Using Your DNA to Hack Weight & Nutrition with Kashif Khan

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Hey, this is JJ Virginia, welcome and.

Thanks so much for joining me.

This is Ask the Health Expert.

Here.

I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast. I love the phrase that my buddy Dr. Jeff Bland says, genes load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger. And you are going to really hear about that. Today I'm talking to Kashif Khan. He is the CEO of the DNA company and I got the chance to do this with him a couple years ago. Kind of blew my mind. I'd had my genetics done years earlier, wasn't really actionable. I think we've all done 23andMe. This is not that. This is like your personal roadmap for how you can live and you're going to hear about this and how some of these different markers, how they can impact your metabolic health, your sleep, your mental health. It's wild, the information. So the DNA company is really a place where personalized medicine is being pioneered through these unique insights into the human genome. Kashif is the CEO of it. You're gonna hear about his story and how he came to be with this. He's also the host of the Unpilled podcast. He lives in Canada. He grew up in Vancouver in an immigrant household and was an entrepreneur from an early, early age and prior to the DNA company advised on a whole bunch of high growth startups in a variety of industries and then really dove into genetics. And you'll hear why during the interview. And what he's really discovered here is, you know, first of all, he's actually genetically engineered to be an entrepreneur and I asked a lot more about that because I think it's really fascinating. But he also was engineered to have a sensitivity to pollutants that really created a lot of issues in his health. You're going to hear how he was able to discover that, reverse that and what you can learn by really digging into your genes and also some AI that he's doing so that some of these things you can just answer the right questions. Like he's got a sleep survey that you can answer the right questions and get your basic AI on how you know what's going on with your sleep and what you can do about that, which you're going to be able to get for free. It's a hundred dollar assessment by going to jjvirgin.com sleepereport and in the place where you can put a code to take away the money, you put sleep sleep special and that will wipe out the hundred dollars and you'll get it for free. All right, so much more to come in this interview. This is going to be a fascinating one for you and so stick with me.

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Kashchef, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to dig into DNA.

It's a pleasure. It's awesome to be here with you.

Yeah, well, we're going to be talking all things about DNA, what we should be knowing about it, how it can impact our weight, our health, how it can be actionable. I'd love to start first with how you got into this, because I've gone through your testing. It is the most extensive but also actionable testing I've ever seen. So where did you, like, what made you decide to dig deep into all of this?

Yeah, well, thank you for acknowledging that. That was really the goal. From where. To answer your question, where did I get into this? Was I was sick. You know, so many of these functional medicine stories start with, well, you find that because whatever you have in your lap just doesn't work. And I was the same. I came from outside of the industry and I had crazy migraines, which was probably the worst part. I would have to leave home and be driven home, or leave the office, I should say, be driven home by my business partner. Eczema, psoriasis, depression issues, gut all kind of happen at the same time. I started picking them apart and asking the clinicians that were prescribing me all these different pills, why am I sick? That's really all I wanted to know because up until that point, I'm 42 now. At that time, I was around 36, 37. I had never been sick. It didn't make sense to me why all these things were happening all of a sudden. And that was when, through my own genome, I started to find the root causes for some of these things. And even in that journey, it was difficult because genetics didn't answer the questions, you know, it gave me, you got an 80% chance of this, 20% of that. I still didn't get the why. When I dug and dug and dug and found some functional interpretation that was sort of being happening in the. In the background, I started to heal myself. I literally, at that point, was so impacted when I healed myself, my mother, some other family members, that I walked away from my existing business and started to work and build this.

And it was because you could find the things that you needed to go deeper on to figure out if they were the cause. Like, how did you use DNA, the DNA information to heal yourself?

So the first thing was I found that genetics kind of guided me, but still didn't with precision. And Certainty. Tell me. Here it is, here's the why. So what was required there was understanding the central hubs of sort of cellular failure as opposed to all these problems that I had. Eczema, looking for the eczema gene, looking for the depression gene. That's not the way your genes work. Your gene is. Genes are much more complex and they work more as a symphony as opposed to individual instruments. Right. So I found that there was a couple of key genes that support your detox pathways and that support your anti inflammatory pathways that I didn't even have. Forget about what version or what SNP or what variation things that you hear about in genetic testing. If your DNA is your human instruction manual, that literally is telling your cells what to do. That's what it is. And different types of cells know which part of the manual to read. That's why they become heart cells or kidney cells. I was missing some pages of that manual and those pages were the pages, that of the toxic nonsense that was blown through our air vents in my office because there was a manufacturing company downstairs. I was the guy, not my business partner, not our team that suffered because I didn't have the ability to prevent them from entering my bloodstream and to clear them once they were in my bloodstream because the genes were missing that hub, that one thing. And seven years of being in that environment led to eventually eczema, eventually migraine, inflammatory conditions, eventually psoriasis, autoimmune response. My body was so confused. Depression, because the gut and the brain are connected, gut issues. It all happened at the same time. My body. Humans are resilient, we fight, but there's only so much we can do. And that's when I realized there's a, there's another layer that needs to be peeled away in how we interpret DNA. And it healed me and healed my mother and we just kept going.

It's very interesting, I will tell you that. Gosh, I think it was probably at least 18 years ago we were trying to figure out what was going on with my son and some emotional stuff. So we did DNA testing, but no one knew what the heck to do with it. You know, all they knew back then is, oh, he's got an mthfr, he's got a methylation issue. That was like the extent of it. And I think for a long time it was like, all right, well you'd get this genetic report, but no one knew what to do with the things in the genetic report. And it strikes me now that in the traditional medical model you would show up with those things and you'd be going to a dermatologist, treating your eczema, psoriasis. Then you'd be going over to the headache doctor for the migraines. You've got all these different things to slap band aids on it. And then the functional medicine one's like, okay, get to the root cause. They probably look at your gut and this is even deeper than that of going okay, you know, what are, what's, what's not working in these pathways that could make this a challenge. So I look at it and I know we've talked about this because you know, I'm obsessed with all things around body composition, metabolic health. I think it's fascinating right now what is going on in the United States with metabolic health. I don't know if you saw the latest statistics that now it's 5% of the US population is metabolically healthy. And which I know, I mean it's just absolutely mind blowing. And if you look at it like my whole world is around really optimizing body composition. And I think we've got a crisis of people being under lean, not having enough fat free mass to improve the insulin sensitivity, to all of the improved longevity, everything that we need to shift this equation. But as I started to first play around with all of this, it was, I think 10 years ago, I was working with a company that was doing a very basic report looking at some of these genet markers and what they, how they impact weight, insulin sensitivity, sleep, et cetera. And it was like, holy smokes. Just that alone and like what kind of macronutrient balance? What are some of the things that, that this can do to help inform us about, you know, metabolic health and weight and all of that.

Oh, there's so much, first of all the stuff you said is there? So that's like genetics 101. It's what we used to, what we thought genetics gave us, that was the potential. If we figure out what each gene meant, we knew what it did and we knew what to do about it. Well, we didn't yet know, like you said, the pathways and systems we already know the hormone system, we already know the cardiovascular system. What we didn't do was mirror and match the genes as per those systems. We looked at them as independent because the research was all funded by drug development. If you can isolate a gene and figure out what it means, you can now make a unique drug that does something in that gene that's profitable. Right. As opposed to let's not get sick in the first place. So Metabol. So that layer was. Yeah. Do you want to be on a keto diet? Do you want to be a vegan? Do you actually have the metabolic activity to support that? There's a gene that literally determines how well you metabolize fats and how well you can use them as fuel. And if you're not doing well there, yeah, you might feel pretty good in the first two weeks because everybody does on keto.

Right.

But you're going to crash and burn a month later. There's some people for whom I can't tell you how many doctors, especially female clinicians that we work with that can't figure out why their thyroid is grew up, why their mood is screwed up, why their hormones, their energy level, everything. And we bring it back to the day they became vegan. Because there's genes that determine how well you produce the enzymes to break down things like lentils, beans, legumes, chickpeas, kale. And that's all you're eating as a vegan. That's where you get your protein from, right? Peas, all this stuff. So if you don't produce the enzymes that break it down, it's not really doing you a lot of good. In fact, it's causing infection, inflammation, gut dysbiosis, eventually leaky gut, which you. It doesn't. You don't feel any of that. Then it happens over time. Then there starch metabolization. There's a single gene that determines how well you convert starch into glucose, into glucose to use as fuel. And if you don't do that efficiently, well, it's no wonder you eat a bowl of pasta and you have to take a nap after because your body's struggling so much, right? Then there's insulin response again. The genetics of that are very, very clear. Then you get into the more nuanced stuff and the more sort of call it current news that hasn't really been released and clinicians don't even know is available yet. There's certain populations that we've learned, and this is why we very purposely headquartered ourselves in Toronto. It's very ethnically diverse, but very ethnically sort of separated, right? Everybody has. If you drive around Toronto, you're going to go to the Portuguese neighborhood and then the Chinese neighborhood, and then the Spanish neighborhood is very. Everyone has their little hub, right? So we learn through all these various populations that there's certain ethnic groups, for example, myself included, South Asians, that will actually get an insulin response from fat. And all the research is powerful.

Wow. Holy.

That.

Wait a minute. That's like a landmine you just dropped.

Yeah.

Say it again.

We, if I have the research for what we prescribe medically is done on Western European white people. Right. That's the majority of North America.

Mainly men.

And mainly men. And that's why you have 80% of people suffering from Alzheimer's are women, because 80% of the research dollars are spent on men. So it doesn't work whatever the protocols are. Right. So same thing, estrogen. Yeah, exactly. And same thing with ethnicity. What I'm told about how to manage my insulin levels. And this is why the biggest heart center in Canada is in Mississauga, where I live, which is where all the brown people live. Right. Because all the brown people have, quote, unquote, genetically bad hearts. No, our metabolic pathways are entirely different because of what our ancestors did. They didn't eat saturated fats all day. And so now when I eat it, it causes me an insulin spike.

Wow, that's so interesting. I've always heard that, you know, you call it brown people, but I've heard that, you know, you know, Hispanic or Asian tend to be more. They have a more tendency towards insulin resistance. But now I'm wondering if some of that's just because of eating the diet that's not right for them.

These are the gray areas where and when you give the prescription of low starch, low, they still end up with the diabetes, they still up with the heart disease, because you're not. You're not sort of scoping out the full metabolic pathway and all of what they're consuming and what it does to them. Right. So because it's. We're leaning on the research that we have, which is based on specific population.

Well, so how would someone be able to do this if they couldn't take the tests? And I guess I go to a bigger thing. Here's what I think. I think that diet book authors write books because the diet worked for them.

Yes, exactly.

That's my basic premise that I work off of. We write the book that works for us. And it was funny because when I wrote the Virgin Diet, it really just happened because I was doing so much food sensitivity testing, seeing so much leaky gut, and I saw the same food showing up. And I was working with so many people. People, I was like, oh, let's do this. So I was fortunate it wasn't like me. The thing that I was working for me, I was able to do it with a lot of people. Same with sugar impact diet. But I see so many ones out there, and I go okay, you're writing this book because that's the diet that you work and do and do with your population, and then you're always going to have those outliers. Beyond doing genetic testing, is there a way to use just, you know, trying different diets and assessing to be able to determine it, or is it. You need to do the genetic testing to figure this out?

Well, so there's. There's a couple answers there. The genetic testing takes the trial and error way. So what we're saying is, on day one, here's your instruction manual. Go for it. Here's exactly what you should be doing for whatever that goal is. Slow down aging, prevent disease, you know, optimize energy levels. Whatever your goal is, here's how you need to do that. Near. Here's not how people do that.

Right.

That being said, if you don't have that tool, then we have the blessing of so many other tools that we didn't have access to even three or five years ago, like continuous glucose monitors. If. If we had that happening and the glucose was being tracked and the insulin response was being tracked, we would know that these foods cause these problems, certain people. And it's so easy to access now, right? Heart rate variability. What's going on inside? Something as simple as. There's a tool that I use that's called aortic stiffness. It's a pulsometer, I think is what it's called. Essentially, through measuring, your pulse on your finger can go all the way back to your aortic system and figure out how stiff or calcified or blocked up that system is. What that then does is gives you a sense of biological age. So as an example, when I started this journey when I was 38, I was biologically 43 internally, right. I was not doing well. And that would have got exponentially worse if I didn't find all this information and heal myself. I am now 42, and I'm biologically 33, because I'm doing everything.

A lot of that, Ben, because you've done the DNA testing and you've really dialed in diet and lifestyle habits based on what is specific for you.

Yes. And there's three buckets. Environment, nutrition, lifestyle. And this is that whole argument you hear about, well, genetics, epigenetics. Oh, genetics don't matter. Epigenetics matters. But epigenetics currently is doing the same thing. They're measuring something and telling you only what they see. What epigenetics should be is let's understand your genetic profile, which means where's your red flags for you? What do you not do? Well, what function in your system isn't just. It's just not happening, right? Could be hormones, could be brain, could be anything. Now you know what the right environment, nutrition, and lifestyle choices are for you based on that problem. Some of them are obvious. Some of them are completely counterintuitive. And I'll give you an example of a counterintuitive one. We can determine genetically how well you deal with oxidative stress. So if you do your high intensity interval training every day and you're pushing yourself until you can't breathe and you're about to vomit, but you have the bad version of the SOD2 gene, which is what clears the oxidation from your cell and the mitochondria where energy is produced, then you're actually suffocating that cell. Every time you get into oxidative stress, it's like you have a chimney. So the cells in your body all take in oxygen to create energy, but in that process of using oxygen as energy, you create oxidants, which are free radicals and toxins. This gene is meant to get them out of your cell and put them into the blood, and then you send them to the liver to get rid of them. There's another gene that sends them to the liver a lot, A lot. A lot of people have the bad version of that gene, which means this fireplace that's burning, this smoke doesn't have a chimney. So imagine that how much soot piles up over time.

That would just be really an issue. Obviously, if 5% of the population is metabolically healthy, we have a lot of people who are not exercising. Right. I mean, that's, it's one of the things you need to do. But this would only show up as an issue, say, in epigenetics. And maybe looking at, you know, I don't know, some of the different things they'd look at, maybe in organic acids for oxidative stress, it would only show up if they were pushing those pathways, like doing aerobic exercise, doing hiit, doing marathon training. Or would you still see it?

We would still see it is just to what degree. And this is that, you know that whole phenomenon of a soccer player dropping dead at 35?

Yes.

Right. This is that profile. So why did it happen?

Could they then go do a big antioxidant cocktail and override that system?

Yes. And what we look for, to go back to your last question, is cholesterol levels. Again, the gap, bridging the gap between genetics and epigenetics. Genetics is you don't do this function well, you don't clear free radical activity in the cell. You're suffocating yourself. What is the epigenic? What is the problem? What's the disease? The disease is if you have another genetic layer, the bad quality of the endothelial lining, the inner lining of the blood vessel. Your blood vessels are bad quality. We can determine that genetically. They're bad, hard work, more prone to inflammation. And you have this stuff causing crazy inflammation. That's why that soccer player at the age of 35, who has the best doctors, best trainers, best everything, best fitness shape, has so much cholesterol buildup because cholesterol is the tool that your body uses to reduce inflammation in the endothelial lining. So if you have bad hardware and you're pumping yourself full of toxins, which could be airborne, could be mold, could be anything. Depends genetically what you do well, what you don't do well, and you have bad quality hardware here in the arteries, you will be that person. Now, the exaggerated version is a soccer player who did 100 years worth of training in 20 years, they really pushed themselves. But for somebody else who does your regular two, three days a week, cardiovascular activity might not be the best idea. And that's why I say some things are counterintuitive, because why would anyone ever say, don't do cardiovascular training? Well, for this person, it's going to slowly kill them. For other people, it could be the best thing they could do. And that's where that trial and error, what do I do? What choices do I make on day one can be very clear.

So trial and error. But it seems like, you know, wouldn't it be amazing if a baby is born, they do this genetic profile, they save whatever it is so they can continue to extrapolate as they learn more stuff. I don't know. That's the other question. It's like, okay, we learn more stuff. Do we need to do another test? Because, you know, the stuff we have, our genes aren't changing. But it would be so cool to have that gentleman done. And I'm sure there's a whole thing with like, medical ethics and blah, blah, blah, but, you know, gosh, to have your playbook. Yeah, right. And, you know, to have your playbook and go, oh, look, you know, you're a way better sprint and strength athlete. You're a way better. It was, it was so interesting. I, when I did, when I did mine pre you, some of the stuff that come out, like, like, I've got the sprinter Gym. I'm much more of that type of athlete. You can tell by looking at me. But yet I kept trying to run marathons. It's like, horrible for me, right?

Yeah, that's. For me, that's like a hallelujah moment, because that's what I've been screaming from the rooftops. If you prevention, the earlier you start, the better it is. It's a simple equation. So if you know, at birth, I've done this with my three kids, and my niece was very close to me. I know exactly how their brain is wired academically, where they should aim. I know exactly physically how they're going to develop and what sports they should play. I know why one won't do his homework and why the other won't. Very different reasons, by the way, for the two of them, I'll give you an example. So the middle kid, every single day, homework was a disaster. He would. And this was here he was around five. He's now six years old. So he had just started school, like preschool, kindergarten, and now he's into grade one. And it was always a disaster. So I would see him doing other activity. And it wasn't a problem. He was generally a motivated, you know, proactive type of kid. But it was specifically homework that was a problem. And he didn't have this problem in school, by the way. It was only at home. So I looked at his genetics. The obvious things are like discipline, attitude. That's what you yell at the kid. What's wrong with you? Why won't you do it? So again, we start with what are the red flags? What's wrong genetically? That may point to something. And the thing that I realized is that he had the worst possible starch metabolization and the worst possible insulin response. And he was doing homework.

A fatigue coma.

Yeah, he was doing homework. Time was after dinner in our home. Right. So we were putting this guy into a coma and then wondering why he couldn't do homework, whereas his brother and sister didn't have that problem. Right. I have the bad version of these genes, so I gave them to him. The wife has a great version, so the other two kids got her version. Right. So that's one simple nuance. But going back to what you asked earlier about, you know, metabolic health, fitness, body composition, where we always start is the brain, mood and behavior. Why? And this is one thing that, you know, boldly brag about that I think we do that nobody else does, which is we spent three years meeting with 7,000 people clinically genetic testing companies and researchers Typically never meet the patient. They get a DNA sample, they sequence it, they run some studies, whatever. We actually interviewed 7,000 people several hours at a time. For most of them, with their full healthcare history, etc. Because of that, we were able to document their mood and behavior traits. Now with great certainty. If I have your DNA, I don't ever need to talk to you to understand. Are you a procrastinator? Do you have anxiety issues? Do you burn out quickly? Are you more reward seeking? Should you be an accountant? Like literally to that degree? And why? Because the neurochemicals of your brain drive your reactions and your behavior. And your DNA drives those neurochemicals through sort of three step process. There's first the anticipation that, you know, that thing, whatever it is, it could be pleasure, it could be pain, it could be trauma is coming, the anticipate, then the actual feeling, you actually have the feeling and then the clearance you need to get back to normal. So between these three steps, we can map to a T how you behave. Now, if you understand that about yourself, how much easier is it to understand? How do you comply with what your coach is telling you? How much you think you're not eating, but you actually are grazing at the pantry?

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You know what it also does, and I think this is so important, is it kind of takes you, you know, it takes you off the hook. Now, you know, it doesn't mean, hey, you, you know, that's the way you are so you don't have to do your homework. No, it does not mean that. But what it does is like, you know, let's say it's the poor kid who's not getting their homework done and you just think they're a bad kid and then you go, wait a minute, what's really going on here? It gives them the tools for the rest of their life. Like think about the rest of what a difference that will be for the rest of his life. Yeah, of course, to be able to have that stuff, but it Lets us, like, there's so much shame and, you know, around weight, around mental health and having grown up with an adopted brother who's schizophrenic, with a son who's got some kind of brain illness, not sure what, because I also don't believe in all these diagnoses. So, you know, I think as we get more into the genetics, we'll learn, like, there isn't this thing that there's. It's a gene interplay. But it just, it just is so interesting to look at all of this and go, gosh, if you'd known these things early on, how much could you have shifted? And how much will you not look at that person? Like mental health, growing up with a brother who is schizophrenic. And my parents hiding it because they had so much shame around it.

Yeah.

And I was like, why? I looked, I went, I don't see the difference between a brain illness and. I love that. Dr. Daniel Amen calls it a brain illness rather than mental illness because it is. Or, you know, diabetes or osteoporosis. They're like, this isn't someone's crazy. Something's gone on with their wiring, with their hormones, with something. So I love this so much. How does you know? Again, I look at this and go, gosh, why isn't this something. I know we do, like some mild genetic testing, but wouldn't this be amazing to do? And think about all of the healthcare changes that would happen because of it. What. What does it take for someone to be able to do this? Is it direct to consumer? Is it. Because I know we did it, but I actually have no idea how, like, how it happens for, for the, for people, and what does it cost? How do they do it? All of that, right?

So there's. So it used to be only through functional medicine practitioners, because it was so hard to interpret. This is the key thing. There was two problems. One is interpretation. Like you said, you can go get a DNA test done, anyone can test. You can actually go buy your own DNA testing machine and put in your basement. Right. The testing is the easy part. It's interpreting the data and what it means. That's difficult. And that's why we studied those 7,000 people to know when it looks like this, it means this. So that was one. We then had to teach that to clinicians, which was exceedingly difficult, because how do you take this entire new set of data, apply it on what they're already doing when they're so busy and their staff is busy so that was one second thing is how do you make it easy, not just interpret it well, but how do you make it like not a stack of gibberish, but when I get this thing, it's just intuitive, right? Those were the two things that were broken. So we actually built an artificial intelligence platform that we dumped all of our three years of insights into. And as opposed to doing what is we're supposed to do as a testing company, which is. Here's your report. We instead have a portal, which it kind of looks like Netflix. You're drilling in and out of problems like anxiety and depression and weight loss and etc. And learning about yourself and how you do that problem well or not so well. And what do we recommend in terms of supplements, in terms of lifestyle changes? So that made it a lot easier to do. You know, it's as simple as spitting in a tube. And it goes to lab, we extract the DNA, we sequence it and then it goes into an algorithm. And you get that. So we found that now that we've done that, we are able to have conversations like this. A year ago we couldn't. People would call us, we'd say, sorry, we're fully booked for the next literally four months because we had to do it ourselves. Now it's accessible to everybody.

So someone does this and if new information comes out, are you able just to make those. With the sample that you have and the information you have, you can then update things.

That's. That's exactly why we build a digital portal, so that whenever you go back, every time we learn. So we don't need your DNA again. It's already been sequenced. We already know what genes you have. We just need to know what those genes mean. The interpretation keeps getting better. I'll give you a great example that I just used myself, right? And this also ties to what you were talking about, brain health. So according to my profile, I'm an addict, right? According to my dopamine pathway. So dopamine is a chemical that allows you to feel pleasure or reward. And this is so important when it comes to food because if you would understand your relationship with reward and pleasure with food, your perception truly may be different than what you believe it to be. So three people in a room, they're literally perceiving it differently. My perception is when that anticipation and feeling of pleasure, reward happens. I have the ultra low density of receptors to bind dopamine, so I don't feel that much. So I strive for more. I also have the ultra fast clearance comt. Which is usually spoken of amongst for hormones. Like a lot of women look at their comp for how well they clear their hormone toxins and all that. Right. Also clears certain neurochemicals. I have the ultra fast comptroller, so I feel it way down here and it's gone before it even started. So the abc.

So you want more?

Yeah, I want more and more and more and more. Right. So genetics 101 is, I'm an addict, but I'm not an addict. I'm not addicted to anything. So why is that? Why am I sort of this anomaly? So one thing we've learned, and this is why I said studying those 7,000 people is so important, is when it comes to brain health, context is so important because when I, when I look back, I actually was an addict at one point. But there's three potential outcomes for the pathway I just described. Addiction or depression. Addiction, because I find the thing that gives me pleasure and I get hooked on it and I structure my day around it. I get frustrated if I don't have it. Depression, because I never find that thing that gives me pleasure. And I just don't get that sense of reward that other people get or achievement. Because dopamine also powers reward, not just pleasure. So I take crazy risks and do stupid things and build a business that I have no business building in the first place. Right.

Do you think all entrepreneurs or addicts have some dopamine issues?

I did this research project where I studied 20 multi billion dollar hedge fund managers to understand their brain. Then I studied about 80 millionaires to understand their brains. And I'm going to get into that. And there's two big ones that I found. One is what I'm describing with me, which is the risk taker, the warrior, right? That whatever I did yesterday isn't good enough. Now the context. When I was young, a friend knocked on my door with a birthday present, which was something I had to smoke when I was like 15 or 16 years old. And I became addicted. I grew up in poverty, nothing was good. And I did have the addiction when I was young. I just forgot about it because I'm past that. Then I had the achievement because I started building companies because my father passed away and I had to take care of the company. I started building and building and building and building and I didn't even know what I was doing. But I built. Then I went into depression because when I finally got to a point where everyone was taken care of, I took a break and stopped trying. And there was, and I didn't want to go back to the pleasure because I remember what that was like addiction. And I wasn't working, so I went into depression. So context is the bookend of brain wiring. First, genetically, how am I designed? What does my brain actually do now? What bucket am I in? Am I experiencing pleasure? Am I experiencing reward? Am I getting neither? Now I can potentially understand that label that you talked about of the condition depression, addiction, anxiety. That label is what we call the way you're expressing it in the context you're in. You can switch the game and turn that into a superpower. The same thing that drives me to build businesses is the same thing that potentially causes me significant depression. Right? So now going back to the entrepreneurial brain, that's one the sort of billionaire brain, because you take stupid crazy risks and 8 out of 10 things fail, but the one that hits doesn't ever hit right. Then there's the millionaire. The more risk adverse, structured approach to building, they typically have the opposite. They have the highest expression of dopamine binders. Why it's so easy for them to experience pleasure that they're not really driven by much. And so they say no to everything. Nothing is exciting, right? Everything is good. So I don't need any idea, any presentation, any person. I don't say yes because I'm already good with what I'm doing. I'm focused with those blinders on, I can really do a good job of what I do well. But they typically also have the fast clearance. Once they get into the slow clearance, they all of a sudden aren't successful because they binge. They get stuck in that thing that they're doing and they become dysfunctional. They're not doing other stuff that they need to do. When they have the fast clearance, they can shift gears and multi prioritize. And those people end up becoming millionaires. They get really good at one thing and do it well.

Gosh, this seems like it would be such. I mean, I'm of course looking at it for the metabolic health side. But then you think, what a tool in psychiatry and psychology. Yeah, holy smokes.

We've done the work and this is what I'm saying, that we now have built it where we can start talking to people. We've known this stuff. Even if I went to some psychology association, whatever, we didn't have anything to offer them. It was in our heads. But now that the platform was built, it's there for everyone to use one.

More thing on the platform. And I know we've gone so way over all over the place. But I was like, we had very specific questions and was like, zoom. Someone going in and taking the test. And I think what we can all understand from hearing this is, you know, a lot of what I've done in the world of, in the diet world was to help you figure out what works for you and what doesn't. I mean, that's the whole virgin diet, that's the whole sugar impact diet. Like, you know, how do you deal with sugar, how do you deal with carbs, et cetera. And it strikes me that, you know, and it was because I kind of went, well, food sensitivity test. You can actually do this yourself. It strikes me if you could do this as a foundational test, it's going to make all of that stuff so much effective. Holy smokes. So someone takes the test and they get the results back. And I know it's like having looked at it, I think I looked at it, what, three years ago? Overwhelming stuff, or maybe it was two years ago. Does it help you also prioritize? Hey, this is like of your red flag flags of the things where you should focus first. Or does that really need to be working with your symptoms, your epigenetics, to see what's expressing itself? And I'd love you to talk a little bit about the difference between genetics and epigenetics so people understand that.

So there's kind of two different ways to look at it. There's certain genes that stand alone and do very specific functions which don't require that. Then there's some systems like hormones and, you know, I'll give you an example of like the BRCA gene and breast cancer that will really paint a picture, right? But first I'll start with the simple stuff, which is when it comes to health, we have a diet report. So there's six reports, by the way. Diet, nutrition, what should I eat? Cellular health. So immunity, detox, inflammation, cardiovascular. So like, you know, hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, all that stuff. Brain, mood and behavior, sleep. Why can't I sleep at night? The genetics of that, it's different for different people. And the last one, what am I missing here? Hormones, hormones, body type, fitness, muscle development, Fat, hair, skin, all that stuff. Going back to diet, there could be a nuance as simple as the MC4R gene. MC4R determines your ability to get satiety of the mouth when you look at. So talking about Asians again, Vietnamese and Thai people think about going to Vietnam and Thailand. Typically petite, you know, not obese, not American looking, you know, to put it that way, Right. If you're talking about only being 5% metabolically healthy, so very petite, healthy looking people, thin, right. They actually have the worst ability to feel satisfaction in their mood, genetically, in their, in their mouth. Sorry, genetically. So then why then are they so thin? Because over time they had this inability to get satisfaction. They developed highly satisfactory food. When you eat Thai food, that first spoonful that goes into your mouth, that wow. That you get, right? The satisfaction versus eating steak and potatoes. Yeah, it's good, but it's not that powerful. Wow. Right, so what's going on there, MC4 are. That gene that it lacks satiety in your mouth is actually a coping mechanism for lack of nutrition. So certain populations didn't have access to enough variety of nutrition. Right. It's not just enough meat or enough this, but enough minerals, vitamins, everything, right. So the mouth then craves more salty, soupy, crunchy, all the different sort of sensations. And the more of it that you give, the more you're satisfied. This could be the single reason why somebody can't lose weight. Just this one thing. Because they're doing everything right, but they keep snacking and they keep going for the Doritos and they don't even know they're doing it.

I love this so much because honestly, you know, having worked in weight loss now for almost 40 years, I totally see time and time again that, you know, people, there's this, there's this idea out there if someone's over fat, you know, or obese, that they're just lazy, that they just. And it's like. And unless I'm crazy 40 years into this, that is not what I've seen out there. I've seen people trying harder, they know more. And it's like, it's like, it's just like the rules don't work for them. And so it's fascinating to see this part of it because gosh, this could just besides just the helping someone alleviate just the frustration and pain and shame of it. It's like, you know, you also get your why right?

My problem, what's what? Tell me what I need to do, not what everybody else does, right? So. And then another simple1, the FTO gene, the signal from the stomach to the brain that you're full. Some people don't have a strong signal. And so when you're told, here's what you need to eat, I ate it, but I'm still hungry, right? I need to go for seconds and I need to go. And everybody knows who they are, that a buffet is like a death sentence for you. Just can't do it. There's certain people that just can't get the satiety of the gut timely. And so you need to structure and focus on just that. There's some people that their serotonin is off. So you're talking about prioritizing things. Right. Your brain's ability to create priorities is based on your serotonin levels. So that reptilian response of a snake doesn't have a. Maybe a snake has a calm and attack. Right. Your serotonin levels determine your ability to be a snake or to be a human in your ability to prioritize all stimulus. And there's some people who are dysregulated for serotonin where, like the steak, they're constantly responding to every single stimulus. And this is literally a reptilian gene that we still have in us. Right. Some people do really well there. So if you are that person, then all of a sudden it's, you know, I can't stand the way that person's chewing. The clock is ticking. I can't focus. You're irritating me. They're hypersensitive to stimulus. The challenge there is twofold now. One is when they're told anything by their coach, by their trainer, by the whatever, it means a lot to them. Right. The stimulation of, you need to do this, you need to do that, the burden that that creates and their propensity towards burnout. And they're going to drop off and fail. Right. The other thing it does is because they're constantly bothered by everything. Cortisol response and stress. Their brain tends to lean on food as a coping mechanism because the brain knows food will make me happy and everything's bugging me. So there's two things happening. They're constantly deploying cortisol, which causes their stomach to store fat. And they're constantly leaning on food as a coping mechanism where they're actually perceiving it as hunger. They actually think they're hungry because their brain is creating that hunger to make them happy, to reduce the cortisol. Right. So that one thing again, there's so many little one things, but what if you have two or three or four of these things?

Yeah.

And so, and knowing these things, there are either diet, supplement, lifestyle strategies that you can do to either bypass it or.

Right.

So this is amazing. It's so good. I know you're giving everyone this sleep report and what's super cool is then they'll be in the system so they'll be able to learn more about everything you do. Because if you're listening to this and you're not going, I need to have this report done. This, to me is a foundational thing again. I don't know why. In the perfect world, this will just become the thing everybody does to start life. And so this sleep thing that you've got, which is pre testing something that you've been able to do through AI, which I love, because every night my husband and I go to sleep, I wear an OURA ring and an apple watch so I can pick which one looks better in the morning, literally. Because I have whatever that gene is that doesn't allow you to sleep. Well, the deep sleep problem gene, I got that, whatever that is. And so I don't get good deep sleep and I more likely be restless. And so every night he gets these like amazing deep sleeps. And if I ever get past an hour, it's like a miracle. I'm usually around 30 minutes. Sometimes I have five minutes.

Yeah. And that again, by the way, is based on serotonin. So I'll tell you what's happening there. So first of all, the sleep thing that you mentioned, there's two things. We did the sleep assessment. It's a $100 product on our website, but for your audience, it's. We're giving it away free.

We love that. I'm going to tell them all how.

To get it too.

Okay.

And the second thing is, if anyone wants the test, don't go buy it from the website yet because We've created a $50 discount promo code that you'll hear through the podcast. You can share it if you'd like. But all I'm saying is don't just jump to the website. Save $50. It's here for you.

Well, how will they know about that promo code when they do the sleep one?

No, it's. You can use it now if you'd like. So it's the DNA company dot com. You're buying the. And I believe I with your team. It's going to be in your notes. But the DNA company.com, it's called the DNA360, is the actual test and the code is JJ50. So say $50. Right.

Just. Just to make sure. We'll put it all in the show notes. I'll repeat it, but I just want to make sure everybody gets. I was like, where do we get this $50? I am like, you know, I'm always searching for the best deal on everything.

Yeah, you might as well.

I mean, so. And what we're going to do is if you go to jjvirgin.com sleepereport then just the way you check out and get this thing for free, the sleep assessment is you just put sleep special as the code when you're checking out and it'll wipe out the hundred bucks. So jjvirgin.com sleep forward/sleep report, and then put the sleep special in and what are they going to learn there?

So we did a lot, by the way. Sleep was an unintentional one for us. What ended up happening is. So if you remember my story of how I solved the hub and then the spokes kind of went away. So in the beginnings of our research, by the way, I didn't explain the BRCA thing. We can go back to that.

Oh, my gosh.

We didn't do that either.

What we learned is in those first, like few hundred people that we were researching that everyone kept saying their sleep was better. And we said, yeah, we don't do that. And they just kept saying. And we realized that this must be a byproduct of what we're doing. And what we learned is that genetically there's people that can't fall asleep. So their circadian rhythm or their internal clock is broken, so their body doesn't know what time it is. And stimulus, like blue light, you know, pot, lights, food, whatever, metabolic health, they have a bigger struggle falling asleep. And because we were resolving the same brain chemicals that were affecting their mood, it improved their sleep. Then there's people like, I'm assuming, like yourself, that have are off for serotonin. What ends up happening is melatonin, we all know is the hormone that puts you to sleep. We take melatonin pills to go to sleep. Serotonin is actually what wakes you up. So what happens is that first light is meant to pierce through your eyelids and that particular color is, is meant to trigger and tell your brain, time to get up. Time to actually wake up. Wake up. Right. So it's based on stimulus. Now, if your serotonin is dysregulated, your brain can prioritize stimulus. It doesn't know what to give weight to and what to ignore. So that means in that second half of your sleep, when your body knows at some point I'm supposed to wake up in the second half, too hot, too cold, hubby's pulling on the blanket, weird noise, weird smell. Any stimulus, your brain treats like that sunlight that's supposed to come through the window, and it starts to trigger serotonin. You start to wake up and you wake up and you wake up and then you're in this crazy, like, deep sleep. I'm dreaming, I'm in awake, deep sleep. I'm dreaming, I'm awake. Because your body's still tired and struggling and wanting to recover, but your brain is trying to fire and turn things on. So the solution is multifold. You have to have the sleep cocoon, perfect temperature, perfect smell, perfect everything. But you also need to take the right supplements to manage your regulation of serotonin. So you're not doing this in your sleep. Right. Then there's people that fall asleep, sleep through the night, no problem, but they wake up feeling not so rested. If you're like me and you have bad detox pathways and you live in North America where there's chemicals to clean all your furniture and there's pesticides in the grass and there's all this toxic threat, well, then at the time when you're supposed to be recovering, where glymphatic drainage is happening, where lymphatic drainage is happening, where detox is happening, and you're adding another layer of toxins to deal with, when you're already trying to deal with what happened the day before, you wake up feeling not so rested because you struggled. And that was happening to me for years. And now I don't have that problem anymore because I know what supplements to take right before I sleep to support that detox that I don't do so well.

It just. It takes out the hit and miss.

Yeah.

You know, try this one. It's like, well, that didn't work for me, but I use this one. It's like, it just removes the hit and miss. And, you know, you think about that, and how much money would you save besides the pain and aggravation? Just like. But then we have to, since you brought it up and we've segued twice to talk about the BRCA gene, because this is stuff where people have a specific problem. They can't sleep well, how do we fix it? But we look at things that there's a lot of fear associated with, which is not going to be helpful for. For anybody. But it's also more preventative, which is always hard to sell, you know, dealing with something before you have it. Right.

This is why genetics is scary to some people. Like, I don't want to know if I'm getting Alzheimer's. Right. I'd rather just live my life.

Except that you could actually do all the things to delay it, postpone it. And I think that's an important thing. You just said, and I always love the statement I got from Jeff Bland is genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls it is. You know, obviously Alzheimer's couldn't just be straight genetics because it's exponentially increasing. So clearly there's a lifestyle, diet, toxic environmental component to it because otherwise it would just be increasing based on population increase, so.

Exactly.

Okay, go ahead.

This breast cancer example will paint a perfect picture. In fact, we should have started with this so people understand the difference between genetics and call it functional genomics, like the same difference between medicine and functional medicine. So brca, scary four letter word that women hate. And if you ask a woman what it means, she'll say, I don't really know, I just know it's bad. And most doctors will also tell you, I don't really know. I just know that if it shows up in a test, I might recommend as a preventative measure to go cut a piece of yourself off.

Right.

That's literally what women are being told.

I know, I'm hearing, seeing people do it on social.

Yeah, it's crazy. So, so now the question is, why does a breast cancer happen? So BRCA is a tumor suppressing gene. When you have cancer, it's supposed to go fix it. So if you dive the bad version of brca, you don't do a good job of repair. In that scenario, you still have no clue why that breast cancer happened in the first place, which is the real question we have to answer. If you answer that, then you know how to prevent it. Not cut a piece of myself off. You think by cutting off your breast, the thing that you're doing to cause a cancer won't cause it to show up somewhere else?

Well, that's what I should ask then. Couldn't you just get uterine or ovarian or colon like it's.

Exactly. If you're doing something to cause cancer, breast is number one choice for you. And you'll understand after this explanation. So now let's get into why the why. This is our research of the 7,000 people, by the way, the area that we found sucks the most in healthcare is with female hormone health. It is so horribly underwhelming. All of the stories that we've heard, all of the people that we've had to help when it comes to their female hormone problems, it's the area that needs the most work and it's where we put a lot of our focus. So some women had the bad version of brca. Now, in your hormone metabolism pathway, again, the pathway or the system as Opposed to what does this gene? What does this gene mean? Some women are more estrogen dominant. What does that mean? Progesterone converts to testosterone, converts to estrogen. You may just fill that bucket a lot more and your genes will tell you that we know what version of each gene you have along each step to know which bucket are you filling. And you may just have a much bigger bucket of estrogen. Step one of three, estrogen dominant. You may also be estrogen toxic in your monthly cycle if you're still having one. Before you clear the estrogen, you convert it into a metabolite, either 2, 4 or 16 hydroxy. Estrogen 2 is great. It's what you want. 4 and 16 are highly toxic. Some women make that estrogen dominant. Big bucket, estrogen toxic, turning it into a toxin. Step three, how well do I get rid of the toxin? I have antioxidant pathways, glutathione pathways, I have glucuronidation pathways, different ways that my body gets rid of toxic insults. You may not be doing that stuff. Well, now you have the perfect storm of estrogen dominant, estrogen toxic, and I don't get rid of it. Even then, that's not a diagnosis for breast cancer. You still have now just loaded the gun like you said. What pulls the trigger? 85% of women are on a birth control pill for 10 or 15 years. North American women fueling that estrogen bucket with more toxicity. So many more women are getting hormone replacement therapy as they age without understanding their genetics first. And what they're doing with that hormone, what do they turn it into? How many women don't understand the endocrine and hormone disruptors that they're breathing and smelling and eating daily around them that are mimicking hormones and filling that bucket even more? So now you have the loaded gun. Here's my profile. You have the trigger, which is all of these choices you may make poorly. Why then does most breast cancer happen around the menopause age? Typically not for all. There's women that get it even in their teens. But why mostly the menopause age. Once you're menopausal, you no longer have a menstrual cycle to clear out that monthly dose of toxin you produce. It's in your system and your body wants to protect the organs and the vasculature of the veins from getting inflamed and damaged. So it goes and stores it in fat, which it feels is safe. And where do women have fat? And the hips and the breasts. You're not going to get Hip cancer, it's just a bunch of fat. But you will get an overdose of toxic insult causing inflammation to all those glands that were never designed as cellular structure to deal with that type of toxic insult that then get cancerous. If I know this, to your point, if I know this about a 5 year old girl, I can tell her you will absolutely not go on birth control pills for 15 years. And you absolutely will be taking a detox protocol every month after your cycle. And you will not be dealing with toxic chemicals in your home. You're going to use organic cleaners, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what? Breast cancer becomes a choice at that point. That's when BRCA is supposed to get to work. After all this stuff and the cancer now exists, BRCA is now supposed to go fix it. And if you have the bad version of brca, there's a higher chance of dying from breast cancer, not of getting breast cancer. You then have to fix it. And fixing it partly is why did it happen to begin with? This is why. And there's many whys. There's not one, but this is one of the big ones. So that paints a very clear picture of genetics. BRCA cut something off. Functional genomics. Here's why it happens. You can intervene. It doesn't have to happen.

Yeah, that's a beautiful explanation. And it just instinctively. And I've had a couple clients back when I was working a lot, one on one, who did this, who removed their breasts. I had one woman remove her breasts and her nipples.

Wow.

And had everything rebuilt. And I'm like, just instinctively, this doesn't sound like the way to go, you know, because she'd had a sister with breast cancer. So that's, that's just such a great explanation of all of it. Thank you. I am, I'm now holding my dog because we have a thunderstorm and she's shaking. But I want to remind everybody again and there's so much great information. We'll have it in the show notes. We'll have these things I'm saying in the show notes too. If you're driving in or at the gym and you can't write it down and hopefully you're at the gym. But if you go to jjvirgin.com sleep report and then when you go to check out, you'll put in sleep special and you will wipe out the $100 charge and that's where you will get that AI driven sleep report when you answer some questions. And of Course, the other opportunity which we'll have in the show notes is at the DNA company to get the DNA360 test and to use the code JJ50 to save $50 off of that so that you have that foundational test that now you can really go and see. Stop trying different things. You'll be able to pinpoint exactly what you need to do in terms of diet, lifestyle, environment, which I just love. And I love that you put it into those three buckets. It makes so much sense.

Yeah, those. I mean, after we didn't know we were going to land on those buckets. Right. It's just after meeting 7,000 people and seeing 7,000 problems, it was the same thing over and over and over again. If you can maintain cellular health, everybody already agrees disease is rooted in inflammation. What is inflammation rooted in? That was the gray area. Well, it's rooted in having healthy cells or not so healthy cells. So if you can deal with that, why would you get inflammation and why would you get disease? Why would you age rapidly? Why would your hair turn white? Why would your skin sag? You know, you can literally decide how many extra years you want to live by reversing some of this stuff.

Well, how many extra years do you want to live? Well, which is the important.

Exactly.

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Like no one wants to live the last couple years poorly. That would be a mess. So. All right, well, thank you so much for this. This was incredible. I've been, you know, waiting with bated breath to do this interview. So I really appreciate your time and all the information but more importantly, like just the, the work that you've put into this and really making this a user friendly, life changing platform for people. So thank you so much.

Always a pleasure. We love what we do. So it doesn't, it doesn't feel like we're.

It shows. Definitely shows. Okay, just a reminder again to make sure that you pick up the sleep report@jjvirgin.com sleepreport and you put sleep special in the little code box so you wipe out the hundred dollars. And if you would like your own DNA report, go to the DNACompany.com choose DNA360 and put in the code JJ50 to get $50 off. You know how much I love savings. All right, there you go. I'll see you next time. If you've not subscribed yet to the show. Hello. You don't want to miss out, go to subscribetoj.com and you will never miss a show. See you next time.

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 take 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 frothy 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. What should I readnextpodcast.com to find out more.