're talking about serotonin, are you saying that this particular gene has an impact on neurotransmitters as well?

I think what ends up happening is with this particular gene, it can create more inflammation. The more inflammation that you have in your system. It has a tendency of going to your vasculature. And with a vasculature, it can cross the blood brain barrier and have an impact on focus concentration, not directly on serotonin, but inflammation into the brain.

Okay, regarding serotonin, would there be any other things that you recommend when it comes to serotonin management for myself or other people who tend to have this rumination issue?

I think with regards to serotonin, you also have to make sure that BDNS is also a factor. If you have an issue with both serotonin and bdnf, that's when you run into the hamster wheel phenomenon. If it's serotonin itself, then certain nutrients like GABA, Ashwagandha, Rhodiola, 5 HTP, these are all wonderful serotonin precursors. They help to increase the amount of serotonin in your system. Meditation I found to be exemplary for increasing serotonin in your system.

Interesting. So it's not just supplements. A lot of this stuff comes down to lifestyle like longer aerobic or easier aerobic sessions versus lots of high intensity. Crush yourself with the workout sessions or meditation, intermittent fasting, the use of a sauna. It's interesting how many things from a lifestyle standpoint can be used to optimize your, your body or your brain based on your genetics.

It's incredible how much my practice has shifted and changed just because I've received this information. For patients, I can almost dictate how their body's going to respond given a situation based on their genetics. The information is profound.

Yeah. It relates to something you told me. I think the way that you phrased it was you said epigenetics can disqualify Genetics. And you said that as you were saying that if. Well, tell me what you told me regarding if I were one of your patients.

Well, I was actually quite impressed when I was looking at your genetics. And it was interesting, though, because when we had first spoken, you had indicated to me, well, let's just, we can go over the genetics and we can record this as a podcast. And I suggested to you said, ben, that might not be a great idea. And your response was, well, why is that? I said, because your genetics, Goodness, I wasn't expecting your genetics to have so many. I'm going to use the word flaws, if I may. And that's when we decided to have a conversation about it first, before we decided to record this podcast. And you so graciously still allowed this process to occur. And I was challenging you, I think, a little bit, and saying, Ben, you may not want the world to know about your genetics because your genetics are not awesome.

Yeah, you said, I basically, I'm more effed up than most of the patients that you see from a genetic standpoint.

Yeah. And that's what the impressive part was, is that you've got this triangulation of three things that I would put in the regard of being concerning. The first is your glutathione levels. Your glutathione levels, your capacity to be able to detoxify, to pull toxicants out of your system is fairly low. And so those toxicants can stay in your system and it can cause inflammation. This is the first part. The second part is if your inflammation, your capacity to handle inflammation is very, very good. I'm not concerned, however, with your 9P21 and your TCFL72, which is your blood sugar one. If those are of challenge, which they are for you, your ability to. Your inability to detoxify and your inability to reduce the inflammation in your vasculature. That sets us up for some cardiovascular risk.

Those two are ones that are that were concerning for me. Then we tack on this third concern of the serotonin phenomenon. And I look at all of this and I say, wow, Ben has low levels of glutathione. He has a very, very active lifestyle. So he's producing a lot of pro oxidants that will then get thrown into his vasculature. That's going to cause a massive amount of inflammation. And he has his BDNF and serotonin concern where he's going to be nervous and anxious about not getting his things done and he's going to probably be flying around the world Even more doing more creating again more inflammation and it becomes cascading cycle. And I thought, wow, we really need to, I really need to have a chat with them and talk to him about this. And as we spoke, I was extremely impressed by the amount of things that you are doing epigenetically. Having a 24 hour blood glucose monitor on you is not something that people do on a regular basis. All of the things that you were doing epigenetically has proved to anyone who should be listening that genetics are only trumped by the epigenetics, your lifestyle that you are following, the clean eating, the exercising, the recognizing of what exercising you should and should not be doing, and the overall functionality of how succinct you are with finding ways to exhale, to be calm, to yet still be very, very efficient. And with the activity levels, I mean, it's astounding how well you are doing given your genetics. So I'm duly, duly impressed because when I first saw your genetic report, that's why I reached out to you and said, hey, Ben, your report is in. We need to have a conversation about this. And I think you had thought that I wanted to have a conversation with you because of a podcast, but I actually wanted to have a conversation with you because. Because I was concerned about your genetics. Plain and simply, I was concerned about your genetics.

Well, one could argue that I'm mildly obsessive over enhancing health. And I think that being in the position I am and constantly getting exposed to folks like you who are just streaming a lot of this cutting edge knowledge, it allows me to probably fix a lot of the potential genetic issues that I would have experienced. And I don't want to shove any of my family members under the bus, but I look around me at my brothers and my sisters and you know, again, I want to be careful because I know, you know, my family listen to this podcast, but they're not doing as well as they probably could from a health standpoint. And I question what parts of my genetic profile they share and how much better they could be doing if they were doing a lot of the things that I'm personally doing, you know, from a biohacking and a nutrition and a lifestyle standpoint. And at the same time, there's probably things that I've done that haven't done me any favors, like a lot of the high intensity interval training and the hard charging stuff. And you even encouraged me. And I've thought pretty intensively about this since our discussion about whether or not it is prudent for me to continue to compete at the level that I'm competing in, the sports I've chosen to compete in versus say, maybe thinking a little bit more about golf and hiking and a lower intensity, constant steady state sport such as say, you know, open water swimming or, or you know, solo cycling or something that allows me to not have those frequent blood and vascular, you know, almost like waterfalls or, or, you know, fire hose type of experiences that you said would not do my, my vascular function any favors. So it's, it certainly got my, my brain ticking a lot. My brain, despite its potentially low levels of bdnf, thinking a lot about some of the things that I can change. So this has been incredibly eye opening for me. I know we're getting pretty long in the tooth, but I wanted to make sure that we equip people with the knowledge they need if they want to get a test like I did or to work with you.

I know that you are going to be putting together some packages for folks who are listening in, but the basics, from what I understand, is that folks can get tested. They have the option when they get tested to get a consult with you. And they also have the option when they get tested to get some of these customized supplement packages that fix some of the issues.

That are highlighted on their genetics. Is that correct?

Yeah. I've always found that information is key and when you're equipped with this information, you can make the conscientious decisions as to what your next steps in life should be.

But we're not able to make that decision if we don't have the accurate information. So yes, would love to provide the testing mechanism to your large fan base. I think that would be an opportunity for them to learn more intricately about their genetics and the functionality of the their genetics. I don't really care if I blink four times if I have chocolate. There's a gene there that I think that does, that makes no difference in my life. But if I know that I don't have or I'm missing completely a glutathione gene, that makes a massive difference in my life. And so knowing that information I think is huge. But because there is a lot of information there, you do need sometimes on occasion to have someone to help you guide through all of that information, of which I'm very, very happy to do. And then of course, the last bit being it's not just that information and looking at things from an epigenetic perspective, what can I do on a supplement perspective to see if we can mitigate some of these concerns. And rather than go off to the health food store and buy 30 different pills, because.

I was on 17 on average, 17 different supplements. Supplements on a regular basis. And I would cycle between them. Now that I'm on these nutrient supplements, what I've done is all of those ingredients and then some. So now I think I have 23 different ingredients all blended into one formula. So I don't have to run out and buy different things. It's just specifically, the compliance is so much easier. I don't have to. I don't have wrist pain from opening up all these different bottles. It's all into one. And so.

The connection between genetics, lifestyle, and then solutions with supplementation gives us a perfect opportunity to have that process contended with.

It's literally like when you get your supplements, because I know you're going to be. And we're talking about kind of getting together some packages for me and I'll try and get photos of what this looks like for people on my Instagram channel, etc. But. But in the meantime, you're saying you can take a lot of this stuff and encapsulate it or somehow get it into one serving or one bottle?

Yeah, we have a.

There's a manufacturing process here, a GMP certified facility in Toronto, just outside of Toronto in Mississauga, and they take all these individual ingredients and they customize it. They blend exactly the quantity in milligrams in international units of exactly what is required per individual patient. It takes about four days to make for one patient. So it does take a little bit of time, but it's customized, blended specifically for that patient. It is truly the next generation of medicine. I think the aspect of walking to a health food store and picking this or that for whatever you feel is necessary or whatever the health food store owner deems is necessary, I think those days are numbered. We look at can your body take beta carotene and convert that to vitamin A? Can your body absorb and transport vitamin D? What about vitamin C? Can you absorb that in your system? If you can absorb it, why are you taking higher doses of vitamin C unless it's required, Unless it's winter months, unless it's a cold and flu season, unless you're trying to ward off something, but on a regular basis? You may not need vitamin C if your body can absorb it from food. And so those kinds of things we look at to determine what's necessary for you.

Very cool. All right, so what I'm gonna do is I'll. If folks go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com genetictesting so far, what you can get there, what we've put together is you can get 50 bucks off a consult with Dr. Danani. If you want to have a consult with him to go over your results or even talk about testing, you can basically hire him automatically get 50 bucks off for being a listener. Normally the test that we just discussed would cost $920. Right now at the time that you're listening to this, we're bringing that down to 400 bucks for the test. Normally if you were to get the customized supplements, you'd be paying about $229 a month, bringing that down to $199 a month for all the customized supplementation protocols based on your genetic results. So I will put all of those savings along with a special link for you over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com genetictesting I can tell you right now, for me personally, this was one of the most eye opening and insightful medical tests that I've ever done for myself and perhaps just as important or more importantly for me, for my boys because now river and Taren are growing up knowing okay, vitamin D blended with something like vitamin K is crucial for me in my development. Glutathione is something that's going to allow them to fight an uphill battle against the post industrial era that they're growing up in. They know now about BDNF support. They're doing the sauna, they're doing glutathione, they're doing aerobic exercise, they're doing a lot of things just like that. And so I think this is really important, important too for you to be able to see what it is that your kids or your loved ones should be up to from a health standpoint. And of course all they really care that much about ultimately was the fact that they're so genetically related. I think there was only like one SNP or one variation, which they were different. I think Taran had one variation, one of his testosterone genes. But ultimately they thought that was pretty cool too, how similar they actually are. So this is fascinating. I think we only scratched this, the surface of biological medicine and all the other things we could have talked about. Dr. Danani but what I'll do is again in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com genetictesting I will link to everything from the medical week conference in Germany that we talked about to this bioregulatory medicine book that I read, the Carolan Resort in Miami supplements. The DNA testing results that we've just gotten done discussing, should you want to, just view them in PDF format, everything that you need, along with a link to Dr. Dhanani's website where you can get all the discounts on your own consultation, your own testing, your own supplementation protocol that's all customized for you. Everything's going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com genetictesting Dr. Danani, we might have to do a round two based off of all the different things that we could probably geek out on.

Yeah, it'd be my pleasure. That was fun.

Awesome. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with the great Dr. Karim Danani from Toronto's center for Biological Medicine, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

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