Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Interview With Dr. Lee From Gene Solve on Health Optimization

Episode Date: December 29, 2014

In this podcast I interview Dr. Richard Lee from Gene Solve and we talk about what genetic research is teaching us about how to achieve optimal levels of health and performance. GENE SOLVE: http://gene-solve.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.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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Hey, hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife.com. Thanks for stopping by. Welcome to the podcast. In this episode, I am going to be interviewing Dr. Richard Lee from Geneforlife.com. Thanks for stopping by. Welcome to the podcast. In this episode, I am going to be interviewing Dr. Richard Lee from GeneSolve. GeneSolve is a company that Kelly Starrett actually turned me on to when he was on the show. It sounded interesting, so I went and checked them out, and then I got real interested and contacted them to get Dr. Lee on the show and kind of talk about not just what GeneSolve does, but just genetics and how they affect our health and our ability to perform in general.

So Dr. Lee received his MD from Michigan State University in 1988 following bachelor and graduate studies at Stanford. He was the first resident recipient of the Star Physician Award for Excellence in Patient Care from San Jose Medical Center, and he won an award in teaching excellence from Stanford Family Medicine in 2001. Through his entire 25-year medical history, he's always taken a special interest in body chemistry, and as you'll see, he knows his stuff, and he's a pretty cool dude. He was fun to interview. So I hope you like the podcast, and let's get to it. Okay, Dr. Lee, thanks a lot for coming on the podcast.

I'm excited to have you because the work that you're doing is very interesting, and this is an area that I don't know that much about, so I look forward to learning something myself. Well, hopefully I can teach you something and have fun at the same time. Yeah, I think so. All right, so your mission at GeneSolve isn't just to help people improve their health, but more to help them kind of achieve the absolute best levels of health and performance possible, right? To kind of optimize the human body.

Yeah, that's the word we use a lot. And I think if there's one word to describe what we do, that would be optimizing. If we use an automotive metaphor, it's like performance tuning, which actually I used to do before medicine. And the whole idea is to get the most out of every human being that you possibly can without harming and without increasing the wear and tear and have him last a whole lot longer because of it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that whole world is something just in general that's very interesting to me because you have – obviously there are a lot of people that are looking to achieve that. And therefore, with people willing to spend money and spend time, you have a lot of bullshit out there. All kinds of snake oil supplements and weird routines and weird diets and blah, blah, blah.

But there actually is a legitimate science to, to improving the body, uh, improving the performance of the body. And you'll see that a lot, obviously like with, um, I'll I'm I email or social media with quite a few professional athletes. And it's always interesting to hear what kind of things they're doing because they need to, as you're saying, squeeze out. I mean, if they're either if they're looking to just improve some aspect of their performance by by three percent that can mean quite a bit when when their livelihood is on the line you know what i mean yeah absolutely um and the but you when you mention these athletes are looking at for one thing or another and this is a problem the science is very complex because it isn't just one thing or another no physiologic system works in a vacuum or in isolation. So we try and simplify the solution,

but we're still using very complex science to do it. Yeah. I'm going to be, you've probably read the book, The Sports Gene. Not cover to cover, but yeah. Oh, so you're familiar with it. Yeah. I'm going to be having the author on the next podcast. And just that, I mean, you start delving into the genetics and you start, it's just, it gets so complex, as you're saying. And there are so many different variables to account for. So how do you go about doing that? How do you go about kind of pinpointing, you know, what you can do to improve people's health, improve their performance, and how do you do it? Well, it's interesting because the answer, the first answer may be an unexpected one.

We get a really good history. I mean, people are focused on all this quantified self and data and labs and measurements. And, yes, we do that. But I'm a third-generation physician in my family. There are seven doctors before me. And my grandfather was renowned for being an excellent diagnostician back in the days when you didn't have the tools. And he told me in my youth, you can get 90% of what's wrong with someone by getting a really good history, knowing to ask the right questions. So we start with that.

In many ways, it doesn't matter what your lab is now if we don't know what you were before. We want to know what happened with you in the past. We want to know what you're feeling now. And that way, we get a better idea of what systems are wrong. We use that history very carefully in a very elegant expert system. It's basically applying artificial intelligence to a complex set of answers to come up with a list of up to 38 different conditions that could be going wrong with you. If you went to your doctor, they say, you're normal, your labs are normal, there's nothing really that far out of whack, go away, you're just getting old.

So starting with that history, we get a real jump start on what could be going wrong. We back it up with very specific labs. We're not shotgunning everything. We only use labs for items that are actionable, that we can change, and for systems that we need to monitor. And in almost every case, the labs absolutely confirm everything we find in the historical diagnosis. On top of that, we throw in genomics. We don't do the entire genome and we don't even do huge genotyping because what we're interested in, again, are the genomics that we can do something about. Your genes, they're like the blueprint of your house, but they don't tell you how well

the house is built or who's repairing it. It's not your genes, it's what you do with them. We figured out what to do with that as well. That's really fascinating. What kind of results do you see? What type of changes do people in performance or health biomarkers or even overall well-being? Well, that's probably one of the most satisfying things. Our marketing people, when they talk to patients, they get a taste of what I had 20 years of getting a taste of, which people say, I never thought I could feel that much better. Or I haven't felt this good in 20 years. Or I just can't believe I sleep better.

I think better. My mind is sharper. My mood is better. I don't yell at my wife. I don't yell at my kids. I wake up in the morning with energy. I don't yell at my kids. I wake up in the morning with energy. I don't hurt so much. And when I do do something physical, I'm getting away with going much better, much longer,

much faster with less pain and feeling better the next day, whereas before I might be crushed. So whether it's- And what I think is so cool about that is, and this is actually funny enough. This is kind of an idea for a book that I want to write. It's been – the idea is out there. It's been done in different ways whenever. But that is what you're describing while it sounds – it's definitely extraordinary. It's not – the average person, that's not how they live. They don't live saying, I wake up every day with a bunch of energy.

I'm pain-free. I always feel great. I'm mentally clear. But that's how – I would say that's how things are actually supposed to be. If you can really give your body what it needs and you can eat the things you need to eat, you can supplement the way you need to supplement. You can exercise the way you need to exercise. Um, and you know, of course there are other lifestyle factors that could come into, come into play, but I think that's awesome because I think that that is, that's what people should be striving for. Not just, Oh, you know, yeah, right. That would be, you know, it's as if that's like science fiction stuff that maybe in 100 years we'll ever be able to experience.

It's fun because it's here now. And you mentioned all the things that people are supposed to do right, eat right, exercise right. Notice a lot of people don't talk about sleeping right, so many other things. And the issue there is, again, going back to the history, is what kind of damage have you done? If you're eating, doing anything right now, that's fine, but in your car, did you rip out the undercarriage and not know it? You may be fueling it right and driving it right, but are the tires worn? Is the clutch slipping? Those things in a physical metaphor are what we find from the history in the labs that go well beyond what you can get from just sort of looking at the surface.

That's interesting. And could you give me an example? I'm just curious. Like what's an example of something that you would find in someone's history that they've done that has caused damage that needs to be repaired? And then how do you actually go about doing that? I'm just curious. Okay, great question. Well, you know, I don't know anyone who lives a stress-free life or who leaves a trauma-free life. And those things accumulate. Little traumas, big traumas. It could be a car crash. It could be a divorce. It could be working under a boss who's a workplace bully.

The first thing is stress. We've learned to historically quantify it. From that, that builds a diagnosis. And then we look at the markers of that. Number one, in most cases, is the stress hormone cortisol. We measure it not only once but four times a day because it has a different pattern. We measure it not only once but four times a day because it has a different pattern. Cortisol does so many – well, it can do some good things for energy, but it does so many bad things.

It raises blood sugar. It beats down serotonin, which leads to depression. It steals from your sex hormones. You won't make them if your body is creating cortisol, and it all comes from your cholesterol. and it all comes from your cholesterol. So the stress hormone and the stress response has a huge cascade effect on your entire neurologic system and on your entire endocrine system. And if you don't measure it, you don't know how to fix it. If you don't fix it, you'll never get what you want out of your body. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's funny because it's actually something I wanted to ask after the podcast. My wife has run into problems with that because our son just doesn't sleep. I mean, she takes care of him at night. I'm up early and I'm working all day. She takes care of him and he wakes her up a lot at night. And because she hasn't been sleeping really correctly for a long time, like she actually just recently got blood tested and her cortisol levels are too high. And then it was the exact same.

The doctor that we're seeing is a pretty smart guy. And he also does a whole like history analysis thing, not the same as yours, but he does go about it that way, almost like a Hippocratic type of method. But so anyways, I see firsthand what that can do if cortisol levels get out of whack and you just have chronic high cortisol levels, just really messes with the body. Yeah. And then we've also got, I mean, Yeah. That's the whole sex hormone and adrenal system. We've also got the thyroids to deal with. Most people have at one time in their life a dysfunction in their thyroid. It only gets worse with age. You can't treat it in a vacuum. You have to treat it with the adrenals. Thyroid and vitamin D. This is a vitamin.

Both of these, if they're off, they'll affect the production and the regulation of your sex hormones. Oftentimes, if you correct those, you can bring someone out of a low testosterone or low estrogen state if you understand how they affect that. So, you know, these are just a few examples. We haven't even got into neurotransmitters or what the gut does and doesn't do, but you get the idea that they're all out there and they all affect each other. So you have to understand those relationships to make both a diagnosis and to correct it. Yeah, totally makes sense. So let's talk about eating foods, right? So everybody kind of knows that eating a bunch of nutritious foods and exercising also, you can talk about that, you just got to lump it in here, are the foundations of good health, but you kind of go a step further by really diving into each individual's chemistry

and how to change those things to fit each person's body's needs. How does that work exactly? Okay. Well, on the diet side, we'll start with, first of all, we find out through the questionnaire, do they have any food sensitivities or inflammatory reactions of foods that they're not paying attention to? We'll make a diet correction for that. We also include in the genomics, the best available tests to determine if there's a specific diet type that their metabolism would work better with. Could you give me an example of that? I'm sorry, what?

Could you give me an example of that? Like what are some of the variations that you see? Okay. We test routinely for four variations of diet. One is the person who's lucky who can eat almost anything in terms of good quality. Others that need to be – and the majority need to be on a lower-carb diet. Some do well on a Mediterranean diet, which is similar to that but has some differences. And others, very few people do well on a low-fat diet.

You know, you've got, you know, some people are just born Eskimo. It's all fat in their diet, and they do well on that. And some are born, you know, islanders where it's all fruits and grains, although that's more of a rarity. So there are genomic markers for that. Also, there are genomic markers that will tell us if they have certain enzyme deficiencies for getting rid of toxins or building neurotransmitters. And we check for those, and we also check the products of those enzymes and adjust accordingly. So that's just the diet side of it. Obviously, we have people who are heading towards diabetes and don't know it.

We fix that. And I haven't found a person yet who wasn't in need of more vitamin D. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wrote an article recently about vitamin D. I'm always talking about vitamin D. We're just not running around naked in the sun enough. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, that's what it boils down to.

I mean, here I'm in Florida. So I think when I was writing the article, just doing the research, it kind of would boil down to if I were exposed about, I think it was 75 or 80% of my body to the Florida sun in the summer for, I think it was about 20 to 25 minutes a day, then I'd probably be fine. But you know,

who, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not going to go out tanning. I'd rather just supplement. And that's the majority of people obviously are deficient because they don't supplement and they don't get in the sun enough. And that's it. There's no other way.

Yeah. Now we're worried about – well, also we're worried about skin cancer. And maybe the ultraviolet light consistency has changed in our exposure as well. So you are safer to go out and run around naked a thousand years ago than you are now. That's an interesting point. Quickly, I want to say something about this on low carbs. So do you find, because in my, I mean, there's looking at the literature and then just working with people, I find that if a person, because carbs are primarily energetic, uh, if you don't move your body, if you're not exercising much, especially if you're not training your muscles, which, you know, obviously just through the

storage of glycogen, I mean, that, that's a big carb sink a bit, and that's a big, uh, major use for the body is, is the muscles doing things. Um, where I find that people that are weightlifting frequently and, you know, probably doing cardio as well, just type of people that I, that I generally work with and email with tend to do better on a higher carbohydrate diet in, in, in, and that's quantified by, or how the quality, I mean, maybe it's more just a qualitative thing, like in terms of what they say is better. And I've had quite a few people come to me on a low carb diet where they found that they're, they're, they, they felt okay throughout the day, but their workouts suffered. And when they switched to a higher carbohydrate diet, um, and, and once again, I'm also a big proponent of getting the majority of your calories,

some nutritious foods, um, just because you can eat junk food and maintain a low percent of body fat doesn't mean you should do it. There are other things to take into account. They find when they switch from a low-carb to a high-carb diet that their strength dramatically improves. They find it much easier to build muscle. If they're dieting to lose weight, they find that it provides more satiety. I'm just curious what your thoughts are. Again, you're dealing with active athletes and in that case it is true because they are burning that fuel and you can only burn fat at a certain rate

and you need carbs as a substrate to burn fat anyway protein is mainly there to sort of buffer the whole carb intake into your body it's mainly there to buffer the insulin response and these people the majority of them have really good insulin responses anyway the whole carb intake into your body. It's mainly there to buffer the insulin response. Right. And these people, the majority of them have really good insulin responses anyway.

So for a sedentary person, most of them are going to do better than low carb diet. But for athlete, you got to, you know, if the muscle doesn't get fuel, it isn't going to work. It isn't going to, it isn't going to grow.

So yeah, in essence, yes, for, for that subset, which is probably most of the people are listening to you. Yeah. The main thing is to keep the quality of those carbs as good as possible and be mindful of the fact that there may be foods that you don't tolerate as well that you don't know until you stop them or replace them. Right, yeah, yeah, totally. That's exactly what I've found.

found and what I've always recommended is if for sedentary people, I mean, how many carbs do you really need if you're not exercising? I mean, 50, maybe 60 grams a day and you could really just get it from vegetables probably. Well, ideally, you may need some brown starches, brown carbs basically, just avoid the white ones. I don't think gluten is the cause of every problem from communism to cancer, but a lot of people have an issue with it that they're unaware of while other people think they do and they don't. I forget the acronym, but it wasn't the gluten per se. It was a certain type of carbohydrate that the body couldn't deal with. And you'll find that in wheat, but you'll find that in a lot of other sources as well, like legumes and other things. And when they cut out all that stuff, then their irritable bowel symptoms went away. Right. But then it's a lot harder for them to find food they can eat anywhere at any time.

Yeah, I know. I mean, I've emailed with some people that run into that, ran into that issue, and I forwarded them along to the article, and it was a pain for them to kind of work out their meal plan, but they were having enough problem, having enough problems where it was like they had to do something. And, you know, by cutting out all those types of carbs, it calmed their digestion system down. And, you know, I don't know if you've seen

this, but I've seen this that where if somebody is, they, their, their gut is all inflamed and they do find what their body's reacting to and they get rid of a lot of that stuff and everything chills out and they're able to slowly introduce things back in without any problems. Well, yeah, I mean, I've seen it measuring antibody levels in true celiac disease. The farther from exposure, the more it drops. In fact, some people who have celiac disease have been gluten-free, maybe just out of luck all their life would have low antibodies and be missed. Except when they eat a loaf of bread, they're obviously screwed or pizza and beer. And the other thing we have to think about, it's not just what you eat.

It's what are you feeding? We're just touching the tip of the whole system, know the meta biome all those critters in your gut and uh when you travel they change when you take antibiotics they change uh god knows for whatever reason they change and uh we're trying to learn one to identify those we're not there yet but getting we're we're watching that and two And two, how do you correct for that? Those little critters can increase uptake of certain foods. They can pass excess carbs that you normally wouldn't absorb right through your gut, and that may be the cause of some people's obesity. They can also upregulate neurotransmitters, not just GABA, which reduces anxiety,

but also serotonin. So we're looking at that. We don't have a way to fix it yet, but we're aware and hoping to come up with something. So, yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting. All right, so that's on the dietary side. What about exercise? What kind of things do you find? Okay.

Again, on exercise, we do do a genomic assay to determine, first of all, would they benefit more as a rule from strength training or endurance training? Some people benefit more from both. Most of those tests, however, are based on population data that looks at things like blood sugar response to exercise and lipid response to exercise, not as much as athletic performance with response to exercise. We're still working on that one. But at the same time, your body will tend to do better what it does,

especially if you get some guidance from a trainer. You'll find out that you hurt yourself if you work too hard at the wrong thing. What we also look at is what's the whole endocrine system behind that? Is everything finely tuned to preserve and maintain all nerve and muscle and bone and your brain at the same time. So that's what we're looking at. Yeah, that's super interesting. What kind of things do you find? You find that some people's bodies, health-wise, they're just going to benefit more from weightlifting than cardio or vice versa? Yes. And generally, if someone's really

active, they'll discover that on their own. For our patients who are more sedentary, it helps us guide them into not wasting time on things. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, my general recommendation is like, of course, you have the maintenance of lean mass. If we're just looking at health as you age is extremely important. Of course, as you know, that's, you know, all cause mortality is just correlated to like the more muscle you lose, the more likely you are to die of something one day. Uh, so, so maintaining muscle is important. And then, and then doing cardio as well for, for obviously cardiovascular health. And I mean, I've always just kind of done a bit of both. Like I, whether,

uh, you know, I, I like to, I like to lift weights and doing it for a long time, but I also enjoy cardio. And, you know, it seems, I guess it kind of comes back to when you do enough stuff with your body, you do, you can know things you can, uh, get an idea of, well, it just seems like my body tends to do this or feels better when I'm doing that. And then I'm sure, you know, it could be then actually quantified and measured with something like what you're doing. Yeah. And again, most of the people who are probably listening to this are fairly athletic and know by now or a trainer or someone who's observing them and their exercise would have a good idea at that point. And that's their skill and observation. They're looking at measuring

down the drag strip around the course. We're actually looking under the hood. Yeah. Yeah. I like that metaphor. So based on your experience, what are some of the most common things that you see that kind of prevent people from reaching optimal levels, health and performance? Okay. Well, we'll start with, again, okay um well we'll start with again um going back to history traumas past and present uh what were their subject to um one thing that's really had affects a lot of people is a brain trauma even if they haven't been in you know seriously and hospitalized for it concussions can in very subtle ways uh bruise the pituitary gland and all of the all the endocrine systems downstream from that will will

not be stimulated or or told to work as hard as they should so that history sets a pattern to watch out for the stress level they're on will tell me how much their cortisol is going to be affected by this is it going to be too high or they have their adrenals already burned out or they only burned out in the morning when you need them the most. So their sleep patterns will tell me about their adrenal issues as well. And that's all. And then what they eat gives us a hint what they crave, what makes them feel good or bad. That's the start. And then we look at all the other neuroendocrine balances.

We're talking about the vitamins. Like I said, vitamin D. We look at proteins that are prehormones, DHEAS. We look downstream into estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. We look at the proteins that hold those hormones hostage, sex hormone binding globulin, often raised by stress or raised by someone who's taking an external hormone and not doing it in the right way. We're finding all those can be off interesting and what would you say like you mentioned sleep a few times is that do you find that a lot of people are not sleeping correctly or not sleeping enough or is that like a common thing you run into yeah i mean you talk

to a lot of people and they'll say oh well, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Well, that may happen sooner than you think or you'll be a zombie before then. You don't even have to die. There are a couple of things. One is everyone is just trying to cram too much of what they need to do and things they don't need to do into a day. You know, there are some benefits to the Internet, but it's really screwing with people's sleep. And the biggest culprit there is that blue screen that's staring back at you. And it doesn't matter if it's a 50-inch plasma or a 3-inch smartphone. That blue glow goes to your brain.

It says it's daylight. You don't go to sleep until two hours after that. Or even if you do knock out, your REM sleep won't start until some time later. Yeah, because it messes with melatonin, right? Yeah, it messes. It goes more than that. It goes to a little part of the brain called the suprachiasmic nucleus, which regulates melatonin. But even melatonin can't overdrive that day-night cycle if you've got it too burned into your brain.

Right. It helps. And then, again, your growth hormone only works in those first REM cycles. Right. Your brain recycles and makes serotonin during sleep. Your immune system will only communicate more effectively when you're sleeping. All those T-cells get together like a bunch of special ops guys. And they said, who's a target and who's not to be damaged?

And if they don't get those communications, they don't go after the right targets. And you get sick more often. And they damage the wrong ones. You get more inflammatory disease. All that happens when you sleep right and and for sleeping right i mean is that just kind of the standard seven to nine hours and uh is there any anything else any other like mistakes interesting things that that you know get in the way of good sleep that geez well i don't know if i've had seven hours in the last 20 years but um anyway it it really is it's it's not just a quantity of sleep it's the quality of sleep um the things you know their history will tell us we don't treat medical problems so we're not throwing um you

know ambient or or or lunesta these people they may come to us on that but um what we will do is we'll find that we can we can bring down the high evening cortisol that creates the monkey mind. We can turn on increased production of their brain's GABA so that it also shuts down the monkey mind and the anxiety and just puts them in a restful state through their own neurotransmitters rather than something we're doing to try and manipulate them. Right. And so if a person is in a better state in terms of neurotransmitters, then you're saying that the quality of the sleep is going to be higher and they won't necessarily need as much as somebody else? Right. It's a matter of quality and quantity. Now, everyone's different.

But in our question, we ask questions to determine if someone actually has sleep apnea or a non-apnea sleep disorder. And you have older women athletes. Once they're starting, their ovaries are starting to go into retirement, we tell them they're all heading south to Florida. What happened? Yeah, they're looking at those condo brochures. The estrogens start to drop, and it's very important for sleep. A common problem that's never addressed in pre- and perimenopausal, pardon me, in perimenopausal women with ins with insomnia is due to low-functioning estrogen.

Because we're all outliving our gonads. Unfortunately, women live much longer without theirs than we do. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that, actually. I didn't know that there's a correlation there with estrogen. And you had mentioned cravings now, just because I'm curious about that, because it's something that is on my list of things to research. I get asked about it. What can you tell us about how cravings for various types of foods, like, does it mean

anything? I've heard so many things, I don't even know what to think. You know what I mean? Yeah, it does. In fact, yesterday, I did a long Skype video interview on that. And craving starts at many different levels. First of all, our bodies have not evolved that much past the Neanderthal or cave person stage. We are still bred and predisposed to craving salt and fat and to some degree sugar. Salt and fat being the most rare and the most desired and the most needed when you're trolling the earth trying to hunt and gather what you need to eat. Now, it's in abundance. It's everywhere, particularly in the junk foods. Then they've

added in the sweeteners, mainly high fructose corn sweetener and other carbs that speak to that reptilian brain in us and make us eat more and more of that crap that we don't need to. We're staying up later and we're usually up past the time that a good restaurant is open and we don't like to cook. So we go for something that's quick and that's going to be something that's going to be stable on the shelf or stable in the can for a longer period of time and more processed and has more of these little things that are intended to help our brains eat more of them. So one, we haven't evolved as much as we think we have.

Two, the food has evolved much faster and it's become much more poor in quality nutrition. And they're being sold and actually put together, if you will, or manufactured in a way that will crave things more and more based on those preferences from 10,000 years ago. Yeah, and that makes sense from a business standpoint if you have no scruples. I mean, you need people addicted to your stuff and you've been buying it as much as possible. So figure it out.

So we got that. Then you've got buying it as much as possible. So figure it out. We got that. Then you've got the issue of people will have cravings to try and feed something. Smokers want more dopamine in their brain and nicotine turns that on. There are also foods that do that. A lot of people, when they crave carbohydrates, it will briefly upregulate serotonin in the brain. I said briefly. Serotonin is a chemical that provides calm, order, and hope to the brain. The problem is when they

keep spiking, taking those carbs or sweets to spike the serotonin, cortisol starts to rise. The blood sugar goes on a roller coaster, and after a while, the cortisol actually poisons serotonin through another neurotransmitter called glutamate. Not too far from monosodium glutamate, but this is inside the brain. So they're trying to feed their serotonin by little bits of sugar. They're trying to feed dopamine by, again, fats or certain sugars. And they'll crave things their body needs. One example that surprised me, in 1991, I was a physician for the National Geographic Everest Expedition, and our chief scientist has always been a vegetarian, yet in

the dining tent, he was just scarfing down smoked salmon that was there, and wasn't even aware of it. He was just picking at it and talking, and we brought that to his attention, and very smart guy, and he realized what he was craving was omega-3 fatty acids. You're not going to get that from lentils and rice, which is the main Sherpa fare there. He needed that to preserve his blood-brain barrier so he wouldn't get cerebral edema at altitude. Right. So we do crave things. The problem is the foods that we should crave are being hijacked by the other cravings,

the cravings for sweets and crunchy, salty, fatty things. Yeah. And that's interesting because my experience, I eat very well. I eat probably, I'd say three or four servings of vegetables a day and I kind of mix them up and I don't eat, I eat a little bit of sugar here and there. Maybe it's like some chocolate or something like that. A high protein diet diet and i've been doing this for a long time i don't eat any uh like i i eat mainly organic foods which is a whole nother subject actually to write an article on it but um and my primary reason for that is because i mean a new study just came out i just saw it just uh the other day it was um organic produce and i think it was whole

grains and the produce was whole grains. And the produce and whole grains had a bit more – the organic had a bit more nutrients and a bit less heavy metals and other toxins. And I don't eat any fast food. So I have a pretty clean diet. And I don't – I never crave – like I'll go out once a week. If I'm going to go to a restaurant, I'll probably eat a dessert, and it's going to be sug sugary and it's going to be good. And that's it. Hopefully it's chocolate. I am pretty into chocolate, but you know, what I'll do is I'll beat, like if I'm doing one meal a week where I'm just going to kind of eat whatever. And then I'll, if I do something chocolatey, you know,

six weeks in a row, then I'm going to change it up. But, uh, so my, my, if I were to say I have any sort of craving, which I don't even know if I'd really call it a craving, but I look forward to healthy, nutritious foods. Like I, when I think about that, that is appetizing to me when I think about, you know, right now, if I'm getting a little bit hungry, I think about eating a candy bar. It doesn't even, I wouldn't want, I would much rather go home and make my dinner with potatoes and vegetables and chicken. That is good to me. So is that like, I guess that's more how it's supposed to be? That's how it's supposed to be. You may be lucky that your sleep is pretty good, that you manage your stress fairly well.

And again, even if you eat well, the stress goes up. What happens is cortisol rises and it can actually make, it can increase what we call the glycemic roller coaster, the blood sugar going up and down and up and down to greater swings. And that's where people who even – even the Dalai Lama, given enough stress in his life, could end up going for a Twinkie now and then. Highly unlikely. But anyway, so yeah, you're lucky in that respect. The problem is there isn't – there's no meal that you can pull out of a machine or pull out of your backpack, your glove box that's going to be that good for you that quick. And that's the tough part of – and most people don't have time to even eat real meals.

How many people eat breakfast? Yeah. I mean it's – I deal with this a lot because, you know, just in, in working with people, emailing people and the, what seems to work best is, uh, people, they get into the habit of, uh, just preparing larger batches of food once or twice a week. And so then they always have stuff, you know, they bring it to the office and then instead of going for chips, they have some other sort of snack that they've made. A lot of people, they start getting creative with it. They start having fun. You know, they'll make like homemade protein bars or, you know, a lot of time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, it's like, you know, whatever you throw it all together, you throw it in the oven or even stuff like, I mean, like snack foods where instead of eating whatever you could go, you could have some Greek yogurt and some fruit and some nuts or things that you can come to like. I mean, I think, uh, there was a guy, I forget, he wrote a book called the man who ate everything or anything, everything. I think it was. And basically he made a list of like his top 30 foods that he hated and like disgusting shit. So who eats this stuff? Right. And, and he, when it was like he planned out his entire year where he had to eat everything, I think it was eight times or whatever. And by the end of it, he found that he actually came to enjoy – it wasn't all, but it was a lot of the foods that he hated before. And just by eating it over and over, he just started to like it. people that go from a very diet full of processed foods and the type of stuff you're talking about,

where that's just what they're used to eating. The transition to a healthier diet can be kind of jarring to their palates in the beginning. But then if they just stick to it, they start to, the body, I don't know, it's like their taste buds just change. And then all of a sudden they think all this food tastes great and they don't really, you know, maybe they have some junk food here and there, but it's not anything like how it used to all this food tastes great, and they don't really, you know, maybe they have some junk food here and there, but it's not anything like how it used to be where they would crave it and they hated vegetables and whatever, you know. No, it does get better, and basically, you know, it upregulates, like you said, their taste buds.

They don't need as much sugar to taste sweet. They don't need any sugar. They don't need to salt the hell out of everything. Yeah. And they'll recognize the subtleties of what's in there. On that side of it, it's true. Without going too long into it, you mentioned organic. The big problem there is organophosphate pesticides. If you look at any area in the nation where agriculture is very intense and where winds tend to accumulate the dust from agriculture,

you'll find the higher degrees of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's and whatnot. So, uh, that's kind of tying into like what glyphosate and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Organic phosphates. And, and you know, there's real problem with those. Yeah. Um, so, so you,

one other thing you had mentioned was hormone imbalances is obviously a very hot subject these days. Testosterone clinics are like the latest, greatest thing, and everyone is on TRT. And I know people that are in their 20s, early 20s that find – they just want to be on – like a friend of mine, he recently – I mean he never – he didn't talk to me about it because he probably knew what I would tell him. He didn't talk to me about it because he probably knew what I would tell him. But he recently randomly just came up with the idea that he just wants to get on T because he's not building muscle fast enough or whatever. So he goes to the doctor. He gets tested.

His T was at I think it was like 700 to 800 NGDL. That's fine. Exactly. What's his problem? Exactly. Totally fine. I think he's 25-ish or something like that, 26 maybe. But it was just some shady clinic, shady doctor, and there was some like, oh, but his – one of his – maybe it was his sex hormone.

There was somewhat little hormone. It was a little bit too high, and the doctor was like, oh, yeah, sure. Here you go. So now he's on testosterone. And so with, with that being just like a big, you know, button these days, what are some of the things that you like, what are some of the, I don't know if I'd say mistakes, but some of the things that are, that are causing that in, you know, that maybe people could do that could naturally help balance their hormones. Okay. Well, yeah, first of all, yeah, everyone still fix it on testosterone. And again, going back to mechanic days it's, you first, everyone's so fixated on testosterone. Again, going back to mechanic days, it's never just that. And if your car's running lousy, if your engine's out of tune, if you're using crappy fuel and you're driving like an idiot, it doesn't make sense to throw a bigger turbocharger on it on its own. That's kind of what the tea thing is all about. So everyone's looking for the quick fix, the one thing they can just do and make all the difference. But, again, it isn't just testosterone. If the testosterone is truly low, it is a symptom or a marker for a whole neuroendocrine system that's out of whack.

Right. And so typically for most people it's because their stress is high. They're stealing from their sex hormones to make cortisol as a stress hormone. Cholesterol is the starting point, the mother of all hormones. It goes downstream to DHEA. You could have a low DHEA because it's all going to cortisol, or your DHEA could be high because your nuts aren't turning it into testosterone. The question is to ask why.

It could simply be that you're low in vitamin D. That acts like FSH. It acts like a stimulant to your gonads to make all the sex hormones, whether you're male or female. Ditto with thyroid. If that's off, it isn't going to rise. If you correct all the nuanced things around that, lower the cortisol that needs to be lowered, replace the DHEA or find out why it's being stolen from, or if it's adequate,

find out what is not telling your gonads to make the hormones, correct all those things, and your body will make the difference. We've done subtle corrections in thyroid, vitamin D, and DHEA only in a cyclist. His testosterone went from 540 to 910. Wow. Yeah. No testosterone and nothing. He's happy. I'm sure that's a big change in terms of how he feels and how he performs. So the thing is to ask before you start just throwing on testosterone, maybe step back and say, well, why is it off?

Yeah. Okay. And then is it truly off? You know, I have a hard time believing anyone with a testosterone in the 700s, their sex hormone binding globule would have to be through the roof to bring it down. At the same time, you could go into your doctor and have a testosterone that's 500. And by the way, insurance companies will usually pay for testosterone if it's lower than 300. The endocrinologist would like at least 400.

But you could have a testosterone. I've had patients with testosterone that's in 540. But because that protein, sex hormone binding globulin was so high, it brought their free testosterone down to about four. And the normal range is nine to 30. These are all in nanograms per deciliter. So if you'd never measure sex hormone binding globulin, you won't get the accurate measure of the testosterone. And we can lower sex hormone binding globulin, not by drugs, but by a couple supplements. Interesting. Like what? Well, probably the one with the strength of association isn't huge. The one that seems to have evidence is the extract of stinging nettle, which also tends to work for food sensitivities.

which also tends to work for food sensitivities. Also, some authors say, I'm still looking for real good proof, but we found it anecdotally, is by taking a supplement called phosphatidylserine. I've heard that, yeah. Yeah, phosphatidylserine does lower evening cortisol. And by doing that, it may indirectly take away the theft of cortisol and push it back down towards testosterone. So we know it does that. We definitely know it improves memory.

There's very strong evidence of that in randomized clinical trials. So those are the two things we do. But we also try and change people's sleep and behavior patterns so they aren't stealing from their hormones so much in the first place. Right. That makes sense. So that's how we deal with sexual hormone binding globulin. And a lot of people, we've had refugees from some of these clinics where all they're getting

is growth hormone and testosterone in injections. Yep. And you're getting hormone spikes all the time. And we find their thyroids are out of whack. Their adrenals are actually trashed. And they're only getting half the benefit they would with a testosterone. It's 150% over the upper limit of normal. So, yeah, more isn't always better.

There's a degree of awesomeness, and when you go beyond that in testosterone level, you start getting – you're feeling worse again and really end up being stupid and sick. Yeah, I mean – Watch your – I know in the bodybuilding community, of course, because there's all kinds of drug abuse that goes on. That's, that's a known thing that when you really start, when you really start blasting your tea, your immune system goes to shit, your body, you just, you just don't feel, you don't feel very good.

But then, you know, they're on so many other drugs in some cases too. It's like, it's a mess. But that's their addiction, you know? And, um, it's a psychological thing. I mean, I, I talk to guys that, um, you know, they don't care. They talk about it and they're all different type of drugs are on. And one for one, they just talk about that. They, they wish they never started because now they life off of drugs is, is it doesn't, you know, how they feel when they're on the drugs, you know, they feel invincible and then now they, they can't, they can't enjoy life without the drugs

and that sucks. Yeah. How many bodybuilders do you know, aside from Jack LaLanne that ever made it to 80? Yeah. All you hear about are guys that their hearts explode or their, their livers fail or their kidneys fail. Yeah. And so, you know, as you might write an article about a business model

for an addiction clinic for bodybuilders as opposed to, you know, drug or alcohol addiction or what have you or eating disorder. Yeah. Yeah. There's a business I don't want to get into. Yeah.

All right. More questions. What can I answer for you? Well, actually, we're running on just about 40, 50 minutes here. Whenever I go too long, people go, oh, you got to keep it shorter. You got to keep it shorter. So I think this is a good point to just wrap up. So if somebody wants to get a full rundown of their health from your company, from GeneSolve, like how does that work?

What's the process? Okay. They sign up and they get an initial evaluation. Is it in person like they have to come to you? Yeah, they have to see a healthcare professional, one of our doctors. Currently, we have them in California and Texas. Okay. And we have people coming from as far away as New York. We haven't had anyone come from Europe yet.

Yeah, I want to come. This sounds awesome. Well, yeah, the best way is to come in because we are making diagnoses, real diagnoses. You can't do that without a health professional, and they have to look at you. Some states we can Skype that. Others we can't. And you've got to get an eye on the person anyway. You get a much better sense of what's going on with them.

So we hope to expand to the point where we're in as many states as people want to have us. We're early on in that. So they come to expand to the point where we're in as many states as people want to have us. We're early on in that. So they come to see us. They actually fill out this questionnaire that feeds into the expert system. We get labs. We get the genomics. Then we sit down with them, and we do a brief exam. Most of these people are pretty darn healthy.

And then we tell them what's wrong with them, and then we come up with a tailored plan as to what to fix. That's great. Who is this for? It sounds like it's for not just people with problems, but people that could be healthy, they can be athletes, whatever, and they just want to get more out of their bodies. Well, yeah. Like I said, we don't treat disease. We're actually preventing it by doing this, but it's anyone who values it. They have to understand what we're doing. They have to be committed to making what lifestyle changes they can. They have to be

compliant with what supplement programs we give them, and if they're on any pharmaceuticals, what we're doing for them. They have to have a mental commitment to it. If they do, they're going to see results. It's anyone who can make it through the door. We're not going to cure all the other stuff. We generally do not treat people with active cancer. That limits what we can do. We did take an 11-year-old and we were helping him out in very subtle things. Our oldest is 75. It's really a matter of do you want more and can we provide that for you in a lasting and quality way? Yeah, that's great. I mean with the type of changes that you were talking about just in the beginning of the podcast, it goes much beyond being able to squat an extra 50 pounds or something like that.

Oh, hell yeah. It's to live an extra 50 years and have fun every day in as little pain and as much communication and excitement and engagement as possible. Yeah. Well, who doesn't want that? There's the simple, there's the one line pitch for it. That's great. Okay, cool. Well, thanks a lot for all your information, Dr. Lee. This was awesome. I learned a lot. I think the listeners are going to like it a lot. And genesolve.com, right? G-E-N-E solve.com. It's G-E-N-E dash S-O-L-V-E.

Gene-solve.com. Okay, or just Google Gene Solve and you're going to find it. I think it's great what you're doing. I think that this is definitely where I think the almost just medical profession needs to go, where you're integrating, it's not just, oh, here are drugs. Oh, you know, as you're saying, oh, here's some blood work. I don't know. Things look fine. Or, oh, your T's a little bit low here.

Go, here's a prescription. Have fun kind of thing. Yeah, we want to fix it all at the same time in the right proportions. And when you do, it makes a difference. If we could get this to the whole public, we'd save billions, if not trillions, in healthcare costs we don't need to spend. Yeah, totally. All right, well, thanks again.

And this was super interesting. My pleasure, anytime. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll

also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.