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Since You Put It That Way
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Since You Put It That Way
Nutrigenomics With Amanda Archibald
In this episode, I talk with Amanda Archibald, a certified nutritionist and author of the book The Genomic Kitchen, about the emerging field of nutrigenomics and how to eat for your specific genome.
Intro for "Since you put it that way" podcast.
Outro for "Since you put it that way" podcast
My guest today on the podcast Since You Put It That Way is Amanda Archibald. She is a registered dietitian who's widely recognized as an early adopter in Translational Genomics. This connects genomics and nutritional science with everyday health. Amanda is the founder of The Genomic Kitchen, which showcases the relationship between genes food, health, and that translated then, that information into the kitchen. We might even call that culinary genomics. Amanda is the author of two books, one of which she has with her today called The Genomic Kitchen. She's an accomplished clinician, educator, consultant, and public health advocate. Amanda teaches and mentors clinicians around the world in her efforts to make nutritional and culinary genomics more widely understood and accessible. She's equally sought out in private practice setting using genomics to guide individuals with complex health challenges on a journey into their wellness. As an avid collaborator, Amanda recently co-created a company and program called C-Suite which is a DNA-driven holistic health and well being executive program for the United Kingdom. She has led institutional and corporate consulting by using nutrigenomics for a number of inspired corporate innovators, including Sodexo, which is in the United States, and Hopkins Watts which is in New Zealand. Her side-by-side work in the kitchen in boardroom with the Sodexo chat chefs, food service, and medical professionals resulted in the successful launch of the world's first nutrigenomically-inspired menu that was offered to patients, guests, and hospital staff at Sharp Healthcare in San Diego. This is groundbreaking because we all know what hospital food is like, right? So she's literally brought culinary medicine into the clinical world. So she's definitely a leader in this. Originally from the United Kingdom, Amanda currently resides in the high desert mountains of western Colorado. So welcome today, Amanda. Check her out at her website, genomickitchen.com G-E-N-O-M-I-C-K-I-T-C-H-E-N.com Welcome. Here we go. So welcome, Amanda. Welcome to our podcast.
Amanda Archibald:Thank you and it's so good to be back with you.
Mary Louder:Yes, we've done this a couple times--
Amanda Archibald:Old friends.
Mary Louder:Yes, yes. I think our last was 2020. And, yeah, that was--I think we were just into the lockdown at that time.
Amanda Archibald:We were. And what's interesting is, at that time you were in Colorado, still, I think. And I was in Wisconsin, right? So I was like, you know, the other side of the lake from you. And now we're talking to each other, and I'm back in Colorado, and you're in Michigan, so we switched.
Mary Louder:Yes, we did. Yes. So yes, I--Yes. I tell people I've got, I came from the Midwest, I've got the--but I've got the wild west in me. So I'm a good, good blend of the two cultures. So yes, yeah, you're back on the western slope.
Amanda Archibald:I'm on the western slope of Colorado and love it. Yeah.
Mary Louder:Different than the hustle and bustle, right?
Amanda Archibald:Well, it is, and, you know, for your listeners, I mean, but people don't know what--what's the western slope? Well, if you're in Colorado, you know, the water flows east and west, right? And so I'm on the western side, and the water flows to the--to the west. So we're the ones with the Colorado River right, where we're watching it flow past our backyard full of water from the Gunnison River in Colorado and looking at it go up and down and think well, what do you all gonna do, you know, in Utah and Arizona, like save your water. We're--we have it here. But it's, it's an interesting place to live. But it's also--she said, it's different from where we were in Boulder in that the, you know, it's high desert here. So I can see the mountains of San Juan's, it's beautiful. But we have Canyon Country. So it's gorgeous. Yeah, you know, that's the flora and fauna is different, the skiing is different, but it's awesome. So I love it.
Mary Louder:It's a it's a beautiful part of Colorado that is not as populated, but it is a well-kept secret, I would say.
Amanda Archibald:It is.
Mary Louder:Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna go into this topic. I'm getting ready to launch the program that I've been just working on for a long time called the Hero's Genome. And we began our work you and I together on genomics, I think around 2017, I'm thinking 2018.
Amanda Archibald:Yeah, yeah, we were deep into it. Yes.
Mary Louder:Yeah. And we really found looking at how the human genome working that in a clinical fashion can be very applicable for precision medicine. So but that's where we were then and now. But how did you start out? Tell me your story. How did you get into genomics? Where did you come from? What's your career evolved like? What's it been?
Amanda Archibald:Yeah, no, it's a great question. So like you said, I'm trained as a dietitian, and I came through a very conventional program, which means kind of nuts and bolts. And yes, I had a very good background in Nutritional Biochemistry, but I don't know when, you know, we were in medical school, when we were taught nutritional biochemistry, we were taught these molecules and how they changed, you know, in cycles, but we were never taught what does it look like in practice? And so, you know, conventional is like, yeah, carbohydrates, you know, vitamins, minerals. Here's how to read a food label. I mean, I'm being very pedantic here. But I was very unhappy with my training, you know, I have a deep interest in the science, I grew up in Europe, I was very interested in food. So consequently, when I graduated, with my degree here--I have a degree from Europe, but this is from the United States--I felt that I had some form of expertise in nutrition science, but nobody was connecting the dots between nutrition science and the culinary arts, like, okay, well, what do you do? You tell someone, okay, eat this, eat that. But how are they going to do it if they don't know how to cook? So we were graduating people who, like I said, had a degree in the science, but they weren't helping people put food on the table or saying, when you eat this ingredient, this is how it works in your body. This is why Dr. Louder is mentioning this. And this was why Amanda's talking about this. So I went through quite a long time in my career where I really was not actually working in a clinical space, because I couldn't see the application, I thought we were wasting our time. Kind of like maybe in conventional medicine, you're just like on this hamster wheel, trying to help people but we're not actually getting them to well. So long story short, because of where I was in my career, I did a lot of consulting work. I happened to be in South Africa teaching a group of dietitians how to understand how your patients perceive flavor. So we know that--and this is interesting, Mary, so in other words, when you and I tell people to eat kale, because it's good for them, right? Or brussel sprouts, or what have you. If they have taste receptors, which you know are genetically driven, that make them super sensitive to sulfur-y or very savory notes, they're gonna sweet food, and they're not lying to you. It's how their genes are. So long before I knew genetics, I was teaching people the power--or conditions, the power of understanding where somebody's palate is, because I'm not going to eat kale because you say they need to. Because they don't even know where to start with it. So we did a lot of flavor and taste where, like wine tasting, but I did it with food. Yeah, the reason I mentioned that is because I ran into, at that conference, we were in Joburg--Johannesburg--to a gal who was an expert in Nutrigenetics, you know, how our genes react to food, is a way to look at it or react to our environment. So the impact of environment which can be food, mood, exercise on our genes. So disrupting those genes' influence. How you're going to deal with food and nutrients, you know, and nutrition, etc. And anyway, she said, "Oh, my gosh, the way you present science--", because I use actually roadmaps and a lot of visual techniques and tasting techniques. She said, "We need that in genetics, there's nobody understands it, you know, it's so complex." And it's a certain mind that can do the work you and I do, Mary, to be honest with you, Dr. Louder, Mary. And so she said, "You know, I need to write a course in nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics. And the way you explain things, can you--can you be part of this team?" So long story short, I did join with her, and another brilliant researcher who I work with in Australia, genius. And we started to work together. And we started to work on this course. But in the end, like we were in three different countries, it didn't quite work out together. But she got me thinking about a different way to understand nutrition science, which is like you said, nutrigenomics, this world of genomics, and I was hooked, because it pulled us deeply into rigorous science. It pulled me back into genes do this in your body, and they direct biochemistry, which is your operating system. And when we read genetic information, like Hero's Genome, or the tests we're reading, we can literally see where the inefficiencies might be in how you're operating internally. And that directs the prescription. It directs, surprise, the scientific prescription, it directs nutrition prescription, it directs the culinary prescription, the exercise, the emotional prescription, and I found my space. And it was--this space is not for everyone. I think you and I agree this is an area of science that requires really rigorous study. But it also has an artistic side to it, which is the ability to recognize patterns. Which, you know, is the hardest thing for clinicians to learn. Those who get it, we exponentially can help people feel better faster because we're getting right to the root of all the dust in the corner of how your body's operating, clearing that out, getting people back on track, and it is probably the most brilliant part of nutrition and medicine that I think I've seen in my career. And so that's my journey. And, and I can't imagine working in any other discipline than this.
Mary Louder:Yeah, yes, I think your work is absolutely valuable. And I think it's the way--I actually think it's the way healthcare needs to go. Because we talk about--so what I learned in medical school about nutrition, we might as well just escort the crickets in and make noises. Nothing. I think maybe five hours, honestly, five hours, one week, you know, an hour a day, Monday through Friday, and--but we had biochemistry, and we have pharmacology. But again, I was the student in medical school who raised my hand when they said, "Well, this is essential hypertension, and somewhere around age forty, we know that magnesium drops in the body." And I go, "Well, should we just give them magnesium instead of a beta blocker?" They're like,"Okay, no, put your hand down. Don't--don't ask any more questions." And I'm like, "Well, shouldn't we look at--well, why?" And then the follow up question was, "Well, why are they low in magnesium? You know, well, doesn't magnesium do a lot of things?" That was third question to which then I was, you know, kindly asked to be quiet. So. But that same thing for how I practice medicine was looking at the whys and the hows and the root causes. And then when I got exposed to nutrigenomics, it was a patient, actually, just genomics, it was a patient who brought their test in with a diagnosis of breast cancer. And she said, I need you to help me restore my health and do well through my treatment. And I'm like, "I have no clue how to do this." And she goes,"Yeah, but you're smart." I go,"Yeah, thanks, but I still have no clue how to do this."
Amanda Archibald:Right? Right. I have no idea. It's like looking at computer code. It really is.
Mary Louder:Yeah. And so then, but as you mentioned, seeing the patterns and then knowing functional medicine, knowing holistic integrative medicine, and being an osteopath, the body has inherent capacity to heal, I'm like, Oh, wait, this might be something here. And looking, looking, looking. And then all of a sudden it clicked. I'm like, "How can a person think any differently?"
Amanda Archibald:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, you mentioned like this key point that you--when you were in, medicals, I was a much a mature student, you were--meaning I went back to school again, when I was in my late 20s, early 30s. And I was that person asking questions just like you and wasn't told to be quiet, but I think I was reaching beyond the curriculum, you know, but you--the reason I'm sort of going back there was you said, the question was about hypertension, why shouldn't we look at what the root cause is? Maybe magnesium inefficiency, or deficiency, or the biotherapy cycle or whatever isn't working efficiently, and we now know to come into genomic. So if you have a certain form of a gene, like a T-T form of your ace inhibitor gene, you can't tolerate beta-blockers very well, you'll do horribly. Now, of course, that's outside my scope of practice. But we know this, I would flip that over to the doctor. Patient isn't feeling well, maybe--
Mary Louder:Right. So yeah, so you've got the human genome project that came in and then we've got genetics. And so we should probably define the difference between genomics and genetics, genetics tends to study the effects of one gene, like Trisomy 21, or why you have blue eyes, that type of thing. But genomics is the influence of the gene upon the cell's function. And moreover with not just replication of the cells, but the protein metabolism, which makes the pathways go and the metabolism and different aspects of how each cell then interacts within those pathways. So it's a different--it's like the function--it is the functional aspects of your genes.
Amanda Archibald:Exactly.
Mary Louder:In day-to-day living. Right?
Amanda Archibald:Exactly, exactly. And we look at them within the cells, but like you said, the key is the pathways. And so one of the things I like to think about when you and I are looking at genomic information, we're looking for how these rabble-rousers work with the good shifts genes. And so the other way to think about it is if you're ever in a major city, and you happen to be sitting in a stoplight, and you can see all the stoplights down the same street, oh my gosh, and they all turn green. If you turn green, the pathway in your body is probably working efficiently. But when you have the reds and the yellows and the greens, those are the patterns you and I look at because they can veer your biochemistry or your cellular function off track. And then, and then we look to say, Well, that may be explains this, let's validate that through testing or what-have-you. And--or intuition as you may do very well--way beyond my training, Mary, and we can, we can literally look down these roads in your body and know where the traffic is turning down the wrong road. That's the way I like to look at it.
Mary Louder:Yeah. And so, the standard tests we do in medicine to look for magnesium levels, or so, for potassium levels. That's kind of--that's the end product. That's a, you know, here's what's floating around in the serum, or we might get it inside the red blood cell. And then--but you literally have to reverse engineer back to figure out where the track gets derailed.
Amanda Archibald:Exactly. That's--that is genomics, you know, and that's the work we do is, is use that information. And I personally, I think it should be the first page in the medical record, because your blueprint doesn't change. I mean, the environment does that can manipulate it, right. But my gosh, if that was the starter, you know, cover sheet, we can always go back to that, right? Because we know the patterns in your blueprint. We know how to correct them.
Mary Louder:Yeah. So if we've got a blueprint that says when you follow all these steps, you'll get a ranch house with a walkout basement, and you follow it, you're not going to get a--a saltbox house on the shoreline. You're gonna get a ranch. So that's the same thing. And you know, it's interesting, I did a Google search to define nutrition, you'll love this just, I put in "definition of nutrition." In one half of a second, 0.5 seconds, I got 1,170,000,000 results, for a definition. And then so then I Google-searched "nutrigenomics." And then 0.57 seconds, I got 120,000 results, to complete the definition. So if we think of, you know, I mean, there's so much confusion today in what we need to eat, how we need to eat. And I say, "Well, look, there's a bandwagon let's just get on," you know, or "Hey, this seems like a good idea." Or "My friend said I should do this" or "I read this article." But if there's over 1 billion definitions of nutrition, can you only imagine why there's so much confusion about what we should eat?
Amanda Archibald:Correct. And you know, the answer to it, which is so beautiful in this space that we're sharing, is that your genome will direct what you need to eat, and how you need to eat, and how you need to exercise, and whether you need to sleep longer or meditate longer, whatever your gene--that's why I said it's like should be the cover sheet or the front first page in the medical record, because that is the direction of how your body is working. And it never lies. So, yeah.
Mary Louder:You're saying we can work with ourselves and against ourself?
Amanda Archibald:Correct. Okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, you're your body's like, here's my operating system, this is what I inherited. We can influence it, right? We can never change those genes, but now through our knowledge in nutrigenomics and genomics, we know how to kind of cuddle your genes, give them their best information for them to work for you because they're not working against you.
Mary Louder:Right? They're there to support you. And you know, I sometimes say well, you get to thank Mom and Dad for that or Mom, depending upon the pattern or you know, but--so what I'm hearing you say, it seems to be the most accurate and the most proficient to know your blueprint.
Amanda Archibald:Absolutely, yes, yes. YBecause, and you know, we've been in this business a long time, me in nutrition and you in medicine, we know that a lot of people just have not been getting well and that we've been treating the wrong thing or what about the patients or the clients we see who, you know, I have one coming on Monday. She said "I'm doing everything right" and she really is, and I feel awful. And her lab numbers are perfect, you know, great conventionally, they're great, functionally, not bad. But she feels awful. And I'm looking at genes like, maybe, you know not obviously I'm gonna tell it anymore, but I can see see that there are some questions that need to be asked, and some tests that maybe need to run, which I can't because I'm not a doctor. But in other words, genomics helps us, as I said, look for inefficiencies that mainstream medicine and mainstream nutrition cannot find and will not find because it doesn't fit into the algorithm. And what we have to do is feel very comfortable with a blank sheet of paper and your genome and look, you know, with our little headlights on into your genome to find those patterns that we then investigate to say I think if we correct this, detoxification or whatever, or yeah, we're gonna "Gut 101", we can help you move to your best person, but we pick that up because of genes will show probably how your body's operating versus a test, which is a guess, at best, you know, it's not going to tell you how your genome's operating, maybe. Maybe it will, you know, maybe some thoughts, so.
Mary Louder:Well, but you know, why don't I just do what everybody else is doing? Why don't I just go keto?
Amanda Archibald:Because--you really had to fake that, didn't you? So there's, there's well, okay, let's unpack--
Mary Louder:Yes, I did, because I get asked that every day.
Amanda Archibald:Yes. Why can't we go keto? So I think it's true, Mary, like we look ancestrally and from Paleolithically, most people in most societies, were not eating tons of carbohydrates in the form that they're coming in, cereals and tortillas and, you know, that overt carb overload that we're seeing mostly in Western society. So that is true. And the body's very sensitive to that. But--and so I agree in reducing the glycemic load, I think you and I would agree with that, that--doesn't matter whether you're keto or not, we need to do that. The issue with keto is how you organize the fats, because of you, and I see this quite a little bit, in that you can have somebody on a higher-fat keto diet, but depending on your genes, if you have issues with carnitine transportation, you can efficiently transport that fat load into mitochondria to burn energy. So that's one thing. Secondly, the fat makeup, we know that some people are very sensitive to different forms of fat. So you load up a lot of saturated fat--and I've got other examples--you create an even more of a cluster, that these people, we have genes like fatty-acid-binding protein that loves long-chain fatty acids, and it will sequester them. Where do you think you find them? In higher fat foods and present them to the mitochondria to burn and you know, the doors close. So we can create a lot of disruption--and there's one more gene I'm thinking of--for people when we just randomly say, do keto, because so-and-so's selling a book. You and I can look and say, "Not so fast." Another example like with keto, that I think of--we see it all the time, it's brilliant research out of Australia, see it all the time in the genome. Now, people who are doing time restricted eating, it's great, right? I mean, it's great or--and there's therapies, it's very useful. But if you go beyond 12 hours for probably about 40% of people, if they have a variant--we call them snips, so SNP on genes--on a gene called P Par Alpha, and you do time-restricted eating. And they happen to be following their blood sugars at the same time, usually, those people in the middle of the night will have super high blood sugar--and they're eating perfectly--because you're starving the body, that people are alpha is looking for fat, or it's looking for information to create energy. And you just said, you'd put this, this gene in a--in a straitjacket. And it's like, oh my God, my job is to find energy for the cell, I'll find energy for the cell. No fat, you know, no protein, great. I'm going to force the liver to make blood sugars because the brain needs glucose. So we see this in genetics. And we so that kind of goes back to you cannot randomly pick a diet off the shelf and think it's going to work to you. You may be lucky and it does. But for every person it does, there's another 40 it doesn't, and then they come to us and said "What is wrong with me? I feel terrible," or "I can't lose weight," or "I have brain fog." Classic. So there's a long way. I say genetics helps us get to who you are through food.
Mary Louder:Yes. I think that's an excellent, excellent example. Now it's interesting because I also looked at that quote, that has supposedly been attached to Hippocrates. "Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food." And actually, according to the historical research in medicine, he didn't really say that.
Amanda Archibald:What did he say?
Mary Louder:He said, "Let food be medicine." But he didn't--there's a lot of things that people are contributing to Hippocrates as a--one of the fathers in medicine, and yet we've got this sense of, now we're taking--and I see in this space of nutrition, Clinical Nutrition, things that I see that are very challenging is where I think what we might call scope creep, where they go a little beyond their scope of care, and their scope licensing and their credentialing. And, and I think well meaning, but I think, a bit misguided. Where then patients come in saying, I must eat this way, I must eat that way. And then I present them with the gene tests, and they go, I don't want a diagnosis. I don't, no, I'm not doing the gene test, because I'm afraid of what it will show.
Amanda Archibald:Yeah, we have to differentiate what--yeah, exactly.
Mary Louder:So you know, so to be very clear a genomic test is not a diagnostic test.
Amanda Archibald:Nope.
Mary Louder:It's not going to tell you you're going to have Alzheimer's, it's not going to tell you you're going to have a heart attack, or you're going to have cancer. Well, looking at it, you know, it's like saying, you know, how are--how is that ranch house built? Is it built with brick? Are you going to have shiplap? Are you going to have, you know, board and batten, what are you doing? That's what you put on to the blueprint. So what you're saying is the food, the nutrients, the style of exercise, the lifestyle, even stress levels, cortisol, all those things. What's interesting, you know, a little personal disclosure, total normal cholesterol, really bad inflammatory pathways. Lined up with changes in blood vessels that--where cholesterol builds up with normal levels of cholesterol. Now reversing it, but not because it's an issue of cholesterol. It's an issue of inflammation.
Amanda Archibald:Yes. And so yeah, yeah.
Mary Louder:Then having been hit, you know, unfortunately, I had COVID. That was really bad in 2020, that really triggered some things.
Amanda Archibald:Exactly. A cascade. Yeah.
Mary Louder:Yeah. And so a little--so for some people, we find that these inflammatory pathways, you know, just with just a little bit of too much, the lights go on quite quickly, and they'll lay down inflammation, while they're still trying to do the right things.
Amanda Archibald:Exactly. And, and, you know, you mentioned the cholesterol and inflammation. And one of--one of the most interesting pathways that we see disrupted so much, but it's been misplaced in medicine and nutritional medicine, is the methylation pathway, you know, which is a whole other podcast by itself, right? But you just mentioned blood vessels, and that we look at a marker called homocysteine, homocysteine is very, very disruptive to the blood vessels can really induce the--exactly the inflammatory process that oxidizes LDL, and off you go. But we're not looking to correct methylation to correct that molecule, that if we can get it under control, then it can help with cholesterol, and metabolism and also heart disease or what have you. So that's a perfect example of, it's a cycle that's not even associated with heart disease of vascular health, but it is. But it gets misinterpreted as in the neurological space, it has a very important space there. But where genomics forces us clinically, to think out of our comfort zones, and to really be the detectives that we're trained to be now, you know, I work in nutrition science, I'm a dietitian. I, and what's great working with doctors is I can 80% say this is something I would consider. And off we go, you know, I can't diagnose, like you said, don't diagnose, and they don't treat. But what's important is to be able to take this information and say, This is something I would consider, you know, in clinical practice for the patients. So it speeds up the efficiency for you as a client or a patient, because we're not guessing, you know, we're not ordering a bunch of stuff. Well, let's just see how this comes out. Great. That's another deductible in my insurance and it just--it just gets rid of all that noise.
Mary Louder:Well, it's interesting about the homocysteine because we do at functional--in functional medicine years ago, like 20 years ago, which is, you know, right at the, I guess the last millennium, last century, right, back in there--
Amanda Archibald:Back then, right.
Mary Louder:Back in the manual transmission days, not quite the horse and buggy days. But back in there, homocysteine, we looked at that a lot relative to cardiovascular disease.
Amanda Archibald:Oh, interesting.
Mary Louder:And we just saw that as a, we just always said, well, that's just a function of B, you know, some B-vitamin metabolism, we need to support you. And that's what's the extent of we went to. Then boom, way over on the other side, which was an overcorrection, everyone had an MTHFR defect. And, you know, I love what that could stand for, if we could pronounce that MTHFR. And, you know, the motherfucker gene is what people talk about with that one. And yet, everybody would come in and say, I have MTHFR, and I'm gonna die. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
Amanda Archibald:We all have the gene.
Mary Louder:Because when we look at the genomics, and when we look at how the genome inter--interfaces with nutrition, it's not just a one-hit wonder.
Amanda Archibald:Correct. Yes. That's a very important point.
Mary Louder:Yeah. So say a little bit more about, you know, the how the pathways--you know, not necessarily the specifics of the pathways. But how you've got to look polygenomically.
Amanda Archibald:So let's talk about MTHFR, and let's talk about the ApoE, because that one, those are the two genes that seems to be on everyone's radar screen. So MTHFR, methylene, tetrahydrate, for full--tetrahydrofolate reductase, for those of you who want to know what the acronym is, when we call it MTHFR, we look at two forms. It's a gene anyway, and a pathway. But those are just two. So it's like having birds in a nest, you never look at one gene. Because one gene cannot possibly disrupt the body unless it's a mutation, right, which is different than what we're looking at here. We're looking at how these genes and the different colors if you will, like traffic light work together. So just with MTHFR by itself, we look at a number of vitamins that work with--excuse me, we look at MTHFR let me back up here, two forms of that gene, there's probably three other genes that precede those in a pathway we're looking at, just to get to that point. And then what that team does is it works it it produces a certain form of folate that the body uses, but its job is to hand off that molecule, if you will, to homocysteine, in conjunction with B12 to regenerate another amino acid. So the bod--so what you hear me say it's like it helps converge traffic in the body. But it has a whole bunch of other helpers. And for this process to even happen, you need vitamin B2, you need B3, which is niacin, you need B12. You heard we talked about vitamins, zinc and magnesium. So you can come to us and tell us all you want, you have MTHFR. And we would say well, you'd be dead without it, which is true. But what's more important is, what are you--what are the other genes in the sandbox? What are the nutrients? Did you have those in your diet? Because you can have perfect genes, right? Nobody has perfect genes. But if you don't have the nutrients on board, which go back to diet, and your gut, then all bets are off. So diet is everything. Your genes work with diet, with food. So that's one example. The other one, I think is, is the Apo E, do you want to talk about what that is, and then we'll talk about why it is like so out of whack?
Mary Louder:I'm gonna let you go. You're on a--
Amanda Archibald:So ApoE. So, you know, if you look that A-P-O, and it's a little E is a gene that if you looked it up in, you know, mainstream literature or mainstream like magazines, whatever, it's like,"Oh, if you got that gene, you're going to get Alzheimer's, you're gonna go into early cognitive decline." This is the most brilliant example. There's different forms of the gene that we look at. But it's a perfect example of this gene does not work by itself, what it does, and what it can do is when it's not functioning properly, in a certain form, it can disrupt cholesterol metabolism. And what's interesting about that is one of the biggest hogs of cholesterol in your body. It's not your heart, actually, it's your brain, right? By weight, it's the largest, like volume of cholesterol in the body. And cholesterol--so it's really important that it gets into the brain, but it doesn't work by itself. It's just one gene. And what's very important when we look at that chain, and it's just a little bit of a rabble rouser, is we actually look at things like how well you're handling your carbohydrates, blood sugar, we look at the homocysteine, we look at whether you can remove toxins from your body because cholesterol has a nasty habit of carrying all your garbage with it, and it can go right into your brain right because your brain needs cholesterol. It's one place. So we know ApoE, if it's disrupted, in our minds it's like, oh, it's not that gene, it's like it's a, it's a protocol of how we want to look at a lot of different processes in your body. So it's like the beginning of a prescription. Right? Okay, we're gonna look at this, this, this, this, this, you don't die of ApoE, you know, you don't. And there's certain forms of it that are actually super, super beneficial. So we all have the gene, we all have MTHFR, but we never look at them in isolation, we look at them in clusters. Is that a good explanation?
Mary Louder:That's wonderful. And I think that that's very good for our listeners to know that when we pull these tests, when we do a genomic tests, when we look at how you're wired, and how you're structured, it's not a diagnostic. It is a blueprint for us to literally--so you can literally become the hero of your own journey.
Amanda Archibald:Exactly.
Mary Louder:You know, you've got your genes in one hand, and you've got science in the other, and you put them together, it's just a wonderful blend.
Amanda Archibald:Yeah, and I think a point, you know, it's, I, you and I, we look at reports, and then we generally--I will generate an additional like short report for my clients like this, what I'm seeing, this is why I think it's happening, these are my recommendations. But first, my cover sheet says, genes don't predict. They don't diagnose. They give us insights into how your body is functioning. Because I can't diagnose and like you, you can, and you can look at mutations, if you have a mutation that is going to predispose you. That's not my work, you know, that is a physician's work or a group of researchers and physician-led teams, so yeah. But yeah.
Mary Louder:You know, you develop something too in your book The Genomic Kitchen, and how to approach--we're gonna go from now the laboratory and the science, we're going to bring you over into the culinary. Because this is also where you've done your other brilliant work, I think. And this needs to be talked about, because you've got this book, the genomic kitchen, and you've got a process in there, the MISE process, that is absolutely brilliant. And it's something that clients, patients, people can just learn from and put together how to structure the nutrition, the nutrigenomics, specifically for themselves, right? So share with us about how you develop that, what--what the I, the M, I, S and the--
Amanda Archibald:S and the E mean. Yeah. So just going back, like we've talked about genomics, so the brilliant thing about food, is, when you choose certain foods, it has the ability to turn genes on and off. And this--it is very advanced science, how this does this. But imagine being able to walk into a grocery store. You know what your blueprint is, and you mentioned, like inflammatory pathways. We know, we can dial food onto your plate that can tap down, it can turn genes off, that are just the bad kids in the playground, not bad kids, that's not fair. But you know that--the disruptive kids, right? So we want to disrupt the--we want to prevent them from turning on, so that genes can do the job that you know, are anti-inflammatory, if you will. So we can do this. It's like, we can use food to get into the nuts and bolts of your body. And this area of science is called nutrigenomics. So using nutrition to impact your genome, we can silence genes, that's very important in cancer, you know, oncogenic genes, we can actually silence them, but it's very specific. Yeah, we can turn them off. Yeah, and we could turn on ones that work in another way. And it's brilliant work. So we literally can write a prescription for your body, which is amazing. So not everyone gets to meet with you, Mary, or me, you know, mostly they're not working with people working in this space. So I developed MISE, The Genomic Kitchen. And MISE is a collection of ingredients that if you dial them onto your plate, they're going to work to turn your genes on and off they're gonna support your genes. The difference between doing that like from a public health, just doing it without knowing, and actually knowing, is the concentration we may be working with for certain foods, and sometimes we'll use supplements too, very strategic supplements to get your body back on track, you know, to give it a kick in the rear end. But so M-l-S-E so "Mees" or "Mais","mise" actually is a French term like mise en place is how in a professional kitchen you'd set up your station, so that when it's very busy during dining service, you've got everything you need, right, to be able to produce your part of the dish on the production line in the kitchen. But my MISE so getting everything set at my MISE, is Master ingredients, Influence ingredients, Superfoods, and Enablers, and just so you know, I, you know, I've done additional work this year, I think I'm going to expand the toolbox. Yeah, which is amazing, right? So it's gonna have, who knows what the acronym's going to be, but it's going to have more targets in there too, so people can kind of kind of reach in a little bit deeper. But what do they do? So the M is master and they contain, if you look, you'll see that they contain a lot of cruciferous vegetables and a lot of alliums. Because in those cruciferous vegetables, we have polyphenols with bioactives. Um, so they're not vitamins and minerals, they're not calories. And they can basic--I'll keep it's very simple, but those bioactives can actually knock on the doors of your cells, if you will, and turn on pathways that help your body produce its own antioxidants, which is brilliant, with a far more efficient than anything you get in your diet. You can't eat what the cell produces. But we can set it up to produce it. The same time, these ingredients or those bioactives to tamp down inflammatory pathways. So you can see what we're doing, we're using food to block and tackle in the cell ending of what we're seeing, that you need help with. So those are master ingredients. So for example, I want to give a different example, with high blood pressure, hypertension, we can look at genomics and say you know what, if we fix, or we infuse the body with specific information to really help the cycle that's helping you produce nitric oxide to expand your blood vessels. We can fire food at your body's too, but--say we're going to be 100% successful, but we can sure as heck, try that before you have to take a medication, because we can see those inefficiencies. So nutrigenomics helps us fire information into your cells. So those are master ingredients. Those are the ones if you ever look at this, you just want them in your--you want them on your plate every day. Not everything, you want them in your grocery basket, because they're doing the heavy lifting. So, right, so this isn't about eat your broccoli, and eat all your colors. Yeah, that's true. But this is like no very specifically for you, and kale and cauliflower just have to be pretty important. So let's talk about how to prepare that. So it works for your mouth, you know, and it works for your budget, works for your family, and works for you. I, or Influencers is probably the most difficult part of the toolbox to understand. But it's probably where you and I tend to the most right, it's like the Influencers help a cycle in your body called methylation. So the MTHFR thing we were talking about, it helps us with methylation. This is a cycle that helps produce switches or molecules that will turn on and off very important processes in your body that impact everything like particularly in the brain and mood and you know--
Mary Louder:Yes, because methylation has over 300 different pathways it works on.
Amanda Archibald:It's incredible.
Mary Louder:It's just a massive, yeah. No, no.
Amanda Archibald:And you and I were never taught it in school, And it's insane. Because if you talk to a pharmacist it's like, well, of course they know methylation, right? Like when you were in medical school, I went to like university for nutrition science, and, no, it just wasn't taught I still am not sure it's being taught, you know, even. you know, you have to understand that for for medication and This is huge, because we're really, you know, when you get drugs. So I supports this very kind of esoteric area. It has a lot of legumes in there. It also includes things like animal foods, and seafood as well. So can you be vegan? Yes, absolutely. But it's very, very specific, and it includes things like offal. Sorry, but you know, you don't have to eat them. But this what we call sweet meat, or sweet breads that, you know, if you go up on a farm or whatever, and you're harvesting animals, they do not get thrown away, you know, this gets into broths and stocks, and there's a reason for that. So no, you don't have to eat liver as such but it turns out it's actually extremely useful. And the S is superfoods. And what is the superfoods? What I did is I said, let's stop telling people to eat this because it's rich in vitamin A, or rich in calcium or rich in zinc. Where can you go to get--and it's a financial practice--where can you go in the store to get the most vitamins and minerals per bite? Because your body needs vitamin, minerals, you know, to support all these processes, right? Genes produce proteins, proteins do nothing without vitamins and minerals. So superfoods is like six or eight in there. And it seems like a garbanzo bean, sesame seeds, flax, and I think lentils may be in there, but it's very specific. And it's not like, oh my gosh, why--what did you, pull these out of the sky? No. Through rigorous research into nutrient databases. I kept seeing the same foods come up. It didn't matter whether I was looking for magnesium or vitamin D or vitamin C, like there was a set of foods that came to the top. So that's superfoods and E I'm going to expand this a bit--E's called the enablers. And the enablers, what it really is, is how you enable nutrient absorption, you can't do that if you gut's not in working order, to the E part of your toolbox, you know, you're really walking right into the metabolome. you can't. The gut is the gateway to your body, is You are. probably the root of so much disruption in disease, right, including in your brain. You and I were talking about that. So these are foods that are rich in probiotics and prebiotics, it's an area I'm going to expand as I've learned more in nutrigenomic medicine, it massive.
Mary Louder:I gave a lecture this this week to a group of residents. And I asked if anyone knew what the metabolome was. They didn't.
Amanda Archibald:No. And yet, it all starts there.
Mary Louder:Yeah, and so what--so for our listeners, what that is, it is the friend within. I mean, it's trillions of cells, that are--it's our bacteria that line all of our passageways. Everywhere there's mucus, there's metabolome, everywhere there's an interface between different types of bodily fluids, there's a metabolome. So there is a metabolome in the bladder, there's one in our GI system, in our mouth, in our nasal passages, in our joints. And if we ever had an implant of any kind, there's a metabolome that goes along with that there. And that's filmed in--closely in conjunction with a biofilm. So you've got the metabolome and the biofilm combination. And biofilm has, you know, good parts and bad parts. Metabolome is how we carry this cultured part of us with us. And what we're finding in the research is that actually is the primary signaler to our gut.
Amanda Archibald:Exactly. It is, period. Yeah, yes.
Mary Louder:And then what we're finding is our gut is the primary signaler out to different aspects of our body to the brain. So we've got a gut-brain axis, the ApoE, is that driving it, or is that a receptor? Is the brain the driver or the receptor? Wow, I think the brain's possibly going to be seen as a receptor. Well, then we go from the gut to the skin. Then we go from the gut to the hormones. So that's--is that only the pituitary in the brain? Or is the uterus more of a transducer?
Amanda Archibald:Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah.
Mary Louder:So, so I think, as we really, really unfold the human genome, and look at this and see and understand the metabolome more, I think it's going to begin to shift and turn medicine in ways that it's just not a linear pathway, study this drug, a pill for an ill, a supplement for a symptom, and you know, you're just this linear reductionistic type of mechanistic human that's walking the planet.
Amanda Archibald:Now, we're--we're multi-dimensional and our metabolome and our microbiome is different every day. That's what's brilliant about it. But you can control it. I mean, that's what's amazing, that we can literally prime our guts, we can set up our gut so it signals more efficiently. Like you were talking about hormones, and your appetite and satiety. That mechanism is induced by the gut-brain interface, right, you know, and how efficient your gut is and how healthy the lining of your gut is, is absolutely going to effic--effect, whether you feel hungry, whether you have cravings, whether you can sleep. I mean it is--everything starts in the gut. So, the enablers is a very simplistic way of saying, hey, you need to eat foods that prime your gut. That being said, and what I'm seeing, you know, I wrote the book in 2019. I need to kind of take it apart now. Because I think most people need help building their gut or rebuilding or restabilizing, reset it. So we're going to add some more information into that part because yeah, critical.
Mary Louder:I totally--I totally can see how this would be something, the toolbox and toolkit that you've developed for bringing your genes into you know, wipe your feet, you know, put on some clean jeans and get into the kitchen right?
Amanda Archibald:Yeah. Yeah, but it's cool what you eat in the kitchen, you know, you got a foundation ingredients, but literally, if--you know it--let's say you do have to go through antibiotic therapy, for example. You know, some people do. We do.
Mary Louder:Yeah, yeah. And so, and it can save someone's life.
Amanda Archibald:And save somebody's life. Exactly. I mean, it's been demonized, but you know, we do need to use some of these medications. But you can prime your gut before and after. You can get that gut back up and functional within a week. I mean, yeah--and without fiddling too much. Yeah, we really can. So, yeah, so this is, it's just a tinkering from the toolbox. But the genome, the genetics that we're doing, allows us to know exactly where to tinker and not to harm and, you know, help you put your best self forward, you know, from the inside out.
Mary Louder:Well, it's a way to that patients can engage and care for themselves. It's a way that they can take control. It's a way that they, you know, aren't just a victim of the system, a victim of--I don't think anyone's a victim of their genes, unless there's strong mutations that are incompatible.
Amanda Archibald:Yeah, no, I absolutely agree.
Mary Louder:And we, and we understand that that's a different thing. Here we're looking at how can we take something that's this beautiful blueprint. And if we place that blueprint in how the body has the inherent capacity to heal. Therefore the body's been pretty forgiving. Because sometimes, as folks work with you and understand the toolbox, and the toolkit, they're like, "Man, I don't even have those tools in my box here. I have not been playing with those tools."
Amanda Archibald:Well, and you know, part of that too, is the reason they're not paying with the tools is because if you look at just scan, like, I don't know, just modern magazines, and maybe there's dietician X saying, well eat this, the classic, eat calcium, because it's good for--and then we point out a body part, right? So body part nutrition is useless. I know. But it's true.
Mary Louder:I know, and I'm just chuckling because I--yes, I'm sorry, I'm chuckling because I think it's--I think, I literally think we can, with good understanding, turn the world on its side, in its--in our approach to care for ourselves. And all the things that we talked about today that were detail-oriented, the simplicity we can bring it down to, and how you and I can work simplistically in a good way with patients, is we take the complexities, make it easy by saying here's your blueprint.
Amanda Archibald:Yes, exactly.
Mary Louder:Here's foods that you need to put on your plate. Here's how you can cook them. So they taste good to your palate. Here's the exercise you need to do with these foods. Yeah, you got to look at your stress level. Yeah, you got some things you've got to correct because we have some abnormal labs, but we can follow those up. And we can literally, you know, what changes are the things we track, right? And so we then can work together to restore health to achieve--
Amanda Archibald:And you'll understand why. I mean, that's right. You are empowered. You understand what the, quote,"prescription" is, yeah. And you understand the goals. And that's why I kind of made the point about "eat this for your body part" is irrelevant. If we say I want you to try and eat cruciferous vegetables, let's find the ones that work for your palate that you're familiar with. Here's how to pair them. And here's the why. Here's what they're going to do in your body. They're going to turn this on, they're going to trigger that, or you know, and so it's a prescription to help your body pull on its innate intelligence to get you to where you want to be, which is well. Yeah, and this is not eating, "eat right for your body parts." I mean, that's what I just heard. That's how I was educated. If you do this, it's good for your eyes. Do this, it's good for your ears. Baloney. Your eyes are different from mine, you know? And you know, drink milk, it's good for your bones, I'll tell you, methylation is probably a lot better way to look at your bones and it's right with exercise. You're doing it. Oh, good. You get this.
Mary Louder:It's right. If you give a person a lot of calcium and their inflammatory pathways are turned on, and they're under-methylating, guess where that calcium is gonna go? Blood vessels. Yeah, and it's not going to--yeah, into their joints into their soft tissue, it's not going to go into the bones.
Amanda Archibald:Correct. We don't eat enough protein, that won't happen either. So yes.
Mary Louder:Right. So looking at this from a different perspective would then cause us to say, well, since we put it that way, we should probably look at our genes, right?
Amanda Archibald:Exactly.
Mary Louder:Yeah. Well, Amanda, this has been enlightening. This has been amazing. And I think--I think we've got to come back, plan and maybe come back and talk about the metabolome. It sounds like you're going to be digging into that more and, and I think that can be something that can be such a really cool topic to talk about. So--
Amanda Archibald:Absolutely, yeah, yes. Yes. Like all by itself. Yes. Yes.
Mary Louder:Well, today, for our dear listeners, our guest has been Amanda Archibald, registered dietitian. Her book, The Genomic Kitchen, available wherever books are sold, and it's on Amazon. I did check that out. Great roadmap. And then I would recommend as you dig into this book, which is very readable, and it's color-coded, and it's got the MISE approach in her toolbox, to also get a genomic test. And as we're getting ready here to release, and maybe by the time this podcast hits year, we have released, the first part of our Hero's Genome, where you become the hero of your own journey, and looking at your genomics to establish and really, really dig into how you can best care for yourself. So, thank you, Amanda, for being with us, and we look forward to speaking with you soon again.
Amanda Archibald:It was a pleasure. Always fun chatting with you. Thanks.
