EP 196 WTH?!? Unlocking Cognitive Health with Your Genetics with Elwin Robinson

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Welcome back, everybody. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel. This is what the Health Today's topic is Understanding how your genetics can improve your cognition. My guest today is Elwyn Robinson. He's the founder of Genetic Insights and the author of the Rejuvenate Blueprint resolving the seven root causes of all chronic disease. Welcome aboard, Elwyn.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, you're very welcome. I love this talk. And in light of the advances in computers and law with the large language databases and talking about genetics, I am curious how you got into founding a company called Genetic Insights.

Yeah, well, I've kind of been in the health business almost accidentally for, you know, 14 years now. But I so my both my parents were kind of into it for different reasons. My father was a biochemist and a science teacher who was really into organic farming and organic foods and stuff like that back even the 1980s. My mother had cancer several times throughout my life and died not when I was very young, but, you know, when I was in my early twenties. So pretty young. And so my house was always filled with health stuff. There was, you know, weird foods everywhere, supplement bottles everywhere, stacks of bookshelves everywhere with, you know, information and alternative health. So it's very much part of my programming. But honestly, I kind of rebelled against it for that reason. You know, my teenage years and up until my late 20s, I was smoking, drinking, doing drugs and all that kind of bad stuff. And, you know, my mother had cancer several times. My dad had me and cfs. He ended up not being able to work because of that. And I, in my late 20s, I ended up in a similar position where I was signed off work by a doctor for a while because of, you know, stress and exhaustion. I was like, I'm going down a really bad road here. And so I started doing a lot of the kind of usual things that they recommend for health doctor grade like stop smoking, stop drinking alcohol, stop eating junk food. Yeah, I was already exercising, but, you know, trying to reduce my stress. I quit a very high stress job and quit, took a very easy job, that kind of stuff. And I got really into health at the time. I was especially into the raw food, raw vegan movement. And, you know, I was like seriously purifying my diet, if nothing else, even if perhaps that's not the best diet and I probably recommend it to people still, you know, at least it is a purer diet, I guess, than most people are having. So I did that for a few years, did detoxes, cleanses and all that. And I did start feeling so much better in all kinds of ways, both physically health wise and energy and also, I would say, psychology. I went from, as I said, basically being a drug addict who was constantly in debt and working a minimum wage job to starting to think about, you know, what could I do to actually make the world a better place. And I worked as a chef before that and, and I decided to get a job as a chef in a, in a raw food health restaurant. And I guess I'd learned enough that people kept asking me for my advice and kept asking me for help and, and eventually I was like, I was going to start putting up some YouTube clips about, you know, like some simple stuff and, and you know, doing consults and people asking me where to get the stuff I recommended. So then I set up a supplement store. And so it was all extreme and unplanned like that. But, you know, eventually I had a good following and a, and a good business and I was traveling the world doing speeches and you know, I had a bunch of courses and a book and all of that kind of stuff and everything was good. And to be honest, for a while even, you know, so I spent maybe about 10 years during that time studying health. But eventually, because my health was fine, I, you know, I kind of wasn't really interested in it anymore as much. And so I, you know, was focusing more on the business and you know, I started working with someone else and helping them that grow their business and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I got to the age of 39 years old, I thought I had it all figured out enough, that as I said, I was teaching stuff and then suddenly I started to get this stabbing pain in my right midsection area around my lower ribs. And I was quite aware of the kind of Taoist system of health back then. And so I immediately thought, you know, liver and gallbladder as you would, if that's the system that you are. And the first thing I did is went to a medical doctor and they could not find any problems even with an mri, a ct, blood endoscopy, all of that kind of stuff. I went to several medical doctors, in fact, you know, private, eventually, initially, what we have over here, like nhs, and then I went to all the kind of standard practitioners, I would say functional medicine, nutritionist, naturopath, all of those kind of people. They all gave me interesting insights. I learned a lot of interesting stuff along the way, but no one could work out what was wrong with me. Then I was like, okay, well, maybe it's a structural issue Right. If you have pain here, could be a rib, could be a muscle, could be a fascia, could be something like that. So then I, you know, I saw a physio and craniosacral therapist and osteopath and acupuncturist and all of those kind of people. And again, I learned a lot and it was all very good, but it didn't help. Now, by this point, I'd always been a bit underweight and always had a bit of digestive issues. That was like the only thing that I had still in my 30s, like I had a few food intolerances and I thought, ah, it's just, yeah, just the way it is normal. But like this pain was of a specific type that it got worse pretty much when I ate anything, which is also why I thought it was the liver. And painkillers did not work for it, you know, because I know a lot of people over the age of 40 have chronic pain. I think it's like over 50%. But usually, like, if NSAIDs don't work, they put you on opioids, right, to control the pain. So this is a specific type of pains that NSAIDs didn't work and opioids actually made it much worse. So there was no type of painkiller that was actually effective. And so as you can imagine, I was kind of put off eating and I lost a lot of weight. I ended up being £120, 6 foot 3, pretty emaciated. I felt cold all the time. I started to get arrhythmia, I had constant anxiety, I couldn't sleep, I. And I was in probably the worst state of my life and certainly the worst day. While no one could work out what was wrong with me, no one had any idea as to what was causing this pain and what was causing this issue. Eventually, you know, with all these people kind of treating me as if maybe I was making it up, I thought maybe I am. Maybe it's some kind of emotional issue. So. So, you know, I did the kind of traditional therapy thing, which I'd never been keen on, but I started doing that and working on those levels also did more, you know, like I did Joe Dispenza's whole thing of meditation every day, focusing on, you know, being healed and all that kind of stuff, and all kinds of stuff, emotions, trauma, different kind of energy based systems and all the rest of it. And they were all very interesting and I learned a lot, but none of those helped either. And in fact, often they would make it worse. Often after a Session of meditation or whatever. I feel like in a blissful state. And then like half an hour later, this pain would be back and worse than ever. And I was like, what? What is this? And so I did a lot of self testing as well. You know, I was a very fortunate position. I felt very embarrassed, as you imagine. You've been teaching health for 10 years and suddenly you have this thing that, you know, you can't work out. Admittedly, no one else could either, so that should have helped a bit, but it didn't really. I was still very mortified and, you know, determined to work out what was going on on many levels. And so I'd spent a lot of money on testing. None of it had really brought up anything. And then I came across this thing that said, if you've ever done a test before, like 23 million ancestry service, then you can upload your data from that and within a few hours we can give you all this information about your health. And it promised such a wide variety of, you know, reports and information. I was like, sounds worth a try, right? And so I did it. And I was blown away with how accurate it was. And it was interesting to me because the. Some of the things that it said I had, which I had then, you know, when I had my DNA tested in 2013, I didn't have any of those problems. So, you know, I know that's kind of obvious to you probably, that because these things stay the same, the snips stay the same throughout your entire lifespan, but, you know, just on an emotional level, it's like, oh, my God, if only I'd have known this information back then, I almost certainly could have prevented all of these issues occurring. And so I was like, that's amazing. Now, I wish I could say, because it makes a nice story, it told me what was wrong with it and I fixed it and the end. But it wasn't quite as simple as that. What it did is it gave me clues to work out what was going on, that when I did further testing to confirm and then, you know, went down those pathways, I managed to work it out, get a proper diagnosis and then actually resolve it. And I was like, maybe, you know, this is just me. So I, you know, I got my wife to try it, got some of my business partners to diet, several friends, family members, employees, and, you know, after having seen like a couple of dozen people and gone through the results of them and, you know, learn, I was like, this is really incredibly interesting and incredibly helpful. And so. But the problem was I kind of had to go through it with them because we were talking about this before we started recording a lot of these platforms. They're quite practitioner focused, like someone who doesn't have, you know, a fairly in depth, intimate understanding about just health in general, let alone also genetics, they're not going to understand most of it. And so I wanted to create something that was just as, you know, insightful with just this, you know, huge comprehensive amount of accurate information, but that was a bit simpler for the person to use. In fact, significantly simpler and then also more affordable because they can often be pretty expensive. The good ones can be pretty expensive. So I wanted to make it like more affordable than, you know, any other comparable test by far. And so that, to ask your question, is how I ended up finding genetic insights.

No, and that's perfect. And you know, it's oftentimes the, you know, the healing journey that we innovate like this. I'm wondering, just for our lay listeners and viewers, like, are all genetic tests created equal?

So there's the test and then there's the interpretation of the data. So first of all, I should probably make that distinction. So I'd say in terms of the actual test, if they're doing any of the kind of ancestry services, I mean, there is definitely some differences in what they do and don't test for. So they're not all created equal, but they're all kind of good enough. So if you've done Ancestry.com, if you've done 23andMe, if you've done MyHeritage, if you've done any of the, you know, popular ones, they test for enough of the important SNPs that we can then take that data and we can come up with accurate risk scores and recommendations based on them. So that's kind of the good news. Have you ever done any of these big services before? Actually probably is good enough. Now, ironically, often the people who do the health ones, it's not good enough because often if you say you've had it done within functional medicine, doctor or nutritionist or something like that, often they just test a handful of SNPs, you know, they just tested three or they've just tested a dozen or something, right? Yeah, and that's not helpful. We do need. It's not a full genome because of course, most of the genome is stuff that is not relevant, but we need like a full list of the SNPs that have been studied and researched, which, as I said, most of these ancestry services do a good enough job on that in terms of the interpretation, to answer your question, there is a huge variation in the quality of the interpretation. And I'd say I put that down to, well, at least two major factors. One of them is the level of sophistication of the interpretation that's being done. And we talked about this again before we started recording that. In my experience, unfortunately, most of the services out there that have got the most popularity, often due to, you know, sophisticated and marketing. Maybe they spent a lot of money on marketing and sales. They're actually the most simplistic, like unhelpful, potentially services, because all they do is they take this huge file. You get this huge file from any of these services, this raw data, it's called, where they list, you know, a huge amount of these different SNPs, which stands for single nucleotide polymorphism. It's basically just one variation, one difference in your genetic code. And then they, you know, you can easily, anyone can do this. You can hire a software developer and go pick out this snp and then you can hire a scientific writer and go tell them what it means. And so most of the systems out there are basically that, which, as I said, anyone can do. They pick out, they say, okay, you have this SNP and this means this about you. It means you need more vitamin B12. It means that you're more likely to be stressed. It means you're more likely to die of heart disease, like whatever it might be like. But the problem with that is that it's only one isolated variable. And so anything. Now, there are exceptions to this. There are a few things, like, for instance, with nutritional needs, it's true that if there is just one step difference, that may well mean you need more of a certain nutrient or something like that. Certainly we have, we have those reports as well. It's true. But when you're trying to evaluate something like your cardiovascular health and what the risk is of you getting, you know, heart health issues later in life, which of course is super important because first of all, you know, 40 to 50% of people die of that. And then second of all, it's called the silent killer for a reason, right? Which is unless you test these markers regularly, you have no idea you have a problem until you have a severe problem. So this is really, really important. And so I would say to say to someone, oh, you know, you don't have a genetic risk for heart health problem just based on one SNP or even just a handful of SNPs is so inaccurate. It's, you know, Verging on irresponsible in both directions. You could tell someone, oh, you have a high risk based on this snp. It's like, but, but it's, there's so many other, you know, genetic factors, let alone also lifestyle and environmental factors on top of it. But just in terms of genetic factors. So, you know, for our report for cardiovascular heart health, we, we're analyzing tens of thousands of SNPs. And so that AI that actually does that analysis is built by and maintained by several dozen full time AI engineers. The process of deciding with each SNP how important it is, how much should we weight it, you know, in terms of coming up with a risk analysis. And then what are all the studies that show that it potentially like, so if you have this snp, then this nutrient might be helpful. If you have this snip, then this lifestyle intervention may be helpful. And like, but this, but, but then if you have this other snip, it says it's not helpful after all. So balancing all of that and coming up with an overall conclusion, which otherwise you'd have to have a very skilled and knowledgeable practitioner to do. Right. If they just had the SNPs in front of them, they'd have to go, oh, as far as I know, this balances out this and this cancels out this and this is more important than this. So like our system, and we're not the only one, but our system does that. It actually does that. Proper analysis coming up with a. And again, not to say it's perfect. I mean as more research comes out and more data is available, you know, we do update regularly.

Do it.

Yeah, yeah. But to at least come up with the best possible conclusion that the current research allows, rather than this extremely simplistic. Oh, you just have this, therefore this. And then the other thing I would say that, you know, sets. And again, we're not the only one. I'm not trying to say that. But like a system like ours apart, is that the recommendations, like I say to people, if I, if all we could give people is risk scores, I would not do this because that can be extremely disempowering. Right. It's like, oh, you're in the top five percentile, you know, 95th percentile for having, you know, a high risk for heart health issues or for developing diabetes, whatever it might be. Like, that's not good to tell someone. Like, you know, I mentioned my seven step system in my intro there. Like, I think one of the seven root causes of all chronic disease is the placebo and the Nocebo effect, right? The belief that we have in our mind. So if you say to someone you have a high risk of getting developing this disease, that's basically like putting a curse on someone. If that's all you're doing, you have to also say to them, and based on your genetics, here are the things that are shown that for you are specifically helpful. And if you just do the top, you know, the top recommendations, you're going to make a massive difference. And so I'd say. Now, I know a lot of other companies give recommendations, but often it's just like supplements or something. Like supplements are almost never in our top three. I'm not against supplements. I take probably too many of them. I've covered full of them. Like, you know, I'm a fan of them. Yeah, but, but they shouldn't be in the top three in most cases, right? When we're talking about like health issues. And so, you know, we give lifestyle recommendations, dietary recommendations. That's it. We don't actually give medication. You know, that's, that's like a separate thing, you know.

So one, one comment on that is you're not going to be able to supplement your way out of a bag of potato chips. So that, that's the underlying understanding. But secondly, when, when folks, I think some of the misperceptions around genetics, one, like are you didn't destined to express the gene even though you have the sn? Like, I guess this would bring in like, how does epigenetics fall in here with your, with your platform and your discussion here? Because I think a lot of times folks, you know, in the past, they would say, oh, I don't want to know because there's nothing I can do about it. Or, you know, or you have George Burns who used to play God in the movies and drinking his scotch and smoking cigars and when asked like, well, what are your, you know, what do your physicians say, George? He says, oh, they, they say nothing. They're all dead. You know, he's 98 years old and he was blessed with genetics that could handle a lifestyle like that. So how do you tie that in before we dive in specifically of how does knowing about your genetics help improve, you know, with your cognition and or brain health? This more meta discussion on overall, you know, how do you place this in, like, are you destined because of your genes?

It's a great question. And I can tell you're very experienced in this field because when I first put the page together about our services, I didn't Include mood, like addressing this, and I need to update it because it is the number one thing that people are concerned about, and rightly so. So I'd say, you know, going back philosophically thousands of years, there's always been that conflict in, in the, in the way people think between the idea of fate versus free will, right? So the people on the fate side, they tend to believe it's going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. But the people on the free will side tend to be like, I can manifest my own, you know, life. I can create my own destiny. I don't have to be held back by this change of the past, all that kind of stuff. Now I can say, Dr. Grant, I never imagined I'd be someone who had a genetics essay company because very simply, I was very much in that second camp, you know, for my late 20s and all my 30s, I didn't like the idea that there was anything holding me back and there's anything stopping me from, you know, being who I wanted to be and all the rest of it. So it's been very sobering and humbling, which is a great thing to realize that, you know, we're all dealt a certain set of cards. We have certain advantages and we have certain disadvantages. Now, to actually answer your question, it is not set in stone, but it is a factor, you know, so if we use the cards you dealt analogy, you know, for any poker players out there, if you're dealt a bad hand, you can still win. It's just more difficult and ditto, you can actually also win. You know, you can still, you can lose even if you have a straight flush, if you, you are very unlucky or if you play it wrong. So there is the. So here's what I've observed in practice, having seen a lot of people's results, generally by the time someone's in their 30s or 40s, late 30s or 40s. So one of the ways we can, like, we have over 500 reports in our membership, you know, system, the ones right at the top, if we sort by risk, are often like, you're in the top, you know, 99 or something like that. By the time someone's in their late 30s or 40s, I very rarely see where they haven't manifested that either they haven't already got it or they have had it at some point. For me, for instance, as I said, I thought as being healthy, but there were some serious things I was missing. Like, one of the things that were right at the top was like, Sinus problems. And it's true, I'd had that my whole life, you know, from teenager onwards. And so, you know, the question would be, was I destined to have that or is there anything I could have done to prevent that? Well, I was also having, you know, loads of inorganic pasteurized dairy. I was also smoking lots of cigarettes, you know, so like, obviously lots of things that were irritating my sinuses potentially. So. So I have seen that the average normal person who lives the average normal lifestyle, they've usually manifested the things that are the highest risk score. However, I work with two groups of people, often people who are like me, who have really tried everything and nothing's worked. But then I also speak to a lot of people, like maybe yourself, who are influencers, experts, thought leaders, and people have really been into this for a long time and living a healthy lifestyle for a long time. And honestly, when I go through their results, them, it's always the most difficult because I want to go through it with a normal person. It's like, oh my God, they're so amazing. They're so accurate. They're so whatever. And then I go, I just had it last week with the doctor, I went through it and, and, and she was like, no, don't have that, don't have that, don't have that problem. And, you know, it's frustrating for me, of course, because I'm trying to show that the system works because I want them to use it with their clients and their patients. But what I do then in that case is I go through with them and I say, okay, fair enough. Let's look at this one. You got a really high risk score. You haven't ever had it. Fair enough. I acknowledge that, you know, it seems to be wrong. That's fine. And then I look at the report itself and we scroll down to the recommendations and often the reports like majority recommendations, and I look and I always say, if you do the top three recommendations, that's often more impactful than doing like the next 10, you know, like that's the most important. And I say, are you doing this recommendation? Oh, yeah, I've been doing that for years. Are you doing this recommendation? Yeah, I've been doing that on and off my whole life. Are you doing this? So and so I see that again and again, that when people actually have been doing it for a long time, because a lot of these things are not things you haven't heard of. A lot of them are, you know, things that you're already familiar with, like, it actually works, actually make A difference. So to go back to epigenetics, some people ask me to quantify it. They say, well, how much of it is genetics and how much of it is lifestyle, environment and all the stuff that you can control? And I used to say, oh, you can't answer that. But you know what, I actually give an answer these days because I've seen so many reports and often we give you an estimate for that. So for instance, with heart health, the figure we give is about 40%. So about 40% is genetics, 60% is environment and lifestyle. Obviously that's an estimate that's not exactly, but it gives you some kind of idea. And honestly what I have found some things, you know, the report says only 10 of it is genetics. Sometimes it's, you know, quite a high percent. And obviously there are some things like, you know, your eye color and all the rest of it that's 99 point something percent, you know, set in stone. Although usually we don't have reports about that, but we do have some reports on things that you can't change more like traits and, you know, personality and sleeping habits and you know, what kind of foods work for you, even nutritional needs. You know, you're not, you're not necessarily gonna have a nutritional deficiency because of genetics, but if you have an increased need for a nutrient, that's not going to change, right? Like, so that's like a very high chance that basically you're going to have it. And I see that again and again and again when people have. Because I often, I encourage people to test based on what we show them, not to just usually not to take action based on what we show them. I mean, if your nutritional need says that you need more, you know, like glycine or vitamin B12, I say go for it because these things are pretty safe to have. But if it says you need more iron or vitamin D3 or anything like that, I say test because you can easily have too much of those things. So you want to actually confirm it. So I do see a lot of people who do follow up testing and I'm amazed at how often and how accurate is even Dr. Greg down to the amino acids, you know, or say you have an increased need for lysine, you have an increased need for tyrosine, you have an increased need to methionine, all these kind of things. And, and, and you can see actually has a big impact in their life. I had one client, this is kind of related to, you know, brain and, and because it's a nervous system issue, they had chronic anxiety for 40 years. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in trying to resolve it. He tried every kind of treatment from, you know, normal therapy to ayahuasca to, you know, all kinds Reiki, you know, all kinds of everything. And he had an elevated need for the amino acid glycine. And glycine is an amino acid that is not found in huge quantities in anything other than animal connective tissue, where it's like 20% of the total protein. And he had been like vegetarians for a long time, and even when he was eating animals, he was never eating, like, you know, bone broth or anything like that. So I just got him on glycine, and there was loads of other stuff I gave him to do, and he hadn't got around to most of it. I said, you need to see a doctor to test for this. He hadn't got around to any of that. All he started doing is glycine and a couple of herbs. And he said, the anxiety is gone. 40 years of anxiety has disappeared. Now, does that mean that that's going to happen for every person who has anxiety who takes glycine? No. The vast majority probably won't work for. And that's the point. It's like finding the thing. So, you know, sorry, I've gone on a tangent to answer the original question. The epigenetics absolutely do matter. But in this case, with that story I just told, I guess that guy's always going to need more glycine.

Right.

He doesn't necessarily have to supplement. He can just, you know, eat more of the foods that contain it naturally. But that's not going to change in a lot of other cases. You know, the vast majority is environment and lifestyle. And genetics play very little part. And often in the major things like a risk of heart disease and diabetes and respiratory health and poisonings and all the things that actually kill people is around 40%. I see. So genetics do play, like, a significant part.

Interesting. You know, I've been in practice for 25 years. I typically said 33% of the time, do people express their genes just like their parents did? Now, I had no data to go on. Anecdotally, what I was seeing in talking to my patients, hearing their family history and what was going on with them. But, you know, now you're running loads of the genetic data, and it's just. It's a different world, you know, 25 years later. Yeah. And so 40%, I wasn't too far off with that.

And that's my estimate. You may end up being right. I mean, but it's around that level. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I guess in just to reiterate it doesn't mean you're destined by your genes, but they definitely the way that I talk about it is it kind of puts you to the front of the line of we take the guessing out on your platform and then we have a much better starting spot. Of course you can always do trial and error, but it could take 40 years like your friend with the anxiety to figure out a result where this kind of could streamline it and put you at least to like, what are the best, you know, most probable interventions to create changes. So that leads into. And we will get to this cognition and brain discussion, but on how accurate are these for determining diet and exercise regimens for people?

You know, very down to even a granular level. So again, I think a lot of systems out there are overly simplistic. They're like, you know, are you this type, are you that type? And sometimes I dabble in that kind of thing. But I think in reality, you know, different people have different needs all the way down to, as I said, like the individual amino acid and the individual micronutrient. And so understanding that I think could finally give you the key. Plus, of course, when it comes to dietary, the other big thing is how well you digest. So we have, you know, a whole category based on that with lots of reports. And there's what foods does your body treat as if they are a poison? Or what foods contain things that your body struggles to detoxify. So you know, for instance, oxalates, histamines and salicylates are, you know, poison ish things that are naturally found in foods that your body, quote unquote, should be able to process and deal with without any problem. But there's a certain subset of people who have specific genetic variants and possibly other environmental stuff going on as well. That means that they do not deal with those things very well. And so, you know, that's another book I didn't, it's not in the intro, but it's the other book that I have forthcoming is that, you know, the Rejuvenate Diet. And it's, I call it that because everyone wants to call it a diet, but it's, it's a non diet diet. Like one of my central precepts of that is there is literally nothing that is good for everyone. Yeah. Like what is medicine to one person might be poison for another. I've, I, the only, I, you know, I ask people, I can ask Yourself, if you can think to any exceptions to that. The only thing I can think of is maybe like an air purifier or a water purifier that's like beneficial for everyone, but almost anything else, even any type of regimen. And sunlight, some people have an issue with that. Fresh air, some people have, have an issue of that. Like any kind of food, some people have an issue with that. So like, you really got to take it on a case by case basis. And so I would say so long as you are not looking for simple one size fits all answers, this is the very best approach. And as I said, I wouldn't base everything purely on what the genetics say, but the combination of starting with the genetics, that's why it's the first step of my seven step system. Start with genetics and then go, oh, you know, maybe I need to test for these food intolerances, maybe I need to test for these nutritional deficiencies. Maybe I need to test to see if I have an excess level of these toxins. Maybe I need to test to see if I have these hormonal imbalances or neurotransmitter imbalances or whatever it might be. You know, like these are the basic things which I often see as like the root cause of all this disease and, and lack of wellness. And to start with genetics and then do, you know, in most cases do further testing to validate. As I said again and again, it can be life changing. And sometimes it's just an amino acid, sometimes it's just a hormone, sometimes it's just a herb that, you know, adapts to hormone or like, and sometimes it's a simple lifestyle change. And these things can have a massive effect because of the weakest link idea. You know, like it's the, the weakest link in the chain. You're only as strong as your weakest link. And so if you have a, you know, say a deficiency in something obscure you might not even heard of, like molybdenum or alanine or something like that. These are things and no guru is going to tell you your health problems are caused by, you know, like, it's very unlikely and yet it could be the thing for you, which makes the biggest difference of all.

Interesting. Well, great. So, you know, now we've wound them up. We've wound up to the, to the punchline. So, you know, this aspect of utilizing your genetic platform for program development to create cutting edge therapeutics and specifically around brain health, what are some examples of patterns that you've seen and, or you know, some maybe, you know, not without geeking out too much, but getting into some of it. You know, some of the names of the snips or things that you consider when you're thinking about brain health for folks.

Sure. I mean, honestly, I don't usually focus on individual snips. That is one of the differences for our system to other people's. Sometimes focus on genes maybe, but you know, not.

I think. Yeah, yeah, have it that way. However you take that question, go with it.

Yeah, absolutely. So I would start with the basics, honestly, which may sound boring to say, but, you know, so I have our category in front of me, our brain health category. And it contains like obvious stuff that you might assume that there would be rapport, like cognitive decline, short term memory, verbal ability, cognition, and you know, things like diabetic neuropathy, peripheral neuropathy, like these kind of things that you know, very much speak to the potential degradation of the nervous system. And then we also have things in there about, you know, relevant nutrients, relevant neurotransmitter, relevant genes. Some of the genes that I include in there, for instance, are COMPT and bdmf. But you know, usually I wouldn't start with any of that stuff I just said. I would actually start with, you know, like a, for instance, a stress report. I would look at an inflammation report, I would look at a blood sugar, like a hypoglycemia report. I would look at a, you know, an arterial health report. I would look at. Let's just see. Yeah, well, let's just start with those ones for instance because you know, a lot of actually. Yeah, oh yeah. And I would look at a, like a basic hormonal, you know, report in most cases as well. Because, you know, I think this is my theory. I wonder if you agree that, you know, a, a lack of thyroid function is like an epidemic in our society that is undiagnosed. 100 years ago it was common, you know, 30% of people roughly were considered to be, have low thyroid function. You know, the common symptoms are being overweight, dry skin, constipation, but also digestive problems in general, allergies and intolerances, chronic infections, edema and anxiety and, or depression. And yeah, you know, lack of cognitive function as well. It's a crucial part of it. And why doctors, medical doctors often don't like to, if you go in with all those symptoms. Oh, and fatigue. Sorry, the most obvious one.

Sure.

And when you, and when you go into such a broad section of symptoms, they don't like it because it's too diverse and they're like, oh, you're making it up or it's just whatever and they'll kind of fob you off. But the truth is that all of those things I just said, and it's very common and probably a lot of people listening to this can relate to maybe most of them, is because they're all basically down to one simple thing, which is a lack of energy. Right? A lack of energy on the cellular mitochondrial level. Now a lack of energy on the cellular mitochondrial level can be down to things other than thyroid, of course. Right. And you know, one of the things is, you know, anemia commonly something that doctors do routinely test for. Right. And especially in women that, you know, commonly is an issue. But I, I see so often like people focusing on mitochondria health and metabolic health and all the rest of it, and they're talking about like carnitine, they're talking about Coq 10, all this stuff. And I'm like, but what about thyroid? What about the very thing that tells the mitochondria to create energy in the first place? And so, you know, one of the things, if someone has cognitive issues before I looked at BDMF or like any of these more, you know, advanced things I'd be looking at, okay, so first of all, is your body creating enough energy? Because, and here's, here's the distinction. I would say that helps, you know, in a clinical level to identify this is the issue. If you're still reasonably mentally sharp but your problem is more like memory, then I often say that that would be a, a thyroid issue. And the reason being, because my understanding is when you have low cellular energy, when you have low mitochondrial energy, which I relate to say chi in the Eastern system, your body has to go into, it's, you know, in the Eastern system, reserve energy, it's jing, which I would relate more to, you know, adrenal over activation from a western point of view. And so the adrenaline goes up, the cortisol goes up. When those systems go up, the body prioritizes the survival functions. So there's plenty of energy for the heart, there's plenty of energy for the lungs, there's plenty of energy for the muscles, there's plenty of energy for some of the functions of the brain, like the ability to focus. But the more luxury functions like the immune system, like the detoxification system, and from my experience, like the memory system is often what suffers. So I see that again when people like, I'm still, I'm still sharp enough to like do stuff, but I keep forgetting stuff. And then I see that they have this pattern of like what I call adrenaline dominance, although I got the term from Dr. Michael Platt, who coined it. And so that I would say if you can relate to that, then I would look at a lack of fundamental energy before I look at the brain specifically. So that's why I bring that up and look at is stress high and is actual mitochondrial energy production low? And the two questions have to go together because often you don't realize that you have low energy. If you are that type that goes into an overly adrenalized state in response to a lack of mitochondrial energy. Generally, if you have a lack of mitochondria energy, there's one of two like avenues you can go down. You can either go into the sympathetic state where you jack up your adrenaline and all the rest of it. In that case, as I said, like your ability to focus and process things tends to be as quick and as functional as ever. But the memories suffers or you go into more the dorsal vagal state, which is this kind of to some degree shuts down state, this kind of partial hibernation state. And then when you do that of course everything slows down. It's kind of more of a depressed kind of state. But you know, you're also going to tend to have low energy in general, not just in your brain. So if you, you know, if all of you is low energy, including your brain, then I would also look at the thyroid potentially and other things to do with basic energy. So that's kind of one element of energy for the brain. The other element of energy brain I would look at straight away is blood sugar. I think again there is an epidemic of hypoglycemia and insulin resistance which is not recognized and not talked about because again, a lot of people are like avoiding some of the negative effects by abusing stimulants and by you know, running on stress, which you know, you can, you don't have to take something to, to spike adrenaline in your system. You only have to, oh my God, this is going to happen. And this is why a lot of people become addicted to, you know, worrying and drama and all the rest of it because it spikes their adrenaline. And again, if you do that, what happens is, you know, often unless you're very far advanced in that you can still think and focus reasonably well. But again, it's like memory and creativity and being able to think outside the box and all those kind of more executive functions that are non emergency based start to suffer you know, so, yes, you're still able to focus and you're still able to think quickly. But first of all, memory goes. But then also, you know, your worldview kind of narrows. Often your decision making gets worse and worse because it's coming from this, you know, reactive stress, like state. So that would be one of the other, you know, primary things that I was focused on. And so blood sugar, you know, for instance, I see an epidemic of people in the health world who skip breakfast, you know, intermittent fasting, just drink coffee, they, you know, maybe or just a juice or something like that. The problem is if you're not having protein, carbs and fat in the right ratio for you pretty soon after waking up, and I know the Eastern system, like the DAO system, teaches this as well. Your body starts cannibalizing your own, you know, nutrient reserves. And it does that by raising cortisol and raising. And. Or adrenaline and raising adrenaline. It has to raise those stress chemicals to do gluconeogenesis and lipolysis and all the things to pull the energy out of storage. So you're, you're, you're negatively affecting cognitive function. But the problem is it doesn't feel like it, right? You wake up, you don't eat, you have a coffee, you're like, oh, my brain is good. And then maybe you eventually eat. Maybe it's lunch, maybe it's dinner. And then you're like, oh, now I feel so tired and I can't think clearly anymore. But it's an illusion, because food, if it's the right food and done the right way, it gives you energy. Like your body makes basic energy, whether you call it ATP or whether you call it chi out of oxygen and glucose, like on the simplest level, right? So it's breathing and eating. And so if eating gives you less energy, that tells you you're running on stress, which again, allows some of your brain functions to keep going for a long time. But a lot of those higher functions, creativity, you know, good decision making, memory, all that kind of stuff will often, like, start to suffer quite early. So I would say, you know, balancing blood sugar, making sure your blood sugar doesn't crash, breakfast being the most important meal of the day, all that kind of stuff would be something I focus on. And of course, if you do feel like you're. You have brain fog and all the rest of it after eating, then it's not that you should not eat half the day, especially the first half of the day, it's that you need to work out what's going on with your digestion or what's wrong with your diet that is making you have brain fog after you eat, because that's not normal. That's not the way it's supposed to be.

Yeah, yeah, that's lovely. You know, I think it's. It's a biggie that we see in a lot of biohacking and in longevity of. Oh, you've got to do intermittent fasting. And it's actually, it's more difficult for women to do that. And, and that is. You've really said that very well. Thank you for that. I think a lot of folks are going through those patterns, feeling like they're doing the right thing, and yet they're eating and then they crash. And that's a great marker that you're running on stress. And maybe get your hormone levels checked with a Dutch or a diurnal cortisol pattern to see what is going on there. Are you measuring your blood sugars? You know, diabesity of the brain is a real thing. Why we're seeing Alzheimer's cognitive decline increase as we go forward here is there is a lot more sugar imbalances because of the food industry, and our diets have been hijacked by food processing, et cetera. So that's, that's. That was really a great succinct way of putting it together. Yeah.

Thank you. And. And I would say women are also three times more likely to have thyroid issues. Right. Like diagnosed normal thyroid issues. And I think it's absolutely related that. So, yeah, to me, the key is, like, get your metabolism going faster, which you can tell by, you know, like a 37 or 98.6 degree middle of the day, you know, under the time kind of temperature. And if you, if you've achieved that and you can maintain that and then you add intermittent fasting and it doesn't reduce your metabolism, then intermittent fasting is great. But the problem is most people doing intermittent fasting because they are not producing enough mitochondrial energy. So they're having all these health problems and probably feeling brain fog and feeling low energy. And then by doing periods of time and not eating, that slows down your metabolism even more. It raises your adrenaline even more, which makes the problem even worse. And the practical thing, in terms of what you said there is the number one thing you hear people, but I'm not hungry when I wake up. It's like. But that is the number one sign that you're running on adrenaline. That's adrenaline dominance. If you wake up and you don't have A not just not hungry in the sense of my energy is low. But if you don't have a grumbling in your stomach within an hour of waking up, you are almost certainly running on adrenaline and that is not sustainable. Again, if you have good strong genes, sustainable for a lot longer than people who have less strong genes in this sense. But eventually it is always going to leave you depleted.

Yeah, well, any, any last pieces on that brain health, because I know we're just getting into it and would like to some more of the, the top level things for folks to think about.

I mean, I could talk about stress, but we kind of already have. I can talk about inflammation, but I guess you hear about it a lot. Well, let's talk about like something that's maybe a little bit more interesting to people and that would be dopamine. You know, so dopamine is the neurotransmitter which gives you focus and which also which gives you energy. Like, sorry, not energy. I'll just describe energy, enthusiasm, enthusiasm, motivation, passion, drive, ambition. All of those kind of words are dependent on dopamine. So my understanding of dopamine from an evolutionary point of view is it's the thing that makes you want things. And so the secondary function of dopamine, because it's the thing that makes you want things is it also is the thing that gives you mental clarity because, you know, throughout most of our illusions, for most of our, you know, mammal, distant, you know, relatives or however you want to put it there, there is always a problem of this basic, you know, life is two things. It's getting away from things which are dangerous. So it's, you know, being able to spot that and that's more done through adrenaline and noradrenaline and cortisol, the things that I've just talked about. But the other side of it is getting things that you want. So, and this is usually food or, you know, mating opportunities of the type that you like. And so a lot of people, I would say if you're the kind of person who's like, I have enough energy still. Well, when I don't relate to everything you said, but, you know, I just don't have much joy in my life anymore. And I'm start, you know, my brain's starting to slow down and maybe I'm, you know, I'm kind of worrying too much and I'm not happy and I find it hard to relax and all the rest of it. I'd say the reason why you're still functional and still able to maybe Earn a lot of money and run a household and five kids and all that stuff is because your adrenaline, your cortisol is keeping you going. But the reason why you're lacking joy and the reason why you're lacking motivation, like if I, I'm doing it because I love to or because I want to is because the dopamine is not there anymore. So in my experience, I'm sure you see the exact same thing. Dopamine collapses before cortisol and adrenal, which is because. Because staying alive in, you know, in terms of, in an emergency situation is more fundamental than getting things that you want from a design point of view. And so I would look at dopamine as one of the first things, you know, the other thing, the other element of it is, you know, memory and stuff like that, which I, you know, I would look more at choline and the PMT genes specifically and, you know, stuff like that when it comes to memory. But yeah, so those would be like my two starting places. But let's talk about dopamine a little bit more. So some people naturally have high dopamine, some people naturally have low dopamine, and you know, many people are in the middle. That's super, super important to find out about yourself. Especially if you have a genetic tendency for low dopamine. You are absolutely going to have addictive tendencies of one type or another and you are going to find it very difficult to just like focus and you know, whether it's on studying or in your work or whatever it is you might need to do, and you might find it very tempting to go on social media or shopping or gambling or pornography or, you know, whatever it might be even less, you know, let's talk about the fairly, you know, innocuous addictions, let alone drug addiction and sexual diction, all the kind of life destroying ones. But, you know, you're going to find it very difficult and that's because you're constantly trying to raise your dopamine to a point of feeling. Okay? And so that's very important to know about yourself. There's a gene called compt. I don't know if you've talked about it on your podcast before. Okay, let's talk about that one just briefly if we have time for that. This is a very interesting gene, as you ask for a gene, I'll give you a gene. So comt is the gene which breaks down catecholamines, which are a specific class of stress chemicals. And they basically consist of adrenaline, noradrenaline, sometimes called epinephrine, norepinephrine and dopamine. And the. And dopamine is a key point. So some people break those down very quickly, some people break them down very slowly. Obviously many people are in between gene, but again, that is very important to know about yourself. Are you fast comped or slow comped especially? And so, you know, a lot of genes, a lot of the difference between is basically just how quick or how slow they work. That's often, you know, that has huge repercussions. But that's when you really boil it down. That's like the simplistic way of looking at it. And so that's true for this comp. And so if you have a tendency to break stress chemicals down quickly, then you have a serious advantage in life, which is often obvious, but also a serious disadvantage, which may not be immediately obvious. The serious advantage to breaking down stress chemicals quickly is if you are in a war zone, if you are in a highly difficult, stressful situation, you have an amazing resilience because whereas someone who breaks them down slowly, the stress chemicals might build up more and more until they start to feel overwhelmed and, you know, be seriously traumatized and have a nervous breakdown and all the rest of it, you're okay. So that's a serious. And. And I'm not that kind of person. I always used to look at that kind of person go, oh God, I wish I was more resilient. I wish I was like, I wish I could take things in my stride. I wish things were no big deal to me like those kind of people. And they're often called like the warrior gene. This is often called the warrior warrior, but I, I think warrior warrior is the wrong term for it. I would like to suggest a new one for comp. It's actually the wizard warrior because the other type, the type that is slow comped, they have the. They break down stress chemicals slowly, but that also means that they break down dopamine slowly. So the disadvantage that they have is in a stressful situation, they are more likely to become overwhelmed if it continues for too long. They're more likely to shut down, you know, have a nervous breakdown, all of that kind of stuff, panic attack, all that, but they also have an advantage. And the fast comp has a disadvantage, which is in a peaceful situation. A fast comp person who breaks down stress gamer tools very quickly, they become bored and they can't focus on anything. And often they will actually create stress, they will create drama, they will create crisis, they will create war, because they only feel good in their situation. I remember listening to an interview of a boxer and they said, while you do it, you don't get paid very much. It's, you know, like brutal, you brain damage, all the rest of it. He goes, it's the only time I'm not bored. That's what he said. So that's like a, that's a classic fast comps warrior gene. That is often how they feel. And I, as much as I was always, like, envious of those people who are very resilient being in a crisis, I was also like, why does this person seem to keep creating a crisis situation unnecessarily? Like, I never quite understood that either. But when I understood genes, I understood, oh. And so the slow con person, because they break down, they break down adrenaline, noradren, slowly. Okay, not great, but they also break down dopamine slowly. And dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter that makes you feel good and gives you beliefs, ability to focus and makes your brain work well and make your brain work quickly and all the rest of it. And so the way I look at it now is if you are fast comps, you're more warrior type who is genetically predisposed to thrive in a chaotic, stressful environment. But if you are the wizard type, the slow comp who breaks down the neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, slowly, you are more likely to thrive in a peaceful, harmonious environment. And so both of them have an advantage. Both of them have, have a disadvantage. So that's one example. But of course, when it comes to brain, like, if, you know, talk about gaba, it's great to have high levels of gaba in many ways. It keeps you, you know, again, from being stressed and overwhelmed and all the rest of it. But if you have high levels of gaba, you're kind of in a sedated state a lot of the time, and you kind of need something to break out of it and inferior, you know, you maybe, you know, a stimulant coffee is actually a good idea because it will raise your, you know, adrenaline and norepinephrine levels enough that you can kind of have mental energy and think clearly and all the rest of it. You know, the endocannabinoids make a difference to mental clarity. There are advantages and disadvantages to having high or low levels of the endocannabinoids. Now, serotonin is a bit of a controversial one, but, you know, if that's high or low, oxytocin, if that's high or low Cortisol if that's high or low, noradren if that's high or low. So we have reports on each of those and, and each of those, they may not be a big deal for you because yours may just be normal and it may not be something to worth focusing on. But if you, oh, it's like, ah, I have a tendency to high cortisol. Oh, I have a tendency to low dopamine. Oh, I have a tendency to, you know, slow comps or whatever it might be. Again, I can't tell you it's the one thing except for maybe with cellular energy and blood sugar and the inflammation, these very basic things. But like finding that one, ah, this is the thing that for me is causing like all my problems can be really, really enlightening.

That is awesome. Elwyn Robinson of Genetic Insights dropping some knowledge bombs here today. Thank you so much. Any last parting words for our listeners and viewers?

Yeah, if you'd like to see this for yourself. Well, first of all, you'd like to learn more from me. YouTube.com ElWinRobinson is my YouTube channel. I have a lot of episodes on on like topic focused and I do have a full episode on brain health that goes into a lot more detail about this as well as non genetic factors. So check that out. And if you would like to try our genetic service for yourself, go to geneticinsights co and if you use the coupon code E4L WTH then I'm happy to offer you an additional 25 off. As I said, I think we're already industry leading in terms of being more affordable than anyone else who offers any kind of comparable service. But I'd like to offer an additional 25% off for your viewers and listeners to thank them for listening all the way to the end of the podcast.

Awesome. Well, thank you all. If you got something out of today's podcast, please go out, give us a thumbs up, give us a five star review, let people know what you learned. What you're taking away from this one, I'd like to know too. You can put it down in the comments. Would love to see what you thought of today's episode. We wouldn't be doing it without you. Thank you and we'll see you next time.