How to Take Charge of Your Health Based on Your Genetics Ep 7

So I always say, like, every decision we make counts. And not that every decision has to be perfect, but to understand that every time that we make a choice to exercise, to go to bed earlier, to meditate, to go for a cold swim, to go for a massage, to eat raw vegetables, we are immediately impacting how our genes behave in our body.

Welcome to the Find Your Edge podcast. Get ready to dive into all things training, nutrition, recovery, and more. Whether you're a new or experienced endurance athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone who just wants to improve your health and fitness, this podcast is for you. I'm Chris Newport, founder, head coach, registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and certified personal trainer with the Endurance Edge and the Fueling Edge. With more than 20 years experience in the fitness industry, 18 years in multi-sport, and over 10 years as a sports nutritionist, I'm speaking with athletes and experts about key actionable steps you can take to reach and sustain peak performance and health. Let's do it.

All right.

Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. This is Chris Newport, and I am so excited to be here today with Yael Jaffe. She is the creator of 3x4 Genetics, which we just started offering her testing. So Yael, welcome to the show.

Excellent. So happy to be here. Looking forward to it.

Fantastic. So tell us briefly who you are and what got you starting 3x4 Genetics.

So, um, what I, what I am is I, I started out as a dietitian, very disillusioned and disappointed with the profession as a whole. Didn't think that it had really any answers. So spent quite a lot of years really looking for how nutrition and health really can come together. I didn't think that what dietetics was offering was really about health. And that took me on a bit of a journey until I discovered genetics and was lucky enough to be invited into the first ever startup in a field called nutrigenomics, nutrition genetics. And that sent me back to university to study genetics and got a PhD in genetics and specializing in this area called nutrigenomics, which is really exactly that, the relationship between nutrition and genetics.

So I really, I'm, I guess perhaps in a little bit of a similar field being a dietitian and feeling like there's something else that we're missing. So it was, was that kind of your intention? Was that when you went back to school, like what else, what's, what's the missing puzzle piece? And do you feel like you found it in this new in this new business?

So I thought there was a lot missing when I, when I did dietetics, when they were recommending chocolate cake and ice cream for their patients. I knew that there was something more than missing, that there was something fundamentally wrong in the way that they were teaching and understanding nutrition. And I went, yeah, absolutely. I went searching. I actually knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what I was looking for. I wanted to understand. My grandma died from cancer. I wanted to understand why she got so sick, what we could have done differently. and dietetics hadn't delivered that answer. So for me, it was more like a searching, and it could have really found me, I guess, in different places. And it was really this random coming together of meeting this geneticist, Dr. Rosengill Garrison, and her telling me that there was this thing called genetics and nutrition, which up until then I didn't even think there was a relationship. So kind of genetics found me in a lot of ways. And once I heard about it, almost immediately I had a sense that even though I didn't understand the science, there was something about the idea that who we are, what we're born with, what defines us would have an impact on what we eat and what we should eat. And it turns out that was exactly the missing piece in the puzzle. But as I say, I think it was just, you know, being in the right place at the right time, having enough discontent to, to want to explore further.

So for us in the United States, you clearly are not from here. So, so tell us briefly where you're from.

Yeah, I'm from South Africa. So I'm talking to you from Cape Town, South Africa. I have spent a lot of time in the US. In fact, I lived in Boulder, Colorado for a long time. And my company is based in Seattle, Washington. And I should be in Seattle, Washington if it hadn't been for COVID. So unfortunately, I'm stuck here for a while moving over. But absolutely, the company was founded in Cape Town, South Africa, and we still have a lot of staff here. But we have moved the company over to, to the US, which is really where most of my work has been for the last 20 years.

That's fantastic. So you've, you've sort of briefly walked us through nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics. For somebody who's never heard that term, can you be a little bit more specific about what the difference is?

Yes, very, very, very important to understand because I think even most practitioners who work in the space don't understand the difference. So let's just go back to basics. What we're trying to understand is what is the relationship between nutrition and genetics? And when I say nutrition, I'm not just talking about diet, I'm talking about lifestyle, um, environment, toxic exposure, exercise, meditation, all those things. So diet and lifestyle, and what is the relationship with genetics? And there's actually two different relationships that we are very interested in at 3x4. And the way I break it down, much easier than saying nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics, is insight and action. So, the first one is we want to understand if we look at our DNA and we're 99.9% the same as each other, but 0.1% different from each other, how are we different? And this is really just about the variation in our DNA code. But if we study that variation in our DNA code, we can understand why we're different from other people, why we respond differently to diet, to exercise, why some of us are elite athletes and others battle to get out of bed. So, by studying our genetic variability, our DNA code, we can identify how we respond to the world around us, and I call that insight. Or self-knowledge, which is really nutrigenetics. But there's two sides to the coin. And the other side of the coin, which is what you refer to as nutrigenomics, is about action. So, if we know about ourselves, if we use genetics to gain self-knowledge, what do we do about it? And one of the most exciting discoveries for me has really only come to me in the past 5, 6 years of my career. Where I discovered that the real power of nutrition and lifestyle was actually in this area of gene expression, that we could understand how we could use nutrients, supplements, exercise, things like meditation, cold water immersion to switch on and switch off genes. And by switching on and switch off genes, we could really impact the health of our body or the performance of our body. So the first thing is insight. We study our DNA. We do a cheek swab, and we analyze the DNA to say, who are you? How do we understand how you live in this world and respond to it? And then the second part is, what do we do to switch on and switch off genes that are going to drive you to greater health? So I hope that is a better, easier way of understanding it.

Yes, for sure. So I have a feeling that people are kind of wondering, hang on, I can turn on and off my genes? Aren't my genes just my genes? So tell us, how do we do that process? How do we switch things on and off?

Okay. So yeah. So you are 100% right. So we are— let us go back one step again so we do not confuse anyone. We are born with a DNA sequence, a code. It is our blueprint. Let us use the word blueprint. It is a great word. We're born with a blueprint that gives us a sequence, and that sequence determines how we're different— tall, short, blue eyes, brown eyes, and again all the other things I mentioned. But the way the body works is DNA is really a code or a blueprint for making proteins in the body, and proteins are commonly referred to as enzymes and hormones and neurotransmitters. Proteins make our bodies work. It's basically the whole function of our body. It's the engine of our body. And DNA is the blueprint for making that, those proteins. Now, the way we make a protein is we go along to the gene, we attach a molecule to it, the molecule switches on the gene, which basically is saying, gene, I want you to make the protein now. I want you to make that enzyme So let me give you a practical example. It's much better. So I go into Starbucks, very bad example, but I go into Starbucks and I order a latte. And a latte has got a lot of dairy milk in it. I need an enzyme called lactase to digest the carbohydrate in milk, which is lactose. So the moment that I'm drinking my latte, my gene needs to switch, be switched on to make the lactase enzyme so I can digest the lactose. And once I'm finished my lactose-full latte, that was quite a mouthful, I can switch off the gene because I don't need that enzyme anymore. So the difference between switching on genes to make proteins, switching off genes when I don't need that protein anymore, versus my DNA code are actually two different conversations. And just so you know, the word that is often used in the media and, well, even in science is the word epigenetics. Epi means outside of. So everything I've described where we eat something or drink something or do something, and it switches on a switch of genes is the world of epigenetics. And our code, our sequence is the world of genetics. I don't know if I made things worse or better.

No, that was a great explanation. I loved your use of the latte. So that kind of makes me think, so we can have an immediate impact on our genes. Using that example of the latte, like, I am drinking this latte and it is making an immediate difference in the way my body works. So that to me says how powerful is our diet and our environment in the way that we function in the world, not just for performance and health, but just on a daily basis.

You absolutely nailed it. So it used to be thought that you know, we wanted to have a healthy diet and a healthy exercise plan. And if we did, if we did that over like the years of our life, we would be healthy. But what we've discovered is we talk about health is a daily choice. And in fact, health isn't even a daily choice. Health is determined by every decision we make of every minute of every day. So when I wake up in the morning and I make a decision, I make a choice to drink a cappuccino, a double espresso, versus drinking a matcha latte, how our body responds to those two different drinks is entirely different. So, the double dose of caffeine will switch on a whole lot of genes, especially the caffeine metabolizing genes, but other genes as well, especially brain messenger genes. And if we have matcha, it is going to switch on different genes, or if we have a green tea, would have been a much better example, it would have switched on different genes. So, and this is happening in real time. So, I always say like every decision we make counts. And not that every decision has to be perfect, but to understand that every time that we make a choice to exercise, to go to bed earlier, to meditate, to go for a cold swim, to go for a massage, to eat raw vegetables, we are immediately impacting how our genes behave in our body.

Wow. That's amazing. I think that's why I got into this field in the first place, because we really have the choice and we can really see exactly what nutrition and lifestyle can do to our bodies, not only in the immediate term, but in the long-term as well.

Exactly. So I just want to make sure we put it together. The, the trick is, and this is where the power of nutrition— Sarah said I started out in dietetics, really not happy with it. And what I was looking for is, you know, this idea that food is medicine. I never saw it. I never saw it for a very long time. And it was only when I understood this idea of how our genetics we inherit tells us how we respond to food, diet, lifestyle. The decisions we make determines how our genes behave. And then I understood that we could eat a plant food like cauliflower cabbage. And that cauliflower cabbage or broccoli was so powerful that the plant molecules inside that vegetable, providing they're raw, could switch on these extraordinary genes that are what we call defense genes to be able to clear toxins from my body, to be able to take free radicals out. And then I realized that I finally found the answer that I've been searching for, which is, where is it that nutrition is as powerful as we all believed it was, but we didn't understand how to get there.

So I feel like you described that perfectly in that we are always trying to get people to eat their brassicas or their crucifers, the broccolis, the cauliflowers. So you just gave us a little scientific explanation. Tell us a little bit more about that, because I know that you guys are really big on sulforaphanes and their effect on genes.

We are. We're very passionate about it. In fact, if you had to ask me just for, like, one plant molecule that I love the most, it would be sulforaphane. So the brassicas, which are the crucifers— so broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi— are an extraordinary group of vegetables. Even though people look at cabbage and cauliflower and think, well, that's a bit boring, it's white, it doesn't fit into the color plate, because they contain— well, they don't actually contain sulforaphane, but they contain a compound that when we— it's called glucoraphanin. And when we pick up that piece of cauliflower and we chew it, an enzyme is activated called myrosinase that breaks down the glucoraphanin— don't worry about the names— to produce this extraordinary, extraordinary compound in the cauliflower called sulforaphane. Now, why do I love sulforaphane so much? Because this little plant molecule is so powerful that it can not only switch on a gene we want switched on, it can switch on multiple genes. So when, when I said, you know, genes are like switching on and switching off, there's another part of the story. Because what we've got in our body is like master switches. So you walk into your house and you've got one switch at the front door, and when you switch it on, it switches on all the lights and the lights come on in the whole house. So we have things like that in our body as well. And one of the most powerful is something called NRF2. And NRF2 is a master switch. So if we can switch on NRF2, NRF2 will do our work for us and go on and switch on another whole bunch of genes. And what actually happens is the sulforaphane molecule from eating my cauliflower or my broccoli switches on NRF2 in the most potent and amazing way. And when NRF2 switch gets switched on, it switches on about 500 genes. And all these 500 genes are involved in health, in detoxification, in being anti-inflammatory, in decreasing oxidative stress, in improving methylation, improving glucose and insulin homeostasis. So this one switch, NRF2, will do something that we can do. So I'm going to give you another example before I forget. So we take vitamin C as a supplement. And we take it because we've been taught that it's an antioxidant, that it'll decrease the oxidative stress in our body, that it'll kind of quench free radicals. But actually, one molecule of vitamin C will quench one free radical. So keep that in mind. You don't have to know the detail. But if I can take something like sulforaphane that can switch on NRF2, the master switch, which can switch on 500 genes. One of the genes that will switch on is an antioxidative gene, and that gene will quench millions of free radicals. Millions. So a supplement will quench one, whereas a gene can switch on an enzyme that can quench millions. and this is the difference between dietetics and nutrigenomic nutrition. So dietetics, we just plug holes with nutrition, but in genetic nutrition, we switch on these master switches. We switch on the lights for the body to heal itself.

That was amazing. So now I kind of have a feeling that everybody's going to go out and eat a giant head of cauliflower raw. Does it matter? How we eat these different kinds of brassicas?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. I wish I could tell you different, but it really matters. So what happens is when you heat cruciferous vegetables, you destroy that enzyme. Remember I told you about that enzyme myrosinase? And if you don't have the enzyme being active, it can't create sulforaphane. So the moment you— I would say like anything over steaming it for 30 seconds, which literally is not very much steaming, You're actually destroying myrosinase. It's not to say that cooked cruciferous vegetables are not good for you. They're part of your plant diet. But if you want the super, super sulforaphane, which is a bit like a superhero, you need to eat it raw. So there's a couple of choices here. So, you know, there's different ways we can build cruciferous into our diet, especially things like coleslaws and things like that. But there are some supplements in the marketplace. Where if you really cannot tolerate eating a lot of raw cruciferous vegetables, you can get what they call broccoli sprouts. So broccoli sprouts that you can buy that are just the sprout that you can sprinkle on salads are even more potent than broccoli and cauliflower. First choice. And second choice is there are some excellent supplements in the market where they've dehydrated the broccoli sprouts and put it into a capsule, and you can take those. But you've got to be really, really careful about which one you're buying Not all of them are effective, so it's not completely lost if you can't tolerate eating a lot of raw vegetables.

So that begs the question, and you've mentioned this already, like the vitamin C supplement versus actually using nutrition and turning on genes. Do you— are you somebody who likes the combination, based on what you're talking about, of a good quality diet and lifestyle in addition to supplements? Or should we all like run out and just fix our diet with pills?

No, so fixing pills won't work. No. So I'm definitely food first, always food first. So they, they did an amazing study where they showed that this idea of activating genes for absolute health— they were like, someone asked the question, well, how many vegetables do I need to eat today to be able to switch on, you know, like the best outcome of my genes? And it, it was 600 grams. So we say like, get all the vegetables and the fruit out your fridge, put it onto a scale, and see how much you're eating in a day. But the reality is there are some things we want to do where we want to be much more focused and targeted on switching on genes. So, I don't believe in supplements as plugging holes, like let's take some vitamin C, let's take a bit of this, let's take a bit of this because I might not be eating well. But I do really, really like supplements when I know what they're doing and when they're acting in a nutrigenomic fashion. So, where the supplement is switching on a gene that is creating a protein that is healing your body. So, we call it targeted supplementation. So, an example would be sulforaphane. Another example would be vitamin D. Vitamin D is an extremely potent nutrient in terms of switching on switches. Omega-3 is another one. Omega-3 switches on our anti-inflammatory genes and switches off our pro-inflammatory genes. I definitely work with supplements, but I try to be extremely careful and targeted, and I use the supplement to switch on the gene, not the supplement to compensate for the diet, if that makes sense.

And this test that you guys do, you are— in your report, there are some suggestions as to which supplements will help with those particular genes. So I think that's a good segue to walk us through not only how this, this test works— you'd already talked about the saliva swab— but what is the report that people get and why is it important that you have the healthcare practitioner as part of that?

Right, so what we're trying to do is— why do we have a report? Well, because we want to understand who you are. We want to understand what did you bring into this world, how do you respond to, to your environment. So we touch on 6 different areas in the report. The first one is we want to know what we call upstream. At a cellular level, how are you responding? How effective are you at detoxifying toxins or estrogens that come into your body? How pro-inflammatory are you likely to be? So, do you have like a baseline of inflammation that we need to switch off, that we need to address? We deal with things like oxidative stress. So, what are the core processes and how good is your body at doing that? Then we look at systems, things like glucose and insulin. We look at really interesting things like Mood, you know, anxiety, depression, because genetics influences everything. So if you, if you find that you are anxious or prone to depression, is that driven by genetics? Or is it driven more by something that has happened in your life or by choices you are making, those daily choices that you are making? We look at hormones, how your body metabolizes hormones. We have a— that is just one part. We have a whole part about cardiovascular, like how do we respond to our vascular health and clotting. But then the really exciting stuff, which is stuff that everyone really loves, if we have a whole category just dedicated to what we call energy. And we don't call it dieting and we don't call it weight, we call it energy. Because genetics changes how we seek out energy, as in calories. So how do we choose to eat? Do we binge? Do we snack? Are we hungry all the time? Do we feel full easily? When we eat calories, how efficient are we at storing them? When we start exercising or burning up energy, how good are we at burning up, or we're not good at it? So, all these things will determine how we drive energy into our body, how we store that energy, and how we burn up energy. And genetics has a significant contribution to genetics. And that's another place where dietetics really, really failed when I was studying. Where they believed that it was just the calories in, calories out. And then the next part is about exercise performance or sports performance. And you could be a recreational athlete, you could be a couch potato, or you could be an elite sports person. But what we want to understand is, we know that genetics can contribute as much as 80% to a sports performance. So, what we want to understand is, where does your potential sit? What are the genes that you were given that were going to make you really excel in one thing versus another. So, for some of us, we'll say, well, I want to run a marathon, and there's nothing to stop anyone running a marathon. But for some people, doing that kind of endurance training and running an endurance event is going to be an easier journey than others. There's others who will go into the gym and, and do weights, and they'll have an amazing response, muscular response, and grow muscle mass. And someone else can do that for years and grow no muscle mass. This is just the tip of the iceberg in understanding how we respond differently to exercise. How we recover from training. Some of us need a little couple of days off, some of us don't. Being prone to injuries. So, using our genetics, we can understand. And I always say, if you've only got 3 hours to train in a week, which is most of us, don't have 5, 6, 7, 8 hours to train in a week, then what am I going to use those hours for to absolutely maximize how my body responds to exercise? And then the last part is, is the nutrients, as you said. How do we respond to gluten? How do we respond to caffeine, folate, the B vitamins, vitamin C, fatty acids? Because that information is absolutely precious to the practitioner in trying to personalize everything about your diet.

Okay, I have so many questions from that last little section that just— I'm like, I'm like shaking. That was between the calories in, calories out, and how it just seems to me like we are discounting the fact that we are all so individual and so unique that our way of training, our way of eating, our way of gaining weight, losing weight is all unique. And we can't compare ourselves to the person next to us, nor can we try the same diet that our neighbor is doing that's trendy and worked for them.

Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. And so if you think about the history of dieting or the history of dietetics or nutrition, that we were taught that, you know, you used a certain calorie diet and you did a certain amount of exercise and you would lose weight. And so when our patients came back to us and they hadn't lost weight, we were like, "You lied to us. You cheated. You've got no self-control. You're greedy. You've got no willpower." And what we did was we set them up for a lifetime of failure, both emotionally and psychologically and physically as well, because the reality is there is such a difference between how we respond to food and the world of energy. And only by understanding this— I have many people, I ran a clinic for a long time where they would come and say, I've tried every single diet, I have eaten barely any calories, and I cannot shift my weight. And when we look at their genes, we totally understand why. And when we show them, they're actually crying at my desk because they're going, You're the first person who's understood me and hasn't told me that I'm not doing enough. So we have decades, decades of harm to undo in this space.

I would also add to that, not necessarily just in dietetics, but, you know, walk into any grocery store and look at the magazine covers. We're, we're sort of taught that it's standard. Everybody has to have a six-pack. Everybody has to have gorgeous flowing hair or be super muscular. That is clearly not the right thing for everybody.

It is not the reality. When we are placing the— I mean, we know this. We know that the media drives this kind of problem around image and self-esteem. If you look at the percentage of people who can actually achieve that, it is so minuscule. So the question, you know, there's a huge trend to precision medicine or personalized medicine, personalized nutrition, and there's a reason for it. The difference between us is so much greater than we ever dreamt. And it was really genetics providing that amazing insight that if you're, if you're looking at a magazine and saying 10 ways to lose 10 pounds, then you know that you're looking at something that comes out of a mindset that was 20, 30 years old but has nothing to do with the reality of who you are? Nothing. And so this is what we need to reteach and need to retake because— and that's why I always go back to this idea of self-knowledge. You know, we need to know ourselves. And then when we see that kind of person, our best friend going on this, like, crazy juice diet and they're losing this insane amount of weight, then we have to, like, say, listen, but actually that's not me. And my DNA is different. And I'm not saying that you can't lose weight, and I'm not saying that it's an excuse for losing weight because that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm saying every person is different, and we have to manage that journey differently, and we have to— realistic goal setting, and we have to base the diet where we can help them manage some of those obstacles in the energy pathways. It's not that, "Oh, well, just eat for the rest of your life," you know, it's not that at all. It's how do we better manage that journey around weight around what's real and what's not real and what's the better diet.

So this kind of makes me think, like, you, you mentioned the woman who was struggling losing weight and she was crying in your office because, you know, you finally have seen her for who she is and found somewhat of a solution. It makes me think of people who are like, oh my gosh, this is so much work. I have to make all these very specific food choices and I have to take, you know, all of these supplements. So how do you and, and your reports and that relationship with the healthcare practitioner, how do you simplify it a little bit, or prioritize I guess is the better word, as to what things— what, what are the right choices to make for their, you know, lifestyle, nutrition, etc.?

Yeah, so one of the things we've done in 3x4 is really try to make genetics simple because it is, it is not. And if we cannot translate it into something that is meaningful to you, then it's just data. It doesn't matter if it's expensive data or cheap data. It's just data. So, one of the things we've been set out is, so, why do we work with practitioners? We work with practitioners because genetics does not live in isolation. You are not only defined by your genes. Your genes are one part of who you are, but your life, your whole life journey is another part. Your diet, your lifestyle, your exposure, your relationships. Your spirituality, all of that contributes to who you are. And the only way we can put genetics into context of understanding your genes is knowing who you are. And that's why as a company, we do not sell genetic tests directly to the end user. We train, we educate, we mentor, and we, we support practitioners to know how to use genetics to be able to understand you better. So I didn't really answer your question earlier. So now, how do we make it more succinct? So there's a reason why the company is called 3x4 Genetics. It's because many years ago, I wanted to build something where you as a practitioner would really be able to distill the essence of an individual's genes in such a way that you could say to them, you know what, I know exactly what we're going to do. We're going to start right here. So, using genetics, and the report does this, it says like, what is happening in your body? How are you responding? Let's focus on the 3 most important places in your body we need to focus. So, it might be detoxification, it might be blood clotting, it might be glucose and insulin. But what are the areas in your body, the pathways in your body that have been most impacted by your genes and need the most attention? So, that we call the first 3. The first 3 is the 3 most important pathways. The second 3 is knowing where we need to optimize pathways. What are the 3 most important diet changes we want to make with you? It's not that we're not going to make more diet changes down the road, but where do we start? What are the 3 most important changes in your diet you can make. Then it's 3 most important lifestyle changes. That might be sleep, it might be exercise, it might be meditation, it might be stress management. But what are the 3 most important ones that we can optimize those pathways we're concerned about? And then what are the 3 most important supplements that you need to take to start you off? And you may need up to 4 or 5, but we're not going to give you 10 supplements. So, if we only had to choose 3, what would be the 3 most powerful supplements to optimize those pathways that we identified? And that's how the company got named 3x4, because it's 3, 3, 3, 3. And it lands up being like a summary page which gives the practitioner now a starting point to say, let's focus here and let's see how you go. We're trying to take the trial and error out of practitioners' world. So let's— it used to be, let's try this and see how it goes, and then we'll come back and we'll try this and we'll try this. But actually, with genetics, you are going to the front of the queue and you're saying, actually, I know who you are. I understand you better. Let's start off very focused and start here.

And from our work so far in this testing and reporting, it seems like there's a lot of crossovers, like certain types of nutrition choices or supplements may help in multiple different areas.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, sulforaphane is the most perfect example. Sulforaphane will impact detoxification. It'll impact glucose, insulin, impact estrogen metabolism, you know, hormone metabolism. It'll impact cognitive. So 100%. And that's what we're looking for. You know, we want, we want the most powerful interventions that without overwhelming your patients or your clients, because we don't want them to go home with 10 different things to do or 100 different supplements to take. And then they feel like they're overwhelmed. They're confused. We just want to find clarity. So we're looking for those gems. What is something we can change that has the greatest impact and that will address these pathways in your body that we want to optimize the most?

I love that. That's great. So you've touched on this a little bit, but we work with a lot of athletes in particular, like triathletes, runners, but even some like swimmers, hockey players, that kind of thing. So how do you think that these results can impact somebody's performance in exercise, or is it a matter of adjusting somebody's programming and their nutrition habits surrounding their exercise based on, on their blueprint?

Well, it's both, you know. So, so there's some companies who just will do like a sports genetic test, but they won't do all the other stuff around detox and inflammation, oxidative stress, and glucose and brain, you know, mood and everything. We actually do both. So, we have a section that is just about sports. So, where we've used it in some sports teams that's been fascinating is where coaches have said, you know, there's a couple of ways that coaches are using it. So, the first is in position play. So, we have a sense of where your greatest potential is. So, for some people, they're really good at short bursts of speed, like really powerful, really quickly. Almost anaerobic, whereas others are just really good at going long, going for a very long time, for hours at an end. We want to get a sense of that because actually, if you have players in a team and you know that you've got an extremely powerful person, you might want them in a position that's got a lot of sprints, a lot of things, but you might not have them playing on the field the entire time. You might need to take them off half time, replace them with someone else. So, it gives you some insight about, about position. It also gives you insight about injury and functional training. So, if you identified one of your athletes, and it could be a triathlete or a team player, a long-distance runner, who has a susceptibility to injuries, and a lot of these injuries are like collagen injuries, so rotator cuff, Achilles, ACL, then you can preempt those injuries with functional training before they get injured. And not only with functional training but with a lot of great nutrition as well. The other one is around recovery, where we worked with a rugby team in New Zealand, where they were saying, you know, one thing is not everyone can train the same. So, they had some players who could train 6 days a week, have 1 day off, and would bounce back on Monday morning. And other players who, if they didn't have more time off, they, they just could not come back at the same, same level. And they started using genetics to identify who are those that need my more time off. So, instead of everyone having a 6-day training week, there was actually variability in how many days they trained. And those that needed more recovery had active recovery days, but they built it into the program. So, there is so much you can learn. And that's just the exercise component, never mind the energy, nutrition, inflammation, all these things, and mood, anxiety, and addiction behavior. So, there isn't a single thing that doesn't impact sports performance. So, there's stuff that directly impacts it. And then there's stuff that indirectly impacts it.

Wow. That was really cool. And the thing that I'm thinking of immediately is there is a sense in the, in particular in the endurance world that you are a better athlete or you are more of an athlete, the more you train. I run 70 miles a week, 100 miles a week, 50 miles a week. I bike 10,000 miles in a year or whatever. So you're saying that that's— that we need to sort of remove some of that stigma, that we're all different and that we all need different programming, different levels of recovery, and that's okay.

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, the research is showing that, that the more is not better. And in fact, what happens is— so exercise is so fascinating because exercise is actually— is pro-inflammatory. So, exercise generates inflammation and oxidative stress. Now, if you think of a curve that looks like a little, like a little hill, the thing about exercise is we call it a weak pro-oxidant or a weak pro-inflammatory thing. And when we do some exercise, we stimulate our body to generate, to switch on those genes that are anti-inflammatory and antioxidative, and it's extremely healthful and for longevity, and it's fantastic. But what happens with training is when it goes up to that top of the hill and we overtrain and we train and we train, the inflammation and the oxidative stress is no longer a healthy level and becomes— overwhelms the body. So, if you— so, one thing we've seen with a lot of athletes, particularly athletes who, for example, train for Ironman, Within about a year after Ironman, they all get extremely sick. We're talking about autoimmune, chronic fatigue, or things like that. And one of the reasons is, is if you train and train and train and train, you are loading your body up with inflammation and oxidative stress. And that over time is the same as working in a factory 24 hours a day in Beijing with pollution. You are overloading your body, and your body is not getting enough time to dampen that inflammation and squash that, that oxidative stress. So, it's all about trying to find that balance between the right amount of training, the right amount of recovery, and making sure you've got the right nutrition to help you switch off that inflammation and switch off that oxidative stress. So, more training is definitely not more quality training and is definitely not better for health or for performance.

That kind of makes me think this is probably why people get into performance-enhancing drugs. Do those have an effect, I would assume, on switching genes on and off?

They, they definitely switch genes on and off. So the ergogenic drugs or the ergogenic foods, I mean, so, so there's a reason why caffeine is used for sport performance, because it basically breaks open fatty acids and generates energy. and it does things in the brain. It's well documented. So we know, and caffeine's, well, now legal, never used to be. But there are many other of these drugs where they're almost breaking the switch. So they're short-circuiting what is normal and natural for your body and switching on genes that should not be switched on. So the body, like, is brilliant at healing itself and moderating itself. But if you— and it doesn't matter if it's performance-enhancing drugs or just normal pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals are like a sledgehammer where you go in and you throw all the switches in that space because you want to get an impact. And sometimes it's life-saving. Some pharmaceuticals are life-saving. But the problem is then you've overridden the signaling of the body, which actually knows what to do if you just provide it with the right amount of diet, nutrients, stress. I hope that makes sense. So, what we talk about is modulation, is give your body the ability to get stronger, faster, fitter, healthier, but not to force it into an unnatural state. And this is the difference between modulation as opposed to activation, where drugs will activate a pathway that shouldn't actually be activated.

So, that also makes me think of NSAIDs, things like ibuprofen and the like that are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that oftentimes, especially in the endurance community, They are— athletes are popping those like pills.

Like, like, what do M&M's—

right, right, right. Yeah. So candy.

I remember in my running, running career when we were running ultra, ultra marathons, they were all carrying ibuprofen. But even worse, they were carrying ibuprofen and codeine, and they were taking that— exactly. And they were taking that as soon as they hit a distance. And there's so much documentation on the danger of that practice. Never mind the codeine, but the ibuprofen alone of how extraordinary— So people always say, like, even with supplements, they say, oh, I'll take a whole lot of stuff, and if I don't need it, I'll just, like, come out in my urine. But it actually doesn't work like that. Everything you put into your body switches on and switches off genes. It has an impact, whether it's a vitamin C off the shelf or whether it's a steroid or whether it's ibuprofen. Ibuprofen. In fact, we have a training course called Manuka, which is quite an extensive course. And we have a whole like 20 slides on ibuprofen and what it does to the body and why people think it's just this common drug that we all take, but actually how incredibly powerful it really is.

Wow. That's amazing. I do know some ultra marathons, they actually will prohibit you, prohibit runners from actually carrying it. And if they find it, they might even DNF you.

Oh, I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, well, we're starting to get deaths from it. There's no doubt about it.

Yeah, not great.

Definitely.

That was— that was— oh my gosh, I could—

I—

we could talk for a long, long time. Hopefully— do you think that we can have you back?

Absolutely.

I'm so excited to see what, what the feedback is, what people want to know more about, because I certainly want to dig more into this whole calories in, calories out thing as it relates to weight loss, because we do get quite a lot of athletes even You want to lose weight. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's not a great thing. So I would love to dive into that. And then a little bit, perhaps more into the performance aspects of things. And even you mentioned detoxification. I feel like that's a bit of a trendy word and people are like, oh yeah, I went on this detox diet. So that is a very specific pathway. Touch on that briefly. Cause I, I, I always want people to have a taste of that.

And it's not a juice diet. It's actually one of the most important biochemical processes in your body that will determine your health. So it's been, it's been like hijacked by the, by the kind of health industry. But actually, it is a fundamental process of how does every cell in your body manage toxins and metabolites. It's one of the reasons we get sick. It's entirely the conversation of cancer. How do we manage toxins in our body and how do we excrete it and get rid of it at a cellular level, but also obviously at a liver level, which is the organ that's responsible? And we could talk for like 30, 40 minutes just about detoxification because you really need to understand it. It is one of the processes that is keeping you in health or is setting you up for disease.

And that's when you say toxins. This is not just like I don't know, licking the lead paint off your wall.

Yeah, it's not the obvious ones like, Christina, like that, or going to Beijing and having the pollution. It's what we call exogenous, which is what we're exposed to outside. So it could be everything that we're eating in our food, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, hormones. Everything that comes into our body has to be metabolized. It can also be toxic metabolites that are produced by our body. So when we metabolize hormones in our body, we produce some molecules that are really helpful, but some things that are really damaging to our body that we need to get rid of. And so, we rely on detoxification to clear those. And if we don't clear them, we increase our susceptibility for things like cancer. So, toxins are not just the baddies that, you know, toxins are anything that the body is exposed to inside or outside that we need to metabolize and clear and get out of our body.

That was a great explanation. So yeah, y'all, Jaffe, I am so thankful that you were able to join us. And the way that we like to tie up each episode is giving people a couple of different things, maybe 2 or 3 different takeaways that our listeners can use in order to benefit their health and performance. So what are your, what are your tips for us?

All right. So, you know, which one, you know, you know, one of them is going to be Are we all eating broccoli sprouts for life? Broccoli sprouts for life. Broccoli sprouts, absolutely. Find your coleslaw. If you can sprout or buy sprouts, even better. But really, it's your number one thing that you can do that is almost most powerful. Second thing is you're probably not going to see coming is cold water immersion. I'm a huge fan of. And it's absolutely incredible on so many levels for what it does for inflammation, vagus nerve stimulation, stress management. So for me, it's very underrated. And if you can't get to a cold ocean, a cold river, a cold swimming pool, instead in a cold shower. But it's extremely powerful. And what would be my, my next one? Oh my God. Is, yeah, it's just, just the idea that You know, every time we make a decision, we can start over again. That just because you made a bad decision 5 minutes ago doesn't mean you can't make a better decision now. Remember, every decision will change the way the genes get switched on and switched off.

I love that. That's a great way to, to wrap things up. So if you want to learn more about 3x4 Genetics, check out our website, theenduranceedge.com. In the nurse services, you'll find the 3x4 Genetics link, and there's some information on you there. We are offering that test in conjunction with our care. So Yael Jaffe from 3x4 Genetics, thank you so much for speaking with us, and I can't wait to check in with you again.