Dirty Genes with Dr. Ben Lynch

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of Famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin.

JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives with over 3.5 million.

Podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Love Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hello. Welcome to this week's podcast. This is exciting. Truthfully, I have been kind of stuck in the sky for a while and I am very excited to be talking about this day. Now. If you've been around my world, you know, I'm kind of obsessed. Obsessed with what I call weight loss resistance. Like what gets in the way of you losing weight and what can cause you to gain weight. All starting back from 35 years ago when I was a personal trainer. It was me and Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen and Mark's Daily Apple and Body by Jake and personal training as personal training to pay my way through grad school and doctoral school. And I learned really quickly that your body is not a bank account, it is a chemistry lab. We were taught to create a 500 calorie deficit a day and people would lose £2 a week. And I found out pretty quickly that sometimes, sometimes that works, but not always. And I was like, well, why not? And I went to the library because back then we didn't have Google. So one of the areas that I discovered later on, because no one was talking way back then, was genetics. And I got sent this book, Dirty Jeans by the amazing, amazing, awesome Dr. Ben Lynch. And I was like, okay, wow, this is great. And I get sent books literally every single week. And this one was like, sat down, opened it immediately dove in and was like all right, I need this. I need this guy on my podcast. It took a while. I waited literally I think eight months. Then in the interim I got to hang out with him at an event, found out what a nice, super nice guy he is. Besides being awesome, I'll tell you a little bit about him. And so I am so excited to be talking about jeans today with you. I want to remind you we always do awesome show notes, but we also have an incredible gift from Dr. Ben that you will be hearing about. And you can go to jjvirgin.com forward/dirtygenes that is the name of his best.

Selling book, Dirty Jeans. You will want this book.

He's also the president of Seeking Health, a company that helps educate both the public and health professionals on how to overcome genetic dysfunction. He received his doctorate in naturopathic medicine from the fantastic Bastyr University and lives up in Seattle with his wife and three boys. So I also before I jump in and share one of my favorites with you, I want to share one of my favorite reviews with you. And this is wife, Mom, Grandma and Student of life. Five stars. It says Jude's noni and says longtime fan of JJ from back in the PBS appearance days followed all of the advice starting with giving up sugar. Yay. Because she was so informative, authentic and sincere. Many I've studied have not been she says in parentheses I changed my lifestyle, my relationship to food. Right now I'm exploring the cultured veggies and kefir coconut water and have found that an amazing them an amazing addition to my morning smoothies and daily meals. Don't know if I have any thyroid issues, but I find that even if these podcasts don't apply to me currently, there's always important info that does. Thanks a million for your continued diligence in your field. It has made all the and my well being I love it. Thank you. Jude Snoney I'm going to be doing these shout outs. You know I do a shout out every week on the show. I'm going to do them at the front because they to me are the biggest deal ever. It means everything to me and the team. We all read these so I super appreciate it. Jude Zononi and if you feel inspired we would so appreciate it if you would leave a review. It helps a bunch. There's a lot of podcasts out there and I make it part of my mission. My mission is to help a billion people get healthy. I cannot do that by myself. So if you'll Jump in and help me on that mission. I would super appreciate it. All right, Dr. Ben lynch, welcome to the show. I've been waiting a long time for you.

Yeah, awesome.

Great to be here, too. Well, I am so excited about this. I read your book, started stalking you, as you know. I think it took like eight months, but here you are talking about. And I know that you've got seven genes that you want to talk about, and you picked seven out of 20,000. So what's up with these?

Well, one would be a really long book if I did all 20,000. And the seven that I picked, we call the super seven in the book because they really, really are vitally important. If one of these seven genes, just one of them are acting, what I call dirty, then you're going to have a myriad of symptoms. And the issue is a lot of us have most of them dirty. So. And then we're going to have a lot of symptoms. And these, the seven that I picked, have to do with the whole body. They have to do with detoxification, mental health, liver health, and also heart health. So it's. It's all combined in gut health. They're all there. So I picked these seven because they play such major, major roles in major aspects of the body. And then you put them all together and imagine you actually have a holistic approach.

There you go. Well, I love things in sevens. So that works. That works great. And it sounds like to me what you really did here was pick the big needle movers that when you start to work on these, it will shift a lot of things, you know, so that makes a ton of sense. And what I'd love to start with, because everyone's talking about genetics, epigenetics, nutrigenomics, Everything is kind of moving into genes. Now. Let's kind of dial it back to what the heck are jeans and why should we care about them?

Well, jeans are basically the tools that we have inherited that get stuff done for us. And, you know, they're the tires on our car, they're the motor, and are we a four cylinder or a six or an eight? You know, how fuel efficient are we? And that's a legit comparison. You know, some of us can not eat for long periods of time and be fine. Others of us have to just chow all the time. And some of that has to do with our genes that we're born with. So I think it's really vitally important to understand our own genetics so we can see what we're susceptible to. Not destined to. So There are certain genes that we, that can denote that we are going to have a disease like cystic fibrosis or celiac or hemochromatosis. And those are genes that kind of set your fate in those areas. And I don't like looking at those genes. They're important, but that's not my cup of tea. I like looking at genes or what Dr. Robert Navio looks at and what they're called, eco alleles. And these genes are really, really malleable by our choices. And so we inherit them to be, inherit them from our moms and dads, and we're susceptible to them being faster or slower than somebody else, but we have the ability to change them. And we'll get into more details about that because I really love empowering people. And by understanding how your genes work specifically and understanding you at such a deep level, literally in your nucleus, then you can really take ownership and you decide if you're gonna, you know, support your genes or not.

I, I love where this is going because what I've been really kind of pounding my chest about is, you know, this idea, like you put a bunch of nutritionists and doctors in the room and you get, you get like a fist fight over keto paleo, vegan. And I'm like, stop it. You know, because my kind of take on it is whoever the guru is with the specific diet, it probably is the perfect diet for them. Yes, right. And so they're like, okay, everybody needs to do this. I'm like, no, no, no. Like, what if you went on a diet to learn things, to figure out what worked for you, what didn't work for you, what you need to take with you into your regular daily eating life. But what you're probably learning is what genetically works best for you. So if we could even step it back further, which. Actually, a couple years ago, one of my very close friends founded a company called Pathway Genomics. And he did this test that was, and we did this whole thing around, are your genes making you fat? Haha. And it was like a play on genes and genes obviously, but it was the first time they brought me in because my whole thing was like, what is, you know, what is getting in the way of you losing weight or causing you to gain weight? No one had been talking about genetics. And they sat down and started to show me this. I'm like, oh my gosh, like, this is amazing stuff. And so I would love to dig into that with you because I still feel like we're not talking about, you know, the Fact that your genetics could make you someone who has a sweet tooth, needs a snack more often, can't skip breakfast. Right. Is has a tendency towards insulin resistance. And even though you might have these things, you said something so important and I'm going to steal it from Dr. Jeffrey Bland, our buddy of genes loading the gun. But really that lifestyle pulls the trigger, which means we can really make these decisions once we have this information. So let's dive into weight loss because that's what my audience is super interested in.

Yeah, the I really resonate with you talked, talked about earlier too, before we get into the whole weight loss thing is, is when you're talking diet, right? Or you're seeking, well, we can tie it in weight loss too. When you're seeking that perfect diet for weight loss and you're seeing all these different things that work for people, and you read the testimonials and you're like, oh, that's awesome. And you try it and you feel like a failure and you're mad at yourself because it didn't work. And you're seeing all these before and after picks and doing all this stuff and like, God, I suck. And so. And then you kind of give up and you get off the horse and you don't get back on. And later you get back on again because it's New Year's resolution and you jump back on again, you try a different diet, fails again, and then you keep going down this failure route and finally you try a system. And it worked. And it worked for you. And now why is that? Yeah, your genetics absolutely plays a role with it, but it's also how your genes are acting at that time, which is the whole concept of dirty genes, where you do not have to inherit a genetic problem from your mom and dad. You could have actually made your genes not working very well because of a nutrient deficiency or a certain stressor or an infection or inflammation, or you're not sleeping right, or you got exposed to arsenic or cadmium or whatever, and all these affect your genes which allow you to burn fuel efficiently. Efficiently.

I'm so excited about this. Literally, this is like my kind of twist on a platform of first of all, I think we'd agree, like there should be diets that term for a short term therapeutic intervention to figure something out. And then the way you eat, and we need a new word for that one, the way you eat. But what you just said was you got to consider your environment, your lifestyle because of what they've done to you, your genetics and your outcomes and that all those together are going to play into what's the right thing for you at the time, which would be different for you at 15 than probably 30 than probably 60.

Yeah. And even if you, let's say you're, you're dieting in the, in the winter and you have certain genes firing more in the winter than you do in the summer and you try that same wintertime diet that you did and it's not working very well. And so you might even adapt a little bit more for the summer.

Look at summer and winter. Like summer, we have loads of fruit, we have long days, we're more insulin resistant, we be more at storing fat. Winter we're going to sleep more, we have colder days. You know, it's different foods are available. It's like we've got to consider all of these things. It's so important. Anyway, all right, go, let's go. Let's talk weight loss and how this all impacts weight loss.

For the whole weight loss thing, there's a few aspects to it. Weight gain is all about your inability to burn fuel faster than you're adding it on, Right. So why aren't you burning fuel very well? And is it because you're eating too much or is it because your mitochondria are dirty and they are what producing, are producing energy when you are overweight, you've got a ton of fuel on you, which is great, you, but you're not able to burn it. So there is a gene which I talk about in the book, the GST GPX gene, and a lot of people don't associate this gene with weight loss. Which is why I want to go to it right now, is if your glutathione levels are low, then you're going to be more on fire. You have more pro oxidation, less antioxidant control, and if you have less antioxidant protection, your mitochondria are super, super sensitive and those are what burn fuel to make energy. So you're going to be more tired and when you're more tired, you gravitate towards more sugar and more carbs because you think that's what's going to pull you out. But what you actually need is probably glutathione and a sauna to get to help get these chemicals out of you and to get the inflammation down. And as you add the glutathione down into your system, the more glutathione is going to put out the fire, which is going to allow your mitochondria to go back to work again and to burn that fat that you have around your middle or wherever it is. And now you're going to be more energized. And now you're not going to be desiring the carbs and the sweets and the caffeine as much anymore because you actually have more energy.

So it's following a pathway. Instead of what I see people doing now is they're like, oh, my gosh, I'm overweight and I've eaten all these carbs. I must need to cut all these carbs.

Right.

It must be. That must be it. Instead of going, let's go back in the pathway to see what the issue really is. And then we fix that and then the problem forgets, and then it becomes effortless.

Yes, exactly. And. And you feel so empowered that you want to continue with it. And I cannot tell you how many people have added in glutathione that really make a shift in saying, I have more energy, I have more clarity. And, you know, and they don't say that. I've never asked them, have you eaten less? But the result is when you have more energy and more clarity, you're going to be doing more things and you're probably not going to be snacking on the feel good. Give me quick energy food. Right now, a lot of people who are gaining weight are in a vicious cycle and they feel like failures because the only fuel that they can burn is sugar. They can't burn their protein and they can't burn their fat. So when they, when they know that they need to cut carbs and they try the ketogenic diet or they try the, the gaps or the paleo lifestyle, they can't burn those proteins and fats because they're so dirty. And then they feel like a failure because they're. They go back to binging, eating again and snacking all the time because they have to. So it's a big, big problem that I think is very unaddressed.

And so in your book, and which gene is that that we're looking at? You know, and you have, in your book, you have an assessment, right? I remember going through it. So you can figure out which of these seven are dirty that you need to work on.

Yeah. So the, the gene that we've been talking heavily on is I sleep There should be like the great eight or the super eight or whatever you want to call them. But as you said, eight's not a great number. So we made it for seven. And it's the GST that's the Glutathione transferase gene which pulls out a bunch of heavy metals. And then there's a glutathione peroxidase gene. I talk about them in one chapter. So that helps get rid of hydrogen peroxide and additional reactive oxygen species or what we call free radicals commonly. But then the carbohydrate craving gene is the faster MAO A gene because this is the serotonin gene. And so when people crave carbs, they are craving more serotonin and they feel good from that. And then it's also the faster CONT gene. So there's a MAO agene for serotonin. And then you have the COMT gene which can also be fast because when you eat caloric dense foods, they spike your dopamine. And when you have a faster COMT gene, your dopamine clears out of your body quicker. So you naturally want to find, you know, ancestrally more foods that are caloric dense to get your dopamine back up. And we are programmed that with our reptilian brain. So here's your reptilian brain telling you to eat caloric dense foods, which is fast food, junk food.

Yep.

And then your modern day brain is telling you no, you shouldn't eat that.

Guess who wins.

Yeah.

And then you beat yourself up because you know you're a bad person. You've got no willpower, you've got no discipline. Oh, you must be, you know, must be your age. Things are slowing down. All that garbage that we tell ourselves of the negative self talk. And the big bummer is, you know, you fail a couple times and that becomes a feedback loop of I'm a failure, this doesn't work. I guess this is just what I'm destined to be. And that's what I think is so important here. As you start to realize that you've got to go further back in the pathway, all you're trying to do is band aid a problem. And if the issue is I've got cravings, you've got to figure out why you have them. If the issue is that you seem to have needs to eat mass amount of foods, you got to figure out why you want to eat such a mass amount of food. So you want to go, you want to look at the situation, then we're going to go all the way back, which is what, what you're describing. That's so cool. So you've, you've described, you know, eating more, you've decided, described like having toxicity issues. You described carb cravings, any other ones Here we should be looking at in terms of how they impact weight.

Boy, I would say bloating. So you can have bloating when your liver isn't working very well because you can get sibo, and sibo can cause bloating. And you see people. You see overweight folks that have their abdomens hanging way down. I read this in someone, so I'm kind of stealing their thunder here, but I forgot who it was. But it was a great point. So if you're overweight and your abdomen hangs down over your belt buckle, that's one type of obesity. Then you have another type of obesity where their abdomen is sticking straight out, right? Way out. So that is full abdominal distension, probably a lot of bloating and gas and. And adiposity as well, of course. But why is her abdomen sticking straight out? So we got a dirty microbiome here, and we probably have a dirty liver and dirty gallbladder. So that's two other genes. We have the PEMT gene, which really, really helps with producing your bile. So bile flow is really important because you need enough fossil choline, and if you don't have enough fossil choline, your bile doesn't get out of your gallbladder. And if your bile doesn't get out of your gallbladder, what happens? Since bile helps kill pathogens and bacteria and so on that's supposed to drip inside your small intestine. If it's not dripping in your small intestine, you will get small intestinal bacterial overgrowth because your bile can't get out of your gallbladder. And they've done research where they've taken mice and they sutured their little gallbladder duct. They closed it, and the mice got sibo. They removed the suture, the bile dripped out. It got rid of their sibo. I was like, wow, that's really cool. So you can be overweight and you can have a distended belly because of this imbalanced microbiome, because your gallbladder is not getting out. And you're also intolerant. Maybe you try keto, but you can't tolerate the keto diet because you can't process the fat, because your bile is stuck and it can't get out.

Which other one should we. So I know I'm focusing on weight loss, but there's more to this than weight loss. I always look at weight loss as just a sign things aren't working well. But what are some of the other genes and things we should be considering here? And I Just want to remind everybody, and I think this is super cool, is you can go to the book, and this is the book Dirty Genes, as I talked about in the intro. You can go to the book, do this assessment, and start to take action right away. You know, there's a lot of genetic tests out there now, and you get them, and you don't know what the heck to do with them. And not saying, don't do those, that's next tier. But first tier is just go to the book, do the assessment, start taking action, because it will really give you a guide as where you should go first, what should you do? And you'll start to see things shift that you didn't think. You know, you just figured like, oh, I give up. I guess it's just me, which I think is so cool.

And it gives you answers to the common things that you know that you should do, but you don't know why you should do them. And then once you know you. Why you should do them, how the body works with those mechanisms, you're like, oh, that explains so much. And you get more motivated to do it.

It'll make you eat your veggies.

Yeah. And then, why do I need to eat my veggies? And so let's talk about that one. If you don't eat your veggies, especially leafy greens or foliage, I call it. So if you eat your foliage, you're getting folate. So foliage provides folate, and that's supporting the gene called mthfr. And this MTHFR gene I call the methylation master. And methylation is a process in your body which does a lot of different things, including help maintain your neurotransmitters at a nice, balanced level. So if your neurotransmitters are imbalanced, meaning, like, maybe you're having bipolar episodes where you're kind of super excited one moment, and then later in the day, you're just super down in the dumps, and you're just cycling up and down, up and down, up and down. I can't tell you, jj, how many times I've seen people who have been diagnosed with bipolar because their blood sugar levels are all out of whack.

Oh, yeah. Well, I've got a son who is bipolar, but it is the biggest trigger for him is blood sugar, hands down. So, you know, I mean, it's. That's just. I don't know anyone who could have unstable blood sugar and feel awesome. Like, never once have I heard this.

You know, far from. And you're Hearing, you know, so MTHFR is really key because that's. It helps balance and keep your moods clean. So it helps keep your MAO A gene and your serotonin humming along. It keeps your comt gene humming along so your dopa, norepi and your estrogen levels are better. So it's playing a role there. It also helps support the glutathione genes. It helps support the NOS3 genes. And the NOS3 gene I talk about in the book. If your hands are cold. So if you have cold hands and feet, your blood flow is bad and people who have sleep apnea or are mouth breathers, you're going to be tending to be more overweight because when you breathe through your nose, that's triggering these genes. I can't remember which ones I don't talk about in the book, but it was really cool when I read it. When you breathe through your nose, it's triggering genes that promote weight loss.

Wow.

Yes.

Duct taping my mouth right now.

Yeah. After the podcast. But it's, it's so. But mouth taping, absolutely key. Make sure that you get the, your deviated septum straightened out with nasal cranial restructuring. I talk about that in the book. There's a lot of things, but mouth breathing is super, super important and it's a major cardiovascular risk factor too if you're breathing through your mouth and it increases adhd. Wow.

I know.

Rob Wolf was telling me. I was doing a, I think I was doing an interview with him. He was telling me how he mout mouth tapes his kids before they go to bed. And I'm like, huh? You know, I don't know, like, don't. I don't think my 19 and well, another 20 and 21 year old would go along with that. Like, what's another lunatic idea of mom, you know? All right, I know we're, we could be doing this all day. I'm loving this. And I just got to emphasize everybody, you want this book, you want to take this assessment. It is so cool. It gives you absolutely actionable stuff that you can take advantage of right now. But here's what's even cooler that you were telling me about before is this secret, the secret chapter that you have for everybody that didn't make it into the book. It's kind of like the black book that I think of it, you know, of jeans. Tell everybody what they're going to get from you.

So when I was writing the book, I was trying to think of a way that I could get people excited and started Easily, without any sense of overwhelm. So I just started writing this chapter, and I was super excited about it. And then I. I sent it to my publisher, and they're like, this is fabulous, but your book is already too long, so you can't use it. It's like, oh, are you kidding me? But what it does is it gives you this sense of tone of the overall book without feeling overwhelmed from science, and it gives you actionable places to start immediately. And I call it the 26 steps, and step one is letter A. So I picked the letter of the Alphabet, and the letter A stands for avoid, because a lot of people want to add things, which I could have said, but supplementation is something that you enhance your system with. And so many of us are doing things that we need to avoid in order to improve our health. So you got to figure out what those things are. And then B is breathe. And then all the rest that you can discover. And it's super actionable, super easy to read, and you're going to experience tremendous benefit after you start applying just one of them. I invite you to apply one of them and then put it down. Don't try to do all 26 at once.

Yeah, I was gonna say 26, but yeah, 26 over time, not overnight.

Yes.

But what I've learned from you, and I think it's one of your, you know, superhero unique abilities, is that you make things that could be very complicated, simple, and actionable. And especially in the world of genetics, that and. And when you know why you need to do something, you are much more likely to take action. So this is such great work. And you'll be able to get this secret chapter@jjvirgin.com dirtyjeans and of course, we'll put the link to grab the book there too. And I just want to thank you so much. You are just awesome. I love your work and I really appreciate everything you're doing out there in the world.

Thank you, jj.

All right, now, after the break, I'll be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. I love this. And I've actually had people post saying how much they love me answering these questions. If you have a question you would like me to answer, here's what you do. Jump on my Facebook @jj virgin official or my Instagram @jj virgin and or you can, you can also go over to YouTube and here's what you do. If you catch me live, which is always fun, just type it on in there. I'm always skipping, searching around. Or you can just put it into a direct message to me. You can post it into one of my groups on Facebook. You can post it onto my wall. And we watch those and we will answer. So we a lot of times we answer right in real time. But I also watch those ones that are just so perfect for that week's podcast. Like this one is from Charlotte who said, I know I need to lose weight, but I just cannot seem to get the motivation help. So here's the deal. There are so many strategies out there and I loved sharing Ben with you today because the most important thing is to make sure you're picking the right strategy for you, which is going to depend on your lifestyle, your current health situations, the environment you're in, the outcomes you're looking for. Right. And there is no one thing for anybody. If you look at both what I've done in the Virgin diet, the Sugar impact diet, I've taken you down a pathway of self exploration to figure out how many carbs should you be eating or which foods work for you and which foods don't. And it's really for you to connect the dots between what you're eating and how you feel and what you weigh. And I just want to give you a little shout out. You can get started on the Virgin diet and figuring that out for free at jjvirgin.com forward/challenge. And we will put that in the show notes. But the bigger thing here is I want to back step even further than that because today we were talking about, okay, don't just like band Aid the problem, go back in the pathway. And I think the first thing to really get clear on before you ever even start with I'm going to make this shift is why. And man, I go to Simon Sinek with his, you know, start with the why. It's not the how, it's the why. Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to be healthier? What's the real reason behind it? Get super duper clear on that and then let's say that you need to lose £50. Well, that's overwhelming and daunting, right? Take the first step, because I know that habits dictate hormones, and hormones are going to dictate whether you lose weight or not. And as you start to make these shifts, one shift will build on the next shift. And so you start to make these habits. Maybe the first one is to lower your sugar impact, or figure out which foods work for you, or identify your dirty genes and start working on one. But you is that one. Start with one thing, one thing and own it. Get great at it, make it a habit, and then go to the next and go to the next and all of a sudden you'll turn around over time and go, holy moly. This was effortless because I was focusing on taking the next step. I was focusing on that action, what I need to do to be successful with that, knowing that if I do those that I will make the entire shift that I want to. I super appreciate you again. If you want to submit a question, Instagram, Facebook, come on over, hang out with me and I will see you next week. That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading. Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a fraugh the page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what should I read next? Subscribe now, wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.