Real Food Stories
The question of "what to eat" can feel endlessly confusing, especially when we contend with our own deeply ingrained beliefs and stories around food. Blame social media, the headline news, and let's not get started on family influences. Passed down from generations of women and men to their daughters, it's no wonder women are so baffled about how to stay healthy the older we get.
As a nutritionist and healthy eating chef, combined with her own personal and professional experience, Heather Carey has been connected to years of stories related to diets, weight loss, food fads, staying healthy, cooking well, and eating well. Beliefs around food start the day we try our first vegetables as babies and get solidified through our families, cultures, and messages we receive throughout our lifetime.
We have the power to call out our food beliefs so we can finally make peace with what we eat and get on with enjoying the real food and lives we deserve. Listen in to find out how to have your own happy ending to your real food story. Connect with Heather at heather@heathercarey.com or visit her website at www.heathercarey.com or www.greenpalettekitchen.com
Real Food Stories
93. Discovering the Perfect Diet for your Unique DNA Blueprint With Elwin Robinson
Unlock the secrets of your DNA with Elwynn Robinson, founder of Genetic Insights, as he shares his compelling journey from a personal health crisis to pioneering affordable and personalized genetic health reports. Learn how Elwynn's early exposure to health-conscious living, coupled with a life-altering discovery, led him to create a platform that empowers individuals to understand and take control of their health like never before. Discover how crucial insights from his genetic profile helped him discover the lead poisoning that led to severe digestive pain, anxiety, and weight loss, which traditional methods failed to resolve.
Elwynn delves into how genetic predispositions can determine your body's ability to process toxins, shedding light on why some people suffer more than others under the same environmental conditions. We also discuss the ever-important balance between genetic knowledge and lifestyle choices, emphasizing that while your genes lay the groundwork, a healthy lifestyle remains indispensable. Whether you're curious about genetic factors in diet, weight management, or overall well-being, Elwynn's insights offer a balanced perspective on navigating the maze of health information.
Finally, take a deep dive into personalized health recommendations, from diet and weight management to hormone supplementation and natural pain relief. Hear Elwynn's practical advice on using genetic testing to pinpoint deficiencies and tailor health strategies effectively. With real client stories and actionable steps, this episode is packed with valuable information for anyone eager to explore their genetic makeup and harness it for optimal health. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of how your DNA can inform and transform your health journey.
Where to Find Elwin
Elwin Robinson's Website and to find out more about genetic testing click HERE
Elwin on IG HERE
Links Mentioned in the Podcast
Genova Nutreval click HERE
I would love to hear from you! What did you think of the episode? Share it with me :)
Let's Be Friends
Hang out with Heather on IG @greenpalettekitchen or on FB HERE.
Let's Talk!
Whether you are looking for 1-1 nutrition coaching or kitchen coaching let's have a chat. Click HERE to reach out to Heather.
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Hi everybody and welcome back to Real Food Stories. So today I have Elwynn Robinson with me, who is the founder of Genetic Insights, which is an easy to use, direct to consumer platform that allows people to upload their raw DNA data from any ancestry service like ancestrycom you can get access to then over 350 reports with insights on health risks, nutritional requirements, allergies and intolerances, sensitivities and even personality traits. These reports are extremely accurate and include personalized recommendations unique to your DNA. So, elwynn, I am really curious to talk about this genetic testing. I know that it's become extremely popular now, and I did AncestryDNA and I did my DNA testing then through your company. So I want to just first hear how you got into the field of genetics and health and um and, and how it's influenced you yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Uh, lovely to be on this podcast. Um, well, I I was into health kind of my whole life, because both my parents are into it. Uh, my mother like did detox programs and stuff in the 80s, uh, and my father had an organic food store back in the early 80s, when it was very unusual. But long story short, after you know a lot of ups and downs, in my 30s I started to like have my own health practice and business and I was, you know, selling herbs and stuff like that. I had a couple of online courses, I had a book and I was really doing great for a long time until I hit the age of 39.
Speaker 2:And then suddenly I developed or I thought I was doing great I guess that's the caveat until the age of 39 and I hit some significant problems. I developed this constant pain, which I didn't understand, in my digestive area and I had the kind of all the usual medical checks and no one could work out what was going on. And uh, again, long story short, after trying a lot of different practitioners of all types, various types of mainstream medical doctors, alternative medical doctors, alternative practitioners of all kinds, because when there's a pain, you never quite know what it is. So chiropractors and acupuncturists and craniosacral therapists, and on and on and on, no one was really able to help me. And this pain would get worse when I ate. So I was eating less and less and it affected my digestive system and I'd always been tall and underweight. I was always being obviously six foot three and maybe 140 pounds, so I was always, you know, considered to be quite thin and, no matter how many calories, I could never gain weight. But uh, with this issue, I got down to uh 120 pounds. I was really, really uh. I wouldn't maybe go as far as emaciated, but pretty close it. And along with that came feeling really terrible. I couldn't sleep, I had constant, you know, severe anxiety issues. I felt cold all the time, my energy was abysmal and it basically just could barely work for a long time.
Speaker 2:It was really not a good situation to be in and again short eventually, after you know, trying so many things and doing so many tests and not really getting anywhere in functional medicine practitioners and this, that and the other um, I came across this service that said, uh, if you've ever done a genetic testing before, um, which I had, uh, back in 2013 this is 2020, then you can upload that information and get all this information about your health straight away. And that was very appealing to me because I tried all these tests and you have to get your blood drawn and it's very expensive and you have to wait for weeks usually for results for these functional tests and I was like, great, okay, let's see if it has anything useful to say. So I uploaded my data from 23andMe and I was blown away, first of all, how much it was able to tell me about myself. It was almost like going to a psychic in terms of you know just the amount of things that it knew about me. But what was really amazing to me is that it actually was able to help me understand what was wrong with me that nothing else was able to.
Speaker 2:You know, and I'd say there's, you know, two or three different factors, depending on how you look at it, that it helped me uncover and the fact that I had all these problems now, but when I had that um, when I did that 23 and me test back in 2013, I didn't have any of these health problems. So if only I'd have known this information back there and I could have prevented it, because it doesn't just tell you a risk of having things, it also gives recommendations for actually preventing them or reducing the risk of it manifesting. So, uh, yeah, we can go into what they were if you want, but it's a long story again so we might want to skip that. But, uh, you know, because of that I was able to do some testing, like actual testing, to validate that these really were the issues that were going on for me and, as a result of that, was able to resolve it.
Speaker 2:I still wouldn't say my health is perfect, because some of the issues I discovered were things that were take a long time to resolve, unfortunately. But you know, now my digestion is a lot better. I'm 180 pounds, I, you know, I feel good, my energy is good, I don't have anxiety anymore and you know all of that kind of stuff, and so I really credit that. And so, because of that, I was like this is so amazing and this platform was very good. But there were only there were two issues with it. First of all, it was very expensive, I felt, for the average person, and second of all, it was extremely complicated.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm someone who's been immersed in this health world for 15 years at the time, and still I felt it was pretty complex, so I could only imagine what the end user, like the average person who just wants to, you know, prove their health, might think of it. And so, you know, eventually I approached them and we, you know we made an agreement where I was able to utilize the same technology, which has dozens of AI engineers, dozens of full-time scientists behind it, but just produce a simpler and more affordable version.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it sounds like you had an amazing outcome with it. I mean that you really discovered things that did not come up in regular testing with medical professionals. And then, when you found out some of this genetic testing, you went and got validated by like yeah, I'll give one example, if you like, which was, you know, kind of the most crazy one, I guess.
Speaker 2:Um, so, uh, it said that I have an issue of detoxifying a heavy metal called lead, that I'm not very good at it and we'd already tested other stuff, like I'd seen a functional medicine practitioner who thought it was mycotoxins that were the issue, which I think is quite a common diagnosis these days, and that's kind of like when you react to everything and nothing. You know that was one of the other things I you know as a place where pretty much every food my body would have like this immune reaction to. So that was one of the other reasons I was losing weight. It wasn't only the pain and um, uh, but no one, no one had tested me for that. I don't know a hair mineral analysis for that, but it hadn't come up particularly high in that Um, and so I, you know, I bit the bullet and decided to actually test it, to try it, um, and it also said that I had a tendency for, uh, certain nutrients that I had like an increased need for them, um, some of them, things that people would kind of be aware of, like calcium and vitamin k2, uh, but some of them that I think most people wouldn't think of, like specific amino acids, like tyrosine and lysine, specifically. So I did a test that you're probably aware of, called the neutroval from genova diagnostics, um, and that included all of those factors. It tested for amino acids, the vitamins, minerals, and it tested for the four most common heavy metals. Well, the most shocking result was the lead. It was 27.5 micrograms per deciliter, 97.5 micrograms per deciliter when the reference range was zero to three um, and it's at the level 45 that the world health organization considers it a emergency, like you have to go to a hospital and get a chelation therapy.
Speaker 2:So then I went to my nhs, gp uh, which we have over here that's like the, the nationalized uh health care and I told them about this and I said could this be the cause of all my uh symptoms? And you know, because abdominal pain is certainly one of them, as you know, it was all the rest of them and he said yeah, it could be, but you know we don't trust any other testing other than our own. So I said okay, so I had to wait. They did their own testing and they came back said they didn't have as fine a measurement, but yeah, they said it was 20-something. So, you know, they kind of validated.
Speaker 2:And so I said, okay, so this could be the cause of all my symptoms. Yes, I said, what are we going to do about it? And they said, well, we have to remove the exposure. That's the only thing you can really do with lead. So then my wife was tested and my wife's level was almost nothing it was like one or something like that.
Speaker 2:And yet we were drinking the same water, breathing the same air, eating from the same calorie, using the same herbs, using the same supplements for over a decade. And so it turned out that probably, as I discovered later, lead has a half-life of about 20 years and your body stores lead in its bones because it mistakes it for calcium, as well as the cells in general, but especially the bones, because that's where calcium concentrates. And so I probably had for decades this poison right in the core of my body, in my skeleton, which was constantly leaching into my bloodstream. So it's like a time-release poison capsule in the core of my body, constantly leaching into my bloodstream. And then the even crazier thing is everything that is supposed to be good for you and healthy, like exercise and breathing practices and saunas and you know different herbs and supplements. All of those are like NRRF2 upregulators and things like that that cause the release, the increase of that breakdown of toxicity into the bloodstream and actually make you feel worse, which is why you know all these things I was trying. That people said is good for you would make me feel worse and worse and worse, because it was causing more and more toxicity to be released. Um, so that's something I don't think I would have ever discovered. Uh, without that? No, as I said, no other practitioner had thought of it.
Speaker 2:A lead test test usually is very unusual unless the person has had exposure working with it. Then it might occur to the practitioner to do it and, as I said, I still don't know how I had such high levels. And unfortunately, lead is pretty hard to deal with, as I'm sure you know. There are some things like EDTA and DMSA which are reasonably effective, but they have a lot of side effects as well. You've got to be very careful with them.
Speaker 2:So right now it's down to six, which is still above the reference range. It's still not ideal, but it's obviously a lot better than it was and you know, the symptoms have decreased along with that. And, yes, you know, there was a couple of other things. I think even the amino acids were, you know, significant as well, like tyrosine, because it's the building block of thyroid hormone and it's the building block of dopamine. And, you know, I think that was part of the reason as well why I was feeling cold and having anxiety and all the rest of it is because it turned out hypothyroidism, which I think tyrosine depletion was a one of perhaps the causes of that, along with, along with genetic tendency. So, yeah, a couple of little examples there.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I have a question about that, because I got my DNA tested through your site. So when it said you have a higher likelihood for lead toxicity, is that in your dna or were you just exposed to it? I?
Speaker 2:mean so?
Speaker 1:that's. That's where I think I got a little confused with, with some of the things that you know that came up for me and I'll and I'll talk about that afterwards. But, um, so were you exposed to let? You must have been exposed to it. Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 2:You have to have been exposed um, but there's a genetic variant. I mean, you're not as good as breaking it down?
Speaker 2:like there's one of those for mold as well. Uh, that's, you know, quite well known like uh, two people could be living in a moldy house. One of them is definitely ill, one of them is totally fine. So that's down to a few different genes.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, this applies to hormones, this applies to uh, you know um stress chemically, neurotransmitters, basically every you know enzyme in the body will tend to have a speed that it acts at. Some of them work quickly, some of them work slowly, some of them work in between, and obviously that's partly um as a result of epigenetics, so lifestyle and environment and the nutrients that are available and all of that kind of stuff. But part of it is also the starting point that you have that's based on your genes. So, yes, I would have had to have been exposed to lead, but, as I say, in the last at least 15 years we couldn't find any significant source of lead. So either the issue is exclusively that it was from very long ago, several decades ago, or it could um that even a moderate amount built up to very toxic levels, because I really was very bad at breaking it down, which would be genetic, and I expect it's probably some combination of those two factors I'm curious your parents did they have?
Speaker 1:have they had any of these symptoms? Or you know, I mean you, you grew up in the house that they grew, you know that they were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean my mother died when I was 25 of cancer and she had it several times. Like she had severe health issues. Um, they both had thyroid issues. My mother had her thyroid removed. She had cancer of the thyroid. Uh, my father had a goiter at one point. Um, I lost touch with my father so I can't comment on how he is now. But yeah, you know he had um me. So yeah, you know he had severe health issues as well.
Speaker 1:I can't say if they're caused by lead or anything right, yeah, you can't right there's, you can't prove that, but um, so that's well, that's kind of interesting information. So I want to just then talk about this genetics. We can learn a lot about our genetics, right, but how important is learning about our genetics versus just our lifestyle? Because we can get tested for genes that show you might have a more propensity for being obese or weight gain, or or that you can't break down certain nutrients. But what is what's the importance of that versus just living a healthy lifestyle? Because doesn't it all like a lot, a lot of things then just go back to, like you said, you know, like exercise, eating correctly, getting sleep, your stress right, it at all. There's like some commonalities that it all goes back to. But let's talk about just the importance of then genetics. So you, you must obviously think that genetics are hugely important based experience.
Speaker 2:But I can tell you philosophically it's not my inclination I can. I think you know, philosophically people tend to be on one or the other side of the spectrum. Some people are very much in the philosophy of kind of fate, like everything is just the way it is, there's nothing you can do about it. And they're the kind of people who talk like oh, my father had heart disease, my mother had heart disease, I'm probably going to have heart disease. They just accept that. The other end of the spectrum is kind of the personal development, self-improvement, kind of you know, law of attraction, manifestation, kind of crowd who are like I am the captain of my own destiny, I will create my own reality, I will, you know, make my life what it, what I want it to be. And so each of those kind of camps will tend to be drawn to philosophies that kind of back up their perspective. Right? So the fatalists like fatalist philosophies, the um, the, the kind of creative types will you know be attracted to, kind of whether it's bruce lipton type of genetic, you know, or whether it's tony robbins type of personal development, whatever, like they. Just, you know, that's what they love.
Speaker 2:So I was definitely in that second camp I was. I totally believed in your personal responsibility. If your life sucks, it's your own. You know something that you've created for yourself and my life did suck, obviously. So, uh, that's why, uh, you know, I think I really shifted my life from it being very bad to good by that mentality, so I'm a big fan of that mentality. However, I feel part of my process of maturity which I'm certain is still ongoing was realizing that, yes, you can create your own destiny to a significant degree, but you do also have to be aware of the cards that you have been dealt, for a couple of reasons. First of all, because if you understand that, you can mitigate a lot of the issues around it. So the lead one is a bit tricky because I don't even know how I was exposed to it. Let's pick the nutrient one, because it's a little bit simpler. If I know that I have an increased need for niacin or lysine or vitamin K2 or whatever it might be, having a deficiency of these nutrients is potentially extremely serious, as you know.
Speaker 2:And yes, it is possible to get enough from diet usually, but it depends what it is I mean. One for me, for instance, was choline. So choline, I was like raised vegetarian, I was brought up vegetarian. Even when I started to eat animal foods, I was only eating fish, and so you know, one of the issues, I believe, is that I ended up the actual thing that I had.
Speaker 2:That caused the pain which I'm not sure if you've heard of it. It's called sphincter of odd dysfunction, which is pretty unusual and very unusual for men, and it's where the sphincter between the gallbladder and the duodenum is uh, spasming and not releasing the bile properly, and part of the problem that causes that is the bile is too thick, so there's a situation of cholestasis. Well, one of the things that can prevent cholestasis, and one of the key things that is needed to prevent cholestasis in the early stages, is a sufficient amount of choline. Now, it's actually quite hard to get enough choline from diet, unless you're eating a significant amount of egg yolks or unless you're eating liver, or unless you maybe see certain seeds, sunflower seeds, stuff like that, but it's actually pretty tricky. And soy I guess Soy is the other one. But what about if you have a variation in your gene, which I do, the PEMT gene, which means that your body is not very good at creating its own choline, because choline used to be classed as one of the B vitamins and then they realized that your body can make its own and so something can only be classed a vitamin if you can't make your own. So they removed it as a vitamin. So, yes, people can make their own choline, but it uses up a lot of methylation capacity and, more importantly, some people genetically are just not very good at it.
Speaker 2:So I feel like if I'd have had that information early on, I could have either eaten the high choline foods or I could have supplemented choline and I could have prevented myself literally years of agonizing pain. Because I can tell you I've spoken to again it's mainly women who have this issue sphincter of body dysfunction but I spoke to one woman and she said it's worse than the pain of childbirth, and I can't refer to that, but it was bad. And the other thing about it is that painkillers don't work on it, like the NSAIDs do nothing, and then the opiates actually make the pain significantly worse for some reason. The mechanism is not quite understood, but I believe it's related to prolactin, whatever. So just knowing that I had an increased need for choline and that I was actually doing the opposite I was having a low choline diet right would have saved me so much. So that's something where it would be very helpful to know that I had a specific tendency and I had a specific need. Um, so, yeah, I hope that's one example that shows, like everyone you know, if you're really into health, you could say, oh well, people should know that they need choline anyway. So you know, fair enough.
Speaker 2:But what about if you need two to three times more than most people and it's already very difficult to get from diet? I'd say vitamin B1 is another example of that. It's quite hard to even get the recommended daily intake of vitamin B1 from foods. It's not particularly easy. Most foods are not very high on it, which is why 100 years ago, the government mandated that all grains had to be fortified with vitamin B1. But then, ironically, a lot of people who try to be healthy, like myself, they avoid grains because grains are bad for them, and then you're even more likely to end up with this vitamin b1 deficiency. So let's say you're trying to be healthy, you're avoiding all grains, you're not supplementing with b1, okay, and then you have an elevated need for b1 because of some kind of vitamin, sorry, some kind of genetic variation. Well, then you could be in a position where you have, you know, extreme issues with, uh, you know, producing energy which can have a knock on effect on almost any you know system, on the body. So, yeah, so that's one aspect. It's so you can prevent and resolve problems.
Speaker 2:And the other aspect which I think is really profound and has been for me, which is a bit hard to explain to people, is the issue of compassion. So, especially around like this is more like a personality kind of thing, um, but for instance, uh, I always felt very easily stressed and overwhelmed and like it was quite hard to calm down, and I was always really admiring of, and maybe jealous of, people who, no matter how stressful situations may be, they always seem to take things in their stride like it was no big deal. And then, when I did this genetic testing, I saw that I have slow COMT, and COMT is a gene, it's one of the main enzymes that breaks down the catecholamines, the stress chemicals adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine and the downside of breaking down the stress chemical slowly is that they build up and then they build up very high and then your body is not very good at breaking down. So basically, you're not necessarily more likely to get stressed, but you're definitely going to find it more difficult to calm down after you get stressed, and you can easily get overwhelmed. And that's exactly the experience that I had, and so I was always jealous of that kind of resilient person. But when I learned about calm, to what I realized and I, it turned out that I'm actually married to someone who's the opposite with me. They're fast calm to my wife and she doesn't have that issue. She can calm down easily, but she has a challenge with concentrating and focusing. And so you know, dopamine is actually one of the catecholamines and dopamine helps you focus. And so it turns out that you know having that fast comp, yes, it means that you are more resilient to stress, but it also means you actually struggle to like focus and really even enjoy life, unless you're in a stressful situation. So it turns out that actually, fast comped people are more adapted to thriving in a highly stressful environment, and slow comped people are more adapted to thriving in a peaceful environment.
Speaker 2:And it's not that I am better or she is worse or you know, the other way around. It is simply that each of us is genetically adapted to thrive in a different type of environment. That's a very important thing to know about yourself and to know about someone else so you can kind of understand each other's. Um, you know perspectives a lot more. You know, because I'd be like, why do you seem to like create drama, like, and and now I understand this because she needs a certain amount of intensity to actually feel good. I'm like and she's like why are you so boring? You know why. Why do you? Because I need a certain amount of peace to feel good, right and so, and also there are things you can do to speed up and slow down comps. You know, back to your point of there are things you can do, but yeah it, even though there are things you can do to optimize. I think it's really helpful to understand I have a certain set point. Someone else in my life has a different set point. Where I am is okay, where they are is okay. We can have compassion for each other. We can understand that we're different.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, carbs is another example of that. Some people do well on a high carb diet and even simple carbs are fine for them. Some people, uh, like my wife, uh, you know they have more hunter gatherer dna and they do better in a low-carb diet, and even complex carbs are not ideal for them. And you know, rather than arguing which is better, is high-carb better, is low-carb better, you know, let's just accept that we're all different and part of that is down to you. Know, there are other reasons why high carbs may not be good for you because you have a candida infection, because you have diabetes, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:But there may also be a genetic component to it and I think that's good to know yeah, I mean, as, as you're explaining this, yeah, it is all great to know that, that your wife and you have these different genetic tendencies and so you can better understand each other. And then there's just life, right? I mean like, then we're like hit with, like you know, life and circumstances and everything, and so it I I think that's my question is, how important is the genetics I mean? Do you feel like is?
Speaker 2:it. You're feeling that everyone should. How about 40, if you want a quantity? Okay, it's it's not as important, as you know, life and lifestyle and all the rest of it, but it is significant and you know, as you've probably seen in the reports, we often give a percentage. We'll say 20 of this is based on your genetics 40, 50. Usually it is about 40 to 60, but you know, sometimes it's significantly less. So how about 40? As an average? It's 40 important so it's.
Speaker 1:So it's good information, I mean, and especially if you're one of those people who likes to know information, you know about yourself, and that it sounds like it's good to help you understand where you might be coming from, right, yeah, so I did a couple of your tests. There's a lot of information in the testing and I appreciated that, but it's like, wow, you can learn a lot. And then I started to get a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of information. But I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2:Just to say our system is way simpler than the one that we were based off, and you're still saying that, right? So it goes to show my point about the original one. We gave you access to the limitless, so you have access. I think it said 350 in my bio, but it's actually over 500 reports now. So yeah, it is a huge amount of information. Um, we often recommend people to go just through category by category and a lot of people just get by one category. So if you want to lose weight, you just get the weight loss category. If you want to know what nutrients you might need more of, you just get the nutrient category, you know, et cetera, rather than, as you said, getting all of the categories, all 20 categories, which does is a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely a lot, but I but I am one of those people who likes information. I mean, I like to look at these reports and everything but a couple of them, you know. So what am I? What am I doing? I mean, you're you're explaining it now better, like with your story, but I know that there was one category like the pain category, Is that? Is that what it's called? Is it just okay?
Speaker 1:So I have a history of of back pain. I've had two back surgeries in my life. There's definitely, I think, a genetic component. My mother's had back surgery, my grandmother's had. I've had two back surgeries in my life. There's definitely, I think, a genetic component. My mother's had back surgery, my grandmother's had back surgery. There's surgeries, back-related surgeries, all over my mother's side of the family. So what am I supposed to do with that information? You know, like, what do I do? And then I think also what the recommendations were in. There were to take things like pregnenolone, which is a hormone which I where am I getting that? Or willow bark, and do you know what I'm saying? Like what am I? What am I? So I know that maybe that I have a genetic tendency for back pain, okay, so you, so you you did.
Speaker 2:You had a more likely in the back pain report I did yes okay, yeah, so it was confirmation.
Speaker 1:That's great news, you know, but? But? But now what you? Know, that I think that's where I'm. I think, just in general, I wanted to you know, ask you, you get all of this information and you know, like you said with your wife, information and you know, like you said with your wife, you can under, you know, there's understanding of of how things work and then how do I apply it in my life?
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so without actually seeing yours, you know I can kind of more speculate rather than like advising as if I were consulting you. But so you know, you said that there's a couple of recommendations just to answer those can kind of more speculate rather than like advising as if I were consulting you. Um, but so you know, you said that that was a couple of recommendations. Just to answer those questions. Uh, pregnenolone is sold as a supplement. Uh, it doesn't require a prescription or anything like that. Uh, pregnenolone is the master hormone, building block of all hormones. Um, there was a lot of research to show that it is very safe, even, uh, you know, uh, high levels a lot of research to show that it's very safe, even, you know, high levels. A lot of it, in women especially, turns into progesterone. Progesterone is a very powerful anti-inflammatory, so I suspect that would be the reason why that was recommended.
Speaker 2:White willow bark, you know, contains naturally salicylic acid, which is aspirin, I would say. Of all the things that actually are effective to reduce pain, salicylic acid is by far, uh, you know, the safest and um most desirable because it actually has a bunch of other benefits to it which are significant. Um, obviously, with pure aspirin. There are still potentially issues. But uh like um, the stomach. But if you have white willow bark, because it's the natural unextracted form, that would be a safer form of that. So, um, you know that would be an example.
Speaker 2:Wintergreen uh is another thing that's high in salicylic acid that you can apply externally. So if you're you know you're worried about the effect of uh on the stomach because you have a tendency for ulcers or anything like that, then that would be another way of getting salicylic acid to the back. But, yeah, what do you do with it? Okay, so first of all, from a very practical point of view, you can apply some of the recommendations and see if they help. Right, you just listed a couple of them there. We generally recommend people consider the top few. Obviously, these are something that are ideal unless you really are an expert, and this stuff to run by someone who is an expert, you know. So I know that you know you already are an expert, but for many people it'd be something that they might want to check with their doctor but I'm not an expert in supplements.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm not an expert in supplements, so when I see something like pregnenolone as a recommendation, that that makes that gives me pause, because pregnenolone is a hormone and I'm not just going to go into a Whole Foods and buy pregnenolone and take it without having a medical doctor. I think oversee my hormones. Same with DHEA.
Speaker 2:That came up a lot for me too and a couple of these tests that I'm low in dhea yeah, so yeah, an ideal would be to go to either an open-minded medical doctor or maybe a functional medicine doctor who understands these things in depth. I agree, especially with dhea is better to test. So when it's recommending dhea, it doesn't not saying blindly go and take dhea, just like when I, you know, had the uh tendency. So when it's recommending DHEA, it's not saying blindly go and take DHEA, just like when I had the tendency for high lead. It's not saying automatically just go and buy some chelation agents. The first thing to do would be to test, to validate, to see if it's actually accurate, right. So with DHEA, I would definitely recommend test your blood levels of DHEA.
Speaker 2:But if you do have a high ratio of cortisol to DHEA which is quite, you know, common with people, especially if they get older, especially if they're unhealthy that corresponds with a lot of different health negative health outcomes. You know there is a lot of evidence showing that the higher the ratio of cortisol to DHEA in the blood, then the more likely you are to have all kinds of diseases, the more likely you are to die earlier. So at that point you may go huh, okay. Well, I have a tendency for low DHEA. I actually have low DHEA. I'm reading about it and I'm finding it's not good to have low DHEA. Let me work with someone to increase my DHEA, and I might want to do that through some non-taking DHEA method. Maybe I want to support the enzymes that allow me to produce more of my own DHEA.
Speaker 2:There are lifestyle things you can do, because a high ratio of cortisol to DHEA just indicates someone who's stressed generally. So there's other things you can obviously do, but maybe especially if you have a genetic tendency to have low DHEA if you do, then it makes sense to supplement it. Pregnant alone, I would say, is a little bit safer. Usually it's sold in like 25 or 50 milligram doses and there's a lot of research showing you can even take one 2000 milligrams. It doesn't have any kind of significant negative effects and you can do your own research, obviously, to validate that. Everyone can. But the best thing to do is exactly the same thing as I just said right to actually go and check with a practitioner. So these are starting points.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'll give you an example. This is probably the most common thing I come across. I'm allowed to tell this story because this is a friend of mine, a business partner. He's someone who's super not into health. He loves business and marketing and stuff like that, but he was really really struggling. He's saying I wake up and the alarm goes and I just can't drag myself out of bed and, uh, you know, and I can't get to sleep, I'm feeling anxiety and all this kind of stuff and I was like to me this sounds totally like a thyroid issue. But maybe I I seem to everyone I meet seems to have a thyroid issue, maybe I'm projecting. So I said you know, what have you ever done? Uh, ancestry? He said yes. I said okay, and oh, the other thing is because he's so busy and not into health, trying to persuade him to go to see a doctor was like almost impossible, so he just wouldn't do it. It's certainly not like an alternative kind of doctor anyway. So I said okay.
Speaker 2:So we went, we did his genetic insights. He came up as having a high genetic tendency for underactive thyroid. Sometimes in our reports we just give like a binary like high, low risk, but with some of them. If we can, we actually give a percentage score, so we give like a percentile score. So for him he was 99th percentile likely to have underactive thyroid, so he's in the top 1% of people most likely to have that issue. So when he saw that, that was enough to convince him to go to a medical doctor to actually test it and he thought his issue was low testosterone that's why he was so low in energy and depressed and stuff and I was like, yeah, maybe, but I think this thyroid thing is more important. So anyway, he went to the doctor, he tested both. Uh, it turned out he was right too, he had very low testosterone, but he had hyperthyroidism and he had hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune condition. This is a very serious thing. If he had not addressed that, he could have been, you know, in a very bad place within a year or two if he'd carried on ignoring it.
Speaker 2:So again, I'm not recommending that people do our thing and then start taking hormones as a result of it, as I say, pregnant alone. It's so safe that, you know, someone could take a small dose, in my opinion, and that is why it's sold as a supplement, by the way, you know, if it were dangerous, like testosterone or fire or whatever. It would be prescription only, as those things are um. But uh, that turned, you know that turned things around for him to get that thyroid that he actually needed. He also started taking low-dose naltrexone to help to reduce the, the autoimmunity function, and he was able to function again and go back to work and feel good.
Speaker 2:And you know, he got himself a little bit testosterone as well, I think, on trt um, because that was supportive and that you know, the doctor deigned that to be necessary too. That was not genetic. I would say that was because of the massive amount of stress that he'd been going through as someone trying to struggle to work 60 hour weeks despite having, you know, severe hypothyroidism and hashimoto. So I'd say that was more of an effect than the cause, but whatever.
Speaker 2:So you know, yeah, this is not saying to answer your question, our recommendation and I tell that story most commonly on Podcast Festival because I have permission to but second of all, because it's like this is not saying get the report and take a serious medical action without supervision. This is saying get the report and if it says you have a high risk for a medical condition or a medical need, then go and test that. That's the next step. Go and test it yourself. If you absolutely refuse to see a doctor, or preferably go to a practitioner and have them test it for you, um, and then you know you can make an informed decision from then onwards.
Speaker 2:But it's kind of pointing the direction because, as you know, testing for every single test of what might be wrong with you when you have nebulous symptoms like low energy, fatigue, you know, anxiety, depression, weight gain I mean God, how many different things could that be? You know like there could be so many different things. And so, knowing to narrow it down, ok. So it might be this nutrient, or it might be this hormone, or, you know, it might be this specific allergen or whatever. It might be this nutrient, or it might be this hormone, or it might be this specific allergen or whatever it might be. It really helps to narrow it down, which then means you can actually save a lot of money on testing compared to how much you'd have to spend to just test everything that it could be.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm definitely going to get my DHEA tested. I'm going to ask my doctor to do that. And now because I'm curious, because it did show up. I didn't look at all of the information, but it did show up in a couple of the categories, so I'm definitely going to get that test and that's a smart way of doing it.
Speaker 2:If you see it once, then it's like, hmm, but if you see it again and again and again you're noticing a pattern.
Speaker 1:Then it is definitely worth it, yeah no-transcript, like very good and so it, but it is like seeing, like kind of going to the psychic, like is it going to happen? Is it good? They know something that I don't know that's gonna, you know. So it is just a lot of information. So I think my next question is when I see recommendations that say like take royal jelly, this is the DHEA, that's for me to royal jelly, ashwagandha and something called shilajit.
Speaker 2:Shilajit yep.
Speaker 1:Shilajit, I've never heard of that before. Who am I supposed to go to Like? I have all this information. Do you have consultations after you get all of this genetic testing done?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm not, you know, a doctor or anything like that, but what I am able to do is go through people's results and just help to kind of pass what to start with and what to focus on. We do also at Genetic Insights we work with a medical doctor who is both a traditional medical doctor and a functional medicine doctor, so they understand both perspectives. So if it looks like the person needs to work with a medical doctor, then I usually would then refer them on to her, so we have that process in place for people who want further support from us rather than going off and doing things on their own. In terms of the things you just mentioned, I mean royal jelly, shilajit and ashwagandha. These are all supplements that you can get yourself.
Speaker 2:Royal jelly I'm not quite sure that would be there, but ashwagandha is like a very effective thing, balancing hormones and reducing cortisol specifically. That's often what it is used for and it's, you know, ayurvedic herb whose use goes back, I believe, thousands of years, very safe in moderate doses that it's usually sold in. So that's something that people could just try.
Speaker 1:Well, see, that's the thing right there. See, I have my own feeling about just taking supplements. I mean, I know it's. The industry here, at least in the United States, is very unregulated. I mean you could walk into any health food store and buy anything, and without anyone overseeing it, you know so herbs and other supplements can be can be. You know you take too much. You take it.
Speaker 2:They can be toxic how do you feel about like eating curries or like chilies and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:I feel fine about that.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's food okay, so I know that but I mean, I know it's like garlic is a way more toxic, powerful and potentially dangerous herb than ashwagandha by far, for instance, you know it has like antibiotic-like effects. It can imbalance the hemispheres of the brain. It's quite. You know, it has quite a high level of phials which can move heavy metals. So to me the line between food and supplement and drugs is quite arbitrary. It just depends on where the line is.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a lot of Chinese herbs, for instance, which we go oh dangerous, but they just add it to soups and stews like it's nothing, no big deal. Goji berries are something that became like a superfood but, you know, would traditionally be classed as a herb. So I would say, as someone who has got quite deep into that, it really depends. Yeah, there are some supplements that are so powerful that really they should be classed as drugs, but there are also some supplements that are so safe that they're actually safe for the most foods. So it really depends which they are, as opposed to them all being in a certain category well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I understand, I understand what you're saying. I mean, there are are some vitamins that you don't want to overdo, right yeah?
Speaker 2:absolutely Not soluble vitamins. And I understand what you're saying. Vitamin A and D can be really dangerous. Vitamin B12, you can have a thousand times recommended daily amount and it's no big deal whatsoever.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people you and I- know this right, but a lot of people don't know that, and so that's, I think, where I feel some caution around. Just if one of my clients went to go get genetic testing and they saw these recommendations and they just went to the store and started buying some of the supplements, that there needs to be some guidance with what you're taking sure, uh, yeah, I mean, remember that we're gonna have two categories of people buying this.
Speaker 2:Some of them are people who will not go and see a doctor no matter what, and they are buying all kinds of supplements all the time based on purely on marketing and what they see on sales pages and what they hear some random influencer say it has some random benefit. So to me, this is way safer than that because, first of all, every single thing we recommend, we give a huge amount of studies supporting their use. Second of all, we're only recommending things to people if they have an actual, at least, tendency though of course we can't guarantee it for them to perhaps need it right. So at least it's not like picking things in the dark, like a lot of people are doing. But yeah, my preference, of course, is they would come and see me, they would come and see a medical doctor, or they would come and see someone else who knows what they're talking about absolutely.
Speaker 2:But uh, sometimes we're just, you know we're doing uh, what's the word? Uh, it's better than the alternative, right and so, and again the alternative, right and so, and again the recommendations we are making. We don't recommend any drugs. I don't know if you noticed in there. There is nothing in there that actually is dangerous, like DHEA, even though I would be cautious of it, vitamin D free, even though I would be cautious with it, et cetera. They are classed as dietary supplements that you know people are free to buy without any restriction.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we haven't finished this yet, but the last page in the reports we're in the process of setting up that.
Speaker 2:There'll be a next step section by me and then it will provide a lot of resources where there'll be like a video education on that particular topic. Unfortunately it's not finished yet, but it's in process, it's getting there now and so the point of that will be that for people who can't afford a consultation or don't want a consultation in addition to the genetic reports, they can go and have kind of like a virtual equivalent of it, where at least there is, like you said, about the vitamins and minerals, for instance, the episode of that is a really film where I go through each one and say this is how much and this is how much you want to take and this is how much is safe. And I would not recommend getting at taking D3 at all unless you've tested for it. But B1 is pretty safe and you can have that, you know, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, we do give that a further education, but it should be by the summer okay, well, that's good to know.
Speaker 1:I mean because I think that is a necessary step, because people can just go a little crazy and and buy supplements without you know if they see something on those genetic testing that says they're deficient in something that you don't want to, just to go yeah, just to clarify, we we don't say you're deficient anything.
Speaker 2:We say that genetically you have an increased need for it, but you may still have more than enough because you may be getting more than enough, you know.
Speaker 2:So we're saying you have an increased need for it.
Speaker 2:If you need it, here are the ways to get it, but we're not saying that you actually need it.
Speaker 2:That is still ultimately down to testing and that's why one of my favorite things to recommend is the NutriVal when it comes to nutrients, because it basically tells you what you need of pretty much every vitamin, most of the minerals and, along with a bunch of other healthful information, all the fats, essential fats, all the amino acids. So that's why I love that test and talk about it frequently and recommend it because it's like again, for people who don't want to see a practitioner, who want to do their own, it's giving quite a user-friendly breakdown of how much you actually need of each of those nutrients. But often the thing that because that's quite an expensive and difficult test the thing that might motivate someone to do that in the first place is to tell them look, you have a very elevated need for, I don't know, magnesium or whatever, and you seem to have a lot of symptoms related to a lack of it. So why not do a test like that to see if you actually need it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good to know. I'll link that in the show notes. So it's Genova Diagnostics, Dantreval right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you actually want to know.
Speaker 2:Again, it's a lot more expensive than ours and it's a lot more of a hassle to do, which is why it can be definitely would recommend that for anyone who, as you said, is sick of guessing whether they need this supplement or that supplement when it comes to all the nutrients.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it's a very helpful test yeah, okay, I will definitely uh link that. So I want to ask one last question because I think for my listeners, um, who are a lot of women in midlife going through menopause, transition and everything, weight gain is a hot topic, you know, because all of a sudden body's shifting, gaining like mystery weight. So I want to just ask about the genetic tendency, you know, towards losing weight and difficulty, because I know you have a category in there about weight loss right, so could genetics factor in to weight loss?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You know, I don't think it's a huge mystery to say some people just have a tendency to be more higher weight, some people have a tendency to be a lower weight, some people have a tendency to be in the middle. That was one of the things. When I first got my results, I thought they were inaccurate because literally I've been significantly underweight my whole life and yet my genetic report came back saying that I had a tendency to be normal weight and I was like, oh, that's wrong. And then, of course, once I started to actually resolve these digestive issues, I've started to able to absorb nutrients properly again and then I am a normal weight, I'm right in the middle. I'm exactly what 22 or 23, and then bmi or whatever that's it. So so the genetics were right. There was just a specific situation that was causing me to not conform to my genetics and, of course, that could be true for you. You could be someone who does not have a genetic tendency to be overweight, but there is a you know, a lifestyle or whatever factor that's causing you to be overweight. But there could be a genetic tendency and it's really, really helpful to know that In terms of weight loss another story that I'm allowed to tell.
Speaker 2:I had a client who did this, and, as well as being 40, 50 pounds overweight, she also had all the symptoms of MS, and she thought she had MS. The two things that she picked up on, I mean, we went through loads of stuff, but the two things that she picked up and acted on is that she had an increased nutritional need for, uh, just iron and B12. And that's all it is. And she started taking those, um, and the MS went away and the weight just fell off her. Now, as to exactly how that happened, I can't say for sure, but my belief would be probably this thyroid function, because the thyroid requires a specific amount of iron for the thyroid hormone to actually get into the cells. I think she was very low in iron, she was very anemic, and so, because of that, the thyroid function was way down, and so, yeah, the thyroid function is one of the things that potentially can lead to someone being overweight.
Speaker 2:I think it's the least focused on the most important factor For women. There is another significant factor, though, and it's the sex hormones. So, as the ratio of hormones shifts from progesterone dominance, which is the ideal state, to estrogen dominance, estrogen is a very anabolic hormone and specifically it's fat building up. If you tend to build up fat more around the hips and the butt, then that is more of an estrogen dominance issue. If you tend to build up fat more around the belly, that's more of an insulin resistance issue. And so those are two of the reports that we also have in there. You know we have a report on estrogen, we have a report on progesterone, we have a report on hypoglycemia.
Speaker 2:Hba1c fasting glucose, so underactive thyroid Metabolic rate is another one. Obviously that's related to the thyroid, but if you have a tendency for a slow metabolic rate, then that's something that you can either accept or you can try and do certain things to speed it up. But at least you know it gives you a oh. That is why I can't eat as much as the next person without gaining weight. You know it's potentially an explanation, right? You know carbohydrates is a big thing. We just talked about that.
Speaker 2:A lot of people feel fantastic going on a ketogenic paleo diet and going very low carb and it helps them lose a lot of weight. But some people feel horrific doing it and you know it doesn't help them at all. And it actually because when you are in a ketogenic state. It raises cortisol and it raises noradrenaline significantly and suppresses thyroid function. And so for some people, going on on ketogenic diet makes it worse and they might lose fat while they're doing it, but they can't. It's not, it's not, um, what's the word sustainable for them? And then as soon as they go back to eating carbs, they pass away back on and overall it was like a really unhelpful thing to do so again, knowing that fat is another one.
Speaker 2:One camp in the whole natural health world goes oh, you should eat unsaturated fats, you should eat, you know, olive oil and uh, avocado oil and stuff like that. The other one says, no, no, no, they help, they make you gain weight. You should have saturated fat, you should have coconut oil, you should have mcts, you know, you should have butter, right, the whole bulletproof approach, stuff like that. Again, what I found is it's not about working out who's right, it's about working out what your genetics are, and that's simply a matter of checking right. And some people do great. I do better with saturated fat, but for instance, chrissy, my co-host on my podcast, she does better with uh, monounsaturated fats and both cases, that's, in our diet and both sorry, in our um, in our genetics. In both cases we do better.
Speaker 2:Um, again, with fat, some people say a high fat diet doesn't make you put on fat. But some people, when they start to eat a lot of fat, they, they, you know, they swell up immediately. So some people have a good response to fat. I do well with dietary fat. Some people have a poor response to it. It just makes them gain weight.
Speaker 2:So, again, like knowing that about yourself, um, so, yeah, I mean, that's just a you know, and we have other stuff in there, like a tendency to over-wheat and sugar cravings, and so there are a lot of different factors, right, that could lead to someone gaining weight. And so, yes, the reason there's not just one report, because we could just have one report your tendency to gain weight, but that's of limited use, as you just said, right, but if you understand all the factors that could be related to it, all the ones I just listed and more, then we can go oh, what is it? Is it my thyroid? Is it insulin resistance? Is it I'm eating too many carbs? Is it I'm eating too much fat? Is it? Um, you know whatever? Is it estrogen, etc? Like it helps you to narrow down. And then you're like, oh, I have a tendency towards that.
Speaker 2:And then, as you said, ideally you don't just start taking action. A bunch of stuff, you test it, you find out if it's true. If it's saying you have a tendency for a slow thyroid, is that true? If it's saying you have a tendency for too much estrogen, is that true? If it's saying you have a tendency for insulin resistance, is that true? But it helps you to narrow down what to focus on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think also that the bigger point is that diets, what you eat, is very individual, right, and and then it can go back to genetics because that just debunks then all diets in general, like the keto diet is not good for everybody, right, it's not good. The paleo diet is not good for everybody. Like you, you have to really know what's what's right for you and what works for you, and so it sounds like genetic testing would, would give you that information and that's great definitely a starting place.
Speaker 2:Oxytocin is one that almost no one talks about, but oxytocin gives you the and this is more. You know they talk about emotional eating being a big factor, right and and like. Then immediately they go to psychology and stuff like that. But if you, a lot of people, have a feeling like they have a hole inside of them that just can't be filled, but they try to, and so they tend to have addictive personalities. Maybe it's drugs, maybe it's you know all kinds of stuff. But eating is kind of like the, what I'd say, the first addiction. You know the primary addiction consumption. And so if you have that feeling that you have a hole inside you, no matter how much you take or how much you do, it's never full. If you apply that particular psychology to food, you're almost definitely going to gain weight, unless you have some severe digestive issue, like I did. But the thing that actually makes you feel that way my understanding, or the primary factor, is oxytocin. If you have a low amounts of oxytocin, you will feel a feeling of emptiness. If you have high amount of oxytocin, you have a feeling of satiety.
Speaker 2:So again, I'm not recommending anyone should go out and just buy oxytocin. In fact, you can't without a prescription. But some doctors will um, they call it off-label prescribe oxytocin for people with addictive tendencies. And it's absolutely true. If you use, like an intranasal oxytocin, um, you're much less likely to overeat, you're much less likely to take drugs. You're much, much less likely to drink if you're much less likely to overeat. You're much less likely to take drugs. You're much less likely to drink if you're an alcoholic or whatever it might be. And so, again, that's a kind of novel therapy that's not used very often.
Speaker 2:Should you try it?
Speaker 2:Maybe, or maybe not, but if you have a genetic tendency for low oxytocin, that would give more of an indication that perhaps it's something that you should try.
Speaker 2:And if you don't want to take something from a doctor, then there are, of course, activities you can do to raise oxytocin. Maybe, rather than going to the gym to lose weight, you should be spending time with friends and cuddling and playing with your pets and stuff like that, because raising oxytocin naturally will naturally make you feel more satiated, which will naturally reduce your chances of overeating. So there's so many clues in here about things that you may want to pursue, like, as you say, every report could lead to, like a massive shift in your whole life if you were to pursue it. And um, yeah, that's why we kind of have that sort by risk thing, because, yeah, like we show all the highest risk things first because otherwise there would be probably too much to go through still yeah, well, it is a lot of information and if you are a person who likes all that information, and then it's genetic testing is definitely for you and I think that it's.
Speaker 1:you know, it sounds like you're even progressing with your, how you have the reports and the information given and the recommendations and and it sounds like it's it's a growing industry right and work in progress and getting more refined and and absolutely yeah, no, it's, it's. I think it's going to become more and more the norm to get genetic tested to see where you, where you fall into certain categories and ellen. How can people get in touch with you if they want to pursue their own genetic testing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. You want to go to geneticinsightsco and that will take you through to like the limitless option, and then we also have geneticinsightsco slash nutrition. That will be like the nutrients needs category that we've talked about most, and then my podcast as well, if you want to hear more from me about all this stuff. I have an episode on weight loss, I have several episodes on nutrients and all that stuff. I have the Rejuvenate podcast it's called with Ellen Robinson on all the major platforms, including YouTube.
Speaker 1:Great, okay, well, I will link that all in the show notes so people can get in touch with you. Called with ellen robinson on, uh, all the major platforms, including youtube. Great, okay, well, I will link that all in the show notes so people can get in touch with you and I'm going to get back to you about my dhea test and tell you what. What happened. If it is actually really low, because I'm wildly curious to see if that's um, if that's something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, please do me. As the ratio of dha to cortisol. That's especially interesting. Even if the dha is mid-range, if the cortisol is high you still might want to raise it yeah, okay, good to know, all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.