 We start with the brain and why this is important, because not that you have any mood and behavior issues, but if you understand everybody, if they understand how they perceive the world, the same thing that could be labeled as anxiety and depression could also be your superpower. I got into the Alzheimer's gene as a heart surgeon because this gene, the APOE4 gene, either the 3, 4, or the 4, 4, definitely increases your risk of heart disease. And there's no question about that. But we now know that these are modifiable things. And I have, for instance, I have a gentleman from Los Angeles who's now 98 years old. He carries the Alzheimer's gene. He drives to see me twice a year. He runs his company. His three daughters will not let him retire. And I assure you that he does not have Alzheimer's. And yet he's 98 years old and carries the gene. And you're right. These are not, this is not destiny. But what we're going to talk about today is knowledge is power. And your story, I think, is illustrative of knowledge is power. And I think I've told, we measure, for instance, the APOE4 gene in all of my patients, some people are reticent to, you know, have that measured. And boy, I'll tell you, you're much better off knowing you carry that gene because there are action steps to take care of that problem. Yeah. The belief has been, I don't want to know because I don't want to have anxiety for the next 30 years waiting for it to start. No, it's you want to know because now you know where to focus. I'm driving to see Dr. Grundy twice a year for what purpose? To work on something. What should I work on? Right? So your genes will drive what biological function do I not do well and what potentially could come out of that? So I need to support that. And if I support it to the level of the person that has the good version of the gene, I'm not getting the problem. That's all we're trying to say. It doesn't end at the bad gene and that's the starting point. Now that's where we focus. That's where we intervene. That problem shouldn't happen. Let me preface this with quite frankly, I don't endorse people running out and getting a DNA test because and I think because she feel agree with me that the vast majority of these genes, we maybe don't know quite what they do yet and a great number of them there at the moment isn't an actionable item that we can take based on those genes, right? When it comes to rare genetic conditions, unless there's some therapeutic that's going to come along to turn it on or off, you can't really do much. You have it, it's innate, but that's less than 2% of healthcare. 90%, like actually the number of our $4 trillion healthcare budget, $3.6 trillion is spent on chronic disease management, which you don't have to have. These are things where I have the bad genes and I made the right bad choices epigenetically and that combination led to the problem. That's where you can do a lot and truly of the 22,000 genes that make up this human genome, there's really only 100 that we need to worry about that are functional, where you can actually understand what they do biologically and then where to intervene and that's where we focus. It's like the less is more. The type of focus on what is actually actionable and that's what we're going to dive in with your results here today. Yeah, and that's why I wanted to have you back on because there are actionable items and there are things that we can know about. I'll give you an example. In a lot of my books I introduced a lady by the name of Michelle who's Edith Moray, I can say that now because she passed away at 106 years old. Edith Moray got 105 and a half, was walking into my office with a full head of hair and two inch heels, I kid you not. And she went to sleep one night, two weeks before her 106th birthday and that's exactly what I want to have happen. But she actually had bad genes and yet here she is to make it to 106th thriving on no medication and she taught me a huge amount in the 20 years I knew her. So let's talk about me. So what Kashif reveals today is not the exhaustive list of my results. I've asked him to share only the results that had actionable items that I can take to help with the issues the test reveals. Alright, so take it away Kashif. This is going to be fun. It's going to be fun for sure. You're exposing yourself like you've never done before for the inside out to genetic x-ray. That's what we're doing. We start with the brain and why this is important because not that you have any mood and behavior issues but if you understand everybody, if they understand how they perceive the world, the same thing that could be labeled as anxiety and depression could also be your superpower. What we're saying is neurochemicals drive your behavior. Genes determine how you handle those neurochemicals and now that equals how do you feel? How do you perceive? When someone says it's two out of ten, do they actually mean eight and vice versa? So the first chemical we look at is dopamine which powers pleasure and reward. We hear a lot about it, people on Instagram, social media getting dopamine addicted. We know what it means. So the way you handle that is really cool. That's unique by the way. Both for the binding and the actual sensation, the intensity and the duration for which it lasts. There's clearance proteins that we can measure directly for how long does it feel. You're in this kind of Zen state where it's the ideal exact amount you need to functionally go through pleasure and reward. Why is this important? Because most people aren't. Most people are on one end or the other where they're either overly reward seeking, so addiction, depression or potentially achievement depending on the context. Because keep in mind dopamine not only powers pleasure, it also powers reward. So ultimately, satisfaction. You can get satisfaction from either one of these, right? Most people also don't clear at the right pace you do. It's too fast, too slow. So they're either constantly jumping around and it appears to be ADHD behavior because it doesn't last long enough. So now they need the next hit or the next hit or they get stuck and they don't want to do anything. They always say no, no, no, but the thing they like, they binge. So you're right in the middle, which is really unique. One thing you're doing that's not so much in the middle is the way you deal with emotion, which is again, all of what I say in mood and behavior is not a prescription. It's more here's who you are now based on the context you're in. It could either be a crutch or it could be a superpower. And this is the perfect example of that. You are much more likely to bind emotional trauma. So whenever you go through negative stimulus, God forbid a car accident or fight or whatever, you remember the feeling. So the next time you see that person, it's kind of like holding the grudge, right? So can walk down that street again. I don't want to be in a car for the next few days because you remember the feeling. It's like starting off where you left off. So that could be a crutch for obvious reasons, PTSD. Like I don't want to do it. I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to be there. It also could be empathy, emotional intelligence, dealing with a patient at a deep emotional level, right? So you've channeled it in that direction because this powers both. All of these mood and behavior issues are superpowers that we put in the wrong context that leads to a problem. So the ability to bind and remember feelings can drive emotional intelligence, EQ, deep empathy to be a little care for people, or it can drive trauma and PTSD, depending on what you do with it. So we obviously know which way you've channeled that, right? Thank goodness. One thing you're doing quite efficiently, your serotonin response, which we find a lot of people especially that are high performers don't do so well, so serotonin we know of it as sort of your mood regulator. Here's how I feel based on what's going on in my over or under feeling, over or under reacting, both for positive and negative. And you sort of come at things as it should be, because you have these really nice, long, healthy receptors for serotonin, and you're really regulated in way you feel it. So what is the mechanism of that? Serotonin actually determines how you prioritize stimulus. Sound, noise, smell, and you do a really good job, meaning that right now we're doing this, we're talking. If somebody walks by or makes a noise, it may not even distract, you may not even notice. Whereas for some people, can you please stop chewing your food like that? Can you please stop ticking on the table? I can't focus. Can you please not walk behind me? I'm trying to work here, right? Because they can prioritize the stimulus in their brain. So again, the crutch and the superpower, the crutches, and this is not you by the way, this is the people that we see more often, irritable, distractable, appear to be attention deficit because they're constantly giving their attention to the next stimulus. So it's actually an attention superpower. It's not deficits that I give attention to everything, right? The same, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to stop here for a second, because we've talked about this off camera, about how this happens with you. Let's not make it just about me, because I think your story is great, because you in a way have the opposite of me. I'm quite the opposite. When it comes to emotion, I'm at the exact same level as you, right? We're doing the same thing there. And this is why I also found myself in a role where I'm caring for people. That's what I enjoy the most, right? But when it comes to serotonin, I'm completely dysregulated. I'm the complete opposite of you, which means highly irritable, highly distractable, or if I channel it into my work and I use it highly detail-oriented. Now, my dopamine pathway is different than yours, where yours then minus slim to none. I have very low dopamine receptors, so very sparse. It's hard for me to feel the feeling, and my clearance is super fast. So it's gone before it even started, which technically sounds like depression, like I don't get to feel good, or addiction, because I find the thing that makes me feel good, and I keep doing it, and I do it, and I do it, right? Or achievement. Because remember, dopamine not only powers pleasure, it powers reward, and all you need is satisfaction. You just need one of these two. So I went down that reward route, just socially needed to. I had to take care of my family, and I started working hard, and now I achieve, and I achieve, and I achieve. So I've gone down that route. Now, combine that with my serotonin pathway, which is dysfunctional. It leads to this high-functioning anxiety, meaning that I just constant burn every little detail. Everything matters. Every word that we said in the last meeting, I remember them all, right? Whereas you are more high-level, macro. Here's what we got to do. Here's the big picture. Now, team, I trust you, go do it, right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the big picture is where you think, and then you can do big things with that. But when it comes to crossing the T's and dotting the I's, you're probably going to miss them. Exactly. That stuff doesn't matter to you. So that creates, again, more of the Zen, which is for mood and behavior, a very healthy place to be, because stress levels are lower, anxiety is lower, all these things, right? So where you're doing something quite interesting, and this also speaks to the work that you do, brain-derived neurotropic factor. We're also different there. You are a little less efficient in producing that. So what does that mean? Ultimately, it speaks to neuroplasticity. So your brain's ability to develop neuro pathways, neural connections, how well do you learn? How well do you develop your skills? So somebody might say, well, then why is Dr. Gundry so good at what he does if he can't learn, right? Yeah. It's not that you can't learn. It's more that somebody who is suboptimal for BDNF is more likely to hyper-focus and specialize and do one thing as a true subject matter expert. Right? So they do that thing tunnel vision really, really well. Versus Jack of all trades like me, who has the optimal BDNF, I'm an entrepreneur who does the marketing, does the legal, does the accounting. I'll do it all. And none of it bothers me. I'll do them all at somewhat of an 80%, right? But you're doing one thing at 120. That's the difference. The other key difference is it affects your mood in terms of how much meaning and weight you give things, which also speaks to why you're so good at what you do, because not only are you connecting emotionally and you're understanding how people feel. It's not just about the intellect of what they need, but it's also how they feel and improving that, the actual result, making them feel better, right? It also means a lot to you. You truly care. You know, whether it's good or bad, whether it's small or big, everything means a lot. And that's what happens when you're BDNF is suboptimal. So not only do I feel that PTSD, but I also get what we call shell shock, meaning I can't stop thinking about it, right? That's what poor BDNF, that's your combination. But funnel that into the work you do. It's like, I'm, when someone speaks to me, they feel like they're speaking to a subject matter expert, a guru in the field, somebody that truly knows in depth the subject matter can really help me with it, right? So again, the good and the bad. The bad is if this was the wrong context, if it was trauma pain, relationship problems, it would lead to not only PTSD, but like a true trauma, shell shock, or leads to where you're at. I'm really good at what I do. I could really help people, people coming to me feel the connection that I truly want to help them. And I remember what's important to them because I give it a lot of meaning. It means a lot. I'm not the doctor that I need to read your chart to remember what we even talked about last time, right? I know. I know just like you're talking about these patients, you know their story inside out because it means a lot to you. That's a good point because I was actually talking to a couple of patients yesterday on FaceTime who don't live in the area. And I brought up something from, I think four years ago, about a family event. And they said, oh my gosh, you know, how did you remember that? And you know, it's like, that's amazing. And then of course I can't even remember to take out the trash that my wife asked me to do. So that is, I guess, a superpower that a gene that I have isn't very good, but I've used it as a superpower, right? Whatever path you set yourself on, you did it in your own unique way and you found success in that way. Got you. Not everyone has to reach the same goal in the same way. Now, can you tell my wife that because of this dumb gene, I'm probably not good at learning foreign languages. So here's the thing with this. What we've learned is that the day you start, you're going to fumble and seem like a bit of a fool, let's call it, like I can't do this. But the day that it triggers and you catch it, you will again on that do a better job at anybody. Ah, okay. But it's like, I have to develop these pathways. It takes me a little bit longer, but here's a trick. Now we talk about action, what do I do? So in my work, this is working for me. So I don't want to change it, but I want to go on vacation for a month that I need to learn Italian because we're going to be floating around in the Mediterranean. So whole fruit coffee extract. We know that whole fruit coffee extracts elevates BDNF levels. And for that month, you can be a different person. We know that sauna, hot sauna elevates BDNF levels. We know that people with suboptimal BDNF have an ancestry that's more equatorial. And so heat up regulates, but the hot shower in the morning, I'm sure if you were to expose yourself to heat, your mood is probably better than it is in the cold, right? Maybe that might resonate with you because BDNF gets boosted from the heat. So we now know this context, I need it for work, but now I got to spend a month with the wife in Italy. What do I do? And there are things you can do. When we think about behaviors, you know, I live in Palm Springs, one of my homes, and we have this expression, you know, I'm a desert rat. And so could that explain why some people are naturally attracted to heat environments? And here's another big one, vitamin D, right? And now we're skipping ahead, but this is important that you brought it up. So when it comes to vitamin D, it's not just I need to use vitamin D. All micronutrients, vitamin C, K, A, there's one gene that sort of metabolizes it, gets it ready for use. It gets it into your cell, right? Vitamin D is much more complex. It has three genes. One, take D2 from the sun, convert it into D3, put it in the blood. Step one, step two, and second gene is now let's move it to the cell or actually use it. There's like a transport job that happens. Step three is I got to bind it once it gets to the cell. So in that cascade, you're somewhat inefficient. So now keep in mind, yeah, keep in mind when it comes to vitamin D, it's one of the few micronutrients where if you have too much, it could be toxic. And so we have an ancestry that's not like the way we live. They were out in the sun most of the day, agricultural working. Now we're all indoors. You're in studios. We're not even the same city right now. We're talking online, right? So the world has changed. Meanwhile, our genes haven't changed, right? Our DNA is 200,000 years old. We are wired for the habits of people of a quarter million years ago. And the reality that we live in is what? The last 150, 200 years and really the last 50 years of the current industrialization pollution, all that stuff, right? So your vitamin D pathway, your transport is a little suboptimal and your conversion of D2 to D3 is suboptimal. So the solution isn't just take vitamin D. It's also you need to split the dose. Because if I give you say 5,000 IU of vitamin D, you can only use 2,000 of it because you can't transport it fast enough to use it. You can't bind it fast enough to use it. Of the 22,000 genes that make up your genome, 2,000 require vitamin D. So 10% of this human biochemistry that's going on all day long in ourselves need this one thing. It's so important. So this is why you enjoy waking up in promise rings every day. Because you're getting the fuel, you know, and now the combination of this and your poor BDNF also leads to suboptimal circadian rhythm, clock, sleep problems. Right? Yeah. So this is like not so much I wake up in the middle of the night, but more I can't fall asleep on time. If I'm not highly regimented and structured and I don't do things properly, if I screw up one thing, went to bed too late, too early, too much stress, too much TV, I'm not going to sleep properly. Right? Because BDNF is implicit in keeping your circadian rhythm clock going and moving along and your body knowing what time it is. Vitamin D, what our ancestors used to do is get out in the sun. And that utilization of vitamin D and exposure signaled to the circadian rhythm. So you're off for both of these things, which means you need to be a little bit more diligent about your sleep routine. Because if you're not sleeping properly, you're not recovering, you're not detoxifying, we know all what happens in your sleep. Right? So it's another area where we can multi-purpose the meaning of a gene and make it more actionable. BDNF is off, vitamin D is off, we need to work on your sleep. Both my wife and I wear an aura ring and not to slide anybody, I also have a whoop band. And so interestingly enough, you're right, I have a hard time going to sleep. And it's, you know, call it monkey brain or whatever you want, but now I get to blame it on a gene. And my wife can instantaneously go to sleep. I mean, it's just hilarious. She has no sleep latency. I mean, she has no lag time. And if one of our idiot dogs wakes us up at night, which is quite possible because we have two puppies, it may take me, oh, half hour, an hour to get back to sleep. She'll go, you know, she'll wake up and take care of the dog and then boom, she's right back to sleep. So that's my gene. Okay, what can I do about it? So what you should do in the context of sleep is in the evening, low intensity exercise, walking, stretching yoga, boosts BDNF levels. And the evening sauna, right? Now, one of the key things we could do, and this is a habit that we've lost. So again, I said our DNA is 200,000 years old. So for a quarter of a million years, what happened right before people slept as they saw the amber glow of fire? That was the standard. It was pitch black and you saw flames. Everybody, right? It's candlelight of fire. So that amber glow, we are still designed to wait for that signal to bind melatonin, right? That's the signal that triggers the binding of melatonin. And if your circadian rhythm is off and some people lie down, that's enough of a signal like your wife, right? She's probably even just thinking about going to sleep is enough for her. She's already ready when she hits the sack, right? So for you, it's like you need that extra signal, which means turning the lights down low, all these beautiful pot lights we have, creating that dim environment, getting rid of blue light an hour before sleep, right? Probably putting on an amber lens, a deep amber lens so that you're seeing everything from this amber perspective and you're getting that melatonin hit. Sauna in the evening also helps boost BDNF levels, but it actually starts as soon as you wake up. If you don't get your sunlight and vitamin D in the first 20 minutes, your day is not going to be the same because you need to start the clock. Sleep starts when you wake up, right? So those are a few things you can do. And then again, the whole fruit coffee extract we talked about, that would also help a lot. Let's backtrack. Let's talk about my heart. Oh, you know, I love my heart. What's going on? Am I a dead man? So far, it's so good, but... You've been doing everything right. And the interesting thing is that when we look at your profile, we see the things that you've been out there supporting and helping people with. There's a very clear reason why you got there, right? This was part of your own healing journey, and now you're sharing with people what worked with you, whether it's intentional or not, your genes are driving what you needed. So what we found is the inner lining of the blood vessel, and you know, I feel a little bit off making statements like this because I'm talking to you, who's a heart specialist, I'm not talking about the heart, but heart disease in our, from our perspective, usually isn't a disease of the heart. It's usually the arteries, right? So calcification, plaque buildup, cholesterolemia, that's all happening in the arteries. Eventually you get to a point where the heart is suffering because the blood's not flowing and, you know, that's when you get to your heart attack. So why the arteries? What's going on? We can determine genetically the inner lining of the blood vessel. It's called the endothelium, and there's a membrane called the glycocalyx which is not the best quality. Which means it's a little bit more open for inflammation, but something has to cause the inflammation. And this is the thing that you said, that you can live to 106 with bad hardware, but if you never stress the hardware, there's no problem. If you have bad endothelium quality, but you live in the Caribbean sipping drinks like that, like what you just did, and having no stress and sleeping properly and eating fresh fish out of the sea, you're probably not getting heart disease. Even if you have medium quality endothelium health, and you live in Manhattan as a banker with no stress and no sleep, and you're having pollution that you're breathing in, right? Then you have those inflammatory insults and all we're saying is you're going to get there a lot faster. So now, when we look at your endothelium, we know that it's not the best quality. We know that if it does get inflamed, your body's response is going to be to deploy cholesterol as a hormone to mitigate. It's like a Vaseline that smooths out the abrasions, inflammation, right? And we also know that the toxicity that caused the inflammation in the first place will oxidize the cholesterol, which causes it to harden and deposit. And then you get that perfect storm that leads to cholesterolemia. And all of a sudden we're looking at cholesterol numbers saying you need a pill, right? Really, the disease is endothelium inflammation. So when we look at why would you have inflammation, we found something really cool, which is your gut doesn't have a detox system. Oh, no. No, that's impossible. I have the best gut in the world. Not so. And this goes back to exactly how I started when you asked about heart, is there's no surprise the way that you heal people is the way that you heal people because your own journey led you there. There's a gene called GSTM1. It determines how you deal with glutathione in the gut. Glutathione is that hyperdetoxin sends the liver, let's get rid of this garbage, get it out of the bloodstream, right? So you essentially have no first line of defense of the gut, which means whatever's coming along with your food, whether it's a coloring, a drying agent, plastics from the packaging, whatever, heavy metals, it's getting it. There's no soldiers there blocking it. It's all getting it. It's going through your gut digestive tract, your gut lining. It's causing permeability to the gut wall, which leads to leaky gut, which eventually leads to leaky brain. Right? So what we're saying is that you don't have this first line of defense so there's a very big red flag into what would cause that inflammation. So there is a reason why this bad quality endothelium would get inflamed. And if you weren't doing everything right like you are, going back to what you keep saying, maybe you would have a very different health outcome right now. Not only would your gut feel horrible, would you have colitis and Crohn's and IBS and maybe some brain fog but you probably would also have cholesterolemia because you would have a reason for inflammation here. Now you've been doing everything right, which is amazing. Right? So this is where knowing where to focus is so important. But here's the crazy thing. Our database, now this is not population data. This is our study of 7,000 people. This is where our research was done. We worked with 7,000 people to understand why did they get sick. So we had their genome in hand and we had their health history and we worked with them for months. And this was the research we did for three years. Now of the people, now keep in mind we're talking about a population of people that don't feel well. So this is not a population data. This is more like if you're not feeling well, type precise data. 49% of those people had what you have. Zero gut detox. Wow. 46% of people, 50%. Only 5% of the people that we saw in our research phase who are complaining of some kind of chronic issues actually had good healthy gut detox. So now that tells you how important the gut is and the work that you keep talking about and why that's such an important focus and why people don't get. It's by stomach. It's isolated. No, it's not. Right? It's the center. It's literally, if you look at the toe, it's the middle. Right? It is eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. And how much of a threat is the current North American food that we don't realize? So it is a source of 95% of the people that we saw that were dealing with somebody were in the bad bucket, some more than others. So that tells you a big story. So now, what else would cause you inflammation? By the way, what are some of the things you can do here? If you aren't doing well with glutathione, the intuitive answer is go take some glutathione. Right? But if you don't have the genetic instructions, you're not instructing the glutathione and so some people end up feeling a lot worse. They end up taking glutathione and then they end up in bed. Why? Because not only are they binding on the toxins, but also the minerals and nutrients that they actually need and they end up getting worse. So we recommend for people when you're dealing with detox, whether you have your gene results or not, start with precursors and build your way up. If you're going to start working out tomorrow, you're not going to bench press 400 pounds on day one. You start with a bar and you keep going. So same thing here. Start with NAC, amazing precursor, selenium, milk thistle. These are amazing precursors to glutathione that do the work. Eventually build yourself up and then you can start getting to the glutathione and you'll know when you're there. You'll eventually get there, especially if you're working with a practitioner that can guide you on these things. So now another source of nutrition for you. Your mitochondria, your mitochondrial function is low suboptimal. So there's detox, there's toxins coming in. And by the way, just like we said that there's a first line defense of the gut, there's also a first line defense of the lungs you're doing okay there, right? That's why we didn't talk about it, but a lot of people aren't. So there's toxins coming in, there's also toxins we make. So your cells, all the cells of your body are constantly using oxygen to create energy in combination with nutrition. And in that process of converting oxygen to energy, there's a byproduct, there's a smoke, it's called an oxidant. And an oxidant is a free radical that's toxic. We can determine genetically how well you deal with that process. My mitochondria makes energy, what do I do with that smoke? Do I have a big hefty range hood that's sucking up all the smoke or do I have a block and like a troll, nothing there at all? You're somewhere in the middle. Which means, yeah, this mitochondrial function that's meant to do this job isn't doing so well. And so, if you're in things like oxidative stress, cardiovascular exercise, that would actually exaggerate your inflammatory health issues. Yeah, so a recommendation for you would not be to get on a treadmill and it's kind of counter-intuitive for someone that's dealing with cardiac health, go run, go to, no, for you, that's actually going to be the source of your information. You need to do more weight training and resistance training and your hormones speak to that also which we're going to talk about. And so, the choices that you make have to be unique to your genome so that you don't get that bad outcome. That's what we're saying. Mitochondria is not functioning properly. Doesn't mean you have to have a problem. It means you have to make different choices than other people. Let's take that information. So, my wife was a really good marathoner and I hated the marathon. But I became a runner and when I was at my worst health, fat, high cholesterol, I was running 30 miles a week because it was so healthy and I'm a heart surgeon and I was doing 5Ks and 10Ks on the weekends, I was doing half marathons and I was really unhealthy. So, what you're saying is for my prescription, for my genes, that was one of the stupidest things I could have done. So, yes, you could actually gain weight because of it. So, what happens when you're toxic? Your body is intelligent and resilient and wants to make you healthy. It doesn't want toxins floating around in your blood. Where does your body put toxins? In fat. So, some people, their fat problem is because of talking, nothing other than toxins. And they can run themselves through the weight gain. Truly. Like you just did, right? Or you did earlier. And then the recovery, like your wife loves it. There's a Zen feeling, she feels incredible. If your mitochondria is being oppressed with oxidative stress, then you can recover. The next day you feel horrible. There's lethargic, brain fog, joint pain. Why are they back at it and I can't even get out of bed? Because you're not wired for activity. That's the truth. So, for sure, it was something that seemingly seemed like the right choice, but for you was the absolute wrong choice. Right? So, now, some of the things you could have done, if the wife said, well, you're going to keep running whether you like it or not, then you can add a few supplements that support mitochondria. There's things like manganese that really help with mitochondrial function. CoQ10, we know is a cool factor. If you're on a statin, you're taking CoQ10, why? Because it depletes mitochondrial stores. You need it, right? Tochotrinals. Tochotrinals are a really unique form of vitamin E that is known to support cellular regeneration and cellular health in general. We've seen it reverse Alzheimer's and dementia in people. It really helps them develop new cells. So, there's a few things you can do there and there are mitochondrial support products out there now that didn't even exist a few years ago, specifically for this purpose. One other last thing I'll say about that, your mitochondria are not only an energy production function of the cell, they're also a communication system. If I touch my forehead, every one of my 50 trillion cells instantaneously knows that that happened. We don't have any engineering in the world that humans have made that is that accurate and powerful. How does that happen? Your mitochondria are constantly communicating to each other. If you're oppressed and you're suffocating the mitochondria, that communication system also breaks down. You're not resilient. You don't fight the environmental factors. You're not responding timely. The cells aren't fighting whatever needs to be fought. That's where things like viral infections like COVID may hit certain people harder because the mitochondria isn't ready to fight. There's things to consider beyond just how do I exercise, for example. It's interesting you bring up Coenzyme Q10. We in the last few years have been able to start measuring it in all of our patients. One of the things that surprised me, I guess, is that most people over the age of 50 don't make adequate Coenzyme Q10 anymore. It is the coenzyme for energy production. That's been one of the big surprises. There's something really interesting happening there. We've learned that as you age your mitochondrial stores deplete rapidly. Around the age of 50 is when it really accelerates. By the time you're 70, you've lost 70% of your mitochondria. If you aren't actively trying to support it. I am screwed. Well, luckily, as you know, I even write books about supporting mitochondrial health. What you're saying is all of these bad genes one way or another have forced me without me knowing it to look into the things that I should be supporting. The exact things that are making you feel not so well that you've helped so many people with because it helped you, and a lot of people are in this bucket, like I said. Especially people that are not feeling well. Those people like, I can't get, I do everything right. I listen to every podcast. I take every pill. I still don't feel right. Because that thing isn't what you actually need. That's where you've been able to help people. Now, we do know that when you are inflamed, when you've gotten to this point, which you're not, but some people may be if they've done the wrong things, that methylation is supposed to kick in. What is methylation? Methylation, we know it as the MTHFR gene. That's commonly what you hear out there. Do I have the MTHFR variant? That's a small piece of the puzzle. There's a cascade. There's a process that happens. This methylation process. There's two things. It's sending a methyl group to attach to a toxin to make a water soluble so you can get rid of it. That's one thing. Second thing is managing your gene expression. Your genes are constantly responding to whatever is happening in your environment, your nutrition, your lifestyle. If I decide to start working out, I'm signaling to my body I need strength and energy, so certain genes start working a little bit harder. That's gene expression. Methylation is a system that turns those dials. If your methylation is off, you're not efficient at adjusting the volume based on what's going on. You're constantly not in sync with whatever is happening. It may take you a little bit longer, a little bit sluggish to get the cat up. We do know in that methylation pathway, it's not just MTHFR. There's FUT2, FUT2, MTR, MTRR, SHMT1, MTHFR. There's a bunch of these genes that make this baton pass step-by-step of these jobs that they do. The tail end is MTHFR. For you, what we found is there's a gene right before MTHFR called SHMT1 which determines how well you deal with folate. You don't have the good version, meaning that if somebody says, hey, you don't methylate that well, go take some folic acid. It would actually cause you to over-methylate and you'd probably get a headache and quit. You actually need folinic acid because of this one gene. Where do I find that? So, it's actually not... So, depending what side of the board you're on, I'm in Canada, so it's a little more difficult here. You actually... It's considered a prescription drug here. But in the U.S., it's a supplement. You can get it. It's available. It's just not commonly sought after because when you think of managing your folate, you go for folic acid. That's the standard. But I can't tell you... Maybe I'd say a good 30%, 35% of people, it doesn't work. They need like you, folinic. And that's not where it ends. So, your methylation also is where your B12s kick in. And you are doing something unique there where if you go to a store today and buy a B12 9.5 times out of 10, it's going to be what's called methylcobolamine. Read the label and it's usually methylcobolamine. Because the assumption is you need something that's methylated because it's part of your methylation system and maybe this will be more efficient. And for you, the versions of the genes you have that won't work. There's two things going on. You need what's called an adenosyl, a very specific version, because your MTR and MTR genes are a little suboptimal. So they can't metabolize the methylcobolamine that well. You also don't metabolize it in your gut. You probably came from an ancestry that didn't eat a lot of beef. Where the B12 that comes from beef, you actually absorb it in your gut. Your ancestry probably ate more lamb and sheep where it's actually sublingual right under the tongue. That's why Grandma says chew your food properly. Because there's some nutrients that you're literally absorbing as you're chewing directly into the capillaries under your tongue. So you need this very specific sublingual adenosyl B12. And you take that and your anti-inflammatory processes start skyrocketing. And all of a sudden all these little nooks and crannies and brain fog kind of go away. Chew my lamb carefully. Yeah. There's that too. All right, let's keep moving. I can't believe I haven't died on this interview already because... Let me talk about that. So, you know, one person would say, oh my gosh, poor Dr. Gundry, he's screwed and he's got all these bad genes and it's just not worth it. Why doesn't he give up now and, you know, number one, why aren't I dead? So, I think what you're saying and what I've been preaching is that, yeah, you can have a lot of these bad things but knowledge is power and you can do something about these things, right? I mean, I think that's why we're talking about this. This is exactly technology's advance. That's what people need to know. A few years ago, it was genetics. Genetics is here's what gene you have, it means this, good luck. That was genetics. Yeah, that's what it was, yeah. Yeah, and now we have what's called functional genomics which means here's what gene you have which works in this system which means this is the biological function you don't do well, here's what you need to do. So, what we're saying is it's personalized medicine. It's personalized prescriptions. You can read, what is a gene? A gene is an instruction manual inside your cell that tells your cell what to do. Based on what type of cell it knows what page to read. If it's a hard cell it reads a hard section and so on. So, if you can read that instruction manual to the degree that we now are capable of, we weren't able to read it properly before, that's the problem. Now, we know not only what it's saying for risk, we also know what it's saying please give me. The cell is saying please do this and please don't do this and I will thrive. The same person that has the ability to have two chronic diseases by the age of 55 has the ability to live to 90 with zero chronic diseases. That's what we're saying. If you understood what happened, because guess what you weren't born with those chronic diseases. Why didn't it happen at that age? Why does the average American get their first chronic disease at the age of 55 and by the age of 65 they have two and they spend the last 15 years of their life in treatment. This is the average American because first of all, you're resilient when you're younger, but it takes that long to get sick. Your body will fight. Your body will keep fighting these things and eventually it's too much. All we're saying is whatever those things are that your body's fighting, let's eliminate them and let's then support the jobs that your body doesn't do well with the right environment, the right foods, the right supplements, etc. All in the context of today's reality, which is pollution, chemicals, food, stress, etc. You have to think about it in today's reality not a 1950s reality the world has changed. That having been said is here's my human genomic playbook to make sure I add 15 years to my life. That's what we're talking about. Let's add 15 years to everybody's life. That would be nice. Yeah, for sure. I think what you're saying and I totally agree with you is that knowledge is power and we know how to defeat these bad genes or at least keep them from causing the potential harm that they can do. Exactly. Let's avoid the harm and just be at our optimal. Speaking of harm, let's talk about diet before we go. Sure. Give me the bad news. Alright, well you interestingly enough we don't see this in a lot of people but you don't metabolize fats well. Oh no. Yeah, so how often do we hear keto diet, carnivore diet? Right? We also hear things like vegan diet. We also hear things like low carb, high carb. So what do I actually need to do? And here's the problem is when you make a shift like this straight vegan, straight keto everybody feels good in the first couple of weeks because you're usually eating pretty clean straightforward. You get into ketosis, the ketones firing, you feel good. It's a couple weeks or maybe well for veganism it takes a few months but for the keto diet it takes about a month you start to not feel so good if you're not a good fat metabolizer and all of a sudden you're sluggish, there's some brain fog, hormones get screwed up, everything you know so the system's out of stink. That's what would happen to you if you went on a keto diet you would actually get sick. You wouldn't feel well so it's not recommended for you. You also don't convert starch well into glucose to use as fuel which means that if you were to eat a carb starty diet likely lead you to type 2 diabetes a little quicker. You would also have this insulin response that would lead to inflammation which signals all these other problems like cardiovascular disease dementia etc. So you're looking more like paleo like lean proteins, greens and more of your conventional greens because what we saw in your FUT2 gene, the FUT2 gene which is responsible for producing the enzymes that break down things like beans, lentils, legumes, what you talk about so much you don't do that well. So there's one gene we can look at that determines should I be a vegan or not because if I'm going to go be a vegan and all my proteins going to come from green peas and beans am I giving myself gut dysbiosis and Alzheimer's eventually because of leaky brain or am I going to thrive because both are possible depending on your genes and in your case it's not the right choice. Your right choice is very clean paleo exactly if you were to go read a Dr. Gundry book talking about how to eat that's how you're supposed to eat and it's no surprise right well now that we find that the baseline if everyone eats somewhat paleo right it's kind of works for everybody but if you are a great fat metabolizer or if you are a great fat too and breaking down beans and lentils or if you are great with starches then you know you have a bit of a superpower where you can plow through that thing well you can be a carnivore and succeed you can be a vegan and succeed if that matters to you right so we can be pretty specific now for you when you know you're going out you're traveling or whatever and you just don't have the control and you may be eating starches there are things you can do like berberine berberine is a great supplement that you can take that helps you mitigate that glucose and starch pathway and insulin response and all that stuff you know so again there's never a prescription of too bad you have these genes it's like now what do I do about it I feel so naked here all my dirty laundry has been revealed and no I mean I think you've you've got a book coming out where you reveal your dirty laundry and you know good for you and I think the reason we did this today is not to say oh my gosh you know why am I still alive but I'm literally living proof and we've talked about this off camera that you can work with these genes and get a dog on good result so far right so far so good unless you have an actual genetic condition you are born with something sickle cell syndrome for example you have it if you don't have that which is a very tiny percentage of our problems you shouldn't have it that's what we're saying figure out why it's going to happen a five-year-old child we can test a five-year-old child and give you that GPS to show them what's coming what trees fallen what detour to take right so that they get to that goal of 100 120 years of health spent of healthy life that's what we all should be doing if we're making the right choices and then there's just a discipline of I got to make those behavior changes and actually make the choices now we started this podcast with me saying look I have not recommended the big genetic testing for people before because like we talked about it was okay these are your genes you can't do anything about it have a nice day but the reason you know the reason I wanted to go now twice because you've taken a different approach and I really appreciate that approach and that is okay these are actionable item genes these we now know you can deal with and I you know I think that's why this information is important and that's why I wanted to share you know my stuff with folks this next one is sure to surprise you bread is loaded with sugar there are actually 4 teaspoons of sugar in every slice of bread