The Genetic Blueprint of Health - Episode 314

Same exposure, same training, same everything. Why do they have a different outcome? I said the answer is in your question. Are they the same person? So how would they have the same outcome with the same everything? When you're in that moment that induces trauma, it's an adrenaline inducing moment. And there's genetics around adrenaline regulation. And the adjoin B gene will tell you how, what level of intensity you felt that adrenaline woman had. But also adrenaline has a couple purposes. One is your biology is upregulated and you become superhuman temporarily, right? You're capable of more because of a tree threat. Second is because that moment, your body sees it as a threat, can't understand why it wants to remember to help you avoid that mistake. Brain drive neurotropic factor bdnf. Right. Neuroplasticity. And the soldiers that had the bad adrenaline, genetics, imprinting emotional information and recalling it like it's happening again. And the bad BDNF genetics where they had challenges with neuroplasticity. So there's a bit of a lag time, let's say, in processing things. Those people also experience a shell shock which was, this is such a big deal. My nervous system is frozen and I can't move forward because I'm still processing while somebody else is already working on it.

Welcome to the Gladden longevity podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladin, where our passion is helping you to become an a tracker. On this show, we want to help you optimize life energy, longevity, health and human performance with impactful and actionable information by answering four questions. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? And how do we live young for a lifetime? Now here's today's episode of the Gliden Longevity Podcast.

Welcome everybody, to this edition of the Gliden Longevity Podcast where we're here age hacking, if you will, on answering five big questions. How good can we be? How do we make a hundred to new thirty? How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a lifetime? And how do we develop a 300-year-old mind? And today I'm going to be speaking with Kashif Khan. You may know him from the DNA company. He's from Toronto and he actually was the founder of the DNA company which has gone on to become a international brand in genetic testing. And we're going to go down the rabbit hole on some genetic testing that I think you're going to find absolutely fascinating. We're going to talk about hormones, women's health. We're going to talk about kids, we're talk about anxiety, depression, ptsd. It's really far reaching conversation, but it's really, I thought, really a wonderful conversation. So I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and today I'm joined by my guest, Kashif. Kashif is a really interesting gentleman who founded the DNA company, subsequently has exited that, as I understand it. Kashif, welcome to the.

Oh, pleasure. Good to see you. I remember following you on our conferences, trying to learn from you, you know, it's an honor.

Great. Well, it's pleasure to chat with you again. So just so the audience understands you have a little bit of a story as to how you discovered that you wanted to be involved with entrepreneurship and medical things and DNA in the first place. Maybe as a place to start, maybe just give the audience some sense of how you got here and then we'll jump into several topics that I think they'll find interesting.

Yeah, for sure. You know, my, my, it was never an intention of mine. I don't come from the space. I have no formal training. Essentially, like many functional medicine stories, I was ill, I was sick, and I live in Canada. And our healthcare system is lacking a lot of the choices that you have down there where if you have money to spend, you can do what you want. Here. There's one service which is the government. And so I didn't know what health, wellness and medicine was until I got sick. I had eczema all over my face, I had psoriasis, gut issues, depression, didn't want to get out of bed. Migraines. I would think that the thing that actually sent me to the doctor was the migraines. That was what I couldn't fight through. And my question was simple. I'm 38 years old at that time, never been sick. All of a sudden, all this stuff, this is not serendipity. What did I do? What did I eat, I breathe. And the answer I kind of got was we don't do that here, right? What we do is we diagnose and we prescribe. And here's the thing that will make you not complain anymore. And to me, at that time, I ran a business around technology startups. So I was a sort of entrepreneurial support consultant, let's say to tech startups, which in Toronto, there's a big culture for that, to help them grow. So I wanted to solve problems that's what I did all day long. And this didn't make sense to me. So I wasn't until I went down this rabbit hole of traditional Chinese medicine. Naturopathy, functional medicine, homeopathy, you name it, and I landed on genetics that I realized I was not the same as everybody else. I opened my eyes to bio, individual medicine, personalization to the point where I started a research company around it to help my family, my friends, and turned into a global brand.

Nice. Yeah. And you know, I think it, it's one of the key tenets here, whenever we take on a new client is we always start with genetics, really, because we feel like you can't, you really can't do justice to anybody's situation until you really deeply understand them. And, and one of the cornerstones of that, of course, is understanding their genetic predispositions, right? So what they're prone to, what they're not prone to, where are the landmines, where are the icebergs? And then what are the assets they have to work with also, Right? So it's both sides of the coin. It's interesting in DNA testing also that it's not Simply about the SNPs, there's also deletions that are important to understand. Right. Where there's things missing. And so that can have big implications for, you know, risk for cancer or risk for heart disease or some of these other things. So that's an interesting piece as well.

And you know what? That was actually, that was the moment the thing you just said that opened my eyes to why I was sick. So here I, I actually believed what I was told because me and my business partner were the same age, same ethnic background, we lived on the same street, four houses apart. We were same number of kids, we ate lunch together, we worked in the same office. He was fine, right. If I was doing something wrong, why wasn't he sick? And it wasn't until I learned that there were, there was a such thing as a copy number variation where there's a gene that you think, you know. If, if your DNA is this human instruction manual, this book in each one of your cells, there's pages missing for some people. And if the page is missing, there's no instruction, there's no biology led by that instruction. And so glutathione activity in my gut driven by the GST family of genes was somewhat inactive. Right when me and my business partner thought that my functional medicine friends advice of focus on a Mediterranean diet and you'll be okay. Seemingly good advice. What I Didn't know was in Canada, where I live, there's chemicals used as drying agents to dry grains like rice, you know, bread, pasta type foods and chickpeas. Because we have long windows, there's a smaller farming window. So things need to be stored. And those chemicals, when they're tested as safe, they weren't tested on me, who has a number variation. Right. They were tested. Maybe 8 out of 10 people are okay and that's good enough. Right. But the 2 out of 10 maybe were wired like me. And not only is it not okay, it's actually a very serious threat. So when I ate that same seemingly safe hummus with this drying agent chemical, I could not detoxify it.

Yep.

Leaky gut, leaky brain, no surprise the depression, no surprise. The inflammation of the eczema, no surprise the autoimmunity of psoriasis. My body starts fighting itself, not understanding what's going on here. Right. And no surprise my business partner, who has the full two copies of that gene pathway, didn't have a problem. Yep, once, Exactly.

Right now we just had a conversation with a 41 year old woman here that's a relatively new client. She came in for her revelation visit and you know, she had come into us with complaints of lack of energy, developing a rash for no apparent reason that would spread across her body and she couldn't figure out what it was. She'd stopped gluten and dairy, just kind of empirically and that seemed to be helpful, but not completely curative of what was going on. So again, you know, when you deconstruct the situation, and we started with her genetics and we see, oh, she doesn't detox very well, she's got mercury, you know, and she doesn't have amalgams in. But then doing the food sensitivities to see, oh, what's going on there, and then doing the gut analysis to see, oh, it's leaky gut, it's this, it's that, it's when you, when you actually. What I love about the work is that when you take the time to actually deconstruct the problem thoroughly, you can really come up with, you know, great solutions for people. And, and so that's, that's the fun part of this. You know, one of the other interesting things is that she's an exerciser. She does cardio five days a week and resistance training two days a week. And yet her anaerobic threshold is very low. And that isn't usually the case. Her VO2 max is actually quite good. But her anaerobic threshold is low. So that's implying that her mitochondrial function isn't working well, even though her resting metabolic rate is normal. And her fat burn is 88% at rest, which suggests normal mitochondria. And her transition from fat to carb burning with exercise is also normal. But it's when you actually look at, and this is really important for the audience to understand, that in order to really understand an individual, you have to look at the thing you're looking at through multiple lenses. There is no one test that allows you to actually understand what's happening. And so in her situation, we came away understanding her genetics pointed to cytochrome C in her mitochondria doesn't work properly. So she will be a great candidate for red light to actually help activate that. And she'll be a great candidate for some NAD boosting things that we do here. And she was also low on riboflavin, which she needs fad for her mitochondria to work. I know I'm spitting out medical terms here, but the point is that when you actually deconstruct a situation and look at something through multiple lenses, you can actually get it to come into focus.

Yeah.

And so you shouldn't. We should never count on one test. Oh, I got a calcium score. I'm fine. Oh, I just had my, you know, my blood sugar test that I'm fine. You know, this is, this is really a dangerous concept. And, and we want to be, well, we want to be well, we want to be reassured. Yeah. My hemoglobin A1C was normal. Okay, great. But we do two hour glucose tolerance tests with insulin curves on everybody and we find that people all the time are insulin resistance that don't know it's right. And this kind of thing. Right. So really, really interesting stuff.

You, you remind me actually of a case we were working on. Everything you're saying, so refreshing to hear because everyone believes the thing they do is the only thing you need to do, you know, and that's right, this one marker, this one, it's like blood work. Okay. That's what's happening today and now. But if you don't know why, what are you working on? Right?

That's right.

And your genetics may tell you propensity, but that doesn't mean it's there. It just means that's the priority. Right, 100.

Right, 100.

So now how do you take all that and reconcile that? Well, then, what am I supposed to work on? Right. And so it's a little bit of what is the red flag that your blood is telling you or some VO2 marker or whatever is telling you. And using DNA to deconstruct, where did it come from? What's the root cause? You can mask the symptom as much as you want, but you can use genetics to figure out which biology is broken. And you remind me of a client we were working with that was a tennis player. And this guy, you know, Wimbledon, US Open type of guy, like everybody would know his name, right? And this was early stages when we were in like our research phase. He had, he got diagnosed with a cholesterol issue. Cholesterolemia, right. He's like, it makes no sense. Like, I'm a pro athlete, all I do is eat, clean exercise. Why would I have a cholesterol issue? So he was sent to us saying, maybe you have some quote unquote genetic problem. And they said, go talk to this research company and maybe they'll figure out your genetic issue. So I said to him, there are genetic insights to consider, but you still have a choice in terms of outcome. It's not genetics equals cholesterolemia is genetics equals certain broken biology in combined combination with your habits will equal this outcome. So what were your habits supposed to be? So you talk about mitochondria, the super oxide dispute pathway sod2, right? So free radical clearance. And that for him was highly suboptimal. It wasn't working at all. So his, now think about it, tennis player, his career was cardiovascular exercise, right?

So just, just interrupt you so the audience understands here. SOD is superoxide dismutase combines with catalase and glutathione peroxidase to take the free radicals that are generated with cardio exercise, really, with any exercise, and allows you to basically neutralize that from a toxic molecule that can damage the cell and damage the mitochondria back into water, essentially.

Essentially, yeah. Yeah.

But if you're handicapped in your ability to do that and the rate limiting step is the SOD enzyme, that's how you get into that pathway to go back to water, then you can be a gifted athlete and yet be tearing yourself apart unless you do some things to upregulate the expression of that gene so that you can actually manage that oxidative stress, or drink hydrogen water to help you upregulate it and manage that oxidative stress. Things like that.

So now imagine he has this code telling his body exercise is bad for you in a nutshell, right? And his career is cardiovascular exercise. Oxidative stress was his Constant state. So now you have this mitochondrial burden, this free radical burden, inflammatory agents all over the body. And you also look at the genetics of hardware. You know, if you understand, for example, the endothelium, you know, 9P21 will tell you endothelium, let's just say resilient or paper thin. So he has this low grade inflammatory risk here. So you combine this poor mitochondrial function, genetically predetermined, this poor hardware, let's call it genetically predetermined, which he was okay until he started overburdening it with a cardiovascular exercise, causing inflammation here from those free radicals. And the body is going to respond to cholesterol. The body is going to use cholesterol to mask the pain. The free radical damages the cholesterol. Now it's not even mobile anymore. It starts to build up, build up. So all of a sudden you have this starting at what was in the blood work, cholesterol is high. Go take a statin versus why? What changed? What changed?

That's right.

So that's where you pair these, you pair the blood work emergency, but use genetics as the biology to figure out how did you get there?

That's right. Yeah. No, same, same with this woman. Another part of her story was basically that she has, genetically, she's doing five days of cardio, but genetically she doesn't make nitric oxide very well, Right. And her arteries are very stiff when we, when we measure arterial stiffness for her, right. And so, and her aldosterone is actually very high. So we lower the aldosterone, we put her on a number of things to improve the glycocalyx, which lines the endothelium, which really controls arterial health. Put her on some nitric oxide producing things and all of a sudden her arterial stiffness goes way down. She's able to exercise again. So again, the beauty, the fun of this is like you get to be a super sleuth, right? Really it's, it's detective work to figure these things out. It's not just, oh, well, if you come in and we'll give you exosomes, that'll fix your problem. It's like, no, not really. I mean, if you don't know what the problem is, you know, 1 in 100 chance that some random therapy is going to fix it. Right. So yeah, it's interesting, this is something.

That I talk about online that I've gotten backlash for because I am part of the biohacking world. I am part of the sort of longevity community, right. I was in the business and still am. But I openly talk about on Instagram every single day how I think the biohacking world is failing us because it started with this grassroots movements, people like you doing incredible things to change healthcare and then turn into highly commercial. One size fits all right. There isn't anyone that doesn't know what hydrogen or red light is anymore. There isn't anyone that doesn't know what a peptide is anymore. But is that really what you need? And what is your body's ability to utilize that? Is that the priority? Even you have ultimate limit to cash flow and time and resources. What's the priority here? So this whole. And it wasn't. I don't think it was a negative intent. You know, it was more so grow, grow, grow. And then all of a sudden things gets diluted to generalization. One size fits all. And so there's just, just a bit of caution for everybody, which is test, understand, prioritize, as opposed to. I heard it on podcast. I think it's going to work.

That's right. And there's a lot of that going around. And there's a lot of clinics that open up with offering therapeutic interventions. You know, red light sauna, cold plunge, you know, we do this, we do that. Pulse shockwave therapy, you know, whatever it is, peptides. And so when you go into that place, you know, that's what you're going to get.

Yeah.

Whether, whether, you know, it's kind of like taking your car to a car dealer instead of the running diagnostics, it's. They're just going to put some tires on it and change this spark plugs and that's going to fix it. Right. So that's, you know, you get how silly it is when you think about your own car.

Yeah.

Like you'd want to have somebody actually diagnose what is going on and fully understand how this particular machine works. It's like, oh, no, there's a problem with the fuel line. No, there's a, there's a this, there's a that, you know, and it needs realignment or whatever. And the next thing you know, you get your car back and it's like running great again. And that's the difference between going someplace and just trying a bunch of stuff versus actually getting it figured out and then doing the things that are appropriate. Right. So, yeah, cool.

Save time, money and get a way better outcome.

Way better outcome.

Yeah.

So talk to us about some of the things that you're passionate about now.

I think, you know, so I work on, I work on some pro Athletes I work on, some CEO type people, one on one. Then we have a team that sort of distills that down to whoever needs the help. And why, why did I bring that up, the pro athletes league? Because it doesn't matter who I work on. Whether it's an NBA player, whether it's stay at home, mom or dad, whether some kid going to school. It seems like every single person has a dysregulated nervous system. It's like everyone needs to get out of fight or flight. And it's the current reality of you add the, the 5G EMF that's distorting and causing issues. You add the mold that seems to be proliferating everywhere. You add this to culture and the what you have to deal with every other social media and what the brain is now wired to perceive. So it's very difficult for people to thrive in that one size fits all. Go take this peptide. Go take your hormone therapy when the nerves are not regulated and you're in fight or flight. And so I started to address it and I learned that everyone's path to anxiety, stress, depression, fight or flight is not the same. The genetics of neurochemicals and how you perceive the world and also the, the solution is then not the same because the neurochemical that created that feeling is not the same. And I've also learned, and this was really the big aha moment. The exact thing that I figured out caused their problem was also meant to be their superpower. They're just in the wrong context. We all have this unique wiring around how we perceive the world, how we seek pleasure, reward, how we bind emotion, you know, the meaning things based on neurochemicals. And when you understand that this was a gift you, we, if you were to lay out a tribe, we each had a role in the tribe and that's the way we were given. And then all of a sudden we all go do the same thing and expect the same result when we're not the same person. Right? Yeah, that's the big one for me. And I, and I find that when we start there, people have incredible outcomes because the terrain is now ready to benefit from all the other stuff. And when you're in fight or flight, the immune system is not prioritized, the gut is not prioritized, inflammation is high, it's harder to fix things.

Yeah, I agree, I agree. You know, in our world, the book I wrote 100 is the new 30. We talk about four different circles and we've added a fifth which are the environments we Reside in optimizing those for, you know, taking the friction out, if you will, of being compliant with what you're trying to do. But the four primary circles are life energy, which is really the psycho spiritual space, and that's the circle that binds them all, quite honestly. And then you've got longevity, which is looking at the drivers of aging, the hallmarks of aging that are both expressions of aging and also accelerants of aging. Then you've got health, Then you've got performance, how you're going to be fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced, and do amazing things. And then you've got the environments. Right. So, but it's really life energy. It's the psycho spiritual space that really makes it all work. Because when people are in fight or flight or they have unresolved traumas, or they're living in reaction to traumas that they've experienced, now they're living with ptsd, now they're living with anxiety, depression, and there are genetic predispositions. It's super important to understand what those are. But it also does become a gift. Because what we find is that if you're able to go in and actually understand the genetic underpinnings, help somebody biochemically balance back out, and then have them do the psycho spiritual therapeutic work to actually understand what happened, you know, what, what is. What did actually happen? What was the trauma? What is it that I'm living in reaction to? What did I contribute to it? What did somebody else contribute to it? And then you get to a point where you can forgive everybody involved, including yourself. Right. For whatever you might have contributed, then that. That's a way to start to heal it.

Yeah.

But the next. The next phase of it is dovetails into what you were saying about superpowers, which is then when you're able to have enough perspective to transcend it, you actually become thankful and grateful for everything that ever happened because it brought you to this point of greater understanding, more empathy, more ability to resonate with other people, deeper understanding and deeper sense of love and connection. So really, we think that our traumas are sort of our burdens to bear, but they actually, when we die to the stories of those traumas, and we're sort of resurrected back into an unencumbered space where we can see that as being fuel for actually making us a more complete human, to have all this empathy and love for other people, it becomes a superpower. So we see that as one piece of the life energy circle. There are many pieces to it, but that's a really important piece. And so anyway, just, yeah, you know.

I didn't ever think that I would be working on trauma, right? It was never an intention, it just became a necessity. And the eye openening thing for me was there was a group called the Liminal Collective, and they're sort of, it's an Australian group and they were hired by the US military to do some sort of biohacking work back when biohacking, nobody knew what that word meant, right? And so Guy Name is Dr. Andy Walsh, she's out of Australia. And so they called us saying that we're doing this work with these Navy SEALs in San Diego and we're trying to understand trauma. And we like, we heard about your genetic research. We want to see what you guys have to say, right? So their question was same exposure, same training, same everything. Why do they have a different outcome? I said, the answer is in your question, are they the same person? So how would they have the same outcome with the same everything, right? So here was what I showed them, that when you're in that moment that induces trauma, it's an adrenaline inducing moment. And there's genetics around adrenaline regulation. And the adjective E gene will tell you what, what level of intensity you felt that adrenaline woman had. But also adrenaline has a couple purposes. One is your biology is upregulated and you become superhuman temporarily, right? You're, you're capable of more because of a threat. Second is because that moment, your body sees it as a threat, can't understand why it wants to remember to help you avoid that mistake. And so it literally encodes and imprints information around that scenario to help you prevent it. And when you have sort of suboptimal adrenaline genetics, you not only imprint the intellectual information, you also imprint the emotional information. And you're much more likely to retain what feels like trauma. But that doesn't mean you are genetically wired for Trump. It means that you had a superpower of empathy. You had a superpower emotional intelligence. You had a superpower of being the wise person in the tribe, the sales leader, the person that connects and bonds. But in the wrong context, you were not meant to be deployed in active combat. You were meant to be sitting back and, and planning and researching. Then we found another layer to this, which is not all of the soldiers with the bad adrenaline genetics added ended up with a struggle. And there was another layer where it was driven to more certainty. And that's where thinking about genes more functionally as opposed to the way we're taught to, like this gene, means this Just means that. And the beautiful work you do around the detective work and putting the pieces together, then you truly have a complete answer. Right. So the second layer we found of the guys that were truly stuck was brain drive, neurotropic factor, bdnf. Right. Neuroplasticity. And the soldiers that had the bad adrenaline, genetics, imprinting emotional information and recalling it like it's happening again. And the bad BDNF genetics, where they had challenges with neuroplasticity. So there's a bit of a lag time, let's say, in processing things. Those people also experience a shell shock, which was, this is such a big deal. My nervous system is frozen and I can't move forward because I'm still processing while somebody else is already working on it. They experience that same exact scenario as if it has more weight and meaning than the person right next to them.

Yep.

So now you combine those three things right now, combining those. Now you have literally on the wall a formula for PTSD you have. Right. And now you understand this person should not. That's not the person that you throw out in the battlefield. Right. But the. The level of work this person would do in terms of research, high quality, deep thinking, because they're deeply analytical and they're going to dive deeper. The way their brain works, that's what they should be doing. And so there's ways to operate. And it goes back to what you said now, either it's like, okay, here's my genetics. I don't have a choice. I have to be in combat. Now we know what to give you to upregulate the beating up, to manage the adrenalogenetics, to give you what you need. Or the other option is that's not what you're designed for, but here's where you would thrive. And you're never going to use words like depression and anxiety. It's going to feel incredible. The exact same genetics is your kryptonite or your superpower. Right?

Yeah, I think that. I think that's a really nice insight. You know, it's really interesting, too, when you look at children that grow up in the same family experiencing the same level of abuse, let's call it. It could be verbal, could be any kind of abuse, physical, whatever. And some are impacted a lot more than others. Right. And it does come down to their genetics, their COMT gene, their MAO genes, their ability to break down those neurotransmitters. Right. The adrenaline neurotransmitters is also a piece of it. And then their ability to actually methylate well, and whether or not they are prone to have low levels of serotonin and their inability to methylate to where they can actually avoid depression. Right. So it's really becomes this knot when you unravel it to your point, you can put it back together and actually understand how somebody with this genetic predisposition, in this context ended up at this endpoint. Then it gives you the ability as a. As a clinician, as a caretaker provider to help them kind of rewind that and understand what it's going to take to actually get them back through that and then make them more bulletproof for the next trauma that does come through the door. Because even though were not being deployed, who knows when a truck's going to hit your car? Right. So then you can make people bulletproof that way. And that's. That's super fun.

And you. I'm shocked over and over again that when people understand their unique executive function and neural wiring, just knowing solves half the problem, right?

Yeah.

Just knowing. It's not a question of right or wrong or opinion or why don't they agree? It's just perception. And you have a unique filter driven by neurochemicals, driven by genes, that makes you see things a certain way. And then you start to recognize the traits and people around you. Like, that's why. That's why the friction, or that's why I get along with this person and it all becomes clear and then you unlock that superpower.

That's right. You know what? I think I was just thinking about this as we're speaking here. I think social media works against people. And I think it's probably always been true to some extent that people kind of grow up and they have a desire to be like somebody that they see or admire or want to emulate or whatever. Right. And yet they may not be built to be that person. Right. I could want to be Michael Jordan, but I'm probably not built to be Michael Jordan. And so what's really important here is for every person to actually find out who they are so they can be the best unencumbered version of themselves, so they can bring all their gifts forward. That's really the goal.

Yeah.

And yet the goal seems to be with social media, to try to be like the Kardashians or be like, you know, whoever. Right. So it's. It's really as a society, we're kind of undermining the diversity that actually brings us strength. And we're actually penalizing people for trying to be something that they're not.

So it's interesting and it's both, you know, bringing up the Kardashians. It's, it's also, it not just cognitive function, it's also physical. Like everybody is chasing the same, you know, quote unquote, Instagram booty or whatever it wants, you know, the latest trend of what's supposed to look like. And we already know who we're supposed to be based on our hormones. Right. The physical form we can predict. I can take a five year old child and tell you should they be a linebacker or should they be an Olympic sprinter? Right, sure. Not with 100 certainty, but very close. And so if we already know who we're supposed to be, the way we're supposed to train the physical form and if we're in our ideal shape, why not be the best version of that, right?

I makes it, it makes a great argument for, you know, why not have your kids tested.

Yeah.

Why not have your kids tested early so you have some sense of, you know, how to help them navigate.

I've done this with my kids. You know, my kids, I have three kids. They, they understand their genetics right? Now when there's some issue going on the house, it's like you're a serotonin dysregulated. Don't talk to. Literally, that's the kind of stuff they say. No, right.

Go boost your serotonin, will you, and come back and talk?

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So my kids, my, my older son is highly androgen dominant. We knew he was going to be like wiry thin frame, right? And he's was put into basketball because he loves basketball, first of all. But he, he's designed for it, right? And my middle child, my son is more like, call him like a thick football player, right. And when, if you saw him when he was 4, 5, 6 years old, you would have never guessed that. You would have never guessed right now that he's getting to, he's 10, he's completely changing and he's growing out and he's filling out and he's becoming this thick brick wall, right? And that's what his hormones always said he was going to be. And they just hadn't fully kicked in yet. And, and so, and my young, my youngest, my daughter, we, I put her into karate young, which again, she didn't want to, didn't make sense. My mom was like, oh, why you don't you let her do what she wants? But that's exactly what she's designed for. And she's Thriving at it now. She's top of her class. But if I didn't know. If I didn't know. And she went and did something else and became. Because you don't know when someone's young who they're going to be.

Yeah, but that's right.

At the same time, we do know, because their genetics don't lie. And that's the programming, that's the instructions for who they're going to become. Both cognitively, even the way they're disciplined is different. Even the way we structured their homework is different. Not to sound like crazy about it, but it becomes intuitive and easy as you learn the patterns. Right. And so they get this personalized parenting which draws the best out of them and prevents the worst.

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's a really, really interesting point because we talk about all the time that there's, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, however many kids in a family, one kid, for that matter. And they. They grew up in the quote, unquote, same environment, and yet they had such different outcomes. And for one, it's a wonderful experience. For another child, it's a very traumatic experience. Right. And so I think if you're listening to this and you're a parent or a grandparent getting some genetic testing done on your kids to actually, or grandkids for that matter, maybe talk to your children and see if they're willing to have it done. But it can really give everybody a leg up and it can actually make being a parent more joyous.

Right.

Because you actually understand why this person is, you know, reacting this particular way in this situation.

Just this one thing around the frustration around homework, just getting that fixed.

Yeah. Was a.

That gave me 10 years of my life back. Right.

Probably 20.

Yeah. So I like the, you know, the approach is your child is lazy or they don't care or they're not motivated. And I just realized that between these two kids who were growing up at the same time, they had opposing sort of profiles when it came to dopamine. And so the way they perceive pleasure and reward was very different, and that's why they behave different. And I thought one was a flake and one. But it wasn't that. It wasn't that at all. So what was going on? Dopamine, we think of it as this pleasure chemical. Right. We think about it, you know, social media, food, whatever. Yes, it drives pleasure, but it also drives reward, achievement. So any social satisfaction. Right. And in fact, the intention was reward. And achievement is meant to drive us forward and the more you are in that mode, the more dopamine you're going to get and just you get snowballed forward. Right? So that's what it's supposed to be. But there's nothing wrong with pleasure. It wasn't meant to be the primary, Right? So now dopamine, in terms of the intensity of the moment, we can predetermine genetically receptor density DRD2. Right? To what level of intensity do you feel that pleasure or satisfaction? Then, like you mentioned earlier, Mao comped the breakdown and clearance of dopamine. So how long did it last? One of my kids is wired much more like mom, which is dopamine levels are the highest they could possibly be, and clearance is borderline the slowest it could possibly be. This kid is wired to be a binger, which is, I'm content, I'm good, I'm satisfied, I don't need anything. But when I get that elevated sensor award, I can't stop because my clearance is so slow. So I kept finding with him, I thought he was a flake. I thought he was a procrastinator, right? Which is true. And the things he's not interested in because there's no burning fire to get it done, because he's content. So what I really learned is that he's a specialist. He's wired to binge on the things he cares about and ignore everything else. You need to, like, delegate it, right? He's going to be a specialist one day. So let him do that. Let him figure that out. My other kid is the opposite. He's more like me. Lowest possible dopamine levels and the fastest possible clearance. This kid that, unlike the content child, this kid can't get satisfaction. He's wired to be an addict, right? And he was always anxiously needing to do, do, do, overdoing and burning himself out. And so now these kids, polar opposite, I think, well, this kid can do it. Why can't you? Look, you're lazy, right? But I didn't realize this kid was also hurting himself and starting everything and not finishing anything. Every shiny object was exciting to him.

Oh, there you go.

You take this one thing, and now all of a sudden, the structure around this kid needs to be reigned in and be given the priorities. This kid needs structure around deadlines and clear instructions. He'll actually get stuff done because he's not interested, Right. He started to structure things that way, slow you down, speed you up. All of a sudden, they both found the middle, right? Yeah. So. And that's wonderful.

That's beautiful. I love hearing that. I mean, think, just think of what a gift that is for the child.

Yeah.

Because the child that grows up in a, in a home where they're not understood.

Yeah.

Carries the weight of that for the rest of their life unless they do some really deep probing therapy and healing around it. Right. And huge.

Both of these kids were told by their teachers that they had adhd.

Yeah. Of course.

Both were probably of adhd. Right. And they believed it because they felt that way. Right. For complete. One didn't get stuff done, looked like he couldn't pay attention because he was a specialist. Binger. But the things he did, he did really, really well. Sure. One couldn't stop doing new things because his reward seeking behaviors, like what's next? What's next? What's next?

He's always going to the next thing. Yeah.

Both of those are perceived as adhd, but they're both superpowers. One is leadership, one is specialization.

That's beautiful. Yeah. How's your daughter shaping up?

So she's, she's now seven. So I'm starting to see she's somewhere in the middle.

Okay.

She was given the very healthy profile. So she's somewhere. She's down the middle. Serotonin. So she's very, let's say mood dysregulated. So very easy to poke and prompt her. Right.

Yeah.

And adrenaline genic or adrenaline genetics are there. So she has that empathy, she has that deep emotional intelligence. At a young age, you can see it. Right. Which my older son doesn't have that. So what we used to think was like rude was actually just lack of emotional intelligence. Whereas you see in the younger one who has a deep adrenaline genetics, they lead with their heart. She's very purpose driven, very much like caring and making sure everyone's okay ahead of health. Right. And it's not rude or I don't care, just they perceive the world differently. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. No, that's right. It's not that they, it's not that they lack the capacity to love, but they, they just. Yeah. They show up differently. They're just looking through different lenses at the world. Right. So not their fault. Yeah. That's really wonderful. That's very cool. So talk about some of the other things you're interested in. I know women's health has become one of your focuses as well.

I would say it was not intentional once again. So you know, what I've learned genetically is that your. Let me put it this way, the more people we work on, the more we're going to find out what the priority really is. It's not what we thought. Right. It's a. The where, it's where do people get stuck and how do we help them get unstuck? And the more people you work on, the more you're going to consistently see people getting stuck in the same place. One is the nervous system for sure. The other place I see is that, you know, 80% of dementia is in women, 80% of autoimmunity is in women, 80% of anxiety and rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. And the list just keeps going on, why are women, women struggling so much more? So you have this healthcare system that was based on the study of men, right?

Yeah.

Western European white males. Women started getting included, you know, 25 years ago. Ish. And even then it was like postmenopausal women. So that the, the complications of the 28 day cycle versus the daily hormone cycle of a male makes trials difficult. And trials are about safety and efficacy, but they're also about getting things to market and approved. Right. And so you, you structure a trial to make sure that happens. And so women weren't included. And here's the unfortunate truth is the same thing happened in the biohacking and longevity world. And but it wasn't with intent. It wasn't like nefarious like what it was with pharma. It was more so, you know, an industry designed by men for men to fix their own problems. And then everybody started listening to what worked on those men and half of those people were women and things didn't work so well. And so you start to apply all of this stuff, even the baseline fitness industry, go back to the fitness starts booming and all this stuff, even that was never considered in the context of a follicular phase, luteal phase, the menzies, like all there's different thoughts, right? So I started to work on a lot of women only because that's who needed the most help. And I learned that the most broken part of this healthcare system we have is everything around women's hormone health. This very gray area, this very like menopause is supposed to be a disaster, good luck, let me know when it's over type of attitude, right? Versus why do some women not have a horrible menopause? Why do some women not get crazy pms? Why is fertility not a challenge for some women? And you start to learn firstly that everything that you expose yourself to is a hormone disruptor now, right. The environment is overwhelming you, but you also learn that some women and this is all genetically predeterminable. The overwhelming volume of estrogen, they're making far more than they need, which is inflammatory when it's in that level. And the metabolites. And this is where I think things get lost and women really get unstuck, which is after you make your estrogens, you then make metabolites 2 hydroxy estrogen, 4 hydroxy and 16 and 2 is protective. And this is why women take hormone therapy. And, you know, they think it's going to be good for their brain and their heart, etc. But you also potentially can make metabolites that will hurt you. And this is absolutely. Yeah. And you'll see women that say, I did everything right. I ate right, I exercised, clean, clean, clean. There's a single chemical in my house. Why did I get breast cancer? Right.

It's stunning. And prostate cancer for men. It's stunning to me that people get put on hormones and they never have their metabolites checked.

Yes.

All they have are their levels checked. Right.

And that's. That's the thing that causes the damage.

Yeah, exactly. No, exactly.

Yeah. So we've done the same thing and we've worked with, like. Do you know Jen Simmons? Dr. Jen Simmons. She's a breast cancer sort of expert. No. I thought maybe. Yeah, yeah. So. So we did this sort of genetic masterclass once where she said, we have all these women with their second, third, fourth bout of breast cancer, and they all want to know why she. So she's an oncologist, but she's also an integrative doctor. So she covers both sides, right? And she's like, I'm doing what I can here, but if we could figure out why this would really help women finally knowing what they need to do. And so I had to tell 20. So imagine this master class where all these women got their DNA sequence and they show up to this, like, big zoom call where we're going over all the various genes and guiding people through it. Right. And teaching them how to navigate. And 25 of the women on there, I told them that their hormone replacement therapy caused their breast cancer. And I don't. I'm not saying hormones cause cancer. I'm saying that every single woman has a path to taking hormones.

That's right.

Every single man takes it, has a path to take him. But there's no general. Here's what everybody should do, just like you said about the car getting the tires changed when the engine was broken. So if you don't understand first, when you add something to your Body what genes are active, seeking to turn that into something else.

That's right.

Because there's genes that are following an instruction telling your body, when I see this, go turn it into that. And the assumption is when I add something to your body, it stays as that. And that's not true. There's the SIP1B1 gene. We'll see the estradiol that you might add to your body and, and tell your body to turn that into four hydroxy estrogen. And then you don't have a period anymore. Where is it going again that getting stored in your fat because your body doesn't want your organs getting damaged. And where do women have fat, right? So all of a sudden you have these milk ducts and milk glands that are, you know, in the breast with all this fat getting damaged. So you can. So it's not, I'm not saying, I'm not even saying estradiol causes breast cancer. I'm just saying the wrong hormone on the wrong genetic profile can help you or hurt you, depending on how you metabolize it. If you don't get to the net outcome, which is like you said, measure the metabolites. You don't really know what you did with that thing you add to your body. Just like men. I, you know, I'm in Toronto, so we work on a lot of NHL hockey players because of all the training that happens here. We happen to have a great off season training thing here, right? So I work with the personal trainers and sort of chiropractors for the NHL guys. And there was a phenomenon in, I remember it was 2019, it was right before COVID where all these hockey players were told to take an androgen gel pack. So it was an androgen gel you put on your stomach, goes into your skin and now you got some testosterone. And thinking was an NHL was okay with this, they let it happen. And some men who were complaining about fatigue and lack of energy and whatever, they were given this thing, right? And then they're like, I don't know what's going on, but I feel horrible. I have anxiety and it just started getting worse. And all of a sudden like libido's gone and they just feel horror. And then they started getting gynecomastia. Man groups, right? And like, I don't know what's happening to me. So there's a single gene pathway, CYP19A1, that will determine the effectiveness of your aromatization, taking testosterone and converting it into estrogen. Now if you have a man who has an ultra rapid CYP19 a one that's converting all their testosterone to estrogen, then. Yes, their testosterone might be low, not because they didn't make enough, because they're converting it into estrogen. And if you add more, you've added into a context where the body's saying whatever drop of estrogen is underutilized here is going to be turned into estrogen. So the right move wasn't add more testosterone, it was slow down the aromatization, it would slow down the SIP 19 when you block that conversion, which is a very simple thing to do. Right. And so you have this simple what's seemingly harmless question of hormones, which should be harmless, which in the wrong profile can cause a lot of damage.

100%. Yeah. And it can increase prostate cancer risk. It's a really interesting thing. I think, again, this one size fits all. You know, there are other people that are put on aromatase inhibitors routinely and they've never been tested. They don't know if they need it or not or they don't. Right. And quite honestly, men need estrogen also. Yes, but they just need the right amount of estrogen. It's. I talk about biology being economy of balance. It's not about how far can you push it. Right. So if you're, if you're a fast aromatizer, then you need to slow it down. If you're a slow aromatizer, then you know, you need less testosterone because you're going to run higher levels and then you need to make sure you can move the metabolites through the right pathway. So, yeah, yeah, it's. It's really interesting and just so the audience understands when we're talking about detoxing and estrogen is an example of this, when you detox, you know, stage one, stage two, stage three detox, when you go from one to two, you're actually taking something that may be carcinogenic on its own, or minimally carcinogenic or not even not carcinogenic. And yet in the, in the intermediate metabolite, it becomes more carcinogenic than it was originally. And so if you can't get it from that more carcinogenic metabolite into the next one, which is now the least carcinogenic. Right. If you don't understand the detox genes and the pathways for the client, you know, they can end up with all kinds of cancer risk simply because you're not lubricating that system properly. Right. And there are things you can do to upregulate those genes as well. Things like Sulforaphane Yes. Will tend to upregulate those. Right. So anyway, this is. This is an interesting conversation because I think what we're kind of highlighting here is that this is not a do it at home kind of kit, because this is not. I talked to my, you know, my buddy next door, and he's doing this. So I'm going to do that, too. Or I talked to my girlfriend next door and she's doing this. And that worked. I haven't had that happen with a close woman. Close to me. She was talking to a friend of hers who started on this combination patch of estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. She said she feels great. I want to do that, too. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Maybe we should measure something.

Yeah.

It turns out that she had lots of estrogen. The last thing she needed was estrogen.

Right.

So you have to be super, super respectful. I think, you know, think of your car yourself. You know, we talked about a car, but think of yourself as a Formula One car. I mean, you are as a very sophisticated piece of equipment. And you wouldn't just throw any old oil into that. You wouldn't just throw any old whatever into it. Right. It's very, very precise.

Yeah. So how is the engine tuned? How's the transmission tuned? What exactly does it need? Something can help it, something can break it. Right?

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Totally interesting. Well, really fascinating chatting with you, Kashif was good to catch up.

No, it's a pleasure. I mean, the last time I saw you was at a conference. I think it was in Austin. And they put me on the stage with you to talk about stem cells. And I was like, I don't know anything about stem cells. Why am I here? Right. And I was listening to you. I think they put me on the wrong panel and then so. But I was listening to you and I was blown away and it was awesome. But that was some time ago, so. Yeah, it's good to catch up with you.

Yeah, likewise. Well, I really appreciate all your contributions in the field and your depth of understanding around the genetic work is really no pleasure special. So good stuff. Yeah.

Thank you.

Beautiful.

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