Episode #65: How Do Your Genes Affect Your Health, with Dr. Sam Shay

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha. I want to share something with you that I believe God is doing right now in women's health. We're in the middle of a massive movement and most people don't even know it. Every single day, 6,000 women in the U.S. enter menopause. That's over 2 million women a year, and by 2030, that's more than 1.2 billion women worldwide. So here's the thing, most of these women feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and the medical system is Doctors are handing out prescriptions and quick fixes, and no one is helping women heal from the root cause of their issues. That's where Fast to Faith coaches come in. As a certified coach, you'll be equipped to help midlife women balance their hormones, heal their gut, regain their energy, and reconnect their faith, the foundation that so many of us have been missing. And from a business standpoint, woo, this is one of the most lucrative untapped opportunities in the entire health coaching world. The global health coaching industry is expected to reach over $33 billion by 2023, and midlife women are the fastest-growing, highest-spending demographic in that space. Most importantly, these women stay with their coaches. They invest deeply because they are desperate for lasting transformation— body, mind, and spirit. So if you've been feeling that pull and that whisper that you're meant to do more, This is it. Now is the time to rise, to serve, and build a purpose-driven business that not only changes other women's lives but transforms your own in the process. Because when you help one woman heal, you help her family, her marriage, her faith, and her future. That's the ripple effect that we're creating with Fast to Faith. So join me, click the link to come watch this webinar. It might be the one thing that really moves the needle for you in this Next season. I can't wait to see you in there. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Functional Gynecologist. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist, so welcome. Hi ladies, so this is going to be a really cool episode. We're going to talk about genetics. We're going to talk about your genes, what makes you an individual. Sorry, that's my dog scratching on the door. Um, so we all have a unique set of genes. We have the same number, but the way they're put together can be different, and that can affect your health, your well-being, your ability to, you know, detoxify alcohol through your liver, the ability to make or utilize hormones, the ability to handle certain foods like caffeine. The list goes on and on. So epigenetics is really amazing. That is the new study of how our diet and lifestyle Turns on our genes, and that is like the new frontier. That's where medicine is going. It's becoming to the point where we can individualize your your medical treatments, your health and well-being based on your genetics. And so my guest today, Dr. Sam Shea, is a really awesome doc who is. specializing in genetics. So that's what he does. He, you know, meets with you and he does all the functional stuff, you know, asks you about your diet and your lifestyle, but then he starts to do the testing on not only the basic gene panels that you would get from like 23andMe or ancestry.com, but he goes deeper. He looks at, um, more individualized genetic components that, look at inflammation, and look at all kinds of details that he's going to explain today. Like, this is all newer to me. I love it. I think it's the wave of the future. I think it's incredible. And so I really wanted him to come on and talk to you about how this affects you as women, how this prevents you from losing weight, how it causes weight gain, how it causes hormone imbalance. You know, how it affects your ability to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep at night. And the list goes on and on. A lot has to do with exercise. I find that really fascinating as well. You know, I did my 23andMe and I was told that I have the genes of an elite runner athlete. Well, I'm not out there doing marathons and I can't. And so what I suspect is I might have some gene variants in the inflammatory realm that is preventing me from doing any long-distance running, high-endurance training, because when I try to step up my exercise regimen and really take it to the next level, my Hashimoto's kicks in hardcore, which is an inflammatory response. My thyroid gets attacked by my own immune system. And so there's got to be other genes at play, something else that's being activated and causing me to have this bad response when I try to do high-intensity exercise, you know, deeper training. So I hope you listen to this episode today because I got really excited and I was like, okay, Dr. Sam, I'm going to do this testing that you offer to your clients. I am going to do all the genetic tests and then I'm going to have you come back live on the show and interpret and help me figure out me because I think it's really cool and I want to maximize what I'm doing. Like, we know what works for most people. We know what diet is healthy for most people, what exercise is good for most people, but it might not be right for you. So this is a really important episode. I hope you're going to stay tuned and listen all the way through. And I'll have the links in my show notes, but you can find Dr. Sam Shea at drsamshea.com. That's hard to say. He has a couple of ebooks and one, you know, in particular is on the 3 causes of weight gain. There's inflammation, there's hormonal toxic, reasons. And then there's the whole calories issue, which is like the least of why people gain weight. And so we're going to talk and he's going to give us some insight into why most women gain weight and why, you know, just cutting out calories or exercising more is not the answer. So it's, it's a good episode. You're going to feel justified in how you're feeling. And you're going to get hope that like, There's answers out there for me to get myself figured out and figure out what I need to do to optimize my health or return to my health. So that's what I want you thinking about while you're listening to this episode. And then you're gonna have to come back soon, hopefully, for us to do the follow-up episode where he interprets my labs and tells me all the stuff that's wrong with me and What we can do to fix it. So it's going to be pretty fun. So, okay, stay tuned, listen to this episode. But can I just say, like, if you're finding value in this at all, I would love it and really appreciate it if you would hit the subscribe button. You know, we need to tell iTunes and YouTube and all those big places that this stuff is important to you as women. You want to hear more of it. You want to see these videos. So if you want this information, I would love it if you would hit the subscribe button because it tells iTunes and YouTube that you want to hear more of this and this information is important to you. So if you are finding any value in it, please hit the subscribe button and share with your friends, your sisters, your colleagues, everybody that you know. Tell them to listen to the Functional Gynecologist Podcast and shoot me your questions because I am here to serve you. I do this for you. So whatever you want me to talk about, topics, if you have specific questions, shoot them over and I will deal with them as best I can. You can always email me at info@drtabatha.com or go to my website. All the links are in the show notes. But let's talk to Dr. Sam Shay. Here we go. Well, welcome, Dr. Sam, to the Functional Gynecologist Podcast. Thank you.

Thank you. Do I call you Dr. Tabatha or Dr. Barber?

You can call me Tabatha. That is fine.

Yeah.

Most people refer to me as Dr. Tabatha.

Okay. Well, we're all good. We're on, we're on a doctor first name basis. How's that?

Yes, exactly. Okay. Well, I'm super excited that you're here because I don't talk about genes very often. You know, I don't talk about the new frontier of nutrigenomics and all that good stuff. I mean, I've, it's spattered in there every once in a while, but this is like cutting-edge stuff. So this is going to be really good for my listeners today. I'm really excited to dive into this. Um, one thing, you have a new ebook and it really talks and gets into weight issues. So that's where I would love to focus our time today. You know, I want you to teach my listeners a few things about why they can't lose that darn weight. So why don't we start from there?

Happy to. Um, I'll give, I'll give just a brief background of where I came from. So my, my doctor— I'm a doctor of chiropractic, and, uh, I'm also a certified practitioner for the Institute for Functional Medicine as well as a certified practitioner for the Kalish Institute for Functional Medicine. Uh, I also had, um, certifications in functional neurology, but since I transitioned to 100% virtual practice. I've since moved on fully into functional medicine since direct hands-on practice with neurology is a bit difficult through Zoom.

Yeah, yeah.

Fortunately, there's some colleagues of mine that still do the hands-on stuff if people need the neurology component. But I also have an acupuncture degree when I was living in New Zealand and studied naturopathic nutrition for 20 years and have a couple other odds and ends, but I've cross-trained across multiple, multiple fields. And that was not out of choice, it was out of necessity. My— I was very ill as a child from age 6 up to late teens into college. It's really in my late teens I really started to take control of my health and it took years to kind of turn the ship around. And my, my interest in health was, you know, severe insomnia, severe digestive problems, chronic pain, very low mood, very, very low, dealing with hidden infections that weren't dealt with in my gut for a long time, severe adrenal exhaustion. poor posture, a lot of trauma in the past, and it was kind of just on all fronts, all sorts of things, and lots of toxic exposure, terrible diet growing up, just terrible.

Yeah.

And I had to cross-train across multiple disciplines to dig myself out of my own hole. And what I found was People who were dealing with things in a chronic way, they almost never was it singularly one thing that needs to be addressed. It was multiple things that needed to be addressed simultaneously. The problem is, is that a lot of clinicians are— get very specialized in one to a couple things. And if you've got I mean, one of my models is called the 10 Pillars of Health. And what I found is people who are struggling chronically had a minimum of 7 out of 10 of those pillars crumbling. So if you're good at 1 to 3 pillars, kind of average on another 3, and really not that great another 4, you can see where there can be problems.

Yeah, exactly.

And it explains why people can jump, as I did for years, from one practitioner protocol and set of products to the next. Without getting any meaningful gain. And it really was way later when I, and I looked at the big picture, it was actually synergy. And it didn't— and I got so frustrated, as many of your listeners might, might experience that. It's like, wait, I've tried this thing that someone lost 30 pounds on, or tried this thing to deal with the inflammation. I tried this, it worked for them, it didn't work for me. And then there's this kind of natural health despondency that takes over. Like, why, why is this lucky person, you know, all they have to do is squirt goji berry juice up their nose and they're fine. Where here I am, you know, doing all of the things and I'm not doing anything except getting more frustrated. Um, and what, what happens is that If people have, you know, people have these 10 pillars of health, you know, just briefly, it's hormones, digestion, brain and hormones, bowel and digestion is the second one, body and genetics is the third, first exercise and movement is the fourth, biotoxins and inflammation is the fifth, bionutrients and diet is the sixth, breakfast and routines is the seventh, bothers and stressors is the eighth, Bugs and hidden infections and mold is the 9th. Bedtime and sleep is the 10th. So they all begin with a B. If you'd enable sharing, I can just show a quick screenshot of what—

Sure. I love that you, you know, shared that point because I think it's really important that— let's see, that should work.

So if you can see my screen, that's the 10 Pillars of Health. And that's a paradigm I put together from analyzing a lot of clients who had a lot of severe issues going on with fatigue, hormone, autoimmune, or otherwise. And I put them all with bees to try to make them as memorable as possible. There you go.

Yeah, I love that.

My, um, my approach was— and I had all 10 of these pillars crumbling in spades, and that's why I had to, you know, just constantly go, go just all over the place and have to cross-train. And then once I realized that there were 10 separate pillars, I was no longer frustrated or disillusioned by the You know, this technique and this tactic and this tool and this product over here, because those things still matter, but they didn't all matter to me in the same way as other people. But when I combined all of them as a synergy, then things got better. So if I'm like sitting on 7 tacks and I remove one of them, technically I'm healthier, but I'm still not feeling any better.

You're right.

That's, that's the whole visual on chasing after all these magic bullets. But if I realize I take all 7 out at once, Then I feel so much better. And even though certain people need to remove 1 or 2 tacks and they feel better, and so then they develop a career on teaching people tack removal for those particular tacks and don't understand why someone like me doesn't get better because they did their tack removal thing and it should work for everyone else, not you. What's going on? So it's—

Yes, exactly, exactly. It's like we send our patients to the GI doctor and we don't understand when they— their gut doesn't heal, but they're not handling their emotional stressors or their hormone imbalance or their diet, you know.

Exactly.

So I love that you're making this point, like everything is interconnected and you really have to do the whole work. You have to work on the whole body, mind, and spirit, and you have to address all of the different components, all the systems. We're just a system of systems essentially, and otherwise you're not going to get to that point of reclaiming your health. So I, I'm so happy that you found that, you know, and were able to heal yourself and you propelled yourself forward to help others. You know, I think most people who go into functional medicine have their own pain-to-purpose story, so I love that, right?

Yeah.

Yes, exactly.

It's a bit of a trope almost, like—

I know.

And so then the question of my genes, where do genes fit in all this? Yeah. So genes, here's another schematic. And I'll just zoom out a little bit. Actually, I'll fit. There we go. So this is— there's a lot on this slide, but it's in my ebooks. And if people— I have 3 free ebooks for people to get. So they can go to my website, drsamshay.com, D-R-S-A-M-S-H-A-Y.com. And this particular slide that has the 10 pillars of health in this cycle, they can also get the ebook by texting biohacker, all one word, biohacker to 33344. So it's biohacker to 33344, and they can get this ebook just sent right to them. This, this picture basically explains all of cycle of burnout and chronic disease, all of it. So it starts in the upper left corner with bad lifestyle choices and bad circumstances. So if you're 6 years old and like chronic insomnia, being beaten up in school, being fed SpaghettiOs, you know, sitting all day, uh, you know, stressed out to the max, like, is that a choice or is that a circumstance at age 6?

Right.

It's, it's, it's a circumstance. Now, if you're 60, And all those things are happening with some very real asterisks where it is actually a circumstance, not a choice. But on balance, usually there's some choices there that were decided on. But the body doesn't make any distinction between whether it's a bad choice or bad circumstance. And regardless of what it was, your choices and circumstances are interpreted through your genetics. And your body has one of has has a combination of one to four major responses to a bad choice or lifestyle circumstance. It's inflammation, blood sugar dysregulation, free radical damage, or tissue breakdown. So if we're talking about weight, for example, if someone eats, I mean we just had the holidays, so. I know some people listening to this, they've had the experience of like eating a little muffin and then gaining 4 pounds. Now, unless that muffin was last year's Christmas fruitcake, it didn't weigh 4 pounds.

Right, right.

So, so what happened was that people eat this little muffin and the body becomes inflamed dealing with all the toxic chemicals, whether it's the gluten in the muffin or the sugar or the risers or the preservatives, or they have other immune responses to it, or whatever it is, the inflammatory chemicals kind of really rise in the body, and then the body will retain water to dilute the toxic, damaging inflammatory chemicals in order to buy the liver time to filter them out. So the weight one puts on from this tiny muffin is not calories, it's water retention. That's what the weight is— inflammatory water weight. So then there's the blood sugar dysregulation. So someone could eat something, and then genetically they're predisposed to blood sugar dysregulation. So what happens is that their sugar— blood sugar level spikes, and then there's a massive draw of the fuel into the cells and are packed in as fat, and then there is a rapid drop in blood sugar, and then someone craves the muffin again, and then their calories then are driven back into the fat cells and becomes this yo-yo cycle. Now, some people genetically are way, way, way, way more vulnerable to that giant insulin swing where you eat a little thing of carbs and suddenly have all this insulin, then packs everything in the fat cells. Now genetically, you can determine this now. And just like with the inflammation, you can do genetics to determine, are you an over-inflamer or an under-clearer of inflammation or an over-propagator of inflammation? So you can either over-initiate inflammation or propagate or under-clear it. Blood sugar, you can check Your genetics to see, are you more likely to swing wildly up and down in the insulin levels versus have an even drip? Then you've got the tissue breakdown. So these are people who, when they have an immune response or an inflammatory response, or even a blood sugar swing, then the body will go into Gnawing, you know, chewing up tissue. Like, for example, the gut. The gut will then pull out glutamine, you know, to as as an emergency source, and you just burn through all of your resources really quickly. Then there's free radical damage and and the genetic influences there, particularly. You know, I'm sure many people in your audience have heard the term mitochondria, and some of genetically it's real important to determine. If your mitochondria are uniquely vulnerable to free radicals, and there are very, very specific things that can be done. And it's not just taking, you know, buckets of vitamin C to help with free radicals. I mean, that's actually one of the least effective ways to deal with free radicals. One of the best ways is to get the genes inside the cells to create these enzymes called MNOSAD or glutathione peroxidase or catalase for the Scrabble enthusiasts and the health nerds out there listening to this. Some of the best ways to do that is learning these methods to actually trigger the enzymes to, like for example, MNSOD will quench 4 billion, billion, a billion with a B free radicals while, you know, vitamin C does like one, you know. So we're wanting these, we're wanting these enzymes to be made inside the cell instead of chasing it with, I'm not, I don't mean to bag on vitamin C, but everyone thinks to run to it. To help with free radicals. Like, there's way better options that you can look at genetically and know which options are best for you. So if you have bad lifestyle choices or bad life circumstances interpreted through your genes, you can have one or more of the 4, uh, adapt— adaptive responses: inflammation, blood sugar, tissue breakdown, free radicals. I say adaptive, not pathological. I say adaptive because the body is adapting to stress, whether it's severe sleep deprivation, toxic exposure, poor nutrients, overexercise, underexercise, etc. Oh, this is a fun one. Some of your audience members— real key, a huge clue to see if you need to get your genetics checked: the more you exercise, the fatter you get.

Yeah.

That is a red flag and a half. Okay, so here's— here's— I've actually presented at genetics conferences on this. Okay, so here's what happens. People can genetically be so prone to over-initiating, over-propagating, or more commonly under-quenching inflammation that when they exercise, there's this kind of hidden line that is crossed if they over-exercise. You see this a lot in the CrossFit community, and I know I'm going to incur the wrath of The CrossFit, we'll call them enthusiasts. And but but you see this with certain people, and it's based on their genetics. The more they exercise, the fatter they get because just like that muffin where you eat the muffin and suddenly it inflames you and the body retains water, it's the same thing with exercise. If you individually go beyond your genetic capacity, you go beyond your genetic capacity. Then boom, your body goes into an inflammatory response, and then you start to retain water. So I've had multiple clients like this. One the most one of the most egregious was she was it's actually in I think it's actually in the genetics ebook this this discuss like she she started doing an exercise program. And she started to put on weight, lose her muscle tone, and her hormones went off. And what happened—

I will say I've honestly seen that with quite a few patients myself.

Yeah. So here's, here's what happens. Now, I don't necessarily have to or want to nerd out on the specific, you know, gene combinations. We can if you want. But the basic things are that she overinflamed, overpropagated, particularly The propagation was fixated on the CRP, 3 CRP genes in the liver, which is important for the hormone dysregulation, and her interleukin-10s, which are poor quenching of inflammation. And she also had in her liver genes problems with glutathione peroxide— sorry, GSTP1, one of the main ones for glutathione, other things involved with estrogen and inflammation. She had problems in her liver genetically dealing with estrogen. Yeah. And inflammation, and she had problems in her inflammatory genes, particularly the ones that focus around the liver's ability to handle inflammation. So what happened is that she got massively overinflamed from overexercising. Her body got overwhelmed with inflammatory chemicals. Her liver could not— had to make a decision: do I deal with the inflammation, or do I deal with the hormones? And it chose to deal with the inflammation. That's why her cycles went totally wonky. So. I then worked with her, had a few choice words for the trainer. I'm assuming this is a family-friendly show, so I won't share them. And what happened was that we pulled— we backed her off of exercise and put her on anti-inflammatory liver-supporting diet based on her genes, anti-inflammatory liver-supporting nutrients based on her genes and what she had going on what she was experiencing and her— based on her existing lifestyle, and change those 2 things. And her muscle tone returned, her weight dropped, her hormones normalized. And we didn't have the information we needed until we actually analyzed the genes, why this was happening. Now we can run functional tests, which are great. I run functional tests all the time, checking for gut, Gut health. I run an advanced mitochondria test called the ion panel. Hormones, whether it's a Dutch test or an adrenal test. Methylation panel if you want. Thyroid, whatever. The two of them, functional and genetics, go together. The functional testing tells you what is happening now in the body. What is what is you know genetics is like how did you get here and where are you going to go?

Right.

Genetics will never tell you. Never. Never in a million years tell you, um, do you have enough? What's your level of glutamine now? What's your level of B12 now? What's your cortisol levels now? What your thyroid levels are now? What, what's your basal metabolic rate right now? They don't say that. What they tell you is, is probabilities, uh, what you can expect, uh, how things ended up in this particular combination. And also give you deep insight based on the best science of the day on what lifestyle changes have been shown to change the expression of the genes you have. So with, with her, we just use the best science of the day to say, okay, here's not the 400 things you need to do. Here are the 10 things you need to do that will hit on the 40 rogue genes that are, that have been over-triggered with inflammation and so on.

Yeah, so, and I'd love that you, you know, said there's— there was someone who was doing all the right stuff and they weren't getting the typical results. Would you say that is always a good sign of, hey, we better start looking at your genes? Like, if you're doing all the right stuff, you're making the changes, you're doing what works for most human beings, and it— you're having the opposite effect. Yeah, it's— but it's time to check into that.

Check into the genes. And also, I recommend people also check their functional testing as well. If they can do both, that's really important because they complement each other, you know. So for sure, it's ideal to do both. But usually, when people are struggling with a lot of chronic issues, and they're listening to podcasts like yours, they've done— they've kind of done one of two forks. They've either gone down the genetics route and got totally overwhelmed by 23andSomething, you know, and just like, oh, look, I'll just spit on this thing and this algorithm on my iPhone will just make sure I'm all perfect. And it's not— that's not how it works, you know. Like, and what they need is someone to actually who really look at them and prioritize which genetic clusters need to be looked at first. Or they've done the functional route where they looked at whether it's hormones or mitochondria or gut or food intolerances or whatever it is. And they've either looked at only one of those things and not at the whole picture of hormones, gut, and mitochondria at the same time.

Or they've—

Trying to cobble together labs from 1 year ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago, and they're not actually taking the snapshot now. And then sometimes they've had the snapshot and something that's still not working. Then you got to go look at the genes. If there's something that— there's just some major underlying process that's messing everything up, like Massive overinflammation, or they've got really weird issues with their vitamin D receptors, or they've got some really freak thing with, with the entirety of the methylation panel. Like, a lot of people are chasing MTHFR, and I'm like, that is one of 15 major genes in the methylation cycle. And of course, there's people argue, well, there's actually 16 or 17 major genes. It doesn't matter. There's more than one, and it's not MTHFR. You know, like there's there's tons of genes that are related to methylation, and it's you know people have gone down such expensive, time wasting rabbit holes just fixating on that one gene. Whereas you know there's there's pretty amazing panels out there that look at not just as many genes as possible, but the most important ones. Then the genetics. So if we've gone from Lifestyle choices and circumstances to adaptive response, then genetics also comes in. If there's chronic adaptation, and the things that have been going on for so long, then it's interpreted through your genetics and you get damaged body systems like liver, gut, and hormones are the 3 main ones. Obviously, there's more than 3 main systems. I have acupuncture training, but if I put spleen on there, no one's going to know what that means. Nobody.

Right.

So everyone can agree liver, gut, and hormones are the 3 biggies. So we'll just focus on them, and then if you get chronic breakdown of those three systems, one or more of them, then you get the development of symptoms: fatigue, low mood, indigestion, weight gain, cravings, insomnia, chronic pain, hot flushes. And then symptoms leads to coping. You know our two favorite therapists, Ben and Jerry, or. or chocolate or whatever. Coping leads to bad choices, which then propagates adaptation, which then leads to more damage, which leads to more symptoms, which leads to more coping, which leads to more adaptation, which leads to more damage, which leads to— and round and round she goes.

Right, exactly. And I think this slide is so important for women because, you know, we are so hormonally driven. Our Hormones change every day of the month, and the gut has so much to do with our hormone, you know, metabolism and excretion. But the liver, you know, when you're talking about the woman whose liver was deciding, like, am I going to deal with the inflammation from this overexercise, or am I going to, like, keep her hormones balanced? You know, I'm thinking, yeah, and then you throw in 3 glasses of wine in the evening to manage your stress. That's what I commonly see in my patients, and That's like the straw that broke the camel's back, you know? Once you are asking the liver to just keep doing that alcohol metabolism, it's game over, right? Yep. Absolutely. So I love how you described that. I think it's really important for women to understand that genes are just information. They don't necessarily get turned on or activated. They don't respond, or they could be helpful or harmful. And really What you're doing on a day-to-day basis is going to determine how those genes respond, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

That's, that's what we call epigenetics. And what, what we do is, as, you know, those of us that work in the human potential functional medicine practitioner realm, is what we do is that we analyze first and foremost the lifestyle. And I have a 10 Pillars of Health consult questionnaire that's been developed over years. And I've asked tons of questions within each pillar. So they're— one, clients really learn a lot about each pillar as they answer the questions based on each pillar. But it helps me organize my thinking very rapidly to understand what happened, why, when, and which things need to be worked on first, next, and last. Like sleep, for teaching purposes, is pillar number 10. But for— but it's almost never priority 10. It's almost always priority 1, 2, or 3.

Yep.

So what we do, you know, is we analyze lifestyle, then we analyze genetics, because if you can analyze the genetics, then you can put in the lifestyle changes based on the best science of the day to blockade progression. To blockade it— didn't say block, I said blockade. Because some— if you stress out one of these pillars strong enough or long enough, Something's going to slip through the blockade. Something will. So, but we can use our knowledge of our genes to really put in a strong blockade to prevent progression, whether it's, you know, wherever it's progressing on this graph here, on this picture rather. Then we use functional medicine to identify, okay, which inflammatory markers, how's your blood sugar now? What's going on with your liver now? What's your hormones like now? How's your mitochondria now? What organ systems are damaged now? And then you combine all of those things— lifestyle analysis, genetics, and functional lab results— and you create a customized lifestyle diet nutrition program for someone to reverse the whole thing. And that's, that's, that is truly holistic, a holistic approach, looking at all those things at once. And I know for the, for the context of this particular chat, you know, we're talking about genetics, I wanted to just kind of focus in real specifically on what can be done in terms of genetics. So what I'm showing here on this screen is a slide that I put together to explain what epigenetics is. And so epigenetics is— it's like a traffic light. So you've got red, yellow, green, but the light kind of cones out From, from where the light's emerging. And so for people that have— start from a poor genetic role, like they've got a bad variant in their genes, and they're a quote, they're so-called red dot, meaning that they've got a bad copy from mom and a bad copy from dad. So it's like they're an extra exuberant inflamer. So their, their baseline is at Their baseline is at this red dot, but behaviors—you you can shift the expression into greenish territory with proper, consistent, good lifestyle and diet and so on. Or you can go in the other direction with bad lifestyle, diet, etc. Someone with a green dot, which is like a good you know quote unquote good copy from mom and a good copy from dad. They start way ahead in the race, but if they do bad lifestyle, diet, etc., they can that green dot gene can start to express like a red dot. You know, so it's it's it's I feel very accurate representation of how our genes are not our destiny, but they do set the barrier. They do set the bookends of how much we can influence.

Yeah, I like that. So what I'm seeing is you want to stay away from the army green. You don't want to be in that reddish-green area.

You want to, you want to be actually in the real, you want to be like the real deep green area. The yellows represent the one good copy from mom, one, one bad copy from dad, or vice versa. And, um, just, I mean, just to kind of put a fine point on it, it's really important people get their genes checked because if they don't, You know, something you're going to want to know what you're vulnerable to in your genetics. And the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical expenses. And the, the thing that, you know, we really look to, and the difference between life expectancy and health expectancy, is that if we know our genes and we know the lifestyle we need to implement based on them, and even better if we use functional medicine on a regular basis and lifestyle, you know, coaching and so on, we can live not just a longer life but a really healthy, vibrant life along with it.

And right, which is super important.

Absolutely. So yes, in terms of genetics, um, look, there's, there's, there's many different types of genetics tests that are out there. I do a specific set of 5. I do one that's called, you know, that I call Achieve Your Natural Weight, which is looking at These 3 major influences for weight gain: the inflammatory water weight gain, the toxic hormonal weight gain, or the fat calorie weight gain. Now, the fat calorie weight gain is what we were told for decades, that if you eat calories, you're going to get fat. And that is by far the least common cause of weight gain that I have seen. And when I— because when I analyze people's genetics, I can tell Immediately, is this person an inflammatory water weight gainer? Is this person a hormonal toxic weight gainer, or is this person a fat and calorie weight gainer, or some combination? Very, very rarely is it just a calorie fat weight gainer. Almost always, it's an inflammatory or hormonal toxin or a combination. Maybe some of the calorie stuff dribbled in here and there. And so from from that genetics test, we can determine what the best approaches are to deal with inflammatory water weight gain, hormonal toxic weight gain, or fat and calorie weight gain. So just to give an example of how women can really ramp up this rapid weight gain is that in the paradox of fat loss. Inflammation can trigger more belly fat. But if you have lots of estrogen-dosed fat, the inflammation will increase the belly fat, which then causes more inflammation, which then doses more of the estrogen-dosed body fat in the belly, and it just keeps going cycling round and round and round and round and round. So the, the keys here is to really get control of inflammation. And this slide here is, is that exact client I was talking about who overexercised and she put on more water weight and lost, and her cycle went awry and all the rest of it. And this is what, what, what I'm— for those who are not seeing this on screen, by the way, this is in, this is all in my genetics ebook. So if you want a copy of this presentation, just, just go to my website and you can scroll down. You'll see the genetics ebook and you can opt in and see all this.

Awesome.

There's a— there's a fallacy amongst genetic analysis that I really want to address right now. A lot of people run around chasing individual genes, and that is not a really good idea, except in very rare cases when there are very kind of freak genetic anomalies that are— have massive consequences on their own right. But we're talking about functional genetics. not chasing an individual gene. We're looking at clusters of genes. You know, we're looking at what drives a disease process, not trying to find the one gene that's disease-based. So look, a lot of people are wanting to— I want to know my Alzheimer's gene, my heart attack gene, my diabetes gene, my cancer genes. Those are actually downstream from the genes that control inflammation, free radical damage, liver detox, Vitamin D utilization, methylation, and fat metabolism. The quote-unquote disease genes are downstream. What I'm looking at is all those upstream drivers, those upstream clusters in genetics. So when we look here at this, uh, here at my client, we see that of the 15 major inflammatory genes, she has clustering of exuberant inflammation Uh, in terms of initiating inflammation over sustaining. These are the— see, these are the 3 genes for the liver right there in regards to inflammation. They're all clustered together as having a yellow dot, 3 yellow dots, and then under-clearing. And by under-clearing, it's like, do you bring a fire hose to the inflammation or do you bring a squirt gun?

Yeah.

That's, that's really the analogy to think about. And then we look at her toxic hormonal genes, just 8 major— there's some other genes that are in the panel like the free radical genes, etc., but just in relation relation to estrogen. There's 8 major liver detox genes. And as you can see, you know, she has 4 of them that are— have bad variants on them. 3 of the 4 have to do with estrogen metabolism, particularly this one in particular, GSTP1, which is like— it's like the linchpin to this whole thing.

Uh-huh.

And then plus for fun, she's got the HO-1 gene, which is really unfortunate to have because that, that, that thing keeps cycling inflammation, uh, as some sort of weird triangle between that interleukin-1, interleukin-10, etc. It's, it's a, it's a really unfortunate gene to have because it just accentuates the whole inflammatory cascade. And what I'm showing here is that we're— I'm looking for patterns, not particulars. She has a pattern of estrogen problems genetically. She has a really bad pattern with inflammation genetically. So what I'm not doing is sending her, you know, 3 lifestyle choices per gene. Instead, what I'm doing, uh, is in her particular case is we found the fewest number of lifestyle changes that beneficially help the most important genes. So this is an example of part of a chart that I customized for her on this. These are the most important things you need to do in this specific order based on the numbers of genes that are helped by this one intervention. So, you know, one intervention of sulforaphane helped 14 out of the 23 red and yellow dots she had in the first 37 genes she had that were relevant to all of inflammation and liver detox. I just showed you a sample of them before, but she had some others aside from ones I showed you. So like, not here's a list of 300 things, here's a list of 10 things that will help in multiple ways synergistically. So that's, that's the way to help someone with genetics is look for the patterns that cluster, then find the fewest number of interventions that help all the genes, as many of the genes as you can simultaneously. So it's actually— the solutions are really straightforward. It just takes a lot of analysis.

Yeah, exactly. So I would say, you know, I recommend everybody get their genes analyzed, but some people have done 23andMe, ancestry.com, those types of things. Are you able to utilize that information, or is that just the further downstream pathways that you're talking about, just major disease? It's not Giving you the—

It depends. So, so it depends on when they did the 23andMe ancestry. And, and also 23andMe says on their fine print, they only guarantee 95% accuracy of, of those genes. The lab that I use is over 99%, you know. So, um, there's some of the data can be translated, but there's certain genetics tests that can't be because it's not looking for variations. So For example, like the the genetics test that I showed you—that's looking for variations. That's the achieve your natural weight. I also call it the stop the clock of the effects of aging test, or the longevity health and well-being test, or the future-proof your brain test. But there's another one called carb tolerance. This is the one I talked about with the insulin spiking. So this is checking a particular gene, not for the variation if it's a red, yellow, green dot. It's looking at How many duplicates it has. So this is the gene that spits out amylase, the enzyme in the mouth that breaks down carbohydrates. So you can have 1 up to 20, in certain freak cases even more copies. So it's like how many cannons do you have in your salivary glands that will shoot out these little carb-cutting scissors to break up carbs? Now, if you have very low numbers, then you're more on the paleo and keto spectrum. If you have a moderate number, you're more Mediterranean diet. And if you're high number, you're actually a high carb. So genetically, you can determine which ones, you know, what's the best diet as a template for you. For me, I'm a 2. I'm the second lowest carb tolerance you can have, which explained even though I was teaching nutrition for 15 years at that point, and I had the most Portlandia diet ever. You know, knowing the names of the chickens and the farmers and all the rest of it. And it was perfect Mediterranean diet. You know, the quinoa picked by left-handed monks on the full moon on a Tuesday, whatever.

Right, right.

It's— I was still having terrible digestive problems. And when I ran my genetics test, I realized it wasn't a quality issue. It was a quantity issue. I did not have the genetic grunt to break down carbohydrates the way I thought I should have been able to. Unlike people who have higher carbs tolerance genetically, they can do way better on higher carbs. So people who have low carb tolerances like myself, I'm the one— we have really high insulin spikes for these big blood sugar swings, which makes sense as hunter-gatherers. And I You know, I come from a, you know, a Russian, northern Russian stock. Not a lot of fruit there, you know, not a lot of grains there.

Yeah.

It makes sense as a hunter-gatherer. Fruit wasn't around all that much, a couple times a year for a couple days, a couple weeks maybe. So if you had one apple tree and you had one shot to eat as much as you could before the bears, the bees, the birds, Deer, rot, rain, insects, whatever, or other tribe members, whether of your own tribe or someone else's, got there first. You had this built-in mechanism to eat something sugary, rapidly put it on as weight, get hungry and hangry and irritable to keep other people away while you keep eating more and more and more. Because if you could pack on several thousands of calories in one fruit-based buffet, you can basically pack on enough calories to help you survive for a week or two, which is up to 2% of your entire caloric needs or maybe even more for the year. This high insulin spiking Makes total anthropological sense, complete and utter anthropological sense. Whereas if you're in a different part of the world where you did have way, way longer exposure to grains or in a higher tuber environment or high fruit environment or whatever, you can slowly release insulin to just get this, you know, slowly break down the carbs, you know, not go through these massive spikes and all the rest of it because you didn't need to.

Yeah, that is very cool. That is really neat to think about, and I love that we can finally figure that out about ourselves, right? So that's very cool. So I am going to totally do this test and see, you know, if it makes sense with what I found out that my body needs and figured out. And so stay tuned, everybody, because I'm going to do this test. This is pretty cool.

Um, so this— I love this idea. You can't do this one off 23andMe or Ancestry because it's not looking for variations. It's looking for duplicates. It's a very specialized genetics test that requires a separate swab. And, you know, there's very, very few people in the States that are, you know, qualified to actually run this thing. So I happen to be one of them. So it's, it's, it's not something that can translate over. Some of the tests can be.

Okay.

I do prefer to do a fresh swab though for the other tests because of that 99% accuracy. And then sometimes the Ancestry or the 23andMe are missing some of the key genes that I'm looking for. Then there's trigger foods, looking at, are you— what is your relationship to what I call the 5 food groups? I say ironically, gluten, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, and salt. And This is one that's really important, particularly in the Western diet, to get a real honest appraisal of how you genetically respond to many things that are in our diet. And I find that, you know, 80% of the time when I run this on people, there is one of these 5 things that has a drastically effective— a drastic shift on their lifestyle going forward. So for me, it was coffee.

Hmm.

I was a red dot in caffeine tolerance. I don't care how Bulletproof it was. I had the most Bulletproof coffee of anybody. I had like 6 different herbs in it. I had coconut oil, coconut milk. I had all these— I had all these other spices in it to make it like this totally like dense thing. And I was still getting anxiety and depression about 2 hours later. So some people like me are vulnerable to caffeine-induced anxiety and depression.

Yeah.

Because I can't metabolize it properly. And when I— and I was in denial, I was in real denial, Tabatha, about the— how caffeine affected me. And once I got this test back and I really sat back and got off my, you know, coconut oil and coffee high horse, I realized that for me, for me personally, based on my unique genetics, this is not a good idea. Caffeine is not a good idea for me. It can be fine for other people, but it's certainly not for me. So that was the meaningful shift in my universe based on genetics. Then there's the vitamin D absorption genes. Now there's 11 key genes that are involved in this, but the ones people don't know about are called the vitamin D receptors. And those are the ones that, you know, getting vitamin D into the blood is one thing, whether it's from sun, supplements, or food. But getting it into the cells is another.

Yes.

And people have red dots or yellow dots in their VDR genes. That's a problem because you can have all— getting it into the cells is what matters. Vitamin D affects 3 to 5% of the human genome, most of it related to inflammation control and immune system. Just like we've learned that Rhonda Patrick said, 98— Dr. Rhonda Patrick— 98% of people ended up on ventilators were deficient in vitamin D. So this test is, you know, important in today's day and age.

Especially in my neck of the woods. I'm up in Michigan and we are so vitamin D deficient. All day, every day, I'm like putting people on vitamin D and there's, there's some patients that you can be throwing 5,000 and 10,000 IUs at them every day and their levels aren't increasing. They're not feeling better. They're not changing. And so I love this idea of digging deeper. So here's, here's what I propose, Dr. Sam. I want to do this testing with you and I want to bring you back on so that we can talk about my results. And I think that would be a really fun episode because I'd be interested to see. You know, we ran out of time, but I want to talk more about Hashimoto's because a lot of women with— I love it. You know, chronic thyroid disease and attack on their thyroid can't tolerate heavy intensity exercise. And so I'm just like thinking about that in my head, like, is that directly related to what you were talking about before with the inflammation genes?

So yeah, literally the person I'm going to talk to in 5 minutes has Hashimoto's. Uh, like, that's literally the client.

So do I. So do I. So yeah, hopefully it's not the same person.

That'd be an awkward phone call to have both of us on the same No, but yeah, let's do that.

Let's have me get the test. We'll have you come back on. You can interpret the results and teach my listeners like what the heck's up with me.

Be happy to. That'd be fun if you go over it live. And, uh, yeah, that'd be fun. Be happy to do it.

Okay, I love it. Well, thank you so much for all this information. Share where my listeners can find you and connect with you.

So it's drsamshay.com, D-R-S-A-M-S-H-A-Y dot com. And there you'll find loads of information, uh, the 3 free eBooks, uh, other resources you can look at, descriptions of the different testing lists, my bio, lists of other podcasts and summits that I've been on, on varying topics. And soon also, I also do stand-up comedy as a hobby.

Yeah.

And if you go on to my YouTube channel, you'll see there's a stand-up comedy thing I have listed there. And I'm also, most important, I'm going to be getting a French bulldog very soon. And so soon my social media and videos and probably my website will just be a depot of French bulldog pictures. So go to my website soon. Before it's overrun by dog pictures.

Oh, that's so awesome. Perfect. And they can work virtually with you?

Absolutely.

You can order these tests and interpret it and help them understand, like, what they personally need as an individual to maximize their health, right?

Absolutely.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and let's plan to connect soon, okay?

Sounds good.

Awesome. Bye.

Bye.

So wasn't that an awesome episode? I'm so glad you listened all the way through. I'm excited to do this test and to get my results back and see if there's something that I can change about what I'm doing because sometimes I do feel like the exercising I'm doing isn't necessarily the best for my body. I feel like I have my food figured out, but maybe not, you know? And then the thought of giving up caffeine, that kind of stuff, is like, ooh, that's a big deal. So I'm really excited to see what my genes say about what I'm doing to my body. So that's going to be cool. I hope you'll come back and listen to that episode as we go over my results and see what I can do to optimize my health even more. So if you want to work with Dr. Sam at all, the links are in the show notes. Don't hesitate to reach out to him or me. You know, there are answers out there. You do not have to continue to struggle and not make any strides. It's not okay for you to be in pain every day, to have gut issues, to not have energy, to feel hormonally imbalanced, to be depressed, to have anxiety, to not sleep. Like, those are the big ones that I handle with my patients every day, all day long. And it's not okay. And there's hope because I— every day in my practice, I see women turn it I guide them to a different way, and we figure out what works for them, and we get to the root cause of the issues, and we turn it around. And so I am living proof that there's hope. You don't have to be miserable. You can be amazing and enjoy your life. So I really encourage you to Reach out to me or Dr. Sam or a functional gynecologist or functional practitioner in your area. Like, just don't settle, okay? So, and shoot me your questions because I want to serve you. I'm here for you. Um, all right, so check out my show notes and hit the subscribe. If you'd leave me a 5-star review, that would be amazing. But only if you're feeling it. So I hope you have a kick-ass week, ladies, because we are here to do big things, important things. We're here to lift each other up and support each other, and it's hard to do all that kick-ass work when you're not feeling so hot, right? So support yourself in addition to supporting your sisters, but support yourself. Love yourself. Give yourself some time, some attention, and you'll be amazed at how much you get in return. So, all right, go have an awesome week, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye!