You Don't Have The Wrong Genes, You're in the Wrong Environment, with Dr. Sam Shay

What's the 80/20 rule? What's the 20% most important genes that will give you 80% of all the lifestyle stuff that you need to do in order to help you 80% with all these other things?

If you wanna live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great, and feel freaking amazing, you're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubow.

And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

Where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, Hold on to your hats. Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We have a repeat guest today because he's up to some really cool stuff. It's Dr. Sam Shea. He is the founder of fitgenesusa.com. It's a genetics company that empowers licensed practitioners and certified health professionals to incorporate genetics easily into the practice so that clients can know their genetic blueprint to optimize their diet, their exercise, and their lifestyles. Sam, Dr. Sam, welcome back. We're so happy to have you here.

Thanks. It's really great to be back.

Sam, I don't know if I've told you this, but I sat my parents down at a family event. They're divorced. They've been divorced for more— they've been divorced at this point for 45 years. I sat them down at a family event and I said, I am so grateful the two of you had me, but you really should not have reproduced. Truly, like, you should not have, because the combination in me gave me 2 copies of MTHFR, 2 copies of the celiac gene and 2 copies of the vitamin D deficiency gene.

Yeah, we're in the same club.

Yeah, I was pissed. I was like, what did you do to me? Why did you do that? And I have celiac and a history of poor nutrition and poor absorption. And I gave all the kids a copy of the celiac gene too.

All 4 of them. Very generous. So generous.

Well, because I had—

it wasn't in our marriage agreement.

I know it wasn't in our prenup.

You can't prenup away your genes, Wendy. That's not a thing.

I know.

I didn't even know I should have prenuptially weighed my jeans. That was a problem. But when you line 10 people up, I often experience that I'm the one who's going to get the thing. It's like he's eating 3-day-old sushi and I eat 6-hour-old sushi, and I'm the one who winds up in the hospital with the massive breakdown. Right? So I used to call it strong like bull or strong like mouse. And I'm strong like mouse. You could step on me in an hour, but the bull goes charging through and they're fine.

I totally get it. You, like me, Yeah. We, like, I, in the first, I've been doing genetics for over 10 years now. The first 7 years, I was the gold medalist in the crappy gene Olympics. Of all the genes I've run, of all the tests I've run over these, over those years, I had the single worst set of genes of any of them. When it, so of the, of the top 16 inflammatory genes, I have 14 that have variations. And I was very, very sick as a child, you know, and I was, and, and it, and it, it's one another reason I'm so passionate about this test is that if I had had my own test 40 years ago, my entire life would be completely different. I would've been fed differently. I would've exercised differently. I would've approached nutrition differently. I would've probably actually had a growth spurt, which I never did. And it was like my, my entire life would be completely, and you can do the thing about genetics, you can do a cheek swab. As long as someone's got a cheek, doesn't matter how old they are. They got genes, they got a cheek, they're done. You know, you can, you can get a cheek swab.

By the, by the way, Sammy, you win.

I win.

You win. And I'm happy to let you win.

No, no, I, it's no, not that it's a contest, but I got dethroned 3 years ago. I, I got dethroned as to a silver medalist and then I got dethroned again to bronze medalist. So like, what's, what's the joke Jerry Seinfeld said? Gold medalist, Greatest person in the world, silver medalist, never heard of you. Like bronze medalist, you tried. You know, like so it's what I'm saying this not to brag, but but out of solidarity that for for people walking around who feel like you've you've gotten this really horrible genetic dice roll and like I totally get it. And it can look invisible because from the outside I look pretty sturdy, but people have no idea what I have to do on a daily basis in order to even just maintain some semblance of normality. The other thing, but one thing that I will salvage about having, you know, such terrible genes is that I study evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, and What I realized when I looked at my hyper, hyper-inflammatory gene set is that I didn't have bad genes. I was in the wrong environment, meaning that if I'm hyper and hyper-inflamer, that means that I am better suited to be a tip-of-the-spear hunter as a hunter-gatherer of a tribe of under 150 people 20,000+ years ago. Why? Because what is the point of inflammation? To repair tissue damage and kill infections from said damage. If I'm out there hunting an animal that weighs 20 times my body weight and all I have to hunt with is a tiny stick, it's very likely me and my hunting party are going to get bitten, mauled, scratched, trampled, gored, or otherwise. If I'm a hyper-inflamer and I get bit, and what is a bite wound? It's tissue damage combined with the injection of pathogens from the saliva, the dirt, whatever it is. Inflammation will rush in there with red blood cells to kill— sorry, to repair, and white blood cells there to kill off the imposing infections. If I'm a hyperinflamer, I will heal faster than a less inflammatory-prone hunting party member who was bitten the same way. So, from an evolutionary biology standpoint, it's all about trade-offs. I will survive better in the short term at the expense of long-term chronic illness from being a hyperinflamer. The less inflammatory-prone hunting party member will survive more— less likely in the short term but will thrive better in the long term. And, I learned a very harsh lesson from evolutionary biology. Mother Nature does not give 2 bits about who you are or who I am. It only cares about the lineage. That's why it creates sexual recombination. It's in order— the best way to support the lineage surviving over time Is to create microadaptations that survive generation to generation in order to adapt to an ever-changing backdrop of the environment. So I forgave my body when I got my genetics test back, and I don't mean that as some sort of metaphysical, like, here I am in Boulder, let's wave a crystal. I meant that I'm serious. Like, I finally got it that my body was not on the secret mission to sabotage me and harm me. It was just in the wrong environment. And when I got my genetics test in 2016 and I opened it and I read it and realized the implications, I sat and cried for an hour because I finally understood why I was so sick and I had a pathway forward and my body was never the enemy to begin with. Just to make, to illustrate this home, I would wake up, I, I'm, I'm 4th, I'm in 4th grade, I'm 10 years old. I keep waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning every night and my body won't let me sleep. And I have this kind of weird toxic codependent relationship with my body, like it's this othering. And I would literally wake up and start yelling at my body. It's like, what do you want from me? Why won't you let me sleep? Like it's this, it's like I'm being punished for rules I'm never told. And when I got my genes back, I finally got to like my body is just, it's just in the wrong environment. It's responding the best way it knows how, but it's, it's just in the wrong environment. And so now knowing that, It's not my enemy anymore, and it never was. It was— it's just now I have to work on my environment, internal and external, to make sure that it's as harmonic with the genes I've been dealt with. And that is probably one of the most important gifts running the genetics test for me. It was, was reconciling my relationship with my own body and my— and I, I, I, there, there's not a price I can put on that, but it's just an additional thing I, I certainly didn't expect. I wasn't expecting to get a test back and start crying for an hour.

Well, there's really great value in not being a victim, right? Because when you're not a victim and you actually have tools to make a difference in the outcome of your health, it changes the outcome.

Absolutely.

100%. I think I'm going to slightly move us to the most important question that everybody and their grandmother is now talking about, which I hate.

Did you just say that out loud without warning people? All right, I think we need to put a little thing in, like, warning. I think we need to bleep it.

That's fine.

No, no, no, no. Here's what you do, Wendy. When you bleep it out, just have a little decal that says MCHFR over his mouth. Like, have it pop.

Yes, I think that's good.

Because people do listen to this with their kids in the car, so we generally don't swear.

But that is what everybody knows it to be. And the problem is The challenge is I used to look at that gene like 15 years ago and then realized, oh wait, that's just one of many methylation genes and we have to really look at the symphony, not just one gene. And in the last 2 years that it's come back that everybody wants to check their MTHFR.

Well, that's Gary Brecka's fault. I mean, I can point directly to Gary Brecka for that one. He was on Rogan in December of '24 and he mentioned his genetics test, which is only 5 genes and MTHFRs, and it's only 5 methylation genes. And I remember it very clearly because when I listened to it, I started yelling into my podcast player as if he could hear me. And then, you know, I mean, you know me, when I get angry, I make a PowerPoint. So I went and made a PowerPoint debunking Gary's claims that these are the 5 most important genes and that methylation in general is the most important thing. It's not. Methylation is actually after VDR receptors. So you actually bring this full circle to the order of prioritization. Inflammation, free radical damage, liver detox, VDRs. Again, Dr. Beaver says it's below liver. I say it's above inflammation. Doesn't matter conceptually. It's important. But methylation is fifth on the priority list. And I found the papers that showed that methylation is downstream of inflammation, downstream. And so when the reason why MTHFR is in the zeitgeist is such a high priority is because it suffers from founder's effect. It was the first real gene to grip the imagination of the public years and years and years ago. And it's just like Hoover, Xerox, you know, like it's like these, these companies that became nouns and verbs in their, in their own. And just because it captured the public consciousness, they were first to market. Google, Google had to change its own name because Google has now become a verb and you can't trademark a verb. So, MTHFR is part of— there's 12 major methylation genes, not 1. And, there's MTHFR1 and there's MTHFR2, the sequel. Again, Judgment Day. There's MTR, PEMT, MTHFD1, BHMT, SHMT1, COMT, CBS, TCN2, FUT2. Great. Now, we've now rattled off enough. 3 to 4 to 5-letter acronyms to win a very bizarre game of genetics-based Scrabble. So, all these genes together work as a symphony. And yes, certain genes in the methylation cycle, like, yeah, you want your MTHFR genes to be working because that's the preferential place to shove homocysteine through out of the 3 pathways. Homocysteine is so toxic to the body that your body developed three independent pathways to get rid of it. So MTHFR is on the priority list; it's it's the express lane because it's the easiest to cycle through and get rid of homocysteine. But it's certainly not the only gene in that corner of the of the methylation cycle, and there's other pathways too, two others, and. People need to understand that methylation is downstream from inflammation, from free radical damage scavenging in the mitochondria, and at a minimum is bidirectional with liver detox. And this is what I was talking about before, that instead of giving people hundreds of genes with the hundreds of attending health tips and hundreds of supplements, if you prioritize the genes. Then you find out which of those genes have variations. Then you find the fewest number of lifestyle changes shown in the peer-reviewed research that are done on humans, the research for lifestyle interventions done on humans, not wombats or nematodes. Then you can give people the fewest number of things to benefit the most number of highest priority genes. And if those highest priority genes are affected, then the downstream priority genes are also affected. And that's what makes now genetics winnable and not overwhelming and confusing.

It's beautiful. I love it. I actually do love it.

So does your test do all that?

Yeah, that's why I do it, and that's why I teach it. That's why I'm talking.

Yeah, I mean, because I'll often send people to—

no, just— he's just hanging out.

But, you know, I will often send people to things that are outside the system that they can then plug into Genetic Genie to make some sense of it. And we focus on the the detox and the inflammatory markers, but this seems like it makes a lot more— it's a lot easier to digest. Does the report give the clinician the ability to do—

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what I've done is I've designed the reports and my intention was to decode that. Look, Dr. Beaver is a scientist, not a clinician. I'm a clinician. My job is to translate what the scientists say into something practical. That's, that's the role of a clinician. Does it work? Is it pragmatic? Is it practical? And so what I've done is I've taken the— I've taken the clusters and I've taken the genes and I've made the report really easy to understand for the client and also the, the clinician. And so the report's designed For both practitioner and the client, that you can hand it to the client. And what it does is that it's okay. Here's the summary. Here's the most important things to do: diet, nutrients, exercise right up front. And then the rest of the report is here's the explanations in more detail as to why. But you now know what to do right up top. And then each major gene function is on like one slide. So, for example, if someone's genetically vulnerable to caffeine. Here is the caffeine slide explaining what your dot means. What are the considerations around caffeine? Timing, dosage, quality of coffee. Here are some caffeine alternatives. Here's a list of caffeine-laden foods and decreasing amounts of caffeine. So if you want to come off caffeine, like, here's how to come off of it slowly, slowly, slowly. So it's like one concept On a page, easy to understand. Next concept: What's your relationship to what alcohol? Here's the genes. Here's your relationship to alcohol genetically. What what what is recommended based on those genes? Mostly like come off of it. Here's the non-alcoholic alternatives, and it just make and it's like that exercise. You're a slow twitch. You're a fast twitch. Here is the here's the recognized exercise recommendations for people's general health as it comes to exercise. Here's how you need to adapt based on your fiber type. If you've got variation, like here's the slide on weak collagen. What do you what how do you focus on recovery if you've got a genetic risk? And here, so it's like science and then practical science and then practical science and practical. And to make it really easy for people to understand, and with with and if people want to go super super deep into it, then they've got more details in the rest of the report. I'm also releasing the Fit Genes podcast starting in June, which I'm releasing. It's really for practitioners and health coaches, so it's a lot more detailed. Like I just recorded an hour plus podcast just on the caffeine, the the three major genes for caffeine sensitivity. And, um, but the lay public's welcome to listen in on it. It's, it's kind of like, if you like Huberman, like that, it's that kind of level of like complexity that you can still follow along with it.

And they can always put it into chat and make it lay-friendly. So, sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

What's the, just from a practical standpoint, what's the turnaround time on the test and how much does it, is, are there different prices for practitioners versus public?

No. So here's the other thing. The public can't access this on its own. It has to go through a practitioner because the genetics should be done under coaching and supervision. And that's another way that I gatekeep the information so that it's through practitioners and certified health coaches.

Wait, pause right there. Do not try this at home.

Yeah. Otherwise you'll Google yourself into terror.

Don't try this at home. Well, it's like perspective, right? Let's focus on the important things and let's do this as a team as opposed to you being a Lone Ranger going off. And I mean, look, if you want to treat yourself, you can, but you're— I do think there's value in collaboration with a provider.

Absolutely. And you want people to— the reality is that people do better when they have someone there who's more experienced. And the thing is that your gene test is not going to go bad. It's not going to The value of the data is not going to decay over time unlike a gut test or a mitochondria test. Those tests are great, don't get me wrong. I love those. I teach those. I've even designed some of the tests as well. It's just that the genetics, it's there for life. Why not work with a professional for at least the initial bit so you now are set up to implement this in the best way possible for life?

What I love about it is that it really— on one hand, you can say, oh, well, these are my genetics, I can't do anything about it. I see this as a way to empower people, as you've been talking about.

Can we pivot to talk about that? Like, now that you know your information, right?

Right. How do you best live your best life and how do you best live in this world given what you've been given? Everybody's given something different.

Yeah. So my, my, uh, the thing that also about prioritization is that, uh, only genes you can do something about have been chosen for this test.

Thank you. I'm like, what? Why are we testing stuff that, like, you're screwed, just suck it up?

Well, there is a place for— there, there is, there's, there's, there's specific cases for that, you know, in specific genetic— like, I talk about there's 4 types of genetics testing. There's what percentage Irish are you? That's genealogy. There's who's your daddy? That's paternity testing. We don't do those. That's not what we're doing here. Then there's then there's Western medical pathology genetic testing, which is what you're talking about. Where do you have trisomy 21? Do you have Huntington's disease?

Do you have BRCA genes?

BRCA-BRIP.

All those all those all those different genes that are quote pathology genes. We are not looking at those. In functional genetics testing. The, the disease genes are actually, uh, downstream of the genes that— the drivers. So like inflammation, the inflammation genes are actually sitting above, you know, heart disease genes, cancer genes, free rad— uh, sorry, uh, dementia genes, etc. Because if you are— if you're really inflamed, then that's gonna poke, for lack of a better analogy, on the quote disease genes. And there is a place to get those disease genes checked for Because if here's here's one really practical reason for it: if someone has the specific psychology where I'm not going to pay attention to any lifestyle stuff unless I know I have the gene for the risk of this one disease thing that I'm terrified of, and then and then they just won't respond to like you know logic like just do on your life just do the high driver disease anyway. They don't respond to you know logic, and like fine, let's go do the get yourself tested for the genes you're so terrified of, and then you'll pay attention to these other genes. Cool, do that. Fine. So, so it's, it's, and some people also need to, they need to get those things tested for other reasons, which is fine. That's like a niche PhD-level genetic analysis, which may be 100% appropriate in specific cases. What I want to do instead is, what's the 80/20 rule? What's the 20% most important genes that will give you 80% of all the lifestyle stuff that you need to do? In order to help you 80% with all these other things, like like that's that's where I want to come in. And if you want to do the other stuff, go for it.

I'm good. You answered this, but I'm going to ask it anyways because we've been seeing a lot of lot more EDS patients, early Danlos, early Danlos.

Yeah.

And I'm assuming you don't test for it.

No no no.

Hold on.

The two the two collagen genes. It it's not. I don't give diagnosis of early Danlos, but the two collagen There's many, many, many collagen genes. Many, many, many. The 2 collagen genes that we do test for shows up a lot in Ehlers-Danlos. It's not a diagnostic gene. It's just, it's 2 of the genes that also happen to be a part of Ehlers-Danlos. A lot, excuse me, a lot of Ehlers-Danlos cases. There's like 5 or 6 types of Ehlers-Danlos, I think.

And then, does the genetic testing, does your genetic testing help with EDS, like knowing what to eat, the inflammation, vitamin D, all that stuff can help with not the actual hypermobility, but all the other things that are associated. We see they get Lyme, they get mold, they get— They're messy.

They're really messy.

Yeah, they get a lot of stuff. So when you look at— so MyGenexx test, just you get the full Full disclosure, like this is not a diagnostic for early Danlos. It does not treat early Danlos. What it does do is it looks at all of these superordinate genes that are creating a more fragile environment for the collagen to have a less chance to succeed. So, for example, if someone's got early Danlos, it's very likely they also have genes that make them hyper. Inflammatory, which means— and what the thing my, my departed mentor, what he taught us was that one of the things that, that inflammation is a bit like— he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, so there's like scaffolding in all the buildings, you know, like a 10th of all the buildings have these scaffolding. So he says inflammation is like scaffolding, that it makes the thing less functional while it repairs it. So the scaffolding—it's a disruption. The sidewalks are met like it's difficult to navigate with all the scaffolding everywhere. It's less functional, but it's there to repair. So inflam—if you are—so if you have a tissue that's inflamed, it's going to lose function. Functional acia is part of the rubor dolor color. Like it's one of the original. Like dysfunctional or whatever the Greek Latin word was, I forget. But like literally loss of function. The point of inflammation is you got to you got to repair it. It's going to lose function. So if your collagen is inflamed, it's going to lose its function. And if you already have genes that your collagen is weak to begin with, weakened collagen that is now inflamed is now extra dysfunctional. So from the genetic standpoint. If someone has EDS and I'm looking at their genes, not from a diagnostic standpoint, I am looking at the 16 inflammatory genes. I'm looking at the the three major genes for scavenging free radicals in the mitochondria. I'm looking at their VDRs. I'm looking at their dietary genes to see are they eating foods that are creating more inflammatory immune responses? Like, are they sensitive to histamine? Do they have? Are they? Do they have caffeine-induced anxiety and depression? So if they drink caffeine, then they may be comfort eating to deal with their anxiety and depression. That was not necessarily from bad thoughts, but from a physiological response. And so now they're eating inflammatory food, and all of that, all all of these other if they're exercising in a way that's damaging, or they're not recovering enough, then. Then it's all of these things will help someone who happens to have EDS, right?

That's awesome. Yeah, I can really see having an expert in our office and really taking care of us.

Yeah. All right, Sam, I feel like we could do a longer conversation on this. Unfortunately, we have— we— this is— we've used up our time. Oh, but this is really cool. What did you want to jump in with? Anything? Okay, so I think we need to bring this to an end by just saying, where can people find out more about you? Acknowledging that we have not covered 90% of what we were going to cover in this conversation.

Yeah, I saw the question list. I'm like, good luck.

Yeah, no, no. So we haven't gone anywhere near, and we can talk about doing this again. But first off, where can people find you? We'll make sure everything goes in the show notes.

Sure. To answer your question and also address what we just said, it's one reason I'm making the FitGenes podcast, but one of the reasons I'm making the podcast is to long-form all of these topics and to make it really, really simple and straightforward for practitioners, health coaches, and the lay public to go deep with this, with this kind of meta-understanding of functional genetics as compared to Western pathology, genetics, genealogy, and paternity. Like, what really empower people, like akin to Huberman, like he does not strive using the jargon, but he really makes it easy to understand. So, uh, look for the FitGenes podcast, F-I-T-G-E-N-E-S podcast.

E-S, FitGenes.

Um, where people can find me is fitgenesusa.com. If you're a practitioner or a certified health coach and you're wanting to incorporate genetic, you can go there, sign up with your credentials, etc., and then, uh, you can— then you've got access to my learning library. I do the teaching. Uh, we team to help, uh, walk you through and coaches for implementation. If you're a member of the lay public and you're wanting to get genetics testing yourself, You can go to fitgenesusa.com and click find a practitioner and put in your information. We can connect you with the nearest practitioner. So it's, it's available to the public through practitioners and coaches, and that's, it's a big distinction. Uh, the other thing that practitioners and coaches should know is that I do not, like many companies, shoehorn you into a supplement line. I just list what the science says is the ingredients. That show in the nutrigenomic, like SOD inducers. I don't name the ones. I just say this person needs you know vitamin D, SOD, SOD inducers, sulforaphane, whatever it is. Like there's there's there's about two dozen different things in there that that can be looked at. You as a practitioner know what companies and brands you like, and and I'm just listing the ingredients based on the science. Appreciate that. Okay.

We'll make sure that all goes in the show notes. Sorry, what we just said.

Amazing. Thank you.

All right. All right, Sam, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We're sorry we have to stop talking, but we do.

There's always another time.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Don't go it alone.

It's not a social journey until others join.

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