Why Your DNA Is Worthless (& What You Need To Focus On Instead).

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

But if you're going to harm yourself by taking something else too far because of the negativity and the fear around that, then you have to know what the side effects and outcomes are.

Just the genome, the labs, the microbiome, talking to people about their preferences and their lifestyle, their diet. And the problem was that we started just getting piles and piles and piles of paper in front of us whenever we would sit down and talk to a patient.

They really know the science, Been to their facilities, toured them. They're doing it the right way.

What's that even mean, the right way? Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. Happy New Year. By the way, I think this podcast that you're listening to is one that comes out in 2020. Welcome to the roaring twenties. Here we go, baby. Get your roaring twenties dance shoes on, because it's going to be a wild ride. All right, as promised, I have brought back on the show two popular guests, Dr. Matt Dawson and Mike Mullen from Wild Health. I've just really grown to love what these guys are doing. I've actually been recommending a lot of my clients to go to their Wild Health MD website to find a practitioner who practices what they call precision medicine. And what we actually did a whole podcast about this idea of using precision medicine to do things like enhance performance and increase longevity and balance hormones and address cardiovascular issues. We had a really good podcast. But what we didn't delve too deeply in on that show was the whole realm of DNA and genetics with these. These guys are absolute wizards in. And they even claim that your DNA alone is actually pretty worthless, which is quite a claim because a lot of people are, of course, taking their 23andMe results or MyHeritage or anything else and uploading it to all these different websites and trying to weave through the data. And Mike and Matt do this stuff with their patients, with their clients, and operate on a completely different level than what I've seen before. So as you listen in, I'm going to link to everything we talk about@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Genetics Podcast. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Genetics podcast. Dr. Dawson, or Matt, as I will call him because I'm super casual. He's in Lexington. What's up, Matt?

What's up? I'll call you Dr. Greenfield, just to kind of reverse it.

Yeah, definitely don't do that. Look at me. In hot water. God knows I'm not a doctor. By the way, are you recovering from the schooling I gave you in pickup basketball last in Kentucky?

I'm trying. I don't know what you call schooling exactly, but I don't think we want to dive into the details of what happened there.

Yeah, well, you played ball in college, didn't you?

No, not in college.

Okay. Yeah, but you, you, you, you had a history of playing, I thought. Would you play high school ball?

Yeah, I played. I mean, I mean, I'm from Kentucky, so it's like it's your birthright. You have to play a lot of basketball.

Yeah, that's like me in Idaho. We all grow potatoes in Idaho. At least that's what the rest of the world thinks. But for those of you listening, there's a lot more to Matt than just him being a Kentucky basketball fan and getting schooled by me in basketball. In our last pickup game, he lectures.

All over the world.

He's trained thousands of doctors, particularly in ultrasound, and now branched out into precision medicine, genomics, functional medicine, and operates out of a giant frickin castle in Lexington much of the time, which is kind of a trip in and of itself. And there's actually a health event coming up there in April. We'll tell you guys about at the end of the show. And then Mike is across the country in Bend, Oregon. And Mike was trained in emergency medicine and now practices in Bend, same thing as Matt at Precision Medicine Clinic over there. What's up, Mike?

Hey, Ben, how you doing?

Pretty good, pretty good. And these guys also have a podcast called Of All Things Wild Health. So theirtheir podcast, their website, everything is over at W Health Maryland. And I think it was you, Matt, who when I asked you guys what you wanted to really delve into regarding DNA, the first thing you said was, well, DNA alone is worthless. So I think that's a pretty good place to start. You guys can kind of decide who's going to reply to what here because I know you each have your own kind of twist and different perspective on these things, but why would you say that DNA alone is worthless?

Well, I mean, I think it's kind of a strange thing for someone to say who practices genomics based precision medicine, but we see this all the time with our patients. They come with, they've done a 23andMe or something else and ran it through some programs. And while it's important, it's kind of your human operating system. DNA is not destiny. Epigenetics are probably just as important. Mike, you want to answer that question and dive in because, yeah, we both rattle on about that for a while.

We can rattle on forever about it. I think worthless might be a little strong of a word. It's still definitely important, but it's just a piece of the puzzle. And like Matt was mentioning, epigenomics are, are probably the most important aspect, and that's the idea of how your body's actually transcribing your DNA. So are you up regulating or down regulating genes? And the tough part is you can't get at that by just running your 23andMe and running it through a basic report. My guess is like 90% of the people out there who run their DNA through a report probably leave thinking that they need to be taking more vitamin D or that they've got an MTHFR problem. But in reality, I see people who have all the vitamin D SNPs and have normal vitamin D or all the MTHFR SNPs but normal methylation. So it's really a more, it's a more nuanced approach where you have to talk to people, understand how they're upregulating, down regulating disease, get a sense of what their genes are actually transcribing through laboratory values. Let's take PGC1 alpha, for example. It's a co activator central in mitochondrial biogenesis. People have SNPs in their PGC1 alpha gene that can either upregulate or downregulate its function. So some people have more or less of this co activator running around. And that's great to know for sure because we know that mitochondrial biogenesis is important. But what's more important to know is how their life could be interacting with that gene, because you can actually increase your PG C1 alpha expression by fasting by zone two training exercise NAD. So there's so many other things that sort of fit into this puzzle rather than just the actual genome itself. So we recognized this from the beginning and in order to get that whole picture, we, we started testing for more than just the genome, the labs, the microbiome, talking to people about their preferences and their lifestyle, their diet. And the problem was that we started piles and piles and piles of paper in front of us whenever we would sit down and talk to a patient. And it was just taking forever. So we realized pretty early that we had to create some sort of digital product to help us sort of run an algorithm on our patients. And that's exactly what we did. The other thing we noticed that that was really challenging was that people were running their, their DNA through reports and they were actually finding things that were false. So people would run their report and they'd be told that they got an Apoe 4. But then when we run our data through our algorithm, they don't actually have an APOE 4 or maybe it was missing other important SNPs. So when you're, when you're running your DNA through one of these commercial reports out there, you're really putting yourself at risk and just sort of trusting that they've got their data right. And genetics and genomics is not a simple topic. It's actually pretty complicated and it's a little too easy for people out there to just to report things that may or may not be true.

Okay, I have a few questions based on this. First of all, you said that you guys are using a digital program yourself, but how is that any different than Genetic Genie or Prometheus or any of these other programs that folks are running their genes through?

That's a great question. Instead of just running people's genomes, we're also inputting their preferences, their lifestyle preferences, their laboratory values, their microbiome. It's actually collecting all of that data and assimilating it together so that we can give more precise recommendations to people. So instead of just looking at your MTHFR and your choline SNPs, I'm also looking at your homocysteine value and your TMAO and all these other inputs into the system so that I can more precisely give you recommendations about what supplements you should be taking, how you should modify your diet and your macronutrients. And it runs a combination of multiple different SNPs as well as multiple different laboratory values. To come to those conclusions.

Just to be clear, Ben, what Mike was referring to specifically with the APOE 4, that's an example where occasionally some of the consumer based reports you run, you'll see at the bottom they always have a disclaimer. This is for informational purposes only, but occasionally it just translates the RSIDs a little bit wrong. I think most of them are fairly accurate, but they're not all. We've just seen a few examples of that. Most of them are accurate, not all, but then more importantly are the polygenic risk scores. So to me the most important thing is when someone comes to us, sometimes they'll see on the oh, I've got an FTO SNP, so I'm sensitive to saturated fat. Well, there are seven FTO SNP's we look at, there's PPAR gamma, there's APOE four, there's lots of other things that make you sensitive or not. So we like the polygenic risk where we give different scores to different SNPs to give a little better recommendation as to how sensitive you are. And most of the time when people are interpreting these single SNPs, it's not a big deal. If you have a VDR and you're taking vitamin D, well, what's the worst that's going to happen? Your vitamin D is going to be a little higher than you need it to, not dangerous. We do, though, sometimes see issues with just an example if someone has a JAK2 polymorphism. So everybody knows that fasting is good. And if someone sees JAK2 polymorphism and they read that, oh, I've got a two times risk of leukemia or blood cancers, that could be really scary. And someone could take fasting too far. Frequently we'll see young women, for example, doing a lot of fasting, they see the jak2 all of a sudden in their amenorrheic. And that actual risk of leukemia needs to be put in context of what it actually means. If your lifetime risk of leukemia is 1.6 and you double that to 3.2. Okay, that's, it's interesting to know, it's important. But if you're going to harm yourself by taking something else too far because of the negativity and the fear around that, then you have to know what the, what the side effects and outcomes of those interventions are. So all of these single nucleotide polymorphism need to be put in context of the overall risks and how the interventions benefit or risk you as well. So that's what we mean when it's a little more complicated than looking at these single SNPs.

Okay, so my next question is about what you're actually pulling into this software. So you said blood work, you said DNA microbiome. And what about stuff from like micronutrient analyses, like a nutrival test or an organic system immune amino acids test, or let's say something other than a microbiome panel, like a Genova diagnostic stool panel? I mean, like these are the kind of things that I'm running on myself or the folks who I work with, and I'm just curious like how broad this is or are these just a few specialized tests that you pull into the software?

We've had to build this, Ben, and we've had to hire some data scientists and some people steeped in ontology and all these other complicated things. So not everything can be imported. Right now it's pretty robust in the genomics lab value, microbiome and probably just as importantly as patient preference too. We think that's really important. We recommend a perfect diet for someone. It's going to depend a little bit on genomics. They have a PEMT and need more choline. They have a fads too, and more Omega 3. But then what is their Omega 3 level? How are they methylating, what is their vitamin D and what do they like? Like if we hand someone a diet and they're not going to eat it, we wasted our time. So we've actually built that in as well. The other things that you mentioned, some of it can be manually inputted. We're working to build more and more automation. But it's pretty complex just right now to have the genomics, the blood testing, the microbiome and the patient preference. The other ones are on the horizon, but that's what we can input right now.

Okay, got it. Yeah. It's kind of funny you talked about like the FTO gene, which is one that's interesting because it dictates that if you eat a lot of saturated fat, you're gonna gain weight. There's so many things though that depend on lifestyle. Like I have that gene, you know, I'm double A for the FTO gene. And yet even though I don't really do it anymore, I followed a pretty strict high, high saturated fat ketogenic diet when I was training for Ironman, when I was a participant in that faster study at Jeff Volek's lab where they tested how endurance athletes fat burning response was correlated to their high, high dietary intake of fats, particularly saturated fats, heavy creams, butters, et cetera. And I was lean and mean. Of course that's because I had high levels of physical activity paired with an extremely high, probably like as far as a total percentage of the amount of fat I was taking in, my saturated fat was probably like 60 to 75%, like huge amount. Now it's closer to, I would say 20 to 30%. The rest is mostly monounsaturated fats. But I didn't gain a lick of weight and had trouble keeping weight on, on a high saturated fat diet despite having that FTO gene. So yeah, a big part of this is lifestyle as well.

Yeah, you're a perfect example of how the epigenomics play a huge role. Right. I mean without all that exercise you could have had a totally different response to that. Amount of saturated fat, but you're exercising like crazy or doing, you know, Iron man, so, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna have a totally different effect. And that's, that's why the conversation's important. And trying to dive into the epigenomics is so important.

Yeah. And there are other genes that you mentioned, you know, like, like the PPAR gene that's basically the master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis. And I would imagine someone could have, for example, the FTO gene that would dictate a high amount of weight gain in response to saturated fats, but might have other genetic factors that would influence a very high metabolic rate or high throughput in the mitochondria, like the PPAR gene, for example. And again, I know in my case, having gone to an actual metabolic lab, I used to, to run one for years and so I could test my metabolism whenever I wanted. And it's screaming high. I burn at rest, not doing anything at all, anywhere from 2,800 to 3,200 calories a day. And so again, for me, that FTO gene, when it comes to actual weight gain, might be a non factor. Of course, we should clarify that maybe, I don't know, are there still impacts based on things like, let's say, cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular risk or LDLP or things like that?

We think so, yeah. So just to piggyback on the PPAR Alpha discussion, we use the PPARs, both Alpha and Gamma, as well as the FTOs, to get a sense not just of people's dietary recommendations, whether they're saturated fat tolerant or carbon tolerant, but also to get a sense of their cardiovascular risk as well. Because typically people with, you know, P bar Alpha and Apoe 4 are going to lend themselves more to production of increased LDLP whenever they have high saturated fat diets. So that allows us to sort of tinker with the recommendations for the macronutrient profile in their diet based on whether they do or do not have these snips. So that's just, that's part of, and a decent amount of, but a part of what goes into these, these algorithms to help build the profiles for the patients.

Now what have you guys, what have you guys seen, for example? Like what, like walk me through, somebody comes into you, they get, you know, their, their DNA, their blood work, their microbiome, their preferences, all this stuff fed into this software tool. Are you guys actually collecting data about what you've seen, whether it be changes in, I don't know, telomere length or cardiovascular risk or any of These other parameters that you might be tracking.

Yeah, we have been so quite a few different parameters currently tracking. Let me just give you a patient example. So I had a 50 year old guy come in. He was under the impression that he was pretty much healthy, ate the way he was supposed to, ate a Mediterranean diet, at least what he thought was Mediterranean diet, and exercised regularly, took a bunch of vitamins and supplements. And we ran him through this program and we very quickly realized that his, his lipids were horrible. CRP was elevated, endothelial function was terrible. He had early stage insulin resistance, borderline metabolic syndrome. And based on that, we sort of calculated his, his lifetime cardiovascular risk as being off the charts. And his 10 year cardiovascular risk was around 12%. So a typical physician in a typical practice would probably recommend diet and exercise to this guy, but realistically they wouldn't have time to talk to them about what that meant. So six months later he'd end up getting started on medications. Statin, blood pressure, med, metformin. Luckily, with this algorithm, we now have the time to really talk more to the patient and see the entire picture. So we ran his genome, found that he had, you know, both PPAR Alpha SNPs, APOE4 SNP, seven of the FTPs. So basically saturated fats, the enamel, I mean carbs are the enemy. And talk to him about his quote unquote Mediterranean diet, which was really more cheese and pasta than it was veggies and olive oil. So having all of that information, we're now armed with the, with the, with the, the data that we need to really put him on the right diet. So instead of Mediterranean diet, we put him on a, on a low carb, high fat diet, but decrease the amount of saturated fat. And we had him start doing time restricted feeding and intermittent fasting. And in two months, this guy's lipids completely resolved. His CRP went from elevated to normal, his endothelial function had resolved, all of that without statins, without lisinopril, without metformin. And we're finding this on, on multiple patients now. And we ran some numbers recently and we've estimated that we've cut people's cardiovascular risk by about 50% in less than six months. And that's with most patients not being on medications. We've decreased people's LP A down 22%, which is more than you get if you took statins for two years. We've decreased an average LDLP by 357 points. CRP came down over 50% when people started out with an elevated CRP and the patient's HRV has increased by about 15 points just with sleep interventions and our genomic based training programs. Wow. So I feel like we've, we've had some, some really good responses and it's been. The nice thing to know is that for the most part it's been without pharmaceuticals. So it's really awesome to actually see this work with lifestyle intervention.

Yeah. Is this something like if someone were to go to a functional medicine doc, look up a physician, which I'll often recommend, go to the Functional Medical Practitioner Directory, even though increasingly I'm sending people to the Wild Health MD directory. But let's say someone goes to the Functional Medicine Practitioner Directory, finds a functional medicine doctor in their city and hires them. Is this the type of thing that most functional medicine docs are doing? Or is this where kind of like the difference lies between something like what you guys call precision medicine and functional medicine?

I think some people are doing it. The tool that we use is actually ours. No one's doing exactly what we're doing. But I think a lot of functional medicine doctors, they understand this and there's a lot of really great functional medicine doctors out there. So someone could go to one and talk to them about this. And I think you could probably pretty quickly figure out if they know what they're talking about or not, just by the look on their face when you mentioned some of this. That's one of our focuses. Honestly, in 2020, we ran into an issue to where we have more people coming to us than we can take care of. And after hearing and seeing the results that Mike was talking about, how this is really working, one of our big goals is to train physicians. In 2020. We actually have a fellowship that we started and we'll have a class starting July 1st. We're going to be doing some more courses because we want this information to get out there. I think people can find good physicians who understand it, but we think there's not enough. So we're going to try our best to spread the word and teach more physicians.

And if you train a doc like that, do they somehow get access to being able to use this software?

Yes. So we do have the software. So the people that are going to come into the fellowship, for example, and we don't have actually a website for that or anything made up because we're taking very small numbers, you could get a hold of us through the wildhealth.com website if you want to learn more about the fellowship. But yes, we'll be training them and then giving them the tool. We think that's important just because when we learned this, we started implementing it. But as Mike mentioned, it's an incredible amount of data you're looking at. So having a little bit of it automated for you, being able to upload it and then get a printout, then every. Everybody needs to be adjusted a little bit. The recommendations that you get, you're gonna have to adjust after talking to the patient. But it gives you a big head start. So yeah, the physicians that come through and we train, we're definitely gonna give this tool too. Our goal is to spread this as much as we can.

Now one thing that I know just from having talked with you quite a bit, Matt, you guys are pretty interested in this whole like anti aging longevity seen and have worked out some different protocols to reverse this so called biological age. So I want to hear a little bit more about what you're doing, particularly how you're testing, like if you're testing telomeres, if you're testing this newer clock called the Horvat clock based on methylation and then also what you guys. And kind of a big question, but that's okay, we have time. What you guys are doing is kind of like a gold standard anti aging protocol protocol, whether it be like different supplements or peptides or so called biohacks or anything else like that. So kind of a two part question, but how are you tracking and testing aging right now? And then what would be like the gold standard wild health protocol?

Yeah, this is a really hot topic that we're really excited about and interested in. I think it's important to step back before we talk about specific peptides and things and just say we have to get the basics right first. Everybody's excited to talk about supplements, supplements and peptides, but really the best longevity protocol is optimizing your sleep, your diet, your exercise, your environment, water, sunlight, all of those things. So it's. We usually don't talk about our longevity protocols with patients until a few months in. We want to see that they're actually paying attention to the basics and not just trying to jump straight to there because that's where we get a big difference initially. And those results that Mike was talking about, a lot of those, those are lifestyle. That's without the peptide.

Yeah, you're talking about the classic CEO working with a functional medicine doc. And they've got all their peptides in a little cooler bag maybe, you know, stowed on the, on the plane overhead while they're flying hither and yon and, you know, have their, have their cell phone up and wifi cranking out on the airplane and, you know, not blocking any light, not doing any grounding or earthing. But they, you know, they get to their hotel and they inject their peptides and they're good to go.

Right?

Yeah. Sleeping three hours a night, eating fast food on the road. Exactly. So we are very strict and talk about that quite a bit with patients. Now, luckily we have a lot of patients who are really motivated. They listen to your show, they understand a lot of the basics. And once we've got their lab tests where we need to be optimizing those risk factors, then we do get really excited to talk about longevity. And the way we approach it is similar to how we approach, approach everything else. It's very personalized, it's genomics based, it's preference based, it's other risk factor based. So you ask about how we measure it. We don't think telomeres are the best way to measure the Horvath clock, like you mentioned, we think is probably the best way to measure that. There are a few different commercial tests out there. The one that we're going to be using soon is called a true age test, which it's actually not available yet. It will be. And actually, as I mentioned that I'm not 100% sure I'm allowed to speak about it, but Horvath, who you mentioned, is behind it and we think it's a really great test. It'll be out in a couple months. We've been using the DNA age test before then. And what we do, because we like to be very objective and data driven, is send DNA age or true age, one of these DNA methylation tests to get a biologic age first. If we're going to try something with someone, we want to be able to measure it. We don't want to put someone on a protocol and then not know if we're having success or not. So we'll send the biologic age test, get an age, and then we start a protocol. I mean, just to go over a few of the basic ones.

Well, actually, before you get into that protocol, a lot of people might not really realize the difference between something like a measurement of this Horvath clock and something like a telomere analysis. So the Horvath clock is literally testing the actual methylation within the body, Correct?

Exactly. Yeah. And I think probably Horvath, he'll probably win a Nobel Prize. It's amazing work. It's really exciting. I think it's an exciting time to be alive. The fact that forever people wanted to improve longevity and health span, we've not had a good measure of it. So it's a really exciting time. And these have just been out not that long at all. So there's a lot of work still to be done. But I think it's better than the telomeres we think just are not consistent enough. We've sent them on people, two tests on the same person to get different results. So we're not a big fan of that. Hopefully in the future it'll be better.

Right. And that methylation, that's basically an epigenomic test. That's exactly the type of epigenetic test that you're referring to where you can actually see how the DNA is being methylated in response to certain lifestyle factors and as a result of that make a pretty predictive and accurate analysis of someone's true biological age or from what I understand, even how long they're going to live, like how many years are left in that particular biological organism.

Yeah, he has a specific calculator called the Grim age calculator as well that does that and just have a little bit of humility around it. We think it's the best test now. There'll probably be better tests in the future. But we think it's a good test to measure our progress at least. And once we have that, then we can start someone on a protocol. So we know, for example resveratrol, NAD fasting, exercise, a lot of these things are helpful. The way that we approach that is one, we think kind of a pulse press cycle is important. So usually we'll have someone, we'll divide them up into kind of a three month anabolic epigenetic reprogramming and then three months of more autophagy based and kind of cellular cleanup. So we don't do just a straight protocol all the time. Now what we use during those times is going to depend on genomics a little bit as well. Just to give you a few examples, since we mentioned PGC1 Alpha, I'll talk about that again that some people have lower expression of PGC1 alpha. And we'll obviously first start with, hey, if you want to do fasting exercise cold, you're going to increase and upregulate your expression. But there's also a peptide called MOT SC that upregulates it. So that could be something very helpful with someone with low PGC1alpha. As we age, everyone's activity of PGC1alpha and levels decrease so sometimes that peptide can be helpful. Resveratrol, for example, if someone has, like I mentioned earlier, the JAK2 polymorphism, a little bit of increased risk, then we may have them take a little more resveratrol. Nad. We're big fans of NAD and NAD precursors. We may change the dose a little bit depending on if, for example, they have a SIRT one that is decreased in general, we know we can upregulate that with nad.

Wait, would these all be things that you'd be. Because you said there were two different cycles that you'll bring people through, almost like pressing and pulsing, kind of like a catabolic phase and then an anabolic phase, which I think is very interesting. I haven't heard of that approach before, but everything you just talked about, like motc, resveratrol, nad, et cetera, would you be using that during the catabolic phase?

So those we would be using kind of all the time. We may do a little more NAD during the autophagy phase, the anabolic phase, for example. So just an example of that, you probably, I'm sure you saw the study where the kind of headline was we reversed biologic age by a year and a half or two and a half years.

This was like the DHEA. What was it? DHEA, metformin, something else.

Exactly. So DHEA, metformin,. Growth hormone, so the growth hormone, for example. That's something that there's a lot of debate around. It's something that for certain individuals could fall under the anabolic phase, not growth hormone itself. That is illegal to prescribe other than for very specific reasons. But there are peptides for that. So not for everyone, but in certain individuals, especially maybe older, where you're really more focused on muscle growth, bone density, or IGF levels, or IGF levels, we may want to put those on a growth hormone secretagog or amplifier during the anabolic phase for strength and bone density.

But you're drawing a differentiation between just taking growth hormone versus taking like a peptide. That would be a growth hormone secretagogue or growth hormone accelerator.

Exactly. So there's no great studies on this, but in general, we think that the peptide and having your body increase its own production is probably a better way to do that. And just to be clear, too, this is not for everyone. There are some potential risks with this. We don't actually know how well defined those are, but there are some suggestions that increase the growth hormone in some people could lead to a little bit of increase in colorectal cancer. So this is a Perfect example of how every person is different. If someone has a family history of colorectal cancer, then this may not be right for them. If they don't, and we really want to focus on strength as they age, then this could be a really great peptide, especially as it was in the one study. And just to go back to that study, I don't want to give people the wrong impression. That study really was a very limited study. It didn't really prove that those medications reversed aging. It was about the thymus gland only. But it did give us a little bit of hint of maybe there's something there. And if we talk to individuals, then we can come up with these protocols. Some people, growth hormone peptides, the screedogs may be helpful. Some people, they don't. Metformin is another great example of how this should be very individualized. With metformin, if we have someone like you as an athlete or professional athlete, we're definitely, because of the exercise effects, we're not going to recommend metformin in their longevity protocol. Someone with a hemoglobin A1c of 6 or higher, we definitely are going to. And then you have people kind of in the middle who aren't really trying to perform or compete. And it's kind of a trade off between longevity and performance. And those people, we may or may not use it and we may change the dosage slightly.

A few thoughts I have on that. First of all, I saw that study and I tweeted out about it and I commented that if I could have actually chosen the things to use in that study A, I would have considered some natural growth hormone increasing food based products, particularly something like Colostrum for example, or the use of some of these peptides. And as you, as you alluded to, the peptides are in my opinion safer because when you're taking hgh, you're going to promote unnatural levels, you're going to suppress your natural production, whereas the peptides are just causing your body to naturally produce its own growth hormone. You get a downregulation of pituitary function when you take growth hormone versus pituitary. Doesn't seem to be that impacted via the use of some of these peptides. Peptides. And there's also way, way lower risk of having what would be kind of like Attack of Laxis, right? Like a decrease in response to growth hormone because of those persistent elevated concentrations. You don't really see that with peptides. And I mean, just, you know, it's very interesting. Peptides are also cheaper, I think Growth hormone is like a thousand bucks or more a month in some cases. And peptides, you know, 200, 250amonth in comparison. So that's, that's one thing. And then I also commented that even though I think the DHEA could be a sound approach, I don't have many issues with a 2550 mig dose of DHEA a day, especially if folks aren't competing in a World Doping association sanctioned sport or something like that. Even the metformin, I'm a bigger fan of natural derivatives. Not just exercise and fasting, but also low carbohydrate diet. Berberine, bitter melon, apple cider vinegar, cinnamon, and some of these things that I think might produce a little less mitochondrial dysregulation or downregulation of VO2 or lactic acidosis, things like that, compared to metformin. So it'd be interesting to see that study repeated with doing things the way that I might have done it, or using a slightly different approach.

Yeah, we totally agree about peptides. I think they are a safer alternative in general and you can kind of go crazy with them with these longevity protocols. Potentially could use Dihexa if someone's BDNF SNP is low. Epitalon, we may use it more frequently if they've got a Tert or Turk or RTL1 for a shorter telomere length. There's a lot of things we could do, but it's also important, I guess, I think two things. Number one, that we have some humility around these. We don't think there are the side effects of a lot of other pharmacologic medications, but we don't have the long term experience yet. So it's really important to be honest with you patients about that and talk about the risks and to measure over time. We want to measure over time and make sure there aren't issues. And it's also really important to talk about the natural ways. If someone wants to increase their growth hormone. I mean, sauna has been shown to increase growth hormone. If they want to increase their BDNF instead of Dihexa, we can talk about robust exercise. So we always want to talk about the natural alternatives, but we're not afraid when the risks are high enough, especially to go to some peptides. If someone has two copies of Apoe 4 and they're starting to have some mental decline, then we're, we're totally comfortable Talking about cerebralysin, FGL, RG3, all of these things that may have a benefit because when the risk get higher than the aggressiveness needs to be a little higher as well. So these are really great tools to use with people as long as you talk about the risks and benefit ratio.

Yeah. Even growth hormone receptor sensitivity. This is something I talk about in my new book, Boundless. I discuss how some of the issues with the use of growth hormones seem to be more related to growth hormone receptor sensitivity than growth hormone itself. And it's really interesting. A lot of these so called sirtuin activating compounds that can work alongside with something like NAD to help to protect DNA, which is actually a fantastic anti aging strategy. Many of them also, such as carcetin or fisetin kind of operate similarly. These can actually increase growth hormone receptor sensitivity. And so that would be something else to consider, would be, you know, are you actually sensitive to what your pituitary gland is already churning out along with some of the other lifestyle things that you're recommending?

Yeah. And Mike used the word tinkering earlier. And we don't like to think of ourselves as physicians, as tinkerers, but that's kind of what we are. We need to. Humans are complicated and no matter how precise we are looking at the genomics and everything else we want to retest, that's where we look at the biologic age. Later, when it comes to this genomic stuff, we compared to what we knew 10 years ago, we're light years ahead. It's incredible. But I do think 10 years from now we're going to look back at what we know now and kind of laugh at ourselves. So as exciting as this is to put forth these protocols, I think I want to stress to people that if you're going to start doing this, you probably need to have a physician that's following along or someone that understands so that you can make sure there's not some unintended consequence that happens when you start messing with your biologic system.

Yeah, well, hopefully 10 years from now we've also begun to use different forms of WI FI signaling and EMF signaling that are more biologically compatible with the body. So we're not fighting an uphill battle like I know now. You know, there are folks working on WI FI routers with signals that are a little bit more biologically compatible. And you know, I know that you guys use pulsed electromagnetic field therapy in your treatments and I use that quite a bit in myself and recommend it to a lot of the athletes and the clients who I work with. And you know, it's technically a biologically compatible EMF signal, you know, and and it can carry a frequency. It could potentially be used as more of a, you know, like a, like a cell communication signal. But I would love to see, you know, folks in the telecommunications industry focusing more on using biological appropriate signals. Because I think if not 10 years from now, yeah, we're have a lot of new anti aging strategies but at the same time, you know, we're going to be putting water on the fire on one end and gasoline on the other end with all these non native EMFs. So I would hope that that field kind of progresses alongside the anti aging field or else I think the two will just continue to battle against each other. So I also wanted to ask you with regards to this whole idea of how having an autophagy phase and having an anabolic phase, are you tinkering, so to speak, with the exercise protocol during those phases as well?

Let me just go ahead and say that Matt heard me wrong. I didn't say tinkering, I said data driven intervention modification. Close, very close. We are actually changing the exercise plans through those. So during the, during that initial phase, the, the phase that might may or may not include growth hormone as well as the DHEA and the, the fasting, there's typically more of an anabolic style of exercise. We do continue that anabolic phase to some degree during the, the, the, the cell sort of regeneration, the autophagy phase where people can continue anabolic if they want to, but we're going to change the rep schemes and we also tend to sort of push people more towards HIIT and endurance activity during those because we're really trying to do things like upregulate that PGC1 alpha for example. And you know, so some zone two training or potentially some short interval training during that, during that phase as well. So there is a modification there. And I think we, I don't know if we mentioned it, but in that, in that algorithm as well, we also create these longevity exercise programs for all of our patients that are specific to their both their genetic predispositions as well as their preferences in terms of anabolic versus endurance activity. So we can kind of use those and modify those during these three month cycles, for example.

Okay, got it. So the other thing I would imagine during that autophagy phase is just like more fasting, walking, sauna, easy light, restorative type of exercise.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So the fasting is predominantly in the autophagy phase. There's a little bit mixed in during the anabolic phase mostly towards the end of the three month cycle. But Then really get aggressive with it during the autophagy phase.

Yeah, that's something that I tend to do. I use a lot of times with the programming I'm doing with my clients. Many of them will start off with a little bit of a cleanse phase. I like some of Dr. John Douyard's work out of Boulder, Colorado where he has one called the Colorado Cleanse. He has something similar, similar to Dr. Valter Longo's fasting mimicking diet. Dr. Longo has the Prolon kit with all these prepackaged meals that he'll send to you that are about 40% of the total calorie intake you'd normally take in. And Dr. Douillard's is a little bit more ayurvedic based. He's using kitchari cleanses and stews and some ayurvedic cleansing herbs. And occasionally I'll have people do something more like the quicksilver over, you know, push, catch, detox. It just kind of depends, you know, what's, what's high, you know, metals or liver enzymes or what have you. Or sometimes it's just like a super low fodmap diet if they've got, you know, sibo issues. But typically during that initial phase, you know, everybody's especially like the crossfitters or the weightlifters or the elite athletes, they're flipping out because I've got them like, you know, walking a half hour a day in a fasted state, doing some cold soaks, breath work, sauna, you know, and all this, this more kind of cleanup type of activity that puts the body in a more parasympathetic state. But then once that's done, then I'm shifting folks to things like a Weston A. Price diet with liver and ghee and cream and egg yolks and cod liver oil combined with heavy lifting and harder intervals. And then on a quarterly basis shifting back into a five day fasting mimicking diet again to clean things up. But it really, it is true, the body responds very well to almost like these feast famine cycles. And that's not just related to food, that's also related to exercise. I mean even the old school strength conditioning coaches like Tudor Bompa is probably the most famous who developed one of the first books on periodization. We know that that stair stepping effect, pushing hard, backing off, pushing hard, backing off is just a far better approach than training the same same way day in and day out. It just takes careful planning and forethought and you know, kind of the type of approach you guys are using?

Yeah, 100. And you can. You can have some pretty amazing effects when you start combining those things like fasting with some of the molecules that mimic fasting as well. Like, you know, we were talking about rapamycin and resveratrol and nad. All those things can, like, combined with fasting. All of a sudden you're just getting these, these massive inputs into the system.

Yeah. What do you guys do as far as your NAD protocol? Obviously, obviously this is something that goes all over the place. I recently had David Sinclair on and obviously he's a big fan of oral nmn. I've had other folks on who are a big fan of using like intravenous nad, but combining that with methyl donors like trimethylglycine or sami. Other people are using more of like the elysium or the chromadex approach of taking oral nr. What do you guys use in your practice?

It a lot depends on the patient preference. So I think the data on whether IV sub qnad versus oral NR versus sublingual nmn, I don't think the data is great on one being better than the other. So it kind of depends on the patient. If it's a local patient we have and they want to do ivnad, we've seen good results with that. I mean, just things like HRV and just how they feel. There's good results. However, if somebody's not really into IV or they want to do sub Q, which we can send them sub qnad if they don't want to. To do that. We think the oral NR is just fine. There's some really great products like Resvericel from Thorne that has NR with resveratrol and quercetin and some betaine. That's a great product. There's also nasal spray, which sometimes we use, which is a cool product. It's RG3, methylcobalamin and NAD. So you have that, you have that methyl donor as well. So there's a lot of different, different options. And there's just a straight NAD nasal spray we like as well. We're kind of agnostic as to which one right now. Hopefully there's going to be more data in the future. But it's a. It's a space where we think any of them probably work well. And we. So we go on on patient preference and we see how do people respond to different ones and how they feel. That's all we can really do right now.

I will say that I think that dose is probably, probably higher than most of the OP out there. So it's probably closer to 600 milligrams for example, as opposed to 300, which is what you'll see with a lot of the options out there for NR and nmn.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of just kind of topping off levels as high as possible using something like an IV or even a transdermal patch protocol. And then after that oral administration to keep levels topped off. Like I right now use like a sublingual NMN just because I've seen a little bit better data on that winding up in the hypothalamus, thalamus and having a little bit more of a neural effect. And then I also have that nasal spray that you talked about and I kind of bounce back and forth between those. I use a brand by alive by nature. I use their NMN and their NAD intranasal spray. And then just when I'm traveling or when I happen to be near a clinic where I can get one, I'll do the IV treatment and then I get patches which are really great for like long haul flights where you want a slow bleed of NAD into the system. So there's a few different ways to get it in. But you also mentioned mat betaine, which, yeah, I think Thorne has that in their product and a few other companies do as well. And that's another really, really good methyl donor. And I think that's important to make sure that you're getting a lot of good methyl donors in along with nad, just because methylation increases so dramatically when you're using like these IVs and supplements. So you guys mentioned that you're doing quite a bit with peptides. You mentioned Moss C, which is a great one for the mitochondria or the PPAR we were talking about. You mentioned a few of these growth hormone type of peptides. I would imagine things like ipamorelin or Tessamorelin or some of those. But what are a few of the other favorite peptides that you use in your practice?

Yeah, so it totally depends on the goal of the patient. So if we're talking about kind of neurocognitive optimization, we really like cmax. If someone has a little bit of anxiety as well, then C Lunc is also a really interesting one. So again it just depends on what they want. Dihexa as well for neuro optimization. So it depends on what they want. As far as the growth hormone secretagogues, we generally prefer Ipamorelin and CJC 1295. We've had good results with that. It Seems to work pretty well. And there are different methods of delivery as well. It used to be owned, injectable. There's a cream now, and there's some other ways to take that. So we like those Epitalon, which we mentioned before. We think that's. That's a good one. There's a lot of these peptides. The problem is there aren't many human studies. There are some good human studies on epitalon, so it's. It's a nice one to add as well. And then if someone, if their goal is skin health, regrowing, hair, things like that, there's some cool peptides like ghk, zinc, thymulin. There's a. There's a triple combination product we like from TaylorMade with GHK, copper, zinc, thiamulin and minoxidil, which is a pretty cool spray product. So there's so many out there. It just kind of depends on, hey, what's your goal? What do you want to accomplish?

Yeah, that's a spray product, meaning that that's something being used transdermally, correct?

Yeah, exactly. And then the big ones like BPC157 and Thymosyn beta, those great for athletes who are injured. It just speeds up recovery so much.

Yeah. And you guys are working with TaylorMade primarily to get your peptides?

Yeah, peptides are. You can get them anywhere on the Internet now. It's such an unregulated space that we get pretty worried when we have patients just ordering random research peptides off the Internet. TaylorMade, we know those guys. Actually, one of the owners and founders, Ryan Smith, you probably know, he was a medical student of mine at uk, so known Ryan for a long time. Can they really know the science? Been to their facilities, toured them. They're doing it the right way, so we just trust them. And that's where we tend to get all of our peptides. So we're not worried about the quality.

What's that even mean, the right way?

Well, the research peptides that you buy on the Internet could come from anywhere. They could be tainted with anything. If you don't have a GC mass spec, you have no idea which one you're getting. TaylorMade, they are inspected by the FDA. They. It's far. Everything is pharmaceutical grade. They have multiple pharmacists on staff. They're very open. They'll let you tour their facilities. I don't think most of these other places that are just making peptides from China or wherever else they're getting them. I don't think Many other places have that level of transparency.

Okay, got it. And. And so they're pretty close to where you're at, Matt, down in Lexington. TaylorMade is. And then you've also got the Castle down in Lexington, which I visited for the first time last year for a health conference that you put on there. And it was just like this amazing castle you're kind of turning into a biohacking facility. And I'm curious a if you're kind of playing around with any new toys down there or any new things that you found more in the realm of technology than medications or supplements. And then also where you guys are at as far as any events that you're putting on there. Because I think last time I was there, my kids came down and taught a cooking class and you guys were doing a bunch of physician trainer courses and there were some events open to the general public and it's like 15 minutes from the airport and the horse racing track. Kind of a cool spot. But fill me in on any kind of new toys you've added to the Castle from a biohacking standpoint and what you're up to down there from an education standpoint.

Yeah, we have a spa behind the Castle where most of kind of the relaxation and a lot of the biohacking stuff. We have a float tank, century deprivation, float tank, sauna, cryotherapy, pemf, all the kind of standard stuff that you would have really. We at the Castle. The main thing that I like to talk about when people come there though is just food and farming. About 80 to 85% of the food that we serve there comes from the land we grow. We have a massive organic garden. We have sheep and goats and chicken. There's a truffle orchard. So when people come, it's on 110 acre working farm. We like for people to kind of explore the farm, be in nature, be connected to their food, go gather eggs if they want to, from the, from the chicken coop. And it's really more of a relaxation time. We do have the biohacking things, but just being in nature a lot of times is the, is the best treatment for someone coming from the city or in a hectic lifestyle.

Now what about events that you guys are doing there?

Yeah, so in April, April 7th through the 9th, if you go to wildhealth.com you can find a link. We're going to do a course. It's mainly for physicians. We think that's the need right now. We think they're needs to be more physicians trained in this genomics based kind of functional and precision medicine. So we're going to have a course for physicians. You're going to be there. We've got some other great people there. You can see the lineup of who all is going to be there. And we're really going to focus on teaching the things that we were just talking about today, how to actually apply the genomics, how to take it in context of the person and not just look at individual SNPs, but how the SNPs relate together, how they relate to your lab work, how you can accomplish goals by looking at the SNPs and designing lifestyle treatments, diet, exercise and medications as well when needed. So it's a physician course. It's open to anyone. I think a lot of your listeners have a really great knowledge base and would enjoy it. So we're not closing it down and having it only for physicians. But if you are a physician and practitioner that really wants to learn this, that's what this is designed for.

Did you say it was wildhealth.com or wildhealthmd.com doctor wildhealth.com wildhealth.com okay, I think I said wildhealthmd.com before, but okay. So another thing that I'm curious about is, you know, I kind of like to hear how doctors like you guys are actually practicing what you preach. Like, you know, what kind of trench you're living in if you're so busy with your practice that maybe you're sacrificing yourself for others and not incorporating a lot of this stuff or what your actual routines look like. So I was wondering if you guys could just give me a basic overview of some of what you would consider to be the biggest wins for you for either energy throughout the day or things you're incorporating from a longevity standpoint or a health standpoint or a fat loss muscle gain standpoint. So you guys can decide who goes first. But I'd just love to hear a little bit more about some of the coolest things you're up to lately as far as your own personal routine. Some things you're excited about that you think might fly under the radar, or things that have really turned out to be big wins for you.

It's really the basics, kind of intermittent fasting for me. I kind of have usually a 168 window or an 186 window. I adjust that daily based on my activity levels. Though if I work out early, I'll break my fast earlier. The goal is to work out a little later. So I have a, a, a Bigger window.

Okay, so what, what's in a scenario like that? What's the workout and what's the meal that you break the fast look like.

A normal workout for me. So I have very little time. Like you mentioned, a lot of times physicians will let themselves go because they're treating patients so long. So the way I have got around that I used to train for Ironman, did a lot of volume. I just do not have the time with four kids in a busy practice. So I am in the sauna a lot of times and to really kind of hack the speed, sometimes I'll go so far as I'll get in the sauna all the way, turned all the way up 140 to 160 degrees. I've got a 90 pound kettlebell in there. I have BFR bands, so 10 to 15 minute kettlebell swings sometimes with all four extremities on and off. With blood flow restriction, you can really get a pretty intense workout in pretty quickly with that. I'll usually do a cold shower right afterwards. Sometimes I'll separate the cold a little while just so I continue to have a little bit of the inflammation, the hormetic effect. But a cold usually sometime pretty soon after or an hour or two after the food afterwards. My go to is sardines. I think sardines are the world's perfect food. The omega 3 content, the collagen protein, the little organs that are in there, that and walnuts and kind of some cooked greens are really my go to food. Sometimes I'll break that fast afterwards with a smoothie of greens. Eggs, curcumin, a lot of really high nutrient dense foods. My coffee, if I just want to, if I want to FS a little bit longer but have some protein. I've started putting an egg or two in my coffee and blending it up. That was cinnamon and it's really delicious. It's frothy without the dairy. It's got that protein, a little bit of fat. To me, that's a really great. I feel cognitively on fire if I have a coffee with some lion's mane and a couple eggs and some cinnamon right after a pretty intense workout like that. So that's an ideal morning routine for me. And most of the time I'm able to fit that into the schedule because it just doesn't take that long when you crush yourself in the sauna in heat.

Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna have to try that egg yolk trick. And I'm on board the sardine thing as a matter of fact, my family has this little pizza joint they like to go to here in Spokane. They really make these, these wonderful gluten free pizzas. But you know, I'm not a real, real carboholic and so I'll order like one or two slices of the pizza, but I always sneak in a can of sardines in this giant little miron glass jar container of the really, really good spicy olive oil like keep at home. So I'll order pizza and just you know, once, once the server has turned their back. So I'm not breaking any, any food policies in the restaurant. I just cover my pizza and sardines and olive oil and I swear by the sardines as well. Just not on the airplane. I learned that lesson the hard way. Not on the airplane. How about you Mike? What, what do you got for big wins?

Big wins recently. So one of my just favorite things that I've started doing is called sit intervals S I T sprint interval training. I've replaced almost exclusively all of my zone two with sit intervals. So imagine you get on a bike, I've got a Concept 2 bike, for example, and you do a 20 second sprint basically all out. So you know, ideally over six or 700 watts, and then you just sort of spin easy for three minutes and you repeat that cycle six times. And there was a study that came out of Russia showing equal or in some cases better mitochondrial biogenesis from that as opposed to an hour, an hour and a half of zone two training. So that's been a great win in terms of time savings. And I've also just felt a lot better doing it. I think you also get a little bit more strength with that, which is nice. Actually. A little bit of hypertrophy from all the, the sprint training. Other, other wins for me recently was definitely wearing a CGM for a few months. The amount that I learned from wearing that CGM was just, just astronomical. I mean I thought I had a great diet. I thought I had everything dialed in micronutrient wise. And then you put a CGM on and then all of a sudden the data is just slapping you directly in the face. It's amazing how important that first meal of the day is and how you break your fast. So if you're fasting for 14, 16, 18 hours and then you eat a meal, the composition of that meal, at least for me personally, was dramatically, dramatically altered. The response on my CGM in terms of what that glucose spike look like, putting in a little exercise immediately before or after that meal dramatically changed that Spike. Adding some fiber or some protein or fat to that first meal dramatically changed that spike. And that's, I think probably altered the way that I, that I will eat for the rest of my life just from wearing a CGM for a few months. And then most recently I started roasting my own coffee, which is, is super fun and awesome. If any of your listeners out there have ever thought about trying it, you should without a doubt try roasting, getting some green beans, you can get them organic, offline, and then you can either roast them directly on a pan, get a popcorn popper, or you can even go fancy and get a real nice roaster. But it's amazing what one or two day old coffee tastes like. It's phenomenal. And I know that doesn't have much to do with health, but.

No, it does. Coffee definitely has something to do with health. I'm jaded because I own a company that sells coffee, but yeah, I mean, my dad was a coffee roaster growing up and in on, you know, he had the big coffee roaster, the Diedrich coffee roaster from Sandpoint, Idaho out in the, out in the workshop. And that thing was just amazing. And it was so wonderful to just, you know, go through his books and see all the different temperatures and the roasting styles and, and how much you can change a coffee. You know, he's in the water filtration industry now and that started because he figured out the two things to affect the flavor of the coffee. The most, aside from the quality of the bean, is the roasting process and then the water, water that's used to extract the coffee from the bean. So the other thing that I wanted to mention is that that high intensity repeat training you're doing is legit. Like it works very well and it's a very low barrier entry. That's what I like is like, you know, I do it on walks sometimes, right? Like I'll walk and I'll tell myself, okay, every other telephone pole I'm going to do 10 burpees or I'm going to do a short 10 to 30 second sprint, right? It's all the creatine 5 phosphagen system. It's not draining. It's a very exhilarating way to work out. And as you noted, the research behind it's pretty robust as far as, you know, getting results that are far different than what you get from a metcon workout. And the other thing that kind of flies under the radar is that because it's not glycolytic, it can be done in like a fasting or in a low carb state without you feeling too drained. So yeah, it's a cool protocol. I like it. And you guys have given me some ideas of a few things to do, like put some egg yolks in my coffee with the lion's mane, the cinnamon. That's one I haven't tried yet, Matt. Although what I'll probably do is I've been drinking cacao tea lately made out of cacao shells from this company called My Cacao. And I may actually try the egg yolks and the lion's mane in, in my chocolate tea, which I think could actually be pretty good. You got me. You got me brainstorming now.

One thing I would say to people though who hear us talk about these protocols and like, I don't have a sauna at home, I may not have a air down bike or things like that. It doesn't have to be complicated. I like how you talk about running from pole to pole. I talk to patients all the time about I always have a kettlebell in my car. And if on the way home from work I haven't had time to work out and I'm going to get home, I've got four kids, I'm not going to be able to work out when I get home. Just pull over and in 10 minutes kettlebell swings. Or even if you don't have a kettlebell, just doing 100 burpees. Especially with some BFR bands, that's a pretty intense workout that you've done some quality work that day. If you do that 10 minute workout on your way home, just stopping at a park. So it doesn't have to be complicated if you add some intensity in like that or even people who work all day sitting in an office frequently, I'll tell them, look, to start, just get a 20 pound kettlebell, set a timer every hour. When it goes off, stand up, do 20 to 30 kettlebell swings and that exercise, snacking. By the end of the day, you've done a fair amount of work. You've done a fair amount of whole body work. So it doesn't have to be complicated. Yeah.

Now I know why your electric car kept running out of battery juice last time I visited. Because you had a kettlebell in the back. That explains it. Any more charging stations down there in Lexington? Well, guys, yeah. I love talking to you and I love the work that you're doing. I am just super excited about coming down to the Castle in April for that event and I would love to see as many of our listeners as possible. And again, that one, it's open to the general public, kind of geared towards physicians. So if you come and you're the general public, you'd probably want to be kind of maybe somebody who listens to this podcast frequently or has their head wrapped around some of this stuff. Otherwise, it might go over some people's heads. But I think by the time this podcast comes out, registration will be up for that event. April 7th through the 9th, I'm bringing Jessa and the boys down, will be at the castle and Mike will be there and Matt will be there. And even if you don't come to that, I do encourage you to go to the wildhealth.com website and maybe look into working with one of the docs there who's using the software that we talked about earlier. And I just love what these guys are doing in the whole realm of precision medicine. So check out their website, wildhealth.com and then also BenGreenfieldFitness.com GeneticsPodcast I will link to a lot of the stuff we talked about, including some of the studies on the DNA methylation clock and this growth hormone DHEA metformin study and anything else mentioned in this episode you'll be able to find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com genetics podcast. In the meantime, Matt and Mike, thanks for coming on the show, guys.

Thanks for having us.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Dr. Matt Dawson and Mike Mullen signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com having amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.