The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Amy Neuzil, Naturopathic Doctor, MTHFR and Epigenetics Expert

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Dr. Amy Neuzil, N.D. Naturopathic Doctor, MTHFR and Epigenetics Expert Tohealthwiththat.com Biography Amy is a naturopathic doctor who became an MTHFR and epigenetic expert because of her own MTHFR mutation. Addressing this issue gave her such great health gains, she had to share the wealth. MTHFR is a genetic variance in how folate is activated that affects neurotransmitter formation, antioxidant balance, cellular energy, DNA methylation, cell division, reproduction, and personality. Amy works one-on-one and in group formats with clients to help them optimize the genes they were born with. She is passionate about educating people about the role of gene mutations in health, mental health, and even personality. She also loves to share knowledge about the difference between different forms of folate, the risks and benefits of food fortification with folic acid, and the problems related to MTHFR. These include hormone imbalance, mental health issues, and fertility.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, our family and friends. Welcome to the Chris Boss Show family.

The family that loves you but doesn't judge you. At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. Because she doesn't like you. And she never did. But that's, you know, between you and her. So maybe you should, I don't know, talk to her nice. Or buy her a nice gift. Or treat her well or something.

I don't know. But right now people are going, wait, my mother-in-law doesn't like me? I thought she did. No, she wrote the show. She pretends to like you. Anyway, I don't know what any of that means. But be nice to everyone. That's the message of the show. And get her a subscription to the show. Tell her to subscribe because maybe she'll be nicer to you if she listens to the Chris Voss Show. That's probably the whole reason she's angry is you're holding out on her and she knows it. And she's like, well, damn it.

Why won't this guy tell me to go subscribe to the Chris Voss Show podcast? Most of your family members hate you for that reason. So share it with your family members. The improv crap that I do on the Ramble is always extraordinary, even to me sometimes. I'm like, really? Where did you come up with that? Go to Goodreads.com. Tell your mother-in-law to go to Goodreads.com tell your mother-in-law

to go to goodreads.com for just christmas linkedin.com for just christmas youtube.com for just christmas and uh christmas one at the tickety-tockety today we have a doctor on the show we're gonna learn stuff there's gonna be brain brain stuff going on and health stuff going on and it's gonna be awesome uh today we're joined by dr amy newsle on the show she's an mthfr and epigenetics let me uh do that wrong epigenetics you got it there you go i flunked second grade as most of my audience knows over 15 years and i've never been able to overcome it uh so there you go. She is a naturopathic doctor who became an MTHFR and epigenetic expert because of her own MTHFR mutation. She addressed this issue and was trying to work with it and it gave her such a great health gains.

She had to share the wealth. MTHFR is a genetic variance on how folate is activated that affects neurotransmitter formation, antioxidant balance, cellular energy, DNA, methylation. I think methylation. I think I did that once. You can add syllables. It's okay. We accept that. I mean, it makes us sound smarter, right? Cell division, reproduction, and personality. I'm having some folate in my coffee right now. Go for it. Stock up.

There you go. Amy works one-on-one and in group formats with clients to help them optimize the genes they were born with. Mine were Levi's. She is passionate about educating people about the role of gene mutations in health, mental health, and even personality. I'm not sure she can help my mental state.

Maybe she will. I don't know. She also loves to share knowledge about the difference between different forms of folate, the risks and benefits of food fortification with folic acid, and the problems related to MTHFR,

including hormone imbalance mental health issues and fertility does it will it help with stupidity i'm asking for a friend just for for a friend right yeah yeah you know i don't know i mean it's it's kind of linked to everything which is the crazy part but there's definitely brain fog so yeah i'll send you some there's hope for me uh stupidity or the or the uh exfoliate um have fully exfoliate we should probably differentiate the differences there one one uses a loofah and one's uh i don't know so we're going to find out more about this as we dig in but in the start here amy give us your uh dot com so people can find you on the interwebs. It's tohealthwiththat.com.

To health with that. That's right. That's what I said about salad. No, I'm just kidding. Salad's good for you people. So let's get into it. Give us a 30,000 overview of what you do. You know, it's really interesting because I kind of stumbled into this backwards, right?

When I found out about my own mutation, which I found out about from a patient, long story. But what I really do is take the little bits of people that aren't working, right? In their genes, the little bits that are not ever going to be very good and make them better, right? And MTHFR is one of those bits that I really like to focus on because it's like the silent puppet master behind so many functions. So, you know, we think of folate, whatever. It's a vitamin. Who cares? Right.

People know about it for pregnancy. Good. But it does so many things. Right. So it's linked up to like neurotransmitters, to hormone levels, to mood, to personality, to energy levels, to oxidative stress and how well your antioxidants work. Right. And so it's doing all of these things behind the scenes. And usually when people come to me, I mean, these days they've usually found out they have an MTHFR mutation, but historically it was with this whole weird hodgepodge of symptoms that didn't seem to link together with anything, right? So I've been to doctor after doctor after doctor trying to figure out what the hell's going on because it doesn't make sense, right? I have depression and I have endometriosis and I have, you know, crazy hormone swings and I have all this stuff going on, but none of it links.

Like actually it's just, nobody really knows about this weird little link. Wow. So what is a folate? Is that the thing that comes off when you exfoliate in the shower with the loofah? Is that what it is? That's right. I'm the loofah queen. The loofah queen.

Loofah queen. Just so you know. Can I sell this folate for money and I just go in the shower and make me 50 bucks or something yeah no problem um so folate is actually one of our basic vitamins it's called vitamin b9 but nobody calls it that the one most of us are familiar with is folic acid right which is in everything right like folic acid is in bread, it's in pasta, it's in all of the vitamins, the energy drinks, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Ironically, people with an MTHFR deficiency actually can't use the folic acid form. It

interferes with the functioning of MTHFR even more. And so that's a huge thing, right? Because so say women with repeat miscarriages and they're struggling with infertility, the doctor gives them a massive dose of folic acid trying to overcome that. But if you have an MTHFR mutation, that's actually going to push you further away from having a baby. Wow. That explains why I don't have kids. Too much folic acid. Too many lufas laying around. Yeah.

I mean, it's just crazy, right? And people aren't yet really making these connections. And so now we're getting to the point where a specialist, if you go to a reproductive specialist or something like that, they will test your MTHFR. But we're not yet at the point where the research on folic acid is sufficient enough for them to stop using that. So we've got this sort of problem, right? Where the research is coming. It's there. We've got some really, really promising early studies, but what we don't have is a big enough body of research to actually change the way medicine happens so we just need to get the word out there you go the mth and is this this

is a dna uh strand issue uh it is uh and and can i sue my parents over this for giving it to me no sue crazy aunt betty actually. Crazy Aunt Betty? That's right. What did Aunt Betty do? Well, it's the crazy ones that have the MDHR. It sounds like people I've dated on my Tinder profile. Yeah, sorry about that. We're out there. Yeah, no, it's just a gene variance.

It's not like this big, massive mutation. It's a variance that makes the enzyme slower. So the enzyme still works, just not as well. And boosting performance can actually help us to feel better. There you go. Has anyone said to the people who name this MTHFR that it sure sounds like a swear word? Yeah, it's been mentioned. It's also been mentioned how appropriate that feels to those of us in the community.

So maybe that's why they chose that. You know, it could have been some very thoughtful. This darn gene, eh? Right. And what it does. So how many people have this condition and have this gene mutation? You know, it's actually kind of surprising. The research suggests that up to 50% of the U.S. population has one or more bad copies, which is massive.

I mean, that's half of us out there, right? Walking wounded. I'm suing my parents. Suing them. I'm already suing them for, I don't know. I don't have a joke for that. But everything else they did. Yeah. I didn't,

I didn't, somebody sued their parents cause they didn't want to be brought in this world. And I'm like, you forced me into it. Yeah. It's insane. There's crazy.

So 50% of people, how do you, how do you know, what are some identifying factors? I guess if I'm sitting out there in the audience right now, wondering if I'm a mother, I if i'm an mth think about 80 of america or the other but how do i know if i have the mthfr mutation you know it's hard to know but the my favorite way is by playing a party game okay so in this game, I want you to think of like your closest genetic relatives, your parents, your siblings.

Just count on, you know, fingers and toes. How many of those people have anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, pain they can't explain? How many of them have had reproductive issues? how many of them have had reproductive issues how many of them have had fertility stuff how many of them have had hormone stuff but mostly the fun part is to look at the crazy right how many of them are just neurotic beyond belief have depression have anxiety have OCD have any of this sort of thing. Because really that's where it's easiest to see. Wow.

You just described my whole family. My whole family has MTH. I know. It brings like family picnics to a whole different level when you start being like, Oh, red flag. Oh, red flag. Okay. Red flag. Yeah.

The whole family reunion gets together. You're like, how am I related To these people A lot of people are going to you know it's coming up We're in what are we in September Christmas and Holiday season is coming up where people Can get together with their family

So they can be sitting around them and go that's an MTH FR right there and that's Yeah it passes the time Right share the turkey, point out the crazies. Just put it on there like name tags. When you put the name tags like Joey sits here around the Christmas

table there, you just put MTHR123X4. You get a little red dot. Remember, if you can't find the crazy in your family when you're looking around the room, it's probably you. So true. That's what my psychiatrist tells me.

So what's the best way to diagnose this if you suspect that you might have this gene? Should people be going in for my uh testosterone check and also a health check uh for my men's health where they i don't know they just they they check they get me naked and go yeah you look like a man so you must be a man i don't know these days you never know um but uh for that actually and you actually all right well i can sue for being a man or not being a man or both no the uh the look test the look that's not above the level. Oh, okay. But evidently there's some sort of men's health test where they test your testosterone and they see if you have toxic masculinity.

And I already know we have lots of that going on, so we're fine there. But they basically do whatever they test for men, which is very different probably than what they test for women because we're not we're built differently um although i don't know these days all right let's move on from the the uh the segues there um so how do i test for this how do if i'm suspicious or maybe i just want to do a dna test because what i was alluding to was what i was thinking about today is maybe i ought to have like one of those DNA tests that, you know, tells you maybe what's wrong with you. But then of course, maybe I don't want to know. Right. Right. You know, honestly, my favorite way is to test with a home test kit, like ancestry.com, 23andme.com. A lot of these different like genealogy services will do a test kit. It's cheap. It's usually either a cheek swab or a saliva sample, right?

So you spit in the tubes, send it in in the mail, and there you go. There you go. Now, a lot of these services don't disclose MTHFR or don't really specify whether you have it or not. So if you've done one of these, then download your raw data, which they have to make available legally. So download your raw data which they have to make available legally so download your raw data it's pretty easy and then upload it into something called geneticgenie.org they have a methylation panel that will tell you mthfr and a lot of related genes and kind of get you started but you know the thing with mthfr if you suspect you have it it's not necessary well i mean it's helpful to test for it but it's not necessary you can treat as if simply because

what it means is having a better diet better lifestyle and taking better quality supplements so wait i have to have a better diet too now i know all the work right all the work so i have to eat the folate that comes off from the loofah that sounds really bad yeah don't do that don't try my audience but they used it after 15 years so um what so do you work with people to teach them how to improve their diet and what you listed before the their lifestyle etc etc i do for sure you know it's um i do i do work with people in kind of every sense right i have a podcast but then also i run a community for mthfr mutants like myself mutants um you're like dr x of x i know i know i'm waiting for the eyeball laser beams to come in.

That's like my deepest wish. Do you have a wheelchair that you run around in? Sadly, no. But yeah, so I have the community, but I also work with people one-on-one. And my favorite is small group coaching, which I think is just incredibly effective because then you have this kind of network of people who are doing it with you. You're peer support. Everybody's kind of encouraging everybody. It really works out well. Wait, group supports are supposed to encourage people?

We use group support to point fingers and go, this guy's the dumb one in the, this is the, that's where we do the Christmas table thing. This is the one with the MTHFR. That's right, red dot. You get a red dot. Yeah, you get a red dot. He's like, why me?

I came here for help. And we're like, we're helping. Shut up. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that in your group therapy, people. It's really bad. It's okay. That's how I got thrown out of AA and I have a restraining order.

So you work with them and are some of the things that you help them with, with diet and lifestyle, probably things that most people need help with anyway? For sure. For sure. For sure. I mean, it's really hard to navigate a good diet in our current sort of food situation, right?

Because most of us are carboholics and we eat, you know, nothing but wheat products for three meals a day. Right. I try and eat right. So what's the best way to find folate products when I'm looking at the Del Taco drive-thru menu there? Is it one of the tacos? No problem.

Let me walk you through this. Am I getting a good stab in the dark that maybe fruits and vegetables, maybe fruits are good folate? Fruits and vegetables are good, yeah. Beans are even better right like it's you know it's stuff that people know but they don't necessarily know about the folic acid piece and that's the hard part because if you have mthfr and say depression or anxiety then eating bread or pasta or cinnamon buns that are fortified with folic acid is actually going to make your depression worse or your anxiety worse, right? Or your energy worse. And it affects all of that,

huh? Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's just crazy. And so people, when they take folic acid, the fortified folic acid, the synthetic form out of their diet, even for a couple of weeks, they notice this just shift, right? Like this big change. And then when you start adding in natural sources of folate, which we can use with an MTHFR mutation, then it's like this whole different world opens up because suddenly their brain and body has a nutrient

that it's been lacking for pretty much their entire life. Wow. It's a big deal. Now, you say that you alluded to this earlier, but this can affect male and female infertility it does it does yeah uh we're showing mthfr men with mthfr have lower sperm counts worse sperm morphology yeah i mean there's really you know it's so it's male and female infertility both and especially especially if both partners are affected, I mean, we've got a double whammy.

Yeah, they both have it. Right? And with a 50-50 shot, there's a lot of couples out there where both partners have it. I'm going to start putting this in my Tinder profile. Anybody who doesn't have MTA, because, you know, I don't. But let me explain why I don't have children. Oh, wait, it's vasectomy. Never mind.

That'll do it. No, my dad did have trouble for three years. They tried to have me as a child. And I guess they had to wait until Satan could deliver Damien into my mother's womb. But no, they tried for like three years. It may have been an underwear issue, tightness. But they may have had that because, I mean, they tried. Yeah, for sure.

And I know a lot of people try i know a lot of people when i have a vasectomy tested every few years i go into the sperm donor clinic and they always call me and they're like really apologetic like hey i'm sorry but i have bad news and i'm like what and they go you have no sperm and i'm like yeah that's awesome and the dude's like what everyone who comes here usually wants to have that i'm like no yeah, that's awesome. And the dude's like, what? Everyone who comes here usually wants to have that. I'm like, no, I'm fine. There you go.

There's a lot of people that have to go to fertility clinics, a lot of couples. They want to have children. They're having issues. And this might be a big, is there any percentage of how much this is a factor on some of this stuff? I mean, it's really hard to say and it's hard to pin down but in women with what's called idiopathic infertility or men with idiopathic infertility which means they can't find some other cause right so infertility where there's not like a tubal blockage where we know they're ovulating, where things are happening, then there's lots of research that shows switching from folic acid to methylfolate, which is the active form, makes a big difference. So we have to presume that a lot of those women are struggling with MTHFR and a lot of those men are struggling with MTHFR.

My ex-girlfriends have always told me that i'm idiopathic idiopathic video okay one of those two uh so uh you guys you work with them to develop i guess for food fortification programs i almost said something else um and and how they can do stuff more now i know that women are more susceptible to hormones and hormone changes. Is this something that can help them with their hormones? I know a lot of women who are my friends that are in my age group, they're going through menopause and that's not the most funnest experience with hormones. Is that something that can help them as well? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Hormones are really linked into MTHFR just because one of the ways we detox estrogen is with methylation, which is a big part of what MTHFR does. Yeah. And so if you can't get rid of it,

then it hangs around doing damage, which is part of why MTHFR is linked to higher rates of like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, that sort of thing. So the goal is by actually working on this to reduce some of those risks, right? We want, we don't want that. We, none of us want that. That's a no fun future. Cancer is bad. Cancer is bad for everybody. I do not like cancer. Uh, but that's really interesting because that can really help people. So, um, why doesn't, why doesn't most doctors know about this advice on a check it? Are they just kind of running on autopilot? What's going on?

You know, not really. So we're in a weird time in medicine where we have all of this new information about genetics, but genes aren't considered diagnoses, right? So having a gene doesn't actually give you a disease. It just gives you a difference in a gene. And our medical model is based on diagnosis. So there's an algorithm to come up with a diagnosis. And then based on that diagnosis, they can legally give certain treatments. So if you're diagnosed with, say, blood clots, which could be related to MTHFR, they can treat that.

But they can't treat the MTHFR. It's just not, it's not in the medical model. It doesn't work. But if you come to somebody who's more of an integrative practitioner or an alternative medical practitioner like myself, then we're not as bound by that same paradigm, right? Like we don't, we don't have to stick to the American Medical Association's diagnostic and treatment algorithms. We have the liberty to go elsewhere, which is great. There you go. You know, this is interesting.

I was rereading your bio as you were talking, and you went through some health issues when you went through the strange health issues where you had terrible reactions to birth control pills, ongoing muscle and connective tissue pain. I've had girlfriends that have had that issue with birth control pills. And sometimes it can really muck up their hormones when they go off it, you know, after taking it for a while. Birth control pills, they can really, it just throws their system, and then they go back on it and stuff. And I know a lot of women suffer from, I don't know if suffer is the right word. I'm not a doctor, but they're not really excited about the birth control pills by some of the,

sometimes it affects them really heavily and negatively. Oh, all the time you hear about birth control and depression, birth control and anxiety, but that's a folate problem, right? So birth control is known to deplete natural folate, which is exactly what the MTHFR gene does. So if you have birth control and MTHFR, it's like the double whammy, right? It's a situation from hell where it just kind of compounds itself. So, yeah. Well, plus we can't detoxify estrogens very well. Yeah, it turns into this

whole giant mess. But it's really common in, you know, in the MTHFR community to not tolerate birth control very well. And that can be another really good red flag that you probably want to look into this. Wow, I'm thinking about how many people have talked to me about all these issues. And I'm like, I don't know, go see a doctor. But this could be the thing that does it. I didn't even know there was such a thing as folic acid toxicity. That's crazy, man. Yeah, the research is looking really icky for it, too.

Yeah, I'm going to quit exfoliating in the shower. That's right. Get rid of that loofah now. That damn loofah. It's causing all your problems. It's causing all your problems. It's causing all my problems. I knew that thing was a bad thing. But yeah, folic acid toxicity is actually becoming something that the medical sort of

community is talking about because we're seeing higher rates of cancer growth in people who get over a thousand micrograms per day. We're seeing higher rates of autism in babies born to mothers with high folic acid concentrations. We're seeing higher rates of food sensitivity, of allergies, some of the spectrum disorders. I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of some of the stuff that's scary, right? It's the big red flags that we're looking at for the future, right? Because autism is on the rise. Yeah, absolutely. That would be interesting, an autism linkage to autism.

I've got a few friends that have autistic kids, and it's a challenge. And there's all sorts of theories. Let me stress that. Theories don't run off on a conspiracy campaign, boys and girls. But there's all sorts of theories about what causes autism and how it's risen so dramatically. And, you know, I mean, all the different things. And it is interesting that you mentioned that it comes down to diet and lifestyle. So much of what's going wrong with our society does come down to diet and lifestyle.

I mean, we're eating some real crap lately. I mean, that's why instead of Del Taco, I always go to the Taco Bell menu because it has more foliate over there. That's right. That's right. It's a healthy option. Don't be a woman. Can I get extra foliate on my Taco Bell burrito there? Just a nice little sprinkle.

Yeah, just a little sprinkle. I have some on my steak later. So this has been pretty insightful. What have we talked about on the show that people should know? You know, I think the most important thing is, and we haven't really talked about this, but your doctor doesn't have all the answers, right? If something is happening in your health and it's not making sense, start looking around, right? There's so many things out there and MTHFR is one of them for half of us.

So I can tell you for me, it's made an incredible amount of difference in like pain levels, hormone balance, anxiety, quality of life of life energy all of the things so you know really don't don't rest when your doctor says no things are normal they might not be yeah i mean so there's a lot of times people go i know i know lyme disease is a big thing where if people have it and they were bit by a tick or they knew it or not um you know they can go through all sorts of myriad of things but i imagine this if you're having folic acid overload or you're unable to process it because your body right um then uh yeah there you go yeah that's exactly it i mean it's like the missing link that joins all these weird little symptoms

that don't go together. There you go. There you go. Well, this has been very insightful. So tell us any further how you work with people, how they reach out to you, how do people onboard with you find out if working together with you is a good fit, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. Yeah. Best place to look is the website to healthwiththat.com. You can schedule a free 15-minute meet and greet.

If you just want to talk things through, see what options might be good for you. But if you know what you want, you can also go ahead and schedule one-on-one consultations or group coaching. Or just join the MTHFR community and start noodling around and see what you can learn. There you go. And you've got the podcast to health with that mthfr mutations that's right uh so listen that uh this is kind of interesting i was reading the bio on on the podcast uh that this enzyme the mthfr enzyme is in bed with estrogen and uh depression are linked etc etc hormones and fertility um it sounds like, you know, it's a really big deal.

People should get to know more about. It is. It is. Do we get all your dot coms and websites in? I think so, yeah. Tohealthwiththat.com is the best one. And if you want to email me directly, shoot me a line. It's Amy at tohealthwiththat.com.

Nice and simple. There you go. Note to self, throw out the loofah. There you go. Don't worry about that. Thank you very much for coming on, Dr. Amy. We really appreciate it. It's been fun and insightful.

It's been an absolute pleasure, Chris. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Check your folate, acid, overwhelm, toxins. Just check yourself out. Call Dr. Amy and find out what's up. Or email her or text her or whatever.

Anyway, go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas. YouTube and find out what's up. Or email her or text her or whatever. Anyway, go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss. YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing's a joy over there. It keeps growing like a weed. And then Chris Foss 1 at the Tickety Tockety for the kids. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys

next time.