The Little-Known Test That Tells You Everything You Need To Know About Your Metabolism.

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Pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And as you know, I'm a huge fan of self quantification, but there's obviously a ton of different tests that you can run on your body to find out everything from yeast and fungus and parasites to your vitamin levels, your hormone levels. Just so many different tests out there and it can get confusing. Now, about right around a year ago, I actually had a guest named Chris Kelly on the call, and Chris and I talked about specifically testing for your adrenal function, testing for things like cortisol and dhea. And that was a really interesting episode because Chris, who is is a pro mountain biker, really helped to elucidate how to recognize and test for adrenal stress. Now I'm gonna put a link to that previous episode that we did with Chris. It's called 7 Signs that yout Cortisol and Adrenals Are Broken. I'll put a link to that in the show notes for this episode. And the show notes for this episode are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com or organic. But if you are interested in really looking more into a bigger inspection of your cellular metabolism that goes way above and beyond just adrenals, Chris and I are going to talk today about how it is that you'd actually do that. So I've got Chris on the call. He's going to explain exactly what this test is and how to interpret it. And you're going to get all the nitty gritties about this really relatively little known test that tells you everything you need to know about your metabolism. So, Chris, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's a privilege.

All right, well, let's jump right in. What is this test and how did you discover it?

I discovered it as a way of trying to figure out what was going on with my adrenals. Right? So I knew I wasn't feeling good. Loss of sex drive, brain fog, fatigue, mild depression. I run the saliva test and I find very low levels of cortisol, dhea, testosterone, those types of hormones, and I don't think it's really good enough to stop there. You could do that. You could say, okay, let's just Take some supplements and see if we can fix this. But I think that there's always a reason why the hormones are coming up as a problem, as a red flag, if you will. And so the Organixx is an awesome tool to lift the lids on what's going on with the salivary hormones. So the easiest way to think about it is, you know what it's like when you take your car into the shop and you roll it onto the rolling road. And the mechanic, he puts some kind of probe up the exhaust pipe and he measures the exhaust gases, and he tells you something about the way that the engine is working. You can really learn a lot about the way the engine's running like that. And so this urine test that I've been doing is similar in that nature. You just collect a urine sample at home and. And then send it into the lab, and then you get all this amazing information about what's going on inside your body.

So is it literally like urine that you collect in a tube and then you send off?

Yeah, exactly. It's what they call a first morning void test. So you just collect your first urine of the day, and then it's just like kind of the longest period that you probably go without peeing. So this get the most information.

First morning void is a great term off to fill my wife in on that. She can give me a lot of grief about leaving my first morning void on the toilet seat. All right, so you don't have to go to a lab to draw blood. You're just basically collecting urine at home. Okay, so the way that you explain this, I guess, is when you're looking at these markers of cellular metabolism in your urine, when your cells are metabolizing or producing energy, essentially what you're saying is they're producing byproducts and you're measuring those byproducts of cellular metabolism.

Yeah, that's right. So when you look at all these different processes, nothing wants to stay still. It's almost like water that's continually flowing in order for one thing to convert into another. Typically there are enzymes and other nutrient co factors that are involved. And when there's something wrong with one of those enzymes, maybe you've got some sort of genetic defect, or maybe you're lacking in some vital nutrient, you start to see levels of these organic acids actually start to pool or become very low on the organic acids test. And that tells you something really interesting about your metabolism.

So what you sent over to me here, Chris, is an actual printout of what this test looks like, and I think it'd be really helpful for us what we'll do. Is it cool if I put a download of this PDF for people who are listening in so they could go and kind of follow along if they wanted to?

Yeah, for sure. This is a good one to look at, actually.

Okay, cool. And you don't actually have the patient's name on here, right?

Nope.

So we're not breaking any big rules.

Nope.

I don't want to get sued. So we'll go through this. And the name of the test is an organic acid test, right?

Yeah. So Organix, there's a couple of labs that offer them, actually. Genever Diagnostics is the lab that I normally use, and the other is Great Plains, and I think they're both good, but the Organixx profile is the one I'm most familiar with.

Okay, got it. And people can actually order this particular test through your website, right?

Yeah. So that's the easiest way to do this is because it's such a complicated test. You can see that the printout, if you go and download it, it's quite overwhelming, and it can be a little bit tricky to interpret. And I've seen quite a few of these now, so I'm more than happy to help you with that.

I actually got this test done. I actually didn't realize until we had started talking about this test that I did have it done. My doctor ran it on me, but it took us like an hour when we sat down in his office to go over all the results. I mean, this tells you a ton, a ton of stuff. At the end, after we go through this, I think we can go over your web URL and we'll also put a link to it over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Organics if people want to actually go through you to get this test. But let's go ahead and just start from the top of this PDF that you sent over to me. The first thing that it looks into is your fatty acid metabolism. How's this one work?

Yeah. So this was really important to this particular person, and that's something I always bear in mind. I couldn't really interpret this lab result if I wasn't, you know, if I didn't have some sort of relationship, if I haven't spoken to the woman that owns it. And both me and the medical doctor I'm partnered with were both pro mountain bikers, and so many of the people that we work with are cyclists. And that was the case for this woman. And she was a really Good cyclist. But she found that she was still quite heavily dependent on glucose to fuel her endurance exercise, which, as you know, kind of sucks because you've only got so much glycogen, and it's not very nice trying to refuel that with those sticky gel things as you go along. So she ran this test, and we found high levels of this organic acid, which is called adipate. Now, adipate starts to build up in your urine sample when you're not oxidizing fat correctly.

Really.

So normally you get these fatty acids, these free fatty acids that come to the outer membrane of the cell and then they need to be transported into the mitochondria, the little powerhouses where the energy production actually takes place. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be, like, almost like a little boat or a shuttle, you can think of it. And it's that boat that actually transports the fatty acids into the mitochondria. And if that doesn't happen, then you start to see this organic acid adipate build up. And that tells you you're not burning fat as well as you should.

So you don't necessarily have to go in and do, like the indirect calorimetry test, where you put the mask on your face, you measure the oxygen that you consume and the carbon dioxide that you produce as you run on a treadmill or ride a bike, for example, you can literally measure cellular metabolism byproduct of fatty acid breakdown, and find out whether or not you're breaking down much fat or not.

Yeah, exactly. So I think the test that you just described would be even more useful. You could think of that maybe as the gold standard, but, yeah, certainly if this was a problem, as it is on this test, then you'd expect to not do very well on the respiratory quotient test.

And then it also tells you carbohydrate metabolism.

Exactly, yeah. So we can. We can see here. You know, I already said that the adrenals, that's probably the first place to start. And when they start to go wrong, cortisol or glucocorticoid, you start to see problems with glucose metabolism. And then for this particular woman, you can see that here on the test, these two organic acids, pyruvate and lactate. And people will have heard of these, obviously, because they're byproducts of anaerobic metabolism. Right. So something weird is going on here. You shouldn't be getting lactate building up in an overnight urine sample when all you've been doing is sleeping. Right. I mean, you might see this if you were to do some really hard exercise. But something weird's going on here. So it's kind of a clue that something's not right.

So she's got a bunch of lactic acid in her bloodstream and she hasn't been exercising. Okay. I assume this test is obviously it's a morning void. So she got up in a fast acid state and was basically peeing out a bunch of lactic acid, Right?

Exactly.

Wow. Why would that be?

Sorry? Because I think that she's over trained. Like she's in, she's in a point where, you know, she's just too much stress. Like the thing that I'm starting to understand is that the stress physiology changes everything. So all of these cycles that are going on inside your body, you know, many of them can be altered when you're under stress. And this sort of makes sense when you think about it. Your body's just going to do whatever it needs to do in order for you to survive the day. So if you're about to be eaten by a tiger, it doesn't really make sense to make the hormones that make babies or to make carnitine that's going to shuttle fatty acids. You just want to make whatever energy you can as quickly as possible and just get the heck out of there.

Interesting. Okay, so I noticed that, for example, we just talked about fatty acid metabolism and carbohydrate metabolism, and on this actual PDF that I'm looking at right now that you sent over and that of course we'll have available for people to download if they want to follow along, underneath fatty acid metabolism and underneath carbohydrate metabolism, it has like all these nutrients in parentheses, like lipoic acid and CoQ10, vitamin B1, vitamin B3. Are those the things that someone would be deficient in if they were showing improper amounts of the byproducts of carb and fat metabolism? Is that why those are there?

Yeah, those are there. It's in this column, it's labeled intervention options and they're quite useful. But really what this is telling you is just one potential solution to the problem with the physiology that's been found on the result.

Okay, so basically, if you have a problem with carbohydrate metabolism, I noticed that like there's a bunch of B vitamins listed as intervention options that could potentially be because you just have a vitamin B deficiency.

Exactly, exactly.

In addition to being overtrained.

Exactly, yeah. So that's why it's really important to talk to the person as well as Just look at the lab result. You don't know until you talk to that person exactly what's going on. So another really good example that I see all the time is beta hydroxybutyrate, which would appear in this carbohydrate metabolism section. And the marker was originally put on there to detect severe insulin resistance in chronically ill patients. But that's never the reason that I see it now. It's always because somebody's eating a low carbohydrate or ketogenic diet. So it's not actually a problem in the way that the lab originally thought it would be.

Interesting. Okay, cool. So then it jumps into energy production markers. Now, what are these?

These are Krebs cycle intermediaries. So I don't know if you can remember this from biology, but the way in which we convert food and the air that we breathe into energy is through this process that's called the Krebs cycle, or the citric acid cycle, as I think it's called on this lab. And all of these organic acids, and in this case, you can see nearly all of them, those are Krebs cycle intermediaries. So when you start to see these pool on this test, or go very high as they are in this case, that's telling you that the Krebs cycle is not working as well as it should. Now, this is obviously really interesting not just for athletes who are just trying to produce more energy. It's also really interesting to anyone that's doing some kind of desk job where the really trying to concentrate hard. Like, if your energy production is not working well, then you can expect to feel waxes and wanes and all kinds of weird brain fog, and basically anything's possible.

Interesting. Okay, so when I'm looking at this one, as far as interventions, it looks like there's a lot of like, amino acids, for example, that when you're seeing a deficiency in the ability to produce some of these energy production markers, or actually some really deficiency in her case, it's showing all very high in energy production markers. Does that mean that she's spinning too fast or is that a good thing?

So I think in this case it means that there's a block. So you can think, like I said earlier, you can think of these processes like a river, like water flowing. And this case there's a dam that's been put into that river and the water is starting to pool. And that's the organic acid that they've actually measured. On this test. You can see a really common one. And it's up here on this particular test in three different places. I see this all the time. It would appear that the enzyme CoQ10 is one of the weakest links in this chain. So it's really common for me to see people that need more enzyme CoQ10 in order to produce energy efficiently. Especially a really common reason. If your doctors put you on a statin, that could be a really good reason why you need more enzyme CoQ10.

Okay, got it. Interesting. Okay, so then there are also vitamin markers. There's something here called methylation cofactor. Which of these are most important for people to know about or which would be easy to understand going over this via audio?

So, yeah, the B vitamins, they're so important, the most common vitamins that required for all these conversions to take place. So it's really likely if you have a problem that there's a B vitamin that's lacking. And the cool thing about this test is you can really supplement with confidence. If this test shows that you have a vitamin B6 deficiency, as it does in this instance, then you can take that and know that it's going to help you. It's like really takes the guesswork out of it. But the methylation co factors are particularly interesting to anyone that's done the 23andMe test. So the genetic test. And one of the first things that everybody looks at is the MCHFR mutation, that particular SNP that affects the way that a particular enzyme that converts folate that might appear in our diet into the active form that's actually used in methylation. You can see in this particular example that there is this organic acid that's called forminoglutamate and it's starting to build up very high in the urine sample. And that tells me that this particular lady needs more folate in the most active form, which is 5 methyltetrahydrofolate.

Okay. So basically if you look at this test, if you get an organic acids test and it shows that your methylation is low, then that can indicate your need to be on some type of a folic acid based supplement. Like a methyltetrahydrofolate supplement.

Yeah. So if you take any of the Thorne products, they have this most active form of folate in. And you know, this woman has a tarnished EB1B2B3B5. She's lacking all of these things plus the folate. And so she could take something like a Thorn basic B complex and hit many of the problems that are on this test in just one Capsule, which is pretty cool.

Interesting. Okay, so then you get into oxidative damage and antioxidant markers. And so this thing can actually measure the amount of free radicals or is it measuring something else?

Yeah, again, so it's not looking at the amount of oxidative stress directly. It's looking at this surrogate marker. So these are like the exhaust gases of oxidative stress, which is kind of. It's a complicated thing to interpret, to explain in the first place. But, you know, oxidative stress is. You cut an apple in half and you see it start to turn brown. That's a chemical reaction with oxygen. And so this is going on inside your body all the time, and it's obviously vital for life. You couldn't completely extinguish oxidative stress and survive. But at the same time, we know that many disease states are associated with or even caused by oxidative stress. And when that starts to happen, when you start to have too much oxidative stress, you see these organic acids, P hydroxyphenol acetate is one that build up on this urine sample, and it can tell you that there's too much oxidative stress inside your body.

Okay, got it. And so, for example, I noticed that some of the interventions that are recommended are like vitamin C and vitamin E. Are those the type of things that you use or do you recommend like. Like a fuller spectrum of antioxidants? Or what do people do when they find out that they're producing or that they've got too much oxidative damage?

Yes, I've been looking at this quite a lot, and it's a. It's a kind of a dicey and difficult area. Like, it's not clear to me at this time, you know, whether the antioxidants are in vegetables are actually antioxidants, or whether they're pro oxidants and they're. There's some sort of hormetic effect where it's up regulating your own internal production of these antioxidants. And so Jamie, our doctor, has done quite a lot of research into this, and she thinks that the best intervention option is to supplement with a product, an N acystal cysteine. So N acystal cysteine is an amino acid. It's the precursor to this molecule called glutathione, which I've heard you mentioned many times before. It's the body's primary endogenous antioxidant. And so rather than trying to stamp out the oxidative stress with vitamin C and E say, as it says on this lab, we think it's better to take something like Pharmanac. That would upregulate your own internal production of antioxidants.

That's like an effervescent tablet. Like an effervescent antioxidant tablet that you can put in a glass of water, right?

Yeah, it's great. I'm actually drinking some right now. People love it because it's not another pill to swallow. It's quite a pleasant tasting drink. You can easily get into too many supplements if you try and fix everything on this test.

So it's just something you can drink while you're, like, at work during the day?

Yeah, exactly. You can put it into a bottle or.

Got it. Okay. Now then you get into detoxification indicators. What are these?

So these are telling me how well your liver is working. So everybody knows that our environment is becoming increasingly toxic. And there's been studies done by the center for Disease Control, and you've talked about it many times, that it's basically impossible to avoid exposure to environmental toxins. And that's why we have a liver. That's what it does. And your liver removes those and excretes them from your body. And if that doesn't happen properly, then you start to see these organic acids build up on this test, and then you know, your liver's not doing such a great job. And the thing that gets tricky about this test is some of these markers that tied together. So I think that maybe on this test, the phase two. So liver function is divided into two phases. And I think maybe that the phase two liver function on this test is not running as well as it should, and that might be the cause of the high levels of oxidative stress. Right. So these intermediaries that sit in between phase one and phase two, they are reactive oxygen species, so they would elevate the oxidative stress. So you kind of have to look at the big picture a bit with this test and try and figure out what's going on.

Okay, got it. Interesting. The. The next thing that you have on here is neurotransmitters and neurotransmitter metabolism. Would this be something that would be related to, like, your. Your. Your mood, your brain function, or is this more of like a. Like a gut neurotransmitter type of look?

Yeah. So this is another really quite tricky area, and I think some people get confused that this is a test, a urine test for neurotransmitters, which is not Really a very useful test. But the neurotransmitters that are measured in a urine sample are actually made locally in the kidneys and they don't really have much to do with what levels are present in the central nervous system or in the brain. Again, this test is a cool trick that you can just measure these metabolites, these metabolic ashes of neurotransmitters, and know something about how well this person is producing and using neurotransmitters. So in this particular case, you can see Vanl Mandalay is very low and Vanill Mandalate is the metabolic ashes of adrenaline. So when you see that very low, that's a strong indication that this person's in like kind of a deep adrenal fatigue, burnt out sort of state. And that is exactly what we saw on the saliva test for this particular person.

And so in a case like that where you find out that your neurotransmitter function is low, what type of steps do you take?

So the stress reduction part can't be skipped. And it really is the most important bit. Every single person that's an athlete, almost by definition, you're a sort of type A hard charging person. And quite often it's only once people see the lab work do they truly understand that they're pushing too hard and they're not making gains anymore. So the lifestyle interventions are by far the most important thing. Maybe for this particular woman, now is a really good time to take an off season, right? Just take four or five weeks off the bike, get really bored, just spend your time doing yoga and nature walks and stuff and the world is going to be a better place in six weeks time.

Interesting. Okay. And then you get into things like bacteria, yeast, what looks to me like more kind of like gut function, clostridial species, fungal, etc. Can you get into what's measured here and what people can do with the findings?

So now I think we're kind of getting into the meat of it. You know, this is, you know, why are all these things going wrong for this woman? Why is she having problems with phase one and phase two detox? Why is she so burnt out? Why does she feel so bloated after she eats? This is a really common complaint. And so what this test does, it looks at metabolites that can only have come from bacteria, right? They're not of human origin. And more specifically, these types of bacteria are not beneficial. And usually they are in the small intestine. So some people will have heard of this phrase sibo, small Intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And you can think of this test as a kind of. Not a poor man's version. It's kind of a crude. You could do a breath test, I think would be better. But this gives you a really good indication if you have an overgrowth of bacteria going on in your small intestine.

So you can actually measure that via the urine versus doing, like a breath test, huh?

Yeah, exactly. I'd say the breath test would probably be the gold standard, but this is a really good indication. And I see very strong correlation between people that are feeling bloated after eating and seeing high levels of these metabolites from the bacteria.

So what do you do if you see a high level of these type of bacterial metabolites?

Quite often, though the smoke and not the fire. So for this particular person, the best way to do this whole thing is to do all three tests. You do the saliva test and the urine test, and then a stool test as well. And then in this particular case, the woman had a parasitic infection called Blastocystis hominis, which is kind of a nasty little bug that can cause fatigue and other problems. And I think the overgrowths of bacteria that we're seeing here are the result of the dysbiosis that's being caused by this other bug. Right, but sometimes that's not the case. Quite often I see it where the person, the only problem they have are these overgrowths. And of course, it could account for anything else. On the lab test, if you're not digesting and assimilating the nutrients from your foods, then you would expect to see these micronutrient deficiencies. So usually, I mean, sometimes, if the case is not too bad, you can crowd out these bad bacteria with probiotics and maybe like, beneficial species of yeast like Saccharomyces boulardi. But usually what the person does is a short kind of killing phase where they'll go a couple of months taking antimicrobial botanical herbs like garlic and olive leaf extract and oregano oil, and taking in the right doses for a short period of time. Those can be really effective for killing off those overgrowths. And then you would focus afterwards on re establishing a more healthy flora with probiotics.

Now, I noticed after all of these different tests are listed, this particular PDF that we're looking at actually follows up with a customized formulation, like basically a printout of all the things that you should take to address the particular issues that are on the test. Do they all come with this, or is this something that you put together after you look over it?

No, the lab, they have this algorithm where they calculate the dosages of all these different nutrients that would potentially fix the problems that they found on the lab work. Now, you know, like I said, there's some, you know, this is just one option that, that could work for you. And, and so say, take for example, you know, the phase two liver function isn't working because there's an insufficiency of sulfur containing compounds. Now, you could take, you know, N acystal cysteine is one sulfur containing compounds, but there's others. There's like methionine and other. So there's other things that could work.

Okay, got it. So do you. Do you find that you wind up recommending to people, like specific multivitamin complexes and stuff like that, or do people actually get, like, custom formulations created for them?

Yeah, you could do that. And I believe Genova, they do have some kind of compounding service. But, you know, typically I find that you run into problems like, how the heck do you fit all this stuff into one pill or one powder? Well, then what happens if you want to, you know, do one thing but not another? And that's almost the first thing that I take into consideration when I look at one of these results is like, what's this person's main goal? So, you know, in this instance, you know, this woman, she wants to be a better fat burner. So she wants the carnitine to allow her to be a better fat burner. And then she's feeling really tired. So the enzyme CoQ10 and all those B vitamins could be really important for her. And so usually what I do is I just break this thing down and then divide it into modules that are ordered by her priorities. Right. So if your first goal is to produce more energy, let's just take two supplements that can focus on that and nothing else.

Got it? Okay, so this is a pretty dense amount of information. So I want to do a little bit of a review here of what we've covered so far, if we could, just. Because I know that this stuff can get pretty tough to slog through if you're not like a physiologist or you're trained in medicine. So this organic acids profile, you do a urine measurement. It's measuring the metabolites that occur as your cells are working, as they're churning out energy. And when we look at those actual metabolites, we're able to tell certain things about what's going on inside the body, particularly From a metabolic standpoint. And that's all done via a urine collection?

That's correct, yes.

Okay, got it. And the things that this can measure, first of all, you've got fat burning, so you can measure whether or not you're in or out of a fat burning state. Okay. And that would be like a measurement of beta oxidation.

Yeah, exactly. So this is so, so important. You know, obviously for endurance athletes, this is critical. You don't want to be burning glucose in a four or five hour event. But even if you're just sat at your desk, the thing that I'm starting to understand now is although I'm a pro mountain biker, you know, officially I'm, I'm pro. Nobody's really paying me a salary to do this work. Right. And so it's the time that I spend outside of training. I've got a one year old daughter and she's getting pretty demanding running around and stuff. And I want to have the energy and the vitality to be able to play with her outside of the training, off the bike. And I'm realizing, you know, it's, maybe you can do your training, but can you do this other stuff too? Like can you be a great, like whatever you do for a living? And, you know, I think that's where this test really comes into its own, that when you fix those things, you just simply feel more energy.

Okay. And that's also related to its ability to measure, for example, blood sugar stabilization and then the speed or the efficiency of this Krebs cycle for producing ATP.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you look at the difference between a skin cell and a neuron, the neurons doing your thinking, but it's still powered by the same metabolic processes. Right. You've still got a Krebs cycle, you've still got a mitochondria. And so if you're not producing energy correctly, as indicated by this test, then brain fog could easily be one of the symptoms that you experience.

Okay, gotcha. So we've got your fat metabolism, your blood sugar stabilization, your energy production, and then this whole methylation factor where you can actually find out whether you're actually properly methylating or whether or not you need to supplement with something like methyltetrahydrofolate.

Yeah. So that would be my advice to anyone that's done the 23andMe saliva test and notice that they have some of these snips that can cause problems with methylation, is do this urine test and find out how well your methylation is actually working. So what you've just discovered is genetic potential. And I'm a really good example of this. I have some of those problems with those SNPs, but I don't have any problem with methylation at all. So maybe the enzymes are not working as well as they could do, but they're working well enough. And I know that from doing this test.

Okay, got it. And then we get into toxins, and it measures toxins and your ability to specifically detoxify.

Yeah, exactly. It tells you how well your detoxing is actually working. And so in some instances, I do, you know, like, a ton of coaching with someone to help them solve this type of problem. You know, maybe they're doing something weird, like using a whole bunch of kind of toxic personal care products, or, you know, maybe they're living in a house that's got problems with lead paint or something weird. Some kind of preservative in woods is possible, you know, but it's really difficult. There's a really interesting marker that's actually not come up on this particular result, but there's a marker called xylene. And xylene is a metabolite. Coal tar. And the reason they put it on this test is not because not to detect accidental exposure. It's to measure specifically how well your phase two liver function is working, because they know that every single person on this planet is exposed to it. It's kind of a scary idea, but, yeah, it's true. You cannot avoid your exposure. So you really need to make sure your detox is working right.

And then it measures your oxidative stress and your antioxidants. Okay. And then the neurotransmitter that we talked about. And then finally the intestinal function or the intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Yeah, exactly. So in this instance, this woman has also got a yeast overgrowth that we see is really common. And this is not actually a very sensitive test for yeast. You have to have a real screaming yeast overgrowth before you start to see this organic acid called D Arabenitol start to build up in the urine sample. So if you think you've got a problem with yeast, then this test will tell you whether or not how bad it is. If it's really bad, it'll be on here.

What are a few of the things that you find to be really common markers that are really dysregulated, not necessarily with super duper unhealthy people, but the type of people that are listening in right now. Exercise enthusiasts, people who are already taking care of their bodies. What are some of the things that.

You tend to find the kyureinate, organic acid is really common. So, you know, I can hopefully call it kyureinate. Yeah, kyureinate, that's the name of the organic acid. And kyureinate is the metabolite of an amino acid called tryptophan. And many people have heard of this amino acid because it's in Turkey and it makes you sleepy, right? And there's actually some truth to that statement, because tryptophan, it should metabolize into this intermediate called 5 HTP 5 hydroxytryptophan, which you can buy as a supplement. And then from there, it should metabolize into this inhibitory neurotransmitter, serotonin, and they're on into a sleep hormone called melatonin, which is the hormone that puts you to sleep at night. And if you're under stress, your body will divert that tryptophan away from this really nice, sleepy, relaxing pathway and down towards the production of inflammatory cytokines to fight an infection. And when that happens, you see the buildup of kyureinate in the urine sample. And so that's what exactly what I've measured here. And because 99% of the people that I work with are not feeling too good, and they're all athletes, then I see this all the time. So they've driven themselves to the point where there's, like, too much stress and their body is just like, saying, screw the serotonin. Let's just make inflammatory cytokines. And then they run into problems with sleep.

Okay, gotcha. So that's one thing is this kyureinate, tryptophan pathway. What's another thing that tends to be common?

So again, it's the neurotransmitter section mark. It's almost. There's a lot of commonality there. So definitely the epinephrine, the adrenaline, and noradrenaline. So people will say to me, I'm just not as enthusiastic as I used to be. Just the thought of exercise exhausts me. And we know that norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter. Noradrenaline. I keep using those words interchangeably, but that's the same thing that's associated with the willingness to move. So if you're kind of dreading exercise now, if you're not, you know, you used to bounce out of bed in the morning and you felt like, you know, you were really up for it, and now you're not really so sure. You kind of just want to press the snooze button and sleep in. Then, you know, this. This test will tell you exactly what's going on.

Okay, gotcha. Any other things that you tend to see as common?

Yeah, the carnitine thing is definitely really common. And again, I think it comes down to stress physiology. You know, you should some carnitine, it comes from red meat. So if you're a vegan or you're just not eating much red meat, then you might run into this problem. And so this would affect your body composition. Right. If you can't burn fat, then that could easily affect your body composition.

Okay.

But yeah, it should come from food, but it's also produced endogenously from an amino acid called lysine. And quite often that doesn't happen again because the person's under stress. Your body is just thinking, screw the carnitine, let's just make some glucose so that we can survive the day.

It seems like a lot of the information that you get off this test is relatively advanced to be able to interpret yourself. When someone does a test, do you actually get on the phone with them and walk them through it, or how can people actually make sure that they're interpreting their test correctly?

Yeah, that's the best, definitely. To work with someone is, I think, the best way to do it. But the first time I saw it was Dr. Dan Kalisch that persuaded me to do this test. And at the time I was working as a programmer.

Who is that?

Oh, sorry. So Dan Kalish is a functional medicine practitioner. And I met him. He was the guy that fixed me in the first place. And I was so wowed by the whole experience. I persuaded him to train me and my wife, who's a food scientist. And so now we have our own practice. Dr. Kalish, he primarily focuses on training doctors at the moment. So he was the one that introduced me to this test. He's been running it for about 15 years. And he was kind of excited about it because I'm an athlete. He was like, oh, you've got to fix this stuff. Like, if you fix all this stuff that's on this test, you're just going to crush every race. And I don't think it was a coincidence that that was the year that I upgraded to pro. Like, after I fixed all the things that I found on this test.

Wow. So. And that was after you did this organic acids test?

Yeah, exactly. Just fix the things that I found. Just make sure it correlated with my life experience pretty well. And then. And then just fix those things.

And so now when people get this Test, you help walk them through it.

Yeah, exactly. So at the time, I was working as a computer programmer at Quantitative Hedge Fund, and when I first saw this test test, I was like, wow, look at this. It's a big programming puzzle. Like, what do all these things mean? What do all these variables, what do they mean? And so that kind of sent me off down this rabbit hole. You know, when you, when you're trying to learn something and you've got an example that's all about you sat there in front of you, it's like the methylation thing is the kind of. Or the genetic. The 23andMe data is kind of the same. Like once you know it affects you, you suddenly care a lot more about the story behind that data. And so that was how I got into this. And two years later, I'm still kind of digging deeper and deeper into this. So there's definitely. If you're the sort of person that likes kind of delving into things and looking at the literature, this test has been used and has been very well proven out in the literature. So if you like to delve in and go deeper, then you can definitely do that. Or if you're the sort of person that doesn't do well on that kind of stuff, you can just, you know, be on the phone for me for an hour or something and we can figure something out and do it that way too.

Okay. So people can go to your website to get this test. Right. So that's@norrishbalancethrive.com or I'll put a link in the show notes for people if they want to check it out. And are you doing a special deal for the podcast listeners today?

Yeah, so I think the best way to get started is just to talk to me on the phone. So if you come over to the website, you can book a consultation. You don't have to talk to anyone. You can actually book that for yourself online. And I'm going to do 50% off for anybody that has the code Greenfield.

So is that on a consult with you or is that on the. On the test itself?

No, that's on the consult with me.

Okay, cool. So it's a half price consult with you where you can give people direction as far as where they should go from there.

Yeah, exactly. So normally this, when I do this test, it's part of a bigger picture, you know, like, if you really want to like get better as fast as possible, then the best way to do it is to do a couple more tests too. Is quite common. But you could run this test by itself too, you know. But the best way to figure out what's right for you is to talk to me first. And then of course, I have much more information that I really do need in order to interpret the test.

Gotcha. And then I'll also make. If people want to see what the test actually looks like, I'm going to upload the PDF that you and I talked about just now to the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Organics. That's Organixx with an S so that you can see exactly what the test looks like. And also you sent me over a bunch of helpful notes as well, Chris. So I'm going to put those in the show notes as well, just in case. Folks, heads are still spinning from all of the different tests that we just went over in the audio version. So. So I'll try and make this really easy for you. If you're listening in, just go to bengruthelfitness.com organics and I'll have all the information over there about this relatively little known test that seems to be able to tell you quite a bit about your particularly your cellular metabolism. So anything else you want to share with folks, Chris, about this test?

Yeah, I think I would encourage people to. I know it's kind of dense and it's difficult and it's complicated, but this is where you're going to make your gains. Right. If you're just looking for 5 or 10% and that's going to be the difference between age group and pro, or back of the pack and front of the pack, then this is where you need to be looking. You know, like when I ride with my buddies, all they talk about is equipment, like have you got this new 11 speed derailleur and do you have these wheels and all of that stuff? And you know, that's nice. And don't get me wrong, I love all that stuff like masturbating over equipment, but really this cellular metabolism stuff, that's how you're gonna win bike races or marathons or swimming or whatever it is that you do.

Okay, gotcha. Cool. So this isn't just if you're sick, this is if you want to up your game.

Exactly. Cool.

I like it. All right, Chris, well, what I'm gonna do is put a link to this PDF, put a link over to the nourish, balance, thrive, and then also to the previous podcast that we did on testing for adrenal fatigue. Cause it sounds like that would be a pretty good one two combo to test yourself for cortisol and dharma, but then also test yourself for some of these other things. And this is far different than, for example, the blood test that I usually talked about. This is measuring different things. So it's really interesting. Obviously, there's a lot of different tests that you could do, but I would say that if you can't figure out what's going on and why you don't have energy or if you want to break through a performance barrier, this seems like a pretty good one to get.

Absolutely.

All right. Cool. Well, I'll put it all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Organics. And Chris, thanks for coming on the call today, man.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's a great honor. Thank you.

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