How To Decode Your Genome, Unlock The Nitty-Gritty Details Behind Your DNA, Discover Your Good Genes, Your Bad Genes & More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

I am a big fan of self experimentation. I do think there's a role for also understanding, you know, what's going on. And so once I knew that, I said, okay, I know these are the problems. Let me just, you know, focus on these things. A gene is, you know, a certain part of the DNA and the snp, these single nucleotide variations are basically compose the gene, right? So this area in the gene is going to be composed of SNPs.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And if you're like me, you probably wonder what happens when you get one of these DNA tests, like when you drip a bunch of saliva into a special tube and you mail it off to a company like, say, 23andMe or some other ancestry analysis type of website, what they're actually doing, and whether there's, say, much of a difference between paying a couple of hundred bucks or 100 bucks to a company like 23andMe or DNA fit and paying, like, tens of thousands of dollars to one of these companies like the Human Longevity Project, to do a full genome sequencing. You might also wonder, if you're like me, if there's things like bad genes or bad SNPs, if those really, truly are bad, and if so, is there anything you can do about them? And then kind of like the future of genetic testing and genetic interpretation and how to kind of like, navigate the confusing world of all these different websites out there that promise to somehow interpret and spit out your gene results or give you data based on your gene results. So I figured it is high time that we actually do a podcast where we dive into the wonderful world of genetic analysis and some of the ways that you can get the most out of this pretty cool form of self quantification. So I got my friend Joe Cohen on the show, and Joe's been on the show before he came on in the past, and we've talked quite a bit about things like biohacking and self quantification and optimizing neural function. And I'll link to a previous episode that I've done with Joe on the show notes for this episode. And you can access the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com decode as in decoding yourself. BenGreenfieldFitness.com decode and Joe has actually now founded a company called Self Decode. It's a biotech company that helps you understand your genetics and they use things like your genetics and your blood tests and symptoms and other health data to give you a ton of information about your body using the genetic information that you import to their website after you've done a test with a company like say 23andMe or DNAFit or any of these other companies that give you like your raw DNA data. So Joe works with a bunch of high profile executives and biohackers and companies and mostly treats the body almost like a computer program learning how to, learning how to decode it. And this Self Decode, which you can check out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Self Decode is his brainchild. That is a brand new website that lets you delve through all of your DNA results and get a ton of interesting information. I did it. We're going to go through some of my results here on, on this show, but we're also going to dive into, into DNA testing in general and how it actually works. So, Joe, welcome to the show, man.

Hey man, glad to be here.

Well, just as a complete, you got a great show. Thanks. As a complete aside, I think I emailed you last week. I was actually watching a video that you shot because I was trying to mix up in my kitchen, much to the chagrin of my wife because I left blue stains all over the sink, methylene blue as a nootropic. And you actually have a video out there on how to do it, which I'll link to in the show notes if anyone ever wants to try. Basically like a fish tank cleaner for maximizing neural and cognitive function and mitochondrial health. But I was asking you some questions about the actual mixing ratios and you're quite helpful on the methylene blue front. So thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate that. That video actually was for CTV News. They contacted me because there was a study that said it helps Alzheimer's and it has promise for a bunch of conditions. So they're like, you want to make a video? I said, sure, I'll make a video on it.

Yeah. Dave Asprey talks about it quite a bit in his new book, Headstrong how you can order a pharmaceutical grade methylene blue and actually mix it up. So I actually have a little dropper bottle now in my pantry full of methylene blue. Just be careful because you get a lot when you order a bottle and it's very easy to miscalculate and overdose on. Uh, so be careful playing around with blue.

How did you like it in the end?

I like it. I, I, I, I felt, I felt a definite pick me up. And I, I think that especially for people with poor mitochondrial function, it would, it would help out, possibly even even more than it helped me. But I, I would say for a good four to five hours, I felt very similarly to if I'd had like a, like a really good cup of coffee without the jitters. So I definitely noticed an effect from it. Plus my tongue was dyed a little bit blue, which was just cool. My kids thought that was nice and smurfy anyways though, so let's dive into genes, dude.

Let's dive in. Okay. Yeah. So let's get a few things straight here. So first of all, there's the genetic interpretation companies. Those are, you know, the biggest company is going to be 23andMe. You give them your saliva, they do the sequencing. And just so you know, the reason why there's genetic sequencing and then there's genetic analysis companies is because the FDA doesn't like when you do both. So it's just turning out that the reason, let's say a company like South Dakota is not going to want to go into doing the sequencing is because we're going to, we're going to attract the FDA more. So just the way the market is turning out, it seems like there's, you know, sequencing and then there's analysis and then there's companies that do both. But those companies that do both, they're very careful. You need like a doctor's recommendation. It needs to be done in a very specific way. So, you know, Most people have 23andMe data and then the question is, what are you going to do with that data? So right now there's a bunch of genetic analysis companies out. And the reason I started Self Decode is because I used pretty much all these and I didn't like the results. I wasn't happy with the results from anyone. None of them were a really powerful tool. So, for example, DNAFit, I don't want to trash their company or anything, but it doesn't seem like it's a hardcore scientific company. They're really only checking like 10, 20.

Snips they're based out of the UK though, so they, they're, they're allowing you to both test, but then they're also doing the analysis. Or do they kind of like fly under the, fly under the radar or fly outside the scope of what the FDA is able to regulate.

That's possible. Right. So if they're in the uk, the laws are going to be very different there.

Right.

The, the other thing is that DNA fit really is they make sure to only talk about things like fitness, but that's a very, you know, fitness or maybe something related to diet. But it's a very narrow field of the information that you can get from your genes.

Yeah, I mean, and I'll readily admit that fact and I've had them on my podcast before and talked a little bit about what they do. And it's not a whole bunch of data when it comes to some of the health data that you might get if you were to say, like export your 23andMe results to say like what I've done in the past before kind of discovering your website and working with you, which would be like Prometheus or Genetic Genie or one of these other websites. So yeah, it's very, it's very, it's great data, but it's like meathead data. Right. Like it's not all of the health data that you could take a deep, deep dive into when it comes to longevity and anti aging and disease management.

Exactly. So they, they actually have one report that really only does they report on two SNPs and they charge 20 bucks for it. There's another poor, you know, the reports that they have on 20 snips, they're charging $180 or something to that effect. I don't know what they're charging right now, but the point is, is that we have millions of snips in our body.

Well, what about, I mean, when you're talking about those millions of snips, Joe, what about these companies, you know, like, like I think it's Peter D. Mantis who has this whole like human longevity project going on where you've got like rich folks like execs and CEOs and people who are mining asteroids on Mars or at least writing up business plans to do that, going down and doing things like full genome sequencing where they are getting everything sequenced and I believe paying tens of thousands of dollars to do so. What about companies like that?

That's a great question. So there are some companies doing that and there was a famous scientist in the field. That said, we're getting to the $1,000 sequencing, but there's going to be a $1 million interpretation. What that means is that we're already at the sub $1,000 sequencing. That's not the problem anymore. You don't even have to be a billionaire to get your genome sequence. The problem is the interpretation. So the companies who offer that full genome sequencing, the problem is they don't really offer the interpretation that goes along with it. That's number one. There's other problems as well. Such as. And I had to go through this process too. I said, okay, you know, I have to try out all these people. Let me try out these guys. And the problem is it's very hard to get your data. So there's companies that are charging you anywhere from 1 to 5 to $10,000 for full genome sequencing. But the way they make money is by taking your genome and selling it. That's really what they're doing. And that's, that's kind of like a secret that the industry doesn't want you to know about. But basically, you know, they're taking your.

Genome and selling it. What do you mean?

So there's, there's one company called Arval that somebody told me that knows the company very well. They said that the, the way that they're making money, first of all, they're charging $5,000. It's ridiculous. I've seen that. I've seen the program, the person gave me access. It's really not very impressive at all. But basically the way they're making money is they sequence your Gmail and then they try to find information on it, and then they're going to sell it to the drug companies. Oh, that's their business. Yeah, that's the business model.

And so they're basically just like data harvesting.

Exactly. Their data harvesting. That's their business model. And so they raised $40 million and they have a grand plan. You know, take people's data and try to, you know, find new drugs or discover different things from it, which, which is something interesting, but it's not going to help you in the short term. You think like, oh, they're doing this to satisfy their customers. In the short term. That's not actually their business plan. Their business plan is to, you know, do with the drug companies. So one, one of the people who started one of these companies, let's say Arabelle, he also founded a pharmaceutical company. And, and you know, the top guys at these companies are heavily embedded in the pharmaceutical world. They're nothing I'm not like an anti pharmaceutical guy. I'm just saying that that's their business model is to sell your data and if you try to get your data you're going to have a problem. They're going to make it very, very difficult for you.

Okay, got it.

So that's as far as the whole genome sequencing. The answer is that it's good, right? If you want to do it, but the analysis for it is not out there yet in self decode. We're going to support it very soon, like the full genome sequencing, you know, to upload the full file. But right now if any company does the full genome sequencing, they're usually going to attach analysis to it, but that's going to be extremely limited and they're going to use, you know, if you don't mind them using your data then that's fine, you know.

Okay, got it. So when we're getting these genes tested, one of the main things that you tend to see thrown around is this concept of a SNIP or an snp. That's the thing that seems to, that I get the most questions about is like what exactly is an snp? Like why is it important to actually know what all these SNPs are? These SNPs are.

That's a great question. So an SNP stands for a single nucleotide variation. A nucleotide is one unit of your DNA. Right. And basically over time, various units in the DNA, they got a mutation. And a mutation starts off as rare, usually, you know, one in whatever. But in that environment the mutation was beneficial for survival and so that mutation became more common, although it could still be less common. Right. You know, if you had a mass starvation event, there would be certain mutations in your genome or variations that would be more likely to replicate, but they wouldn't necessarily be good in every environment. So people often ask this mthfr, it seems like hell or any other genes. These are nightmares.

That's a very popular one that gets thrown around. The MTHFR gene.

Exactly. A question I get sometimes is why do we have this gene? Why didn't this get weeded out of existence? The answer is that in some situations every mutation that's somewhat common in the, in the population, you know the thing, the mutations that are somewhat common are called variations, you know, they're not called mutations anymore. Mutations are really reserved for genetic diseases. But so these variations, you know, they have a use in some environments and once upon a time that MTHFR in a certain environment actually help people survive and Replicate.

Right, okay, got it. So we've got these companies that are taking our genes and analyzing these SNPs. And you've got this one called Self Decode. And I uploaded my. So I went into 23andMe, where you can download your raw results and I uploaded my results to this Self Decode website with Self Decode. Did you actually create this yourself as a computer programmer? Did you actually create the back end of this website or how did this thing come to be? First of all?

Okay, yeah, this started as a part time project a few years ago when I realized, hey, all the genetic programs, they're pretty. And so I said, I think I can make something better. And I partnered with a developer who started building it. But you know, we didn't really know exactly what we were doing and we learned a lot of lessons along the way. Fast forward now. I have a team of very solid developers, three full time solid developers, very fast and very capable. I have a scientist on board. We have. And then we, you know, we recently got designers. So basically we have a whole team now that's, you know, focus full time on making the products constantly better and adding more information.

Okay, so I am logged in. And by the way, for those of you listening in, we're gonna do some video screenshots of this. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com decode if you want to see how this actually works when you upload your jeans and get a very, very, very deep dive into what's going on with your genes. So I've got my genes uploaded here. What would be the first kind of like window that we would want to look at here, Joe, when it comes to getting more relevant data than what I get from 23andMe or DNAFit or something like this on this dashboard.

Okay. Yeah. So the first thing you want to do is we're actually, by the way, building out. We realized how to best benefit the consumer is they want a very linear approach. Like, okay, I do this now I have to do this. So we're building that experience right now. But in the meantime, let's say the best way to use it is, let's say you say, okay, let's say you have a condition such as hypothyroidism or ibs, right. So we have those disease pages which you could go to. So I pulled up a hypothyroid disease page and by the way, we are making a simple version of the site for basically anyone to use. But right now, you know, it is better to use the tool either, either if you're, you know, you're like a serious biohacker, or if you have a doctor, that's going to definitely be easier. You can look at yourself. And a lot of people, most people are happy with it, but there's some people who it does overwhelm because there is tons of data. So having a physician look at it, you know, is definitely better. And we're training those physicians.

Right. And just to verify, by the way, I didn't send you my saliva. I send my saliva into some other company like 23andMe, and then they give you the raw data. And then just like many of these other companies, you know, and if you go to 23 and you dot com, I know there's a whole bunch of companies listed there that you can upload your, your genetic data to, but you're not actually taking my saliva. A company like 23andMe is taking my saliva. And then I download those results and I'm basically uploading those results to your website. That's kind of like the way it works, right?

Exactly.

Okay, so, so I did that. I, I took my 23andMe results, I downloaded the raw data, I uploaded the raw data to your self decode website and I actually got, I've got a whole bunch of information here in front of me. But yeah, walk me through how, how we would actually interpret this.

Okay. Yeah. So the first thing you want to do is go to the disease pages and we have a search feature for that. So you type in hypothyroidism, you know, irritable bowel syndrome. So I'm on the hypothyroidism page and the first thing you want to look at is your SNPs that are very specifically the condition. Right. And so we have in the hypothyroidism, we have one gene here, a SNP here that has risk alleles for hypothyroidism.

And so a gene, like you've got a gene here and the gene is called CTLA4, but then you have a SNP and it's like a whole bunch of other numbers like rs231779. So the difference between a gene and a SNP. Can you go into that?

Sure, yeah. That's a great question. Basically, a SNP is a gene, is a certain part of the DNA and the snp, these single nucleotide variations are basically compose the gene. Right. So this area in the gene is going to be composed of SNPs.

Okay?

Yeah. So the gene contains the SNPs and you don't have to pay attention to the numbers. It really doesn't matter. It's just if there's a SNP within a gene, it probably means not always, but it probably means that it's impacting the function of that gene in some way. If it makes sense. If you look at the gene and you see, interesting, this has to do with my issue, then that's probably what's happening. That SNP is impacting the gene. So what I suggest is you can hover over these genes and see, it gives you information. When you hover over the gene, it tells you what the gene does and how it might interact with your. You have to think how this might interact with my physiology. But in these cases, we see that you have risks here related to these two genes. And so if you are concerned about hypothyroidism, you're going to want to look into these two genes and you could just click on these genes and it's going to give you, you know, it's going to give you a whole list of information. It's going to give you all the related SNPs to that gene and then it's going to give you which substances interact with that gene. So first thing you want to do is identify which genes are causing the problems. Once you identify the gene, we have this massive database to tell you what to, you know, which gene, which substances are going to interact with those genes. So you want to look at, you know, for many of the genes will have, you know, we'll have something telling you whether it's better to have the gene increased or decreased. Not always, but many times. In this case we don't. But what's interesting here is the CTLA4, it's part of the T cell responses, okay? And so it's going to have to do with inflammation. The CD80, CD86, these are, these, these are related to inflammation. So, and you hope, you know, hopefully, again, if you're not going to read into these things, you would have somebody who understands some physiology maybe explaining to you what's happening. But the big idea here is that I see that you have this gene CTLA4 that is actually puts a brake on the T cell responses, which is the inflammatory responses. And so we see that there's a problem in this gene and then it causes hypothyroidism. We also see you have some relatively uncommon variations here. And so this is a gene that I would look at and say, you know, there might be something going on Here. And then what you could do is you could look at the substances that interact the most with this. Now we also want to.

So if I click on it, I can see all the ways to increase this gene.

Exactly, exactly.

And those would be substance. Would those be like supplements that one could take or would those be like, like for example?

If.

So just backing up here to make sure this is really clear for folks. We typed in hypothyroidism. And that's something that I've dealt with in the past. I've always wondered if it was like due to a genetic factor or due to like, you know, masochistic training that I do combined with low carbohydrate intake or whatever. But when I type this in, it looks like two different things come up that are like genetic factors that I have that would increase my risk for hypothyroidism. So I click on, on one of these, the same one that you're showing right now in the video, this cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated protein 4, which is a gene that encodes this protein for T cells. And, and it appears that I have a version of that gene that would actually increase my risk for lower amounts of thyroid expression. Now if I click on ways, would I want to click on ways to decrease that gene or ways to increase that gene if I wanted to see how to potentially fix that.

So we're trying to get by every gene. You know, it is a little complex when it comes to if you want to increase or decrease a gene because every condition is different. Right. For hypothyroidism, it might be better to increase it. If you have immunodeficiency, it does get complex. But for a lot of them, like mthfr, you could say that in most situations it's better for this gene to be increased. Right. And so in this case, we don't have it written here, but I'm telling you that with regard to hypothyroidism because you know, this does have. This does relate to inflammation. Right. And if you're having inflammation, that will lower your thyroid hormones. And how does this relate? It says it's a little complex. The text, the major negative regulator of T cell responses. But that means that it inhibits T cell responses. So the more of this gene, the lower your T cell responses and that's going to be good. And so actually in this case, you would want to increase the gene. If I were you, I would say we want to increase this gene. So then we can look at all Ways to increase the gene. And it turns out that testosterone increases expression and flavonoids increases the expression. And you can see which organisms it is. Rats, mice.

Yeah. And you have those listed as like a. You have everything categorized. So I would look under the things that are consumable natural treatments and the two that you have there for consumable natural treatments. One is testosterone and you actually differentiate between whether it's studies that have been done in humans versus rabbits versus rats versus mice and then also flavonoids. So I would know if I type that in and I have that specific gene that to help me out in this case, I would want to increase my exposure to my intake of flavonoids, which would be. And if I click on that, it looks like you actually have some different substances.

We've got a chemical.

Yeah. And then testosterone.

Yeah, we got a chemical on everything. Right. So every substance is going to have this whole page that then shows you related pathways of flavonoids. Right. You know how it interacts with diseases and genes. This interacts with. And you could see which genes that are problematic that it interacts with. So, you know, it basically allows you to dive in and really get to the nuts and bolts of your body.

Interesting. Okay, so I have the ability here to actually look at like bad genes and do things that I could potentially implement to keep those genes from manifesting or keep those genes from hurting me. Now, in terms of other things that I can get out of this information, what else do you have built into the website as far as things that I can dive into here rather than me having to search for conditions that I have, can you tell me what conditions that I would be at risk for based on this data?

So we are doing, we do have that to some degree. We have what's called health categories. Right. And so we'll have, let's say a category of addiction, potential response to toxins, a bunch of dietary related factors like monounsaturated fats. And we could look at that if you want right now just to show you what it's looking like.

Anyway, walk me through how that works.

Yeah, so basically it's giving you a grade. Let's say how would you do with certain high fat diet? But we're looking at certain genes and you could see you have an FTO gene here, which is going to mean that you'll have a higher BMI with the high fat diet now.

Okay, just backing up real quick because you know, you know your way around the software much better than I do. Obviously. Where do I click to see where you're looking at when it comes to like the type of diet that would work best for me?

You want to go to health categories.

Okay.

And then you have all of these packages. You know, we have it like diet. So diet's going to be here.

Okay.

And you can do all these things. And then we have lifestyle, nutrition, a bunch of other things as well. So we have some diseases here, but it's not like extremely comprehensive. But we do have a good amount of diseases like, you know, autism, adhd, risk of autoimmune disease, things like that, you know, risk of Alzheimer's. But again, you know, you also want to. The large database, you know, something like this, what we were looking at before the Hypothyroidism, we have 15,000 diseases in our database. So pretty much every, we're going to have every disease there. So whatever disease you have, you're going to be able to look at, you know, which, which genes are potentially causing you the problems for that disease.

Okay, interesting. So what type of diet is it showing that I would do best on? Walk me through that one.

Okay, so again, you want to think of these things. You have to put a lot of these things into perspective. That's why it often helps to have a coach or someone who understands how to use the program. For example, if I were talking to you about this, which I am, we have a high fat diet, right. And it gives you a D now and it tells you why. Right? So you have two genes that don't do well with a high fat diet. But however you exercise a lot, right? And the harms of the high fat diet, for you, it's saying that you'll have a higher bmi, but, but you're exercising a lot, you're burning a lot of calories, you're fit, you're eating healthy. It's not going to play a significant role for you. You're not going to get fat. You know what I'm saying? So it's just, it's all kind of. So basically, if you were worried about your weight, I would say, Ben, do a moderate fat diet or something like that, not necessarily a high fat diet. So what you want to do is you want to look at the, you know, the grade and the conclusion, but then you want to look at some of the things that are associated, you know, some of the reasons why we made this conclusion. And you can see, you know, it's generally has to do with weight and you don't have a weight problem. So it's not really going to be relevant to you.

Okay, got it. Now what about if I just have a specific symptom? Like, what if I say, say, let's say, like, let me, let me think of something here. Let's say I, like, get sick a lot or I have like, like what appears to be like an immune system that isn't working properly or some kind of symptom, like that. Can I type in a specific symptom and then find out if I have the genetic risk for that symptom and then what I could do about it? Like. Like walk me through how something like that would work or if I'm able to do something like that.

Yeah. So we actually have this feature called disease hierarchy. Right. And the reason why this is beneficial is because sometimes people don't even know what disease they have, you know?

Right.

Like, let's say you have some immune system problem. Let's say, right. You don't know you didn't get diagnosed with a disease. You just know that you have an immune system problem. And so what we have is. And I'll just give you an example here. We're on the hypothyroidism page. It tells you a whole hierarchy of disease. So if you're not sure if you have hypothyroidism, but maybe you have some other thyroid condition, you can just go to a hierarchy and say, okay, I'm just going to select thyroid diseases. It's going to give you a whole page on that. Right, right. And then you can look at all the SNPs related to everything under that large category. And you see this CTLH gene, It comes back here because it's including hypothyroidism, Graves disease, thyroid cancer, any kind of thyroid problem. You can look more broader at the SNPs or genes related to that that might be causing problems for you. And actually, I see some HLA genes here as well. They don't necessarily cause hypothyroidism, but they're associated with Graves here. So this is an example. If we were looking for an immune disease, you would want to look at something higher up on the hierarchy. And so let's see something. What we're going to do is we're going to look at the database we have over here on the side, we have the database. And you can look at the. Let me see something. You could look at the disease hierarchy and go down. So here's actually. So we're going to look at the disease tree. And if you look at this Disease tree.

What's a disease tree?

Disease tree is just putting it in hierarchy. So, for example, Alzheimer's disease is a kind of cognitive disorder, and then these cognitive disorders are part of a larger category. So if you look at here, you see we have immune system diseases, right? And you're not sure exactly what you might have. But then you can go down and see immunologic deficiency syndromes, right? Immune suppression. And basically you have all these things that you could look into, right? And you could look at all these subcategories here, but basically you could click on any of these and it will give you information relating to, you know, whatever you might have. So, again, you don't know what disease you have, but you could. What I would do is I would look at the bigger category of immune system diseases, and then you can look at all the SNPs that are basically related to your immune system. You're gonna see there's a lot of them.

Oh, man. Yeah, you can take a deep, deep dive on this stuff. So. So how. I mean. I mean, there's obviously a ton of information that you can get here. Like when. When somebody does this, though. Like, how do you keep it from just being one big, deep, dark rabbit hole that somebody has access to once they upload their genes? Like. Like how. Walk me through how I can actually get the most actionable information out of this, versus me just like almost being hypochondriac and typing in specific symptoms and freaking out because I have some genetic risk for that symptom and then moving on to the next one. You know what I'm saying? Like. Like what. What are the practical ways that I could actually use this? And. And how would it be any different than me, say, just like, uploading my results to, like, there's another website people use a lot like Prometheus, right? Where you just upload your results and you find out if you burn coffee fast or you. Or you're gonna go bald or get prostate cancer or whatever, right?

So Prometheus is a very, very different product. It's actually not a bad product for certain uses. I wouldn't. I wouldn't bash it. You know, they're relatively cheap, and they're a fine product for, you know, for certain uses, but they're not going to integrate. They don't integrate anything with the substances or they don't. It's a lot less versatile than what you could do with this program. They don't have, let's say, disease database that they might have some diseases that you could then look up the SNPs, but it's actually not as comprehensive as this. Like, for example, they're not going to have a whole bunch of databases that give you even more genes, and they're not going to flag the genes that are potentially most problematic for whatever the condition that you're worried about. So they're not interested in making any kind of giving you any suggestions of what substances you might do well with or not. And that's a big downside if you can't relate it to the substances.

Okay, when you say related to the substances, you mean like foods that you eat, drugs that you take, supplements that you take? You could actually see how those are going to influence any type of disease risk that you have or any type of propensity that you might be predisposed to. And it looks like now you're pulling up this page called Substance Explorer. Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah, exactly. So you actually did not. You need to refresh your genes because these were uploaded a while ago to use this feature. But basically, this gives you a whole bunch of. It gives you substances that interact best with your genes. And so, for example, one of the ways that you might use this program is. So let's say you were looking at the thyroid stuff. I bookmarked these genes, right? And so these genes are going to end up in a tab called My Bookmark Snips. You basically, you're going to look through a bunch of stuff and you're going to bookmark what you feel is most important to you. And on that bookmark page, you're gonna. It's going to give you beneficial substances for those bookmark snips. So this is what it's going to look like on the Substance Explorer. It has a bunch of tabs like this and other tools, but we can't use that for your account right now.

What's that mean to bookmark a snip?

So basically you just, you. There's a button right next to the snip that allows you to bookmark it. You know, there's. If you could see this button here, it turns green when you bookmark it and then it lands in this area of, you know, a SNP table with all the SNPs that you bookmark. So if you, let's say, have, like you went through 50 SNPs and you decided these are the most important genes for me, it's going to take those genes and then it's going to compare them to the database and give you Possible recommendations. So over here it says resveratrol might be a good recommendation for you. And then you can look exactly how it's interacting with one of the genes that you bookmarked.

Interesting. Okay, got it. So I can see, basically it looks like what it would allow me to do then is to create like a customized supplementation protocol based on certain SNPs I have or based on certain genes I have. That would be what, what I would. Exactly what I would need for my specific genetic profile.

Yeah, exactly.

Now what about goals? What like what can I work in goals? Like if I wanted to like gain muscle and lose fat or if I wanted to like increase endurance. Like what about things that go above and beyond genes that, that are like exogenous goals I might have, whether or not genes are, are put into the equation.

So what we're actually doing now is we're, we're looking to make a digital health coach. Basically what we've done is we've done this massive project that has tons of data and tons of ways to use it. But the downside of keep on building and making it better, then it gets more complex. I didn't even go through a third of the features that we have or even a quarter. We're basically just touching the surface. The thing is what we're going to do is we're going to take all that backend data and make it into. So if you just want to like something very simple, it's going to be a linear process. It's going to give you one recommendation at a time and then you know, you can type in notes and it'll allow you to, let's say, make goals and do things like that. So it'll be a digital health coach. Right now we have these, this massively powerful tool but you know, the more powerful, the more complex. And what we're doing is we're taking all that back end data and making a very, very nice user interface for it so that you can try something out and then you report back in a week, you tell it how did you do and then it's going to give you a different recommendation. And basically it's just going to take you through a process, a linear process where it's going to be very simple and it's going to help you fix whatever issues you're dealing with. And so one of the things that we didn't go through was a personalized health report. If you have like a good amount of symptoms, it will give whole personalized report based on and so far it's designed according to the clients that I get. So the people with the symptoms, the most common symptoms of my clients. So I made a whole bunch of systems for them. So when I do a consult, people give me. I've got all these problems, these symptoms, this and that and the other, and I have to look at it and I have to think back it at all the things I researched and what might apply to them. Here it's all automated. Basically what we did was we automated that process so that the system that is wrong with your physiology will automatically come up. It's going to associate, then it's going to give you the genes that are associated with that system, and then it's going to give you recommendations for that system, custom recommendations. So we are expanding this product and we're also building the digital health coach so that it's dynamic. It's basically going to be like your health coach, and it's not going to get rid of, let's say, coaches, because for a while, there's always going to be someone that's going to, you know, have to look at your, you know, your situation in a even more nuanced way or even help you use the program. But basically it's. It's going to be a digital health coach and you're going to be able to, you know, put in goals and whatever you want.

Right, okay, got it. Now, in terms of gene, like, are there specific genes that tend to pop up more than others when it comes to, like, important genes that can cause health issues?

Yes. So there are a number of genes that do come up a lot with my clients. One of them is a cannabinoid gene. Right. And this was actually extremely instrumental to me just to backtrack, what is a cannabinoid gene? The cannabinoid receptor 1 is basically responsible for all these psychoactive properties of the cannabinoids. And it's also very important for gut function.

You mean like CBD and THC and stuff like that?

Exactly, exactly. So cannabinoid receptor comes from the word, you know, cannabis. It's activated by the constituents in cannabis. And what I found was, based on my symptoms and based on my genetics, that this system, this cannabinoid system was a problem for me. And while, you know, I was able to get rid of my problems previously and I understood what my problems were from, it's just that when you're not 100% sure of what system is wrong, you know, like, for example, I did try cannabis. You know, I smoked cannabis, and I Said, this wrecks me the next day. It's not worth it. But it did reduce my food sensitivities. But the problem was it wrecked me the next day. So then what I said is, I'm just staring at this. I'm like, I know I got the gene. I know I've got this system that's problematic based on my symptoms. And that's what the personalized health report will tell you if a system is bad. So I said, you know what? I'm going to try edibles. And so once I tried edibles, that was a game changer. Edibles and cbd. So I combined them. That was a game changer because then basically I, you know, for. For the last couple months, I completely went off the bandwagon, just eating everything and not everything, but, like, a lot of stuff I'm not supposed to eat. And I mean.

You mean edibles or just, like, food in general?

No, edibles. Okay, yeah, no, no, no, no. I went off the bandwagon with food in general. Like, foods that I'm not supposed to be eating. I just ate edibles. Basically, I ate edibles. I took butyrate because butyrate is very important for other genes that I. And systems that I found. And so butyrate and THC and CBD basically gets rid of my food intolerances. Any discernible degree. Now, you don't want to take. I don't want to be living on THC for the rest of my life. So to some degree, I'm not going to just eat whatever I want. But.

Okay, so to make sure I understand this, you found out that you have a genetic issue with your endocannabinoid system that revealed that things like intolerances to food or anxiety or stress would somehow be positively influenced by introducing exogenous sources of cannabidiols. And you did that, and you noticed a big difference.

Exactly. Imagine.

And you wouldn't have known that aside from just like, experimenting with smoking a joint or whatever, you wouldn't have known that unless you had looked at these actual results and seen that, A, you have that gene, and then B, here are the specific substances that can help you to increase expression of that gene or fix some of the issues that are associated with you having that specific gene.

Exactly. So, you know, I would have. I. You know, I would have. I tried pot in the past, and when you're not really zoned in on paying attention to it, you know, I didn't ever try it and eat foods that I wasn't supposed to eat or something like that. So, you know, you don't know the right experiments to do. You can't do an experiment on every variation. So while I am a big fan of self experimentation, I do think there's a role for also understanding what's going on. And so once I knew that, I said, okay, I know these are the problems. Let me just focus on these things. And so THC is a strong CB1 cannabinoid, one receptor activator. And so I knew, okay, that's going to be important. And CBD actually increases the receptor. So that combination is quite powerful. Butyrate has actually also helps the cannabinoid system, believe it or not. And it also helps the serotonin receptors that also.

Butyric acid.

Butyric acid or stuff you would get.

From, like butter, for example.

You could get that in butter. Exactly. Okay. I personally, you know, you have to take a lot of butter to get the amount that you would need. So the way I take it is in resistant starch and butyrate pills, you know, pretty much calcium, magnesium, butyrate. And so I'm also actually getting calcium magnesium, and then I'm getting, you know, the butyrate, of course.

Okay, interesting. What's. Let's do one other example. What's another example of a common gene that might fly under the radar that people aren't aware of? You know, everybody talks about like the MP MTHFR gene, for example, but is there another one that you think, that you think comes up over and over again? That would be a perfect example, similar to the one you just shared where you found a gene, responded well to something like cbd. What's another example?

Yeah. Okay, so I find there's a whole group of HLA genes.

What's an HLA gene?

Yeah. Okay, so the HLA is human leukocyte antigen. And basically these are, these are genes that are creating receptors. And just the big picture, they're telling you, does your immune system, is it overactive or underactive? Like how. You know, they're kind of like the alarm bells for the immune system. And if these alarm bells are going to go off very easily, that means that if you ever have a kind of infection, all of a sudden the alarm bells go off and they don't stop. They're kind of continuously on. And that's when you get autoimmunity. With my clients, I noticed, you know, big problem. These problems often come after an infection, extreme physical stress or emotional stress, things like that. So you stress your system and you know, and that creates this long lasting change in gene expression. And I did find that these alarm bells of the immune system, these HLA genes, are often predictive when somebody has an issue like a lot of people with chronic Lyme. Right. What's happening there? In a lot of cases, people get an infection and even if they get rid of the infection, they could still have their symptoms. It's because those alarm bells didn't stop ringing. And so that's what these HLA genes are.

Okay, so what would you do about that?

So what you need to do about that is if you find that. And again, we have a feature here called potentially bad genes.

And again, by the way, for those of you listening, we are recording this whole thing in a video. So you could check it out. Just go to bengreechelfitness.com decode and we'll have the video embedded there.

Okay, so you actually need to upload your genes here. But the point is that it's going to give you a whole bunch of these things and scores and it's going to tell you, it's going to flag the HLA genes for you. And if you see a good amount of HLA genes, it means that those alarm bells are more likely to go off and go on and stay on. And you want to take immunosuppressant herbs and one of the best one immunosuppressant herbs is something like curcumin. Interesting. Yeah.

And would I be expected to just know that or is there somewhere I could click there to see that?

Curcumin, for example, we do have, let's say that in particular would be a little, you will be able to see substances like always to decrease this gene. Right. And so you can do that and you can look at the consumable natural substances that will decrease the gene. And so that will help. But in general, in this case, knowing a general concept of which supplements are good for you, if your immune system is overactive. And a lot of supplements are immune stimulants. Right. And you don't want to take immune stimulants if you're having these HLA genes or if your immune system is overactive. And so one of the, my favorite one is curcumin, the very, very bioavailable curcumin. And they're very, you know, no matter what your immune profile is, they're pretty much block, you know, they downregulate the immune system, but at the same time they have all these other properties that even when your immune system is lower, they stop you from getting an infection. So there's a whole bunch of these properties, whether it's direct, antimicrobial, or indirect, you know, quorum sensing. But they have all these properties that prevent you from getting an infection even though your immune system is lower. So curcumin is just one of my favorites. If you're gonna see a lot of problems with the immune system, same with the ctla. Actually, something like curcumin would help that as well.

Okay, got it. I like it. Cool. I've got one other question for you. Based off some of this data, you have this thing called gene packs. Like, you've got like a gene pack for, like, longevity and a gene pack for. I think you have one for, like, is there one for cognitive health? Like, what's it. What's a gene pack? Exactly.

Okay, so basically a gene pack is just a collection of genes within a certain. Within a certain topic. Right. And so, for example, lectin sensitivity genes. I made this and you and I listed the genes that are most important for it. Like, let's say CNR1, that's the cannabinoid 1 receptor. I put in some of these HLA genes here, and then it allows people to vote on that whole pack. So this one got 21 likes, and it's going to show up. The likes are organized. And so it's going to give you genes related to. It's basically a different way of seeing the data. You're seeing it in a SNP table, and basically anybody could create their own gene pack. Right. You just press create a gene pack and actually did create a gene pack.

And what is a gene pack? It's like a collection of genes associated with a certain thing, like longevity, with a certain category.

Exactly. Whatever the category is, longevity.

And then what would somebody actually do with that, with that gene pack? Like, how would they use it?

You can view all the genes within that gene pack, and then you can look at beneficial substances for problematic genes in this gene pack. And so here's like, for example, so.

You could pull up, like, you have it pulled up here, like the longevity gene pack. And I could see which SNPs are associated with that gene, which ones I have, and then which substances that I could take, for example, to increase longevity based on my specific gene pack when it comes to longevity, for example.

Exactly. And then. And every gene, by the way, we have this fixed symbol which you could see based on, we have a number based on, like, you know, how, how. How important it is. So if you look at CNR1, the cannabinoid. Guess what comes first. THC. Right. And then so you have all these ways to increase and decrease the gene. In this case, you want to increase it. And so you could see all these ways to do that. So you can fix the gene or you can just find out more information and. Yeah, and like I said right now it's not a linear process. It's kind of like the amount of tools we have here is unbelievable. Right. And here's where you can download the PDF. The, the amount of tools that we have and the data we have is tremendous. But now what we're doing is we're going to do it in this very linear process that, you know, you come on the site and it's just going to be like this digital health coach for you to work through your symptoms or, you know, keep track of your health.

Wow. This is really comprehensive, but it's also kind of like, it's a little bit intimidating in terms of how much data there is. Do you, when people send in their genes here, do you have like a, do you guys have like coaches or consults or people like on staff who can help people walk through this stuff if they just have so much data? That is dizzying because I could totally see this being pretty overwhelming for folks.

Yeah. So we do, we are training, we're implementing a training program for coaches and we're going to be training them because not only that, every week we release new features. And again, I'm faced with this challenge. I can give more data, more, put in more databases, more information, make it more comprehensive. But the more you do that, then the person who doesn't have training in could be scary looking at a lot of data, even if it's displayed in a more user friendly way. That's why we're doing two things. Number one is the health coaches and number two, you know, is the very similar process where, you know, it's just like extremely simple. And then if they want, if somebody wants to see like more comprehensive, you know, you could spend the next couple months on this.

Yeah. Now we've got, I mean there's a lot here. I know you guys have one of the comprehensive or one of the most comprehensive of biggest databases of things like SNPs and genes and substances and diseases. So I know you've been putting a lot into this and it costs money for people to be able to access. So how much does it, I know to like get your gene sets with something like 23andMe, it's like 99 bucks. So you pay for that test and then you import it into your website. How much does it cost to actually import it into your website and have access to all this?

Okay, so the current price is $19 a month. Right. And the thinking was if you're just a user who wants to use this for a month, go for it and then that's fine. If you're a practitioner, you're going to be doing it on a continuous basis. Or if you're someone who needs.

But you could upload a bunch of different clients results.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So if you're a practitioner, not only can you upload clients results, there's also an account access feature where you can somebody, a client signs up, they share their account with you and you could see their account the same way I'm seeing your account right now. So you basically you could get into their account and so yeah, for practitioners it could be very useful. But we are again, we're, we're doing the dual strategy making it more simple for users and teaching practitioners so that if somebody doesn't understand, we, you know, we have a practitioner help them out.

Got it.

Okay. Right now it's only. Yeah, we are changing the prices because again, the prices, they don't really match the needs for everybody. You know, to train practitioners we need to spend time and, and help them out. And so that's going to be a different track. We're going to have to raise the monthly amount for that and then for other users we'll do it on a more yearly basis. But we're in progress. But yeah, for now anybody could just sign up for $19.

Got you. So it's $19 and I can import results from like 23andMe, Ancestry, Cortagen, FTD. Like any, anyone that I've gotten my genes tested from, I can just import into this.

Yeah, the big ones. And we're, and we're soon going to support the full genome analysis as well. Pretty much all of the, we're going to, we're going to support all the files that have the most demand.

Okay, got it. Cool. So it's self decode. I'll put it in the show notes. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com decode you can use code, I'll put a discount code there because you can get 50% off your first month. So basically like $9.50. If you just want to check this out, surf through all your results, see what it looks like. Less than 10 bucks to just kind of like take it for a test drive. And if you just want to, like, pull a whole bunch of data out doing that and call it good, you can. But the code is BEN50. That gives you 50% off of this website for your first month of trying it out. And I'll also link to some other things we talked about, like Joe's methylene blue nootropic video and also the other podcast that I did with him on 32 different ways to stimulate your vagus nerve and your nervous system. He's actually got a lot of really cool information. He's constantly putting out some really intelligent blog posts. And this is obviously one of the more comprehensive ways to analyze and look at your genes, but very, very interesting as well. So, Joe, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. I mean, you got a. I'm happy to be here. You got a great podcast. You're, you're a great host, and I really appreciate what you're doing.

Word. Word. Thank you, man. And again, at BenGreenfieldFitness.com decode is where I will also embed the video that accompanies this podcast. If you want to look through some of, like the video screenshots of some of the things, things that Joe and I talked about. If you're a complete nerd and you like to talk about snips and things like RS 6445674, all that is there, and oh, so much more. So until next time, however, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Joe Cohen, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.