The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 24. COMT Gene Mutation: How to Supplement For Better Sleep and Reduced Anxiety | Ultimate Human Short with Gary Brecka
Episode Date: January 4, 2024Get weekly tips from Gary Brecka on how to optimize your health and lifestyle routines - go to https://www.theultimatehuman.com/ For more info on Gary, please click here: https://linktr.ee/thegarybre...cka ECHO GO PLUS HYDROGEN WATER BOTTLE https://echoh2o.com/?oid=19&affid=236 BODY HEALTH - USE CODE ULTIMATE10 for 10% OFF YOUR ORDER https://bodyhealth.com/ultimate Do you struggle with racing thoughts at bedtime, perfectionism, or sensitivity to sounds and textures? Gary Brecka and Sage Workinger discuss how a common genetic mutation called COMT can cause these issues and more. COMT, scientifically known as Catechol-O-methyltransferase, is known to cause estrogen imbalance and can lead to fatigue, anxiety, and a variety of other symptoms. Tune in to learn the exact supplements that helped Sage finally get a good night's sleep, feel less stressed, and how addressing this mutation could change your life, too! 00:45 - What is the COMT gene mutation? (Catechol-O-methyltransferase) 01:45 - How does COMT effect in your body? 02:30 - Sage Workinger talks about her personal struggle with the COMT mutation. 04:11 - What causes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? ( OCD ) 08:45 - Can COMT impact excess estrogen and stomach bloating? 15:30 - How to treat COMT. 16:15 - Why Sage avoids Green Tea. 18:00 - Recommended supplements for treating COMT. 19:50 - What type of B-Vitamin helps the most? Gary Brecka: @garybrecka The Ultimate Human: @ultimatehumanpod Subscribe on YouTube: @ultimatehumanpodcast The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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hey guys welcome back to the ultimate human podcast where we go down the road of everything
anti-aging longevity optimal health biohacking and everything in between my guest today actually
i don't think i should call her a guest.
Should I call you the co-host?
Yes.
Co-founder?
Okay.
My co-habitator.
You're the best thing that ever happened to you?
The best thing that ever happened to me, my wife, Sage Workinger.
Soon to be.
Soon to be, Sage Brekka.
In any case, today's podcast is about the genetic mutation COMT.
We spend a lot of time talking about genetic methylation, you know, this process of how the body takes raw materials that enter the human body and converts it so that if you're listening and you have these types of
characteristics and you've just accepted it as a consequence of aging or a consequence of
your lifestyle or your career or your diet or what have you, it may not be a consequence of
any of those things. It may simply be a consequence of missing raw material in the human body. And the reason why we chose this gene
is because someone to my right has this gene mutation. Someone to my left does not,
which is why we are like the opposite when it comes to personality. So let's talk about what
COMT, which stands for catechol-O-methyltransferase. That's not important. What this gene really controls
is it controls a few things. Number one, it down-regulates a category of neurotransmitters
called catecholamines. Now, that might not sound like a big deal, but catecholamines are
fight-or-flight neurotransmitters. And when they rise in the brain, they create a waken state.
If they rise to a very high level, they create a frightened
state, an anxious state, or they could even create a fight or flight response. And so if we have
impaired ability to regulate these, then there are certain consequences. And some of the other
things that it affects are estrogen metabolism. We're going to talk about estrogen. So let's just
talk about your journey with this gene mutation before we even knew
that you had this, this genetic mutation, like what kind of things were going on?
Oh, so many fun things such as one weird topic that I don't think I ever, I'm 45 years old.
I don't think I've ever shared this with anybody, but before I started to supplement for my genetic breaks, of which I have many, I would fall asleep.
Well, I would try to fall asleep.
And then as soon as my head hit the pillow, even if I was exhausted from the day and thought I'd sleep so well, my mind would turn on and I would have show tunes.
Songs that I don't.
Really?
Yeah, I don't even go to Broadway Broadway plays but I'd have these show tunes just
running through my head or a song I heard on the radio or and I and I would have that all throughout
the day too and I just sort of thought that was normal so I until I started talking to people that
don't have this gene break and they're like you don't have show tunes in your head at night that's That's weird. And then I just, I overthink everything.
No.
I know.
No.
I'm a worst case scenario person, which sucks.
What?
When there's a knock on the door and you think it's a murderer?
Every time.
Yes, every time.
There was that meme that was so funny where it was like a knock on the door and it's either a murderer or maybe the positive thinking book I ordered on Amazon.
Yeah.
That's both you. It's me to a T. But I over, I'm a, I'm a perfectionist. I have,
I have OCD, but you know, the more I read about OCD, it's not like the light switch flipping on and off kind of OCD, but it's, I like things in their place. I like things very organized.
I like my phone charger where my phone charger is supposed to be. And I hate it
when somebody to my left moves it out of place on a regular basis.
Yeah. And you know, when we put some science behind what could be causing,
what is obsessive compulsive disorder? Like what is OCD or compulsive neatness? I mean,
when we lack organization in the mind, we crave organization in our outside environment,
because it's one less thing that we have to deal with, one less disorganized thing we have to deal with.
So a lot of people listening to this podcast will go, wow, I might have that gene mutation because when I go to study or work on a project, not only does the desk I'm working on have to be clean, but the room the desk is in has to be clean. It's hard for me to work from home because if I see a pile of dishes in the sink
or I know there's laundry to be done,
I feel like I have to get those things done
even though that literally is not anything
I need to deal with on that day.
But once I take my vitamins,
then I recognize what needs to be put first.
I need to get my emails done or phone calls made
and not worry about the laundry.
I can do that later.
But it is hard for me.
I actually have to work on that every day, whereas you don't ever do that at all.
No, dishes don't bother me.
You don't ever worry.
Neither does laundry.
In fact, not a lot bothers me.
No.
Yeah.
So I don't have this gene mutation, one of the other consequences of these excess catecholamines is that as your environment quiets, your mind wakes up.
And it wakes up like all night long.
And so what does this mean?
It means that you're body tired, but your mind awake.
And I always talk about the kind of things that are going through your mind are the most innocuous little thoughts.
Stupid stuff.
It could be really important things too.
Like I stress a lot about the things that need to get done or things I didn't get done.
Where nothing is particularly pressing, like in your business or your career,
your relationship, you might find yourself thinking about,
did I get everything on my grocery list today?
Did my outfit match my shoes?
You know.
I definitely don't care about that, but yeah.
It's never a worry. But these are always innocuous little thoughts that could easily wait until the
next day. They don't need to be solved in that moment, but they're keeping your mind awake.
And so once we start to put some framework to understanding, well, how is it that I'm body
tired and mind awake? It's that these
excess catecholamines, this category of neurotransmitters, fight or flight neurotransmitters,
ephedrine, ephedrone, epinephrine, or what we also call adrenaline, and dopamine. And when we don't
down-regulate these, the mind's in an awakened state. Sometimes it's difficult to understand that we don't just
create thought, but we also dismantle thought. We actually break thought down. If not, we would
always be thinking the same things or we'd always be in the same mood. And so if we have a slow
process of degrading thought, transferring catecholamines, I mean, transferring methyl
groups from the category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines, I mean transferring methyl groups from the category of neurotransmitters
called catecholamines, if we're slow at this, then the mind's in an awakened state. And not only is
the mind in awakened state, but it's thinking and it's running through this loop. So like,
what are some of the things that you do to address that? Because if somebody's listening to this and
they go, okay, great. I really identify with her. I've got the show tunes. I've got the waking mind at night. I'm a perfectionist too.
I have the perfectionism.
Yeah.
I always say when I do a lab review of someone and I help them understand their Comp T break,
I always try to show the good side of it because it really is a difficult gene break to have mentally.
I always try to tell them that usually these are very successful entrepreneurs.
They can't work for anybody else. They have a hard time, you know, taking direction. They hate,
we hate to be micromanaged. If you try to micromanage me, I'm out. Oh yeah. I've tried.
Yeah. It doesn't work. Um, so that's why we have to work for ourselves. And so that's a good sign
because usually people become more successful that way.
They're also very dependable. They're very reliable. They're very thorough.
Very thorough.
They're the kind of people you want in your corner. You want them on your team.
They're very intuitive.
You want them in your group project when you're in school and you want them on your team when
you own a business. If I look at somebody's gene breaks when they start with 10X Health,
after three months, when
somebody's with us 90 days, we actually give them the gene test. We provide that for them. And I
like to look at employees' genetic reports because it helps me understand them. It helps me understand
what they're thinking, what they're doing, how they react to things, and I can just communicate
with them better knowing their personality.
You know, the other thing that I wanted to mention before we give some specific supplement
recommendations is, you know, early on when we were pulling your lab reports and looking at
hormones, nutrient deficiencies, blood sugar control, one of the things that always would
pop up was this mild elevation in estrogen.
It always seemed to be slightly estrogen dominant.
And you're extraordinarily fit, lean, you know, amazingly fit.
Thank you.
And.
I got abs for days.
Actually, she does have abs for days.
She has one of the greatest midsections any woman I've ever seen.
But when I was going through a period of time where I was taking the wrong vitamins you had this little this gut yeah it was a bubble
um which turns out is the estrogen band right in my lower section right below the belly button
moving laterally around to the flanks and then back around towards like the kidneys
and this particular area will drive women crazy we've had so many women come into the
clinic and talk about gosh i just don't get it guys i'm not eating i have a cup of black coffee
in the morning um i wake up fast you know i go to orange theory for 55 minutes i've been doing that
five days a week for three months i haven't lost a single pound like what is going on yeah and when
you look at their hormones, you realize
that they're estrogen dominant, meaning their estrogen is out of ratio. So it's retaining water
in what we call the interstitial space, that space between cells. And it has a tendency to gather
right below the belly button, laterally around to the flanks. But you also look at this COMPT,
the C-O-M-T gene mutation, and you realize it plays a magnanimous role,
a very important role in estrogen metabolism. It sends estrogen down what's called the E2 pathway
to help it get rid of it. And if we can't get rid of estrogen, especially women, it rises and it
causes this water retention. So these poor women that think they're fat are actually just retaining water. And so if you have some of these personality characteristics,
very organized, obsessively neat, detail-oriented,
maybe people tease you about having OCD,
you have this waking mind at night.
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forward slash ultimate and now back to the ultimate human podcast you know what another
symptom too is sensitivities to texture sound heat loud noises she does yep um we had this bed
in our house that you thought i mean
you nerded out on it you were like this is the greatest thing i've ever all the hydraulic lifts
and everything no the one with the loud loud sound the vimibed oh now the majority of our
clients love it it like even you would lay on it bed It's a meditation bed. Yeah, meditation. It uses vibroacoustics, red light therapy, PMF.
But we had it out in kind of the living room den area of the house.
And if somebody got on it, it reverberated through the entire condo.
You hated it, I remember.
I hated it so much.
But you thought I was being dramatic until Pete Vargas came over.
And he hated it too.
That's right.
Remember?
And you had the same gene break.
And I was like, see?
Pete knows. Pete, I'm not? And you had the same gene break. And I was like, see? Beat knows.
Beat, I'm not crazy.
And then you read about it.
Remember when you were in L.A.?
I read about the hyperacuity.
And then that was when it like put it all together.
Why does she get crazy?
You don't like a lot of bright lights, loud music.
I don't like a lot of people either when it's like too overwhelming and there's too many people talking.
And I just, I have to back out. See, I love that, but you don't like a lot of people either when it's like too overwhelming and there's too many people talking. Right.
I just, I have to back out.
See, I love that, but you don't.
No.
So knowing that you might have some of these characteristics, right?
So somebody's listening and they go, wow, I lay my head on the pillow, my mind wakes up.
I've got the show tunes and the active mind.
And I don't know what my hormones are, but I do seem to have this estrogen band.
And because I have these other characteristics, maybe I have this gene mutation.
If you get tested for this gene mutation and you are positive for it,
it's not the end of the earth.
It's actually a very common gene mutation.
Makes so many things make sense.
Yes.
It's really helpful to know.
And so what have you done to mitigate it?
Because now you're sleeping better.
Your hormones are perfectly in balance.
You clearly don't have estrogen dominance anymore.
I certainly don't notice the level of obsessiveness that you had before.
The big thing in my diet was that I had to get rid of green tea.
Green tea, everybody's like, it's so healthy.
It is.
It's a wonderful tea if you don't have a CompT gene break.
It's the quercetin in the green tea.
So that's what it is.
It's quercetin.
Because I know then specifically you can't have quercetin.
Cannot have quercetin.
So during COVID, I recognized that a lot of doctors were prescribing quercetin for their patients and recommending elderberry as a supplement.
Those are terrible for comp T breaks.
To boost your immune system. And if I had elderberry, quercetin, and a green tea,
you can guarantee that I'd have a panic attack and lose my mind.
No question.
Definitely I would not sleep. There was, I remember looking back that I had a green tea
because you were green tea obsessed for a while.
Right.
And you were at the Ritz-Carlton one night with some patients.
Yes. And you were like, oh, it's good. You drank it green tea obsessed for a while. Right. And we were at the Ritz-Carlton one night with some patients. Yes.
And you were like, oh, it's good.
You drink it right before you order your food.
Yes.
Remember I drank it and I did not go to sleep until 8 o'clock in the morning.
I remember that.
And I was like, why in the, it's not something I regularly drink, but, and I definitely don't
drink caffeine at night, but it affected me way more than if I had had a coffee.
Yeah.
And quercetin, which is commonly found in almost all green tea and elderberry.
Elderberry.
And people take quercetin supplements.
If you have this genetic break, you need to be very cautious about taking quercetin because
it will make your mind race.
It will keep you up at night, almost like a stimulatory effect because it creates this
wake-in-mind state.
And it can significantly aggravate the estrogen metabolism and further impair estrogen metabolism so that you become even more estrogen
dominant and retain more fluid. So if you think you might have this genetic mutation, I noticed
that Sage's routine is she takes methylfolate, 5-MTHF. For a while, she used a supplement called SAMe.
Which, I always tell people when I started the protocol, it took me about three tries to get it right.
Right.
Because we were learning still.
I think we've figured it out for a lot of people.
But if anybody ever doesn't have the perfect reaction to the supplements, I always encourage them to try to mix it up and to try
something new. And the addition of SAMe, Dr. Sarta kept telling me, I think you're going to
really do well on it. So I added it in and that first three days. Oh my gosh. I remember you were
like the happiest person. You were like calling me going, I'm the happiest I've ever been. I feel
great. I literally felt like this huge weight was off my shoulders i was so happy i
remember this i called you i was on 41 in naples and i called you you don't even sound like my wife
i don't even know what's going on but i am so freaking happy right now and it was the addition
of that sammy but it's not for everybody so it's very we don't ever put it on the first protocol
for patients we always you know see how they do with the other vitamin supplements and then potentially we add it.
But SAMe was great.
I take TMG.
Try methylglycine.
Try methylglycine at night, which helps me methylate better.
I take a sleep formula pill.
Our formula is melatonin, magnesium, and theanine, which I love.
And then my trick is to take 5-m five methylfolate at night as well because i have
an mthfr break so that helps me quiet my mind and get into bed she powered through the night last
night i don't even i don't think you got once last night it was glorious glorious um but you know
having this sleep routine with methylfolate magnesium theanine and melatonin um you know
and the trimethylglycine during the day.
Which you can take during the day or at night.
Yeah, you usually take it in the morning.
But the interesting thing is something as simple as regular supplementation
to support a genetic deficiency, a nutrient deficiency,
can make all the difference in the world in the entire trajectory of your life.
So many of you that are listening to this have these tiny little anchors off your stern
that you've accepted as a consequence of aging.
It's either weight gain or water retention or brain fog or poor focus and concentration
or lack of short-term recall or waking mind at night
or you get up at night to use the restroom and you can't go back to sleep.
Can't go back to sleep, yeah.
It's miserable.
Those things are not a consequence of aging.
They are not something that you need to accept as a consequence of aging.
These are generally a consequence of missing raw material, deficiency in the human body.
And speaking of the raw material, so the B12 specifically that I take, now I have a yellow CompT, which means I inherited it from one parent.
So I can get away with taking either methylfolate, I'm sorry.
Methylcobalamin.
Methylcobalamin.
Which is a B12.
Yeah, which is a really good B12.
Or I can take two better forms, which is hydroxycobalamin or adenosylcobalamin. But if you have a red comp T,
which means both parents passed on that genetic mutation or that genetic break to you,
then you have to take hydroxycobalamin or adenosylcobalamin because those are the top
two forms you don't really do as well on methylcobalamin, right?
So you could put it, to make it even more simple, if you have the choice over B vitamins, you could take a hydroxycobalamin or a denosylcobalamin form and not have to worry about it.
Yeah, because everybody can process that.
Because everybody can process that.
And it's odd sometimes when we think, well, there's four forms of B12.
Three of them occur naturally in nature.
One of them is actually synthetic.
We can't stand it.
It's called cyanocobalamin.
That'll turn me into a crazy person.
Yeah, you need to get that out of your life if it's in any of your supplements. But
your sanity, your sleep, your lack of brain fog, your focus and attention, your deep sleep,
your non-racing thoughts, your organization could be as simple and as far away as some very,
very simple nutrient deficiencies. So I really encourage you,
you know, to get that test done for the Compti gene mutation if you have any of those symptoms
and begin to supplement for those and possibly change the entire trajectory of your life.
It will be a total game changer. It's changed my life significantly.
It's changed both of our lives and the lives of thousands of our patients.
And I don't drive them as crazy as I used to. This is true. It actually has made our relationship a
lot more calm. And I'm sure I have gene breaks that used to drive her crazy that are not anymore.
So if you've enjoyed this podcast, please don't forget to like and subscribe below.
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