Your DNA Holds the Key: Why Some Supplements Make You Worse

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most in a natural way. Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Holistic Dentistry Show. Have you ever wondered about your genetics and how they play a factor in your everyday life? What kind of decisions you can make that will be good for your genes or bad for your genes? Well, today we have Dr. Tyler Pansner. He's a PhD scientist with a deep background in pharmacology cancer, neuroscience, and inflammation research. And I met you, Tyler, at the Mindshare Summit event. We happened to be sitting, you know, having lunch together, and I was just so amazed about your knowledge in genetic testing and doing personalized medicine the right way. And really what the problem is, you know, in today's medical or nutrition recommendations that are out there. So Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really excited to dive into this topic of genetics because I feel this is one of those fields that changes from month to month.

Yeah.

There's so much new information. How did you get interested in being a geneticist?

So believe it or not, my PhD wasn't in genetics. I did my bachelor's in cellular and molecular biology. I loved supplements. Drugs, how they affect the body. So I did my PhD in pharmacology. I did take, you know, graduate-level genetics. I did some CRISPR-Cas9, so some genetic editing of the breast cancer cells I was working with during my PhD. But really, what was the tipping point for me? I was dealing with a lot of anxiety, brain fog, headaches, sleep issues during my PhD. And that's when 23andMe was kind of really starting to get its legs. And I'm like, you know what, let me get the genetic testing done, these supposed life-changing results I'm going I got the report done and the report, and this was early 23andMe, it was more likely for your pee to smell like asparagus or more likely to think cilantro tastes like soap. And I'm like, okay, well, where's this life-changing, you know, that's cool and everything. Right. But it wasn't what it was now. So I took the raw data and was looking manually, looking up the mutations, what they meant. And I figured out for myself, for example, I have a mutation in the COMT gene, two of them actually. This means I break down dopamine and adrenaline 4 times slower than a normal person. So that explains why I'm always type A, go, go, go, very extroverted, but I'm also very prone to overstimulation, anxiety. And I figured out, well, what does that COMT gene need to function? It needs magnesium. It needs something called SAMe, S-adenosylmethionine. And what do you know? I went to Vitamin Shoppe. I got both of those, changed my life overnight. That gene didn't work as well throughout my whole life. I gave it more nutrients to make sure it works better. Now it's more important than just one gene for total health, right? But that's what kind of got me started initially. I figured out I had a lot of histamine issues, which I love to dive into more. I think histamine is a massive overlooked factor. For wide array of health issues for people and figured that out for myself as well. And certain foods I was eating, very healthy foods, actually were making my histamine levels higher and contributing to my brain fog, some ADHD-type tendencies, and was able to change my life.

Itching or hives from food?

So no, so that, that's, that's related to histamine, right? Allergies, but it wasn't an allergic response. High histamine can be, is linked to ADHD. Anxiety, brain fog, headaches, joint pain, insomnia. There is skin stuff as well, but it could show up in different people in different areas based on their genetics. My stuff is mostly neurological and supported those genes as well and really changed my life for the better very quickly and started doing that for friends and family on the side. You know, while I'm finishing up my PhD, was working for them and I'm like, well, I don't see anyone really looking at the supplementation properly with these genetics. So I kind of started rinky-dinking it together, you know, control effing the fuck, you know, nothing automated or anything like that. And, uh, decided I wanted to pursue a career in this. I, right out of my PhD, I got a job as a clinical test analyst for a clinical genomics company. So oncology, cancer patients, that type of genetic testing. And I thought it'd be a bunch of people, you know, just like me that want to totally change the world through genetics and, you know, to each his own, but it was a bunch of people that are just kind of showing up to do their job, which is fine. Right. Not everyone. I eat, sleep, breathe this and ooze it 24/7, 365. And I realized where, so we're paying millions and millions of dollars per year in taxpayer money to sequence our cancer cells once they're cancerous to figure out what drugs we need. That's what I was doing. Why aren't we sequencing our healthy cells to figure out what they need and don't need? So they're happier and healthier now. So they hopefully don't get cancer in the first place. I feel it felt kind of like backwards to me. So we're coming up on 2 years now. I actually got laid off from my job on my 30th birthday. That was 2 years, was 4 days ago from when we're recording this. Got laid off and decided I was already starting to see some clients. What I was doing on the side as an actual business, went all in on that. The past 2 years have been so surreal and eye-opening. A, what's possible for the life you create for yourself, but also how poor the education is around genetics and supplements. I work with people every day, so much sicker on the wrong supplements by quote professional input. I put it in quotes.

That's right.

There's a lot of these doctors, coaches, they're trained on, you know, gastroenterology or neurology or gut health, but they're not trained on pharmacology. They're not trained on— I mean, don't you think that's a little weird that doctors need to go through all this training to prescribe medications, but it's kind of the Wild West with supplements.

Yeah, for sure. And I even— I remember in dental school we had one pharmacology class. I didn't have any genetics at all. I don't think genetics is even taught in medical school. Really?

Very little.

Yeah. And I think now, you know, with the upcoming tests in genetics and nutrigenomics, it's so important for us to understand, you know, what's going on there and how we can help patients. Because you're right, I think we're just doing these You know, I know physicians that prescribe like, only supplements, here you are, take them all. Some people actually do worse on those supplements.

Well, you know, because it's take my X protocol or take my protocol for Y thing, right? But everyone's different. Each person with depression has different underlying cellular issues. Each person with joint pain, some may be lacking omega-3s, some may not. So when people say, I took omega-3s, I didn't feel any better, Well, maybe you didn't need more omega-3s. Maybe you don't have mutations associated with it. Maybe you're already ingesting enough omega-3s. Now, for your pharmacology training, that was probably focused around more pharmaceutical things, not supplements.

Exactly. More pharmaceuticals, more like, let's say, general anesthetics, especially how those work in the body and all that. Yes. But, you know, not so much supplementation. You're right. Nobody in dentistry Even in my residency program as a periodontist, nobody talked about supplementation. Not even, you know, and then the nutrition class was actually so basic. It was just had to do with like severe deficiencies of B vitamins, C vitamins.

You're, you're about to die. It's like either you're totally good or you're about to die. And that's sadly how a lot of the allopathic system is. Go to them if you're really close to dying or acutely injured, right? But regarding staying healthy, That's why you added the holistic in front of the dentistry, right? Because we're all on the same mission here.

Exactly. Prevention. How do we keep the cells healthy, the teeth healthy, you know, your whole body healthy in order to promote good overall health? So what is your cells— what are our cells truly need here and how do we determine that?

Yeah, well, the number one answer I get— I give most people is it depends, right? Because we're all unique. Yeah, I'm biased. I love utilizing the genetics to figure out which molecular steps are messed up. You know, an example I like to give, a lot of people can wrap their head around, is vitamin D. I'm sure you know vitamin D is highly linked to improved oral health outcomes. It regulates, you know, bone remineralization, teeth, bones, you know, they're all in the same wheelhouse here. And just for example, vitamin D, there are mutations in genes that can make you not make it in your skin as well from sunlight. I have two mutations there. Several years ago, wasn't doing— I mean, I've never been chronically, like, severely sick, but I was in that gray area for a lot of my life. And I was middle of the summer, I had low vitamin D levels. The doctor said, all right, just take vitamin D. I'm like, okay, but I'm at the beach all the time.

What?

Didn't make much sense to me back then. I take the vitamin D, the levels barely go up. Oh, just take more. Okay, I take more. I think I was taking like 20,000 IUs a day. All right. It's not going up. Let's do injections. This is kind of early, mid PhD days for me. Well, what do you know? There's also a gene that vitamin D people take that gets converted. That's the cholecalciferol that gets converted calcifediol. That's what shows up on blood work, but how does it get converted? The CYP2R1 gene, that's a gene. It's its only job, that worker. And for you guys listening, genes are like workers in your cells. They need a bit, a lot of workers to make the city work. This worker's job is to convert that vitamin D you take as a supplement. Well, I looked into my genes and I have 6 mutations in that gene. So I'm taking that vitamin D form. The worker is not converting it. I told my doctor that I have never heard of that in my entire life. And that's when I knew I need to double down on this and go and figure it out. So maybe I don't make it in my skin as well. I don't convert it as well. And you may know this, but for the people listening, our cells sense things in our blood with receptors. Think of them like baseball mitts on our gloves. I mean, on our cells, vitamin D is like a baseball floating around the bloodstream. Your cell has to catch it in order to sense it. So it doesn't matter what's in the blood. It matters what your cells sense what's in the blood. I have some mutations there, which means I need to go— I keep my levels around 60 to 80 because my cells don't sense it. But I had a client last week that had 10 mutations there. We had to bring her up to 100, the high end of normal. Her regular doctor was saying that's too high. She was like, respectfully, screw you. I finally feel better now because now her cells are sensing it. Her 100 is like someone else's 65, 70.

Makes sense.

Yeah. So that's just a few examples there of just for the vitamin D, right? Not to go too nerd out on you on these, which steps— it's not how much vitamin D do I need to take? It's what levels make your cells happy, what form you need to take, and what other micronutrients.

Yeah, you're bringing up a good point because you're right, when you go to the doctor, your doctor said does a blood test and say, oh, your level is all this much, but those are just the level you're saying that's in the blood. It's not that the levels that the cells necessarily recognize.

Exactly.

I haven't even heard of a doctor that's even looking at that or know how to look at that.

No. And here's the thing, you know, there are genetic companies out there that look at that VDR gene, the vitamin D receptor gene. But this is one of the biggest issues I see in the genetic space. You pay this money for this report and it says, oh, you have one mutation in the vitamin D receptor. People are like, oh no, you know, I'm so messed up. I checked 10 with my analysis. So everyone here listening, I think 99% of you have at least one mutation in that gene. That's— but you see how if the average I see is maybe 2 to 4, And you have one on that other testing. Oh my God, you think you're screwed for life. On this testing, you're better than the normal person, but you show up with 10 mutations. I'm like, oh boy, I'm happy for you because vitamin D levels are a big, big factor for you. Like the worst thing you could get from a test is everything looks fine, you feel like crap. And that's why I love genetics. We all have millions of mutations. It's not a question if you're going to get answers, it's how much will the interpretation of those answers get you feeling better? How quickly?

That makes total sense. I love that we've gone into this. Yeah, there's actually a practitioner out there who basically says that, or he advises people not to take vitamin D at all because they should only be taking like retinol and iron, not even iron, just take retinol to be able to get the vitamin D to regulate itself, that we shouldn't even be touching that level.

But yeah, and you know, my, my— yeah, I mean, my philosophy is anyone that outright promotes or demonizes any one supplement or nutrient for everyone, pretty big red flag if you ask me, because it completely undermines the uniqueness and genetic complexity of us. Do I have all my clients take vitamin D? No. Do I have all my clients go up to 100 nanograms per milliliter? No, actually, that's a small fraction of them, right? But there are outliers. Do you have zero mutations or 10? Big variance there, right? And of course, we want to recommend getting outside, making sure you have enough magnesium and boron so the vitamin D can do its thing. But I don't care who you are, if you have that many mutations in that one gene, these are the people, then they get the vitamin D injections. The levels still barely go up. Why? You're injecting the wrong form. It's not an absorption issue, it's a conversion issue. So they take an oral form of the preactivated form, calcifediol. I'm not even kidding here. Some people within a day or two of taking it, Their lives completely changed their entire life. That road leading to the right vitamin D levels. There's a big tree in the road, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 mutations there, their entire life. They've been lacking that. And now it's like coming from the gods, like, oh, you know, like coming from the gods, like, oh my God, we finally, these cells are so happy. Tyler finally gave us calcifediol, right? We finally have that. Boom. Instantly starts getting those genes for, you know, mood, histamine, infections, bone health. Teeth health.

Yeah. So, so the kind of education in genetics that you're talking about, is this available for, for people to like, for doctors to get? Or where can they— I mean, this vitamin D information that you just gave us alone is like gold. I feel like it should be the standard of care.

Yeah. And so I— my genetics information, the vast majority of it has been self-taught. Like I took, I took genetics in undergrad, I took graduate level. So, you know, the molecular concepts, right? That's through training, but connecting the dots with what genes can you support naturally to actually, to truly make you feel better. That's pretty much self-taught. I did do a 3-month practitioner training program earlier this year. I plan on continuing to hone and refine that because you're right. I think this is a no-brainer. Not that every doctor needs to do a crazy gene panel, but even some of the heavy hitters, you know, vitamin D, methylation. These can make massive impacts on people's lives. And you see all these people, you know, being put on all these hormone therapies, which I'm not against, but hormone therapies or, you know, mood medications. Low vitamin D is linked to all these issues. But again, you take a little vitamin D, you get your level to a 40, the doctor says you're between 30 and 100, you're good to go. You may need double that level. To really start feeling improvements. So yeah, so, so yeah, so in short, I hope to lead the way with this type of training because again, it's— people have said you need higher vitamin D levels with the receptor, but are you looking deep enough? How do you know which form you need? Right? Again, it's— it reminds me of, imagine trying to build a house, you know, the blueprint, you have all the materials, but you don't know how to use your tools. That's what it's like trying to relay a genetic report. When you don't know the pharmacology. A lot of these people, these doctors reading genetic reports, it's a little side thing for them, right? They just want to read real quick, and they get questioned by their patients. I hear a lot of feedback: I got these panels done, I asked for more information, they couldn't answer it for me. And it's very scary. It's frightening, honestly, that they're offering this genetic testing if they don't know the ins and outs of it.

Yeah, for sure. Most of us don't. When it comes to actually one genetic test that I do in the practice as a periodontist, it has to do with inflammation. But this is the thing we were taught is like, okay, if somebody has periodontal disease, well, we take a saliva test and we look at the 11 different pathogens that cause periodontal disease. And then we also add the IL-6 gene because we want to know if somebody's predisposed to, you know, bone loss. And based on that, I make some decisions. Okay, well, you should come in for a cleaning every 2 months instead of every 6 months just to kind of stay on top of that IL-6 gene. But, but it's such an opportunity. I feel like we're also looking as dentists at such a narrow part of inflammation. Right. Yeah.

I mean, IL-6 is a big one. You know, I also check TNF-alpha, interleukin-1 beta, right? You know, that immunology is an absolute monster of a field of study, right? It's— it goes really, really deep.

Yes. And we're not checking that right now. We don't even have an option like in our testing. So it's such a huge opportunity also in dentistry to improve this personalized type of care, especially when it comes to inflammatory conditions.

I mean, you know, it's like not even just the dentistry, oral health. I truly foresee a future. It doesn't matter what discipline you're in. If you help people with cellular issues, which is anyone involved in health and medicine, this can help. I mean, even with the psychiatrists that are trying to help, or therapists, right, that are trying to help people change the way they view the world, right? Like What is healing from trauma and all these things? It's flipping off the genes that got turned on due to the trauma, right? So imagine how much easier it would be if your brain had what it need to be more malleable, right? So yeah. And now with your practice as well, are you utilizing supplements in your practice?

I am utilizing supplements in my practice and vitamin D is one of them. Mm-hmm. E3, K1, K2. Now I have Different view. And I follow the integrative medicine, functional medicine recommendations, which they say 60 to 80. Yep. But, you know, to your point, like for some people it might still not be enough.

Yeah, and exactly. And it's one of those things too that people love. And, and again, people saying like, oh, you don't need vitamin D, you can get it from the sun. But again, that ability to make it from the sun is done by that gene, right?

Yeah, it's different for everyone. Yeah. Now you were mentioning to me, like, every person really— we need supplementation to live our best life because we are all so different in terms of mutations. Uh, what other supplements do you feel like it's a common one to have deficiency, or is there such a thing as a common supplement that we would—

yeah, no, definitely. So yeah, what you just said initially, I'll touch on that first. I truly think Well, it's a fact. The environment we live in today is not what we evolved to live in, right? We evolved to forage for berries, killed a couple of woolly mammoths, right? Get stressed for a bit and then chill by the fire, this or that, right? In our world today, we're exposed to more stress than ever, which depletes nutrients in the body. Our food quality, our soil quality is lower, so we don't ingest as many nutrients. And we're exposed to so many more toxins, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, EMFs, heavy metals that deplete our nutrients, our micronutrients. So I firmly believe every human being needs to be supplementing. You don't got to go crazy out the wazoo, but at least a couple staple things catered to what your body requires. But regarding general recommendations, a few that I see across the board that are fairly— there's always a small percentage of people that don't feel great on something, right? But in general, I think magnesium is one. I think they estimate over 50% of people are deficient in magnesium. And you got to remember, that's based on the conventional medicine guidelines, which, as we know, if you're deficient by their standards, you're super deficient, right? So if 50% of people are deficient by their standards, 70% maybe, you know, if not more by, you know, those more functional ranges, right? We don't want to wait till there's none left. We're knocking on death's door, right? We want to make sure we're in that optimal range. So magnesium is one that I think it's very well tolerated by a lot of people. I also think that a good B complex can be good for you. But a lot of people have heard about this MTHFR gene. Drives me nuts. People will not stop talking about it. People want flashy marketing and say, that's the secret to your issues. Newsflash: it's no more important than any other methylation gene. It's just the most studied. But you know this, just because something isn't studied very well studied doesn't mean it's not important. It just means the bureaucracy that is scientific research hasn't gotten to it yet. The B complex.

I mean, I'm trying to—

on the top of my head, I mean, there's at least— I think I check at least 8 to 10 of them. And think about, these are all points in a circle, right? It's a cycle. So if you were to put 8 dots and draw a circle from the 8 dots, which dot is the most important? They're all equally important. It's a circle, right? So that's just the most discussed. But regarding these B vitamins, if you're prone to anxiety, a lot of these methyl vitamins, methylfolate, methyl B12, can make people very anxious and overstimulated because their body doesn't need that much. I'm very sensitive to that as well. But I do think a good adenosyl and hydroxyl B12, those are methyl-free forms that can be safe for a lot of people to try out. So the magnesium, B12, and I do think that vitamin D is something I think everyone should experiment, especially in the winter. Try supplementing with it a bit and see how you feel. People act like you take a vitamin D supplement for 2 months you're gonna like die and turn into a big calcified human corpse or something. Like, it's not like a couple of months of trying something. It's if you do high dose of the wrong thing for decades, right? But experiment a little bit with that, see what your levels go up to, and see how you feel. I think those are some pretty safe ones across the board. The last one too I really like is glycine. Glycine is found in animal connective tissue and some plants. It's half of the building block for glutathione. The body's number one antioxidant. I love that a lot. It calms down the nervous system, helps me a lot with sleep. If you think about this too, like, when's the last time you ate a bone or a tendon, right? Like, when I, I thought we were cavemen, right? We would eat all the gross stuff on all the bones and stuff. So we would get the animal meat, which has methionine that plays a role in methylation. But when nowadays we go buy filet mignons or ribeye, we don't eat all that junk anymore.

Not—

it's not junk, it's gold actually, right? But all the gross stuff, we are missing some of that glycine. This methionine glycine ratio is very skewed and a big reason for homocysteine levels rising. I'm sure, you know, linked to heart disease, any disease you could think of is linked to that high homocysteine. Glycine is one that's well tolerated by the vast majority of people, and the few people that don't feel great on it, instead of calming them down, it kind of just stims them up a little bit. So not that it's like this horrific reaction, but always start the dosage low.

Yeah. You know, it's funny because actually I have one of my friends, she said everything on her has the opposite reaction. If something's supposed to calm her down, it actually makes her more energized. So she was telling me, I take Vicodin and it makes me energized. So yeah. Does, is that a genetic component?

Well, I know for the glycine, definitely. For the Vicodin, I mean, if it's not a genetic component, it's a psychological component, right? So like, I wonder, now I wonder a good experiment would be tell let's give her a calming supplement and tell her it's going to energize her. And then that would, that would eliminate that bias, right? That variable, right? Because then maybe, oh, now it works. And then it might be a psychological thing, not a physiological thing. But yeah, and that's what I really focus on too, is it's not just saying what you need. Like, I work with people every day that are feeling so much worse on these supplements because of these supplement gene interactions. I told you I break down adrenaline 4 times slower than a normal person. I have 2 mutations in that gene. I'm pretty sure, like, well, I know in my practice, I'd say around 70% of my clients have 1 mutation in that gene. Maybe 10, 15% have 2. There are so many supplements out there that block that gene. So think about this. Imagine if I had a bathtub of adrenaline in my brain. My bathtub already barely drains due to my mutations. But now I'm gonna plug the drain up even more with some of these supplements, and I'll share some of them for you and you're probably going to be like, these are great supplements and they're not— no supplement does a good thing or a bad thing. They just do things in the body depending what body they're in. They may be good or bad things. Quercetin, rhodiola rosea, methylene blue, fenugreek, berberine, cinnamon bark extract, green tea extract. Oh my God, that one ruins me. Piperine, turmeric or curcumin. So these are all very known resveratrol being in longevity, the mitochondrial health. These all do amazing things in the body. But one of the things they do is that they block the gene that breaks down adrenaline. So if you don't have any mutations in that gene, you'll likely tolerate it better. But if you're someone like me with a double mutation there, if I even like sniff some of that, not literally, but you get what I'm saying. If I even like sniff some of that stuff, I just feel, why do I feel fight or flight? I call it the monkey on your back feeling. And this is something, this is a word, the term that I've coined after working with people in my practice. It's the people that no matter what, they cannot be at ease. They'll be like, I had a day at work. I just feel a little off. And then at nighttime I'm asking them questions and I'm like, when you're hanging out with your family and everything should be great, everything in life you could want, you're with your whole family. Do you still have a hard time just being at ease? Oh my God. Yes. Does it feel like there's just like, I call it the monkey on your back. You know, something they're like, yes, yes. What is that? Well, what do you know? You're taking curcumin for your inflammation. You're taking resveratrol for your mitochondrial health. You're taking fenugreek for your hormones. You're taking Methylene Blue for energy. That's what your naturopath or practitioner put you on for those reasons. And those 4 reasons, it's not that that's not what's going on, right? But from my point of view, I'm seeing adrenaline booster, adrenaline booster, adrenaline booster, adrenaline booster. Plus your genetics, high adrenaline person. So you see, from my point of view, I'm like, oh my good— I've been doing this for 2 years, but I worked with around 600 people at this point. Like, this happens so much more often than people think. And it's not that those supplements are going to make someone, you know, extremely ill or kill someone, right? But this is about someone's quality of life, how they feel each and every day.

And I've seen people—

Yeah, yeah. I've had people also taking— they're also on Adderall with these supplements, and then I'm like, oh my, that's just adrenaline drug, adrenaline supplement, adrenaline genetics. No wonder why if I take any one of those, I won't go to bed on time.

Oh yeah. And it's berberine, especially today. It's like the alternative to Ozempic. So a lot of people are putting themselves on it thinking I'm gonna lose weight. Yeah, probably a good percentage of them are going to have this kind of reaction that you're mentioning.

Well, yeah, you know, the berberine, the fenugreek, the, the cinnamon Bark extract, those all do very good on blood sugar, but bitter melon is one that I like that based on the data, and I've tried it myself, that also works on GLP-1 like Ozempic, like similar to berberine, but I've noticed there's much, much, much less. I don't really notice any anxiety stimulating effects. So someone comes to me, I'm taking berberine for weight loss, I'm anxious, irritable, I have a temper, or I don't sleep well, then I'll say, okay, we're going to swap that for the bitter melon. And they're like, oh, day one, I just feel a lot more at ease and safe in my body. Right. Because that adrenaline alarm is not being shot up. You know, if you think about it, it's very hard for someone that's uninformed to understand what is a true psychological anxiety threat and what is just the wrong foods or supplements. Like, for example, you know, I've been doing this biohacking, my ma— I'm patient zero for what, 10 years now at this point, probably more. And I've— I didn't always know what I know now, and I've messed myself up pretty bad. And by bad, I mean like really bad. I'm just sitting there doing nothing, 12 out of 10 anxiety because I took the wrong things, right? And my wife will be like, what can I do to help? But I, I can recognize this is not a my boss yelled at me, I'm worried about a work thing. This is a hardwired biochemical issue right now that really won't get much better until I just sleep it off. But most people, they confuse the two, right? They're like, I'm more stressed. It's a supplement doing it. I'm more stressed. And then they're like, oh, it's the work thing. Then they hyperfixate on it. Right. And this level of distinction, doctors aren't going deep enough. And of course, part of it's because they don't have a lot of time. I tell people, don't blame the doctors, people. You gotta blame the system. A lot of them are trying to do their best.

Exactly. And we don't even know what we don't know.

Exactly. Yep.

How many geneticists like you are out there basically, or, you know, that are actually can interpret a genetic test like 23andMe, for example?

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a few that I'm friends with that do it, you know, regarding the bigger companies, I've seen a lot of the bigger company reports and again, it's a mixture of good information, but for example, you'll see. You have an IL-6 mutation, take curcumin, right? It blocks IL-6. They'll put the study there. Great. The next line over, you're prone to anemia, eat more iron, but curcumin lowers iron in the body. But do you see how the report just completely contradicted itself? Because again, it's missing that pharmacology knowledge. Oh, it can help with— but my wife, she has a hereditary hemochromatosis. So she always has high iron. Well, guess what she takes every morning? She takes curcumin because it's good anti-inflammatory, but she needs to knock off some of that iron, right? We eat a good bit of red meat, so it's not that it's bad for everybody. If you have high iron, that's exactly what you need. If you have iron overload, that's exactly what you need. If you're anemic or borderline anemic, you should go nowhere near that.

Interesting. Very interesting. I'll chat with you a little bit about personalized versus Hyperpersonalized medicine.

Yeah. So yeah, we kind of touched on it a bit already, but that's the hyperpersonalization. That's a word term that I coined just after me seeing— after working with so many people that have gotten, quote, personalized guidance reports, I'm realizing I need a way to distinguish myself because it is a completely different layer or level of personalization for you. It's not just some stuff you should take. Here's a report, figure it out. Like I require an hour-long call. I need to hear if someone says on paper they're anxious and they're depressed, I have all the recommendations for the genes. There's way more. My clients get maybe 40 or so supplement recommendations, but I would never put them all on that. How do we know which few to pick? I need to hear you and not just say, just, you're someone with anxiety, depression. Do you lean more toward, are you waking up in the morning, bouncing out of bed, anxious? I have so much to do. So you're more on the anxious side. And by the end of the day, you're burnt out. So then you're depressed, or do you not want to get out of bed? Very low energy, very low enthusiasm. The depression is leading the way, or are you just a 50/50 split? Right. That type of question. How could you ever encapsulate that within just a report without meeting with someone? Right. So that's kind of what I'm saying, what I do being hyper-personalized, because I need something to separate myself from what else is going on in the genetics industry. This is also why I can't ship out thousands of kits per month because I'm one person right now. So rather than trying to figure out how to get these reports to the most people possible right now, I think genetic space has a lot to learn and implement. I've been doing this for, for 2 years at this point, and I— 2 and a half years at this point, and now starting to get a good grasp. I'm focusing on the best possible guidance service first. Figure out scaling later. Right. It's a different way of doing it, but I'm not looking at what other people are doing. I'm seeing what's in front of me, reading my own literature. You asked about training. I don't listen to podcasts. I don't read books. I read studies. I work with people. I connect the dots up here. And then once in a while, when I see what someone else is doing in the genetic space, I'm like, oh, they're, we're on the same wavelength. Great. Right. So, uh, yeah, the hyper-personalized is kind of just that next layer there that I really think needs to be adopted more wide scale. I mean, I've had so many people, they have like 4, 5, 6 different genetic tests. They upload all of them on the discovery call. They have all these sheets, this and that. You should not be having to do all of these different genetic tests. They all say different things cuz they all analyze it differently.

Mm-hmm. So true. And, and you know, we have a view right now, you know, top-down view on disease, meaning you have a symptom, you have disease. Okay, let's try to solve it. But really, with genetics, you were mentioning that we really have this— okay, let's look at what your cells— like this bottom-up view on disease. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that I've been working on over the past few months because I'm not going to be able to change the world by just doing one-on-one calls, right? Like, I need to figure out a way to spread this to the masses. And what I'm really doing for people is optimizing the cell signaling pathways. And that's basically what eating and supplementing and living in according to what your body needs. That's basically what it is. So what I mean by that is, let's just say, let's just say we have anxiety, depression, OCD, and ADHD. Let's use those 4 examples. Regular medicine, the top-down, you have the label, right? What medication works for ADHD? What medication works for OCD? Well, low vitamin D, high histamine, high glutamate, high sulfur is linked to all, every single one of those. So, and again, I'm not saying, you know, this bottom-up approach is superior all the way, right? Just a different— it's how my brain looks at it. And it addresses a lot of gaps in this space. Instead of focusing on the myopic lens of what your label is, you see someone with low vitamin D, these same mutations that I mentioned for vitamin D are linked to all these different conditions. So I believe it's a lot simpler to think, okay, you have a lot of issues with sulfur, vitamin D, a little bit of serotonin, let's say, right? Let's address that from the bottom level upwards. And I'll word it this way. I worked with people with, you know, neurodegeneration, with skin issues, fertility issues. Like, so I've had people, let's just say has Parkinson's. Another client has fertility issues. Sometimes their protocols are so much more similar than you would think, because I'm looking genetically, what are they lacking? I'm giving what they're lacking. So like low choline can be linked to both of those, because remember, all of our different cell types in our body, they do different things with these nutrients. So that kind of makes sense that there's— people like to ask, you know, what is the anxiety gene? What is the cancer gene? Don't take this 100% literally, but everything pretty much affects everything, I think, in terms of cellular dysfunction. And let's try to address what's the most genetically disrupted first and let the cells— now they have what they do— see that little trickle-down effect and watch your health improve.

That's amazing. Can you think of a, of a client of yours that you had that like had a dramatic, uh, result that you can share with us? Or, um, you know, somebody that you got maybe surprised or somebody that comes to mind?

Yeah, absolutely. So I had a couple clients, one that really comes to mind. Well, I had several clients with that vitamin D conversion mutation I mentioned, and that's a really important one because that's what we call is a linear pathway. There's only one way to make that, and that worker, like the assembly line of all these genes, there's only one way to do it and you have a roadblock there. So I had a client that was having chronic panic attacks. And the first day he took that calcifediol supplement, he had, I think, 6 or 7 mutations in that gene. Within an hour of taking that, his panic attacks just stopped. Now I'm going to be totally honest. I didn't even expect that. And that's why doing this type of work where I'm just kind of working in my zone, right? Like sometimes people respond so much more miraculously than I ever could have imagined. And honestly, sometimes the genes point towards a major issue. And it's not as life-changing as I thought, right? I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's always so, you know, sometimes it's like, okay, we gotta pivot a little bit. Right. But that one, I told you, I suffered a lot from anxiety, always an uphill battle. So that always helping someone with that when it was panic attacks within an hour, nipped it in the bud cuz their cells were lacking that, that much. Another one that comes to mind is a client of mine that had Alzheimer's disease. And it was mild moderate. And she had 14 out of 14 mutations in the PEMT gene. This is the gene that makes phosphatidylcholine, extremely important for brain health. It's linked to Alzheimer's disease. So gave her that phosphatidylcholine. I had her work up to triple the recommended dose because 12, 14 mutations, that gene is barely working. If you have 1 or 2, maybe you need like 1 pill of it, right? Not triple the dose. So that was able to have profound changes. And here's the thing. Do I have brain scans to show we regrew part of the brain? Not yet. Right. I hope throughout my career to fund these types of studies. And I'm not saying that phosphatidylcholine is the cure for everyone's Alzheimer's disease, but we do have a lot of data. Choline supplementation helps with human outcomes of neurodegeneration. And really remarkable data with mice, even though it's different, right? So I'm not completely reinventing the wheel here. We know these things play a role, but I just wonder if we could take a time machine 20 years ago and start her taking this phosphatidylcholine, then would she have developed Alzheimer's disease to begin with?

Yeah. No, I see you really go to the root of the problem. That's the thing.

You don't— and again, it's the, it's the genetic root too, right? Because Then there's also comes down to, you know, you have like mold and viruses, parasites have, you know, there's all that stuff too, which genetics play a role in. Right. But I never want to be known as that crazy guy that, uh, says genetics are the answer for everything always and cures everything. Right. Like I'm interested in the science way more than I am in the business side of it. I don't, there's enough people out there with the flashy, crazy marketing for genetic stuff that are, getting debunked left and right, they keep preaching it because they want to get more eyeballs, get more money. But never has and never will be me because this is what I was put on earth to do, is try to advance this science and kind of weave it into these other disciplines.

Yeah, it's perfect timing for you to do that. I feel at a good time in medicine where things are shifting that direction.

Yep.

So drtylerpanzner.com/startyourjourney, you're offering us actually paid one-on-one deep dive into genetic analysis. So we can work with you that way. And I guess one way is for those of you who already have genetic tests and genetic data, that we can just send that to you and you're able to have this deep dive into our basically lifestyle and tell us, give us more hyper-personalized recommendations for supplementation.

Yeah. And it's also foods as well. You know, which foods— I've had people get off of their sleeping medications because they were eating too much garlic, onions, and tomatoes for dinner. Now that may sound crazy, but let's break that down a little bit.

So, uh, sauce for pasta.

Well, yeah, well, here's the thing. So garlic and onions are very high in something called sulfur. When sulfur gets too high in your body, your body releases histamine, sort of like an allergy, but histamine is a neurotransmitter that regulates wakefulness. Tomatoes release histamine in your body. So you have the garlic and onions releasing histamine. You have the tomatoes releasing histamine. This is a fact. They prescribe antihistamine medications for sleep medications. So you kind of see here, if you're genetically sensitive, I make excess sulfur in my body and I break it down slower. I mentioned initially earlier on, I have a lot of high histamine related things as well. I'm very sensitive to that. So again, I'm not saying that's everybody, but if you do have trouble sleeping and you have a lot of garlic, Onions, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes for dinner. Try not having those for dinner. And it may sound nuts. I've had so many clients that are like, no way. I'm like, trust me on this. Just try it. And within a few nights they're like, oh my God, I never ever would have thought that.

Amazing.

And good luck. Good luck. I've had to unfortunately break that news to a couple of Italians as well. And that was, uh, kind of tough as well, but there's certain things we could do to help process it, but I could go on and on, but yeah, the deep dive analysis, that's what I started doing this from the get-go. It's still the majority of what I do and really just giving that white glove service and a good experience to make sure you understand your body. Because like, I'll have clients a couple of months after we meet, they're like, hey, I've been feeling great. I went out with friends, I ate and I nosedove. I felt like crap. I remember what you said. I got out my phone, I Googled what I ate. Example, that food, two things in there were high in sulfur. Boom. Now I know why I got a headache. So you see how it's them learning for themselves too about the language or the patterns of your body.

Yes, absolutely. You're also offering a mini course, Cell Signaling and Genetics mini course, and we're gonna put the link down in the show notes. Tell us a little bit about this mini course.

Yeah, so, you know, I mentioned some of these self-signaling pathways. These are basically instructions that tell ourselves what to do. I like to give the example of imagine like a puppet with a puppeteer with strings. The puppet is ourselves, the strings are the cell signaling pathways, the hands are what foods we eat, what thoughts we think, what supplements we take, how we live our life. I mentioned like the histamine, glutamate, sulfur, vitamin D. I, as I mentioned, rather than— because here's what I was trying to do. I was thinking about making courses for people on how to help your anxiety, your brain fog, your headaches. But then I realized from my point of view, my vantage point, the answer is the same for all of them. Make sure your histamine, glutamate, sulfur isn't too high. So I would make a course that can fix every— so rather than doing that, I wanna educate the histamine pathway, what foods, supplements, lifestyle habits can raise your histamine and lower your histamine. So you can learn for yourself and look at your life and say, wow, I eat a lot of histamine for dinner. Maybe that's why I'm not sleeping well. Or, oh, I eat a lot of histamine for lunch. I have a headache, which is linked to high histamine after lunch. So I want people to go on a journey. Imagine peeling back each layer of the onion. I'm going to try my histamine pathway, look at my life and see what I could change. What feels better? Then I want to try this pathway. Then I want to try that pathway. But before we get to the pathways, we need to learn the basics of the cell signaling, right? And that's exactly what this mini course is about. And that's a free resource. The genetics one's a free resource. I just want to try to help, help people understand, to view things how I look at things. And I'm really— I haven't shared this publicly. I'm really excited to see. I know it helps a lot of people. I, these are the principles I use in my practice, but I'm really curious. I really think if truly believe, if I distill this down right and make it digestible for people, I truly think it could take so many people from that. I'm not super sick, but I'm not doing great. I have these aches and pains, the brain. Most people are in that area. It could take them out of that area into feeling Noticeably better.

Wow, that's amazing. All by making these small changes, which is great.

And again, you got to know the pathways though, right? Because even the wrong supplements recommended from a doctor could throw you the wrong way. Because again, they're looking at, you have joint pain, take this. They're not thinking that's very high in sulfur, which is also linked to joint pain. That's why it made you feel worse. But hey, if you need more sulfur, then go and have it.

Yes, but we don't know. That's the thing. You really got us thinking, I think, with, with what you're saying is like curcumin is not good for everyone, even though it's got so much research on anti-aging and is one of my favorite supplements. But you really got us thinking, is, is this really good for us? And we need to really test deeper. And if it doesn't make you feel good, stop taking it or change or experiment. If you're not able to get genetic testing with your readout. Yeah.

And again, too, I think especially in functional medicine now, it's more and more supplements, you know, and I think people don't really realize how similar holistic medicine is to conventional in a lot of ways. And it's guessing mechanisms. Great. They're natural things instead of pharmaceuticals. Great. A lot of it is still guessing based on X protocols or your label. Not based on the individual. And sure, you're only taking 5 supplement products, but each product has 15 ingredients. So what, you're like 60 different nutrients? And I'll pretty much guarantee if someone's taking 60 nutrients, multiple of those are working against their health. And the sad reality is you could be on 10 of the right supplements, 1 or 2 of the wrong ones could not only counteract that progress but make you feel worse overall. They throw it all out. Supplements don't work. It's expensive pee, they write off the whole thing. But it comes down to the right team. I think of it as like an orchestra, right? Sometimes you need a little more violin, need a little viola, I need a little less trumpet. That's how I view the supplementation. You need to have the right team or ecosystem of nutrients for you.

Yes, absolutely. Very enlightening. Thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Tyler Pansner. I'm gonna put all the information on your website down in the show notes. And for those of you listening, I think you learned a lot about genetics. And, uh, always message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. If you have any questions, let us know. And if you have any other ideas for any topics for future shows. And with that, stay healthy everyone, and see you next time. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @drsandamoldovanovanova. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovanova, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.