Methylation: The Best Kept Optimal Health Secret | TUH #005

Foreign. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Breca. I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you guys for listening and I hope you've been enjoying the show. You know, it's my mission in life every week to bring you guys the most interesting minds in science, longevity, anti aging, biohacking, and everything in between. This entire show is designed to turn you into the ultimate human. And as we kind of ramp up the show, and I hope you've been enjoying it so far, I just thought it was important, before we go on this journey to just take a minute and really introduce myself, give you a little bit of background on myself and tell you what inspired me to start the Ultimate Human Podcast and really bring you guys along on this journey. You know, as Bob, by way of background, I'm a human biologist. I'm not a physician. My undergraduate degrees are in biology and human biology. I went to a branch campus at University of Maryland, got my first degree in biology because I'm just fascinated by the form and the function of the human body. I then went to grad school in Chicago at the National University of Health Sciences. I got a second degree in human biology. So it was a four year concentration in human beings. And while I was there, I took an inordinate amount of physiology and gross anatomy classes, cadaver anatomy, gross anatomy, neurology. And I just became more and more fascinated with the human body and the ability of it to heal itself, to heal the world around it. And when I left grad school, I went to work in a niche market of life insurance. It's called the life settlement industry. And believe it or not, every year there are billions and billions of dollars of financial services instruments that are put in place based on how many more months people have left on Earth. And yes, how many more months. Things like reverse mortgages, annuities and life insurance are all based on the mortality of human beings. So in other words, when a life insurance company takes 25 million or 5 million or $10 million worth of risk on your life, only one variable matters. And so I was a part of a team that would assess this information, medical records and demographic information, and we would predict for the life insurance company how many more months you had left on Earth. And to be honest with you, that was very unfulfilling work. It was a very inauthentic time of my life. I was a partner to a number of people during that time that I wasn't a very good partner to. I was very inauthentic about the way that I was living. I wasn't making an impact on humanity. I wasn't changing anybody's life. I was basically taking all of my education, all my expertise, and all the long hours at work, and I was plowing that into just determining how many more months somebody had left on earth and giving that information over to an insurance company or an investor so that they can make an educated financial investment on whether or not that was good risk to take on that person's life. And if you don't think that that's accurate science, just think about what happened in the 2008, 2009 financial services crisis with life insurance companies. We had about 362,364banks fail, not one life insurance company failed. And there's no other financial services enterprise anywhere in the world that would take that level of financial risk on a single variable. Remember, only one thing matters to a life insurance company. How many more months you have left on Earth. So after decades of doing this kind of work, I woke up one day and I just realized that there were human beings on the other side of those spreadsheets. This wasn't just data. This was somebody's mother or sister or father or brother. These were real human beings. And I had the capacity to give information to them that could possibly have changed the entire trajectory of their life. And yet I was unable to do so because I was prevented from contacting any of those people or even any of their treating physicians. And for good reason, because I wasn't licensed to practice medicine. I'm still not licensed to practice medicine, but I knew that there had to be something different. I knew that I could take this information and somehow help people live healthier, happier lives, longer, more fulfilling lives. And so I decided one day to permanently end that career. And I'll never forget, I went home and my fiance at the time, she's now my wife, Sage Workinger. I. I went home and I broke the news to her that I was quitting my job and that I wanted to start a wellness franchise. And much to my surprise, she agreed. And she said, you know, I noticed you haven't been happy for a long time in your career, and if this is something you really want to do, I'm all in. And at the time, she was a real estate agent and I was a human biologist, but I was working in this mortality division of life Settlements, and we just jumped in with both feet and decided to start a wellness practice. We called it Streamline Medical Group at the time. It's now called 10X Health. And we started it in a little strip mall next to An LA Fitness in Naples, Florida. And it was probably three years before all the hard work in our business really began to pay off. I found a great local physician that was willing to listen to what I had to say about the 74 biomarkers in the blood and these genetic markers that we were using in the mortality space. And he was willing to listen to this and put his license on the line and begin to treat patients in a way that looked at root causes rather than just symptoms of disease. We hired physician assistants, we hired nurse practitioners, and eventually the business really, really took off. And I'm, you know, just absolutely blessed to tell you that now I feel like I'm on my passion and my purpose, and I know what God's calling for me is, and that is to take ultra complicated information, distill it down, and distribute it to the masses so they can make real change in their life so that we can actually add not just years to people's life, but life to people's years. So the ultimate human podcast is for you. It's about decades of research that I've done. I'm going to continue to scour the world and meet with the brightest minds in aging and longevity, in biohacking, in bio optimization and functional medicine. I'm going to try to bring those interviews right to this camera and give you practical stories and information that could change the trajectory of your life. So I'm excited that you're on this journey with me today. I'm going to talk about one of the most important topics, I think, in all of human optimization. It's a topic called methylation, and it's one that I've decided to dedicate the balance of my adult lifetime to. And I've immersed myself deep in the study of methylation, because human beings go through this process about 300 billion times every single day. And yet I still believe that it's one of the most overlooked things in all of modern medicine. So many of you that are watching this podcast right now are suffering from common ailments that you're chalking up to the consequence of aging or your environment or your spouse or your career or your kids, or a lack of sleep or so many other consequences that is not a consequence of any of those things. It is a consequence of missing raw material in your body. And you may be one or two simple nutrients away from being the most optimal version of yourself. You might have heard me say that. I feel like 60 or 70% of people right now are literally walking around at about 50% of their true state of normal, meaning 50% of, of being optimal and really feeling what normal really, really feels like. So many times people tell me, oh, my God, Gary, I feel amazing after just taking a simple methylated multivitamin, or putting magnesium or zinc or trimethylglycine or any number of these other nutrients back into their bodies that we found on a test. And I remind them that they don't actually feel amazing. They just feel normal. So it's time for you to find that nutrient deficiency in your body and experience what it's like to really feel optimal health, maybe for the first time in your lifetime. All of these things add, adhd, ocd, manic depression, bipolar, weight gain, water retention, poor sleep, lack of focus and concentration, poor gut health, gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability, cramping. All of these consequences that we feel are coming from our environment, meaning from our lifestyle, may in fact not be coming from those things at all. They may not be consequences of aging at all. They could be consequences of nutrient deficiencies. So I want to go deep down the path of methylation today. I want to tell you what it is, how you can have it tested, if you choose to have it tested, but most importantly, what you can do when you're done listening to this podcast without spending more than 30 or $40 a month. And you do not have to spend that with me to possibly change the entire trajectory of your life. So listen up, because this could be the most important podcast you ever hear. So, methylation, let's talk about what this is in the human body. You know, I always use the analogy that we pull crude oil out of the ground, right? But you can't put crude oil into your gas tank. The reason why you can't put crude oil into your gas tank is because crude oil has not yet been refined into gasoline. So the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Well, human beings are no different. We put vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nutrients of all kinds into the human body, yet none of them are used in the format that we put them in. None of them are used as the crude oil as it comes out of the ground. They have to be refined into the usable form. This refining process is called methylation. And if your methylation is broken, then you have a deficiency. It is this deficiency that leads to some of those common ailments that I just discussed. And let's take a deep dive down the road of science so that we can prove, we can look at the peer reviewed, published clinical literature so that you guys understand that there's real science, real evidence based science between finding nutrient deficiencies in the human body, replacing those deficiencies, and then thriving. You know, I do remember when I was in grad school, I had to, I had to take all these plant botany courses. And you might have heard me talk about this because I hated plant botany courses. But you have to take them. You're getting a human biology degree, but they make you take all these courses on plants. And I'll never forget that whenever anything was wrong in the leaf or the trunk or the branches of a tree, if you were to actually call a true botanist, a true arborist out to your house and you had a palm leaf that was decaying, they wouldn't touch the leaf. The first thing they would do is they would cortest the soil and they would core test the soil and they would look for nutrient deficiencies and they would say, you know what? There's no nitrogen in the soil. And then they would add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf would thrive. Only we've stopped thinking about human beings this way. As soon as something goes wrong in a human being, we immediately go to chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals. We immediately think that the solution is found in a chemical laboratory and not found within us. We've lost faith in humanity and mankind. We've lost faith in the body's ability to heal itself and heal the environment around us. Well, now science is catching up and the science is dictating otherwise. The science says when you find the missing raw material in a human body and, and you put that material back in, it begins to thrive in ways we never imagined possible. So let's go on this journey right now. Let's start talking about methylation and let's start to look at some of the peer reviewed, published science which, by the way, I'm going to put the links to every article that I talk about on this podcast. I'm going to put them in the, in the links below so that you can find these. But I want to start with how our genes and how our genetics are affect this process of methylation. Remember, the process of methylation is the process of taking one raw material that's entered the human body and converting it into the form the body can use. And this is a really important concept because if you can't make this conversion, it causes a deficiency. And it is this deficiency that leads to some of the most common ailments that we face as humanity and then we end up going and getting diagnosed with a condition we don't have, treated with a chemical that we do not need, which causes consequences that were not necessary. So let's talk about how we go hunting for raw material in the human body, find these deficiencies, replace it, and then thrive. So let's start with one of the most common gene mutations in the world. It's called the MTHFR gene mutation. It's estimated that up to 44% of the population has this gene mutation. And if you write it out on the screen, I don't have to tell you what the nickname is for that gene, but it stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. You don't need to know that. I just want you to know I'm smart. But this gene mutation, which means that. Now, what do I mean by a gene mutation? Well, an impaired ability for the gene to function, and the gene is not actually performing the function. What a gene does is it codes for an enzyme in your body to perform its function. So in other words, our genes are like the blueprint. Think of a skyscraper and having a developer set of blueprints on the first floor of that skyscraper. It tells you where to run all the plumbing. It tells you how to run the electricity, where the windows go. It actually gives you the blueprint for how to pour the foundation and how to erect this entire structure in a way that makes it functional when it's fully completed. Well, human beings are no different. These instructions are coded by our genes. And your genes are not your destiny. Your genes give you information on how to reach your destiny. In other words, if we could tell which genes are working and which genes are impaired, we could supplement for those target deficiencies and thrive in ways we never thought thought possible. So back to this MTHFR gene mutation, one of the most common gene mutations in the world. It's been linked to all kinds of things. Anxiety, depression, poor gut health, anxiousness, add, adhd, ocd, a waking mind at night which interrupts our sleep. All kinds of conditions that we then go think are related to a food allergy or food sensitivity or our gut bacteria or our spouse or our career or stress, or a lack of sleep. But these are things that people have generally had on and off for their entire life, lifetime. So let's look at what some of the science says about this gene mutation and specifically about what the product of this gene mutation causes due to its deficiency. So this gene is a gene that takes folic acid and its derivatives, folate and converts it into the form that the body can use called methylfolate. So in other words, folic acid is like the crude oil and methylfolate is like the gasoline. And this conversion is done by this gene. It's coded for by this gene. And if this gene is broken, meaning you got a gene mutation from one parent, or you got a gene mutation from both parents, which would be a much more impaired functionality then. And then the body has a hard time reducing folic acid and its derivatives into methylfolate. Now why is that so important? Well, remember that methylation is also called one carbon metabolism. And if you look at the molecular structure of things like neurotransmitters and amino acids and vitamins and nutrients, by simply adding one carbon metabolism, which is a carbon and three hydrogens, by actually adding that to a molecule or deleting that from a molecule, you change the entire structure and function of that molecule. It's much like we tell the difference between different types of fats by the number of bonds that fat has, the number of chemical bonds that that fat has. The difference between a polyunsaturated and a monounsaturated fat, or a fat that is solid at room temperature or liquid at room temperature has to with these carbon bonds. So one carbon metabolism, as simple as it sounds, is a very important process in human beings because it could mean the difference between a neurotransmitter which creates a mood exhibiting one consequence versus exhibiting an entire diff entirely different consequence. So this one carbon metabolism is really at the root of methylation. It's coated by our genes, and if it's broken, we have a deficiency. So when we look at the very first gene mutation that I want to discuss, the MTHFR gene mutation, which again, 44% of the people watching this podcast, you have this gene mutation or you're, you're likely to have this gene mutation when this code is not given to the enzymes and you have a deficient in methylfolate. Remember that methylfolate according to several research study, and I'm actually looking at the 2018 study from the Journal of Nature, which I will put in the podcast, explains that folate methylfolate enables the activation and transfer of one carbon units for the biosynthesis of purines, thymidine, methionine, different and different amino acids. So what are some of the consequences of having a folate deficiency and what would happen if we supplemented for folate with folate for for this deficiency? Well, folate enables the activation of one carbon, one Carbon synthesis or the biosynthesis of things called purines, thymidine, methionine, different amino acids in the body. So when we have a deficiency in this folate, what kinds of consequences is it linked to? Well, folate deficiency has been linked to non, non fatty, non alcoholic fatty liver disease. This is associated with dietary restriction of folate and the mutation in the gene mthfr, which is required for this one carbon metabolism. In patients that had non alcoholic fatty liver disease and this gene mutation, they found that supplementing with methylfolate actually helped curb the consequences and reverse this pathology. Other consequences are the capacity for the body to break down neurotransmitters. Remember, there's a category of neurotransmitters in the body called catecholamines. These are commonly referred to as fight or flight neurotransmitters. They're epinephrine, ephedrine, which we also refer to as adrenaline dopamine. This category of neurotransmitters, it's engaged when we have a fight or flight response. So if you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife, you would immediately have a flood of catecholamines in the brain. When you have a flood of catecholamines in the brain, your, your pupils can dilate, your heart rate can increase, your extremities flood with blood. You start having this physiologic response in response to a fear. But understand, when you have a gene mutation that doesn't allow you to break down these catecholamines in the brain, then they actually begin to rise. And you don't need the presence of a fear in order to feel fear. This is the genesis of things like anxiety. You know, most of you that either have anxiety or know somebody who suffered from anxiety, or have watched some of my previous podcasts, you know that you do not need the presence of a fear to start to feel anxious. So there are all these consequences that come as a responsibility of these genes being broken and not coding for the enzyme to break down these raw materials. Let's talk for a second about a second gene mutation and what kind of supplementation you could take if you had this gene mutation. And if you don't know you have this gene mutation, you could still supplement with anyway because these are water soluble vitamins that will eventually just spill over into the urine if you take too high of a concentration. So, and remember that we're going to discuss the very specific things that you can do before this podcast is over to maybe change the impact of some of these gene mutations. The second gene mutation that I want to talk about is a gene mutation called mtr, and this is not as common as the MTHFRG mutation, but it is quite common and is an impaired ability to metabolize something called homocysteine. And homocysteine is an amino acid. It's in everybody's blood. It's in your blood, it's in my blood, it's in everybody's blood. It's listening to this podcast. But when homocysteine begins to rise, because we are not metabolizing it, we are not breaking it down through the process of methylation and converting it into something called methionine, when the body is not making this conversion, you now have a deficiency in methionine, which is the starting block for every other amino acid protein in the body. So, in other words, when you can't break down homocysteine, you generally have a deficiency in methionine, which is the starting protein for every amino acid building block in the body. So this homocysteine begins to rise. What are some of the consequences of homocysteine rising? Well, in high levels, it becomes one of the most inflammatory compounds in the human body. And as it rises, it starts to irritate the endothelial lining of the blood vessel. When you irritate a blood vessel because it's smooth muscle, it clamps down. And if you make the pipes smaller in a fixed system, pressure goes up. And this is when you go to the doctor and you say, hey, my blood pressure is elevated, or the doctor tells you that your blood pressure is elevated. They do all kinds of cardiac workups. Your EKG is normal, your EEG is normal. Your DIC contrast study is normal. You have normal heart and lung sounds. But lo and behold, they describe you as having a condition called idiopathic hypertension, hypertension of an unknown origin. And you start to take cardiovascular meds, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, diuretics, without really knowing that the source could be a nutrient deficiency in something called pyridoxine, vitamin B6 or vitamin B12, methylcobalamin, the methylated form of B12. So a deficiency in vitamin B6 and a deficiency in vitamin B12 will further impair this homocysteine metabolism. And if homocysteine metabolism is impaired, you have the consequences of potentially rising blood pressure. You also have the consequences of other pathologies in the body. Paresthesias, tingling and numbness brain fog. Because when you start to reduce blood flow to the brain, the first thing to go is short term recall. There is a published study in an ancestral journey linking the elevated level of homocysteine to the onset of hypertension and also the importance of vitamin B6 in B12 in homocysteine metabolism. So patients that actually supplemented with simple B vitamins, pyridoxine, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 in the methylated form, methylcobalamin, were able to reduce their homocysteine levels and, and return pressure to normal. I'm not saying that every person walking around with high blood pressure has high homocysteine, nor am I saying that homocysteine is the cause of all high blood pressure. But what I'm telling you is that very simple fixes exist, like supplementing with B vitamins for things like hyperhomocystinemia. And so as we begin to continue down this road of genetic methylation, there is a very, very interesting article that was published in a psychiatric journal, this was in 2016. And it talks about the association of depressive and anxiety symptoms with 24 hour urinary catecholamine levels. This is a fancy way of saying those fight or flight neurotransmitters that are building up to levels that can be detected in the urine. And high levels of urinary catecholamines were associated with anxiety. So why would high levels of fight or flight neurotransmitters be associated with anxiety or associated with depression? Because these neurotransmitters are rising in the brain and if they're not catabolized, if they're not broken down at the right rate, they can trigger things like the presence of a fear, which is what we call anxiety. And they were able to lower catecholamine levels in the urine by using methylfolate, trimethylglycine, and the B complex of vitamins and catecholamines being tied to anxiety means that they could lower the incidence of anxiety by lowering the incidence of catecholamines through proper supplementation. I, I would take issue with anybody that says that you can get all of the nutrients you need from your diet. It is very, very difficult. Today's world, with all the pesticides, the herbicides, the insecticides, the lack of nutrients in our soil, the industrial processed seed oils that we're putting into our bodies for us to get all of the vital nutrients that we need for methylation just from diet. That's why I am a big fan of supplementing for deficiency, not just the sake of supplementing. So as we walk through the peer reviewed literature, we find mechanisms for high blood pressure, we find mechanisms for ADD and adhd. Children with this MTHFR gene mutation were found to have a higher incidence of attention deficit disorder, higher incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And if we think about what kinds of foods we feed these children, we feed them foods that are very high in folic acid, we feed them foods that are fortified or enriched. We feed them white flour, white rice, white bread, white pasta, cereals and grains of all kinds. Any of these foods that are fortified or enriched have high amounts of folic acid added to them. And these little bodies cannot process this folic acid due to this gene mutation. So one of the most important topics to me is this topic of methylation. And if you've watched any of my podcasts or stage talks or lectures, I'm constantly talking about how the body converts certain raw materials. But I don't often talk about what could you do if you didn't want to take a $600 genetic test? And to find these deficiencies? What could you do leaving this podcast today that could very well change the trajectory of your life? Well, here's one option. You could start taking a methylated multivitamin. Write this word down. Methylation or methylated multivitamin, the difference between a regular vitamin that uses raw materials like folic acid, which is synthesized in the laboratory, cyanocobalamin form of B12, which is synthesized in a laboratory and doesn't occur naturally in nature. The difference between, between using those types of vitamins and using a vitamin that is methylated is night and day. Because if your body can't make a certain conversion, you need this conversion to be done for you, instead of using crude oil, you have to use gasoline. And if you use gasoline, if you use the methylated form of these nutrients, magic things can happen in the human body. And so as we go down this path of looking at the research, there was another interesting In a histopathology journal, this one was in in 2020, there was a mechanistic explanation for vascular toxicity and neurotoxicity that was caused by hyperhomocystinemia. And it was exp. It was supported by many of their experimental findings and it fully agreed with the known protective effects of methylfolate, vitamin B6, vitamin and vitamin B12 in hyperhomocystinemia. In other words, vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and folate were the antidote to some of these issues. All of us Have a relative suffering from high blood pressure or hypothyroid or hypercholesterolemia, or we know women that have estrogen dominance. There is a third gene mutation called comptroller catechol o methyltransferase that is highly tied to all three of these conditions. Estrogen dominance, poor sugar metabolism and poor catecholamine regulation. What does this mean? It means if you have this genetic mutation, you are less likely to have balanced levels of estrogen in your body. When estrogen rises and gets out of balance with other hormones, it begins to retain water and it retains water in what's called the interstitial space. I've met a lot of women that come into our clinics that are very frustrated because they're doing everything right through intermittent fasting, they're exercising, they're eating clean, they're getting good sleep, but they seem to have a little bubble of water that's right below their belly button. It moves laterally around to their flanks, and it's very frustrating because they think it's fat. Well, it's not. It's called the estrogen band, and it's a place where estrogen binds water in the interstitial space, and it's very, very difficult to get rid. Why would a gene mutation cause you to retain water around your waistline? Well, what this gene mutation does is it impairs the ability of the body to get rid of estrogen. When women and men cannot get rid of estrogen, estrogen rises. When estrogen gets out of balance with other hormones, it begins to retain water. So what's the answer? We can supplement with things that help us to put estrogen back into balance without hormones. So supplementing for this gene mutation comt is commonly done with dim diomethene diindolomethane, or done with methionine, or done with the B complex of vitamins. When we supplement with these nutrients, it helps this genetic deficiency provide the raw material that the body needs to rid itself of estrogen. This is why so many of these common ailments are tied to to nutrient deficiencies. So so far we've talked about high blood pressure, anxiety, add, ADHD and ocd. This includes manic depression and bipolar, in many cases, elevated levels of estrogen in the bloodstream, causing water retention and mood numbness. And then also the very, very active mind that so many of you have at night when you lay down to go to sleep and you are body tired but mind awake. Now, why would your body be tired and your mind still awake just going through the day's activities. Well, did I get everything on my grocery list? Did my belt match my shoes? Did I return that email? The reason why this happens is again, because of this excess level of catecholamines in the brain. Catecholamines being fight or flight neurotransmitters in high doses. In low doses, they just create awakened states. So what if you were a simple supplement away from having your mind quieted at night? So I would encourage you, if you're taking a multivitamin, spin the back of that bottle around, look for these two ingredients. If it has either of them, throw them in the trash and get a methylated multivitamin. And people ask me all the time, what are some things that I could do, Gary, for free that could possibly have an impact on the, on the trajectory of my life? And I give them the same four things to do every single time. So if you're looking for things, something that you could start to do tomorrow besides going out and buying a $40 bottle of methylated vitamins or getting a $600 gene test, it would be these four things. And that is to develop a routine in the morning, a 16 minute routine in the morning that really stresses the body and actually feeds the body and makes it stronger. Remember, there's a process in the body called hormesis, where you stress the body and it responds by strengthening. It responds in a good way. And we have to stop thinking, as always, being negative, you know, telling grandma not to go outside, it's too hot, not to go outside, it's too cold to eat at the first pang of hunger, just to lay down, just to relax. So in the mornings, in your morning routine, and it's not complicated, there are four things that you can do at no cost that really could change the trajectory of your life. And if you don't believe me, just try these four things for the next seven days. Go Sunday to Sunday and you see how you feel at the end of the seventh day. The first thing is to get up and expose your skin to first light. And I know this is tough for a lot of people, but if you want to be disciplined and wake up with the sun every morning, or beat the sun up every morning and expose your skin to first light. There's some very, very special effects from first light. Number one, there's no UVA and UVB rays for about the first 45 minutes of the day. There's very healthy blue light, which helps to reset cortisol and melatonin receptors in the brain. You get vitamin D3 without the risk of a sunburn. And the light actually passing through your eyes helps put you in a more wakened state. So for free, you can go out, face the sun. Don't look directly into the sun. Expose your skin to sunlight while you're doing that. If you want to put that moment on steroids, learn to do three rounds of 30 deep breaths and Wim Hof style of breathwork is the style of breathwork that I use. I actually took his training course online and it's entirely changed the trajectory of my life and so many of the clients that I work with. And that is to sit quietly with your shirt off exposed to sunlight. If you're women, just maybe wear a halter top, expose your skin to sunlight and do three rounds of 30 breaths with a breath hold in between. The third thing is to take a cold shower when you're done that routine and you can exercise after your cold shower. A cold shower will actually prepare you for exercise. You don't want to do cold water immersion after exercise. It's best to do it prior to and let your body warm up naturally. And the fourth thing you can do is take your bare feet and touch bare soil, dirt, grass or sand for just six minutes a day. So ideally, if you had a place outside where you could put your feet on the ground and get earthing and grounding, exposing your skin to sunlight, and had a place where you could breathe three rounds.