Habits and Hustle - Episode 362: Gary Brecka: Understanding Genetic Testing, Proper Nutrition, and Supplements

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Are you relying on supplements and medication to address health issues without considering the fundamental role of nutrition?  In today’s Fitness Friday episode, I chat with Human Biologist Gary Brecka as he emphasizes that optimal health is not found in a laboratory but in the wholesome, natural foods that surround us. We discuss genetic testing and the biomarkers people should know to look for. Overall, our conversation encourages listeners to prioritize nutrition and make informed choices based on their unique genetic profiles and blood tests. Gary Brecka is a professional Human Biologist, and the Co-Founder of 10X Health System based in Miami, FL.  What we discuss:  Understanding Genetic Testing and Supplements Peptides and Testosterone Understanding Testosterone and Hormone Levels Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off To learn more about Gary Brecka:  Website: https://www.garybrecka.com/  Instagram: @garybrecka  Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therisage. Their tri-light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go.

And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to. Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face

which I also use it for. I personally use Therisage Trilite everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therasage.com right now and use code BEBOLD for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to Therasage.com and use code BEBOLD for 15% off any of their products. You know, when I was in the insurance industry and we would see early onset Alzheimer's patients, not once in 22 years did I see an early onset Alzheimer's or dementia patient for that matter that did not have 10 years of elevated blood sugar prior to. And now there's a lot of clinical studies.

You can get them at the National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health and PubMed and other big places where you can search journal articles. We're calling Alzheimer's type three diabetes, insulin resistance in the brain. The big lie about Alzheimer's is that people are losing their memory. That's actually not true. They're losing access to their memory, and access can be restored.

No. Blood flow, hypoxia. I mean, if you look at the neural entanglement in Alzheimer's, we used to say, well, this is all related to amyloid plaques, but we haven't, we've actually seen, you know, brains where entanglement and animal, and these amyloid plaques are significantly more progressive than patients that have Alzheimer's and they have no exacerbation of the disease. It has to do with blood flow. It has to do with the way the brain communicates with other hemispheres the brain. When people

have a lot of these neuropathic conditions like Alzheimer's, they'll have periods where they do something called sputter, right? If you've ever had the misfortune of having a loved one that has Alzheimer's, they'll all of a sudden have this recall of an incident with such a level of clarity, you're like, wait a second, that was my fifth birthday. You remember the birthday cake, the color of the balloons, who was there?

You recognize me? So that proves that the memory is not gone. The access to the memory is gone. When we start to reduce blood flow in the body, this is why I say the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. We get the expression of disease that is not that disease.

So for example, if I put a tourniquet around your calf and I restricted the blood flow to your foot, pretty soon you would have to have some serious neurological signs. You'd have tingling, numbness, eventually pain, it would go completely numb. You'd have burning, itching. You'd have all of these neurological sensations.

And I would say you have peripheral neuropathy. We don't have peripheral neuropathy. You have a decrease in blood flow that's causing you to have peripheral neuropathy symptoms. This happens in thyroid. Very few physicians that I'm aware of even realize that the thyroid only makes, we diagnose people with hypothyroid

because they're low on T3 very often. And the thyroid only makes 20% of the T3 in our bloodstream. So when T3 is low and we call it hypothyroid, there's an 80% chance it's something else because the other 80% of the thyroid hormone is methylated in the gut. We actually convert T4 into T3 in the gut.

So if you don't know if you have a gene mutation that impairs that conversion, then you spend a whole lifetime on thyroid medication for a condition that you don't have. We hold organs and the human body responsible for crimes they don't commit all the time. This is why we have the definition called idiopathic, meaning of unknown origin.

Because I say your thyroid is low, but there's nothing wrong with your thyroid, I'm still gonna medicate the thyroid. Your blood pressure is high, but there's nothing wrong with your heart, I'm still gonna medicate the heart. You know, and we do this over and over again, because we don't go down into the roots below the soil and we say, what nutrients could

be missing from this person's body that could be causing this condition to exist? You know, right before we got on this podcast, I told you if you had something go wrong in that tree that's outside that window, and you called an arborist, a botanist over here, they wouldn't touch the leaves or the trunk. The first thing they would do is court test the soil. And they'd say, hey, that soil is deficient in nitrogen. Then they'd add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf would heal. But we don't think about human beings this way, right? We go straight to pathology, disease, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, you know, synthetics. And the truth is that optimal health will never be found in a laboratory. It will be found on Mother Earth by what God has surrounded us by. And the more we get back to the basics,

whole food, sunlight, grounding, breath work, exercise, challenging the body, not seeking aggressive, you know, comfort aggressively, the happier, healthier, and the longer we're gonna live. So then, what are you selling exactly? I sell a gene test. Okay, so what I'm gonna say, because everything you're saying,

people don't have to be spending a lot of money. Right. You know, the only reason why I don't talk about what I sell on podcasts is because then I get attacked and they're like, everything has an angle, he's just trying to sell a blood test and just trying to sell a gene test. I hope you do get a blood test and a gene test.

Most people know more about their businesses than they know about their bodies. I mean, I meet with a lot of entrepreneurs and they'll tell me their income statement, their balance sheet, their PNL, but they know nothing about their blood sugar. They don't know what vitamins they should be taking. They have no idea what's going on in their genes.

It's astounding to me that this is the temple that's going to take you where you want to go. And we don't spend any time getting information on it. So I think the problem I think is a little bit even different now. I think the problem is there's too much information and people are now are confused. I think it's not a lack of information. I think it's an abundance of information. I'll tell you what you need. You need to do a gene test and you need to look at five major genes of methylation. Okay, this is a test you do once in your lifetime. You'll never

repeat this test. Yeah. Okay. It's called the genetic methylation test or genetic methylation profile. Once you have that information, you'll never guess again on what you need to supplement with you'll be supplementing for deficiency not the sake of something. And then where do we go? So like, then do you sell the supplements?

I also designed my own supplements. It took me two and a half years to design a supplement to fix these genetic breaks. So I make multivitamins that are specific to these gene breaks. To gene breaks. Yeah. So like, because I want to explain. So you were just basically, you started this company, wellness company with your wife, Sage, hello Sage. And it was obviously like you're getting a lot of traction

because your people were seeing a lot of results, right? And then like, how long was it going on for? Like it's been, you left the... Yeah, it was five years. Five years. So five years, you were kind of just trucking along, doing your thing, minding your own business. I mean, we actually sold our primary residence

to make payroll and build out this office and hire PAs and physicians, because again, I'm not licensed to practice medicine. And then I trained them on the blood testing. I believe there's 74 biomarkers we need to look at in the blood and five genetic markers we need to look at in the body. That's where you start.

74 biomarkers, you look at glycemic control, how well you're controlling your blood sugar, your hormone balance, and your nutrient deficiencies. You need to know those things. You have to know those things so that you can address them. They're very simple, easy things to address, but they're catastrophic if they go unchecked, right? This is amazing, yeah.

And so I watched what happens when people have no idea what's going on with their blood sugar. They'd have no idea what nutrient deficiencies they have, when people have no idea what's going on with their blood sugar. They'd have no idea what nutrient deficiencies they have and they don't know what's going on with their hormones. So those three things are a must. And then you get a genetic test that you do once in your lifetime and you should do it on your kids as soon as they can chew and swallow because so goes puberty, so goes the

adult. So if we can get kids in their prepubescent years, there's a much more significant chance that they don't have any of these ailments when they get older. Really, so I have an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old. Oh, that's a great time to do it. They're both prepubescent. So then I would give them a genetic...

You do a cheek swab. I mean, you'll have a different child around the house. If your child has this MTHFR gene mutation, it is a full contact sport to get them in the cardigo school in the morning. If you're feeding them anything with folic acid, which by the way is an entirely manmade chemical, you can't find folic acid anywhere on the surface

of the earth, even though in the United States, we spray our entire grain supply, all pasta, all white flour, all white rice, all breads, all cereals of any kind, grains of any kind, we spray it with folic acid, a manmade chemical. And we call it fortified or enriched. When you feed 44% of the children fortified or enriched foods, they go nuts, right?

So if you give them pop tarts, white bagels, cereals, things like this in the mornings, but this is, you know, the standard American diet. It's high in the food pyramid. And you feed these kids this stuff before school. First of all, it's a full contact sport to get them in the car to go to school in the morning. And then as soon as they get to school, the call comes

home from the teacher and they're like, little Johnny's not paying attention. He's disruptive. He doesn't follow directions. It's none of those things. Folic acid can be like cocaine for six year olds. It makes their mind race. Wow. I was laughing off camera. Yeah, that's it. I was doing cocaine when I was six. Yeah.

But it can. Is it worth for adults now? I'm just kidding. It just makes their mind race. And then modern medicine says, well, if the mind is racing, then let's pump an amphetamine into the body to race the central nervous system to match the pace of the mind, which is a terrible idea because eventually this causes something called tachyphylaxis, which is the medical term for desensitization.

It burns these receptors out. It can actually permanently change the neuroplasticity of the brain. If you look at the study that actually just came out on antidepressants, the long-term use of antidepressants and the skyrocketing risk of suicide and the skyrocketing risk of prolonged and permanent depression, you would realize that we're going down the wrong route of mental illness and we should be talking about mental fitness. Exercise and clean whole foods and the supplementation for deficiency can change the trajectory of people's lives.

Right? Listen, you're preaching to the converted. This is what I do. I mean, I could not agree with you more. And I mean, I feed my kids every day for breakfast eggs, you know, because of that reason. Whole eggs, your body will absorb zero of that cholesterol. Whole eggs. I mean, and then, but I'm gonna, I also,

because I have to be, you know, I don't want to be a total devil. I do give them a piece of whole wheat bread because they have to eat some kind of carbohydrate and fruit. It's the 80-20 rule. I'm trying, you know, like eight and 10. Try to have them eat the fruits.

But I give them the banana, I don't blend the fruit. I give them the banana. Perfect. This blend, by the way, I'm listening to this podcast. I'm not joking. You are. I've gotten so, I'm like literally have so many notes that I'm taking that I haven't, I haven't even asked you the questions I have because- Well, let's go through them. I mean, I have so many and like, you're like giving me so much amazing information that I think

I've never heard about putting a banana in a blender or whatever, whenever you put a fruit in a blender, the glycemic load is four times higher. No question. I never, but it makes sense because you are mixing it with the milk and the this. People think they're doing themselves a big service by having these smoothies and shakes every morning. Terrible. But it's the worst possible option.

Skyrocketing your blood sugar. And it's the rate at which blood sugar rises that's very dangerous, right? I mean, because remember when glucose spikes in the blood, insulin spikes, so it's the rate of that spike, right? But they think, oh, I'm putting collagen powder and protein powder, and so it must be good. Like that's the whole myth around it.

Again, it's the further we get away from the natural state of the food, right? So do you think that we used to pick bananas and berries and then we would put them in a blender and then drink them? No, we would actually eat them right off the tree or we'd wash them and eat them. So why not a peach? Is it just too high in sugar?

Yeah, I mean, fruits that don't end in berry are very high on the glycemic index. I'm not saying you can't eat them. I'm just saying if you are eating a lot of fruits, it's better to eat fruits that end in berry. Most people like strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. I mean, there's plenty of fruits there that end in berry and they're low on the glycemic index. How about a cherry? Sounds similar. No, cherries are very high.

I love cherries. I know, super high in sugar. But okay, what about stuff like, Super high in sugar. But okay, what about stuff like for hormones, right? Are you a believer in hormone replacement like testosterone? Because that's also a rage. Everyone I feel over the age of 35 is now increasing. They're all on testosterone. But the truth is that 70% of the people that are on hormone therapy don't need hormone therapy.

They need nutrients to supply their body with hormones. So for example, you want it because you look good. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. I do. I take testosterone. I'm 53 years old and I have something called primary hypogonadism. So initially, I tried to put pressure on the testicles to stimulate the testicles to raise the level of testosterone. So for example, when you look at a blood test, just like every organ system in the body, just about every organ that secretes a hormone has a boss. So in the case of testosterone in a male, it's the pituitary.

The pituitary is the boss of the testicle. Testicle does not decide how much testosterone it secretes. The pituitary does. It's just like if you walk into a room and you can't hear the music because it's not loud enough. You don't go over and mess with the speaker. You go to the tuner and you turn the signal up. So in this case, you can go to the pituitary and the pituitary secretes two hormones. It secretes something called luteinizing hormone,

which stimulates luteal cells to create testosterone and something called follicle stimulating hormone, which stimulates follicular cells to create sperm. So if you want to raise the level of testosterone, you can mimic this hormonal pathway, HCG, gonadal relin, there are peptides that mimic this hormonal pathway and raise the level of testosterone naturally. So you're high on your own supply. So is that like a peptide like CP1295?

CJC1295? Yeah, that one. Yeah, so CJC1295 is a class of peptides that are growth hormone releasing peptides. So there's two of these. There's growth hormone releasing hormones and growth hormone releasing peptides. If you want to raise your natural pulse of growth hormone, because growth hormone in a human being is pulsatile.

So if you don't want to take growth hormone from outside the body and put it in, which I am not a big fan of because you do what's called upstream regulate, right? You have the growth hormone level rises in the bloodstream, tells the pituitary there's enough growth hormone, tells the hypothalamus there's enough growth hormone, tells the brain there's enough growth hormone. That's not the standard chain of command, right? There's a captain, a first mate, and a second mate. It goes brain, hypothalamus, pituitary, growth hormone. You want to obey that command hierarchy. So when you use a peptide, right, and growth hormone peptide, there's basically two classes.

There's one called a growth hormone releasing hormone, one called a growth hormone releasing peptide. So if you use CJC 1295, you want to use another peptide called ipomoralin. You want to use those two in conjunction. Or surmoralin and ipomoralin. This way, if you've recently had a pulse of growth hormone, and your largest pulse of growth hormone is at night,

right before you go to bed, your largest circadian pulse, this is why most growth hormone peptides you take at night, and you can either take them by injection or sublingually. And what you're trying to do is increase that amplitude by having the pituitary naturally increase its pulse of growth hormone. I'm a huge fan of peptides. I mean, I think peptides is the next rage in anti-aging

because there's peptides for healing, there's peptides for anxiety, there's anti-anxiolytic peptides like CELANC, there's healing peptides like BPC157. We talked about that one. Do you think they work? Oh, I know that they work. I think they're phenomenally effective.

You know, BPC157 is a gastric pentadecapeptide. It's synthesized from gastric juice. It's tolerated.