Beyond 23&Me: A Deep Dive Into Ben Greenfield's Personal DNA Results (& How To Get Your Own Genes I

The human body does not work based on individual genes beating to their own rhythm. The human body works on an awesome orchestral masterpiece of many genes working in cascades to get the various cellular functions done. Are there any genetic underlining contributors? How resistant are the cells that line the blood vessels? Is there such a thing? And when we look at it, there is such a thing.

I have a master' degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From Sealfit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

DNA, the magical building blocks that unite all humans. We're going to talk about them on today's show. Not humans, but. Well, we are going to talk about humans, but we're going to talk about DNA in a very, very profound and deep way. My guest on today's show is Super Smart Doc in Genetics. This podcast is actually brought to you by Kion, which is my playground for all things health and wellness. Probably one of our most popular supplements over there because it's like a Swiss army knife, but it tastes a lot better than a Swiss army knife, trust me, because it helps with sleep, it helps with performance, it helps with recovery, it helps with gut health. Collagen joints, a whole bunch of different parameters are the key on aminos, which are in a lovely cool lime powder flavor and also a mixed berry flavor. These things are like a shot in the arm. I get Instagram posts from people who are like, dude, did you squeeze steroids and crack cocaine into this? Because it is the biggest pre workout boost I've ever had in my life. And what I like about these is they can be used for endurance athletes, for strength athletes. They're clean, they burn well, and they're essentially one of our essential amino acids blend in a precise ratio that really, really is something you feel right off the bat when you use them. So if you have not yet tried Kion aminos, you can get 10% off of them. You just go to getkion.com getk I-O-N.com and the 10% discount code you can use over there is bgf10 bgf tenetkion.com Another thing I wanted to tell you about was that something that helps out this show quite a bit is for you to leave an itunes review. So if you enjoy this show, go leave us a quick review in Apple podcasts or really anywhere where you tend to digest your podcast and that helps out the show quite a bit. Some of you have been asking me about how you can get access to episodes that are 8 years old, 10 years old, et cetera. Because this podcast has been around now for going on around 12 years. You can download the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast app in the app store for Android or for Apple. If you just search for Ben Greenfield Fitness, there's an actual app that's just jam packed with all of the podcasts and it's just like a podcast player, it's pretty handy. So if you weren't aware of that, check that out and also leave a quick review on itunes. Finally, this podcast is brought to you by one of the ways that you can get ultra high concentrations of hydrogen into the water that you drink and the research behind H2 and its selective antioxidant behavior, its anti inflammatory behavior, its cell signaling properties, its support for mitochondria, its ability to be able to decrease the rate at which telomeres shorten. So an anti aging and a longevity effect massive impact on the inflammation you get from like jet lag or a hard workout. This hydrogen rich water is so versatile and so use I have a giant glass mason jar of it in the morning and in the evening and you can get the same stuff I use via this company Trusi T R U S I I and Trusy makes not only hydrogen tablets but also an ultra high concentration hydrogen water generating machine. You can just go to trusy h2.com Ben that's T R U S I I h2.com Ben to get an instant 30% discount off H2 tablets if you enter code Ben and you can also over there get one of the hydrogen water machines. So trucy h2.com Ben.

You know I'm constantly blown away by the amount of genetic data and actionable information you can get from a freaking little bit of your saliva. And what I wanted to do for today's podcast was kind of give you an insider glimpse using some of my own genetic data as well as a conversation with one of the guys who I think is probably on the most cutting edge of Genetic testing and genetic interpretation to kind of teach you how this goes way beyond what you might get from like the 23andMe. Your, your pee might smell like asparagus or you have a high risk of a unibrow, or you know, like the ancestry information that show that you, you know, you're, you're a mix of whatever, Sub Saharan African and Southeast Asian and Northern European. And a lot of that stuff can be useful. But to get really, really useful information on things that could help you out with your sleep, your gut function, your neurotransmitters, even your lifespan, you know, or your brain health, you have to take a deeper dive. You have to look at a lot more of these so called SNPs. And that's what my guest on today's podcast kind of specializes in. His name is Dr. Mansoor Mohammed and he has a very impressive background in the field of genetics. He not only studied genetics at a university level as well as doing postdoctoral studies in cytogenetics, he's the president of a company called the DNA Company, which does functional genomic testing and consulting and even does like individualized supplementation programs based on your genetic profile. But he's also widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of medical genomics. He was the founder and president of a company called Monagene. He was the CEO of Combinatrix, which was a NASDAQ traded company in diagnostic genomic microarrays. He was the director of genomics at Quest Diagnostics, which you may have heard of before. That's the world's largest reference laboratory. It's like, has a market capitalization, I think of over $10 billion. And he was their director of genomics.

There's.

He was also the director of research at Spectral Genomics, which was one of the industry's first commercial genomic microwave developers. So he's done a lot and he's probably seen more freaking gene reports than just about anybody I know. So. Dr. Mansour, welcome to the show, man.

It's an honor, Brent. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. And you're up in Canada, right?

Yes, we are. And don't rub it in, but yes, we are.

Which area are you in over there?

Toronto. So more East Coast. So Toronto, but honestly speaking, I wouldn't trade it for anything else I do, Mr. Sunset, but it's an awesome city, awesome research, awesome people.

Yeah. One of my buddies has a restaurant over in Toronto. It's supposed to be amazing. I haven't been. I was supposed to go there last time, but I wound up going over to that controversial meat restaurant where the guy carved the deer in the window in front of a bunch of protesting vegans. I forget the name of the guy. I went there with my friend Ben Pacolci, who's like a former bodybuilder, and we just punished a huge amount of meat. I forget the. It's like this big carnivore restaurant. The guy was on the Joe Rogan show. I'll remember the name of it here in a second. Yeah, it's like this controversial meat restaurant in Toronto. Antler. Antler Kitchen and Bar. Have you heard of that one?

No, I've not. You know, honestly, Ben, I don't get out too much when it comes to restaurants here.

Okay, but the other, the other one is owned by one of my buddies, Alan Ozery, and it's called Parallel Brothers, and apparently they do a bunch of like, molecular gastronomy and a bunch of super, super healthy tasty foods. That one's on my bucket list too.

So nice.

There you have it. As long as based on our discussion today, my genes allow me to go there. I don't know, gotta find out. So we'll dive into that. So you guys, you guys do some very interesting tests at the DNA company. And I'm curious, just first of all, why is it that like, one test might vary from company to company? You know, why is 23andMe different from, say, maybe ancestry different from, say, you know, you. How do we kind of interpret the difference between all these different genetic tests?

Excellent question. So most folks, when we think of genetic testing, we think of SNPs, these things that you referred to earlier. Single nucleotide polymorphisms and SNPs definitely are some of the most important contributors to a person's genetic variation. So, number one, yes, we need to test SNPs. However, SNPs aren't the only variability to the human genome. There are other genetic phenomena, things like copy number variation, cnvs, where it's not about, you know, what we'd call spelling differences, which is the analogy of SNPs. But copy number variations are where whole paragraphs of your genomic manual can be missing or duplicated. So that's another major one. So when you think of looking at a genetic test that's going to give you the fullness of variability, important variable is something that we'll probably talk about later in the podcast, which is what type of variability are we really looking for? As you noted earlier, do we really want to find out that we've got A unibrow, or, you know, I say go look in a mirror if you want to find out if you've got a unibrow, right? So SNPs, we need to look at that. We need to look at CNVs, we need to look at Indels. If it's not the whole paragraph that is missing, by that analogy, parts of the paragraph might be missing. So to summarize, when a person, when a consumer wants to consider a genetic test that is meaningful, they need to understand that the variations that impact the human genome are beyond SNPs. SNPs are important. Well, we've got to look at these other phenomena, okay? That's the first thing. The second thing is, and it gets a little technical, a bit of technical detail. So what we got to understand is how do labs go about testing SNPs? Let's just stick with the SNPs for the time being. You see, your genes can be looked at. Let's say your genes are the individual instructions, the individual paragraphs in your operating manual, okay? And within that paragraph, we all have, or we all should have, two copies of any given paragraph. Because, of course, the miracle, the awesome miracle of the human genome is that it is diploid. We have two copies of the operating manual. You know, when you think of any cool piece of gadgetry that you buy, you're only expecting to get one manual with it. You know, you're not going to expect to have two almost identical copies of the manual. Yet with the human being, we've got two almost identical copies of the human manual. So at any given time, any paragraph, any discrete instruction, any discrete gene that is going to be expressed, the body, the cell, is going to take a look at those two copies of the gene, one from mom, one from dad, and make a determination as to which of the two copies your cell is going to express. And there's some basic phenomena that defines. Are you going to express Mom's copy of the gene, Dad's copy of the gene? Are you going to express both of them and have a hybrid outcome? Now, of course, SNPs come into play in that they are these spelling variations in the two copies, the two paragraphs. Okay, well, when we go about testing for SNPs at the laboratory level, what we're doing is we've got to find a way to, quote, unquote, read the paragraphs and look for these variations. What differs at a laboratory level is how many paragraphs is a test designed to query simultaneously. You see, some tests, the Test that we, for example, the DNA company that we design, we look at fewer paragraphs at any given point in time. Because why the more paragraphs that you simultaneously try to query, simultaneously try to look for these spelling errors, the greater risk there is that one paragraph starts to look like another. And we can get some cross talk, we can get some false information, we can get some false negatives, false positives in regard to the SNP that we're looking for. So now to summarize, the technology for determining and detecting these spelling differences, these SNPs is amazing across the board, really. SNPs. Now, there are machineries that you can buy. You can run this in your garage if you really wanted to, and you can be pretty confident in the results you're getting. That's not the issue. The issue here, Ben, is the design of the test. How many genes are you looking at simultaneously? How many paragraphs in this 22,000 gene manual are you attempting to query simultaneously? Keeping in mind that the more that you query simultaneously, there is a greater chance of error. So I think that's where it comes in. It comes into the design of the test, the size of what you're looking for, not to say anything of the functional relevance of what you're looking for, that we'll talk about that later on maybe. And then of course, are you looking at just spelling errors? Are you looking at deletion errors? Are you looking at grammatical errors? These are the type of things that influence one test being different from another.

So when you say query simultaneously, do you mean, for example, if you're looking at one specific gene, rather than interpreting that gene in isolation, actually interpreting it in terms of how it might interact with the other genes.

So by query here, we were speaking of the initial physical.

DNA platform, the PCR platform of that gene. So when you refer to querying as per interpretation, that comes later. What I was referring to is, you see, there's an actual molecular reaction. Think of a test tube, think of that test tube having your DNA, your DNA sample, and all I'm going to do in that one test tube is I'm going to go in using a technology that will find one gene, one predetermined gene, and I'm going to ask, are there any variations in that one predetermined gene in your entire manual versus that I can take a test tube with your DNA, all of your DNA, and I can run in parallel. I can run a query, I can determine the sequence and the presence of variations, not in just one gene. I can do it for five genes simultaneously, 20 genes simultaneously. That's what I was referring to. And the more the number of genes you try to scan, looking for variations simultaneously, which of course depends on the platform that you're using. That's where you start to enter the risk of false positive or false negative results. That's at the level of what I refer to as querying at the actual platform level. And then later on, depending on the genes that you studied, then what you refer to becomes even more important. Which genes did you study? What is the impact of these genes and how do they interact and how do they determine each other's expression, each other's outcomes? So they are two completely different phenomena.

Okay, got it. So after you've gotten your hands on the saliva and you've done this like simultaneous querying of the genes, what occurs next?

So at that point, you now need to curate, you need to say, and this is the logic flow that should happen, whether it happens in every test or not. Obviously that's not a comment that I'll make. What should happen is this. You should go into a test. And now we get a little into designing a test at the end of the day. What are we doing this genetic testing for then? Because really, physiologically, we almost don't care about genes. It's a pretty bold statement, because physiologically, what do we want to determine? We want to determine, are those cells working? What is the outcome? What is the manifestation in the person? That's ultimately all we care about. Now, obviously, cellular function, the person that you're dealing with, their deficiencies, optimabilities, as the case might be, do hearken back to their particular version of genes. So when you design a test, a really well designed test should be one that says, what is the cellular function that I'm going to be studying? What is that pathway? Because the human body does not work based on individual genes beating to their own rhythm. The human body works on an awesome orchestral masterpiece of many genes working in cascades to get the various cellular functions done. So when you design a good test, what you should really be designing is this. You should say, what is the cellular function? What is the pathway? What is that system in the body that I want to study? Okay, let's map that out. Independent of genetics, let's just say, what are the things that influence vascular endothelial function, for example, huge contributor to vascular and cardiovascular disease? What are the mechanisms, what are the cellular processes that keep the lining of our blood vessels healthy or not? We put that on a whiteboard. Nothing to do with genetics, we map out the players, we map out the cellular processes and then we begin to pencil in the genes that influence the ultimate outcome. Now what comes out of that when and if you approach your genetic testing this way is the genes that you test for per that design that we just discussed, those results now tell a story. So when you ask me the question, well, what do you do when you've gotten your DNA and from your saliva and you've tested it, the answer to your question is what did you ask of the DNA in the first place? Did you ask of the DNA intelligent questions meaning intelligent judicious choice of genes or did you just have a shotgun approach and just say let's go query 500 genes and see what comes out of the. This then then becomes a major differentiator in the test and in the results that you're going to get when you choose a lab.

So you're not looking at just say one SNP that says, oh, you have whatever a 20% increased risk of cardiovascular disease. You're looking at multiple SNPs that affect.

The entire cascade of events that could influence risk for cardiovascular disease.

Exactly. And you're doing it. You're taking that cascade in a meaningful that the total is greater than the sum of the parts. Are you open, Ben, to jump into some of your results so that we can take this very point and highlight something?

Yeah, I think that using actual results and examples will help people wrap their heads around this a little better. So let's do that. And by the way, what I'll do.

I've got the show notes all available for people@bengreenfieldfitness.com DNApodcast that's bengreenfieldfitness.com DNAPodcast if you go over there, you can if you want to pull up my own DNA results, unless you're an insurance company or you're an employer, in which case keep your dirty, dirty hands off of my results.

Other than that, you can go grab my results and follow along if you want to see what, what an actual results printout looks like from the DNA company and some of the stuff that Mansoor and I are going to talk about today. So yeah, that being said, go ahead and jump in wherever you want to jump in.

Doc and Ben, are you comfortable with your two little angels? I mean, I guess they're not quite little anymore, but river and Terran, are you comfortable with us doing any compare and contrast between you and them?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because you've tested both me and my boys so absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

And they're definitely daddy's boys. So let's do this. Let's just step back for a moment and say, okay, I want to design something that will be informative about the cardiovascular function, function, the players, the contributors to overall cardiovascular health in an individual. And so often, you know, we'll see a report that has, you know, meaningful genetic information, but it comes with this gene gives you a 30% increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This gene gives you a 40% increased risk of, you know, afib or something else cardiovascularly relevant. Now what in the world does that mean? In any event, if I tell you, if I told you a gene result confers a 30% increased risk of cardiovascular disease, what does that actually mean to you? How do you process that? Does it mean that if you live three lifetimes, at least one of those lifetimes, you'd have a cardiovascular event? Does it mean that if I put you amongst 100 people, you'd be in the top 30? What does it mean when I tell you a gene confers a gene, one gene confers some percent risk of something. When you really take a look at it functionally, it has very little meaning until you understand what is that gene doing? What is the variation in that gene that is perturbating the responsibility, the job of the gene? So now let's just step back. Intelligent genetic testing should start, as we said, with looking at the overall function, penciling in the genes that are the players. And every time you pencil in a gene in your test, you should be asking, is the function of this gene known? What does it contribute to in the cellular casket? Where is it playing, number one? Number two, do we know that? Do we know that that function is well established in human studies, that it has the same function across multiple ethnicities? A major point of misinformation that is out there. So many genes, Ben, with a particular job that is to be done by that gene, a version of that gene, what we would call an allele, a particular version, a particular version of the SNP that might be defining the allele of that gene can have one outcome in one ethnicity, and the same version of that gene can have a diametrically opposite outcome in a different ethnicity. So just putting that, just, you know, we'll come back and we'll take stitch together these important points, but I want to start highlighting where people have been when we take an overly simplistic view of genetic analyses, how misleading the end outcome can be. Okay, so we come back now and we take a look at Cardiovascular disease. And what we want to be able to do is this. We want to say which genes contribute to that vascular function. Do we know what the job of the gene is? Do we know that if there is a variation in that gene, a snp, an indel, a cnv, as per all of the three things we spoke of earlier, will that variation truly impact the job that that gene was supposed to do? Which brings us to another point. Not just because there's a variation in a gene, it doesn't mean that that variation necessarily impacts the function of the gene. So testing for every variation without knowing whether the variation actually has a meaningful outcome, a meaningful change to the operation of the cell, is really just data for data's sake, without any real functional outcome. So we've got, again, all of these little points we've got to be cognizant of. Let's go back to cardiovascular function. Let's just. Here's an example of what we call a storyboard. And I'm going to quickly now summarize the Ben Greenfield storyboard for cardiovascular.

And by the way, I got two different reports from you guys. I got this one called Genome Pulse Report, and then I got one called a hormone pulse report. Which one are we looking at?

Right now? We're looking at the Genome Pulse report for the time being.

Okay, okay.

But. But by the way, a person's hormonal status, of which, Ben, forgive me, but you've got the genes of the gods, as they say. So when it. So everyone out there, yes, it's true. Ben's hormonal, steroidal. How Ben Greenfield makes and processes his progesterone, his testosterone, his DHT dihydrotestosterone is just about perfect. So, yeah, Ben, yeah, no, it really is. And I'm not trying to be, you know, facetious. It really is, and we'll talk about that later. But let's focus on the genome pulse for the time being. And here's what a story.

I'm gonna grab a beer because apparently I can get away with that. So you keep talking. I'll be right back.

So here's how it goes. Vascular function. When we talk about vascular function, we're talking about how are those blood vessels living up to and withstanding the wear and tear of every living, breathing, waking, sleeping moment of our life? Let's take a look at the vasculature. And what are the cells that are getting the most punishment, so to speak. The cells that line the vasculature, known as the vascular endothelium. Those are the cells that line the inside of the blood vessel. Now, why are those cells important? Because think about it, at every given moment in time, those lining cells are subjected to whatever is dissolved in your blood. And by dissolved in your blood, we mean literally when you swung your left foot or right foot off the bed this morning, when you got up, whichever side of the bed that you're on, the quality, that which is present in your blood vis a vis metabolites, vis a vis toxins, vis a vis whatever it might be, is different first thing in the morning than after you've had a breakfast, after you've hit the big city, after you've sat in an hour's traffic. Because after, later in the day, your blood represents all of the things that were either through dietary intake, through breathing, through touching things, all of these things enter into your bloodstream. And to the degree that the things in the bloodstream are inflammatory, they've got inflammatory properties. Those poor endothelial cells, the poor cells that line the blood vessels are taking a pounding. So one of the first things we need to ask from this, what we call genomic storyboarding, from this intelligent approach, is we're going to simply say, hey, listen, are there any genetic underlining contributors to the resilience? How, how resistant or how sensitive? The corollary are the cells that line the blood vessels? Is there such a thing? And when we look at it, there is such a thing. Some amazing research over the last 20 plus years have shown that there are a couple of genetic markers on chromosome 9. They're known as the 9p21 markers. Now, notice I said markers are not genes. These aren't quite genes. They're genetically their DNA sequences within which there are these markers that have been found to be correlated to how resilient is the lining of your blood vessel. I like to call this your Teflon coating index. See, we want the lining of our blood vessels to be Teflon coated. We want it to be nonstick. We want it to be resilient. Except some of us are born with a Teflon coating. That is, we might call it the dullestore version of the Teflon coated frying pan. Some of us are born with the William Sonoma Teflon coated frying pan. We've got a really resilient lining to the blood vessels. These nine P21 markers, Ben, were so important when they were discovered, the first publications referred to them as the heart of the human genome. Now, let's go with this. There are two 9P21 markers, two of them, many others that I studied. But these two are really important. Each of those nine P21 markers, you have two copies, one from mom, one from dad. So we've got two 9P21 markers each with two copies. We've got four copies of these nine P21 markers that we're going to be looking at. Now here's how it goes. Each of those copies can come in either an A version called the A allele or a G version, the G allele. So that any given human being, anyone choose A chosen at random, might have four a zero G's, Another person might have two A's, two G's, and so on and so forth. And then we have some individuals with zero A's, four G's. And here's the importance for these two markers in that region of your genome, the more the number of GS you have from zero to four, the less resilient. Speaking plainly and simply, but that's functionally what happens. The less resilient is the endothelial lining. You see, the guys who have four GS, all four of their markers for these nine P21 loci, RGs, their endothelium, their vascular endothelium, will be more sensitive to inflammatory markers in the bloodstream. Well, Ben, that's one of the few negative things we found or potentially negative things that we found in your profile. Because as you can see, you and your little angels, you all have four GS. Isn't it interesting? Both you and your boys act these two super important markers and what do they do? They influence, they contribute to just, just how sensitive is the lining of your endothelial, your vascular endothelial, which means to the degree that we know that it's sensitive or resilient, is the degree to which, if and when things are present in the bloodstream that would have been inflammatory, those vegetable oil derivatives, those toxins that are piggybacking on the foods that we eat, or the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from cigarette smoke, or the VOC's volume volatile organic compounds from all of the things that we deal with in our modern buildings, and so on and so forth, okay? When these chemical and or cellular metabolites enter into the bloodstream, depending on lifestyle choices and those things, those chemicals, some of them impart inflammatory consequences onto the lining of the vasculature. And now we have a first differentiator. We can say the guys and gals who have four GS, their vascular lining can't Take as much of a punishment as the guys and gals lucky enough to have zero GS. All A's. Putting some statistics to this, Ben, you and your boys then belong to about. We estimate less than 10% of the human population will have four GS across these two markers. Okay, well, you know, does that mean that Ben is going to be faced with vascular disease? No, but it does mean that Ben, right off the bat needs to know that he wants to take steps to protect that vascular lining more than the other Joe who was smoking since he was 15, drinking cognac. And then here he is, the George Burns effect, like I like to call it at 80 something something, still smoking, still drinking and his blood vessels probably look like a 20 year old. He is very unlikely.

That would be an example of someone who's healthy despite their genetics, not.

Or I guess I should say someone who's healthy because of their genetics, not because of their lifestyle. If they had that double a copy of the 9P21, that would be like the person in the. Whatever, the 110 year old French grandma who smoked a cigarette and ate a biscotti and a croissant every day. And yet she's got no coronary artery disease or risk of ischemic stroke.

Bada Bing. And here's something really cool, Ben. You know, when we talk about high vegetable, you know, of course we can all benefit from health and increased consumption. Let me be very careful. I want to actually be as accurate as I can possibly be. Most of us can benefit from increase in good quality vegetable matter. And we've all seen the studies that sometimes say, well, a glass or two of red wine a week can also be beneficial studies. They come and they go. Sometimes another study comes out that negates these associations. Here's an important phenomena. Do you know that the association of improved endothelial function, the very cells that we're talking about with the consumption of increased vegetable matter, it seems like those, the people that have improved vascular function with increased vegetable matter, that appears to be much more so for the people with zero GS. In other words, the folks who have increased number of GS, which is not to say they shouldn't have vegetable matter in their diet, but the protective effect of whatever, you know, all of the wonderful things that increased vegetable consumption and all of the studies that show that it is cardiovascularly protective, they benefit less from vegetable intake, which is not to say they shouldn't have it, but they benefit less than the 4G carriers, than the folks with zero GS. You know, the studies that show that red wine consumption has certain pro certain beneficial vascular.

Associations. It turns out that the folks who benefit from red wine and the resveratrols and all of the other goodies in that are also the folks with the zero GS. Not to say that the folks with GS couldn't benefit from those things, but in other words, the having more GS diminishes the beneficial effect. To talk about just these two dietary things that have been often studied well.

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So, so you could, and this might be.

This might be extrapolating too much, but you could potentially say if you have all 4G copies that you could potentially better handle something like a carnivore diet that's lower in plant matter. And, and red wine.

It's, it's a little stretch. We, we can start coloring just how much of an additive benefit these propertly beneficial things are vegetable consumption, red wine, which will again I want to stress they can be beneficial across the board. To make the leap that you did, which is, which is a sound one, a logical one, we need to look at other contributing pathways which we'll get to shortly. Okay. All right, so we start off the storyboard. We said, hey listen, if we're going to look at vascular health, we got to start with, well, the player tells you how strong, how resilient is the lining of your vasculature. Now why did we go down that path? We went down that path for the next point, which is what would be the things in the bloodstream that would have or could have caused inflammation in the first place? We just said how resilient you are to those inflammatory things. But now let's ask a different question, an additive question. A logical next step. Let's say let's ask, how is the body keeping the blood supply? How healthy is the body? How good, how efficient is the body at monitoring the quality of that blood supply? Because, of course, what is in the blood will be the things, as we mentioned earlier, that would inflame the lining. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to say, well, listen, the most important vascular, endothelial disruptive things are. And we could all list them, all of these chemicals and byproducts that we're becoming more and more aware of, whether it be cigarette smoke. And, you know, Ben, so many folks, when I speak to patients, I have to remind them that smokers are more likely to die from vascular disease than lung disease. We all think that we all can associate with smoking and lung disease. But, but here's the point. The lining of your lung, the alveoli lining, and the lining of your gut are designed to take much more of a pounding, much more of a beating than the lining of your blood vessels. The lining of the lung, the lining of the gut, has a mucosal and a microbial lining that protects the biologic cellular lining, which is not present in the vascular. Vascular lining. So we're gonna say if a person, depending on environment, lifestyle and diet, if certain things are getting into the bloodstream that are pro, inflammatory, toxic, oxidative, causing, how good then is the body of dealing with those things so that they would be neutralized, or conversely, if they're not neutralized, if they're not neutral, metabolized and flushed out, and God forbid you still have a 4G, a more sensitive lining. Now we're building up the momentum to saying this person has to watch out. And if the most important of such phenomena, Ben, is we're just going to ask, how good are your detox genes? And this is not pie in the sky detox. I'm going to go on a detox diet. This is the bonafide hepatic liver function that your blood, your blood is constantly flowing through your liver and through the liver. Enzymes in the liver, as you know well, are metabolizing, neutralizing, toxins, byproducts, pharmaceutics, and so on and so forth. One of the major jobs of the liver and one of the major genetic pathways, Ben, one of the first, I call esmat pathway of the body. It's the pathway that neutralizes, gets rid of toxins in the bloodstream, is known as your glutathione transferase pathway. So glutathionization is the cellular process that neutralizes the laundry list of toxins that you can think of. Think of something that is toxic and all, chances are it's going to be neutralized and replaced, removed from the body via glutathionization. Which is not to say that it's the only detox pathway, but it is certainly one of the most important. So if glutathionization is the pathway that is going to remove toxins from the blood or one of the major pathways, and if said toxins would have been the very things to inflame the lining of the vasculature, and of course, we've determined whether someone's a zero G, three G, four G, we've got to ask, how good is your glutathionizing capacity? So that's when, Ben, we jump over to a seemingly unrelated part of your report, the part of your report that talks about detox. And what we find is this. A remarkable phenomena, isn't it? You see, we started off this very discussion saying for the vast majority of Genesis, vast majority of genes, we're going to expect to have two copies, one from mum, one from dad. But for some really important genes, for reasons that still baffle scientists, some people may not have two copies of a given gene. They might not have inherited that gene from mom, they've only inherited from dad, or vice versa. And my goodness, Ben, there's sometimes genes where you didn't inherit it from either parent. Now, of course, let's stop for a moment here. If you did not inherit a gene, if that instruction, if that paragraph of which you should have two copies isn't there, period, it's not even there. Talking about SNPs in that gene is completely irrelevant because the gene isn't there. More than that, Ben, talking about epigenetics of that gene is further irrelevant. You see, people get really caught up in, you know, let's change our genes. That's one of the, you know, blood pressure rising statements. We don't change our genes, we might be able to alter the expression of our genes. That's epigenetics. But by God, if you don't have the gene in the first place, there is nothing to alter. Now, when we look at your GST Genesis, we found you specifically, Ben, we found something interesting. You see, because this phenomena of detox via glutathionization is so incredibly important, the good Lord, whatever you believe in, didn't design us with just one gene responsible for something so awesomely important, detox. So what do we have? We've Got several GST genes that are essentially duplicates of each other, that are placed in different parts of the genome doing the same job. Just in case something happens to one copy of those genes, we've got backups. So there are three, three particularly important GST genes. Each of these genes are essentially identical. Essentially they're placed in different parts of your genome, in different volumes of your genome, different chromosomes of your genome. And they're going to be responsible when toxins show up in your bloodstream to get rid of them. Keep in mind, I'm going to expect that I should have two copies of each of these genes. Now, as much as we said that each of these genes are almost identical, their order of preference, the order in which when a toxin shows up in the blood, these genes are expressed, in other words, the priority with which they do the job of cleaning up, detoxifying at a cellular level. Studies suggest that they're slightly different. So studies suggest that the big brother, the big sister of this triad is the GSTT one. Each member is going to have the prefix GST and then each of the members will be differentiated by the suffix t1 for theta1, p1 for pi1, m1 for mu1. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna say, alright, let's go check for the GSTT1 gene in BEN. We want to see two copies because that's the gene that is going to be one of the major players in key keeping Ben's blood free of toxicants. Toxicants that you could name anything on the laundry list.

Why do we want this information so badly? Because we've predetermined. Ben's vascular lining is a bit more sensitive than we would like. So we go looking for Ben's GSTT1 gene. The GSTT1 gene is on chromosome 22, volume 2022 of the 23 volume encyclopedic set of which we have two copies of that encyclopedia. So we pulled the volume 22 from mom that you inherited from your beautiful mom. We pulled the volume 22 from your dad, okay? We look on the page of that volume that should have had the GSTT1 gene and we found something interesting. Ben, we found that you only inherited the GST TT1 gene from one of your parents and not the other. Ben Greenfield has one, not two, one copy of this gene. And just so that you know, Ben, the expression level of this gene is directly correlated to the number of copies. Simply stated, you, Ben, and dare I say, Ben, yours truly, myself as Well, I have one copy we both produce 50% less of this important detoxifying enzyme, GSTT1, than the lucky gals and guys with two copies. Just. That's a. You could take that to the bank. Now let's just do a quick little statistics check so that we don't feel too badly about ourselves. It turns out, Ben, that it is estimated somewhere around 60, depending on certain ethnic drifts. About 60% of the human population has one copy of this gene. So in other words, having one copy still gives us enough detox activity for the rank and file toxic exposure. Of course, the guys and gals, it is estimated that somewhere between 20 and 25% has. Have two copies. Those are the lucky buggers. Those are the guys who can detoxify and keep removing toxins when they enter into the bloodstream far faster and more efficiently than you and I. About 20 to 25% of the human population has two copies. Okay, so we were in the average. We were in the 60% that has only one copy. Okay, this means, remember, we're keeping an eye on that 4G phenomena. So we're saying, listen, so long since Ben has a modicum of healthy environmental practices, dietary practices, lifestyle practices. So long since he's not exceeding his toxic threshold, starting with this one gene. You know, he's not doing too bad. He's average. Well, hold on. Remember, there are three of these guys, each of them helping, acting as backups, one to the other. So let's go to the other all important. GSTM1, the sister of the T1, and that's on your. In your first volume, chromosome 1. The first volume of your manual is where the GSTM1 is. Keeping in mind that it's almost a duplicate of the T1, but it acts as a backup. So we go looking now in Ben's two volume 1s on the page with a have had the GSTM1 gene. Okay, we open Mom's volume 21. Volume 1. Oops. Ben did not inherit the GSTM1 gene from his mom. We opened Dad's volume 1 to see if he got the GSTM1 from Dad. Lo and behold, it's not there on either of the copies. Ben Greenfield does not have the GSTM1 gene at all. It's not there. So let's stop for a moment. Then keep in mind, it means your entire paragraph, the paragraph that was that gene. Minimally, it's just not there at all. This is. We're beyond snips here. There's no SNP to be spoken of in Ben Greenfield for this gene because he doesn't have the gene, period. But Ben, yours truly as well, does not have the gene. Ben, 60 to 70% of human beings, notice we said 60% of human beings have one copy of the T1. 60 to 70% have zero copies of the M1. It tells us something important. It tells us that the M1, even though it is an absolutely important detox gene, can be lost with a plump in a large portion of the human population, assuming they at least have the T1. Alright, so keep that in mind, the M1. In other words, most studies suggest that the M1 is a backup. We can lose it with less consequence so long since the other functionality of detox is working. So what does this mean? It means that Ben Greenfield, with one copy of the T1, zero copies of the M1, heck, we would have at least liked one copy of the M1. But you know what? One copy of your T1 zero copies of your M1 puts you at scraping the bottom of average. You and I have thus far what we call just about average, low to average glutathione detox capacity. So you and I now have to be.

That much more cognizant of our environmental choices, our dietary choices, whatever is going to enter into our bloodstream, the laundry list of toxins that needed to be cleared via glutathionization. You and I need to be that much more wary about it. And why is it even more important to you? Because we're keeping an eye on the sensitivity of your vascular membrane, your lining, your endothelial lining. The final player here to Speed up the GSTP1 is the final member of this triad that we look at. And every human being that we can tell has two copies. You, me, everyone else. So we do have two copies. So now we've got two copies. SNPs are going to be important. Are there spelling variations to the two copies of the P.

Member of this family that contributes to its efficiency, its optimability? And the answer is yes. Simply stated, Ben, you've got two copies of the P1, and both of your copies are the optimal versions. Aha. So now that puts you a little above average. So you've got one copy of T1, zero copies of M1, two good copies of P1.

Ben Greenfield, through the mechanism of glutathionization, is just a little above average in his ability to clear things from the body. He's not going to win a, you know, gold medal here for detox, but so long since he's moderately a little bit more in Tune than others. He should be okay. And remember that super important considering the 4G status, your lining. Now let's just quickly close on this. Ben, let's quickly look at your little angels. This is why as a father, awesome. I mean, my God, your boys must be tickled pink having a dad like Ben to watch out for them and to train them and to educate them. Because here's what's important, Ben. Both your little angels, river and Terran, both have the 4G status. Okay? So they're vascular endothelial. You know, just. And by the way, that's how they're born. They're Teflon coating isn't quite the robust Teflon coating that we might otherwise have liked. Fair enough. But here's where it gets really important for river and Terran versus Ben. You see, river and Terran, they are completely deleted for the all important GSTT one, the T one. Ben that you have one copy of that at least. You have one copy of the big. The big player in that D2 pathway. River and Taryn have zero copies apiece. So you see, Ben, river and Taryn, you know, from their youth, not that they are schizophrenic over it, but from their youth, Ben, you need to be the dad that informs them. You know, hey guys, dad's going to treat you. Dad and mom are going to, you know, encourage you and train you and engender in you the best lifestyle practices and varnish practices. Ben, you and your noble wife. Artificial air refresheners shouldn't be a thing in a common place in your home. Those toxic bomb cleaning detergents shouldn't be there especially for your boys. Because those things, those artificial air refresheners with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, when they enter into the body of your boys, be it through the bronchial alveoli, the lung, be it through the GI tract, be it through dermal touching. When those toxins enter into their bloodstream, river and Terran are at a reduced efficiency and notably reduced efficiency in their ability to glutathionize, neutralize and get rid of those toxins from the bloodstream hepatically through the liver, then through the kidney, out through the bladder and urine. And because they are endothelially 4G, you can see now the 1,2 punch that we've got to watch out for. You need to be the dad that says, hey, River, Terran. You know, listen, I know you guys are going to be teenagers and university goers one day, but you Know what, sons, don't be the guys that are smokers. I know your buddies might try it out, but for you, you got to understand that, that you really just aren't equipped to handle that like some other guys might have.

Just for your genes, kid. Now, now, in a situation like this, or for myself, like, do you, do you make targeted supplementation recommendations as well? I mean, I know that, that your company is associated with Utrients that does like customized supplement packages based on your genetics. Would this be a situation where you'd say, like, okay, we're going to include some kind of glutathione or superoxide disposition, mutase support or something like that?

Brilliant. And the answer is yes. But.

I must color that by saying, Ben, and the little that I know of you and that I've seen the awesome, just holistic approach that you bring to health, which is why you are who you are. We always stress, Ben, that we want the most that we can get from whole foods. Nothing compares to that optimal diet the way in which compounds were they to be individually isolated, that is through micronutrients and supplements versus those same compounds amidst the complexity of whole food, other compounds that work synergistically and so on and so forth. So the first point to your, the first answer to your point is this. We encourage optimal whole food eating good, whole nutritious foods. So by the way, for the very concept of someone with poorer glutathione function, we're talking about the awesome nature of the ingredients in cruciferous veggies, those isothiocyanates, those sulforaphanes, cysteine containing foods. N acetyl cysteine containing foods. Whey. The whey fraction of a good grass fed. The whey fraction of the milk of a good grass fed animal is chuck full, full of the precursors of the things that improve glutathionization.

A little quick note, although looking at a lot of this. Sorry to interrupt. You know, looking at the full picture of a lot of this, I did notice on my results for my, I believe it was the metabolism section of the report, increased risk for lactose intolerance. So when you're making a recommendation like that, you know, for any dairy type of foods, do you kind of couch it in light of other related SNPs related to dietary factors?

100%. And when we speak, you're speaking of the MCM6 gene, Ben, that you carry the G allele, which is associated with lower lactase production. Again, one minute of diving deep. Let's get Geeky for a little while here for that MCM6 and then we loop back around. First and foremost, that G allele, that allele that is associated with lactose intolerance because it's associated with adult or you know, as you post weaning, reduction in lactose production is of zero benefit in individuals of sub Saharan ethnicity. So here's an example. If you're someone of sub Saharan ethnicity and of course, with the beautiful diaspora of our modern world, these individuals can be anywhere in the world and you get your gene result and you go, oh my goodness, I've got the G allele, I'm lactose intolerant. No, that G allele and lactose intolerance was associated in the Caucasian, Western European Caucasian population. It is not associated with lactose intolerance in certain other ethnicities, including the sub Saharan population. But for you there is that association. Okay, fine. Another point here. This gene, the G allele, which is associated with lactose intolerance and it's bandied about. So now we've got just heard something that says, listen, you just can't bandy about that G allele and tell someone they're lactose intolerant unless you know their ethnicity. Number one. Number two, that G allele, what does it do? It confers post weaning a reduced lactase production. Now here's the point. Notice I said post weaning. You see, for individuals that have the G allele, that is a risk. It's a predisposition, yes, to lactase reduction. If post weaning their culture, their diet remained rich in dairy products, for those individuals, it was as though they never weaned. For those individuals, they can have the G allele and still maintain oftentimes healthy levels of lactase. So this is a critically important, this is an epigenetic phenomenon that just because you've got the G allele does not mean that you're absolutely lactose intolerant. You've got to look at, did you nurse in the all nourishing mom's milk? And then after weaning, is your culture, was it a culture replete with the use of yogurts and cheese and milk products or milk derived products? And if the answer is yes, then lactase reduction, it was as though you never weaned. Again, Ben, the awesome of seeing how superficial interpretation can be given versus a really deeper dive? Okay, cool. So coming, coming back to it, a little beautiful tidbit. I learned this from a dear colleague of mine, brilliant Oxford scientist, he did and showed that you Know Ben, back in the Victoria era of England, the wealthy folks in London and other places of Victoria, England, when it came around September, October, November, they couldn't be found in the cities, where would they be? They would be in these lodges in the Scottish Highlands. And what were they doing, the lodges in the Scottish Highlands? For weeks on end they were actually being given, they were feeding on whey fractions of these healthy grass fed sheep. In other words, way back in Victoria, England, the whey fraction. And absolutely, as you pointed out, you do still have to have other parameters of discussion. Lactose intolerance, milk protein sensitivities and so on and so forth. But just to point out, peoples from a long time ago understood that there were whole food components that radically improve, whether it be detox phenomena and other health healthy things in life. Now, to answer the final part of your question regarding supplementation, if and only if, and this is where I say I am an advocate, what we do with utrients, what we try to do is not promote supplementation, but rather reduce it, reduce it to only if and where it is necessary to educate the population. Listen, just because something is a supplement, just because it's supposedly natural does not mean that it's wanton use and you know, 50 things under the kitchen sink and the sun all at once. Think about it, Ben. The human body was not designed to respond cellularly to the micro fractionation and condensation of 60, 50 micronutrients all at once. How does that work with the cellular functions in the body, the circadian rhythms of the body? Body. More often than not, our body, the cells of our body weren't designed to handle super levels of micronutrients that have all sorts of gene expression consequences. So what we do at uterine, to answer your question more fully, is we ask, is there a cellular function that is discernibly suboptimal or dysfunctional? And are there judiciously certain micronutrients that might improve said discrete cellular function? And then those are the places we recommend and we custom formulate ingredients. So what could we do for individuals with reduced glutathione function? Well, of course, here comes a really important point, Ben, that a lot of clinicians get wrong. Well meaning clinicians, they would say to river and Terran, they would say, well River, Terran.

You'Ve got poor glutathione function. Follow with me just one minute here. So what are we going to do? We're going to recommend that you get these Glutathione IVs that have become Vogue. And let me make it clear, Glutathione IVs can have some awesome properties for some individuals. But we've got to understand something here. That gstt1 gene that Ben and River are both missing, what is it? Is it the gene that's making glutathione such that because it's missing, we give them more glutathione and off they go? They're happy? No, this is the gene that is controlling the use of the glutathione. It is catalytically binding glutathione to the toxin. So in other words, what river and Terran are missing is they're missing the controller, they're missing the guidance system to zone in glutathione onto the target. That's what they're missing. So simply pumping them chock full of glutathione via an IV is not the solution. In fact, were we to give Ben, were we to give river and Taron one too many IVs of, you know, smack into the serum, smack into the blood? Glutathione, glutathione, as you know, Ben, is one of the most awesome. First, it's a tiny polypeptide. It's just a three amino acid polypeptide with massive cellular absorption capacity. It even gets into the mitochondria because it's so small. If you overdose someone with glutathione, for whom the control of the use of the glutathione isn't as optimal, you can radically upset the redox system of the mitochondria. And then these folks get Glutathione IVs where other folks go, damn, that was the best thing since sliced bread for rivers and Terrans of the world. They get one too many IV glutathione shots and they will feel like someone has pulled a rug from under them because they're entire for a duration of a few hours. The whole mitochondrial redox has been thrown off kilter. Do you get that, Ben?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think it's a good point for a lot of people who just think more is better or who find out whatever they have low glutathione status, they should go out and get intramuscular glutathione or a glutathione IV or something like that, when in fact, you know, the mitochondria might not be able to handle that. So. Very good point. Okay, cool.

Indeed.

Got it.

Okay, so now we stitched together Ben, and we're gonna start speeding up Here because, because again, to the listeners out there, you know, the greenfields clearly part of Ben and Mum beautiful genomic profile. We're focusing here on only that which is dysfunctional, but there are lots of other great things. So, Ben, we've just established endothelial sensitivity. We've layered in intelligently. Look, we've only spoken of, you know, five genetic markers thus far. 2, 9p, 2 1s for endothelial function, three of the GSTs. Yet the sum total of the impact of what we're getting, we're witnessing in actual physiologic manifestation is huge. And this raises a really important point here, Ben, that even when it comes to genetics, more is not necessarily better. You see, Ben, we've got 22,000 odd genes in our library. If, if every single one of those genes were independently capable of being dysfunctional or not, and then networked into cellular systems that would then further perturbate the dysfunctionality of any particular gene, we wouldn't survive then as a human species if we had so many opportunities for dysfunction. Rather, yes, we've got 22,000 genes, yes, they've got these awesome important function cellular, but we can really distill cellular dysfunction to some landmark things. We're not looking for a thousand points of dysfunction. What can we distill this to, Ben? We can distill cellular dysfunction to some big ticket items. How good is that cell at detoxifying itself? How good is that cell? And here's if you were to ever ask me, Ben, how good is that cell at controlling inflammation? You see? So now you can take big ticket items and really create informed physiologic outcomes without having to look at hundreds and hundreds of genes at the same time. Because we've established there is an increased susceptibility in the vascular endothelium, meaning an increased susceptibility to inflammation, we've just established how good are you at keeping down the things that would cause the inflammation. Now let's switch gears very quickly. Other than toxins in the blood, Ben, you know the ones that you could think, yeah, boy, if those things were in the blood, they would be really abrasive to my Teflon coated blood vessels. What else? Other than the point a finger at the toxins, if present in the blood chronically elevatedly would be inflammatory, what else? Well, at the top of the list, and you know this, Ben, better than most, at the top of the list would be chronically elevated a hyperglycemic condition to the blood. With the corollary and many people miss this point. Not you, but many. Most of us, we correctly focus on the deleterious nature of chronic hyperglycemia due to poor glucose control. But we forget that chronic hyperinsulemia secondary to hyperglycemia, but importantly in the context of insulin resistance, because of course, insulin resistance is going to define the very phenomena. If the cells of our body are resistant to the chaperone, insulin is, as you know, the chaperone of glucose to get it into the cells. If our cells were resistant to the signaling of insulin to get glucose into the cells, what does the body have to do? The body will compensate by producing more insulin. And now we've got an individual who's going along life going, heck yeah, my hemoglobin A1C is good, my fasting glucose is good. And what they're not realizing is unless they're looking at their C peptide results or even an insulin challenge test results, what they're not realizing is they're going about life with chronically elevated blood insulin levels. And that is another contributor to inflammation of the vascular lining. Now Ben, why am I talking about that? Because this is going to be your triangulation of all of the things in the limited genes, limited genes that we looked at for you. Your triangulation of concern is precisely your 4G 9P21 status and what that confers your just above scraping bottom barrel detox, more so for your boys. And the third component is we looked at this all important TCF7L2 gene tomorrow. Charlie Frank 7 laughter 2 this gene then has become the poster child in the type 2 diabetic world. Okay, it seems that this gene controls what is known as an insulinotropic hormone, GLP1. It seems that GLP1 is this thing that is produced in the gut when we ingest carb and glucose rich foods and through a cascade reaction. The activity of the TCF7L2 gene affects two things. A, it literally affects the efficiency of insulin release. In the early postprandial and actually prandial phase, it's affecting insulin release. But remarkably, in the postprandial phase, this gene is involved in insulin resistance. Now, this gene, we all have two copies of it. There is a snp, this one has a SNP in it that is informative. The SNP comes in two versions, A G version G as in George, A T version T as in Thursday. The T version of the gene is deleterious, it's subject. And by the way, Ben, here comes another phenomena. Yes, we've got two copies of the gene, but sometimes one of those two copies, depending on what's there in the human population is as you well know, what we call dominant, meaning whatever that one copy that is dominant, it doesn't matter what the other version, the other second that you got from either mom or dad is because that one copy is dominant. Now remarkably, Ben, the T version of this gene, which is suboptimal, which confers suboptimal response to dietary glucose in a biphasic manner, A because it confers suboptimal prandial and postprandial insulin release as well as secondarily and paradoxically, well, not paradoxically, but importantly, it further then confers insulin resistance. So then you start to seeing a postprandial spike in insulin more than you would have liked in these individuals. The T version that is suboptimal is dominant. So hold on, whether you are T homozygote, which you are, Ben, both of your TCF7L2 genes, you carry the T allele, by the way, your boys are heterozygote. They are gts. They obviously then got the G from mom, the T from you. But even though they're heterozygote, they're still going to behave more like you because their T allele, which is suboptimal, also happens to be dominant. Now Ben, this might, and of course this opens up a whole different discussion, but when you take a look at this gene that is actually now, it confers the single highest genetic association with type 2 diabetes, secondary insulin resistance and poor insulin control, the single most important gene, which is remarkable for something as polygenic, something as type 2 diabetes, that absolutely has multiple genes contributing to the end outcome. This is the leader of the pack. That the suboptimal version is dominant starts to inform us, isn't it Ben, as to what maybe our forefathers were designed to eat? It starts to inform us that maybe we weren't quite as designed for high processed sugar, high, low, you know, high simple carb meals. Because if after all the suboptimal version of the gene is dominant, it sort of tells us something, isn't it? Now the point here, Ben, is your homozygote T, your boys are heterozygote. Which means that Ben, in the context of a high carb diet for either you and or your boys, you are at a greater risk of insulin dysfunction which can create a non toxic pro inflammatory condition environment of the blood which would further perturbate that delicate lining, that 4G lining of your vascular endothelium. I'm going to pause there, Ben, because now what we've just done is we've taken three disparate aspects of cellular function, endothelial quality, detox capacity, insulin productivity and function in response to diet. And look at the awesome story functional logical cascade that we've been able to formulate. Does that make sense to you, Ben?

Yeah, it's very interesting. And this idea that I would need to, for example, prioritize taking care of my vascular function, prioritize mitigation of some elements of carbohydrate intake, and also pay close attention to glutathione status. It's very interesting. There are some things on here that I already knew. Like, you know, like the poor vitamin D availability. I noted that that's reflected on thus report the CC copy thatsor not the CC copy, the GG copy of the cypr gene associated with suboptimal activation of vitamin D and a few others. But I know we're getting a little bit long in the tooth, so I wanted to quickly ask you also because what you've been talking about, talking about is this genome pulse report and obviously there's a ton we could go into on this, but you guys also do the hormone pulse report and I was wondering if you could just give me a quick overview of what that is and how it's different and any primary takeaways from that.

Indeed, just before we leave that, Ben, because I do know that your work on the circadian rhythms of the body is so incredibly awesome and the things that you advocate have just been on the money. Just make sure that Ben, you recognize that both you and your boys are. You carry the heterozygote and therefore suboptimal predisposition for BDNF production, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is arguably one of the most important genes in the genome and one of the most important genes from a circadian rhythm, sleep quality response to exercise and so on and so forth. So just before we leave the genome pulse, do cast your eyes on that and all the awesome things that you already know that you can do to improve your BDNF production, which of course we can all do with better production of bdnf.

Exercise, sauna, things like that.

Yes.

Learning new things.

Feeding my children plenty of psilocybin things along those lines.

Yeah, indeed. Keeping that neuroplasticity at a young age, learning languages, music, things like that. Are all of these lifestyle things that we can bring in that are not pie in the sky, they're not airy fairy they're real things that we can do. Okay, so we come to the genome pulse. The genome pulse, particularly for men.

Wait, you mean the hormone pulse.

Sorry, the hormone pulse. My bad. My apologies. So what I like to call the first part of the hormone pulse. What are we looking at, Ben, for both men and women? The first thing we need to know, Ben, is in both men and women, we're speaking of essentially the same molecular count cascade. We're essentially speaking of how does the human body, male or female, convert progesterones into androgens? Think testosterone. But there are other androgens as well as then from androgens into estrogens. So, yes, ladies out there, you don't. If you're menstruating, that is, if you're in your menstrual years, post men, post menarch, pre menopause, you are making your estrogens your estradiol, largely from testosterone. In other words, you don't make estrogen unless you make first testosterone. And yes, men, we don't have a monopoly on testosterone. We also make estrogens. So my first point here is human beings, we have essentially the same cascade of progesterones into androgens, into estrogens. That's the first. When we understand this, we have what we call the T intersection, T, unsurprisingly, for testosterone and the E intersection for estrogens. What do I mean by the T intersection? Very quickly, what we're able to see genetically. And that's why it's so awesome. Had I not met or had I not seen Ben Greenfield, I would have been predicting, depending on age and a modicum of healthy diet and lifestyle, Ben Greenfield, and I was not being facetious or, you know, trying to be ingratiating to you. Ben Greenfield has literally the single one of two of the best possible hormonal cascade genetics when it comes to physique. How could I make such a, you know, frankly, you know, awesome statement or bold statement? It is as thus. You see, when we look at how the body makes testosterone and uses and metabolizes testosterone, I have what I call the T intersection. Think of a lowercase t, in other words, a cross. What are the four points of the cross? The four points of the T are number one on the left.

How efficiently are we converting progesterone into testosterone? Ben, you have this one gene. Imagine that one gene, CYP17, a one that converts progesterone specifically and more so pregnenolone into your androgens. Dhea, androstene, dion, androstene diol and testosterone. Let's just say testosterone for simplicity. You've got the version of that gene that is considered relative to the other version of the gene, the slow version of CYP17A1. So one might say, well, hold on, does that mean that Ben isn't making enough testosterone? No, it actually means that compared to how much faster Ben could have converted his progesterone into testosterone, Ben has the version that makes his testosterone just at the healthy level. Having an Overly fast sub 17A1, Ben, not you, the other folks, is a preamble predisposition for hormonal dysfunction downstream. So Ben converts his pregnenolone ever since he hit puberty back, whenever he converts his pregnenolone into testosterone at what is study after study pan ethnically, just the right rate. Now you've made your testosterone, you are the juncture, you're at the middle of the T. When you make testosterone, Ben, three things happen to testosterone. Well, one, we're going to use it, obviously, and benefit from it. That's obvious. We are going to take some of that testosterone, testosterone, and convert it into dht. Dihydrotestosterone. I like to call it my Jason Statham testosterone. Right. So one molecule of DHT is worth five molecules of T. Yeah.

You, Ben, that can make you go baldo if you're not careful.

Indeed, indeed. So you, Ben, have the medium speed version of the SRD5A2 steroid 5 alpha reductase that converts testosterone into DHT. Now, when we take that into composition, you have the just right slower CYP17A1 progesterone, pregnenolon into testosterone. You have the medium conversion of testosterone into dht. You have the medium of the other things that we do with testosterone aromatase. CYP19A1 converts testosterone into estrogen. And men, we need it as well. You've got the medium version of that. You've got the last thing that we do with the testosterone and the DHT having made it, we metabolize it, we flush it out. How do we do that? Through glucuronidation.

Notice you have just about the medium Goldilocks version. You are neither too fast nor are you too slow at getting rid of your testosterone DNA. DHT having made it. How does this all combine? It combines as. Thus, Ben Greenfield is the lucky son of a gun who makes testosterone at just about the right rate. He converts just about the right amount of testosterone into that more voracious anabolic DHT so that it creates good lean striated muscle without Excessive hirstutism and going bald without too much of a concern of BPH later in life. Because the men who had the fastest 17A1 converting pregnenolone to testosterone faster than you can shake a stick at converting testosterone into DHT at the highest rates possible. These are those DHT bald men, you know, much leaner, yes, much more wiry muscle type, but at a significant increased risk of BPH into their early and mid-50s and 60s because they were too DHT dominant for their entire life. Ben Greenfield has the perfect balance of the T intersection. Quickly. Quickly, Ben. The only difference between your little angels, your boys and you. They've got the identical perfect balance that you have, except they have a higher predisposed conversion of testosterone into estrogens. In other words, when they make their testosterone. And Ben had the nice medium conversion to dht, they have that as well. And Ben has the nice medium clearance of the testosterone dht, they essentially have that as well. But river and Terren have a greater predisposition of converting testosterone and to estrogens. How is this going to play out, Ben? You will find that when river and Terran mature from a pubescent perspective, you may find that their puberty is slightly delayed versus yours, for example, slightly. And you will find that their body type in response to exercise and diet and lifestyle is that they will have a tad more resistance to creating lean muscle mass, as you might have been able to conduct to get, because that increased estrogenization, which is going to have nothing to do with their male herd or anything of the sort, but from a physiologic perspective, that tad more estrogenization in them versus you tend to confer a little bit more difficulty, we might say, in gaining that leaner cut, if you will. Do you get that then?

Makes a lot of sense. Interesting. So they may have gotten that point part from from mom, not from me, huh?

Indeed. And look what would have happened even in you, Ben, even in you. You had the medium aromatase, right? You were heterozygote. So you're converting testosterone into estrogens at all things equal, mono a mono male to male at a medium in the range of how much you convert, were you exactly you, Ben, in an alternate universe, everything was the same genetically. But if you simply had the slowest version of aromatase, CYP19A1 such that when you made that testosterone, everything else was the same. You're making it to the same rate, you're making good amounts of dht, not too much, not too little, and so on. And so forth. But if the only difference in you, Ben, was that you had the slowest CYP19A1 right off the bat, innately you would have had a predisposition to having a little bit more of a cut physique. You would have had your ability to get that lean straight and cut would have come easier if you were if you had the slowest of 19A1. That's the awesome nature when you're able to start looking at these cascades and being able to read the interpretation of how it manifests itself.

You know, one thing I was going to ask you Too was this ACTN3 gene that's associated with muscle twitch fiber type. Because there's a lot of talk out there about how certain people are more predisposed to power type exercise versus endurance type exercise response. What's your opinion on that gene?

Well now you've hit a sore point. So you know the actin3 gene which yes, absolutely is. It defines as you well noted that the muscle fiber type some being more associated with a faster twitch than not. When you take this gene then there are actual reports out there, loads of reports out there in the sort of what we call performance genetic reports. You will see this gene. Now first and foremost, this gene has two SNPs. In other words, genes can have multiple SNPs in it and this gene has two SNPs within the same gene that people report. Number one. Before we get into even the SNPs, Ben, as a trainer, okay, the difference in muscle twitch between someone that let's call it has the lower functioning actin 3, the less optimal, although that's a wrong word, the one version of the actin 3 versus the next, the difference in muscle twitch capacity, Ben, for the 99.9% of individuals that will come to you looking to be healthier due to some exercise regimen that you'll describe and design for them, Ben, this gene is going to have zero implication. That's that innate slight difference might mean they can shave off 0.5 seconds on their 50 meter dash. But from a purely in other words, as a world class trainer, you're not going to look at that gene result and say well Mrs. Jones, I'm going to give you a more endurance based exercise motif than a more resistance based or power training exercise motif, which ironically and really it's just pure hubris. That's exactly what these reports and I'm not calling anyone out, I'm just saying from a genetics perspective, this is an example of a gene that yet reported on. Yes, there's some nominal cellular differences, but when it comes to bonafide physiologic outcome, I'm going to ask you, Ben, not to put you on the spot, to put myself on the spot. If you got this gene result in a report and that gene in that report says to you, Ben, your patient is better suited for power type exercises, would you really use that information and somehow drastically change the training potential of that person?

Well, I'd certainly consider it. I mean I'd certainly consider shifting things more towards lower rep, higher weight, more explosive activities targeted towards fast twitch muscle fiber type.

Good. Now. Perfect. And now what if I ask you, remember I said that gene has two different SNPs in it? Two different SNPs. Same gene. Two different SNPs. And what if I told you very often one of the places in which the gene varies comes back with the result, you are better suited to power training. But the other variation in the same gene for the same person gives the diametrically opposite interpretation. Now how would you use that genetic result?

Well, if both SNPs were tested and they came up with completely different results, I'd just probably throw them out and roll with what that person was responding best to. From a qualitative standpoint.

Bada bing. And in many, and we're not talking 5% or 10% in many, many times, because these two SNPs are independent of each other, they're inherited in an independent manner. Many times these two snipers SNPs within this gene come back as strictly opposite informative outcome. And so these are some of the things we go right back to the beginning. Ben and I know that we're going to wind down. It goes right back to what are the genes that give intelligent insights that are meaningful?

Wow. Well, we just went through like, like for me to get this hormone pulse in the genome. Pulse that's called the functional genomics test package. Right? That, that's the title of this. So the hormone pulse is the one that tells you like issue with any hormone related cancers, you know, weight gain, weight loss, potential metabolic syndrome, some information on physical exercise performance, hair loss, hormones, fertility, a lot of the stuff that we were just going over. And then the genome one is basically, if I understand correctly, kind of like six different paths. Your carbon, your metabolism, your vitamin and micronutrient requirements, your cellular methylation, your detox and antioxidant capacity, cardiovascular health, and then mood, behavior and neurotransmitters. And basically what you guys do is you do the genome pulse and then the hormone pulse. And then you also have the option for people who want to get some kind of a customized supplement package sent to them that kind of addresses some potential deficiencies. That's something that they can follow up with after they've done something like the functional genomics analysis that you have.

And the reason we separate the hormone pulse is not for any other reason other than we wanted to have people be able to say, you know what, I want the hormone pulse without the genome pulse, I want the genome pulse. Or you want both. In order for us to make an intelligent interpretation of the type of micronutrients that you might need, we're going to flip those reports because of course, they're all synergistic. Obviously the hormone pathway, the storage general pathway, is not existing independent of all of these others. That TCF7L2 gene, Ben, that influences insulin resistance, insulin resistance is absolutely paralleled or informs and is informed by the estrogen pathway of the body. So all of these things are interconnected. In conclusion, what you would have observed here, Ben, is trying to interpret, intelligently interpret genetic information, is something that is often beyond the capacity of a simple report. You see, a report is two dimensional, it's serial, one gene after the next after, by its nature. But what I've hoped, if at all, if there's one thing that I've conveyed to your incredible audience, is genetic pathways are not serial, they are multiplex. They are intertwined. And so what we advocate, Ben, more so than who does your test, it's about making sure that the interpretation of the results is as robust, is as non superficial as possible. That's really where the substance and meat is at.

And I know that for people who don't want to like hop on the phone with a doctor, you guys, basically, along with the reports that people get, these two PDFs very similar to what I got, you include like a webinar series that just walks people through how to interpret all these different markers that they get after they test with you, correct?

Yes, sir. And we're doing that because, like you just said, to ease, you know, having to figure, you got to sit with someone. Also, Ben, we are creating the largest curated library of videos that illustrate these pathways, talk about these pathways. So in other words, in the comfort of your own home, you can determine, listen what. What pathway am I going to study or listen today? What pathway am I really going to try to open, own and personalize with? So yes, those webinars, those educational videos are really where we're putting our emphasis and attention.

Yeah, I've seen some of them. They're super duper useful. And what I'll do is first of all, everything we talked about, including some of my own results, if people want to download those and kind of peruse them to see what the results actually look like, you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com DNA podcast that's basically again, GreenfieldFitness.com DNApodcast and I'll link to those. I'll also link over to Mansour's company, the DNA company. They are offering everybody who's listening something special. Basically this whole functional genomics test package. It's normally about 450. They're giving it to everybody for 3.99. That includes all the webinar videos, that includes the hormone pulse test, the genome pulse test, and these 80 plus page PDF reports that are super insightful. And then from there you can basically watch the webinars, get a chance to kind of see how to interpret some of your results and even look into getting some customized ingredients sent your way to kind of address specific issues that you might need to address. So I'll put links to all of that as well over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com DNApodcast and you don't need a discount code or anything. You just click through from that URL and you can try out this testing for yourself. Mansoor, I feel like we almost barely scratched the surface of all the different SNPs we could have talked about, but we covered a lot of the big ones and I'm hoping this has been helpful for people. And if this has been helpful for you and you're listening in, you can also leave comments questions for Mansoor, for myself, and we'll try and jump in and answer some of your big genetic tests testing questions. But in the meantime, Mansoor, thanks for, thanks for coming on the show and walking me through all of this and taking this, this deep dive into genetics with me.

Ben, it's been an absolute honor, sir. If you ever need any further feedback, just you know where to find me. And for your audience, I'll look out, as you said, to any of these questions and we'll coordinate getting answers back to anyone. It's been an honor, Ben. Thank you.

Cool. Thanks for having me on, man. I'm gonna go have a beer and get some glutathione injection and I guess learn something new to increase my bdnf if I haven't learned a whole bunch of new things in the past. Hour and a half anyways, but all right, folks, show notes again@BenGreenfieldFitness.com DNApodcast along with that special offer from the DNA company. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Mansoor Mohammed signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an 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 loss, protein 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 helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.