Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. Anthony Jay on the Surprising Science of DNA Testing

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

These days, there are a variety of companies offering DNA testing so you can learn about your genealogy, origins, and genetic makeup. Chances are you’ve already used one of them, like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. There’s even more you can do with these services, though. Poke around online and you’ll find quite a few self-styled experts who are eager to review your raw DNA data and provide you with very specific lifestyle recommendations that will purportedly maximize your health, performance, and well-being, including specific foods to eat and avoid, exercise programs to follow, supplements to take, and more. On the other hand, you’ll also find plenty of credentialed guys and gals saying that such DNA-based plans are little more than pseudoscientific scams that won’t have any meaningful impact on your life beyond your wallet. As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and that’s what Dr. Anthony Jay and I discuss in today’s episode. And to make it more interesting, I sent Dr. Jay my raw data from Ancestry before the episode so he could not only explain the ins and outs of genetic testing and how our DNA can affect our sleep, mood, body composition, risk of disease and dysfunction, and more, but also demonstrate what a solid, science-based DNA consultation looks like. In case you’re not familiar with Dr. Jay, he’s a scientist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who earned his Ph.D in Biochemistry from Boston University School of Medicine and provides genetic consulting to everyone from professional athletes to special forces soldiers and everyday gymgoers and everybody in between. Dr. Jay’s also the author of the book Estrogeneration, which is all about a class of estrogen-like chemicals that are prevalent in our society and contributing to many different widespread health problems, including weight-gain, depression, infertility and many others. (And if you want to learn more about that, check out the previous interview I did with Dr. Jay on it!) So, if you want to learn more about how to use your unique genetic blueprint to live a longer, healthier, and happier life, this episode is for you. 7:54 - How does atrazine affect humans? 14:26 - What is a snip? 29:43 - What are the five categories of genes? 37:24 - How do our genes affect stress, anxiety, and caffeine metabolism? 48:06 - What is HRV and is a higher HRV better? 50:51 - How does the blue light gene affect our sleep? 58:39 - How do our genes affect obesity? 59:55 - What is brown fat and white fat? 1:09:20 - Which genes increase your risk for leaky gut? 1:23:07 - How do our genes determine our muscle types? 1:26:46 - Which genes determine how weak or strong our joints are? 1:31:49 - Which genes determine if you’re a gout risk? 1:37:55 - Where can people find you and your work? 1:38:56 - Have you found commonalities in the genes of professional athletes? Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion supplements here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ AJ's Consulting Company: https://www.ajconsultingcompany.com/  Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Hello and welcome to another episode of

Muscle for Life. I am your gracious host, Mike Matthews, and today we are going to be talking about DNA testing, which I'm sure you have heard about. These days, there are quite a few companies that offer it. So you can learn about your genealogy, your origins, your genetic makeup, and chances are you've used one of them like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. I myself have done both. And there's more that you can do with those services, though. If you poke around on the interwebs, you'll find quite a few self-styled experts who are eager to review your raw DNA data, which you can get from 23andMe and Ancestry.com, and then provide you with very specific lifestyle recommendations that will purportedly maximize your health and performance and well-being, including eating specific foods

and avoiding others, exercising in very specific ways, taking very specific supplements and so forth. Now, on the other hand, you will also find quite a few credentialed guys and gals who say that such DNA-based plans are little more than pseudoscientific scams that will not have any meaningful impact on your life beyond maybe your wallet. And as is often the case with these things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. And that's what Dr. Anthony Jay and I talk about in today's episode. And not only that, but just to make the discussion more interesting, I sent Dr. Jay my raw DNA data from Ancestry before we spoke, so he could not only explain the ins and outs of genetic testing and how our DNA can affect our sleep, our mood, our

body composition, our risk of disease and dysfunction, and more, but also demonstrate what a solid science-based DNA consultation looks like. And in case you are not familiar with Dr. J, he has been on the podcast before, and he's a scientist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, who earned his PhD in biochemistry from Boston University School of Medicine. And he also provides genetic consulting to everyone from professional athletes to special forces soldiers and everyday gym goers and everybody in between. Dr. J is also the author of the book Estrogeneration, which is all about a class of estrogen-like chemicals that are prevalent in our society today and contributing to

many different widespread health problems, including weight gain, depression, infertility, and many others. And if you want to learn more about that, then check out the previous interview I did with Dr. J. It was a couple of years ago, two, three years ago or so. So you're gonna have to go a bit back in the podcast feed, but if you just search for Anthony J, it should pop up. So anyway, if you want to learn more about how to use your genetic blueprint, your unique DNA fingerprint, so to speak, to live a longer, healthier, and happier life. This episode's for you. Dr. Anthony Jay has returned to my podcast. Welcome, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been a while. Our last discussion was on estrogen mimicking chemicals, which was interesting.

Anybody listening who's heard about these chemicals should go listen to it. It was probably over a year ago, right? So you have to go a bit back in the feed, but if you go far enough back and search for Anthony Jay, you'll find it. And you also have a book on the topic as well, right? Exactly. Yeah. And it seems to be catching on now more and more. I just gave a talk for the special forces for the military. I had to sign paperwork and say, I'm not going to reveal the location and I'm not going to publicize it on social media, but the talk has passed now. So I can at least say that I gave

this talk and they're picking up on the issues with artificial estrogens and DNA consulting and these genetic insights that you can get, which of course, we're planning to talk about today. Yeah. I mean, we can thank Alex Jones in part for making us aware that the frogs are going gay. And I've heard that so many times. Which actually funny enough, that actually is and was happening. That was just a mainstream news story. Nat Geo, like National Geography Magazine, which, you know, they're pretty cautious with their science. They're not too over the top, obviously. And they picked up on this story recently. And you can literally change male frogs into females. The males will start mating with the previously males. The chemical I remember when, again,

when Alex Jones was talking about it was atrazine, right? Atrazine. Yep, exactly. Atrazine. Right, right, right. Yeah, which is still legal in America. And it's the second most used herbicide in North America. And that's totally illegal in Europe. They don't allow any of it. And here's the crazy thing, right? We could go on this rabbit hole forever because I wrote a book on it, but I can't resist. 3,000 nanograms per liter is allowed in our drinking water with atrazine, 3,000. And if you put a frog in 200 nanograms per liter of atrazine, it turns a male into a female.

Obviously, we're not big frogs. So how does that, again, I know this was already discussed in our previous discussion, but I don't remember the specifics. And I'm sure some people listening are now wondering, how does that translate to human exposure? What are your thoughts on that? I mean, it lowers testosterone for sure. It has feminizing effects. But yeah, it's hard because you can't do a real controlled experiment. You don't want to dose somebody with atrazine. And so you're left with

just doing epidemiology, just looking at people's urine and how much they're pissing out and trying to figure out from there what kind of health impacts it has. But in mice and other mammals, there's a lot of issues. You see just the usual issues that you see with other artificial estrogens that people could go into the book, the EstroGeneration book and learn about. Well, that's the name of the book for anybody who wants to learn more about this, EstroGeneration. All right, let's pivot now to today's discussion, which is DNA research, DNA optimization. And I'll just preface the discussion with, I don't know much about this. I haven't looked into much of the research myself, but what I've heard is from smart people who know a lot more about it

than I do, is that there is a lot of good science behind the associations between certain genes and increased or decreased risks of certain conditions or just inherent advantages, physiological advantages and disadvantages. But where it can get into the realm of sorcery is when that information is being used to make specific recommendations as to dietary methods or optimizations or exercise recommendations or supplementation. And that's about it. That's about all I know about the topic, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on because I first and foremost wanted to learn more about this myself. Yeah, it's completely true. I mean, there's a lot of just cowboys out there basically

taking people's DNA and telling them, this is exactly what your macros should be. And this is exactly the supplements you should be taking. And, and it's pretty wacky. You know, some people are just making stuff up, which kind of ruins it for everybody else. But then there's legitimate people out there doing it. And of course, I'm trying to stay on the cutting edge. I think it requires a biochemistry background to really get into it because you have to understand, you know, what these genes do. You know, If you find a genetic flaw, like the best example, and you don't have this genetic issue, some people have an inability or a decreased conversion of beta carotene to retinol. They have an enzyme, they can't do that. So you get beta carotene from carrots, right? That's where carotene got its name and it's the orange color. And that's hugely important

for your eyesight, of course, because it gets converted to retinol, which was named after the retinols, right? Your eyes. But if your body's not converting that, then you're not getting it from carrots. You're not getting it from plants. Plants don't make retinol. So if you're a vegan or a vegetarian and you have a 70% reduced conversion of beta carotene to retinol, which a lot of people have, and that's just a genetic snip, you know, then you can't try and get your retinol from plants. You have to get it from animals. That's the only way to get retinol. You know what I mean? So, if you understand that... Or you can supplement with it, obviously. Yeah, you can supplement it, but the supplements come from animal sources, excuse me. Retinol is basically found in the liver.

It's not even enough to just eat meat if you've got that issue. But if you don't know about that, number one, and then if you're a vegan or a vegetarian, like I say, there's a real risk. And people think of retinol just purely in the eyes, but it's hugely important for your immune system and your immune function. So some of these people are getting sick all the time, and that's a great example of a gene that they should be looking at. And if you don't understand how the gene works and the conversion of beta carotene to retinol, you know what I mean? You can kind of, you don't know what you're talking about if you don't understand the mechanisms of how a lot of these genes work. Yeah, and that's something that you would want to take into account before making the decision to switch, let's say, from an omnivorous

to a vegan or vegetarian diet. Because if you're looking to go vegan, what can you do? Yeah, you definitely have to supplement retinol or you could take a shit ton of beta carotene. Yeah, similar issue with omega-3s, right? With ALA and the conversion process is so inefficient that yeah, you probably can get to sufficiency, but you better be ready to be drinking a lot of oil and eating a lot of nuts every day. Yeah. And like on the far other end of the extreme, you know, there's people that are going carnivore now. And there's a lot more people with genetic issues where flavonoids are super important to protect their heart and their arteries. Flavonoids are plant compounds and

colorful plants have a lot of flavonoids. Some people pronounce it flavonoids. It doesn't really matter to me, but it's a real risk if you have issues where you need those flavonoids to kind of bolster your arteries, protect your arteries. There's a gene. I mean, we could go into it at some point, but that one's a little more complicated than exactly how it works. But the point is like there's people that really need these flavonoids, and then they're going carnivore, and man, that's risky. I don't like that. Yeah, I wrote a long article and recorded a rather long podcast on the carnivore diet,

which, long story short, is I'm not a fan. If you're curious as to why, just search in the podcast feed for carnivore, head over to legionathletics.com and search for carnivore. You'll find the article that the podcast is based on. And it's very silly. I could see some people if they need to do an extreme kind of elimination diet, because they have some real issues with food sensitivities, or they do not feel good a lot of the time. And it seems to stem from foods they eat. But regardless of how you're going to go about following an elimination diet, you're not supposed to stay in that first phase indefinitely.

You're supposed to reintroduce foods because the body does need a variety of foods to just get all the nutrition that it needs. You can't just eat one or two or even just three narrow food groups and expect to be healthy over the long term. Now, of course, the body's good at storing nutrients that it needs, and some of the diet. I mean, he's a PhD scientist as well, and he did a really nice job there. And there's even additional things beyond the points that he talked about, which is, again, a rabbit hole I don't want to go all the way into. But yeah, that's just one of those extremes. And the beauty of looking at the genetics is it helps you narrow a lot of things down, and it really does identify a lot of risks and exactly the approach to fixing those risks is a little bit you know up in the air but what i try

and do is just have suggestions and i try my best to say okay here's the problem here's what's happening at the molecular level and here's some solutions that should help to fix that problem you know it's not 100 guarantee and the other thing that really throws people off with the genetics, including the analysts, people analyzing the DNA, is sometimes people have rare mutations that have never been studied. They're so rare, nobody's studied them, at least on a large scale. And those can have influences that you can't expect or predict. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. Of course. So like with these SNPs, these are pretty well studied. There's literally tens of thousands of studies on a lot of these genes and a lot of these SNPs. Enough people have them in the population that they're pretty

predictive, but there's always those curve balls where you should have increased anxiety or some specific health issue, but you don't have it. And a lot of times that's because you also have some other rare gene that nobody's ever studied. And those certainly happen. Yeah, that's interesting. What's a SNP, by the way? Yeah, SNP is a single nucleotide polymorphism. It just basically means a single DNA code letter has been changed. So DNA is made up of four letters. And backtracking for a second, computer code is made of zeros and ones, right? DNA code is four letters. It's A, T, G, and C. And a SNP is just one change.

One of those letters gets changed and it causes a pretty substantial impact. You can literally make one SNP change, one DNA code letter change, and it'll cause sickle cell anemia, for example. So there's some pretty dramatic impacts just from having one little piece of code changed. And for people that don't understand genetics, basically it's a blueprint. I mean, there's epigenetics, which are marks little piece of code changed. And for people that don't understand genetics, basically, it's a blueprint. I mean, there's epigenetics, which are marks on top of the DNA, which I talked about in our last podcast, I think, you know, I usually talk about that in light of estrogens, because it's a big problem changing your epigenetics and altering future

generations and all this. And that's a very important component of genetics. So when you're thinking about all of this stuff, you have to consider the DNA and you have to consider the epigenetics, the marks on top of the DNA. The best analogy I have is piano notes, like music, where you've got a super simple melody, like Mary had a little lamb, those dots are like the DNA, just single melody. But if you add chords on top of those notes, that's like the epigenetics. Now you've still got the same melody. The DNA is still there. The blueprint is still there. But the chords now add some complexity. That's the epigenetics. And you literally have to factor both of those components in. And today we're just looking at the genetics because the epigenetics

is such a new field and that's a huge component, but not a lot is known about it. But a ton of stuff is known about DNA and what cause, you know, what impacts that have. And it's generational, right? Like it passes on. So it's just like a melody. It doesn't really change that much from generation to generation. So anyways, so a lot of these SNPs, they arise from our ancestors and certain tribes that they were in, you know, there was a lot less, there wasn't really global travel and, you know, all this genetic mishmash that we have now. There was a lot more like, you know, like tribalism where this tribe probably ate a lot of liver. So they needed to get their retinol from liver and they didn't really eat carrots. So they didn't need to convert beta carotene to retinol, for example, right? And this tribe over here had a

ton of seafood. They had iodine all the time. So they have all these genes that are dependent on getting iodine regularly. And now in our modern culture, maybe you're not getting enough iodine, right? And just on and on and on. So that's the beauty of these SNPs is they give us some insight into that and pretty accurate most of the time. It's surprisingly accurate, which I like. And just to make it clear for anybody who's just not familiar with even how DNA operates, you said it's a blueprint. Can you just lay out the basic mechanism of how this works? So then when we get into some of the details, it'll make more sense how these SNPs can cause very real physiological impacts. So DNA is a blueprint. So just think of your house, right? You've got a

piece of paper that tells you how to build a house. If you've got a crappy blueprint to make a bathroom and somebody goes out and makes 10 houses built on that blueprint, you're going to have 10 crappy bathrooms. You're going to make crappy bathrooms, right? And the house, the blueprint is just the blueprint, but the house, quote unquote house is the protein. So DNA decodes ultimately for proteins. So the actual dysfunction is in the house. It's in the protein. Does that kind of make sense? It's hard to make analogies for these things, but. Yeah, it decodes ultimately for proteins. So, the actual dysfunction is in the house. It's in the protein. Does that kind of make sense? It's hard to make analogies for these things, but... Yeah. DNA is the instructions of what to do with these proteins, right? Exactly. So, the real flaw, when you see genetic problems, the real flaw is actually in the protein

that's made from the DNA code. But usually, even if people can't quite wrap their head around that, it's fine. You just tell them you have a genetic issue, it leads to this problem. And that makes enough sense for most people. And the key too is to know that you've got two copies of DNA. A lot of people don't realize we have two copies of DNA in every cell in our body, except egg and sperm cells. So egg and sperm cells only have one copy of DNA. And then of course, when they fuse together, that's where you got the copy of DNA from your mother and the copy of DNA from your father. And it's also where scientists get this idea of plus plus or plus minus, that sort of thing. A lot of scientists use plus plus, plus minus, minus minus, meaning like if you have a plus plus

gene, that means you have a bad version of that gene from your mother and a bad version of that gene from your father. Whereas plus minus would mean you have one bad copy of the gene and one good copy of the gene. And then of course, minus minus means you have two good copies of the gene, two normal copies. And we all have thousands of good genes. So me personally, I'm not interested in your good genes. I'm only interested in the bad ones, right? The plus plus or the plus minus genes. And so that's what I look for when I do these screens. And not only that, you know, a lot of people just going back to people that are kind of cowboys in the genetic field, you know, they do these studies and they'll find like you have a 1.3 fold increased risk for cancer. Let's just say breast cancer, some example like, you have a 1.3 fold increase risk for this and 1.5, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. Problem with that is when they repeat those scientific studies with those low risks, they don't hold up. So you do it in a larger population of people and you can't repeat the

study. They're not robust findings. But when you start getting above a twofold increase risk for something or higher, then you repeat those studies and they usually are robust. They almost always hold up. So what I look for is I try and find those genes that have more impact and are higher risk because those are more predictive. And people go wrong a lot by over-interpreting genes that really don't, that just aren't robust. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. That also probably can lead to unnecessary anxiety, right? If you're going through page after page, you're like, I'm basically dead. Right. I'm guaranteed to get one of these things. Exactly. And one of the things you learn when you do a lot of genetic consults like I do, you learn that cancer is really not that genetic. I mean, there's really, it's so rare to come across real strong cancer risk genes. Most of that's lifestyle or epigenetics or chemicals are exposed to environmental stuff. You know, a lot of these genes, surprisingly, a lot of the health issues we have today are

more environmental and less genetic than people think. That's interesting. And on one hand, you could say it's maybe not entirely surprising and that you would expect to find genes that dramatically increase the chance of dying to be rare, right? Unless the human body, unless we messed it up so much, I mean, it would take a lot, but there'd be a point where it's like, okay, well, then I guess this is the end of the species. Well, and speaking of messing up our bodies, right? I mean, most of these studies, pretty much all the studies actually, they're done in people that are eating a standard American diet. We call it a SAD diet,

standard American diet, S-A-D. Which is an acronym. People have to realize when I'm talking about you have a twofold increased risk for Alzheimer's or something, that's in people that are eating a SAD diet. And just to jump right into your genetics, Mike, if you don't mind. Yeah, which by the way, for people listening, so I sent Anthony my DNA data from, I think it was Ancestry, right? It's my favorite, my favorite. I did Ancestry and I did 23andMe and just, I don't know, for fun to see what the differences are, if there would be any differences. And so, yeah, I sent the raw data over to Anthony. So in preparation for the podcast, he went through it and we're going to find out if I'm an ubermensch or untermensch.

It's really not that scary. You know, the worst genes that people have are usually fairly, they're things you can mitigate really dramatically. And like the biggest one, the one that most people get most nervous about, to honest is the alzheimer's risk gene it's called apo e is the big one because if you have the bad version of apo e it's called four slash four apo e4 like in other words you have a plus plus on that gene two bad copies of that gene you have a 70 chance of getting alzheimer's now you don't have that personally mike but for people that do that's a really scary gene but here's the crazy thing right is ronda patrick has done a ton of research on that specific gene. And a lot of other people, I talked to the military about it. I mean, they're doing like seven grams per day of DHA when they

have that. DHA is the real trick, I think, with that gene. It seems like it's a DHA transporter issue and you've got to take DHA if you have that gene and spend a lot of money taking DHA or fish oil or eat a lot of seafood, right? You don't have to supplement. But even that, that's not that scary once you realize. Pretty significantly? Maybe 100%. There's no studies, right, in humans because it would take 100 years.

But just based on the animal studies and what that specific gene does and the flaw in the APOE4 version, the bad version of that gene and what the flaw is, it looks like DHA should completely eliminate the risk. And that's backed up by a lot of experience in my own life too, just looking at people that are doing DNA consults with people that are 80 years old and they've been eating a ton of seafood or supplementing DHA. They don't have even a hint of Alzheimer's and they're supposed to. That's encouraging for anybody who might be concerned about that or if they just know that Alzheimer's runs in their family, right?

Exactly. And the thing about Alzheimer's, I'm literally working on a book on this topic because there was a good book, it's called The End of Alzheimer's, but I feel like he kind of missed the genetic aspect of it. Because when you start looking at the genes, you realize, yeah, there's that DHA related risk. There's some cholesterol related risks. There's heavy metals related risks with Alzheimer's. Some people can't clear heavy metals from their brain. You know what I mean? And you don't have that one. You'll see it on your PDF. I sent you, it's an empty category. There's nothing underneath that because you don't have any genes that are flagged. Some people, their brains don't deal well with carbs.

And so there's all these different categories that give people Alzheimer's risks. Maybe you've got an Alzheimer's risk from heavy metals and you're just spending hundreds of dollars a year on DHA supplements, but in reality, you don't have a genetic issue that requires DHA. You actually have to check your heavy metals and make sure you don't have a lot of heavy metals building up like cobalt, chromium, cadmium. cadmium, knowing and understanding those categories in terms of Alzheimer's risks and knowing your genetics and how that fits into your family history, that's super important. It even helps your brain function better now. It's not like, oh, let's just purely think of a long-term, the big picture. When am I 80 years old? What's my brain? Right now, your brain will perform better eating a lot of carbs if you can handle a lot of carbs. And you have good genetics. You have exceptional genetics for your brain dealing with carbs. As you can see, like that category is empty in your spot. Probably about 50% of people, they get a lot of brain fog

and a lot of fatigue and a lot of Alzheimer's risk from eating a lot of carbs. And that shows up in the genetics. Interesting. I didn't get that from, so the first time, let's see, I did something similar to this some time ago with a company. I don't think they're around anymore called DNA Fit. And the results were more just broadly categorized. And I remember for carbohydrates, they were just, the conclusion was my body is just very good at dealing with carbs, period. But I don't remember any discussion about brain function in particular. And that makes sense because, I mean, that lines up with my experience. I can eat a lot of carbs. And I mean, sure, there's a point where if I eat 400 grams of carbs in one sitting, I'm going to go pass out. But if it's 100 grams, I don't experience brain fog or lethargy.

I'll usually get almost like kind of like a pump in the gym. and I'll usually notice that I'm getting hotter. Sometimes I even get sweaty. And those are all indicators that my body deals well with carbs. And I've talked about this. I haven't gotten very technical about it, but just told people in the context of low-carb versus high-carb dieting in general, where this is... So for example, if you, dear listener, when you eat a decent amount of carbs, not an absurd amount and not a salad, but something that is, say it's, I don't know, depending on your body weight, 50 to 80 grams up to maybe 80 to 100 grams. And you feel the way that I just mentioned, where you feel good, you feel energized, maybe you get a little bit of a pump, your body temperature rises. It's an indicator that your body probably deals well with carbs. But on the other hand, if you get sluggish and tired and lethargic and bloated and sometimes gassy, then that's an indicator that your body probably does not do so well with carbs. And so adjust accordingly.

And just working with many people over the years, again, not being overly scientific or technical about it, just working back to something that works for that person, where I can think of a number of people, guys who were lifting weights regularly, in some cases, pretty big. You'd think that if you were to prescribe a standard lean bulking diet to them, you might say, all right, let's start with 400 grams of carbs a day, 180 grams of protein, rest, and fat. But for those guys, that would not work well. It's just too much carbs. They would not feel good, especially because it would require eating too much in one sitting. Whereas cutting that in half and going to 200 carbs a day and the rest in fat works much better for them. Even though

it's understood that as far as if we were only looking at muscle and strength gain, more carbs is generally better. That's just known by anybody who pays attention to the bodybuilding literature and especially the nutritional side of it. But that doesn't actually mean that everyone should be eating a high carb diet. side of it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone should be eating a high carb diet. Right. And that's super true. It's amazing how, especially when I have clients that are really paying attention to their bodies. Some people don't, but some people do. And some people are really in tune. They already have this great sense of a lot of their genetic weakness, which, of course, I see on my end with my software and all this, but I love it when people are paying attention, they already have a good idea, you know, that,

Oh, caffeine jacks me up, or I get a lot of anxiety from caffeine. There's genes that give you anxiety with caffeine. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, that is cool. Like even me looking through the PDF, some of the stuff, and I'll be curious, a few of these points will be interesting to talk about, but I wasn't surprised in a number of them them like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Like I could have told you that I couldn't have told you why, but I could have told you that. Yeah. Especially for somebody that cares. And the other thing about the carbs too, there's a difference between your brain dealing well with carbs and your body. And some people, their brain is awesome with carbs, but their body doesn't deal well where they have all these diabetes risk genes and you know, they spike

in their insulin and stuff, but their brain doesn't really get affected that much. So even distinguishing that, I think, is important. And then the other thing is exercise helps to make up for quote-unquote sins. You can eat a pretty bad diet. And then not being overweight too, right? Having a good body composition and exercising regularly, they're not panaceas, but they're as close as you can get, I think. Canaceas, but they're as close as you can get, I think. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on

social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. I have five categories, right, for your listeners. I've got the brain, I've got the diet, and then I do a section called vitamin, hormones, and detox genes, which is how your body breaks things down and gets rid of them. And then I've got gym genes, like your training genes, your muscle fiber type, your joints, your back, whatever, and then sleep. Those are the five categories. That's how I'd like to organize it. But if you scroll down to the diet section, you'll see a section called metformin. Again, just on the topic of carbs, can't resist.

Because a lot of people take metformin these days as a longevity drug, to be honest, because every animal that we study, it increases their lifespan. Rabbits, rats, mice, whatever. A natural alternative to that that I know is popular for the same reason is berberine. Berberine. Yeah, berberine. Yeah, and cinnamon works pretty well too. And you can determine your response based on just pricking your finger and checking your blood sugar in the morning after you take metformin before you go to bed or take berberine before you go to bed or take Ceylon cinnamon before you go to bed. It's pretty predictive based on your genetics. And you have two genes, these ATM genes that indicate you're a high responder to metformin.

It's like a real high responder plus plus. And that's not super common to have multiple positions here on that same gene. Is that good or bad? That's a good thing because some people get a lot of bloating and a lot of diarrhea and stuff from metformin and it doesn't really help improve their blood sugar that much. Never taken it. I've never even taken berberine. It's actually something that we've tried to work in a product over at Legion, but we wanted to, if I remember correctly, originally put it in our post-workout because it makes sense.

That's when you're going to be – it's when a lot of people are eating, in some cases, their most carb-heavy meal is after a workout where you want nutrient absorption to be its best if you're going to pick one meal. But the problem is it's disgusting. It actually tastes like puke. Like you mix it, you mix it into whatever it is you're supposed to drink and you've now vomited in your own mouth. That's horrible. Yeah, I just take the pills.

I have berberine. I've got metformin. The problem with metformin is you need a freaking prescription, which is super obnoxious. It's from the plant, French lilac plant. It's like a naturally derived compound, but a lot of people get diarrhea and stuff from it. So they like to monitor it. And for some reason they force you to get a prescription with it. Hopefully that goes away at some point, but it is a valuable tool for people that really struggle with their blood sugar, which again, you shouldn't, you're unlikely that you do, but it also improves your metabolism.

So there's benefits just from that perspective. We actually have berberine coming in a gut health product that is non-bacterial. We're going to do two is how Curtis and then the advisory board, all the people. I mean, my job in the formulation at this point now that I've recruited, honestly, what I consider an all-star team is I just provide a good budget. These guys know so much more about this stuff than I do, but there's going to be two different gut health. There's going to be bacterial and non-bacterial. So the probiotic is what Curtis and the team are working on right now. It's just tough because there's not a lot of good research on probiotics and a lot of the stuff that is

common is just garbage. But that's another discussion. I'm just personally excited to, we finally figured out a product that, a pill that, because we were thinking, Curtis is a big fan of berberine. He loves berberine. So he's like, she's like, should we just sell it as an individual ingredient? And sure we could, but the problem with that is it's very much a commodity at that point. And I'm not sure we'll be able to offer the best prices and really incentivize people. They might be better off just getting it from a company like maybe Now Foods that runs a billion berberine pills a month or something. Although the quality of those is apparently real questionable. Of now, really? Because the companies that I...

No, not now. Not now. I just mean out there on Amazon, if you just randomly pick. Ah, sure, sure. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that's something that's worth actually mentioning to people listening. If you buy your supplements on Amazon, be careful because Amazon is littered with scam artists. And that's not entirely Amazon's fault, but because even if they had people in there manually reviewing brands and products, they would have to be very savvy to even understand who's dubious and who's not because there are a lot of very good marketers on Amazon. And ultimately what it'd come down to is you'd have to be testing. Amazon would have to take it upon themselves to just test tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of products, and they can't do that. So it'd be either that or they'd have to enforce very strict standards for selling in the supplement space, like providing third-party testing, which I actually don't think they will do it, but I would be happy if they did because I already do third

party testing. I'd have no problem with that. But anyways, my point is, if you're going to buy supplements on Amazon, oftentimes, whatever it is that you're searching for, you look at the top 10 results, at least half of them are shit products. That's just straight up. And I know that sounds like a ridiculous generalization, but it is true. If you're searching for something that is halfway popular, a lot of the products that are going to appear in the top 10, even just in the top 20, the first page of results are going to be the products of people who know how to play the Amazon marketing game. And that often means one of the big components of that is simply spending a lot of money on Amazon advertising.

one of the big components of that is simply spending a lot of money on Amazon advertising. And the only way to do that is to have large margins in your products, which is often means in some cases, yeah, you can make a vitamin D pill and still have a good margin. But in many cases, to have the types of margins that you need to really unquote, dominate on Amazon and any competitive niche is, at least as far as supplements go, it means that your product has to cost very little and that means it's not going to be a good product. And so what you'll see then is you can go search for Berberine's probably a good example. I'm sure it's a popular product. And you're going to see brands that you've never heard of, but that look really slick. They're going to have good product images. Their product pages are going to be well-designed. It's going to look like a legitimate established

company, but oftentimes it's not. It's just a couple of dudes living on a beach in Thailand, making millions of dollars a month selling trash. That's one of the reasons why there are a couple brands that I like to go to for individual ingredients that are trustworthy and that have checked out many times in independent research. Now Foods is one of them. Jero, I like Jero. I've heard good things about Doctors Best as well for individual ingredients. There are a couple of herbs I've gotten from Swanson's, but Now Foods and Jero are my two go-tos for just my vitamin D. What else am I taking? I take L-theanine from Now Foods. I take L-tryptophan from Now Foods and stuff like that as I just go to Now. Interesting. The other aspect in terms of metabolizing carbs in your genetics,

kind of a unique one is that zinc transporter issue you got. So the gene SLC30A8, it's actually a zinc transporter. So it brings zinc in and it also brings in glucose. In other words, if you make sure you've got plenty of zinc, it's not really an issue. But if you're deficient in zinc, which a lot of people are, to be honest, they think they're getting enough from their diet and they're not eating a lot of micronutrients. I mean, even red meat, you have to eat quite a lot to get enough zinc. And I don't eat a lot of red meat. I do supplement with zinc, but I don't, just because I don't eat a lot of red meat, I'll eat a hamburger or two that I cook myself at home, like on the weekends sometimes. Yeah, no, I think that's good. I mean,

I think zinc supplementing is really important for you with that plus plus gene. Again, specific to your longevity, your insulin sensitivity. If we can just go back, let's just take those big categories that you had mentioned. Start with brain. So we talked about Alzheimer's. So I see here, you called out something related to stress and anxiety. Those are things a lot of people experience. And also caffeine metabolism would be good to talk about. Yeah, for sure. So stress, I mean, you're pretty well able to handle stress, but the one issue you've got is plus minus on your oxytocin receptor, meaning the receptor doesn't pick up oxytocin as well as it should.

It's plus minus, so it's not massively impacting you, but just things that increase oxytocin will help if you experience a lot of stress. Dark chocolate is kind of one of the favorites. Which is funny that you mentioned that because that is my go-to. I have a little bit of dark chocolate every day. That's my little indulgence. I don't have much of a sweet tooth. I can eat dessert or not eat dessert. I can like it. I don't care either way. I'll have some dessert if I go to a restaurant and they have good dessert kind of thing, but I'm not going to go out of my way to eat sugar at home. But I do have maybe 100 calories or so of dark chocolate every day. And I find that very satisfying.

Yeah. And of course, there's a ton of ways. And I linked a website there. I'm a scientific advisor for them. And you can learn a lot online about how to increase oxytocin naturally. There's pretty good studies and a lot of good options. But like I say, dark chocolate's one of the favorites because before you go into a stressful situation, you can bang on that and it helps. You know, it's interesting just speaking to my experience with stresses. I don't get stressed out. It just doesn't happen. I deal with stress very well. The only notable thing that stands out in my mind is as I've gotten older, stress seems to impact my sleep. I wake up more often at night, but that's really the only way it manifests. Like,

I don't deal with anxiety. I don't have the normal negative reactions to stress. I'm pretty just even keel in that regard where I just do my thing. And if I think about it, I could be like, yeah, maybe I feel a little bit stressed, I guess, but that's it. And at this point, I've gone through some situations in life that I think many people would consider quite stressful, actually, and in some cases involved other people who were very stressed out about them. It's also not that I've just grown up living off of my trust fund and, you know, turning it loose for a living. And oh, yeah, I don't know. What is stress? I've never experienced

that before. What is responsibility? What is hard work? So, you know. Well, and people underestimate exercise, to be honest. Like a lot of people, they're not exercising and that's like a foundation. People really need to exercise. And then if you still have the stress and things like that, because that balances a lot of hormone, there's no drug that's as good as exercise. There never will be, to be honest. You never know. I can't say never, but right now. Yeah. If it happens in our lifetimes, it will be, to be honest. You never know. I can't say never, but right now. Yeah. If it happens in our lifetimes, it will be a miracle. Yeah. So, I mean, you have that anxiety gene involved in the production of serotonin,

but like I said, I think you have some options that are precise to your genetics. If you're not, don't worry about it. Caffeine is the same thing. You do have a plus minus where caffeine could get you some anxiety, but it's just a plus minus. There's a number of other genes. Some people have all of the genes and they're all plus plus, and then they have a really strong anxiety from caffeine. And what's interesting about that caffeine related gene, that one responds to oxygen levels. So it's exercise again, right? Like bringing in oxygen, getting your blood moving around. It helps. What about caffeine metabolism? It stays in your body quite long compared to most people. Which is the exact opposite of what the DNA fit people told me. They told me that I had

two fast metabolizing genes. That's funny. Yeah, no, I mean, I factor in all these CYP genes, these liver enzymes that are involved. What's your experience? So my experience with caffeine is one, my caffeine intake is generally low. So I'm talking about under 200 milligrams a day. I have a cappuccino in the morning. That's about it. Sometimes I'll have maybe an extra a hundred milligrams at 11 or 12, 11 AM, 12 PM, but oftentimes not because I find that if I do that just even a few days in a row, it'll start to impact my sleep. When I was younger, just, I don't know, let's say six years ago, five, six years ago, I had absolutely no sleep issues. Caffeine didn't matter. So my normal day was, I had a run of like six years or so of this was my experience. Obviously not every

day, but generally speaking is I would have not very much caffeine, but I would have about 175 or 200 milligrams in the morning before I would lift. And then if I was cutting, which wasn't always the case, but there would be periods where I'd be cutting for sometimes it'd be two months, like getting ready for a photo shoot or something. I would have another 175 or 200 milligrams at like 6.30 or 7 p.m. and do cardio, fasted cardio, have some yohimbine as well, which is also a stimulant. And then I would be working most nights, most weeknights. I'd be working the weekends too, but most weeknights in particular, I would be working late. I'd have to eat some food and spend some time with my wife, but I'd usually get back on the computer and put in another couple

hours of work and get off, let's say at 1130 or so, get ready for bed, go to bed, fall asleep within like five minutes instantly, blackout unconscious sleep for like six and a half hours, wake up naturally and that's it. And I've had no, there are no symptoms of sleep deprivation. I mean, I did that literally for five or six years. Then as I got older though, I'm just a lighter sleeper now. And, you know, people say having kids changes that, which I guess could make sense from a physiological perspective or evolutionary perspective. Like maybe our bodies are wired to pay more attention when there are kids around now. And, you know, I know my parents both are not particularly good sleepers. They're light sleepers as well. So there's probably a genetic component, which we'll probably get to. I would not have caffeine at 7 p.m. now, period. probably a genetic component, which we'll probably get to. I would not have caffeine at 7pm now, period. I probably could still fall asleep, but almost certainly, you know, I'd be waking up every hour probably. Yeah. And you just wouldn't get the sleep cycles, you know, do you wear an aura ring or a sleep tracker of any kind?

I did in the past when I was invincible and it was like, oh, I guess I'm invincible. I don't care. And that was the end of it. So like I'd be in bed again, no more than seven hours, usually six and a half hours, but I would get up to three hours of deep sleep every night. And I was like, wow, that's pretty efficient, I guess. But that's not the case now. My sleep is not bad at all, but I wake up at least once a night usually. So like a good night is I will sleep about six hours, wake up, pee. And in the past, I would just get up and go about my day. Now, I'm a bit more cognizant of like my sleep is not as rock solid as it once was. So, my alarm's at six. So, if I wake up at five to pee or 4.30, I won't just get up. I'll go back

to sleep. Even if it just means getting another 45 minutes or so, I'm just like, I'm a stickler now on being in bed eight hours, even though I'm not sleeping eight hours. But some nights, like last night, I had to pee a couple of times, which was annoying. But I woke up, I don't know, three times last night. So sometimes that happens. Rarely I'll have a really fucked up night of sleep, which often at this point, my observation My observation is it seems to be related to watching anything. Like if I'm in front of a screen, if it's stimulating at all, there's a good chance I'm going to wake up like five times that night. It's actually strange to the point now where I don't watch TV. I don't watch movies anymore.

I just don't because I'm working all week. And then on the weekends, I'm not going to take time in the middle of the day to like Saturday, I do stuff for my kids. Sunday, I'm working and then I go golf. I'm not going to, I'd rather go out and golf and like be outside and do something like that than sit in my basement and watch a movie. So, I mean, so anyways, I'm kind of just rambling at this point. No, I was going to say, well, I think the anxiety gene that you do have that one gene above, it's probably playing a role there while you're sleeping. Your brain might be triggering a little bit of anxiety. I would try some of those supplements and I'll bet they would improve your sleep cycles if you're tracking it. Might even be worth throwing an aura ring back on the...

If anyone from Aura is listening or you want to send me a ring, I'll plug it. I'll follow up with a podcast with somebody from Aura. Yeah, bring on their CEO. I can put you in touch with them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool. Yeah. I'm working on a medical study where we've got like 100 free aura rings and we're doing a big sleep study oh nice for a cannabis company that i'm a scientific advisor for just for the cbd component but some other stuff too i'm working on with them so yeah i mean that's the thing like you might not even notice that you're sleeping better but you might be dramatically sleeping better if you try those supplements that i list there. But you won't know unless you're tracking it. Yeah. Ironically, I recently got L-tryptophan. So I'm taking just a serving basically. Again, I got it from now, but just taking a serving before

going to bed. That's one of the building blocks for serotonin. So I love it. I think caffeine stays in your body. Glycine as well. I take glycine before I go to sleep. If you noticed in the sleep section down at the bottom, like the very last page, well, let's just shoot down there for a second, right? I mean, let's just organically go with it. Usually I go in order, but with the podcast and people listening, makes more sense. If we're talking about sleep, let's talk about sleep.

So you have really good genetics for sleep, but you do have that one gene, the most ridiculous named gene on the list, probably it's called BHLHE41, which stands for basic helix loop, helix family member E41. I guess that one, of course. Yeah, it's not a sexy one people talk about, but it has this really, this glycine rich loop that's important for circadian function, which means glycine is a real good candidate for improving sleep in your case, just with this gene, because it's really the gene issue that you've got relating to sleep. Which just for people listening, my genetics would indicate exactly what I just said, right? Is how my sleep difficulties have manifested are in wakings. I can

always fall asleep. I rarely ever have trouble falling asleep. And I can almost always go back to sleep. Even if I wake up six times, it's like waking up every hour and a half or every hour or whatever, but I can always go back to sleep or almost always. So, that doesn't happen often, but that's how it has manifested. Not in just general insomnia or racing mind at night. None of that. It's just fall asleep. Totally fine.

But wake up now these days, like I said, at least once and a bad night for no particularly good reason could be six times. Yeah. I literally just had a consult this morning. I'd done this person's DNA. He's actually a podcaster and, but he wanted me to do his mother's DNA. So he was on the line and his mother was on the line. He had the same gene as you here. And I told him to get on glycine. He has an aura ring. He's been tracking his sleep for over six months. And his HRV, by the way, his heart rate variability,

HRV is about 40. And since starting glycine in the last five days, it's jumped up to 80. He doubled his HRV, which is heart rate variability. So that's an indicator that his body is better rested. Yeah. Higher HRV is better for people listening. I'll give them the one minute rundown, right? Your heart doesn't beat exactly like one, one, one, one. It's not like that. It beats like 0.99, 0.98, 1.01, like that. It has variability. If you're super overtrained and you're super exhausted, your heart's just like, screw it, if you're super over trained and you're super exhausted your heart's just like screw it one one one but if you're really well rested your heart will micro adjust the beats a lot more and micro regulates better so higher hrv is better and so he doubled his hrv just by taking these precise supplements which i think is just a huge testimony and just for people wondering what are

those supplements well it's specific, it's specific. Yeah. It's specific, but in my case, right? So I'm going back. For you, it's glycine. Yeah. Glycine and then... Then 5-HTP and GABA and like any of the serotonin, the supplements that increase serotonin, I have listed up on the top there for you. So that's 5-HTP and tryptophan. You have to be careful with 5-HTP. You don't want to overdose it. I've personally overdosed it just by tinkering around and it gives you anxiety if you overdo it yeah I've experienced that when

I was taking when just different nootropics right and just saying you know let's see if I notice anything and notice nothing until I took too much of too many and I actually that is probably the closest where I'd be like oh wow this wow, this is what anxiety feels like. This is annoying. And then that was the end of that little experiment. So I wouldn't take all of those supplements at the same time that increase serotonin. And I would definitely not overdose any of them. But you've got some good options there.

GABA, St. John's, WART, 5-HTP, and L-tryptophan. Yeah, I'm just doing L-tryptophan and glycine. Those are my sleep-related. And then also some melatonin as well, not necessarily every night. Well, I'm glad you're taking melatonin too, because you had the diabetes risk gene. Now, of course, you're not going to get diabetes, but it just means you're going to have higher blood sugar for somebody like you, unless you take melatonin. You have a melatonin receptor weakness, and that's in the diet section on the top there, diet optimization genes under the

melatonin. That MTNR1B, that's melatonin receptor. And is it okay to supplement with melatonin every day? Does that not? From what I've seen, yeah. And I've looked hard. I'm super skeptical. There's no way you can take it every day for years and years and it doesn't cause problems, but it doesn't. They've looked into that because scientists are skeptical about that. It's like, it's a hormone. It's got to downregulate. Your body's production has got to go down. But it just doesn't seem to. But certainly, you can cycle it. That's what I do in, again, not a very scientific manner.

But what it comes down to is taking it every other day or something like that in general. Perfect. Yeah. I think that's good. And I think it's going to help your metabolism and overall probably help your longevity, although that's just a hypothesis, but I think it's a valuable hypothesis because it's based on your genetics. One of the things with sleep is blue light gene, because that's also something that a lot of people are hearing about these days. It's just blue light in general, reducing exposure. Does it really matter? How much does it matter? Well, some people are super

sensitive to blue light and that's definitely not everybody. People are assuming that everybody is super sensitive to blue light, and that's not really valid. But it's surprising how many people are, and you're plus minus, like you're a little bit sensitive. And there's other genes too. It's not like this is the only gene you could have. There's a gene called cryptochrome. It's in firefly protein, and fireflies actually have it. They don't have cryptochrome, but they have a flavor protein that's real similar, extremely sensitive to blue light. So for people that have that gene issue, it's just like imperative. But this tyrosinase gene, I mean, this one's pretty important to block blue light or to be kind of cognizant, you know, not be blasting your eyes. So yeah, you're a little bit more sensitive.

What I've always done, even going back to when I was a sleep champion, I would just use Flux on the computer and then I had no sleep problems. I'd use it even in the day on my computer. Yeah. Same, actually. I have it. I mean, it's there. It's just on. It's just more enjoyable. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the number one conversation starter at the Mayo Clinic. People walk by my office and they do a double take and you see them walk backwards and they do a double take and you see them walk backwards and they're like, what's going on with your screen? Because I keep it pretty yellow. It's blocking a lot of the blue and they've never seen anything like it. So then it's kind of a fun conversation. But yeah. But I mean, overall, you've got excellent genetics for

sleep. I mean, you can see most of these categories are blank. That's not common, to be honest. Interesting. I guess I can say how that manifests even currently. And something I've noticed is that point of, even though I do generally get a little bit more sleep, I think I'd have to actually be curious. I'd have to start tracking it because now that it's a little bit broken up, it's harder to tell. I may actually not be getting at least as far as deep sleep goes or even light sleep.

I may not be getting more than I did previously. It was just previously it was so easy when you just black out for six and a half hours, open your eyes and you're like, okay, time to start the day. I'm so impressed with Aura. I got one for my wife and she does it. She's the one that wakes up with the kids because I have to work so much. I just can't do it, but she'll wake up with the baby and stuff. I've got four kids, right? So sometimes it's mayhem at night, but she'll wake up with the baby and stuff. I've got four kids, right? So sometimes it's mayhem at night, but she'll get three hours of deep sleep irregardless, which is amazing. I'm lucky if I get one when there's a lot of disruption and stuff at night. I have a gene here, a plus plus on poor sleep leads to poor cognitive performance. I'm just

curious about that. Well, that gene, it's pretty rare in certain nationalities, like literally 1% of people in some nationalities have it. And then 50% of people in other countries have it. But they've done a lot of studies on it because it leads to 25% less memory recall if you get low sleep. If you get perfect sleep, it's no issue. But if you do have low sleep, it does lead to poor cognitive performance. that specifically with memory, actually. I've noticed that where if I'm not well rested, facts and just stuff doesn't come to me as quickly. It's even more obvious because I'm learning German and part of learning a language is building your vocabulary, of course. And so I'm using SRS flashcards to do that. I'm explicitly using, it's a task of pure memorization. So I'll notice that on days where I sleep well, the answers come to me faster. I make fewer mistakes. And then just in general, also in conversations, if I'm talking about something that relies heavily on stuff I've learned or even things that have happened previously, I can just feel the extra, like the gears are a little bit,

they're just grinding a little bit harder than usual to retrieve the information. Whereas if I'm well-rested, it comes very quickly. Yep, and nicotine can actually increase the performance of this gene and it'll increase the expression of it. And obviously you don't wanna become addicted. So I should start smoking.

I'm doing it for my cognition. I come on. Yeah. And then you got five cancers and you're good to go. But no, I mean, like some nicotine gum or something like what I tell people is basically if you've got an SAT or like a MCAT or whatever, like some specific thing, you don't want to just try nicotine the first time out of the blue that day, just because people get nauseous or whatever sometimes, but sometimes it's an amazing fix for that rare situation, in the addictive sense because it's supposed to be for that rare situation but but sleep is the ultimate for sure yeah that makes sense all right let's jump to diet and we've talked about a bit of this is there anything else interesting in here

that i was going to say that hex gene i want to mention that one because it's interesting that you're like really heavily involved in the exercise world and things and that's super important for you and that's pretty much for everybody right but you you have a gene a genetic issue where your pancreas doesn't make as much nitric oxide so pancreas is where your insulin is produced right beta cells and so nitric oxide is really important for you for your glucose disposal for your blood sugar for your optimizing your health. And of course, the best way to increase nitric oxide is exercise. But I like to note that if for some reason, like you had surgery and you're just laid

up in bed for a long time or whatever, which happens, right? Get some L-citrulline or some beet juice or something that increases nitric oxide, like figure out a way because it's really important for it. Or just eat low carb, right? Which is probably good if you're sedentary, but... Yeah. If you're lying around all day. Yeah. But even so, it's just to keep that pancreas healthy. It's kind of a unique... I also, I do take citrulline every day anyway, because it's in my pre-workout and I just use, I personally use the caffeine free version of it. Again, because I just like to keep,

I know that I could get better performance in the gym if I were to take a bunch of caffeine before a couple of my heavier workouts, but I'd rather just... Because of the sleep, I just keep my caffeine intake low, so I use caffeine-free instead. But it has eight grams of citmalate per serving, so that's just my daily... And if you'd notice down in the obesity metabolic syndrome section, I recommend beet juice, L-citrulline, that sort that sort of thing again there's also betaine in it too nice it's funny the betaine thing the pronunciation is so bizarre you know when i learned oh is it betaine actually no you're correct no no you're correct but when i've learned that i was like man what the hell like the spelling it looks like betaine right yeah yeah yeah unless you've heard the explanation of

where it was derived. The word was derived from beets. So you're supposed to say beet. Yeah, yeah. And you just made me question it because I was like, wait, some people actually pronounce it betaine. Am I wrong? They just don't know.

No, they just don't know that. And I didn't know that. I used to pronounce it wrong too. So it's kind of funny. It doesn't matter. It doesn't bother me if people are pronouncing it wrong. It makes total sense to me if they are in scientific class, nutrition studies and classes and this sort of researcher and writer over at examine.com. Like all the technical stuff that you've read over at examine was researched and written

by Curtis. And he knows a lot of, this would be a discussion right up, this whole discussion would be up his alley. He's into this kind of stuff. Right. And oftentimes I'll have him on the podcast to talk about one thing or another. And oftentimes he'll say something and I'm like, I don't know if that's right. That just sounds off to me. It'd be some technical term, some supplement or biological thing. And I'll check the pronunciation. And sometimes he's wrong.

And he's like, oh yeah, I'll point it out to him, not challenge him. It's like, oh, by the way. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah. I never actually looked at how to pronounce that. I never really cared, but yeah, that's good to know. Well, and the problem is you go over to England and they pronounce it weird, like all the other, they pronounce things different. America, so. Yeah. Even estrogen, right? They call it estrogen. But anyways, I mean, overall, you don't really have too much obesity risk and stuff that you have a couple plus minuses that aren't really that important.

I wanted to ask about the obesity stuff because that's very much part of the mainstream obesity discussion, which you touched on earlier in that you believe that it's a lot more related to lifestyle than it is to genetics. Correct. Although people do have, I mean, the BBC.FTO gene, there's a number of different positions on that gene you can have that are problematic. That's why I have that number three bracket on that. I know that's a little specific to you and less for your audience to see, but you know, it's like a sidewalk, right? Like you can have one pothole on your sidewalk. That's bad. You could have three potholes on your sidewalk. That's even worse. Genes are the same way. You can have one spot on a gene. You can have multiple spots on a gene, but this gene called

FTO, the BBC did a whole one hour documentary just on this one gene. Basically it's called, why are we getting so fat? If you wanted to watch it, it's not super informative, but some people, you know, I watched it. But that one, you know, it seems like intermittent fasting is really the best way to go about having that issue. And you don't have much of an issue there, but some people do and it is harder. It's just... And is that just because of food restriction, like restricting feedings, or is there a deeper physiological reason for that? Well, the specific gene I've dug into this gene because it's so powerful for certain people that are obese, they have the bad version. I really want to help them. And it's involved in converting

white fat to brown fat. That's the real mechanism. And just for people who don't know the difference, it might be worth quickly explaining that. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So brown fat is brown in color. It's healthy for you. And it's brown because it has so much mitochondria that it physically looks brown. Like, you know, people are used to cutting a steak or whatever, and it's white, right? The fat is white and white fat. You know, it's not brown. It's white because it doesn't have all those mitochondria. It basically just stores fat. It's just an energy store, right? And obviously it's involved in hormone production. It's not that white fat is quote unquote unhealthy, but when we think of body fat, we're thinking of quote unquote white fat.

Exactly. And this form of fat called brown fat is actually healthy all the time. And your white fat can convert to brown fat. When I was doing my PhD, somebody on my thesis committee is like one of the world's experts on brown fat. And he studies what's called beige fat, which is kind of the intermediate between the two. You can actually, your body can convert the white fat into brown fat. It beiges the fat, turns it a little bit more beige. And basically that gene, if you've got the bad version of that, you don't do that as well. So your body just tends to store fat more than it tends to use it for energy. Brown fat burns energy, right? Tons of energy. Yeah. And so people with larger amounts of brown fat are going to find it harder to get fat.

Yeah. So like my favorite, if we're really getting into the weeds for that gene and when people have that gene, my favorite therapy is cryotherapy like once or twice a week. But that's so expensive. It's kind of niche. You know, not everybody can get a hold of a cryo chamber. But I mean, it is pretty amazing, you know, because that does help your white fat to convert brown fat. It pushes in that direction for you, but for everybody else, intermittent fasting. And the other gene on this category.

What about just taking cold baths? Yeah. I mean, I've looked into the research. I'm not that, I mean, you could, yeah. Most people aren't disciplined enough into some of this research. I wrote an article about cold showers. That was a thing for a bit. It's actually something I still do simply because I like... It just wakes me up in the morning and I know there's no health benefits to even if I were to sit in the cold shower for three minutes, even if it's ice cold, it doesn't matter. It's not enough exposure, but I do still do it and I've just come to like it as a routine, I guess. But in looking into that literature, for the purposes of recovery, it was for reducing inflammation after hard training, which you wouldn't necessarily even want to do, but it could make sense for, let's say, athletes who have to perform regularly.

They're not just in the gym to get bigger biceps. They need to function. But the standard ice bath protocol was the water needs to be very cold. I think it was in the 50s. So there needs to be a lot of ice in that water. And it was basically full immersion up to the neck for a minimum of like five to six minutes to have any real effect. So how many people are actually going to do that? Yeah, not many. Exactly. Yeah, that's the problem with that. Whereas cryo is a couple of minutes, people manage it and they get out and it's even more potent but i think intermittent fasting also really helps and it helps even more with the

next gene adiponectin you don't have a huge issue here but a lot of people do where they don't make as much adiponectin and adiponectin speaking of hormones that are secreted by fat cells adiponectin is a hormone secreted by fat cells and it helps you metabolize carbs and fat so having less of that hormone is a problem for a lot of people. You want to have more of that hormone and intermittent fasting brings it way up. Like that's by far the best tool if you have that genetic weakness for obesity. So there's different categories for obesity, right? Like people try and pigeonhole it into just one thing. It's like, oh, you've got a risk for obesity. You know, you see these genetic reports like, oh, what is it? You know, like there's different mechanisms for having that risk.

And the more precise you can get, the more you can learn about the specific gene, the better. Some of these genes we don't know that much about, but when you know it's like brown fat conversion or it's adiponectin or whatever, nitric oxide, right? You can get precise on it. Just make better educated guesses. And intermittent fasting is just a good example, again, of something that for me, I've done it, of course, and I'm just kind of whatever about it. It didn't seem to serve any real purpose for me.

And I like to work out first thing in the morning. I like to have a protein shake after and like a piece of fruit. I would prefer not to have leucine every two hours until I eat. Looking at it in terms of my genetics, it would seem that it wouldn't give me any major metabolic advantage advantage of any kind. Right. And that's really rare, to be honest, most people it does. So if I was making like broad global statements towards the general population, I'd probably say to intermittent fast because just so many people get dinged on those genes. You're in the minority there, which is good. But again, you're also centered around performance. So that's another factor you have to consider when you think about this is like, what age is the person? What's their

sex? What's their goals, right? Like some people, you know, they're super sedentary and their goal is to just whatever, right? Like some people are pro athletes. Not die. You think I'd get a heart attack, right? And speaking of heart attacks, you're super low risk in terms of your heart disease. I mean, you just have all of these categories coming up empty, which is awesome. Yeah, that was the next thing, just because obviously on a lot of people's minds is heart health. Right. And it should be because as you can see, just based on the PDF I sent you, I mean, there's

risks from a lot of different angles, right? And most people do have certain risks. Yeah, I mean, we should just to list them out the different categories here are heart palpitations heart disease related to iron immune related lipids cholesterol related homocysteine related lectin related sugar hyaluronic acid flavonoids yep quite a few categories exactly and crp comes up sometimes with that's what's interesting like the lectin-free diet for example works amazing for certain people which people's the people that have those genes where those lectins are triggering plaques in their arteries. You know, it's pretty much minority.

But man, for those people, it's important to know that. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I wrote an article about the plant paradox semi-recently and similar to carnivore. Right. The carnivore diet. Just kind of not a fan. It borders on just quackery, actually, the way that Gundry is selling it and promoting it, how broad his brush is,

and even some of his proposed solutions. I mean, that dude is a straight fraud, in my opinion. But it's interesting to see that in some people, for certain certain reasons it could make sense for them to minimize their their lectin right right in those rare cases yeah it's actually very easy to do as well so right right well cholesterol is the same thing like for some people they get so obsessed with like most of the doctors that that's the only category they're thinking about with all of these things right and some people their risk is far from cholesterol like the cholesterol is the last thing they have to worry about but the doctors you know man they worry about that one but i mean for you as long as you keep your triglycerides good like you do have a risk with the triglycerides

if they're high you know keep an eye on them if they're below that number i put on there for you 125 mg per deciliter i'm not too worried you know with that gene yeah actually i'm gonna pull up let's see because blood work i've only i've only gotten blood work done once for life insurance. Otherwise, I just never really had a reason to. Usually, a fitness person does blood work semi-regularly, it's because they're on drugs unless they're just completely not jacked at all. But if a jacked fitness person is getting blood work done semi-frequently, it's because they're on drugs. As I've never taken steroids, I never really cared to. Well, the thyroid hormones I'd be interested in too, because that one you do have a weakness.

Coming down to like the next section, I don't want to jump ahead of myself. Let's see. So my triglycerides were 52 MGDO. Perfect. That's phenomenal. So there's nothing there. To summarize my blood work, it was, again, I'm just going to sound pretentious, but I guess it was perfect because they gave me, what do they call it? Super preferred health. I actually saved a bunch of money because of my health. And it didn't include hormones,

like testosterone, which would have been interesting. But I actually asked, I was like, with the person I was working with, I was like, can we get that included? And she's like, no, no, no, don't do it. This is literally a perfect score. And if you include anything else, they will look for something. And you may be perfect, literally in every parameter we could ever look at, but you might just end up paying more money. And you want to know these other things. Also, even just like nutritional statuses.es again she was like just do a separate blood test don't just leave this the way it is and so i was like i don't i don't actually care enough to get another blood test and that was the end of it there was another

one though you wanted to know um i was gonna say did you do t3 t4 reverse t3 tsh any of those the thyroid hormones thyroid section probably not i don on a standard blood pancreas no it was just because the thing about the thyroid hormones is they decline in everybody as we age right so if you start off kind of mediocre and to be honest you're kind of borderline just in terms of your genetics on a lot of those genes then as it declines then it's really a problem right and of course one of the better things to do is supplement iodine because that's a building block for all these thyroid hormones. Which I do.

So, it's like, well, if you're... Okay, good. I mean, it's in legions multivitamin. So, I take it. So, you're probably not even at risk. I mean, to be honest, most people aren't getting enough iodine. They think they're getting it from salt and it's just not cutting it, to be honest. So, it's hard to know if you're at risk for thyroid because most of the people in the studies they do are pretty low on iodine. They're not deficient, like they're not dying from iodine deficiency, but they're low. They're not optimal. You know what I mean? So that could just completely overshadow all the genetic risk there, but you do have a lot of them. You know what I mean? If you scroll down to that thyroid category.

Yeah. I'm still on leaky gut because I want to get your thoughts on that. So that's also a controversial topic and something that is often used to sell people worthless supplements. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, most of them, it's pretty simple. The most interesting one in here is called IBD-5. This one I don't see very often, but it increases your risk of inflammatory bowel disease by about twofold. Scientists debate like crazy exactly how this issue occurs with this gene because it's one of those things, it's hard to figure it out. But the major options seem to be via interferons like inflammation, which I doubt you have. You're exercising, you're eating healthy, you're not eating McDonald's every day. The other option is ergothionine transport with this gene. And

that's something interesting that I want to bring up because most people have never heard of ergothionine. And certainly, nobody's supplementing it. And it's a vitamin. It's like a vitamin. Your body needs it. You can't make it. The reason nobody's heard of it is because your gut bacteria make it. But you don't transport it as well as you should through your gut lining potentially. Now, some people have ergothionine transporter issues, like genetic issues with their ergothionine transporter. Then it's really critical, but for you, it could help. Ergothionine, mushrooms, you don't have to get ergothionine purified. Mushrooms have like a thousand times more than any other plants. Plants in general have some of it, but mushrooms are just by far the best source. So if you had gut issues, there's a really

interesting. I've never had issues there, but to be fair, I've also eaten very well for a very long time now. I mean, even going back to when I was a kid, I, well, I mean, I eat better now. I maybe didn't eat enough fruits and vegetables, but I wasn't pounding candy and fast food every day, like my friends, at least I was eating like real food. And now I would say for the last 15 years, I've been eating, especially the last probably seven, eight years been eating about as well as you can. I mean, I've talked about this and not, not again, again, not from a point of look at how cool I am and how I'm eating, but just bringing I even go as far as, you know, chopping it up and leaving it sit and mixing it into my vegetable medley stir fry last. So it has more of a beneficial impact because if people are listening, if you're wondering why heating up garlic kills

some of its health benefits, basically, but you can get around that by if you chop it up and let it sit for about 10 or 15 minutes and then cook it. It actually increases the allicin or whatever that compound is, doesn't it? And it sits for a minute? I don't know if it increases it, like if you let it sit and then- Bioavailability, I think the enzymes break some of those. Yeah, you can now heat it up. You don't lose the allicin in the same way as if you just chop it up and then cook it. It's not that still going to provide your body with sulfur. It still has some value, but you lose that allicin

content. So plenty of fiber, plenty of a couple of pieces of fruit a day, and even go as far as again, optimizing. And it's interesting, we'll get to a couple of these points on cruciferous vegetables, for example, like explicitly including those in my diet, making sure I eat some colorful fruits to get like blueberries, for example, to get anthocyanins. Anyway, so for the leaky gut, it's something I've never dealt with gut issues, but that's probably because that's kind of been my general approach to diet, what I just outlined with, obviously, I'm eating a high protein diet and I don't, but it's mostly a plant-based diet with, you know, I eat some chicken and I'll have some skier yogurt here and there, but I don't, I don't really eat that many animal products.

Not that a vegan diet is the way to go, but definitely a diet heavily weighted toward plant foods. I think you would agree in most experts in this field would agree is yeah, that's the way to go. You should be eating a lot of vegetables. You should be getting a bit of fruit. Whole grains are a good option if you need more carbs. Lean proteins, of course, work for those of us who need to eat quite a bit of protein. Yeah, and exercise. Again, like we've said, that's kind of the master key to health, right? Yeah. For a lot of people, it's so overlooked. Some people, they can get away with it a little more than other people based on their genetics, but it's always risky. It's

always an issue. Yeah. Any other questions on that section? I mean, I know we could probably go into all these. No, I think that's, yeah, I think that's it. Now we have the vitamin hormone and detox genes. Yeah. Vitamin D, you have a couple of weak spots potentially. Like did they check your D on that test? Nope. But I do, I've been supplementing with 5,000 IUs a day for years now. And I actually make a 0.2 of in spring and summer and really in the fall, like until it gets just pointless, I go out into the sun. I gather a couple of the guys here at the office. We actually go down, there's a parking lot next to the office complex we're in. And we just take our shirts off and stand in the sun. Looks, I'm sure, very strange to people. Probably about 15 minutes a day. And I supplement with 5,000 IUs of vitamin D. That's perfect. I mean, that's literally what

you got on that form, right? Based on your genetics. Some people, they don't have any vitamin D issues in their DNA, but you've got a couple. And I think having 5,000 is good. It's probably good for everybody, but especially important for you. Yeah. And I like that you mentioned the vitamin K2 as well. I mean, I supplement with K1 and K2, but that's an often overlooked vitamin. I think partly because it was long considered not important for general health, but now there's more information that's come out, right? Yeah. In terms of not building up calcium in your arteries in particular. Yeah. And you know, like fermented products and stuff have a lot of it. Your gut bacteria can make it. If you're going to take D, it's really important to have that, I think.

Again, it's in Legion's multivitamin, shameless plug. That's why I get it every day. Yeah. I mean, SHBG, you maybe have a little bit higher SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, which bind up more of your testosterone, but it's a plus minus. It's not a huge issue. In my book, I call it like- I haven't done a testosterone test, but my brother has. And I just remember that his total test was very high, which is also strange because you wouldn't think that looking at him. He's always just been kind of a skinny dude, not muscular. And at the time was lifting regularly and he had gained some, he'd gained quite a bit of strength or amount of muscle. You know, there's a disconnect there for people when they're new, you gain strength pretty

quickly, but muscle gain can lag a little bit, but still after about a year or so of lifting could see that there was a change, but on a major change, right? So when he went to get his blood work done, we were thinking like my friends and I, we were joking with him that, you know, I probably am the high T1. He's the low T1. Ha ha. Right. His T came back at like 11 or 1200. And he certainly, certainly not going to beat that.

Yeah. Not using drugs. Definitely not. But his free T, I don't remember the exact number, but it was quite a bit lower than you would expect yeah and you expect that's that shpg exactly so i don't know if you know who knows he might even have the plus plus you know like who knows what your parents had like if both of your parents have a plus minus you could get the plus plus you can get the minus minus you could get the plus minus you know that happens all the time when i do families it's super interesting to do families because it's so predictive but yeah that's exactly the thing if you've got high t but it's funny i

was thinking maybe he's eating some rocky mountain oysters or something you know yeah exactly as soon as he said it was 1100 that's the first thing i think of but no i'm sure it's just natural i mean and you can see your testosterone category right there's nothing there there's no like issues i'm pulling up although you did have a risk for some higher estrogen stuff but again as you can see your testosterone category, right? There's nothing there. There's no like issues I'm pulling up. Although you did have a risk for some higher estrogen stuff. But again, as you can see with all those little paragraphs I have, eating those brassicas, eating that broccoli, the cauliflower, all that stuff, that's pretty much the solution there. Keeping that estrogen down, getting that diindylmethane at reasonable.

Like I don't like it when people dose diindylmethane. A lot of people ask me about that because I wrote the estrogen book, you know, people are like, oh, why don't you have a diindylmethane? For some of people ask me about that because I wrote the estrogen book. People are like, oh, why don't you have a diindylmethane? For some people, it increases their estrogen. It's a risky one. Yeah. And that's a supplement that you'll find recommended in the random grimy corners of the internet where self-proclaimed biohackers will say, oh, if you want to jack up your testosterone, just take DIM. It doesn't work. Yeah, it's risky as hell. And most people, especially if you're to jack up your testosterone just take dim right it doesn't work yeah it's risky as hell and most people especially if you're overdosing it i mean you can look at the

research on my web page aj consulting company and you'll see like the all the increased prostate cancer risks and all the other stuff with that one yeah so it's better to just eat the vegetables even if you're not like me and i have let's see there's one two three four five six call outs for estrogen estrogen stuff yeah so it would seem that those that cruciferous vegetables are particularly beneficial for me but even if i had no call outs i still would be eating them every day because one i like them and two they're just a great vegetable to include yeah and they've done studies with saunas too i love the sauna because you get a lot of these bpas and all these artificial estrogens out actually better than you urinate them out. Like some of the people in the studies, they had zero BPA in their urine, but they had extremely high levels in their sweat

after using a sauna. That's interesting because those chemicals lodge in fatty tissues primarily, right? Exactly. And your skin is fat. If you're eating a bunch of chicken skin, you're eating a bunch of fat. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm just saying it's interesting that you can sweat them out, but not necessarily pee them out. Yeah. I mean, you do both, but I think the sauna is even more beneficial for somebody like you where it'll help you just keep that stuff down, you know?

Yeah. Which it almost sounds like I'm making this shit up, but I have an infrared sauna, which doesn't get as hot, but I like some of the benefits of the, particularly the far infrared light. It gets fairly hot though. I mean, I sweat in there. And so I do that for 30 to 60 minutes a day. Perfect, man. I didn't know that. And I'm glad. Yeah. I like to read first thing in the morning. So I get up again, my, my alarm is generally six o'clock. I'll get up, go to the bathroom and then just go sit in the sauna for a bit and read and sweat and then go to the gym. Yeah, that's amazing.

I love it. My thyroid, we mentioned. I have a few call-outs here that potential for thyroid issues. Exactly. Yeah. Which we'll see how I guess that plays out. I think my mom takes thyroid medicine, actually. Yeah, I'm a fan, man.

When you get older ages, I think everybody, just about everybody should. My dad may too as well. I'll ask them. I know that they, they're in their sixties. My dad's in his sixties. My mom's in her late fifties and they take good care of their bodies. They exercise, they eat well, but there's some hormone replacement. And I think thyroid is part of that. Yeah. I'm a fan. Like I say, it's like, do you want low energy or do you want decent energy? Sometimes that's, it's that simple, you know, silly or do you want decent energy? Sometimes it's that simple. You know, it's silly not to go in that route. What's this point on alcohol?

Alcohol. I check alcoholism genes for people. You don't really have too many. You have got that opioid moon receptor. So a little bit of an alcohol risk, but it's plus minus. So it's not super strong. And that one's actually related to pain sensitivity as well, which we'll talk about in the training session. I don't want to miss that because you're actually won't give it away, but we'll come back. But the ADH.

For me and alcohol, I've actually never even been drunk, which is a strange thing, but I just never got into drinking at all when I was younger. I don't know. I just kind of played sports and the crowd of people I ran, I was with, they just weren't into drugs or alcohol. So I didn't get into it. And then as I got older and became more aware of the effects of alcohol and that it's just a straight poison, it's not good for you in any amount. I was like, yeah, I guess it's probably a habit that's not worth picking up. And then that turned into me being 35 years old and never having been drunk. Good. No, I mean, well, especially because that ADHD and then it got there, you have a 12 decrease in

alcohol detox so just via your liver so it stays in your body longer hangovers are a lot more pronounced in your case and things like that so no it's good you know it would be more toxic for you so i have some options there to help you if you want to go and drink but i like what you're doing what you're doing is better maybe you should recommend a psychologist or something first. Hey, I'm thinking about like getting into whiskey, maybe try to couch it like as if I'm trying to, it's like a skill, you know, it's like a wine tasting thing. I'm trying to become a connoisseur, not an alcoholic.

I do like a good scotch myself, like the ones that taste like paint thinner to a lot of people. I love those. But what's funny is that RU21 supplement, like to play on words, right? RU21. That was developed by the KGB because they wanted their agents to be able to drink like crazy and not get drunk. So then they can do whatever agents do. But what's funny, though, too, with that opioid receptor, you're more sensitive to pain.

But then if you go down to the training section. Which we can jump, I mean, it looks like I'm well, let's jump down there for a second. Yeah, because yeah, I'm looking at the rest of this section and it stands out. So again, I'm trying to pick things that people have also heard about trying to make it interesting for the people listening. So it's not just, yeah, listen to my, yeah, here are my genetics and you should be interested in this. Well, let's talk gym for a minute.

Like the last category we've got left basically is the training. And the highlights there, I want to start with the pain sensitivity, even though that's on the end. SCN9A, this is a rare gene. It's linked to extremely low pain sensitivity, which isn't necessarily an issue. And it's offset a little bit with that opioid receptor we just mentioned, which is a higher sensitivity to pain. Like you feel pain more with that gene, but this one you feel it less. And this one's a plus plus. So I think you probably have a tendency to have, you know, less pain sensitivity, meaning you're more at risk for getting injured because you don't feel pain when you're working out. But again, it's harder to tell. And you have to

offset that with that opioid receptor. You know what I mean? So sometimes it's real clear cut and it's like all the genes indicate you don't have pain sets but in this case there's a little yin yang going on what's this muscle types yeah muscle types you know people put way too much emphasis in thinking like i'm just a fast switch guy or whatever but most people they can train their bodies to go either direction and endurance or strength they don't realize there's not that much genetic difference you know what i mean you almost can't write a book on it because there's not that much to say. But this ACVR1B gene you have, it does give you higher muscle strength per volume of muscle. If you had the exact same size muscle as somebody else, you'll be stronger with this

mutation. That's interesting because I actually, I've never been, well, maybe I've been slightly stronger than average, but I'm not a super strong person naturally. Even looking at my bests, my best lifts, which are respectable. I've squatted, I'd say around a body weight of 200-ish. Maybe I was a little bit lighter, 190. I've squatted maybe 365 for a couple. I've pulled 420s for a couple. And I think that was actually when I did that, I hurt my SI joint, which was neat. It wasn't even like my form was good. It was a freak just like, oh, what was that? Felt my hips kind of shift. And I was like, that's probably not supposed to happen. And then I bench press, I think 295 for a couple and I've seated military press 225 for a couple.

So those are okay numbers. And I guess maybe they're decent considering that I didn't program specifically for them. I've always followed a routine that's kind of half strength, half bodybuilding. I didn't go all in on a strength training. I just want to get really strong. I do not think no matter how hard I worked at it, I would be a good strength athlete, for example. I don't think I would be able to compete for shit no matter how hard I worked at it, just given how much work it took to get to those numbers. Whereas some people, they'll start outlifting and they'll be hitting those numbers by the end of year one, maybe year and a half. Right, right. Well, did you work out in high school? Nope. I played hockey. Yeah. It makes a huge difference. A lot of that is epigenetic.

It's the marks on top of the DNA. It gets programmed when you're younger. Oh, interesting. Because I always played endurance sports as a kid. Yeah. The guys that are real high responders to putting on extreme muscle strength and mass, I mean, to a T, they did the heavy lifting in high school when they were developing. Yeah. I've come across that actually. Quite a few cases that's been true. Actually, I'm thinking to some of the people I've just met over the years who were impressively strong. And yeah, one for one, they- Or they take steroids. I mean, that's also usually the case, but-

Exactly. Or and or, and or. Yeah. I think there's also an anatomical component with me though. For example, I have strangely long arms. Yeah. I don't think I look too weird just to when you see me walking around, but if you look at my arms, you're like, Oh yeah, that dude's arms are actually really long. And that makes pressing harder. Even if it just makes that sticking zone a couple inches larger, like it does translate a more difficult lift on any sort of press. I have long legs and long femurs. So that screws me on the squat and not literally, but it just makes it more difficult. Those what would the

long arms would be an advantage on pulling, but the long legs are a disadvantage. So I'm like an okay puller basically. So I'm like a shit squatter, a shit presser and an okay puller. Well, and you're still got decent numbers. I mean mean what it comes down to for a lot of these guys they're on steroids and they did a ton of training when they were in high school or pre-puberty or whatever during puberty and they've got this mindset where they don't give a shit if they destroy their joints and all that that's true destroy anything that you know it's just yeah it's true live and die by the barbell yeah so that's you know not very sustainable but people do it and you know you don't have to go there to be healthy and strong.

Agreed. What are these joint points for me? I'm curious about that because like I've always had a little bit of crepitus in my knees and I've had some achy joints and I've had some biceps tendonitis, which is not particularly a joint thing, but it makes me think of joints, tendons, and ligaments as a group. And I've heard, I think that was in the DNA fit. There was some just kind of, again, it was a generalization of, I remember it was like, yeah, your joints and your tendons are pretty shitty actually. Well, you know, as you can see, I have different categories and the big risk for you is inflammation. If you have a lot of inflammation, you're going to have joint issues, but more specifically like that HLA gene is a fourfold increased risk for arthritis. So it's pretty high. Again, average Americans, right?

But it's still there. And that one's triggered by insulin. That gene, chronic high insulin is especially the worst thing you can do. So if you had the joint pain and your insulin was high, keto is really effective in that case. That STAT4 gene is another one that's another twofold increased risk for rheumatoid specifically. So that one's another chronic inflammation related gene. And there's a drug out there, it's called lyopheline, but it's like in preclinical trials and it's not available on the market. I wouldn't necessarily go there unless you're super desperate and then you could look into it. I mean, what I do is I take, so that's one of the reasons I got an infrared sauna is

because from my understanding of the literature, there's actually some good evidence that it can reduce inflammation. Not necessarily increase post-workout recovery, like that's questionable, but reduce inflammation in the body looks to be pretty reliable. And it increases nitric oxide too. And that's really important for you, for your pancreas, like we talked about, for a lot of things we talked about, but also for your joints, because that blood flow section, if you look down below, that gene in that category basically indicates like your joints don't have a lot of blood flow. Most people don't realize your joints have something called synovial fluid. And to get that toxins out of your joints and to move nutrients in, you have to move your joints. And that's true of everybody. It doesn't matter what your genes are. I've worked in the orthopedic surgery department

at Mayo Clinic with stem cells and stuff. And I've watched them do knee replacements and my brother's an orthopedic surgeon, et cetera, et cetera. But for you, you have more of a risk of needing to move around to get that crap out of your joints and get nutrients in. And one way to do it, of course, is exercise. And that's the best thing. But infrared light is also super powerful here because it increases nitric oxide and you can target your joints with that. It just really helps. What I've noticed from my little infrared sauna routine in terms of my joints is now, fortunately, I don't have any really major joint issues to speak of anymore. I guess I didn't have major joint issues, but so previously when I was lifting some of those heavier numbers that I had mentioned, I remember that was the end of like a lean bulk that I had done. One of the reasons why I was

like, okay, I think I'm reaching a point where pushing beyond this is asking for trouble is, I remember my right knee would kind of bother me a bit after I would squat. My lower back sometimes just didn't feel too great after deadlifts. I had that SI joint issue. So I started to just notice that I was getting running into joint issues. And then I backed off the weights. I just started cutting. I was like, whatever. And then I just got super lean and I'll just make the best of it. I backed the weights down a little bit and I started working on mobility. And I found that, for example, my internal rotation on my left side was really bad in my hips. I guess I'm not well-versed enough in anatomy to automatically go like, oh, if your

internal rotation on your left side is impaired, you can have SI joint issues. It makes sense if you think about it, but I just didn't automatically connect it. And then in poking around the literature, there's actually quite a bit of evidence of that. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So since improving the internal rotation in my hips, the SI joint issue has completely gone away and improving mobility in my shoulders that help. These days, I don't have any real complaints as far as joints go. However, I'm not lifting as intensely. I'm still training intensely, but I would say if my training before was generally an intensity of a nine out of 10, I'll give it a seven out of 10 generally. And sometimes I'll

push it up a little bit higher. But what I've noticed from the infrared sauna in terms of joints, and if anybody out there, if you have joint issues, this would be relevant to you, or if you have crepitus, which is like cracking. And that's what I noticed is less of that. My understanding of crepitus is that it's not a big deal if there's no pain and there's never really been any pain with it. It's just been a thing for, it hasn't gotten worse. It just is what it is. And actually since using the sauna, it's gotten like, it's been noticeably less. I'll notice it going upstairs. I'm like, oh my, I didn't even, my knees made no noise. So that's interesting. No, I agree. And it's not like you're training for the Olympics or anything,

so you don't have to prove anything to anybody. Exactly. So I think it's better to do a longevity training protocol. You got to train for the gram. I thought that was just for the butt, but you know, it could be wrong. Yeah. Well, I wish it were that easy. If I were a female, that's all it would be. Hip thrusts at titillating angles and then that's it. And I'm going to have a seven figure following that makes me no money yeah so or you could just promote cheap ass supplements anyway you did have a little bit of gout risk too and i wanted to cover those because those are interesting like the first one prkg2 this one's not well studied but it seems to be connected

to hydration and kidney removal of uric acid. So drinking plenty of water and staying hydrated is key for that. But the other one is even more interesting, SLC-289. This one is actually a sugar transporter, fructose and glucose transporter. So if you get a bunch of uric acid buildup in your joints, it's because of the sugar, to be honest. So all the doctors will tell you to stop eating meat or whatever, but that would be a kind of a false direction with your genetics. It's probably more related to carbs. If you had uric acid buildup, which I really doubt you would because you're exercising, you're moving, you're flushing stuff out of your body, you're eating healthy, all the stuff, right? But I also drink a lot of water. I

drink probably a gallon a day. Yeah, I'm not surprised. And the last category, the very last category here is bone strength. I mean, there's other ones where I'm skipping over, of course, because you don't have any issues, but you had a yin yang here where you have stronger bones for that plus plus win 16. And then you had a weaker bones gene. So I think they're offsetting. Interesting. Yeah.

I've fractured my wrist when I playing football many years ago, I got tackled hard, but it was just not even, it was just like a pickup game with friends and randoms that were at a field and got, and I fell hard on my wrist. And I think given the force, I'm probably lucky I didn't just shatter it. I was actually surprised that it was only a fracture. I was like running full speed and someone jumped on my back and kind of swung me around. I didn't even see him coming. And, but so I don't, I don't know. That's my only experience with bone strength.

No, that sounds pretty much what your genetics. Some people, they have stronger bones, stronger bones, stronger bones in their genetics. And they do these DEXA scans and things. And the doctors are like, holy shit, you've got strong, you know, like tense bones. And it's pretty predictive. And they never break them unless they get hit by a bus or something. So, you know, it's another category I like to look at. Because if you've got weak bones, there's some stuff you can do to fix it.

But another rabbit hole for another day, man. That's overall really good, Mike. Yeah. I mean, this has been a super interesting discussion. At least to me. Hopefully, if people are still listening, hopefully they found it. I was trying to make it, trying to pick things that people would like to hear about. Oh, yeah.

Applicable. People are usually fascinated by it because there's not a lot of awareness no you know 23andme they offer these health reports that are pretty neutered you know they're pretty weak they don't tell you much of anything and people get them and then they're like well this is clearly not useful so they kind of shut the whole industry off or they they kind of shut that out of the block that out of their mind um but then when they recognize, you know, when you do these, like ancestry.com is my favorite because they do 900,000 snips. That's a ton of information, right? Like 23andMe, they only do like 600,000, which is still a lot of information. It's a ton

of info. This has been not only interesting to you, but it's useful. Like there are definitely a couple of takeaways here of, for the most part, it's continued doing things that I'm doing, but that's good to know that intuited my way into some of this. Honestly, some of these things just sound like drinking a lot of water is something that I've always done. I just have felt like that's what my body wants. I don't know. It wants more water, not less. You're not doing the snake diet?'s a guy who does like dry fasting it's kind of a joke he's super obnoxious super obnoxious dude he's getting really popular on youtube because he's just so extreme people like to follow him just for the humor because he's so

obnoxious that is it a joke or he's serious he's serious but it's kind of a joke it was a joke or he's serious? He's serious, but it's kind of a joke. It was a joke from my perspective. It's a joke, but he doesn't mean it to be a joke. That's funny. I'm going to look that up. The snake diet. Watch out, it's a rabbit hole. Yeah, well, as the cool kids say, miss me with the snake diet, okay?

I see a Legion article in the future on the problems with the snake. Hey, if it has enough search volume, we'll go after it. It does, trust me. I keep hearing about it on my genetic consults. People are like,

well, what do you think about the snake diet? Wow, okay. I'm actually making a note right now. Snake diet. No, no, this has been great. Also, one thing I like about it is I think there's value

in just better understanding your body and how your body works and you get to feel more in tune with your body. And then you get to make some changes and see some improvements. And that's cool. And I think that can lead to being more aware of what's going on in your body. And it may also, for anybody listening, if you want to reach out to Anthony and go through this process, it'll be cool for me, at least like I go through some of these things and it, I guess the word could be affirming where it's like, oh, that's neat. Like I already had a sense that that was the case.

And so it shows that if you are paying attention to your body and if you care about your body and take care of it to some degree, not that you need to obsess over it, but that you can know things. Then you get a DNA test and you go, oh, wow, that's actually right. I'm not surprised. I came to that conclusion myself either because, I mean, again, a few of these things were just things that made sense to me or I had heard about it and I tried it and I'm like, yeah, that feels good. My body feels like it wants more of that. And not that that is necessarily, those signals could be misleading too, because it depends. Some people think that, oh, my body wants more cupcakes every day. Is it really though?

Is that really, or is there something else going on there? But oftentimes there are signals among the noise. And if you can pick up on those, it's, it's neat to then go through this process and how your intuitions line up with DNA. Yeah, I agree. I mean, like Socrates said way back, I've been to the, uh, the Oracle of Delphi, you know, and I've been to Delphi and they, then they have this stone there that says, uh, know thyself. The oldest philosophical command. Yeah. Principle. Yeah. And people think of it purely as philosophy, but in reality,

this is it, you know, know thyself, know your DNA, knowledge is power. Absolutely. So for people listening who want to have you go through their DNA, what should they do? Where should they go? How does it work? Yeah. Well, I mean, right now I charge $300 to do like a one hour rundown of people's genetics and it's on AJ consulting company. You have to type in that whole phrase, which is obnoxious. I apologize. I'm not a marketing guy. The scientist in you is winning over the marketer. Yeah. And I mean, to be honest, I have a pretty long wait list. I'm actually getting some coaches and I'm training in on this because I want to bring the price down a little bit and be able to get it out there a little bit more because I do pro athletes. I've done MMA fighters. I've done

NFL players, like real famous ones too. I keep it confidential, but you know, a lot of really, and then the next person I'll do is just a random dude from oklahoma or whatever you know like who drives a garbage truck you know and i'm that's awesome i love that because it helps those people too it's not like i don't want to get like feel like your genetics doesn't matter you know because you're not a pro athlete does it helps everybody that i talk to i think i hope something that just pops in my mind is out of curiosity. So you worked with high level athletes. Are there interesting common denominators among these people? What are just a couple interesting common denominators genetically? Yeah. Well, it depends on the sport, right? Because like a friend of mine, and he doesn't mind me saying this, but like Zach Bitter, you know, he just set the world

record in the a hundred mile race. He did it with six minutes and 45-second miles for 100 miles straight, for example. Somebody like that, of course, that have a surprising like they have very good dietary genes they don't get you know like a lot of sensitivities to different foods and things like that so they can kind of get away with a lot of stuff that most people can't anyone who's played a lot of sports you can immediately think back to those kids especially as as you got a little bit older who you know they'll they show up with like big macs to add to the game and then just go destroy everybody. And you're like, what the fuck is this? I feel like that's more of the advantage than the muscle fiber types and things like that. Most of them it's in the diet section, to be honest. Interesting. Yeah. It's super interesting. Cool, man. Well, yeah, I really appreciate you taking

the time and appreciate you going through this. And I want to talk to you. We can talk after just quickly. I want to talk to you about getting this done for my wife. I think it might be helpful for her and if it would be of any value for my kids as well. But yeah, so thanks again. And people listening, it's ajconsultingcompany.com where you can reach out to Anthony and he'll take care of you. Thanks, Mike. I understand there's a waiting list, but hey, you can get on the waiting list and you can,

you can get it done. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural, evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order.

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