Episode #83: How Genetic Testing Can Empower Your Health Journey, with Dr. Sam Shay

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Hi ladies.

So I'm really excited about this episode. This is kind of a continuation of episode 65 back in March, How Do Your Genes Affect Your Health? with Dr. Sam Shea. So he talked about epigenetics and how we can use our genes to influence and really take our health to the next level. So I did his genetic testing. It's a saliva test. You send it in the mail, it goes off to Australia. And today's episode, we're going to go over my results. And I will tell you, like, this is a really long episode because it's full of amazing information. So many good golden nuggets in this episode because even though he's talking about me, He is give— dropping a lot of good information for health and understanding of physiology and why you have the conditions you have or the struggles that you have. And so even though this is going over my information, you're going to learn so much and you're probably going to be like, that really sounds like me, and oh my goodness, I need to do genetic testing to You know, what, what pieces of the puzzles I'm missing. So you probably have to break this episode up into a few different sessions. And if you're listening on audio, it's actually a lot of visual stuff. So you might want to go over to my YouTube channel, The Functional Gynecologist, and watch this episode on YouTube. Because he's going to show my report. And his interpretations of things. And it's just really eye-opening. It's a really interesting episode. So I'm sorry it's so long, but it's worth it. So, you know, if you need to take a break and come back to it, you can always do that as well. But this might be the next step in your health journey, too. So I hope you get a ton of information out of this episode. All right. So here we go with Dr. Sam Shay. All right, Dr. Sam, welcome back to the Functional Gynecologist Podcast.

Thanks, Dr. Tabatha. It's great to be back and we've got, we've got a lot of fun stuff to go over today.

Oh, I'm so excited. So this episode is a little different. We're just gonna act like I am your client or your patient and you are gonna go over testing results I did because I did the big genetic screening panel, right?

Yeah, you did all 5. You did the genetics lab package, which is a combination of 5 unique genetics panels that are unique from all other genetics panels out there. And what we're going to do is we're just going to go through it because you haven't seen your results yet. So we're like, it's all very exciting. We're going to go through, you know, quasi-live, I guess. I mean, uh, right. And, um, and then it's very generous of you to be willing to share this whole process with you know, your audience. And, and part of, part of the thing about going over genetics results is a lot of people can feel like intimidated by it, or it's, it's like deep, because there's some results here that are like not ideal, you know, in terms— and, and just to be really transparent, like to date I still have the worst genetics profile of anyone I've ever run this on.

Oh my goodness.

You're— so it's not like I'm not— if I say like you're in good company, it's not saying like yours is as bad as mine because no one's is. But it's— I understand the sting and the concern and like the fear and the anxiety that some people may have about like what's, you know, what's this Pandora's box going to reveal. And I just want to put at the outset, the whole intention of these specific 5 panels is practical and empowering. It's not to make anyone feel like they're doomed. That all hope is lost, there's no point, any of this stuff. It's designed to give you the truth but also give you the practicality, because one of the benefits of this type of genetics testing is that we're looking for what are the specific genes that— I mean, we talked about this in the last, the last genetics talk we had. Is that there were 4 criteria for these genes. One, they were part of the, the major panel. Uh, they were a part of the 7 drivers of all diseases: inflammation, free radical damage, liver detox, vitamin D utilization, methylation, cardiovascular circulation, fat energy metabolism. So Then they were the upstream genes. So inflammation is hundreds, if not thousands of genes that are involved directly or indirectly. So we're not looking at the hundreds and thousands underneath. We're looking at for the top 15 that control all of them underneath it. Then we're looking at of those genes— oh, sorry, it's more than top 15— of those top apex inflammatory genes, which have at least 10% variation in the general populace. Meaning that there's a likely chance that someone's going to have a variation or a yellow dot or a red dot, meaning that they're not going to have the ideal genetic predisposition. And then the fourth criteria is that all the genes have peer-reviewed research done on humans to show that lifestyle, diet, nutrition, etc., alone can shift the expression of the genes to a more favorable expression. So it's like people can have, people can have like a quote red dot, a quote yellow dot, or a green dot. If they have a red dot, that means they've got a bad copy from mom, bad quote unquote bad copy from mom, bad copy from dad. And then, so they're starting back further at, back from the track. The Summer Olympics are on right now. So, so green dot, someone starting way ahead, yellow dot there. Yellow dots vary, you know, in terms of the distance between red and green. And then you got red dot way back behind. Now, as soon as the gun's fired, the green dot can, you know, just dilly-dally around and end up in last place. So even though they have an advantage starting out, if that lifestyle, the choices that ones make, That runner is going to choose, you know, goes off the track, does this, waves at the crowd all the time, whatever. Like, they're going to lose. Whereas the red, if they have the right discipline, they have the right lifestyle, the right this, they can still approach greenish state. The red will never be green. Like, they will never start there. Never. But they can act as if and get very close to it. so that the disadvantage isn't as disadvantageous. And that's the, that's the positive message of epigenetics, is that even no matter how you— whatever dice you've been rolled, you still have an empowered life to make changes so that the expression is for your benefit. And, and me, again, I have to date the worst genetic roll of anyone I've ever done a test on. And so I, I get it. Um, and so just to remind people, like, I had, you know, achy joint pain, like, like an 80-year-old pain in my joints. So I have a massive inflammatory role. And when I saw my results the first time, I cried because it explained why I was so sick when I was younger and had this kind of echo of just achy, like, achy pain. And I realized because I expressed inflammation exuberantly like that, and then I was just so shocked, like I was crying because I felt so much, you know, kind of like shock and, and frankly a little bit of bitterness about the genetics that I was given. And then I started to cry in relief because I realized that, wait a minute, hold on, now I've got a battle plan. of what to do. And I started to follow the recommendations to control the inflammatory genes in my case, and all the pain in my joints went away.

Oh my gosh, I love all that. I, I'm really excited to get these results. I mean, you hit on so many good things. Your analogy is perfect. Like, I want listeners to realize that this— these genes are not your destiny, you know. They're just a guide of How aggressive do you need to be with your diet and lifestyle? Can you party like a rock star, or do you have to—

Uh, you're gonna pay for it, but yeah.

Right, exactly. Or do you have to like take care of yourself and baby yourself a little bit? So I will say, you know, I have an odd— I have a couple autoimmune conditions and I have chronic pain, and I feel very inflamed and in pain almost every day of my life. The degree of it changes. You know, some days it like hurts to get out of bed. Other days I'm rocking it and I'm not even noticing it. So, I'm really excited to hear what you have to say because I want to be able to get up to that person with the green light.

Oh.

You know, I want to know what, how to intervene. So, I love that you're not only giving me the bad news, but you're gonna like Tell me what to do about it. And I think so many of my listeners are gonna go, holy crap, I think that's me too, you know. So I think this can be super empowering episode.

Yeah. And I want, and I want listeners to know, like, okay, so this is your unique genetic makeup. So what, this is not prescriptive to people watching this, this is prescriptive for you.

Yeah.

Uh, there are You know, if, if people do run these tests with me, like, there are going to be similarities and crossovers because most people who reach out, they've usually been struggling with something chronic for a long period of time. And guess what? There's a couple common patterns I've seen over the years I've been doing this, particularly like both VDR genes are red, which, which vitamin D receptor genes. And we'll get to that in a minute, but I've seen Only 2 exceptions in my whole career where someone who's been struggling chronically had 2 green dots in their vitamin D receptors.

Wow.

So, so those are like some meaningful patterns. So just, just to clarify, I'm kind of jumping ahead here, but vitamin D receptors— there's the journey of getting vitamin D into the blood, whether it's from sunlight, supplements, or food. That's half the battle. Getting from vitamin D into the cells is a whole other journey. So, and it's the vitamin D receptors that form those docking sites or catcher's mitts to capture the vitamin D floating in the blood, to bring it into the cell, to then activate the nucleus to transcribe all the wonderful anti-inflammatory immune-supporting genes. Now vitamin D has been estimated to activate up to 5% of the whole human genome. Think about that.

That's crazy.

Up to 5%. One And it's called vitamin D is a misnomer. It's technically a hormone because it goes in like—

Right.

It's a hormone. And everyone knows now because we're in, you know, the plague, how important vitamin D is because it's been shown that one of the best predictors of hospitalization and morbidities and all these problems of people ending up on respirators had to do with vitamin D deficiencies. So, but you look at what vitamin D does, it's anti-inflammatory and it supports the immune system. Makes sense. So what I've seen as a pattern, literally almost anyone, everybody, 2 exceptions only, who struggled chronically have had these 2 VDR genes double red, occasionally double yellow, but almost always double red. I'm one of those. You're one of those.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so lucky you, you win.

Okay.

Make a plaque, make a VDR gene plaque. So what we'll do is we'll jump right in. So what, what you're seeing, what you're going to see right here, this is not the— um, hold on, let me just reshare it so I can have it on my other— I've got monitors flanking me here, so I just want to make sure it's on the main monitor.

And I'll tell the listeners, like, if they're listening to this on audio, there is a video version on YouTube that you can look at the results that Dr. Sam's going to explain from my testing.

So yeah, the testing is very visual. It is very visual. So I just— people should be aware of that.

Yeah.

So did you see your— the title page of your report?

Yep.

Okay, so what you're looking at, this is not the official results. You'll get those, and we're gonna— I'm gonna switch screens and show them to you. What I'm showing you is the custom summary report It's about 20— what is it, 20, almost 30 slides long. It's the, it's the distillation of the 100-odd official reports between the 5 tests to what's practical now. So this is like the thing you print that is your personal little Rosetta Stone. Uh, you, you'll have all the other technical nerdy, you know, stuff, you know, stuff you can win a Scrabble tournament with all the terms in there. But this is the personalized report that it put together.

Okay.

Okay. And then, so then the, the, the talk, this is the, this is handsome fellow here is like describing everything. Here's your results, drum roll. And then the overview of what we, what the genetics lab package covered, it was the combination of 5 different profiles, what I call the Achieve Your Natural Weight. Uh, it is also the kind of the, what I call the Future Proof Your Brain in air quotes or air quotes, Stop the Clock. Test. Uh, this is the big one of the 64 main genes that fill all 4 of those criteria. Then there's the second lab test, which is your ideal diet, which is your carb tolerance. Is that how you navigate the world of carbs? Like, I'm a very low-carb person. You're actually in the middle range. We're going to get to that actually as the first one. We're going to, we're going to start there, uh, because that's Uh, usually the one people want to know the most is like, what diet, you know, diet, diet, diet, right? And like, can I have carbs? Please say yes. Can we negotiate? Is that possible? You know, so, um, that's, that's your carb tolerance. This test changed my life. It changed— I had struggled with— the whole reason I got into natural medicine was because of my terrible, embarrassing digestive problems back, you know, from a teenager and earlier. And Uh, I was, and I just, even though I had the most Portlandia diet ever, like I knew the names of my farmers and all the rest of it, I was still having really bad digestive problems. And then I ran this genetics test and I realized that I have the carb capacity of an Eskimo.

No.

Not a carb, sorry, Inuit. Sorry, the carb capacity of an Inuit, uh, not the carb capacity of a Mediterranean-style diet that I— even though it had the quality was great, you know, hand-picked quinoa by the harvest moon by a left-handed monk, whatever, it didn't matter, didn't matter. It was too many carbs. It wasn't about the quality, it was a quantity issue. So within 1 week of changing my diet to my carb capacity, my digestive problems of over 20 years went away.

That's impressive.

Then we've got some trigger foods, uh, so this is looking at relationship to Gluten, lactose, caffeine, alcohol, salt, histamine, and other food allergens. The histamine and food allergens is a recent addition to this, which you came in under the wire to get those as well. Vitamin D is the 11 main genes that are the distance between the sun and getting into your nucleus. That's kind of a real focus report. Then the immunity support genes are rela— came out because it's relevant to the worldwide situation with the pandemic. The immunity support genes are specific derivations of about half of the Achieve Your Natural Weight genes with a specific lens towards immunity support. So, so it's taking approximately half of the 64 genes here and putting a very special lens on them to understand how they will operate to support immunity. So those are the 5 profiles, um, that you did. So then we're going to jump right into your results. Okay, so you're, you're a 6 out of 20. Now, which 26 sounds low, it's actually not. The average is 5.6 for, uh, those of European descent. For those of Asian descent, it's 8. The 5, 6, this is Mediterranean. Like, you're like 6 especially. 5 is a lower carb Mediterranean. 8 is a higher carb. So, uh, I am a 2. Now my ancestry, I came, my ancestors came from Northern Russia, not a lot of carbs up there. So that makes sense.

Yeah.

Um, Now, how, how do we make this practical? There's a lot of words. Again, this is condensing, you know, 40-page report down into 2 slides. So here are the basics. It's called— how do you use the 6? You use what's called the finger rule. Now, 6. So you see, here's an image of my hands here, 6 fingers, right? Like this, 6 fingers. All right, so how do we take this number and make it practical? When you eat all of your meals. Okay, that's where I came with the finger rule. So the background to the finger rule is I'm sitting thinking about this test, this carb tolerance test, and how do I make this easy to apply? So I'm, so I'm watching Game of Thrones— true story— I'm watching Game of Thrones, and this is the mind of a clinician. You're watching Game of Thrones and you're thinking about lab testing while you're watching Game of Thrones, right? Right. Okay. So, um, so in Game of Thrones there's a giant, uh, well, there's a guy who's— he's like literally the strongest man alive. He's an actual person. He lifted 501 kg. That's over 1,000 pounds. He deadlifted. That's, that's insane. Now there's also a, uh, there's also a dwarf named Tyrion. And so He, uh, so in theory, the giant called the Mountain and Tyrion the dwarf could have the same carb tolerance. Both of them could have a 6. So, so does it make any sense to prescribe— if someone's a 6, that's exactly 500 grams of carbs per meal. That makes no sense when you're talking about someone who's 7 foot, 400 pounds, and like 2% body fat and, and someone who's a dwarf. Makes no sense to just give this prescription. So I'm sitting there, I'm like, how can I reconcile this? And then I remembered I taught x-ray analysis after I graduated chiropractic school. And in x-ray analysis, in these board exams, you learn a lot about the Differences in skeletal x-rays between normative human structure and dwarf structure, because the bones of dwarves are different. Like, there's some anomalies compared to normative skeletons, particularly their fingers. And I'm like, wait a minute, dwarf fingers. So what, what grows in approximate ratio to weight— that's a height and even weight. with a human, the size of their fingers. So Tyrion's— Tyrion's finger, like his index finger, is probably 3/4 the width— the length of my pinky, whereas according to the Mountain, you know, his fingers is probably like 3/4 the length— uh, sorry, my fingers the 3/4— his, his longest finger is probably 3/4 the length of my pinky, whereas My longest— his longest finger, my forearm is probably 3/4 the length of my forearm, right?

Right.

So, so it's the finger rule. So if you're a 6, whatever your height, here's the rule of thumb, or rather rule of finger. You get 6 fingers worth of carbs, heavy carbs, maximum per meal as a baseline. All right, so I'll say that again. You get 6 fingers worth of carbs maximum per meal as a baseline. So what is heavy? What do heavy carbs mean? Grains, sweet fleshy fruits, tubers, really carb-dense tubers. So it's like potato, right? Yucca, grains, sweet fleshy fruits like mango and, you know, Granny, uh, not, uh, Honeycrisp apples, as opposed to light carbs. Light carbs are mixtures of carbs and fiber, carbs and protein, carbs and mostly water, carbs and fat. So instead of— so light carbs, you would get 6 times 2 as a baseline maximum per meal. So you have a Honeycrisp apple versus a sour Granny Smith apple. Do you see the difference?

Mm-hmm.

So you have a— instead of potato, you have things like a squash, which is like more fiber and water. A carrot is, is more like, it's like carbs and fiber. Beans and nuts are not— they have carbs, especially beans, but they're mostly like— it's most like protein. Like, it's like it's a mixture of carbs and protein. So heavy carbs as a baseline is 6 fingers worth. And it— and I don't mean how much you can stack on 6 fingers. This has happened where people try to negotiate, oh, so how much I can stack on things? Like, clever. No, but good try. Um, And, oh, you mean like 6 of potatoes, 6 of fries, 6 of hash browns, and 6 of waffles? I'm like, again, A+ for effort. No.

So— So it's the width?

Well, it's, it's the whole mass. So because remember, like, people, you know, really, you know, the mountain, like, his fingers are basically what you can dunk your fingers in water. Like, it's the whole, like, everything. It's It's, it's the 6 fingers worth. Now I just want to preface, there's no scientific literature on the finger frugal. It doesn't exist. This is the difference between a scientist and a clinician. My job as a clinician is to take the science and make it practical and usable and effective. I ran this by Dr. Beaver. I, I interviewed him. I have 2 interviews of him on my YouTube channel. People want to meet the actual scientists that put together these tests. I ran the finger rule by him because, look, he's the scientist, I'm the clinician. I take his stuff and make it usable, you know, for the everyday person. He thought the— he said, that's very clever. Let me know how it works.

Well, I would say that that is probably often how I eat, you know, if I'm being honest, if I'm just like looking at my fingers, That's a pretty typical carbohydrate size for me. Sometimes I'll go a little bigger on the light carbs, but you said that's 2 times, so that makes sense.

Yeah.

And that maintains my weight. So I love this. This is great. Okay.

Yeah. And then, then it gets— and so some people thinking, Linga's like, oh no, I hope I'm not a 1 or a 2 because then I'm doomed. It's like, well, I am a 2 and yeah, it Kind of stinks at times. That's true. But again, even these genes have flexibility. They have epigenetic shifts. So I— that's why I said as a baseline, as a baseline, because you can increase or decrease your carb tolerance depending on a number of factors. So that's what the second slide is about. What are the things that increase your carb capacity and what are the things that decrease your carb capacity? Okay, so I'll just, I'll just jump to like the big one, exercise. If you exercise within 2 hours of a meal, you can have up to 500% increase of your amylase production. Amylase being the enzyme that these genes secrete to break down carbohydrates. So your 6 can jump temporarily to a 30. Temporarily, then it comes back down. So if people are really gunning to have a super high carb meal, whether they're, they're traveling, they're at a social event, a birthday party, a business dinner or so, whatever. Okay. And, and they have a low carb tolerance, uh, or they just plan on binging on carbs, but they can, they can be strategic and plan a vigorous workout within 2 hours of that high carb meal, not exercise for 2 hours prior to your meal. It's an intense, you know, high-intensity interval training, ideally exercise period within 2 hours of that meal. That way you can temporarily jump your enzyme capacity. The other thing you can do is chew more, chew more, mixing more saliva, all that. Now I don't tell people chew 30 times because you can just drive yourself nuts going 2, 3, 4, 5. Right. Right.

It's nuts.

Instead, I would encourage people to breathe 3 full breaths through your nose, obviously not through your mouth. That's not only rude, but you can choke, you know, while you're chewing. But if you can chew and breathe at the same time, as long as you're closing the back of your throat while you're chewing, breathe through your nose. 3 full breaths. You can sit there and count it once and you'll get to approximately 30. So it also creates kind of a mindfulness thing.

Yeah.

And you can still talk to people with— you can still engage with people without like counting to 30 and just not even paying attention to them, you know?

Yeah.

Um, so chewing will help. Uh, lemon, lime, or apple cider vinegar before or during a meal will help. I mean, you can even just think of sucking on the juice of a lemon, you'll start to salivate. Uh, eating greens, particularly bitters, before your meal— bitters will trigger cranial nerve 9 and then 10. to the— which triggers the vagus nerve to start dumping more stomach acid, more digestive enzymes, more everything. Uh, that will help. And then there's a savoring your food. So this is what we call in neurology the cephalic phase. So cephalic, like cephalopod, like head. So when you smell good food, you start to salivate. When you think of good food, when you look at the, the presentation of really nice food, That also increases salivation and the engagement of your nervous system to secrete enzymes. So those are the things that you can increase your carb capacity temporarily. Um, any questions on that?

No, I think that's great. That's good information. Thank you.

You're welcome. Uh, then there's the, uh, decrease. So I want to just preface this. A lot of people get super confused when they see this, that Oh my God, strawberries, blueberries, and blackcurrants are bad because they decrease— no, blueberries, strawberries, but they're not bad. It's just food is complicated, like nature is complex. And, and so you don't have to— it's not saying don't eat these, just be strategic about when you eat these. That's all. You can have these, just don't— just, just be strategic. So strawberries, blueberries, and blackcurrants have polyphenols which shut down carbohydrate metabolism, digestion, for whatever reason. That's still not clear to me why, but that's what the research shows. So if you're gonna have strawberries, blueberries, and blackcurrants, simply have them after, you know, as like a dessert thing after if you have heavier carbs, or you have them separate from other carbs, like as a snack in between or something. Um, like it was just, they just finished cherry season. I actually don't know if cherries shut down, um, amylase or not, but as an example, it's like, like we just had cherry season and I eat cherries in between meals, not with meals, you know?

Okay.

Uh, so pumpkin, beans, eggplant, and red cabbage. Red cabbage, super nutritious, one of the cheapest organic vegetables available. When I was in chiropractic school, I, I couldn't afford it. So the, the org— I was basically living off of like eggs and cat and organic cabbage, you know, for a period of time. Uh, and, uh, you know, and then when, you know, going through, you know, functional medicine training and the functional medicine institutes I'm certified in, it's like you learn about all these wonderful components to all these different foods, but occasionally you find out there's drawbacks. Like eggplant is a nightshade, so sometimes it can provoke inflammation. It also turns out it can suppress amylase. Red cabbage, totally full of nutrition, but for some people who are sensitive with their thyroid, the raw cabbage can have what are called goitrogens, which can affect the thyroid. Red cabbage can also decrease carb costs. Now, why is it red cabbage and not green cabbage? Because the polyphenols in the red color Of the red cabbage. So if you're gonna have also pumpkins and beans, you just same thing. You either you either have them, you you you have them separate from other carbs, or you have your other carbs first, or you simply do more of this. You do more of the chewing, more of the lemon lime apple cider vinegar. You eat your bitter greens first. You savor it more. You exercise ahead of time. You know, you do all these other things to help just increase your capacity. It's It's not— you can— it's a balancing act. You can just do more of the other stuff.

Yeah.

Corn is ironic, is that it suppresses amylase. Rice also suppresses it as well, which is my theory— again, just my theory— why the average AMY1 gene copy number is 8 in China, because it's a 5,000-plus-year rice culture. And so there was a very concentrated geographic selective pressure to, because, because you lived off, you know, so much into the carbs was based on the, the calories were based off of rice. But if rice suppressed amylase, there was a genetic pressure to select for higher carb tolerance because rice was the thing that was, that everyone was eating.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

That makes total sense.

It's the same thing like in northern, northern Russia, in, in the Arctic regions. There's no selective pressure to have higher carb tolerance. That's why I'm a 2. You know, it goes in the other direction, you know, it goes down. So, all right.

Very interesting.

I'm looking down to my right because my little French bulldog wants her belly scratched. So I'm just kind of petting her. Oh, anyway, uh, okay, focus, focus. All right, uh, the, the other thing is that if people are also very athletic, they may need more carbs in general because they burn through a lot of calories. I had, I had a couple clients that were super athletic. They didn't read the fine print and they just— and they— but they were athletic, but they were really low carb, so they cut down carbs a lot But they were super athletic, so they lost a lot of weight and, and not to a healthy degree. And it's like, well, wait, what's going on? It's like, because if you're really, really athletic, you actually need more. You need to count— there's a lot of variables here. So that's, so that's just a little asterisk that everyone needs to pay attention to.

Okay, that makes sense.

Any questions on your carb tolerance score?

No, I think this is good.

So I've also created— now there's the official 40-page report, um, that, that goes into detail. Now I've distilled that report down into 10 pages, a longer version that also includes the recommended diet, like recipes, and like a lot more information and a lot more detail, a lot more. But it's— if you're gonna have— if you're gonna read the official report with all the The nerdy language and the pictures and stuff that they created. Have my 10-page report that is specific to your number. So I have, I have different, I have different customized reports based on the number someone has. You follow what I say. And I'll get— I'll give you an example. It's that there's, there's a, there's a lot of medical pressure in Australia right now. I mean, I don't know if you've been following, but, but Australian natural practitioners are really under a lot of heat right now. It's never been harder to practice as a natural practitioner in Australia at the moment. So there's a lot of like scrutiny of official reports that are coming out of labs by the Australian Medical Association. So like There's, there's a couple things in the official reports that I very much disagree with, but they kind of have their hands tied because it's, it's this kind of like issue of like, if you— well, if they're making a recommendation, it's like in the official recommendations, it's like under certain people, like under fats, they say like butter and margarine. And I absolutely object to margarine.

Right.

But the Australian Medical Association and their army of nutritionists are saying, no, it's fine. Why are you objecting to it? Like, then it becomes a problem. So, so I have my official report, which kind of goes through and says, okay, this is what is officially said. This is what I absolutely agree with. And this is what I disagree with. So that's why I say follow my report. So that's why it's, it's a bit challenging if people wanna try to run and get this test run themselves. I, and, and it's like, I, I don't recommend it because there's things, very important things that I, that I thoroughly disagree with that can have meaningful effects by just going off of a score and, and the official report. So anyway, that's a little, another asterisk there. Yeah.

And just for my listeners, like the testing is done in Australia and it was actually really easy to do. It was a swab that I collected and then I sent it in the mail, but it does go to Australia and that's why you're getting their official report. Um, but I agree, like margarine is toxic. So We're gonna follow what you recommend. So yeah.

And they, and they're very aware of this issue and I brought it up with them and that's that. And so there's an understanding as to why it's still in the official report and it's, it's, it's awkward, you know? So, uh, and just, just like getting it out to Australia, it's like super easy. Like I, I preprint all the paperwork, like the documents, like it's, it's just what goes in the thing, what goes on top of the envelope, walk into USPS or wherever you are in the world. Or if you're not in US, then it's just, you know, send the test kits there and then you use DHL to send it off. It's really easy. So, and I've been to that lab in Australia. I have been in that lab.

That's awesome.

And it is phenomenal. Like, and the level of accuracy is unbelievable. Like, they, they are super duper accurate, way more so than 23andMe and Ancestry and all that. And they showed me the technology of how I can't describe it because I have an agreement with them not to share, but it was so clever that, uh, they— he showed me an example of how he was able to find that there were 2 sets of DNA on one swab because they were able to parse it. I was like, wait a minute, doesn't make any sense. And here's what happened. It was a mom who did the swab, this, and then she left it out to air dry, and her toddler came by thinking it was a lollipop. you know, put it in his mouth, and I was like, well, that's not very candy-like, and put it back. And but mom didn't realize it, and she sent it off, and they found like there's like 2 sets of DNA in here. They were able to catch that.

Wow.

You know, that, that's how cool, that's how cool it was. So yeah, I, I love this lab, absolutely love it. And this is the only lab that does this type of reporting, so I— you can't actually get this, this thing elsewhere. So Next, we're going to go to the trigger foods. Now we start with the trigger foods because they're the easiest to understand the difference between red, yellow, and green dots. So this is green dots is 2 good copies, one from mom, one from dad. A yellow dot is one quote unquote bad copy, one quote good copy from either mom or dad, doesn't matter from who. And red is 2 quote unquote bad copies. It's, it's, it's very simplistic to say bad. It's very simplistic. I know people who are really into genetics, so I can hear them screaming. into the screen right now. I get it, but we're talking to— we're talking about practical stuff here.

Right.

Like, so, uh, now there are— we're talking about gluten, lactose, salt, alcohol, caffeine, histamine, and other food intolerances. So you are a green dot in, uh, your risk for celiac disease. So that means that you don't carry both the genes that are— have been shown to implicate risk of celiac, you don't have that risk genetically to have celiac. It doesn't mean, however, that you couldn't possibly have non-celiac gluten sensitivity, uh, to gluten-based foods. Now that— now this just means that you don't have the genetics to create celiac based on the genes. Doesn't mean gluten is good for you because a lot of gluten-based foods, particularly inorganic, are just drowning in toxic pesticides and other problems that are Trojan horsed in along with the gluten-based foods. It just means that celiac is not necessarily on the radar for you.

That's great because I do have non-celiac gluten sensitivity. I absolutely—

Yeah, so do I.

Gluten. So it's— it makes me relieved to know that I'm not going to go on to develop celiac in addition to my Hashimoto's and Raynaud's and everything else. That's good.

So lucky you, you don't get— you don't get it there. You got 2 autoimmune, you're not looking for a 3rd. No. Oh, right. So then the 3rd— the 2nd thing is lactose. So lactose is that you're also not, uh, genetically vulnerable to lactose sugar. So that's— now I just wanna— I wanna give like a meaningful caveat to that. It doesn't mean that you might not be sensitive to dairy. Now, I am a green dot in lactose, and I am super sensitive to dairy. Why? Because there's other allergenic proteins. I mean, lactose is a sugar, but like, there's whey and there's casein. It's just 2 other main allergenic proteins. I'm very reactive to those things.

Yes.

So yeah, so it doesn't mean people have a green dot, they got a free ride with milk. Like, so I'll give you a real example. My mother You know, I was very reactive to dairy, and my mother went— and at the time, this is like the '80s— she got Lactaid milk and Lactaid pills. She's like, look, we solved your problem. And I would take it and it would do nothing. And she'd be so frustrated because she thought she did— got the expensive milk, did all the things, and was like— it was not a good situation. She thought I was like making stuff up or wanting attention. I was like, no, I'm genuinely like really have a bad stomach issue going on. Because in her world, she thought the only thing wrong with milk was lactose. Now, she was— she, she's a retired medical doctor, you know. She was a medical doctor. She graduated in the '70s, and at the time, '70s, '80s, like, that was all you thought was bad in milk was lactose. So, so I can understand her frustration because whey and casein were not on the radar, especially for medical doctors, right? So that's why I could be— so even if you took the lactose stuff, it doesn't— not irrelevant. if you're reactive to casein and whey. Now, in the official report, they actually have a really wonderful chart of de— of dairy products with decreasing levels of lactose if you are yellow or red dot. Now, it doesn't mean you may still be reactive to casein and whey, but if people are reactive to lactose, there are certain dairy products. Most biggest example is ghee, which is best. There's no lactose, no proteins. It's just, it's fat. Like, I'm, I'm fine with ghee as long as it's actually pure ghee, because sometimes it's not so pure.

Yeah, exactly.

Good. So any, any questions on this?

No, this is— I mean, it's all making so much sense.

Yeah. So, and the good news is, is that this is 2021, not 2001, meaning that for those of us that struggle with dairy, the dairy-free industry has really matured. I mean, they're, they're not quite as developed as the— they're about 5 years behind in terms of their technology and believability as the gluten-free, uh, industry. But like, things like Miyoko's butter, you know, quote-unquote butter, is like the most butter-like butter I've ever had. It's like cashew— it's like cashew oil and, uh, you know, coconut and some other stuff. Like, it's the most butter-like non-butter thing I've ever had. I only discovered it early last year and I made up for 15 years without butter. I had to cut down. I was going through like 3 bars a week because I was just like, I miss butter. So anyway, so there are options for people who struggle with dairy and it's only going to get better and better.

Yeah, for sure.

So alcohol, this is your genetic sensitivity to alcohol. Now, for those of you who are real genetics nerds, you're like, wait a minute, where are the genes that are specific to this? It's on the official reports. This is again just the summary. This is the summary report designed for the lay public to just know what to do. If you want the nerdy stuff, it's there. It's just in the official separate reports with all the jargon, all the weird, you know, hexadecimal designations of like DQF5692 genes, whatever. Like it's not necessary to know those things unless you're a nerd or a clinician. Uh, but you're, you're basically, you're, you are genetically sensitive to alcohol. So metabolism of alcohol can be problematic. I'm a red in this. So like, I've instinctively always shied away from alcohol. Always. Now—

Me too. If I, I feel like I'm a red, like if I get past 3 drinks, there's a potential that I'm vomiting and having a hangover. It's, it's pretty low.

Yeah. Like I, I've avoided alcohol. I mean, the reason that I don't drink alcohol is not necessarily my genetics. It's that if your first exposure to alcohol was Manischewitz, you'd be sober too.

That's not good.

So if, so if you want context for that joke, go to my YouTube channel and I have a stand-up comedy playlist. I do stand-up comedy as a hobby. I have an entire minute and a half set on why I don't drink alcohol. And, and it's, it's like, if any of you've ever tasted Manischewitz, it tastes like virtuous Robitussin.

Oh God.

Like, it tastes like vindictive grape juice. Okay, so this is— anyway, I have a whole bit on it, so, and you can— a little teaser for that. Yeah, so that's alcohol. Then there's coffee. Now coffee, you are— so, so this is a really— this, this is the one that's kind of most confronting for people. Uh, I find that, you know, of, of the 7 things that this food trigger panel reveals, the, the things that are the— that is the most confronting to health enthusiasts is the coffee one. Okay, and so I'll give you an example of me. You're a yellow dot, but I'm a red dot. All right, so I had the most bulletproofy coffee ever, you know, coconut oil, coconut milk. I put in like Licorice for adrenal and ashwagandha. And like, and like, I added in like clove and cinnamon and cardamom. And they had this like fancy, like, like chocolate powder, like cocoa mochaccino chai Moroccan coffee, this luxuriously super complicated thing. And I was still a jittery mess, you know, 90 minutes later.

I have become that way in the past. 3 or 4 years. So I find that my genetics are definitely going the wrong way. I'm not doing well with coffee at all.

Yeah, so what happens is that certain people have a hard time metabolism— metabolizing caffeine, and they can have what's called caffeine-induced anxiety or depression.

Yeah, for sure.

Caffeine-induced anxiety and depression. So This is why people are avid coffee drinkers, or they think the way to product— production— productivity nirvana is Bulletproof Coffee. Get tested first. Because I cut coffee, caffeine out of my life with rare exception once I got my genetics back and explained my experience, my lived experience of having coffee.

Could it be possible that it's making me tired in addition to depressed?

After I drink it, so it depends. That's probably more a function of your adrenals than the actual coffee itself.

Okay.

That that may be an adrenal issue. So I also have a degree in acupuncture, and when I was learning TCM from my professor, she said according to Chinese medicine, caffeine. Um, caffeine expresses kidney qi at the expense of the substrate, which is a very fancy, colorful way of saying that you squeeze the— now, the kidney with a capital K in Chinese medicine clumsily translates to adrenal in Western physiology. It's very clumsy. It's not a direct one-to-one. There are some genuine kidney-related issues, but For the most part, kidney, capital K Chinese kidney, means little a adrenal in Western physiology and natural medicine. And so if you drink coffee, you squeeze out cortisol, but you exhaust the adrenals. That's, that's what, that's what that translates to. So that's what I would say is really might be going on if you're feeling tired after, after a certain—

That makes sense because I do have adrenal issues. So Major dysfunction. So obstetrics. All right, let's keep going.

Yeah, so this is— are we okay going beyond the hour? It's going to be—

Yeah, let's, let's—

okay, this is out. Okay, so then we've got salt. Now, so, so this is about salt and high blood pressure. Now I want to be very clear and even put this in, in writing. You know, there are many reasons blood pressure could be high. Stress, height, excessive weight, smoking status, alcohol consumption, sleep apnea, thyroid issues, adrenal issues, kidney issues, and lack of exercise. Salt is a variable, not the variable. It is a variable. So if someone has high blood pressure and they have a red dot in salt, the very first thing I'm doing is looking at all those other variables first.

Yes.

Okay, before we blame salt as, as the evil underlying high blood pressure. So, uh, so that's— so now also, um, gender, uh, sex should be in there as well because women typically have lower blood pressure than men. So, um, if you ever have high blood pressure for whatever reason, we first look to those other variables, and if those other variables are all fine, then we can look to salts and reducing it down. And also, I recommend people get like Celtic salt, Celtic sea salt, or Hawaiian red salt, or New Zealand sea salt. I'm not— don't get pink salt because some big box grocery stores basically get crappy salt and dye it pink and call it pink salt. So they're legally not saying it's Himalayan salt, but it's pink salt.

Oh my gosh, that's horrible.

It's a little sketchy, just a touch, just a smidge. Um, so anyway, then we got histamines. So you're a yellow dot in histamines. So what that means is that histamines are, uh, are things that can release like, uh, an inflammatory reaction. They're, they're an immune response, like mast cells. Uh, they're the little cells in the body that go to areas of injury and inflammation and dump all these histamines in it.

Yeah.

all the rest of it. So, uh, you're, you're sensitive by a yellow dot to histamine. So that means that, uh, you, you are more genetically vulnerable to like headaches, itchy skin, runny nose, fatigue, hives, digestive issues. Histamine is very big in the digestive tract. And there are— there's— what I, what I did is condense the chart in the official report to this one little page of like what's low histamine foods and what are high histamine foods. So just for example, like high histamine foods are alcohol, eggplants, pickled and canned foods, mature cheeses, smoked meats, shellfish, beans and pulses, long-stored nuts, chocolates and cacao, uh, uh, seitan, uh, the, the vegan meat, rice vinegar, ready-to-eat meals, salty snacks, sweets, and leftovers actually should be in there as well. And the low histamine foods are like fresh foods, fresh fish, eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, fresh pasteurized milk. I'm not Again, I'm not saying that you should have pasteurized milk. It just happens to be a low histamine food.

Right.

That's all. Um, cooking oils, uh, leafy herbs, uh, fruit juices. Now I'm not, I don't endorse fruit juices because I can just drink a whole bunch of sugar, but it happens to be a low histamine food, uh, herbal teas, et cetera. So, uh, this is, you just gotta monitor. There, there are supplements out there like, like, uh, DAO histaminases and things like that if people are really histamine sensitive. But the first thing to do is to drop histamine-containing foods. Any questions on this one?

Nope, it makes sense. If I eat a big charcuterie board, I do not feel well. I get congested, I get the headache, I get the whole work. So I just have to like check myself and eat a low amount of it for sure.

Yeah, and for someone like you that's very self-aware about your, um, your reactions to food. The, the benefit of this profile is affirming that, yep, gotta focus more on— make sure that I can't deviate from that.

Yeah, but I'm sure for people, many people, this is like going life-changing, open their eyes and change their whole world for sure.

Absolutely. And the one, again, the one that's most confronting for people Is actually the caffeine. Yeah, that's the one I get the most emotional pushback from. Yeah. So then there's general food allergies. Now, now we're also figuring out the genetics of food allergies. It's very complicated. There, there's actually a bunch of genes that are checked. So it's— we put in yellow because it's kind of an aggregate of like the 10 or 13 genes I think they test for. For this. And so this is just a general thing. So if you are experiencing feeling not the best, you can remove the top 7 food allergens— fish, eggs, wheat, soy, shellfish, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts— and it may— you may just have an overall lowered immune response because you have a generalized vulnerability to food allergens as a whole, not anything specific to what's listed here, with the exception of the gluten in the wheat and relates to celiac disease and the lactose and the dairy that we mentioned before. So this is a generalized thing like this. This is to tell people, okay, do the food elimination diet if you're a yellow or red dot. This is worth doing. It is worth doing. Yeah, to figure out if that's going to help. That— this is— that's, that's like the one magic nugget from this slide. Do the food elimination diet and see if that helps. That's basically it.

I love it.

So any questions on your food triggers?

No, I think this all makes sense. And I think that so many people would, you know, have clarity if they had this information. This is great.

Thank you. And now, uh, I, I know it's changed my life and it's really helped a lot of people, uh, and again, food is emotional and, um, I've kind of seen the spectrum of the reactions. Again, just tell people to buckle up because you may not like what you see, but you will certainly like how you feel if you change your diet accordingly. So now I'm going to talk about vitamin D, and I'm actually— this is where I'm going to pull up the actual official vitamin D report. Um, the, the— well, if there's a— there's 14 pages to it. I'm just going to show you one page from the report, um, because it's— it really helps contextualize everything. So I'm just going to switch screen. So you're globally— you're a red dot on aggregate. You're a red dot. This is a clinical call on my part in terms of your ability to get vitamin D from the sun, which means you don't really get vitamin D from the sun that efficiently. at all, and you're a red dot in your ability to use said vitamin D no matter how you get it— sun, supplements, or food. So I'm just going to stop the share. I'm going to show you just your particular map, which again, you'll, you'll get, uh, you know, everyone I work with, they get a copy of all the official report. You'll get all this and, and, and everything like that. So this is the vitamin D pathway. So here, the top here, this, this DHCR7, that's the gene that takes sunlight and it helps convert that first stage of cholesterol to help start the journey into making it into vitamin D because the basis of vitamin D is cholesterol. Then if you have a certain inflammatory gene like interleukin-6 or TNF-alpha, If they're red and yellow, red or yellow, vitamin D will be pulled out of the blood and stored in fat cells and not used by the rest of the body. So if people have a lot of inflammatory weight, they actually lose a whole huge amount of vitamin D because it's just sucked into the fat cells and kind of quarantined.

Mm-hmm.

Then the next step, if it, if, if it, whatever gets by the fat cells, then has to go to the liver To what we call the hydroxylation, which is a fancy way of saying adding an oxygen hydrogen group to it, and that's the CYP2R1 genes. I remembered the R in liver; that's how I remember that gene. And it's getting a little bit nerdy, but just just to keep you've got two green dots, but all the rest are yellow and red. Of the eight genes that get from sun, the eight major genes that get from sunlight to vitamin D. Only 2 are green, 4 are yellow, and 2 are red. Now, and that's not good. Like, for yellow, you're like, oh, yellow, it's like, oh, it's fine, it's kind of like a green. Okay, so this is the one problem I have with the, quote, traffic light system of green, yellow, red, because people's perception of a yellow is totally— is totally culturally based.

Yeah.

So if you're in Italy and you see a a yellow light, that means it's a hard green. You hit the thing and you go through it. If you're in the Scandinavian countries where people follow the rules, a yellow is a hard red. So, so it's— that's the problem with, with, with the traffic light system is that people think yellows are either a semi-green or a semi-red. For the purposes here, we treat yellows like semi-reds. For, for health reasons. Now, is it true that all yellows are semi-reds? Not— no. But for health, it's better to err on that side for your health-based genes.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Um, so you see how it's really difficult for you to actually get vitamin D into the blood in your particular case?

Yeah, that's a huge bummer.

And then when you get it, then you've got some issues with the vitamin D receptors even getting it in. Now we're going to cover what to do about those vitamin D receptors, uh, because the VDRs are so important. Those 2 genes are actually on the big 64-gene thing, which is what we're going to cover next. And then we're going to see what to do based off of the bigger, the bigger gene test that includes all this plus the inflammatory genes. Because the VDR genes, in my opinion, are best clustered along with the 15 major inflammatory genes. Of all the hundreds and thousands of inflammatory genes, only the 15 fulfilled the requirements of one of the 7 drivers of disease— inflammation. The genes that were upstream, minimum 10% had a variation, and the genes all showed peer-reviewed scientific research done on humans that lifestyle alone can change the inflammatory genes to be way less inflammatory. And so I put the VDR genes as the 16th and 17th inflammatory genes, if that makes sense.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, so then the next thing we're going to do is that we're going to go to— I'm going to put the share screen back on to your All right, so this is the summary page for your vitamin D. So, uh, this is just explaining your red dot. It's harder for you to absorb vitamin D via sunlight. You need to take either vitamin D supplements or have foods that are high in vitamin D, so like egg yolks, sardines, uh, liver. Uh, if people want, I have a very specific company I get my sardines from. you know, that are from clean, clean caught, etc. Uh, sunlight. There's a great app called, um, D-Minder, like Reminder but D-Minder.

Hmm.

Uh, that's a phenomenal little app. It's brilliant because wherever you are on the earth and the time of day and the calendar day and how much exposure to the sun for how long, it will give you and and your skin tone, it will give you an algorithm of how much vitamin D you're absorbing.

Oh my goodness, that's very interesting.

Super cool. Now, for people like— I, I used to live in New Zealand, and it'd be like, oh, I'm getting vitamin D from the sun. Like, no, you're not. The only time the sun is at the correct angle to actually give you the UVB that actually makes vitamin D is only in the summertime, and only between 11 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, and only if you're out there with enough skin exposure. So sorry, just because you're outdoors in the sun doesn't mean you're getting the correct UV light to make vitamin D.

Yeah.

That's why the D-Minder takes into account for that. So it's really, really clever.

That's cool.

Next profile is the immunity profile. Okay, the reason why we're doing this first is that, uh, here's what I've discovered when reviewing your immunity profile. All the recommendations to help your immunity are the same recommendations from the big Achieve Your Natural Weight Longevity, the 64-gene test. So I don't need to go into a separate how-to. It's like just focus on the to-do list for the big panel.

Okay.

Just focus there and I'll cover, cover this. All right, so now What we're going to do is we're going to go into the big panel. This is the achieve your natural weight slash, um, uh, you know, future-proof your brain slash stop the clock slash all this stuff. And so now we're going to go through each major, each major section: the inflammation, the inflammation section, the free radical section, the liver section, the methylation section, cardiovascular, and the fat and energy metabolism. So this is the big picture I'm just showing you the big picture trends. So you are— out of the 15 inflammatory genes, you have 11 of them as red and yellow dots. Okay, so that's on, on aggregate, that's a red dot. That's a lot. That's your— you're very pro-inflammatory on, on average as an aggregate. Okay. I knew it. I know. Yeah. So you're at— so I'm 13.

Okay.

To show you what I mean. So there's 3 parts to inflammation. There's the initiation, the propagation, and the extinguishing. You had a green dot in initiation, meaning that you don't easily trigger the inflammation, but your red dot in propagation, extinguishing— once you do get inflammation going, it keeps going. It's hard to put out. Did you see the difference between splitting into 3 parts— initiation, propagation, and extinguishing?

Yeah, so once I get going and I'm inflamed, it's hard to turn it off.

It's hard to turn off. So initiation is in the interleukin-1s. So there's 3 interleukin-1s here. I know that sounds confusing for people listening. How's there 3 interleukin-1s? Doesn't that be 1, 2, 3? No, no, no, it's interleukin-1a-1, 1a-2, 1-b. It's all super nerdy. Again, that hexadecimal system they came up with of naming these things is just kind of nutty, you know, you're the computer programmer or Scrabble enthusiast who really want to dig into all this. Uh, so of the— it's interleukin, it's the 3 interleukin-1s, interleukin-6, and TNF-alpha are considered to be the major initiators of inflammation. 4 of those 5 genes are green for you. So you have all 3 interleukin-1s are green, and TNF-alpha is green, but the interleukin-6 is a yellow. So 4 out of the 5 initiations are green. That's a green dot on aggregate in my book.

Okay.

So that's why I said you're green for initiation, meaning you, you don't initiate inflammation easily. But then when you look at propagation, that's interleukin-8, interleukin-18, all 3 CRP genes in the, in the liver, and the 2 COX genes as well. Those are all red and yellow. So the liver ones are especially important to pay attention to because if your liver gets clogged with inflammation, other things are going to go awry with the liver because the liver's— one of the liver's primary job is to deal with inflammation. And so this— I did a case study on this at a genetics conference where, you know, women— there's a particular type of woman that the more they wake up, the more they work out the fatter they get, which is, well, demoralizing at a minimum.

Right.

Um, so what I found in the patterns when I genetically analyzed this is that they have lots of inflammatory genes and they have problems with their liver genes specifically for detoxing estrogen, but they've got a cluster of these 3 acute phase liver protein inflammatory genes here, the CRP genes, Meaning that if they're— if they get inflamed and their liver just kind of goes, you know, wacky with all sorts of inflammation, the liver is going to make a decision. Are we going to deal with inflammation that's really dangerous, or are we going to try to deal with these hormones that are floating around? Now, I've asked people who have no background in health and medicine, intuitively, what would you decide if you were the liver? Inflammation? Or hormones? What are you going to deal with first? Every single person, with no exception, has said inflammation. I said, "You're correct." So what happened is that these women that overexercised for their genetic capacity, they crossed the line from anti-inflammatory levels of exercise to now pro-inflammatory levels of exercise. And then what happens with all the inflammation? Is their body now starts to retain water to dilute the toxic inflammatory chemicals. To do what? Buy the liver and kidneys time to filter out the toxic inflammatory chemicals. That's why when you— that's why they can get fatter, not from fat, but from water retention. It's, it's, it's, uh, puffy weight. It's fluid weight. It's water weight. It's not calorie weight. It's this puffy weight, right? So, and there's one simple test aside from you over-exercise, you get fatter. It's the muffin test. I think we talked about this on the last podcast. If you eat a muffin that, you know, unless it was last year's Christmas fruitcake, it didn't weigh 3 pounds. But if you ate a tiny muffin and you suddenly gained 3 pounds, it's not the weight of the muffin, it's the inflammation, inflammatory chemicals in the muffin that triggered an inflammatory response. Your body's now retaining water. to dilute the toxic inflammatory chemicals in order to buy the liver and kidneys time to filter out those toxic inflammatory chemicals. So it's the same. So, and if you've got this cluster of these overall lots of inflammation, lots of these 3 liver genes, and particularly the 2 VDR genes in red, you are very vulnerable to this inflammatory puffy weight phenomenon. Does that make sense?

Um, it makes complete sense. I always gain weight when I strength train and do—

There you go, there you go.

Hard, high-intensity workouts. And I feel crazy, like, why am I feeling swollen and puffy and gaining weight when I am working out? Wow.

That's you right here. This is it. This, this is why, this is why you're, you're literally the case study that I've presented at these genetics conferences on. Like, like, this is exactly the mechanism. So what's the solution is you focused on recovery primarily. Like, it's— and you, you only do intense workouts once every 2, ideally 3 days at most. You don't do it every day. You do not do this every day. You don't do high-intensity intervals every day. That— no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You do minimum 1-day break, ideally 2 days break, and you only do high-intensity interval training twice a week. And then in between, at most 3 times a week, at most, but really twice if you're this sensitive to it. And what you do on the off days is you focus on movement, not exercise, but movement like light yoga, walking, you know, swimming, tai chi. You know, qigong, all these other things, and you focus on recovery. So this is where things like ice baths to help drop inflammation, make sure you're properly hydrated, plenty of sleep, uh, alternating between like saunas and cold plunges, things like that. You, you focus on an anti-inflammatory recovery-focused exercise system, not I'm going to exercise more to deal with this puffy weight. That's the exact wrong thing to do. Wrong, wrong, wrong. So, uh, it's, it's— you need to focus on recovery. So massages, saunas, um, ice baths, rest, movement, sleep, um, water, all these things you focus on. You do exercise, but you must focus on recovery. Does that make sense?

I love that you're saying that because intuitively that's what my body is telling me.

Right.

And everyone around me is trying to tell me the opposite. So I'm so, I feel so vindicated and so happy to hear this.

I see you.

I see you. Okay. So would you put like running in that same category as the high intensity?

Okay. So running, running is a really vague term. Do you mean jogging or do you mean—

Oh yeah. Jogging, 3 miles.

Okay, so that really depends. It really depends. So I grew up next to Heartbreak Hill, the Boston Marathon. So even in New Zealand, they knew about Heartbreak Hill. Okay, so like, so most famous hill in all of marathoning in the world. I remember watching these runners go by. I'm like 6 years old. I turned to my mother, a medical doctor, and I watched these marathoners go by and I say, Mommy, they look sick. And she's like, no, no, it's Zone Cardio. I was like, Mommy, they look sick. It's good for their heart. Mommy, they look sick. Okay, so if, if people are feeling that their buttons are being pushed by hearing that, um, I'm okay with that.

Yeah.

2, uh, you can go to my blog and look up why marathon— I have a post that's, uh, uh, very uncontroversially titled Why Marathoners Look Like Cancer Patients.

Yeah, I have seen a lot of people tank their sex hormones and adrenals just by training marathons.

The reason why, the reason why I learned this from Dr. Mark Smith, uh, he's a PhD who studied under Loren Cordain, who was a part of those, uh, zone cardio studies in the '70s. And he explained why they were kind of bunk research. Uh, you know why? So here's the short version. The reason why it was bunk research is because We all know the protocols, right? Somewhere like 20 to 60 minutes, 2 to 5 times a week is zone cardio, right? Something like that. Somewhere in there, 2 to 5 times a week, 20 to 60 minutes. Right. Okay. Do you know why those, do you know why that, those, that frame came in, why those parameters came about?

No, tell us.

Okay. So Dr. Smith was in the lab as the PhD student gathering the data that Created these protocols. He was a part of these research. Okay, the two to five times a week for twenty to sixty minutes had nothing, literally nothing, zero, nada to do with what is healthy. It had everything to do with what was convenient for the researchers to collect data.

I believe it.

Okay, so what do you do? How do because at that time they discovered oxygen consumption. Put a tube in someone's mouth and measure oxygen consumption. So the whole thing was now, before that, it was just a ruler and a stopwatch to measure improvements on basically whatever you do to improve your outcomes. Now they had a thing, measure oxygen. So you're PhD graduate students, you're forced guinea pigs, all these things. So, okay, we gotta get some data. Let's see, we've got break between classes. You got 20 minutes, jump on there, you know, you know, 5 days a week, 20 minutes, jump on to collect some data. Oh wait, we've got physiology lab 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday for 2 hours. Okay, everyone jumps on for an hour and collects some data. That's how the protocols were made.

Wow.

Because it was a data collection parameter, not a health optimization parameter. Now, just to be fair, the high-intensity interval training research is guilty of the same thing, just in reverse. These 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds— like, they're giving an arbitrary number for rest and activity as opposed to measuring actual physiology Like, so exercise has to— I can spend another hour. I have whole podcasts just devoted to this. So look, I just tell people like, read the article. I've done— there's HIIT, high-intensity interval training. And then there's safe high-intensity interval training. S-H-I-I-T. This is a family-friendly show, so I won't pronounce it. Um, S-H-I-I-T, safe high-intensity interval training. Those are my parameters because how do you do this safely? Whereas like basically you, you exercise to a level of intensity so you get a deep muscle burn within a minute or less of the exercise. 'Cause the deep muscle burn is the lactic acid production. Lactic acid at that point is a hormone triggering the hypothalamus and other mechanisms to burn fat, release growth hormone. and testosterone. So if you go beyond the minute, you're now into aerobic respiration. And so you're not— that's why marathoners, they don't get that real release of, um, growth hormone to rebuild all their muscles. Instead, they just get this constant rise in cortisol that stays sustained. It's the cortisol that erodes the muscle tissue evenly across the body, which is why they look so gaunt. So the way you tell the difference between a cancer patient and a marathoner is the marathoners have thighs. It's the only muscle that actually gets any real, you know, meaningful activity. So, and I know this is going to offend a whole bunch of marathoners, and again, I'm okay with it. Uh, and, and just go read the article. And, uh, and if people— now here's the other thing that's really interesting, going back to the carb tolerance, really high carb people They actually have a higher tolerance for longer, longer distance running.

That makes sense.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And the lower carb people like me, I'm a sprinter through and through, because if you're, if there's not a lot of higher carb areas, you have to walk around and gather, like you're doing zone cardio, you're a farmer, you know? Whereas, whereas if you're a low carb person, you were sprinting after or away from things. Right? You're sprinting after your calories, or you're sprinting away from things that were going to make you its calories.

Yes.

So it actually— so even the carb tolerance test indicates very strongly what— how you can dial in your, your exercise. Now, in your case, you've got a highly inflammatory profile but a mid-range, um, carb tolerance. So for you Um, I would say like, number one, focus on recovery. Absolutely focus on recovery. But you have a longer tolerance for zonier cardio than I do.

Okay.

You know, I never did well cross-country, but really well at indoor track. You know, and it's made sense now looking at my genetics.

Yeah, I would say that running doesn't affect my body the same way as HIIT does. Yeah, that makes sense to me. It's just a different beast, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Good, good, good.

So, um, now we're gonna get to the practicals of what to do nutritionally, uh, etc., at the end, kind of all looking at all things all at once. Because one of the real amazing things about this, this specific rendition of genetics is that I'm not looking for— look, you've got 11 inflammatory genes out of the 15, I'm not going to give you 11 separate things to do for 11 separate genes. That's, that's crazy. This is the problem with most genetic testing for health is like, here's your 300 genes, here's 300 things to do, good luck. No prioritization, no organization. It's overwhelming, it's confusing, it's demoralizing. Um, so instead I'm going to look for what are the fewest number of lifestyle interventions that beneficially affect as many of these as possible. Like one intervention helps all 11 of these, or 8 of them, or 9 of them, or 7 of them, or whatever. So what can you do, like the fewest number of things to activate the most number of epigenetic shifts for these problematic genes?

Okay.

So now that's the inflammatory. Now I'm gonna go to the next page, uh, then of your trend. So this is the, um, free radical quenching genes. So free radical— so there are 3 main genes that create the enzymes to quench the free radicals inside the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of the cell where the vast majority of your free radicals remain. Now, free rad— you can think of free radicals as Sparks. They're the sparks that come off the machine. Like your mitochondria are very complicated factories that take proteins, fats, and sugars and put them through very, very complicated machinery. Very and like machines are like the machines are the vitamins, the minerals are the computer chips of the machines of the vitamins. You know, CoQ10 is like the conveyor belt transport things. You've got you know free antioxidants that act as the janitors to put out the Sparks and clean up the mess. You've got all these, all these different— you got specialized lipids and fats to form the walls of the factory. You know, there's all sorts of things that go into make this, this free radical, this powerhouse of the cell called the mitochondria. But you need really good janitors to clean up all the sparks so stuff doesn't catch fire.

Yes.

So there's 3 genes, MN SOD, glutathione peroxidase 1, or GPX1, and catalase. And you've got a yellow— the MNSOD, which is called superoxide dismutase. There's 3 different main superoxide dismutases. The Mn stands for manganese. Manganese is a mineral, not magnesium, manganese. So there's 3 different MNSODs. The manganese-specific one is the one specific for the mitochondria. Now I'm going to show you on your report what that actually looks like. So it'll make, it'll make more sense to see why this is so critical. And it is a little nerdy, but it's important to understand why. I'm just going to zoom in just, just a little bit so it's easier to understand. So the body is really cool. It takes free, 2 free radicals. And then through this SOD enzyme, this little micro machine, it'll turn 2 free radicals into hydrogen peroxide. Same hydrogen peroxide you get at the, you know, pharmacy. Then next, your body takes 2 hydrogen peroxides and then combines with these 2 enzymes catalyzing glutathione peroxides. You get oxygen and water. So how cool is that? Your body takes free radicals and you end up with Oxygen and water. That's amazing. That is literally amazing. But if you've got yellow or red dots, that means that these enzymes aren't working so well. Okay, now I got double reds here, so I feel for you. Okay, and so Uh, that means that you've got to do specific things to support lifestyle changes, nutrition, etc. To help these yellow dots behave more green-like, just like your inflammatory genes. We need to give you lifestyle, diet, nutrition in order to make these red and yellow dots behave more green-like. Will they ever be green? No, but they can behave more green-like. So in your case, I've, you know, dubbed your overall free radical scavenging capacity as a yellow dot. Okay.

And that's probably why I struggle with fatigue. You know, I just chronically have low energy because my mitochondria can't clean house.

Right. So then, uh, we're just gonna jump to the liver. Now, your liver— so, so your liver genes are actually relatively good. Like, I very rarely see this clustering of all 5 phase 2 Green. Very rarely do I see that. So just to understand this, to help everyone, everyone understand what's going on, the liver has 2 phases, 2 main phases for detox. You can think of them as a washer and a dryer. So the washer and— so if you have dirty clothes and you wash them— actually switch over to the official report, uh, because it'll explain this So if you have dirty clothes and you wash them but you don't dry them, then they'll get moldy and rotten and even worse. So that's the problem. If you, if you have an overactive washer, meaning you're pumping out more wet clothes than your dryers can handle, or your dryers are broken, you're gonna— it's gonna be worse than if you never washed your clothes at all. So that's the issue. Like, you have a toxin like benzene and you put it through phase 1, the washer, but you don't have a dryer to stick a whatever, a methylation group, or I think it's a methylation group or a hydroxyl, I can't remember, uh, something, whatever it does to neuter it, dry it. Benzene oxide is 100 times more dangerous than benzene. A benzene oxide radical will, will intercalate with you, will do terrible, terrible things. So you're better off not putting things through phase 1 if you don't have a dryer— if you're not to dry, if you don't have a dryer to fix it. Now you've got a very unique situation where you've got 2 of the 3 most important overactive washers, but you've got 5 dryers to catch them. So I, I didn't quite want to call it a green. I definitely wasn't going to be a red, but it wasn't quite a green because you've got You've got a lot of laundry that's being pushed into those dryers. So as long as your dryers are operational, you've got the proper nutrients like sulfur and, and other things to help keep them going, um, you should be okay. But you're always at a risk of overwhelming your dryers.

Yeah, that makes sense. I like that analogy. Awesome.

I, I learned that from Dr. Kalish. Then we've got these 2 other kind of sub things within the liver profile. It's your ability to handle estrogen. And one of the liver genes called HO-1 is a wickedly powerful pro-inflammatory. It spins out inflammation up in the inflammatory genes. a little complicated, but you know, you've got a green dot in HO1, which is really good so that you're not winding up your inflammation higher than with an extra layer of it. And your ability to deal with estrogen in general is really good. And that's mostly because the, the, um, 3, the 3 of the phase 2 genes, which is really important for estrogen detox, are all green. And the— you've got, um, of the phase 1, 1 of, 1 of the 3 is green. So just kind of on balance, it's more errors on green. So basically 2 of the 6 genes related to estrogen are yellow, the rest are green. So that's why I'm kind of giving you a green.

Yeah.

Then we come to the— this term methylation. Now methylation is a massively complicated complicated, complicated thing. We don't really have time to go into the depths of it. What I will show you is your— I'll just— to give people an appreciation for how complicated methylation is, in the official report, these are 15— there's a bit more, but these are 15 major genes that control the methylation cycle. Most— well, the MTHFR1, and there should be another one, MTHFR2. So you count them up to 15. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Yeah. So most people fixate on MTHFR. That's a mistake. Everyone's, oh my God, I'm an MTHFR, I'm doomed. No, you're not. No, you're not. There's, there's 14 other genes. I'm sorry, there's a lot more to it than MTHFR. I really wish people would get off the MTHFR bandwagon and just Take step back, zoom out, and have a look at everything. Okay, so methylation is a really complex process. It has it controls so many processes in the body. There's a lot of genes associated. There's a lot of nutrients associated with like B vitamins like B12, B2, B6, zinc, choline, glycine, serine. There's There's there's a lot of stuff involved with this pathway, and in your case, you've got not not really an ideal role of of the so three of the fifteen genes are three of the liver genes. Those those three green dots in phase two GCLC, GC11, GSTP1. That's that's over here. These three last three to make glutathione. Those are all green, which is great. But when we look at the other 12, you've got 9 out of the 12 are red and yellow dots. All right? So what that means is that you need more support with like B vitamins and serine and glycine, etc. Now there's a separate like I occasionally run you know distinct functional methylation panels. Like it's a blood test from Genova where you actually look at all the functional markers like how much serine, how much glycine, how much are you know, SAMe versus SAWe and all these other complicated markers. Those are because there's genetics and then there's functional testing. So the genetics tell you about your tendencies, its predictabilities, you know, how, how things are going to develop. But the genes don't tell you what's the level of your B vitamins now, the level of inflammation now, the level of your glycine and serine, your—

Right, right.

They don't do that. That's why it's ideal you run both functional labs and genetic labs either at the same time, or at least you get the genetic information and then you run the functional labs to figure out where are you now to then correct course. And then you have the genetics as the long-term view to like, okay, now everything's back to better. Now you can look, what do you dial in based on the genetics? And you can do the genetics even in the short term. That's what I did.

Yeah.

Also, because from the genetics information, if you can start to shift the way the genes express, whatever markers are in your blood, stool, saliva, urine, etc., they're going to shift anyway. But there's certain things that you're never going to get from a genetic test, like what are your amino acid levels now? What are the fatty acid imbalances now? What are the— are you mineral deficient in things right now? Like, that's why I prefer to do both. At the same time. But usually when people like work with me long term, they do like the functional and the genetic, genetics. So they have— they get both at the same time. But for here, um, you know, there's, there's a lot that can be done. But in terms of practical, I want to point out some kind of— these are genes 29 to 40. Okay, these are very specifically ordered. What does that tell you that these are genes 29 to 40 and not genes 1 through 12 listed on this profile? What does that tell you?

Maybe they're not as important?

They're not. The genes above regulate the genes below. Okay, so whatever the top 15 genes, the— all the inflammatory ones. So inflammation regulates methylation, right? So if we Yeah, so if we can help with methylation, free radicals, liver detox— also the vitamin D receptors are above us as well— a huge part of methylation will be addressed. And then we just zhuzh with what's needed within methylation. So things like B vitamins, B12, maybe, you know, and magnesium, for example. Now in your case, you're a red comped. So COMT is a very special gene. It's called the warrior versus warrior gene. And that's like, I don't recommend people look up methylation because frankly, it's just a, it's just a hypochondriac hellscape. It's a terrible thing to go down that rabbit hole on the internet to look up methylate, you know, MTHFR genes, because you'll just worry yourself to death and get on some websites and literally spend thousands of dollars to fight this one gene. Totally not the right approach. Okay. It's instead, you gotta look at the big picture, like the, the things that I'm doing. It's like, let's, let's look at the aggregate. Let's look at what's the highest priority. Let's find the minimum number of things, lifestyle, diet, nutrition that will help the most number of rogue red and yellow genes. Done. One exception, COMT is worth looking up as an individual gene because COMT, what it does is that it, it's thing that clears adrenaline. It's the thing that clears cortisol, estrogen, and dopamine in the brain. So people who are red comp, they're very slow to break these things down. So they have blazing minds. Like they're constantly thinking. They have harder times with anxiety, harder times with insomnia. But they have a higher capacity to be stronger thinkers and just rapid thinkers. Okay, and so it's kind of a gift and a curse. You can have a blazing intellect but higher anxiety, higher, you know, and stuff like all these other problems that are associated with it. Now, when I say magnesium, there's a special type of magnesium that's really, really, really good for comped people because you want the magnesium to get into the brain. And the brain— the magnesium you want to get into the brain is magnesium threonate. Not citrate, not glycinate. Glycine's great, citrate's great, so all these wonderful things, but magnesium threonate is the special magnesium for red and yellow comped people to help them come up. Now also you can get SAMe, which is great, but SAMe is really expensive. Now here's something else that people need to know. A lot of you see like, oh, L-theanine is wonderful to help with the mud. It's not for red and yellow dotted people in the COMP gene. It's not. It actually makes things worse. Let me go get some water. My mouth's running dry a little bit. Give me a second.

Yeah, okay.

So let me know when— Okay. All right. So, so magnesium. So next phase, any questions on methylation?

No, I think that's really helpful to know, you know, the specific type of magnesium I should be taking. And it makes a lot of sense because I do have trouble turning my mind off. Thank goodness I can handle my estrogens through my liver because I have the COMT issue. So that's good.

So the next thing we're going to cover is blood pressure and vessel integrity. So this is the cardiac portion. Okay, so unfortunately you've got red dots in both.

Hmm.

And yeah, uh, it's— yeah, it's— it's— you've— when we come down to the vessel integrity, first thing to look at is blood pressure. So there's several major genes, uh, AGT, ACE. ACE is the most famous and the most powerful of them. You have a red dot in ACE, which means that you're much more prone to higher blood pressure. It also means that you're— it just really basically means you're more prone to higher blood pressure. And now again, it's kind of like salt. Just because you have the genes for it doesn't mean you have automatically high blood pressure. There's all these variables that go with it. We talked about You know, weight, smoking status, you know, different, you know, issues with kidneys and adrenals, uh, weight status, um, stress levels, all, all these things, and, uh, sleep apnea, etc. So there's lots of things that go into blood pressure, but genetically you are at a risk for higher blood pressure. And then vessel integrity has to do with what's the level of integrity of your blood vessels, you know, in terms of damage, tears, etc. And you don't have the best role here. That's why I gave it an aggregate or red dot. And just to point out again, like, these are genes 45 to 48, not genes 1 to 4, because what also regulates vessel integrity? Inflammation, free radicals, vitamin D, methylation, you know, because homocysteine really affects blood. So that's why the methylation genes are above the vessel integrity genes.

Right.

Well, this is good to know.

I mean, my blood pressure is typically 110 to 115 over 60 to 70. So I think all of the stuff that I'm doing is hopefully preventing these genes from really taking me down, right? Via my advice. Yeah.

And you've got those, all those other factors with blood pressure, you know, again, like, because, because if females have generally lower blood pressure than males also. So estrogen affects that. So then we can scroll down to fat and energy metabolism. Okay? So this is, this is a bit of a word salad here, but let's, we're gonna focus on appetite cuz the things that most people are concerned about is appetite control. So MC4R, FTO, and the 2 leper genes, which sounds like leprosy, And the FTO gene is really horribly called the fatso gene, FTO. It's terrible. I mean, this is not— dark sense of humor here. So 3 of the 4 genes are green. The run is red. So like in terms of your genetic capacity to sense that you're full is much higher than most people's. So if you ever find yourself overeating, probably emotional. Unless you also have like a gut parasite or something else that's, that's eating your calories on your behalf. Okay. Does that make sense? Does that resonate?

Definitely. That does make sense because I, I know when to turn it off. And if I overeat, I feel miserable. And, you know, I just, I tend to be able to keep my weight in control with my diet pretty easily.

Okay. Then we've got, um, using fat for energy. So some people can burn their fat for energy, some people it's harder. Now you've got, you've got, there are some really good things about your profile. Here's one of them. Um, so 8, so there's 5 genes for fat and energy metabolism. This one, PPAR gamma C1A, that's just for the nerds out there. Uh, LEPR1, LEPR2, and then ADR beta 2, ADR beta 3. So you got 4 out of the 5 are greens and 1's red. And then there's the ability to burn fat for heat. And you've got a green and a yellow, which is— that's, that's on balance a green. So you're— so when you put— if you have fat, you can burn it for heat and for energy. Now, there's a difference between burning fat and dropping inflammatory water weight.

Yeah.

Being inflamed with water is not fat. That's water.

Yeah.

So, so it's, it's, uh, they're 2 separate things. That's why when I talk about achieve your natural weight, people can have this, this, this is what I'm talking about. So there are 3 main types of weight gain according to this profile: inflammatory water weight, which you absolutely have and you've talked about it; toxic hormonal weight, which you really don't have; Because your liver genes are on balance really good. And then you've got the fat and calorie weight, which yours is almost perfect. So the weight gain that you get is almost exclusively focused on inflammation. That makes calories, not toxic hormone stuff. Does that make sense?

So much sense. Yeah. Yep, your genes don't lie, it turns out.

They don't lie. And here's the funny part. When on the rare occasion I do meet someone that I have gene envy, like they've got all these green dots all over the place, but their health is terrible, and I say— and this is literally what it tells us— guess the good news is you actually have really great genes. The bad news is you can't blame your parents for the state of your health. This is 100% self-inflicted. Hey, you can't blame your parents on this one. This is, this is all you.

Yeah, okay, exactly.

That, that runner at the green starting line that's just busy waving and munching on burritos is— and sorry, not the Cheetos— is there like, like not, you know, it's, it's just, um, it's, it's all self-inflicted. So in your case, you've got a lot of things that like you, you've got some real meaningful genetic challenges. Like on balance You've got 24 green dots, 27 yellow dots, 13 red dots. Now I've got, I think it's like 15 or 16 green dots.

Oh my goodness.

Like, it's really bad. Like, it's bad. Okay, so on balance, like, you're, you're— and the most of your green dots are actually like in your liver, like in the liver cluster. And in the fat and energy metabolism cluster. So you've got some kind of clustered weaknesses: inflammation, free radicals, vitamin D, methylation. Those are the, those are the clusters that you really have to pay attention to personally, because everything else is pretty clustered up.

Okay.

Okay, so then the next thing we're going to look at is look at highest priorities, lab recommendations. If you're going to look at functional labs The labs that I would recommend you look at are the ones that relate to inflammation, free radicals, vitamin D, etc. So those would be things like an advanced mitochondria panel, like what I call the ion panel out of Genova. Like that's that's a whole other expertise that I have. I was I was interview. If people are curious about that, I was interviewed on the Mitochondria Summit in late 2019 by Dr. Jay Davidson. There was a lot of people. a lot of luminaries on that, but I was like the only one talking about labs because I don't recommend things unless I see labs. But there's a massive lab related to mitochondria, but that lab also takes into account the 20 core amino acids, 30 fatty acids for inflammation balance. It takes— you've got 6 key minerals like zinc, magnesium, selenium, potassium, copper, selenium, 5 key heavy metals. Um, it takes into account homocysteine. It looks at fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin— 2 forms of vitamin E, CoQ10, measures CoQ10, really super important.

Yeah.

Um, and then it checks for the actual mitochondrial function itself. Like, can you shuttle proteins, fats, and carbs into the mitochondria for energy? Does your mitochondria actually work? Do you— do the machines in there actually generate Um, energy, uh, neurotransmitters, and brain inflammation markers, uh, major liver pathways. Are you able to detox through these different pathways? 3 of those are related to glutathione. Those would be the— that would be the functional tests that I'd be recommending to you if you're concerned about inflammation, free radicals, um, vitamin D, and methylation. Now, you, you may also, depending on the complexity of what you got going on, which it sounds like you do, You might want to consider also the additional methylation panel from Genova. You can get a lot of inflammation information off methylation from the ION Panel, a lot, but there's like a couple extra things in the dedicated methylation panel. Uh, you always, if you're concerned about methylation, you'd want to check gut because huge percentage of inflammation has to do with gut problems, whether you've got hidden infections that are causing inflammation, an immune risk, overactive immune system. If you've got immune responses to gluten, the gluten antibodies floating around, your digestion is not good. You're not able to digest fats properly, digest other things. All these things you've come across, whether it's in your own practice or talking with other clinicians on your podcast. So pairing gut testing with advanced mitochondria testing, as well as of course with hormones, especially adrenal, because cortisol regulates inflammation in a major way. And those are the big 3: mitochondria, which includes like liver and brain inflammation, and amino acids, fatty acids. So it's mitochondria plus gut hormones. Those would be the 3 core. And then you can judge things on top based on what people have going on, like a thyroid or methylation or food sensitivity or whatever. So that would be like how to view functional labs to continue to add con— add to the picture of your genetics.

Yeah, I love that idea. I love like getting the framework. Here's, you know, the foundation of your house and here's what your house actually functions as right now. So I think that is key in like putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. So I love this. I hope that my listeners found this helpful to like understand just how complicated the body is, right? Like, we want to dumb it down and make it seem so simple, um, but it's really super complex. And this is just one beginning piece of the puzzle. But I love that you're like giving me actionable steps. We're gonna like work on these 3 main areas. I think that's easy for my brain to wrap around and focus on, you know. Um, so this is fabulous. Thank you.

And now here's the next thing is what's the lifestyle to do? Yeah, all this information, what do you do? And then remember I said in the beginning, what are the fewest number of recommendations to give the most benefit to the most number of rogue genes? that are the most important genes to look at. So what I did, it's a, it's kind of small writing here, but you'll get a copy of this, is that the first 40 genes, which are the 15 inflammatory genes, the 3 free radical genes, the 8 liver genes, the 2 VDR genes, and the 12 methylation genes, those are the most important ones in terms of you help those, you'll, you'll help, you know, the whole system. So of those 40 genes, you had 26 red and yellow dots. Of the— in the first 40, 26 total of the— now there's more, obviously, the other 24 genes you had, there's another mix, but the first 40, the most important. So how do I rank order what lifestyle changes to do that are the most important? Well, every single recommendation for every single gene, there's a correlate to the specific recommendation and the gene. So I look at how many genes are beneficially affected by a single intervention. So if you avoid smoking, both active and passive, and this includes air pollution— I mean, right now, you know, Colorado is dealing with a lot of forest fire pollution as well from Oregon and California— 12 of those 26 red and yellow dots move more towards the green. So if you avoid people who smoke or avoid areas in smoke, or if you're in an area that has air pollution, you get a really good air purifier to get rid of that. So that will help 12 out of the 26. So that's, you know, that's not quite half, but it's pretty close to half of these red and yellow dots are beneficially shifted to behave more green light just from that one thing. Then there's things called SOD inducers. So remember that free radical enzyme, the SOD, MNSOD? Well, I did a separate research project back when I had a neuro— uh, functional neurology diplomate. I've since given it up since I don't do, uh, in-person practice anymore. I do all virtual telemedicine now, uh, because it's hard to do neurology through, you know, Zoom. Um, but one of the, one of the things I had to do was to read 24 research articles a year for my, um, certification. And so I dedicated half of those articles to finding, uh, SOD inducers. to find out like where, what, what can I find that will help these enzymes? And I found about 10. And what I found is that there's a specific product called Mitochondrial NRG from Designs for Health that has 6 or 7 of them in there. And then N-acetylcysteine is also another one. Now, N-acetylcysteine does a lot of stuff. It breaks up biofilms for H. pylori. It's really helpful for uh, increasing glutathione. It does all sorts of stuff. It's also an SOD inducer. So that— so those 2 products help 11 out of— so the SOD inducers help 11 out of those 26 red and yellow dots. So not quite half, but close. Now, uh, sulforaphane, that is broccoli sprout extract. This is one of the few things that help the VDR genes, one of the very, very few. To help the VDR genes, you have to get out of pollution and you have to take sulforaphane. Sulforaphane is very hard to source, a legit source of it, because it's, it's a very fragile molecule. Um, people think, oh, I'll just have broccoli sprouts. Well, you can, but there's over 300 varieties of broccoli and not all of them have the correct ratio of the enzyme and substrate that combine together to make sulforaphane. For the nerds out there, the enzyme and substrate is glucoraphanin and myrosinase. Oh, sorry, myrosinase is the enzyme, glucoraphanin is the substrate. And you come— those combine together, you get sulforaphane. And that's— it's really hard to get it, you know, like you say, oh, broccoli. Yeah, but yeah, not all broccoli have the same right ratios, all the rest of it. That's why I prefer supplements from a practitioner-level-only company because practitioner— like people just go out, oh, I'll just get this at Walmart or whatever.

Right, right.

No, you won't. You'll get like the— I've been in— I've been to one of these practitioner-only factories before, okay? And they quarantine all the raw ingredients and take cell— core samples to check, to check to see if it's actually the powder it is. Is it free of heavy metals? Is it heat? Is it free of impurities and contaminants? Is it the actual thing? So you actually get what you're paying for. So That's why it's really important to go to practitioner-only products. So I recommend one particular product from Designs for Health. Then there's high omega-3s help 10 out of the 26, uh, red and yellow dots. Now the— there's the— those 10 are actually 10 out of the 11 inflammatory genes, just high-dose fish oils. Now let's bring us back to my situation. I had 13 out of 15 of those inflammatory genes as red and yellow dots. Now, I also had two VDR genes. Massive pro-inflammatory. Massive pro-inflammatory. Now, what happened is that I realized I needed a lot of fish oil, not just the one gram. You know, the thing that is different about nutritional dosing versus nutrigenomic dosing: nutrigenomic dosing is higher concentrations. Of fewer nutrients to change the genetic expression. So if I give 1 gram of fish oil, you know, the essential fatty acids get thrown in and they act— they're like widgets. They, they, they're— they help out. They're widgets in the machinery, and that's great. But if I give 4 grams of fish oil, I change the machinery. Okay, now what I did, because again, I have To date, the worst genetic profile I've seen of anyone else I've worked with. I went to— and don't, listeners, do not do this, okay? Do not do this without supervision, without— okay, I, I do not do this, okay? Repeat, I did 9 grams of fish oil a day for 5 months.

Wow.

9 grams, okay? Not a single bruise, not one, okay? My joint pain went away. Because I had such pro-inflammatory genes, I need ridiculously high levels of fish oil temporarily to help change the genetic machinery. So now I only do like 4 to 6 grams because I've gotten things rolling. I don't need that same loading dose because after like 4 months or so of loading dose, like 3, 4 months— I did 5 months and 9 grams instead of 6 grams for 4 months because, you know, I'm, you know, experimenting on myself. Um, so my joint pain went away. That was what did it. Like, I mean, did the other stuff too, but I— but like really like super high dose fish oil, like really high dose for me. And it was clean. It was from a practitioner level only. Like, only get fish oil from practitioners. Not from Walmart. Don't go out and get Walmart or Walgreens or Trader Joe's or see— don't Get that stuff. Yeah, get the real stuff.

So you would recommend I'm doing 3 or 4 grams loading up?

For you, it would be more like 6. Okay, for you, for you personally, it'd be 6 because you had 11 inflammatory genes. You had the 2 MN, you had the 2 VDRs, plus MNOSOD is the other pro-inflammatory gene. I didn't mention that. That's, that's this, that's the additional one. So you, you actually had quite a Few.

Good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Um, so 6 grams for, uh, 4 months, uh, and, and watch for signs of bruising, watch for all the signs of too thin a blood. You know, this is also, if you do like the, the advanced mitochondria test, you'll see, uh, your fatty acid profile distribution. And, and to be clear, like this is, this is why I prefer to do things in tandem, cuz I also have a video on my YouTube on Just interpreting the fatty acid portion of the ION Panel, including a section on the 5 reasons to pull people off of fish oil temporarily. So there— so I'm not thinking like fish oil is gonna answer everything. I— that is not the case. Not at all.

Right, right.

Very specific situations where you should not be doing fish oil. You're not absorbing it. It's of poor quality. Your lipid peroxide markers are too high, meaning if you take in fragile oils, they're just gonna be deep fried in your own system. Uh, you've got you've got way too many omega-3s relative to omega-6s, et cetera, et cetera. So there's, there's other reasons to— it's not just like— I, look, I was a product of the '90s where we thought fish oil would solve everything. That's not true anymore. So, so it's— again, this is the wonder and the beauty of doing genetics, but there's also a risk that you've got to know— ideally, you've got to know what your actual fatty acids are. So that you can dose even more specifically.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. Awesome.

Okay. But we're nearing the end here. We're almost— we're hitting the 2-hour mark here with podcast recording. But, you know, like—

Well, you are throwing out so many golden nuggets. Like, people really— I hope they're getting something, like even one thing that's like, aha, click. I need to get this testing. This is going to be the missing pieces of my puzzle, you know.

So just to emphasize, these are your specific combination in your specific order. Okay, now people— this is, this is you. Now for people who run this test, you will— there will be some similarity, not necessarily in the numbers or the exact order. But again, a lot of people come to see me, uh, there may be appearing to be some things that look similar and some things will be meaningfully different. Because a lot of people come to see me that they're— that if they're chronically unwell, they usually have a lot of inflammatory genes and VDRs out of line, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Like, so there can be some, some visible similarities. Now, in the— so then we go down to high vegetable intake helps Nine out of the 26 omega-3 rich foods. Nine out of six avoid overtraining. It's literally right there in the literature. Avoid overtraining. Decrease omega-6 rich foods like grains and bean oils. Vitamin D3, in conjunction with you absorbing it, helps nine out of the 26. A wonderful product by Designs for Health called ADK Yavale that should be. E-Vail, not Avail. Um, uh, anyway, that has a combination of vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin D, vitamin K, and a tiny bit of CoQ10 as well. Uh, it's like my favorite multivitamin for fat-soluble vitamins.

Yeah.

Um, then there's, uh, reduce weight if overweight. Now for some people that may seem really unfair, like, wait, I'm overweight already and you're telling me I have to drop— to help my genes, I have to drop weight, but I'm overweight because Because of it, that doesn't seem very fair. It's like, okay, well, sort of. So if you've got genes that make you make you put on weight from inflammation or hormones or calories or whatever, that means if you quickly gain weight, that means you can quickly lose weight if you've got a lot of genes that make you overweight. So it goes in both directions. That's why the whole thing, like if you eat the inflammatory muffin. You can gain 3 pounds, but if you do a lot of things to help with your inflammation, you can drop that very quickly. So that's what this is saying. Flavonoid— so you notice like there's diminishing returns here. Like you start with 12 and it goes 11, 10, 10. These are the number of genes out of the 26 red and yellow dots. So I just arbitrarily cut it off at 8 because I only want to highlight the green is like the most things you should really focus on. So one second, fix my mic here. Um, so the— this— there's this cutoff right here. It's not saying that these, these are not to do, it's just there's diminishing returns. I want you to focus up here on the top first, and then you can move on to these other ones. You could do some of them in combination, that's fine, but diminishing returns. So like Colorful vegetables help 6 out of the 26. Um, mod— like walking helps. Mediterranean diet helps you. Uh, remember, you're also a 6. High vegetable intake, vitamin E, uh, flax or hemp oil, olive oil, magnesium. High-intensity interval training helps 4 out of the 26, but remember not to overtrain because that's 9 out of the 26. So that's the balance. That's all the adequate rest and relaxation, etc. And on and on it goes. So there's— this is the diminishing returns. So this is what I recommend you print and put on your fridge or whatever. And as you can see, these recommendations, they're not really that hard to implement, are they?

Right, right. I just need to up a couple things and add a couple things.

Yeah, exactly. And so this is the good news, is that from the genetics reports, you can be like, okay, I can do that. And in that order.

Exactly.

I can do that, you know. And for people who already do a lot of this, it's a matter of emphasis and it's a matter of recalibration, you know. Because like, even it's like, well, I already do this. Like, yeah, but do you do it enough? Are you doing it too much? Like, and that alone is worth it, you know. Like, not— I was doing fish oil 1 gram a day for years Okay. So, um, for— I was taking 1 gram of fish oil for years, and then, uh, but then it was the dosage. I wasn't doing enough of it, and I never would have known that Unless I did the genetics.

Yeah, exactly.

Never would've known that. So then let's go to your specific recommendations here. So this is like a loading dose. So this is like the sulforaphane, 1.5 tablespoons of their liquid is about 6 grams. Technically it's 5.5, but close enough. Vitamin A, you see how like there's vitamin E here and there's vitamin D there. Uh, et cetera. Like that's in the, uh, vitamin ADK, that's in the ADK Veil. Mitochondrial energy, that's the anis— that's the, and that's the SOD inducer. That's also the, um, uh, your, your basic, your B vitamins for the methylation cycle and all like the, the, all, all the basic things you need. Like it's basically your multivitamin for your mitochondria, plus it's an SOD inducer. Digestzymes. I just recommend people take digestive enzymes anyway because it's gonna help drop inflammation, help you absorb the nutrients. There's nothing in there about digestion, but the Digestzymes, I just think help overall. Zinc Supreme is, you know, zinc helps. It's not that much. Zinc helps a lot. There's some extra B vitamins in there as well. N-acetylcysteine, that's the SOD inducer, plus it helps with liver detox. And the NeuroMag, that's the magnesium threonate. That's a magnesium threonate to help you with the COMT gene and just magnesium in general. There's some magnesium in the Mitochondrial Energy, but I always like to give extra magnesium at night for lots of reasons. So this is that first 4 months of loading to wake up the genes. And then maintenance is basically half of that. So from not 3 Brocco Protect, but to 1 instead of 1.5 tablespoons, it's 1.5 teaspoons. So it's a— it's— you cut it down to a third. Uh, the AD— the, the, the fat-soluble vitamins is from 2 to 1. The mitochondrial G is from— was from 6 to 4 a day. Digestive enzymes stay the same. Zinc is cut in half. N-acetylcysteine is cut in half. Magnesium threonate is really worth staying on long term.

Yeah.

Um, so that's, that's, that's what a genetic nutri— your genetic nutritional dosing looks like. Any questions on it?

I am super excited, Dr. Sam. I can't wait to get on this and like just see what happens over the next 4 months because, you know, I'm doing all the functional things that are supposed to work for the majority of people, right? And I've made significant headway, but now I've kind of stalled out and I'm at this basic inflamed state that doesn't make sense because I'm super awesome with my diet. I don't eat gluten. I, I've—

Same thing with me.

I sleep at night, like I exercise, I do all the right stuff. So for me, I'm hoping this takes it to the next level of recovery and feeling amazing. So I, I can't wait to like try this out and sing your praises. We'll see what happens.

Questions you have for me, Dr. Tabatha?

Um, no, I think we covered it all. You know, I, I'll probably have questions when I look more deeply at reports, but you know, this makes a lot of sense to me. But then again, you know, I understand all this. I've studied this for 15, 20 years. So, um, explain to my listeners what it looks like to work with you.

So it's, it's pretty straightforward. Um, if you've been listening to this, and especially if you've listened to the Genetics Podcast Recorder before and to this, working with me is going to be so efficient because you've already forgotten the whole spiel.

Right, right.

It's going to be Like, if you're going to invest into high-level genetics analysis, please listen to like the whole 3 hours or so of recordings we did. It's so worth it, and it's— it's so much is going to translate over. What working with me looks like is very straightforward. Um, you contact me through my website, drsamshay.com. There's a contact page. You can book, uh, a 15-minute, uh, health strategy call. which is, uh, which will go— which you'll go over with, uh, it's gonna be, uh, either my, my, uh, intern, um, Michaela, who's in the master's program for functional, functional nutrition, or it will be me. Or if you work with Michaela and you feel like there's just a couple other questions you have for me, you can schedule a call with me. And then you just simply order. And if it's a good fit, if it's a good fit, and there's not some other issues that may— like, we need to divert you over here first. Then you just simply— I mail you the cheek, you know, mail you the cheek swabs. You spend a minute rubbing your cheeks on each side. You mail it to Australia. I send you the paperwork, how to do it pre-printed, so it's just super easy. Uh, then the lab processes everything, and then I get the data back, and I put everything together into your customized personal Report, and then we get on a Zoom call and chat. Not not for two hours. This is this is just you know it won't be that long. It'll be like an hour, and and especially if you've listened to this, like you won't need as much of the big picture explanations either. So, and and then you'll get your customized report and exactly what to do. The nutrients are recommend. You'll get your customized diet via the the carb tolerance, and then that 10-page separate distillation, and then what the exact diet I recommend with recipes and all the rest of it as well. And then if people— people can get that, and then they've got everything there. And then if they want to have further, uh, work with me further, then there's specific implementation packages where they can talk to me, you know, once a month over a period of months, and then work with my health coach An intern, Michaela, and get other support that way. Because what we— what I want to do, what me and my team want to do, is we want to be able to support people for the long term, not just like, here's the labs, good luck. Now, some people opt to do that, that's their choice, but the ideal is to work in tandem for implementation support. And I offer that as a concierge service and implementation packages as well. So So it's pretty straightforward. Get on the website, schedule a chat, have a chat. If it's the right fit, send you the cheek swabs, do the test, send them off, we get the results back, talk again and start implementing.

Awesome. Well, I will have all those links in the show notes so that people can reach out to you if they want. And I just, I find this fascinating and I'm super excited to implement it and just take my health to the next level. So thank you so much for all of this amazing information and for going over mine specifically. This has been great.

I'm very happy to do it. Thank you for your willingness to share because this genetics— genetics is a vulnerable topic for a lot of people. And that's very, that's very honorable and brave of you to be willing to talk so publicly about this.

Yeah, I was nervous, but you know what? That's— we gotta, I just, I feel empowered now. You know, there's nothing to be scared about. It's like information is power. So this is great. Thank you so much.

You're so welcome.

Oh my gosh, weren't there like a million golden nuggets in that episode? The magnesium threonate for relaxing your brain, that was a great one. You know, I usually use the kind combination of glycinate, threonate, and citrate for helping you sleep better, giving you better digestion, that type of thing. But if you're only focused on like calming your brain down, try magnesium threonate. I thought that was a golden nugget. So many good things. I got a ton of information out of it, obviously, because it's me particularly. early, right? Like, I love individualized medicine. That's— it's the wave of the future. This is how you're going to get answers about you, is to do testing. So test, don't guess. Like, figure this out. So I would encourage you to work with me or Dr. Shay or a functional provider in your area and find these answers, right? So thank you so much for staying tuned. I know it was a long one, but reach out to me. Let me know what you thought of this episode. I'd be honored if you give me a 5-star review. I mean, I do this for you, so I want to hear your feedback. I want to know what you want to talk about on the episode, so you let me know. Okay, so follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr. Tabatha. That's 3 A's, no I's. Check out my website, drtabatha.com, and share this with a woman that you know that needs this wisdom. You know, share with every woman you know. But more importantly, go out and have an amazing week and don't give up on yourself. You have the ability and the right to feel amazing and have a beautiful, vibrant life. So keep searching and keep putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I hope this helped. Now go out and have a kick-ass week. Bye, ladies. Bye.