How To Fix Dirty Genes, Interpret Your Genetic Testing Results, Go Beyond 23AndMe Genetic Testing & More With Dr. Ben Lynch.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. We're gonna talk dirty today. Dirty jeans. Yep, dirty jeans. I interviewed Dr. Ben lynch, who's pretty much like the smartest guy in the world when it comes to interpreting and fixing your genes, even taught me something really fascinating on the show about how to basically make alcohol less damaging to my body based on a genetic snip that I had. And I'm also gonna put my own raw results from his company called Strategene, into the show. Notes, if you want to check those out. So. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, if you understand that you perform better in stressful situations and you have a faster comt gene, then, you know, maybe you can change your occupation or choose an occupation which does that and does a lot of you perform. Or maybe you understand why you put yourself in these situations. You're not some weirdo. So if I just remove folic acid from my diet, then in effect, I'm cleaning up my genes and my MTGFR gene is going to work better without even adding anything.

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've ever tested your genes or wanted to, and you've had a very head scratching experience when it comes to interpreting your results or kind of translating your results into actionable information that goes above and beyond, just like a bunch of snips with robot names or information from 23andMe about your hair color, then today's podcast is going to be right up your alley. Because I, I have on the show with me today a guy who I consider to be one of the world's leading authorities in interpreting your genes and in fixing your genes without necessarily traveling to China and getting crispr technology performed on yourself. His name is Dr. Ben lynch, and Ben actually attended a naturopathic medicine university pretty close to where I'm at, over in the Seattle area, Bastyr University, where he kind of began to take a deep dive into nutrigenomics and what's called methylation. Methylation dysfunction. You may have heard of mthfr before. And Dr. Lynch is really a leading expert when it comes to that MTHFR gene and many other genes that affect not only your risk for chronic disease, but also your ability to be able to go from good to great when it comes to your performance and your health. In addition to being a doctor of naturopathic medicine, Dr. Lynch was also named number 37 in Inc's list of 500 entrepreneurial superstars from America's fastest growing private companies and number one in Washington state. And he made that list again in 2016 because he's developing all these extremely cool web technologies for doing things like analyzing your genes. Right. He's got one company called Strategene that I've personally uploaded my 23andMe results to and gotten very interesting information from. He's got another company called Dirty Genes that he'll talk to us about in the show today and of course, his website seeking health. And I'll link to all of this stuff in the show notes. So the show notes for today's show are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ben Lynch. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com ben lynch. And you spell lynch. L y. So, Dr. Lynch, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Hey, pleasure to be here, Ben.

Yeah, no problem. And like I mentioned, Bastyr University is not far from me. And back in the day, I had even thought about going into naturopathic medicine. So I toured Bastyr and I toured National College of Naturopathic Medicine. I toured a smattering of different naturopathic facilities.

And.

And one thing is that a lot of these naturopathic institutes you see a lot, when it comes to at least my initial impression, like healthy nutrition and herbs and massage therapy and a blend of Chinese traditional medicine and some of the good things from Western allopathic medicine. But I didn't have the impression that they were very focused on genetics and on gene analysis. So how did you go into bachelor university as a naturopathic document, get interested in genetic analysis and the genes?

That's a great question. It's a great question. And, you know, I didn't know you were local and someone was mentioning to me that you were pretty close to me, you know, because I'm in Seattle, Kirkland area, and so we should hang out sometime and dirty our jeans with some alcohol. Possibly.

Absolutely. You just got to come over to this side of the state where there's far fewer Starbucks and more trees.

Yeah, well. And more pesticides and herbicides.

Possibly.

Yeah, possibly. Possible yeah. So back to your point. Yeah. So I got my undergrad degree at the University of Washington here in cell and molecular biology. And that was really fascinating to me. And. And I chose that degree because I love understanding how our amazing bodies work on a cellular level. And when I was at Bastyr, we studied a lot of nutritional biochemistry, which was fascinating to me. And then I started understanding the power of the environment and the exposures and how they influence our biochemistry and how they deplete our vitamins or how they block certain things and make us feel like garbage and affect our hormones and all this stuff. So I started really specializing in environmental medicine and applying my nutritional biochemistry there and also utilizing SONA therapies and chelations and so on. And while I knew that these various nutrients like glutathione or NAC or glycine or glutathione, all these other things were helpful, and I was using them on patients, what dawned on me was they weren't responding the same. And that bothered me. And while we would get 60% better, there was 40% that weren't doing well, and there was some that were doing worse. And so I'd ask my colleagues and I had the great fortune and privilege to work with Dr. Bill Ray, who's one of the leading environmental doctors in the world. And I asked him, I said, do you think there's a genetic component here? And he's like, I don't know, probably. But we don't have the technology, really, to utilize it. And so I wanted to dig further, and I did, and I opened Pandora's box. And that's what I've been trying to figure out ever since.

Interesting, interesting. Got it. So in terms of kind of like, stepping back and looking at this process of testing genetics, it's obviously come a long ways, Right. I remember back in the day when I was at this thing called the Ancestral Health Symposium. Gosh, must have been like five years ago. I was talking to this doc who was super excited about. I think it was National Geographic was rolling out the ability to be able to test your genes for. I think it was like 500 bucks. And within a few years, it dropped down to 100 or 200 bucks through 23andMe. And now there's all these companies popping up. For example, one website that I talk about a lot on this show, Ben, is 23. And you. Com where you can go and just get a list of these dizzying number of services that will analyze this part of your genes, analyze another part of your genes. And it gets relatively confusing. So you've got this service called Strategene. And what I'm curious about, and I've personally uploaded my results to Strategene and gone through some of them. But, but what is it that's, that's different about something like Strategene? Like, what was your goal when you set something like that up in terms of genetic analysis, particularly?

Great question. And it, you know, there's, there's many things there. And I would say the first is most genetic reports out there and most geneticists and practitioners and laypers, persons, they look at genes in isolation. They look at MTHFR in isolation. I did, I used to. And then I connected it. It's like, oh, it's related to this other gene and it works with this other gene to support homocysteine recycling and lowering. So I quickly realized that genes don't work in isolation. They work in tandem with others. And when one gene turns off, another one might turn on. And then I also realized that, you know, just because one has an MTHFR polymorphism, let's say, you know, they have an MTHFR issue or SNP or whatever you want to call it, MTHFR variant, doesn't mean that they're going to have an issue. You know, it just shows that they have a variant in their mthfr. It's different than the standard population. Other people will not have an MTHFR variant at all. They won't have any mthfr mutations or SNPs or what have you, yet. They will have all the symptoms of someone who has an MTHFR snp. So I was thinking, well, why would that be? So when you start diving down into how genes are regulated and then how the enzymes that they are producing, because genes will make enzymes and they need vitamins and cofactors and other things to do that, and then these enzymes are produced and then they have jobs to do so. And then they're influenced by the environment. And remember, you know, this all goes back to my cellular molecular biology days and my environmental medicine days. So it's really important for me to look at genes and how they communicate with each other. And it's even more important to understand how. Well, it's actually not more important, is as important to understand how genes are influenced by our lifestyle, our mindset, environment and nutrition. So I, that's why Strategene came along, because I'm sick and tired of people saying, hey, I have an MTHFR snp, I need to take methylfolate or they go to the doctor and they say, hey look, I have mthfr and they give them a bunch of methylfolate and then meanwhile they have headaches and migraines and they're irritable and they can't sleep and they have leg pain and acne and they have chronic runny noses and nerve pain. But it can't be the methylfolate because they have mthfr. So now they go on for, you know, months, days, years of feeling like crap because of improper treatment. So that's why I did it. And the other reason is many of these reports will have a slew of SNPs, right? Though more is better in the American way. Right? And you know, it's, you'll have pages and pages and pages of all these snips and greens and reds and yellows and you're like, oh my God, where do I start? So most of those are clinically irrelevant. There's, there's no data, there's no research, there's no evidence that the majority of those SNPs are even causing a problem. Yeah, maybe in the future we'll have evidence, but why are we putting all these snips in front of people that are scary, that look like they're doomed and half dead when they see all these reds and yellows on the report?

Yeah, I have a, I have a 71 page report in front of me, Ben, for myself from this website called MTHFR Support. It's literally just 71 pages with a bunch of highlighted reds and greens and yellows with very little information about how to actually interpret this, aside from the fact that, that there's a bunch of red stuff on it. So you might be effed, but there's a couple of terms you've thrown around that I wanna make sure we don't lose people in the weeds, leave people in the weeds. However that phrase goes too much as we move forward. So first of all, you mentioned the SNPs, and just for those of you listening, in a SNP, all that stands for single nucleotide polymorphism or SMP. And you pronounce it SNP, you're gonna see it if you see it written as snp. And your DNA, as you probably know, it's made up of a T, Cs and GS, right? Like adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine is the last one, I believe. And basically each of these different as T's, C's and G's, those are in different variations Different DNA sequence variations. So basically, a single nucleotide polymorphism or a snp, is a DNA sequence variation that occurs when one of those letters in the genome differs between members of a species or between individuals. So you all have your own unique set of SNPs, and those SNPs can actually be associated with certain genes. Like you keep mentioning the MTHFR gene, Ben, which, from what I understand, that provides instructions for making an enzyme. Like you already said, genes provide instructions for making enzymes. But that enzyme would. Would be the. The methyl and a tetrahydrofolate reductase enzyme. And that would be important for a chemical reaction that involve forms of a vitamin called folate, which, if you're listening in, you might know that is vitamin B9. So that MTHFR gene provides codes for the enzyme that converts that folate into something called A5 methyltetrahydrofolate. And some people can make that and some people can't. And so that's an example of the MTHFR gene. Now, when you have something like strategene, Ben, that is looking at the different biochemical pathways for each gene and not just the isolated snp, or what exactly does that mean? And, for example, I'm looking at my own results right now. And when I go to the folate cycle, for example, I see the biochemical pathway for the folate cycle along with my snp. But why would you include something like that? What's the importance of the biochemical pathway being shown?

Yeah, great point. So I just opened mine as well. So let's talk about it this way. All right. So you live east of the mountains, right? Or somewhere in Washington, correct?

Yeah.

Okay. I live west of the mountains, so I live in Kirkland. You live in a different town. You send me your address and say, hey, here's my address, and then I give you my address and we try to go to each other's house, and that's all we've got. Right. There's a lot of stuff between that. There's not just. There's. There's. There's all sorts of connecting dots in there, and there's different ways to get there. You know, we. I could take I5. I could take I90. I could possibly take five, you know, Highway 20. I mean, there's all different roads and routes to go, and depending on the time of day, traffic can vary depending on what I'm driving, if I'm taking a bus or train, which doesn't exist here, you know, or a plane. So there's there's multiple ways to get to that same destination and there's multiple things which can be affecting it, you know, snow, ice, traffic, so on semi trucks in front. So when just having the destination is not good enough. So MTHFR is probably. It's not one of the most researched genes out there, but it's way up there. It's way up there. So AMT JFAR has a ton of research and that's kind of like the golden child for a lot of people, right? They test for that first and that kind of gets them into it. So if you look at the folate pathway on your strategene, you see MTHFR is the last one. It's way at the bottom, but the very top we have reduced folates and we say uncooked leafy greens and they're like, oh, wait a minute. So that's kind of step one where you've got your healthy folates and then we have these other genes which show how your folic acid is supposed to get through to your methylfolate g you know, to making methylfolate. So it's, it's empowering to know the steps involved to convert the synthetic folic acid into the most bioavailable, most common form of folate in your blood, which is methylfolate, which is what your MTHFR gene makes. And all along the way, there are other hindrances that can happen which most people don't understand, including other vitamins and minerals, including drugs, including environmental compounds like organophosphates. So, you know, or infections can, can vary these things. So, and it's done in a pathway so people can see and understand the map in which these steps are involved and they understand the complexity and it's confusing for many people at first, 100%. But as I talk them through it, as they start staring at it more and more, they start seeing amazing things and they realize that, hey, by looking at this thing, I can remove things like folic acid and actually speed up my genes because the purple on your strategy report slows these genes down and slows the enzymes down. So if I just remove folic acid from my diet, then in effect, I'm cleaning up my genes. And my empty CFR gene is going to work better without even adding anything. Most people like, if they find a problem, they want to add something. Right? The beauty of strategy and looking at your biochemistry and understanding how it works is all that purple. If you start removing that, your genes are getting cleaner.

Okay, interesting. So the purple and by the way, if you guys just want to see the results, you don't even need to pay for your strategy. And if you just want to see what results look like, I'll upload my own results over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you can, you can look at my results, see what we're referring to. But like, I'm looking at page four of, for example, my own strategene results, which shows this, this folate cycle that you were referring to, and it looks like, you know, written in purple. If I were to take Bactrim, which I think is like an antibacterial, or sulfasalazine, which is an antibiotic, I believe, or methotrexate. What's methotrexate?

That's a drug they use for autoimmune diseases.

That's right. Okay, cool. So if I were to take any of those, that would slow down the specific pathway that that's referring to for me, particularly in that part of the folic acid cycle. So I can go through and see, okay, well, these things are going to. To damage my ability to be able to engage in a proper folate cycle, whereas these things are going to help me. Is it. What color is the stuff that helps me? Is it. Is the orange font or something different?

Well, it's the green.

The green. Okay, I see. So, so green. Where, like, where it says. I guess. Let me, let me see a green. Would that be like, like something that's circled in green or a green font?

Green font.

Okay, so I see. So magnesium and ATP, for example, it's showing that those would be two things that would assist. And the. And that's in a certain pathway, a part of this folate cycle. Okay, interesting. So I can just basically go through each cycle. And the purples are the things that are gonna slow that cycle down, and the greens are gonna be the things that help to speed that cycle up. And am I always wanting to speed the cycle up?

No.

Okay.

No, no. And the, The. The. The green are actually the CO factors.

Okay, gotcha.

So that's what the enzymes are needed. So on. On Strategene, we have the, the bubbles. Right? The big bold capital letters in the bubbles are the genes. But genes make enzymes, and then you have the cofactors, which are green. The purple slows the enzymes down. The orange speeds them up.

Gotcha.

So, for example, if you look at the TYMS gene and you're like, okay, what's that? The function of TY Ms. See, there's no polymorphism on there. There's no snp. There's no SNP identified there. But what's important to know here is organophosphates will slow this down. And organophosphates are found in, you know, toxic environment, insecticides, insecticides, and they're everywhere. So if you're eating dirty dozen fruits and vegetables, your organophosphate levels are going up. And then you look at their. And if the organophosphate levels are high in your body, which they are in many people, then your ability to convert uracil, which is an RNA base, to thymine, which is a DNA base, which is what you talked about earlier, the agts and and so on, that, that ability to make thiamine from uracil goes down. So now your own ability to make a DNA base in your own body is deficient because you are consuming organophosphates and you're exposed to organophosphates.

Interesting.

Okay, you can order that. So while strategying, you know, the first couple pages of your strategy report lists the SNPs that are only clinically relevant. The real beauty of strategene is these cycles because you can see how your, your cycles get dirty and how you can clean them up and say, God, you know, if I eliminate organophosphates from my, my blood and my exposures and I eliminate folic acid, then I'm already cleaning this sucker up. Yeah, you know, that's the cool thing. And a lot of people think that SNPs are bad. And the SNPs that I talk about mainly are not bad. They're selected for, for a reason. And I'm not going to get into that without you directing me with your next comments because you probably have a track.

Okay, gotcha. So basically, one question that I have, when someone is looking at their strategy and results, you know, on each page it show the cycle. And then it also shows, as you mentioned, you know, the greens and the purples, what increases activity, what decreases activity, and what are the CO factors. But along with the results that people get, is there like a list of recommendations like, hey, based on the SNPs that we've identified that are actually clinically relevant, meaning not the 72 pages of every single SNP on the planet, but instead just the ones you've identified as being clinically relevant, here are the action steps that you should take.

Yeah, there are, there's information on each one of the polymorphisms that we discuss. You know, so if we end up, if 23andMe identified that you have MTHFR and we reported that, you know, we talk about the co factors needed for that. You know, you need riboflavin for it. We discussed that hypothyroidism could be an issue, you know, but no, we do not give treatment recommendations, we do not give supplement recommendations. There's really no like hard set actionable plan that you get from strategy, what strategy is. It's a map. And you use the map to, you know, to figure out where you want to go in your life, you know.

Gotcha.

Your folks want to go from good to great. I don't know any of them and I will never meet them. The ability for them to understand their own exposures, their own lifestyle choices and so on. They can start utilizing those within strategene and make decisions either by themselves or with a health practitioner. And that's how you go about it.

Okay, gotcha. And I noticed by the way, you have like a list of healthcare practitioners on your site which I'll link to in the show notes by the way, for those of you listening in, where there are certain people, certain doctors for example, who know how to use strategy and who have been through your training programs, who I could send my results into to take a deeper dive with me if I wanted to do that. Looks like you also have like a free Facebook page as well or private Facebook group.

Yeah, the strategy and Facebook group is amazing.

Interesting. I'll have to log into that. Do people just go in there and upload their results and say, hey, anybody got any recommendations for me or is it.

Yeah, they do. We have rules and we're very strict about it and people know by now. I mean we get newcomers coming in all the time but you know, we, we have a pin post that has a lot of free information and videos for them to read. You know, the dirty jeans course Facebook lives that I'm doing on my professional page right now are really helping out a lot of people. But yeah, they'll upload their genes and they'll talk about symptoms that they have and, and they'll ask others what their experiences are or they'll say, hey, I took this drug or I took this vitamin and I'm feeling this way. What are the mechanisms? Why? We're really mechanism based. We're not treatment based. We tell people and we teach them how and why their body is responding, how it is based upon nutritional biochemistry and physiology. And so they get it.

Gotcha.

Get it.

And so when I mention like I've got a 72 page report here from, from another website and I've seen others that, you know, it just gives you reams of data. Then you say that your report is kind of, you know, it's a lot more short because it's all clinically relevant SNPs. When you say that, what do you mean? Like who did the research to figure out which SNPs you were going to identify, which ones are actually clinically relevant?

The thousands and thousands of researchers who have dedicated their lives to understanding how enzymes are working and the impact of the environment and all that. So PubMed, the National Library of Medicine is where we get all our evidence. And you know, that's me and my research team and you know it. We've gone through that 70 page report that you have in front of you there and we've gone through every one of those RSIDs and those SNPs looking for clinical relevance. If we didn't find it and it didn't meet our standards, then it was not included in Strategene. So it's, it's hours, months, years of work to remove that excess noise. And it's very expensive. Is not a money maker for us because the amount of investment that I put back into it is.

Yeah, I was going to say it cost me. I don't know what did it cost me, like 30 bucks to get analyzed? I think it was something like that. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't expensive. And you know, 23andMe, like you guys don't do the. So I didn't send you my saliva, right? Like I sent 23andMe my saliva. I paid 23andMe. So I've got all my genetic ancestry results and stuff. And then as I think a lot of people listening in probably know there's a section on 23andMe where you can download what's called your raw data. Now I download that to my computer and just keep it on my computer. So if I ever want to use a website like yours, Ben, I can just upload to that website. It's like a, it's like a zip file. But just so people know, just to clarify, folks aren't sending you there. There's no option for people to send you their saliva, right, Ben?

Yeah, Right. Now the. We only work with 23andMe. We don't work with National Geographic, we don't work with Ancestry.com and, and people commonly ask, and that's one of our FAQs. Why don't you take Ancestry? Other ones do. Why don't you take National Geographic? Other ones do. Well, it's because they're not clinically relevant. I've bought them. I've ran them through. I didn't buy the National Graphic, but my other team members did. There weren't enough clinical, relevant, clinically relevant SNPs to make strategene worthwhile. I purchased Ancestry. I ran it through with our programmer. We evaluated how many SNPs were relevant. Half of Strategene was empty. Ancestry didn't call enough relevant genes, so and so 23andMe is the only one currently. And 23andMe is now starting to reduce it with their version 5 chip Mao A. SNPs are missing and some of the nitric oxide synthase genes are missing, which is a shame. But the usefulness of Strategene is still there because of all the pathways and all the other number of clinically relevant SNPs. We are currently in production of our own chip as we speak. We are working with a major chip company and we have hundreds more clinically relevant SNPs that we are adding. So Strategene is getting bigger, but the rigors of the research and the credibility maintains the same.

Okay, gotcha. So I want to delve into kind of like giving people some practical recommendations here based off of off of SNPs. So you've got, for example, all these clinically relevant SNPs. And, you know, it's not a dizzying number of them, but they're, you know, a handful of different SNPs that I'm looking at here as I scroll through my own results. And what I'm curious about would be, can you tell me some of the biggest issues that you see pop up over and over again? And I realize this is a little bit of an involved question. That's okay, we got the time. But. But what. What those issues are and what some of the common fixes for them are like. Like, what are the things that it seems like human beings, especially folks who are, like, exercising, eating healthy, uploading their genes to Strategenes, finding out they have issues and then fixing those issues. What are some of the common issues you see and some of the common fixes?

Great question. Love it. I would say personalities. Personalities, yeah, our behavior. You know, we all tend to have our type of personality. I'm driven. I'm type A. I'm a go getter. I was a night owl for a long time. I changed that because Alison to Freddy and, you know, other people's work. Finally, it's like you know, I want to be good to great. And it's killing me. I gotta fix my, my sleep pattern here. But I was programmed and programmed to be driven, focused, attentive, type A. That's just me genetically.

And so there's an actual gene for that?

Well, it's a, See, that's, that's the thing. And you know, there's, there's, there are genes, isolated genes, which will increase the personality type tremendously. Yes.

Is that like the warrior versus warrior gene?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, let's take that one step further because, you know, your audience is on it. They're educated, they're smart, and they want to know more. So let's talk about one thing that's commonly not talked about and that's called haplotypes. Haplotypes are combinations of genes. And when you have a combination of a set series of genes, then that can amplify your type of personality or your, it can reduce your ability to perform in certain situations. Maybe you're, you know, a track athlete and you know, you're, you can do some things, but you can't do other things. Maybe your post, your post workout recovery is crap. You know, you take way longer your entire life than other people you're competing against. And it's like, why am I, what is wrong with me? Why am I, why does it take me so long to recover? And other, these other athletes are kicking butt. So there's haplotypes are the combinations. So for example, if, if you're having a beer, you get some impact. But if you mix a beer with a vodka and a Bloody Mary, that's gonna be a triple whammy and you're gonna feel it worse the next day. So with genes like the worry and warrior gene like you talked about, that particular gene can impact it. Now you combine the warrior and warrior gene with mthfr and then you combine it with the comt gene. Now you really, really have a potential to be a different type of personality. So let me give you a concrete example, if I may.

Okay, let's hear it.

All right, so comt. This is a gene whose job is to help eliminate some aspects of estrogen. Its job is also to help eliminate dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine from the body. So three major neurotransmitters and estrogen, which is a major, major hormone. So if comt is slow, then you would think, and it's true, that these people will tend to have higher levels of estrogen, certain forms of estrogen, higher levels of dopamine, higher levels of norepinephrine, and higher levels epinephrine, they do. So in a person who has a slower CMT gene with higher estrogen, higher dopamine, higher norepinephy, what do you think they'll be able to do in life in terms of personality?

In terms of personality, they would be able to basically jump into more stressful situations and be able to manage those more effectively.

I would say they would be more attentive, more focused.

Okay.

Yeah. So if you have more dope, that's.

Okay that I failed that question.

Hey, I have we fail questions all the time. And I wouldn't say we failed that question. I would say that these people are more prone to put themselves into more stressful situations because they're driven. So I mean, we could alter that your statement a little bit. Right. The, the people who have higher dopamine and higher norepinephrine levels are driven to succeed and they will do pretty damn much anything to do it. Right? So if they have to put themselves in a stressful situation to do it, they'll do it. The problem is, is they'll become more anxious because of it. So, for example, children, if children have a comt slower gene, they'll be more prone, not always, but more prone to be excelling in class and being focused and attentive. My middle boy has got this and he has MTHFR as well, and empty chafar also slows comt down a bit. So my middle boy's focus and attention is through the roof. But when it comes to test time or you're trying to push him too hard, he cracks, he gets anxious and irritable. He can't manage the stress. Now, on the flip side, let's flip it back to someone who has this comt faster type of gene. If someone has a faster comt gene, their dopamine is flying through, their estrogen's flying through, and the norepinephi are flying through. Now these types of people, I believe, excel in stressful situations. They excel because they can think better, they do better. And why is that? Because the comt gene job is to move the dopamine out faster and the norepinephrine out faster. But when they're stressed and they're under fire, their dopamine and norepinephy actually is versus gets too high like the slower CMT and become anxious. So I bet you that ER docs, paramedics, you know, rescue people. I bet you that these types of people tend to be faster CMTs and people who, you know, and they're more daredevils, you know, they're more prone to doing things which. Right.

These would be like the Navy SEAL type of personalities, like the warriors.

Yeah, because they need that environment of stress to kick ass. Right. But if you have someone with the environment of stress who has a slower cmt, they're gonna. They're gonna panic, they're gonna get anxious, they're gonna get irritable, and they're gonna make the wrong decisions because they have.

Way more dopamine and norepinephrine.

Yes.

Okay, so higher levels of COMT enzyme would mean less levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, meaning you would operate better in an extremely stressful situation. Whereas lower levels would mean higher levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and you would get more stimulated in stressful situations and be almost too stimulated or get too stressed out.

Nailed it.

Okay. Got it.

That's exactly what the research finds too interesting.

Okay, so. So what can people do? Like. Like, let's say you're one of those people who's easily stressed out. Are there things you can ingest, supplements you can take? Lifestyle factors you can take advantage of to lower your propensity to be stressed out in stressful situations?

Yeah, the first step. Yeah, you're right. So now what do we do about it? Right. The first thing is awareness. The first thing is understanding. That's how you are built. If you understand that you perform better in stressful situations and you have a faster COMT gene, then, you know, maybe you can change your occupation or choose an occupation which does that and it'll dazzle out of you perform. Or maybe you understand why you put yourself in these situations. You're not some weirdo. And if you're a slower cmt, now you realize that. God, you know what? Yeah. I am a type A. I am driven and I burn myself out. So I should probably, you know, take more time out for myself and, and relax and, and take longer vacations and, and. Or just go for walks part way in my day or avoid these situations where I high pressure and try to either do those lessons or do something about it. Like, okay, this situation is going to make me stressful. I have a presentation. I don't like, you know, facing the public, but I have to do it. It's my job. Or, you know, it's part of what I do. Then I could take things like herbal adaptogens to help calm me down prior to going on the Stage. Maybe I can do breathing techniques. Maybe I can meditate before, you know, maybe I can practice more. Maybe I can get a better night's sleep, because, you know, I do know sleep is a factor. And if I don't get my deep sleep at night, you know, then I'm gonna be even more anxious. Yeah. Susceptible to it.

That makes sense. And looking over my own results. And by the way, I'm intermediate, which I guess means I'm like, half worrier, half oyer. It looks like, for example, some of the things that would aggravate that would result in lower levels of comt. Enzymatic activity, which would cause, I guess, higher levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. Or being more stressed out would be like, low levels of folate, low levels of vitamin D. It looks like low levels of quercetin or egcg, which is found in green tea. So it looks like I can kind of piece together some of these results and say, like, hey, I'm gonna optimize getting enough sunshine. I'm gonna drink some green tea. I'm gonna get adequate quercetin from eating dark berries and things that are rich in flavanols and polyphenols. And I'm going to avoid, like, antipsychotic medications, for example.

Perfect. Okay. Exactly. Spot on. Now, let's. Let's. Let's say that you start doing those things. Let's say you start adding the quercetin from your grapes and your onions and so on. Maybe even start supplementing with it. You know, maybe you. You start drinking green tea more because, you know, you're realizing that, you know, your focus today isn't so good. And. And so you drink green tea. And he's like, God, you know what? That is actually helping me. I'm feeling good. So now let's say it progresses. And you. You start seeing that you're. You're performing better, your concentration is better, but now you start getting headaches. You know, a week or two later, you start getting more irritable and snappy. You're staying up later than usual, and, you know, you're like, what the hell? What's going on? So what would you think? Why would that be?

Basically, I've overdone it. I've got. I guess this one would be too little COMT Activity.

Yes. Yeah. Because COMT stands for catechol O methyltransferase. Big words aside, its job is to process compounds which are called catechols. So green tea, catechol, quercetin, catechol. Dopamine estrogen, norepi, catechols. Right, These are all catechles. So you've given your CMT a lot more work to do. And if you have a lot of work to do, say you have 500 emails in your inbox. That's going to take you longer to go through those 500 emails than it is to go through five emails. So your comt is now slowed down because you've got estrogen in your body, you've got dopamine, norepi. Now you have the added catechles from the green tea extract, you have the added catechles from the quercetin. So you've slowed it down and now it's gone from you doing okay to going great. But now that great is too much and you've overdone it. So what would you do?

You would probably reduce your intake of those specific things and then go back and look at your strategy and results to see what could potentially increase levels of comt activity which it looks like things like L dopa or ways to increase testosterone. It appear lipopolysaccharides, would that be like a higher intake of fat based compounds?

Lipopolysaccharides are actually produced by your I believe RAM negative bacteria, so harmful bacteria. Okay, but you're right, you're right, you would reduce those things. So again, awareness is number one. So I had a green tea the other day at a conference and oh my God, my head was hurting and my, I was more hot and I was more anxious than I should have been. I'm really, really susceptible to green tea. And you know I have mthfr and like you, you know I have a very slow mthfr. You know I have a two copies there, so mine is slow. And I also have an intermediate CMT like yourself. So as again we talked about haplotypes, combinations of genes. So I have a very slow co, very slow MTHFR and I have an intermediate speed comt. But that combination makes for a very, very slow comt. And you know I know people who have a slow comt and a slow MTHFR and a slow MAO A. Oh my God, they're very susceptible to anxiety and irritability and insomnia and all sorts of things are very, very sensitive compared to those who on the flip side. So once you are aware of these things and you're drinking green tea some days and you're good, other days you drink green tea and you're not good, you're like, okay, I've dirtied My cmt, now I need to clean it up. So maybe my magnesium's low, maybe I took too much green tea, maybe I'd be, maybe I'm too stressed out, maybe I'm not sleeping enough, maybe my blood sugar's jacked and that spiked up my, my norepies and all that. So that's the beauty of strategy. It teaches you how your body works so you can then make the changes. And as you, you read from the, the CMT paragraph there, how to speeds up and slow down. So then you start playing with those things and we even. There's no supplement recommendations. It's mostly food and lifestyle. Right. You know, we talk about nutrients, but I'm not sitting here promoting my, my supplement line because I don't know who's running the report. I don't know. I can't do that. Nobody should do that.

Interesting. I mean, there's a lot we could dive into obviously with just the COMT gene itself, but if you could identify one other SNP issue that you tend to see repeatedly or that is kind of like a low hanging fruit for people to be able to tackle. Are there any others that you think just pop up over and over again that people, people should know about?

Yeah. Let's look at your report, if we may.

Okay.

Do you have what else is red on your report there?

What else is red? Everything is red. No, I'm just kidding. Let me see to my reds. So the APOE is red.

Let's skip that one.

Meaning it's okay. And when you say red, are you speaking specifically to the fact of something being homozygous?

Yes.

Okay, cool. MAOB is another one that's red. Okay, complicated.

What about maoa?

Maoa, I'm good there. That's minus minus on both. Yeah, on maoa I'm good on both of those. All of them are minus minus.

Okay, now flip to the top.

Never gonna die. Okay, I'm on the next page.

Gene, go to that gene. Yeah. Section.

Okay, scrolling there right now. Okay, I'm there.

And what does it say? Where it should say in the bioptin pathways. It should talk about naoa. Does it?

Yeah, it does. It's got like a whole page about maoa. It says it's monamine oxidase type A. It codes for the mitochondrial membrane enzyme that catalyzes deamination of biogenic and xenobiotic amines and functions in the metabolism of neuroactive and vasoactive amines in the central nervous system and peripheral tissues.

Okay. And let's talk about the activity of the MAO A on your report.

So it says that the minus minus is associated with normal Maui activity. And that's all it says, aside from.

And then say something else too.

Let me see. No, it says slower activity compared to GG and GT Bam.

There it is. Okay, read that again.

Slower activity compared to GG and gt.

Correct. So your Maui gene is normal compared to the regular population. Okay, so the regular population has a. You know, the same as you. You know, the majority of the population. Let's call it that way. Right. So it's a minus minus. However, it's slower. There's people who have a different MAO A, those who are plus plus. Like myself, I'm plus plus. So my MAO A gene is faster than yours. So if your MAOA gene is slower than mine, what do you think will happen to your serotonin? So go to your biopterin pathway.

Okay, go up to the biopterin pathway. If it's slower, what would happen to serotonin Would be. If it's responsible for synthesis of serotonin, I would have a lower amount of serotonin production.

Yeah, but look at the arrows. Look at where serotonin is and look at where your MAO agene is in relation to serotonin.

See, I'm looking for serotonin on here. Serotonin O sulfate.

That one to the right of that. So you see serotonin.

Okay. Yeah, I see serotonin. Okay.

And then there's mao. Yeah, right beneath it.

Yeah, I see that.

Okay, so if your MAO gene is slightly slower, what's going to happen to your serotonin?

It appears that it is going to get converted into something called aanat.

Yeah, it could go more that route. Exactly. So your MAO agene is slower than. There's different routes your serotonin can take according to this thing. Right. You can sulfate your serotonin, which is very, very balanced in the body. I don't know all the things which influence this. As you can see, flame retardants and bisphenol A do slow that down, which is so. But if your MAO aging is slower, then you're going to be pushing your serotonin to the AANAT gene more. And what is the end step of that pathway?

Melatonin.

Okay, now when you fall asleep at night, do you tend to stay asleep or do you wake up super early, like 1, 2 and 4? Or do you stay asleep?

I usually wake up at some point during the night. If I've had like a big glass of wine before bed. I'LL typically wake up around two. Otherwise I'll kind of pop open around three or four and then go back to sleep.

Okay, so let's talk about the wine for a moment. So the wines increase histamine and monoamine oxidase genes are associated with breaking down amines. Monoamine oxidase. So they are also involved in the histamine pathway. And you have a MAO B gene which is also slower. So if you go to your histamine pathway, you'll see your MAL B gene. So your red wine at night is going to be causing you to fall asleep and also cause various other issues in your sleep wake cycle because of the histamines. But the serotonin typically, you know, this is also how strategene is important because you're not your genes, you're your environment. Okay, that's an important point. You're not your genes, you're your environment and your perception of the environment, as Bruce Lipton so commonly says. But yeah, your serotonin does stick around longer to make your melatonin. And I would also suspect that. Do you have any propensity towards headaches or not?

I don't get headaches.

Okay. Okay, great. A lot of people who have a slower MAO A will have an increased propensity to have headaches. You're a healthy guy and you are looking for ways to constantly improve your health. Am I correct with that?

That is. That is pretty dang correct. Yep.

Yeah. So your lifestyle, your choices have, you know, even though you have a slower MAO agene, your lifestyle choices and the things that you're doing throughout your life are not causing that slow gene to cause you that much problem. Now you start eating like crap, you start working too hard and not sleeping very well, these slow regenes are going to amplify and cause risk and they're going to slap you along the head and they're going to increase your symptoms. Whereas other people that you and I both know who are living a life of junk food and smoking and drinking, and they seem fine, their genes can handle that load. But if I try to do all that alcohol and bad lifestyle like I used to, I mean, I wasn't a big drinker at all, but if I had any type of alcohol, I would really feel it the next day. So. But my other friends and, you know, in college, and even now they can drink it and they're okay. So our genes show us susceptibility.

So because the MAO A. Sorry to interrupt. Because the MAO A in me operates slower and because that Deaminizes things. And because one of the things you need to do when you consume alcohol is to deaminate, basically what this can mean is that my body isn't going to do so well producing melatonin, for example, to keep me asleep at night. If I do excess alcohol or anything else that would need to be deaminated.

Well, it would be. Well, it's a multiple step process there to make melatonin. You can see the last gene there, ASMT uses Sami. You see that, Sam?

Yep.

And alcohol will really mess up your Sami production. So alcohol will reduce your body's ability to synthesize and make melatonin. So there's multiple steps here.

Interesting. Very interesting. Although I honestly, I don't mind waking up at night if I can have my nice nightly glass of organic wine with dinner and sit around with my wife sipping on some vino, I totally get it.

And here, let me give you a term that I don't like to say. And let's say we are strategically supporting your genesis and your lifestyle choices, which many people have. I mean, sitting down with a glass of wine with your wife and your friends is a great thing to do. Right. A lot of people across the globe doing these things. And it's nice. So how can you tweak your biochemistry in your favor to enjoy your wine and still get the sleep that you deserve? Right? Right. What would you do here? So you could take things like histamine lowering probiotics. Bifidobacter probiotics are known to degrade histamine.

Okay.

Red wines are higher in histamine. So you could take bifidobacter probiotics to do that. So now when you're drinking the red wine, you are, the bugs are going to go to town for you and start degrading that histamine, which is a wonderful thing. The other thing you can do, wines are also higher in sulfites. You can get lower sulfite wine, but all wine has sulfites in it. You could take a compound called molybdenum, which is a mineral. And if you go to the transulfuration pathway on your strategene report, which for me it is page 11 for you is probably. Actually no, it's page 10.

So probably no, there's page, page seven for me.

I'm there. Okay. Page seven. So if you see, look, there's a Suaks gene there. Yeah. So it's on the left. You see sulfite.

Oops, I'm on the path. Okay, here we go. Suox. Yep.

So it's on the left. Suaks the green again is how your enzyme works faster. That's MB molybdenum. So molybdenum helps break down your sulfites and turn them into sulfites. So you pee them out. So if you take molybdenum and you also take a bifidobacter probiotic, you know, prior to consuming your wine or immediately after, along with some molybdenum or putting a drop of molybdenum in your wine, you know, just one dropper full or few drops, like 50 micrograms of melanin in your wine or just directly in your mouth because you don't want to ruin your wine, which totally you get. Then you're processing those sulfites and I bet you you'll fall asleep better. And then since the alcohol. There's alcohol in your wine, correct?

Last time I checked.

Yes, last time you checked. Right. So there's alcohol in your wine and does, does alcohol affect your methylation? Does alcohol slow your methylation down?

I believe it does, yes.

Right. It's contraindicated in pregnancy because it affects methylation. And so what is the green thing on the gene which makes your melatonin? What is that? That is if you go back to.

Your bio back on that other, that other pathway. This is wonderful podcasting. All of you can imagine these pathways or just, just pull open my results as you're listening to this podcast because that would actually really help us. Okay, so I'm back on the biopterin pathway and what makes melatonin. I see Sam.

Sami. So you could take, you could pop a capsule of Sami.

Interesting. So same bifido based probiotic or molybdenum.

And molybdenum. Yeah, because we're all. That's three pathways we supported because that red wine is affecting your sulfites molybdenum, it's affecting your histamine probiotic with bifidobacter strains. No lacto. Then there's some lacto that do it. But that aside, then you supporting your methylation to handle the alcohol so you can produce your melatonin with Sami.

Very interesting. This is intriguing. So if you take nothing else away from this entire podcast, you now know how to biohack your wine consumption.

Bio support.

Bio support. I know you love the word biohack. Okay, this is super interesting. There wereand. I know we're getting a little long, but there are a few other quick questions that I wanted to ask you, Ben, if you have a chance because one absolutely intrigues me. First, you've got this thing called Dirty Jeans. Dirty Jeans. What is Dirty Jeans?

Dirty Jeans is what we just talked about in terms of drinking red wine. We want to enjoy things in life, and we deserve to. But these things put loads on our genes, and they put loads on the products that our genes make, which are enzymes. So if we understand that red wine is dirtying our genes and it's affecting our sleep, it's affecting our ability to. To think and, you know, to perform at our best, and we understand that, and then we understand how it's working on our genes, then we know how to support our genes so we can continue our lifestyle. Things that we enjoy and love, like drinking red wine and supporting and refining, so we can continue performing how we deserve, which is also great. So the things that we do in life are not always great for our genes. We fly, we travel, we are exposed to toxins, we get stressed out. Some nights we don't sleep well. Some nights we drink wine, some nights we eat too much protein or sugar. All of these things dirty our genes. And the whole concept of the book Dirty Genes is to identify how your genes are. And we have seven genes that we talk about in depth. Every chapter is a specific gene. We talk about the function, how it gets dirty, and then the symptoms that are associated with it and how to clean it up. And then there's a program of how to support it as well.

So basically what we just went. What we just went through is what the Dirty genes program does.

Yeah, yeah. And it's also like you said, you know, I answered too long here, like I typically do. But a dirty gene is just something that, you know, it's. Our genes got dirty through our lifestyle, and we. We deserve to know how we can support our genes working as optimally as function.

So Dirty Jeans is basically. It's a book.

It's a book.

Okay.

Yes.

Gotcha. When I look on your website says, it says course. Is there a difference?

Yeah. So the yes and no. So the Dirty Jeans course is a. Is a way to start cleaning up your jeans right now. So you access the course, you immediately get the content, and then when the book is published in January 30, then the book ships out to you. So when you buy access to the Dirty Jeans course, you start learning how your jeans get dirty through air, food, water, the environment, and your mindset. So it's about five hours long and very actionable, practical information. And we have a bonus chapter too, that was not included in the book. Because the publisher said you got 80,000 words and I went too long. But it's the ABCs of clean genes.

Okay.

Which shows you how to support your genes, and then you get the book along with it when it is available.

Okay, cool. So that's just basically a book. People can go to your website and I'll put a link in the show notes. If you want to check that out, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ben lynch, where you can also grab my own results. And then you have a book that goes along with that. Looks like a little ebook, like 26 Steps to Clean Genes. And you've already given me a couple of steps on this show, like find out whether you're a warrior versus a warrior, and if so, figure out how to adjust your dopamine levels accordingly, especially if you have the MAO A issue. Some probiotics, some sami, and some molybdenum when you drink wine, which I would imagine would help just about anybody who's drinking alcohol. And so those are the type of things that you lay out in this little eBook, 26 Steps to Clean Jeans.

I talk about that a bit. Yeah. But the book goes into way more detail. That PDF will get you a lot of great information. I'm not as specific as I was here on your show today.

Okay, gotcha. Throw one more at me just in the few minutes that we have left. What's one other cool gene cleaning up step that you think more people should know about that people don't know about?

Boy, there's so many cool ones. I would say pick the coolest. The coolest. They're very jealous, these things. I would say that the DAO gene is pretty cool. So it's the glutathione one and the phosphatidylcholine one. Let's. So you tell me histamine, phosphatidylcholine, or glutathione. Which one you want?

Let's go. We've talked about glutathione on the show before. Let's go with this DAO thing.

Yeah, this Dao thing. So DAO is. Genes have many, many names and many abbreviations. So DAO is one of the gene codes for the gene which processes histamine in your small intestine in your gut. So when you eat histamine containing foods such as salami, bologna, cheese, wine, grape juice, oranges, fish, all these things are very, very high histamine. And if you have a DAO that is dirty, so if your histamine gene is dirty in your gut for various reasons, then you're going to be way more susceptible to drinking higher histamine containing drinks or consuming higher histamine foods. Leftovers are also a big problem. So because leftover foods, the protein is degrading and the histamines are being produced by the bacteria sitting on your food despite being refrigerated. And so you're going to be less tolerant of leftovers than others. So this gene gets very dirty very fast and makes your life a living hell. And my DAO gene was not born dirty. We call it that in the, in the book Dirty Genes, we call it born dirty or got dirty. Most genes get dirty even if they're not born dirty. So I have no genetic problem in my DAO gene that I've spotted with the research that we have available. However, my DAO gene gets dirty. And it gets dirty because it lives in your small intestine lining. And if you have leaky gut for various reasons, say you're not consuming enough glutamine, you're not consuming enough fiber, or you have harmful bacteria in your digestive tract which are producing histamine because you can have your microbiome producing a ton of histamine, which is a problem, then your GAO gene gets overwhelmed. And since you have all that histamine in your gut, your DA gene just throws its arms up, says, I can't help you out, that histamine's got to go somewhere. It gets into your blood, it contributes to nosebleeds, headaches, migraines, insomnia, irritability, eczema, psoriasis, progressing of leaky gut. It's a big issue. So a really good thing that a lot of people do well with again are the bifidobacter probiotics and reducing their histamine containing drinks and foods. So you lower the histamine containing food in your diet, you toss those out, you eat fresh.

Would that include like fermented foods like kombucha and probiotics and things like that?

Yes, yes, yeah, some of them, yeah. So that, that is, these are all a big issue. And you know, I'll do a shout out to Yasmina thelowhistamineschef.com so if you've not had her yet on your show, Ben, she is someone that you should bring on. She's a histamine guru. And this is an area that people are living a life of misery and they don't know why they react to foods and drinks, they don't know why they Do a food allergy test, it all comes back fine but yet they keep reacting and they don't get it. They're also more prone to being sweaty. Exercise induced asthma, sweaty feet, profuse sweating. It's horrible. And I was one of these people and I'm now pretty dang. I've cleaned up my dirty DAO gene and the big one for me was supporting my gut and using the right probiotics. And I used to be very, very sensitive to dust mites to the point where I'd have to wash my sheets very common, frequently and I'd have to avoid all these histamine containing foods and drinks or I struggle, you know, nosebleeds and so on. But I'm good now.

Interesting. So man, this is so cool. So that's as simple as. And by the way, I looked at my gene while you were talking and I definitely do have the variant associated with reduced DAO activity and increased circulating histamine levels. So I actually not only did I add this to the show notes thelowhistamineschef.com, but also go check that out and get my head wrapped around with some of these low histamine protocols would be. This is so fascinating. If you're listening in, you can see how interesting this is. Obviously it's pretty scientific and you would probably want to take advantage of the Strategene Facebook page and Dr. Lynch's book Toto really wrap your head around everything that you can do here. But regardless, I'm going to put all the resources for you. The dirty genes book, Dr. Lynch's website, my own results if you want to look at those and maybe even listen to this while you're looking at those. If you want to kind of scroll through with your finger as Dr. Lynch and I are going. The 23andMe genetic testing I did that I sent in to Ben to actually do this particular protocol, the strategene protocol, which again is not expensive. It's like 30 bucks and everything else that we discussed during the show just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ben lynch that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com ben lynch l y n c h Dr. Lynch, I probably could have talked to you for like two more hours and we could have just been banged out all the rest of the snips. But I would imagine you have a.

Life.

So I'll let you go. But in the meantime, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man. It's super fascinating.

My pleasure. And thanks for the invite.

Awesome. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Ben lynch of Strategene, Dirty Genes and Beyond, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing 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.