How To Use Genetic Testing To Personalize Your Workout And Diet.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And we've actually talked about DNA testing and the whole world of genetic testing and gene research on the podcast before. If you've been listening for a while, you may remember my interview with author Spencer Wells, who wrote this book called Pandora's Seed. And the title of that podcast episode was the unforeseen cost of civilization, what you can do about it. And we actually talked talked about genes from more of like an ancestral standpoint and how the way that we're living nowadays might actually influence our health based off of the way that our ancestors lived. But we've actually come a pretty long way since that episode just a little over one year ago. For example, the genetic testing service 23andMe is one thing that you may have seen in the news quite a bit where you can get little salivary tests and for like 99 bucks you send it off. And it used to be that you could get your health results from that. And 23andMe had a bit of a slap down from the FDA when it comes to releasing specific health information. So now if you were to test through something like 23andMe, you would have to export those results to a different service to get like fitness, nutrition information, et cetera. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Like, if you get your genetic testing done through something like 23andMe or any other service, how can you actually delve in and get personalized health results? It's personalized fitness and diet prescription based off of what your genes are telling you. So my guest on today's podcast is named Andrew Steele, and Andrew actually is a British Olympic athlete in the 400 and the 4x400. He actually runs the 400 in I believe just under 45 seconds. And he's represented his country at the European Championships, the Commonwealth Games, the World Championships, the Olympic Games. He's pretty fast. He's probably faster than me. I don't think I can run a 444.94 seconds. I could maybe run away from you for like 10 miles carrying a sandbag over my shoulder. Andrew.

Yeah, you could definitely beat me.

That or climb under barbed wire. But anyway, so Andrew kind of knows what it takes to go from good to great and how to kind of tap into the power of genetic research because he's used a lot of this stuff to target his own training and nutrition choices. And he actually works as the head of sport for a company called DNA Fit. And DNAFit is one of these companies that lets you, well, they'll test your DNA and we'll talk about that. But you can also, for example, if you have 23andMe results, you can import that stuff into DNAFit and get personalized fitness and diets results kind of spat back out at you. And I've done that myself. And we'll be going over my results, we'll be going over how this stuff works and some real world examples of how this information can be practically applied with pretty significant benefits to your performance and the food choices that you make and some pretty cool and cutting edge stuff. So, Andrew, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Absolute pleasure.

Before we delve into DNA and I know you've got my results sitting in front of you that we're going to talk about, but before we really get into any of that stuff, can you tell me a little bit about how you got into all this? Because it sounds like you're kind of a jock scientist. I'm curious what your story is.

Well, I'd definitely be careful of calling myself a scientist in any respect, but being as a professional track and field athlete, as it were, I've obviously been exposed to sports science for a great many years, through my whole career, my development as well as an athlete, it's an integral part of what I do. And so you end up with a kind of second hand knowledge of sports science through a practical aspect. And I guess that's the most important aspect for most of us is the utility and the practical aspect of how we use it in our training and in our performance. So I now, as you mentioned, I run the work we do at DNA Fit across professional sport and also deal with basically a lot of other things that we also do as well. So it's an interesting story of how I came to be involved and partly it was down to me sort of questioning how I could bring my career back to the heights I reached about six years ago now for the Beijing Olympic Games. So when you mentioned my best time before, which is just under 45 seconds, it's 44.94 seconds to be exact, and I ran that at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. So I had a good, good cup. Yeah, it was a good, it was a good chance for my first Olympic Games. I ran a personal record there and we came fourth actually in the 4x400 meter relay by an extremely margin of time, 0.3 of a second. So it's kind of like a bittersweet kind of experience for me, you know, so, but what happened is I had some very good years in my career there, 2006, 2007, 2008. And I was young at the time and I was thinking, wow, okay, this is great. London Olympics are in four years time, a home Olympics, a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I've run this time. Now I'm going to look forward to few more years of building my profile in the media, building my performance on the track and being kind of like in my head this idea of being super famous and super successful by the time the home Olympic Games came around.

Like, like the white Usain Bolt of England, right?

That's right, yeah. So I was just, I just had this, this wonderful sort of Hollywood notion of, you know, sporting achievement and success over the next four years culminating in that home Olympic gold, you know, so. And that was, that was the plan. Now what happened after Beijing Olympic Games is kind of, it didn't really work out that way and there was many reasons. But after the Games we, my coach and myself and my support staff, we kind of made a decision and we said, well, you know what, how do we get better than this? I've shown I'm really world class. How do I make myself world beating? And we decided that we needed to kind of work on some of my weaknesses. We didn't want to carry on doing the same, we didn't want to stay the same. We wanted to change. And it was a tough decision, but we decided that for a 400 meter run of my standard, my 200 speed was not equivalent to those others running at my 400 meter speed. So effectively my weak part was my short sprint, my ability to accelerate to full speed and how long it took me to reach that speed. So that was the conclusion we made because actually if anyone ever googles my race from Beijing, you'll see that in the first 30 meters I just get left behind by these guys before actually coming through and winning at the end. The question was how do we do that? And we changed my training somewhat to work more on our weaknesses. Back then, before I changed, I used to train almost more like a middle distance athlete. So we do what was traditionally considered a bit too much endurance for a 400 meter guy. Because although to the likes of yourself, Ben, it probably seems like the difference between 400 and 800 is very little. 400 is still a sprint to us. And the 800, of course, is extremely different energy systems.

Yeah, we're talking about kind of like a creatine phosphogenic energy system being a huge component of the 200 and still a component of the 400, but that's a little bit more glycolytic, right?

That's right, yeah. So in the 400, there's a few ratios thrown around and people talk about it being, you know, maybe 10% aerobic and 90% anaerobic. But of course, for me, I used to train kind of not almost like half and half. So I would train as though half of the race was based on my lungs, really. And that seemed to work for me back then. When we made the changes to how are we going to get better, we kind of stopped doing quite so much of that endurance based stuff, that middle distance kind of training, because that was kind of the done thing. That was what everyone else in 400 meters was doing. So we decided to go down that road. Now, along those next four years, a few other major things did happen to me. I had a quite a difficult injury in 2009 called osteitis pubis. And then I had Epstein Barr virus. Oh, you've had opd? Okay.

I had it back when I was a triathlete. Like early on when I was a triathlete, I got a bike crash and messed up my pelvis and then that turned into osteitis pubis. And yeah, it sucked. It was like no sit ups for six months.

Yeah, yeah. You have to watch out on all your abdominal stuff. You just got to let that gut flow, but that's it. But. And then another major factor was I had mono mononucleosis for about 18 months after that as well. So there was a.

Like an Epstein Barr. Wow.

Yeah, basically. Yeah. So we call it glandular fever here in the uk. But Epstein Barr virus.

Tons of athletes get that, by the way.

Yeah, exactly.

Into more and more people who get like so worn down and it's Epstein Bar. And I mean, that was a simple blood test to figure it out, but yeah. So you got scene Bar?

I did, yeah. It took me a while. So that got me in 2010. By sort of mid-2011, I was fully healthy again. And effectively that was obviously a large factor, but kind of almost with all these other mitigating factors, by 2012, I just wasn't quite the athlete I was four years prior and I ended up just missing out on the London Olympic Games. Had an Achilles tendon rupture about a year before. And then also I just really wasn't that quick like anymore. I was running 45 high or 46 low seconds, but not 44. And so I missed out on this great event, this home Olympic Games, the once in a lifetime opportunity. Just missed out, but I missed out all the same. And so after the dust had settled with this sort of quite emotional time of not being part of this big sort of life defining event as an athlete, I was wondering to myself what went wrong there? How do I fix that and what am I going to do now to make sure that that doesn't go wrong for the last four years of my career, for example. So part of that was I said, you know, actually what worked for me was doing that stuff which was a little bit more endurance based, that stuff, which wasn't quite considered a normal 400 meter training program. Because over those years I did improve my acceleration mechanics, my acceleration speed, my short sprint, but actually lost my individual calling card which was my stupidly good last hundred meters, which I'd had since I was a child. So I was like, no, I need that back. That's what I need to do. And around the same time I basically got solicited a free DNA test by Avi Lazaro, who founded DNAFit. Just sent out to me while I was on a training camp out in Scottsdale in Arizona actually. And I was like, okay, whatever, I'll take this. We do a lot of physiology, all our careers, a lot of tests and sometimes, sometimes they mean a lot, sometimes they don't. So I got these results out of interest and when I got the results I was really quite.

Same thing as like 23andMe. Salivary cheek swab, basically.

So just essentially not quite exactly the same mechanism. 23andMe. It's more like a swab that you rub on the inside of your cheek rather than a vessel that you spit into. But yeah, essentially the same. Sent it back in the post. Just like kind of brushing your teeth but on the inside of your cheek.

Yeah, I didn't get the results back yet, but I did that, that kind of like brushing the inside of your cheek chest when I did the three hour treadmill test at Dr. Volek's lab at UConn.

Okay.

And it was same thing. I didn't get the results from that one yet, but they wanted to look at genetic changes to a high fat Diet. So you did that, you did that cheek swab and then what happened?

Send it back and about. At the time I was in Arizona, I think about a couple of weeks later, I got a PDF report basically on a selection of genetic variants which we'll talk about when we go through your report. It's essentially the same report you've got here. I was quite impressed and kind of surprised at how accurately it portrayed what I'd been forced to learn through painful trial and error over the years. So it showed me that I was on the power endurance base. On genetic side. I was a mix with a bias, not a full majority, but a bias towards endurance, which is kind of fitted in with my image of myself being a sprinter who could play to the endurance side of things a little bit better than most. I had a raised risk of tendon injury and that was basically a year prior. I just had my Achilles tendon partial rupture and I also had a slow recovery speed from a genetic point of view, which fitted in with my Epstein Barr, with my over training and kind of with my anecdotal experience of why some guys seem to be ready to go the next day. And I wasn't so on those facts because I just basically fed back to the company and said, well done guys. This is kind of fitted in.

What I feel like you read me like a book.

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, well done. You know, I think this is a thing press on. And we kept in touch and here we are, it's about a year later now and I'm essentially a core member of DNAFit. I guess it's a good sales pitch in that I was so impressed with the results I ended up working for the company. But it's not quite as simple as that. But that's kind of how I reached this point. I just sort of saw the utility for me and how had I known that earlier in my career, how that might have been a behavioral influence change around me and my coach to understand what's going on at a genetic level with me, to add that into the whole pot of other parameters that we measure.

Yeah, I actually got, I think pretty much the same test that you got, except nutrition as well. Did they do nutrition on you, by the way?

I did do later on, yeah. So obviously I've done my nutrition test now, but not right at the very start. I just did the sort of physical performance, the fitness side.

Yeah. And I'm intrigued and I know we're going to delve into this at this point. If you're listening in. If you're one of those people that likes to read along and kind look at the stuff that Andrew and I are going to talk about as we delve into what a genotype report and a DNA Fit diet report actually look like. I've got all my reports uploaded. All my Data is@BenGreenfieldFitness.com DNA so that's where the shownotes are for this podcast. I've got all these PDFs we're going to talk about uploaded there. It's pretty cool stuff. So, Andrew, what do you think? Should we just like delve in?

Yeah. Do you want to start on the fitness or the nutrition side?

Let's look at this report that says your genotype report and this is the one that's related to fitness. So before we jump into the specific data and how it influences people's fitness and training when they get a test like this done, just like a quick overview here. And I mean hit the fast forward button if you know what a gene is. But can you give us the quick overview overview, Andrew, of genes and gene variations?

Okay, so we look at a total of, if you do both our full, our full range of tests, we look at a total of 45 genetic variants. So a gene, I would really hope, probably guess that most of your listeners kind of know what a gene is, but essentially this is what makes us. These are the building blocks of us as life forms, as humans, and we look at variants, so that's also known as an allele. And basically you have a variation of polymorphism in certain genes which affect how you are.

And that's like the polymorphism is like the SNP that you hear a lot of people talking about these days.

That's right. That's a snp. Yeah. Single nucleotide polymorphism.

Yeah. Okay, so basically your gene is a segment of your DNA and each of your genes is made up of these four different letters, right?

That's right. The genetic Alphabet.

I took all this in Biochem. A, T, C and G. Right?

That's right.

Okay, so basically these letters can be replaced by another to create different variations in genes. And that's where a lot of these SNPs are created, basically.

Yeah. So by the combination of these letters, though, how they're the individual ones you hold and this changes a certain factor or may influence a certain factor. So it could be in the obvious side, we look at someone and what color hair they've got or how they look. But of course, that's a very, very Very small part of what a gene does. And we're looking at the variations here, these SNPs, these polymorphisms that have been shown to hold associations in multiple studies with various health and fitness markers.

Yeah, got it. Okay, cool. All right, we got past the nitty gritty science stuff.

I would say that was very light. Nitty gritty.

I guess that's pretty light, but I don't know. But you go to the Wikipedia page for DNA if you want to delve in more deeply than that. Okay, so let's jump into the fun stuff, the fitness stuff. So on page six of my report is basically a power endurance profile that gives my personal power endurance response. So what it says is, is that my DNAFIT assessment determined my genetic profile is equally balanced between power and endurance activities based on variations in my genes. And so it just tells me basically mix power and endurance to benefit the most from my genetic profile. Can you break this down a little bit more in terms of like an example of. I guess you kind of use yourself as a little bit of an example of power versus endurance, but can you explain this a little bit more deeply in terms of the whole power endurance?

Yeah, sure. So these particular genes which we look at in this page, this panel, our power endurance side, these are those which have been shown to hold associations with response to power training or response to endurance training or power performance and endurance performance. So, for example, there's one gene in here called the ACTN3 gene. This is quite a kind of a list gene. It's talked about quite a lot in the media, a lot of hyperbole, which perhaps is, you know, taken out of context, but it's been shown quite remarkably, if you have a version of the gene which has the C snp, the C variation, so you have one version or two, so you have CT or cc. This has been shown to have a remarkably strong association with power performance. So, for example, in every Olympic sprinter ever genotyped, they have held at least one version of the C, the C variation of ACTN3. So statistically speaking, when someone has that, you could say, well, there's. Just to put that in context, they've never found an Olympic sprinter who doesn't hold at least one version of this C version of the act n3. So that kind of puts it. So we look at these not as individuals, the genes, but we look at them as a whole, as a panel.

So let's say somebody gets tested. And for me, it looks like I'm a 50, 50 mix of power and endurance. Which kind of sucks because that means I'm never going to be a pro triathlete, I'm never going to be a pro footballer. I'll just.

Far from it.

No, no, I'll always be average.

Well, let me clarify that actually, because what we're very careful to do here is actually we want to make clear that there is no such thing as a good or bad genetic profile for a certain sport or any chosen goal for that matter. So we would never ever use genetics to choose a goal or to modify your goal to change what your chosen sport would be.

For example, why not, why wouldn't you test a kid and let's say a kid has no power and full on endurance, why would you not kind of encourage them to take part in cross country running and cycling and rowing? Wouldn't that be a smart move if you wanted them to have, say, success.

In sport in the future there may be research to back up that kind of mentality. But at the moment there just isn't the weight of research to say that someone with, for example, 90% power genetics can't thrive at an endurance sport. We don't have the research and ethically there's a lot of questions there about if you tell someone, especially at a young age. Now we're very careful with if we test anyone under 18, but actually it's such a powerful influencer, we're very, very careful to say no, you should, you won't be good at this, but you will be good at this. There's just not really the research to back that up.

Since I've already dug myself into a hole with, with the whole white Usain Bolt comment, I'll toss this in here too. You probably wouldn't be saying this if you were Russian or Chinese. I'm joking, man. Sorry, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, well, you're right though. Perhaps in some other countries and regimes they perhaps trying to use this as a talent identification. But we're very, very careful just really there's no research behind that quite yet either way. So it would be amiss of us to try. So I mean the key is it's rather using it to modify and tailor individually how you reach that goal, whatever your chosen goal may be. So that's kind of the key phrase, the key sort of methodology of how we use your power or endurance percentage.

Okay, well let me ask you this. Let's say that somebody tests and they're really skewed towards power. Would that mean that if they wanted to be, let's say, a good triathlete that maybe since they're naturally high in power, they shouldn't necessarily spend a lot of time in the weight room and might want to get better at what they essentially might suck at by going out and doing more aerobic or endurance training.

Well, what we're currently doing that may be a methodology, but what we are currently doing and actually currently our own clinical trial with the University of Manchester here in the UK to sort of prove this is that actually we're saying that to improve your, you need to improve your aerobic capacity, you need to improve your. What we call endurance kind of energy systems. You as a very, very high power percentage individual will probably thrive better off using that through high intensity small voles as opposed to your longer steady state.

So you basically what you're saying is like train your strength.

Strength, we're saying train to your genetic advantage. Exactly.

Okay, gotcha.

100%. But use that to tweak auxiliary training sessions and just change the emphasis of your week, perhaps.

So in my case being of like an equal power and endurance profile, I should be doing things like concurrent training where I'm doing both strength and endurance and high intensity cardio intervals kind of all as part of my training program at a relatively equal volume.

Yeah, so I mean you're actually. So you're 59.5% endurance, 40.5% power on our scale. Where that fits in our data set is what I'd call mixed with endurance bias, which is kind of where I was. So it's between 55% and 65% one way call you mix with a bias whichever side that went. So in your case, I wouldn't say fully mix. 50 50. I would say definitely place a priority on.

You're right, I'm seeing those numbers now. I didn't know the actual numbers before. I was just looking at the chart and the colors. Yeah, okay, cool. Interesting, interesting. So the.

But I would still keep power. So I would look at a polarized training program, for example, and almost arbitrarily adding, you know, a very, very power based workout, a very endurance based workout and filling in the gaps in between, just almost to a 60:40 ratio as a start point to see how that responds for you.

Okay, so on the next page we've got this aerobic potential. And for me it shows my VO2 max potential as high. Not very high, but high. And it looks like there are certain genes that can help with natural VO2 max. How does that work and how do you apply that?

Okay, yeah, so basically there are certain genes which hold A kind of genetic resistance to achieving the highest VO2 max scores. So important to understand where you lie from a genetic point if your goal is to improve your VO2 max, or if you regularly measure your VO2 max as a marker of how well you're doing in training. So in your case, you don't hold every variation that kind of lubricates the weight of the highest vh, but you hold mostly a majority of those. Some people find themselves very low or low on this scale, and that means that they might find their plateau on their VO2 max scores, and there's a certain amount that their genetics will just not let them go any higher that doesn't just say they're not as fit, but if VO2 max is a goal and a measure, then they need to understand that to know when they might have reached kind of a plateau for them.

Yeah, okay, got it. And that's one that seems to get talked about a lot in the news, actually, is, at least in sports science, how high you can genetically increase your VO2 match with guys like Lance Armstrong not necessarily being as high as some other cyclists, but still from a skills or a training standpoint, or maybe a lactic acid buffering standpoint, still being able to beat some of the guys who might genetically have higher VO2 maxes.

That's it. In David Epstein's the Sports Gene, I remember he referenced a certain small village in Finland, I think, where they all just randomly had the highest VO2 maxes, even sort of in an untrained capacity. And that's obviously a genet sort of pool there, which had extremely high VO2 max.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. So that. That's pretty interesting. But I thought the really interesting part, and you kind of alluded to this when you were talking about how long it took you to recover, was the recovery profile, because I've never heard of this before with genetic testing. But it shows that my post exercise recovery protocol is very fast. And I've actually, this is interesting because I've noticed this compared to, you know, when I was a collegiate tennis player and a lot of my training, it seems like I'll do something like an Ironman triathlon and I can go out and work out the next day. And I've always wondered if maybe I just wasn't pushing myself hard enough in my race or in my workout or if maybe there's something else going on from a recovery standpoint. What does this mean when it shows that my recovery profile is very fast and I've got the genes that cause Faster recovery. Does that mean my muscles repair faster or I shut down inflammation faster or.

What'S happening effectively what you just mentioned there, the inflammation is the key factor here. So certain genetic variants are associated with a pro inflammatory aspect. So they are responsible for causing more inflammation post hard exercise. And you possess the opposite versions of those overall. So you're effectively causing less inflammation when you exercise hard and you're getting better free radical clearance after exertion, whereas some people have the opposite. And in my case that's where I was. Which meant that it's going to take me a bit longer to clear that information and to feel ready.

That's come back to bite me before too though, because I can finish up a workout, heal up pretty quickly, but I can dig myself into like a hormonal and adrenal fatigue hole because I'm able to come back day after day and beat myself up. I don't think I would suspect maybe you know more than I do. But even if these genes are responsible for allowing you to shut down inflammation more quickly, I don't really think that means your adrenals are healing as quickly, does it?

It no for sure. So this is one factor to take into account. And of course if someone's very fast on this genetic inflammatory process, they do hold the risk of slipping into over training without realizing it. So for sure, if in an ideal world you could take this, you could take your hormonal results post hard exercise every time and understand exactly when you're ready, your heart rate variability, et cetera as well.

I was going to say heart rate variability would be super important. If you have that genetic variation that allows you, you just bam, bam, bam day after day, you shouldn't necessarily expect that your hormones are playing catch.

No, all the other factors not necessarily the same. What we do with our professional sports teams that we work with is we actually cross reference this with their heart rate variability, their Omega wave for example, or any other recovery markers that they look at to then make the correct decisions based on all the whole picture as well as just genetic.

That's a good idea. Smart man. Okay, so you've also the last part of the fitness part of things. I know we want to talk about the nutrition too, but you've got injury risk on here, which I guess is. That's somehow different than recovery.

Yeah. So there are a panel of genes here, seven in total in this one, which are associated mostly with kind of tendon and ligament ACL looking type injuries. So there are genetic variants which are associated with a higher Risk of injuries in this respect. So especially we look at is it.

Like how flexible your fascia are or like your connective tissue integrity or what are the genes affecting.

So specifically the COL1A1 and COL5A1 as the name suggests, are to do with your collagen. So we look at that and this is particularly of interest to sports and fitness people because certain people just don't get, get Achilles problems. They don't get patellar tendonitis, they just don't seem to get those. And there's many factors, your biomechanics and obviously your overall strength and conditioning, of course. But from a genetic point of view, certain people just get placed at a start point which is a slightly higher predisposition to these things. And if you know that from the start, it's not a bad thing if you're a higher than average injury risk. It's just by knowing it, you can then make the right steps to be prevented. And so.

Well, my, my personal injury risk is like, yeah, mine is like a little, it's almost high basically. And this kind of raised my eyebrow because I honestly don't get injured that much.

Man, that's great. Well, good, good work.

But I, you know, I also weightlift and foam roll and you know, I use a lot of stuff like you know, fish oil and, and collagen hydrosylate and a lot of stuff to kind of support my, my connective tissue health and keep any fascial adhesions from forming. But it kind of made me raise my eyebrow. Like, I'm curious, how much of this do you see fleshed out in the real world? Like how blue sky are we talking here as far as this stuff goes right now?

So for example, what we do with like if we working with a sports team, I always bring it back to that because this is kind of in general health and fitness, things filter down from professional sports.

Yeah, it's like show me the world championship ring, right?

Exactly. Yes. The utility gets proven there. And then we can say, how do we extrapolate that to the everyday person? So what we do with the guys that are kind of high or very high on this scale, from their strength and conditioning point of view, we all say we're going to put in pre habilitative preventative exercises such as isometric loading for their Achilles tendons or for their patellar tendons, tendons as a default, regardless if they have symptoms. So asymptomatic, they're in the gym. First exercise is eccentrics on their calves or isometrics on their hamstring tendons just to keep the tendon growth and the stimulation around their collagen there active and not sticky, as it were, in the Achilles sense. So this has kind of been extremely important in some of the sports clients we've used because. Because the medical staff are able to say to the managerial staff that those who choose who plays as well, like, okay, watch out, this guy is higher than normal genetic injury risk and he's complaining of some soreness here. We really can't play him this weekend or we really can't use him. We've got to be super careful. Whereas with the guys down the lower end, we can say, okay, we're going to put these exercises in once or twice a week in their gym program, but we can use the other times in the other sessions to do something else, which we need to. To improve performance, for example.

That makes sense. This might be. This question about my fitness results might be a good segue into talking about the nutrient part of things. But I noticed that on my recovery protocol, it says that I have a variation in a gene that's important in free radical removal, specifically superoxide dismutase. And I know that there are nutrients like glutathione that support that pathway. But does this mean that I'm good and I don't necessarily need to take those kind of antioxidants? Or that, for example, like a superoxide dismutase support would be one of the antioxidants I should kind of go out of my way to include if I were going to take an antioxidant.

Okay. So, yeah, essentially this says that in the. In the sod2 variation that you hold that's been associated in the studies to have a better free radical removal. So it's essentially saying that perhaps that's one of the genes that we look at with free radical clearance, that you've got a slightly better than average ability to clear those naturally. Of course, we're talking very minor variation of one gene here, but the overall picture is where the power comes. But essentially you hold that variant which is good for free radical claims.

Good. Cause that liquid glutathione stuff tastes like liquid dog farts.

That's what we're all looking for, isn't it?

I'm happy if I don't have ways.

To avoid these things. Yeah, yeah.

All right, let's talk nutrition, man. Because. And again, if you're listening in and you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com DNA you can download either of these reports that Andrew and I are going through. So you can kind of see what this actually looks like on paper. But on the nutrition reports, it kind of gives the optimal diet and the recommended nutrient overview and kind of like, what is the best diet for me? So I'm curious before I actually reveal what it says the best diet for me is how in the heck is that figured out the best diet for somebody?

Okay, so this is a best diet from a weight management point of view to start with. So we don't know someone's goal from their genetics. We don't know what their general activity levels are. So at the moment we're just telling people, like, you know, if they're looking at a fat loss loss program, and we're trying to guide them as to the best path for them and the diet types because it's, as you know, it's a confusing world out there. If you're just starting on this journey every week in the fitness magazines, there's a new super diet, there's a new super way of eating. And we're just trying to help people kind of navigate all the options here. So what we look at is the world of nutrigenetics. So individual responses based on our genetics to nutrition.

Okay, got it. So I noticed that, you know, and on my 23andMe results when I looked at those, because I got them done when they were actually able to reveal health information. And it indicated that I, for example, have a higher than normal risk of type 2 diabetes. And I've noticed that I tend to have a little bit high fasting blood sugar for an athlete. It's like around 90. And sometimes my postprandial blood glucose, when I test it, kind of stays elevated a little bit. So I use things like cinnamon and apple cider vinegar and some insulin sensitizers and things that help my body in terms of carbohydrate sensitivity. But I noticed that there's actual gene results here on page seven that says I have high sensitivity to carbohydrates. Does that back this up? Is high sensitivity to carbohydrates? Does that mean that I have a pronounced blood glucose response when I eat a carbohydrate?

Effectively, yes, I know it's. For some reason the arrow on your graph is not accurately responding to that. This from your gene results there, but effectively, yeah.

So sensitivity, I noticed that too. Like on the graph it says low, but it looks like all the, all the alleles say high.

So that must be a glitch there. So high is what you Are So effectively what sensitivity means in this respect is that from one calorie of carbohydrate you actually receive more energy per calorie than the average based on your alleles. So that essentially means a larger disruption from glucose fluctuations, larger, longer term insulin sensitivity.

It says I should consume a maximum of 8% of my daily calories through refined carbohydrates. So it's pretty much, it's telling me that starch and sugar is going to, in my case, for my particular genetic profile, do some pretty good damage to me.

Yeah, basically you have a larger problem with insulin glucose balance based on a single calorie of carbohydrate than the average. So the phrase kind of, as we all know, calories are starting to become more and more of a sort of old fashioned way of looking at our nutrition. But effectively they're not a static thing. The notion of one calorie equals one calorie is not the same for all of us. We're all different. And our genetic variants play a role there, there, especially when it comes to carbohydrate here. So that backs up what you found from your 23 me and that you need to be, you do have a raised risk of type 2 diabetes from a genetic point of view. But interestingly from the research that can be of course, as we know, completely canceled out through the correct nutrition and diet.

Yeah. And you also have a fat sensitivity. Fat sensitivity isn't something you hear people talk about much. So saturated fat.

No, it's not, is it? Yeah, yeah.

So there are genes that, that affect your sensitivity to saturated fats.

Yeah. So there's kind of like two strands within it. There's lipid metabolism. So what that means for our fat loss goals, if that's the case. And then there's also general health. So we talk about saturated fat and the impact it has on our cholesterol and whether that's healthy or non healthy cholesterol. So there's sort of two strands within there and the sensitivity effectively means the same from how well you metabolize lipids and how much of an effect they have on your cholesterol.

So I'm curious as far as saturated fats go, if I have, it looks like I've got medium sensitivity to saturated fats. Let's say somebody has high sensitivity to saturated fats, does that mean that when they consume saturated fats compared to the rest of the population, they're probably going to have, have a higher increase in cholesterol?

Yes, exactly. So they've got More. They would be sort of more dangerous to their cholesterol levels than the average.

Okay, all right. But you're not. Well, I guess I would actually beg to differ with what's written at the bottom of page 10 here. That high LDL cholesterol can cause cardiovascular disease. I think it needs to be present with, like, inflammation and oxidation though, right?

Yeah. And I guess, like, the whole nutrition science is starting to move towards a new understanding of what LDL and HDL mean as well. So we're currently working off what I said is the centralized guidelines from the EU here in Europe and making recommendations based on that. And as things get more weight behind them, then we can start to move our guidance towards that. But at the moment, this is where we aim our guidance towards.

Yeah, centralized guidelines here in the US Are no good because they're all influenced by corn and grain subsidies and farm lobbyists.

That's it. And as is the nature of centralized policy, it's often many years behind the curve. So good to take away your marker here, combine it with your personal knowledge and where your current, actual, actual standpoint lies on fats and the latest research, and then make your own decisions based on that, I guess.

Yeah. Basically what I took away from this is that while I can continue to eat a high level of healthy fats, that I should make sure that I'm still moderating my total saturated fat intake. So what I shoot for, honestly, is I try and get about 20% of my total amount of fat calories from saturated fats, like from a little bit of butter and like a little bit of the marbliness of the steak and stuff like that. But most of what I get is olive oil and raw seeds and nuts and things of that nature, of course.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

And you're not going to go wrong with, with that as a. But I would say you just say don't be too scared of them, but equally don't be so free, you know, Free with your just letting full saturated intake go unchecked.

Basically.

Yeah.

Okay. And then also you've got nutrients on here, and this shows that I. Sam, it says I'm lactose intolerant. Right. Just looking at this again. Okay. Lactose tolerance, my lactose intolerance risk. No, it says my lactose intolerance risk is low. Like I wouldn't have lactose risk.

So a lower risk of lactose intolerance.

Okay, how's that? Okay, I'll tell you right now. Dairy. Dairy freaking destroys me. Like, if I. Okay, if I eat commercial dairy And I don't take enzymes with it. It destroys me. I mean, like, there's definitely something going on. I've never actually. Well, I have. I have shown lower than levels, lower than normal levels of lactase production. So I'm curious about this whole lactose tolerance thing. What's this allele that's responsible for lactose tolerance? And I suppose, like, are there other things that would cause dairy intolerance in addition to lactose in a situation like this?

Okay, so this is the LCT gene. And effectively this is. We're looking for the presence of kind of what, the lactose persistence gene, to put it so simply. So as people know as mammals, you have the ability to process lactose naturally in early life. And then most of us, most of the human population, this gene sort of deactivates after a certain period. Point. But in, in ancestral terms, at a certain time in history, a group of humans developed the ability to continue to produce lactase, to continue to be able to digest lactose effectively all through life. And you've got one version of the allele which is responsible for lactose. So you, you produce the enzyme, but not the full. You haven't got the full allele, which means you produce the whole hundred percent of the enzyme. Enzyme. However, you do produce some, from a genetic point of view, to process lactose.

Interesting. Yeah, I do. Okay. Like if I go to a local farm and I get like raw milk or organic raw yogurt, fermented dairy, stuff like that, I'm fine. But if I touch like a, you know, 2% milk from the grocery store, I'm just, I'm destroyed. So.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, there could be other factors there at play which perhaps we don't quite understand. But from the genetic point of view, you've kind of got the half lactose persistence gene. So you are producing the enzyme lactase. But the other factors, perhaps something away from genetics which are causing you discomfort, then.

Got it. And then you've also got celiac predisposition. So celiac being that digestive condition where you have the adverse reaction to glucose. For my celiac predisposition, it says, or gluten, rather. I've got possible predisposition for celiac disease. That seems kind of murky. What's that mean?

Yeah, so effectively with celiac, it's not as simple as gluten intolerance, as people like to put it, but there's generally a kind of 1 in 100 risk of being celiac as an average. But certain variants kind of change that Risk. With some variants, we can almost eliminate the risk of becoming celiac or having celiac condition. They sort of raise the risk to 1 in 35,000, lower the risk to 1 in 35,000. With some variants, we say there'd be a higher predisposition because that changes the risk to 1 in 20 or 1 in 10. Even so, in your case, you have the result, which means you're kind of around the average. They predisposition for it there, 1 in 100.

So let's say somebody gets their genetics test, like they go to DNAFit or they go to 23andMe.com, they get a test and they. They export the results to DNAFit and they show that they definitely have the predisposition for celiac disease. Like they have the gene for celiac disease. Is that just like thumbs up? No, no doubt. You don't even need to go get like a Cyrex lab test or a food intolerance test. Like, is this pretty much a total correlation that has been observed in science?

No, it's. So it's more that we say you've got raised risk. So if you have symptoms, you must go and get checked out. It's a consideration whether you go and get checked out. But just to be understanding that you are in the gene pool here, which are 1 in 35 risk of glute, of celiac, for example, instead of 1 in 100.

Okay, gotcha. Interesting. Okay, so actually I'm on the DNAFit store here and it looks like so everything that we just talked about, it's like £249 to get the combination of the DNA fit and the DNA diet combined. But it'd actually be. If someone's already gotten their 23andMe test results, it'd be less than that, right, Andrew?

Yeah, much less. So we go from like 49 pounds to a maximum of 99 pounds. If you've already got your 23 me results. So much, much cheaper than that way.

Okay, got it. So I guess just go talk to your friends in the UK if you're American or Canadian and you need the conversion there or go to. I think Google should be able to do that conversion.

Yeah, they might just be able to help on that front.

Yeah, cool, Cool. So this is really neat stuff. And again, I'll put links to the reports that Andrew and I talked about over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com DNA along with a link to 23andMe and DNA Fit and even the previous podcast that we did where, where we talked about ancestry and DNA and some of that cool stuff. So, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on the call, man, and sharing this stuff with us.

Absolute pleasure, Ben. Thanks for having me. And I hope everybody found that quite interesting.

Yeah, it was interesting. And at some point we'll have to meet up and we'll race a 400 and we'll see if I could beat you after I incorporate all these power and endurance training recommendations. And from Sugar, right.

I'll be kicking myself that I gave you all that advice.

In that case, I love it. All right, well, cool. So, folks, this is Andrew Steele from DNA Fit and me, Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com go to BenGreenfulFitness.com DNA to check all this stuff out. And thanks for listening.

Visit Ben greenfield field fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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