- in aging , guest/interview , health by allan
How to use your DNA to optimal health with Kashif Khan
More and more we are finding the keys that our genetics give us to live a longer, healthier life. In his book, The DNA Way, Kashif Khan gives us a roadmap to look at our health and fitness through our DNA. On episode 590 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss his book and how you can use your genes to get and stay healthy and fit.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:03:19.230] – Allan
Hello, Ras.
[00:03:20.690] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, how are you today?
[00:03:22.760] – Allan
Well, I'm juggling. Juggling episodes. Juggling traveling. Well, we had a guest, and her episode is supposed to go live when this episode goes live. So probably last week you had heard me say such and such will be on this week, and this ain't that episode. Well, her book got delayed, and so we shifted things around. So we may have a couple of episodes in the near future where there's not a hello episode. Hello part of the episode. And I apologize for that. Well, I may play it anyway, but if you're like well, he's already there, and now he's talking about going there. If that gets confusing, I'm sorry. We're time travelers here, and we're this in the future. It is what it is. I want to make sure that I help the authors the best I can when I can. So this episode was not the one I promised you last week. It's a new one. So that plus, yeah, I'm traveling. We're currently in Ashborough, North Carolina, which was the county I was born in, the city I was born in. My mother lives here. My sister lives here. We're visiting her before we go over to Asheville, which is where my daughter's getting married.
[00:04:27.570] – Allan
So when you're listening to this, our daughter would have gotten married on Saturday, so you're listening to us on Tuesday. Normally we're not that tight. Normally we're two or three weeks out, but right on that. So if the next couple of weeks sound weird, was like, yeah, I'm planning this trip. I'm about to go. I went and I got there.
[00:04:45.850] – Rachel
Time has no meaning.
[00:04:49.210] – Allan
Yeah. Message from future.
[00:04:51.370] – Rachel
Time has no meeting anymore.
[00:04:53.710] – Allan
How are things up there?
[00:04:55.020] – Rachel
Beautiful. We have spring. The trees are budding, and tonight is actually run club night for me. And I cannot wait to get down to the trail because the turtles that we have in the river should be starting to do their nesting. And so I can't wait to see what kind of wildlife we'll have pretty soon. So looking forward to seeing my turtles tonight.
[00:05:14.090] – Allan
Cool, because now they're going to listen to a future episode, and it's like she just said it was freezing a turtle.
[00:05:20.590] – Rachel
Well, today's a spring. You never know. It's Michigan.
[00:05:25.190] – Allan
So are you ready to talk to Kashif?
[00:05:27.880] – Rachel
Sure.
Interview
[00:06:08.700] – Allan
Kashif, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
[00:06:11.280] – Kashif
Good to be here, man. Very good pleasure. Happy to be here.
[00:06:14.500] – Allan
Yeah. Now your book is called The DNA Way: Unlock the Secrets of Your Genes to Reverse Disease, Slow Aging, and Achieve Optimal wWellness. In reading the book, it was very interesting because as you went, you went through great examples of different people, including yourself, and how their genetics were driving their outcomes, their health outcomes, sometimes without them even knowing it. Obviously mostly without them knowing it. It was there and it was real. By the time you started writing the book, it was about 7000 profiles of people that were out there. So I do have to ask this quick question, is have you figured out the perfect genetic profile yet?
[00:06:54.050] – Kashif
I wouldn't say perfect, but there is one gentleman who we met with who was the founder of a four M, the anti aging conference. And this guy's in the Guinness Book of all the records for like, 13,000 sit ups and some number of thousands of push ups, and his genetics were almost flawless. He's so healthy that he's recovering while he's pushing himself, and that's why he can do the 13,000 sit ups. I think his name was Robert Goldman. But other than that, everybody has a red flag for the most part. He's literally the only person we've seen that's wired like this. He's a genetic freak. But everybody has something, whether they know it or not, that needs support.
[00:07:28.980] – Allan
And that's why we're here, because I know I'm far from perfect and I need support, a whole lot of support. Now, you used a term in the book. It's the first time I've actually seen this term in a book. And that's why it really caught my attention, because it was just one of those it stops you for a second when you're reading. You're like, Wait a minute. That's really important. And the term was informed choice. If we know what the answer is, if we know the right choice, we have a choice. We have the opportunity. Can you talk a little bit about informed choice, what that is and what it means for us?
[00:08:03.800] – Kashif
Yeah. So in this context, what we're saying is we are constantly making choices when it comes to health or wellness, even if we don't think we are. Every time you decide to eat, to breathe, to expose yourself to anything, it's a choice towards health or a choice away from health. Literally every choice you make. And most of the time, we're not even consciously aware of that. It's outside of our awareness. And so once you start to develop the habits of understanding that your choices do equal your health outcome, when it comes to chronic disease, aging, the way you perform, the way you sleep, and it truly is in your control that a lot of these things that we think are, oh, yeah, there's diabetes in my family. There's breast cancer in my family. No, there's some underlying genetics of optimality that drives that thing to thrive. And if you understood what that root cause was and you started to make the right choices, then you can decide whether or not you have disease. You can decide at what pace you actually age. You can decide how much energy you have. And this is one thing I learned about myself.
[00:09:02.480] – Kashif
I sit here in front of you, perfectly healthy. When I used to have five chronic conditions, which I really thought I had, that I didn't realize until later, I developed through the wrong choices.
[00:09:11.060] – Allan
Now, one of the interesting things that we got into this was there's what we would call, I guess people just call common truths. It's like we all believe this is the right way to do this. And if you're doing this, you're doing the right thing. And generally 80 20 rule is probably working out. But there is some counterintuitiveness to this whole genetic makeup. You had a buddy who was golfing four times a week, and I think most people would say, well, that's awesome. That's a good amount of walking. Even if you're in a cart, you're still doing a good amount of walking and exercise and getting outside. But this was actually detrimental to him. Could you explain that?
[00:09:45.320] – Kashif
You nailed it. The reason why he did the golfing was for the walking because he had a cholesterol issue. And this guy, a dear friend of mine, 38 years old when this happened, and he was a pharmacist, so he, on the medical side, understood himself. Right. He had been trained, but that number kept going up and his dosage kept going up, and he couldn't understand, what am I doing wrong? So the walking was part of his therapeutic plan. Let me walk this off. Right. What was actually happening was he was missing some of the key detox genes that instruct Glutathione utilization in the body. So your body's ability to bind onto toxins, send them to deliver, to metabolize and clear and so in missing them when he was walking on that golf course and breathing in. And by the way, this is in Canada, where the regulation on what chemicals are allowed to be used in golf courses are a little lax just because we have a long winter in most provinces. And so they allow more stuff to be used. And he's breathing these things in for three, 4 hours at a time, four days a week, which is not typical human capacity, even with the best detox system.
[00:10:48.670] – Kashif
And he had the worst. So what happens when you have toxins in your body? They cause inflammation. Your cellular structure was not designed to cope with these types of toxic insults. And so when the endothelium or the inner lining of the blood vessel, the wall that the blood actually touches, gets exposed to toxins, it gets inflamed. And your body will then use cholesterol as a hormone to reduce the inflammation. That's why it's actually sent to that location so if you don't deal with the underlying root cause, which is I have no detox system and I'm consistently exposing myself to toxins that are causing inflammation. But instead you wait to treat the disease that comes out of it, which is what we call cholesterolemia. All you're going to ever going to do is it's like a boat with a hole and you're just throwing buckets of cholesterolemia while the water is still coming in. Why not plug the holes? And that's what we were able to do with him. And guess what? He's not on a prescription anymore. No more pills.
[00:11:40.210] – Allan
That's awesome. That's awesome. But so counterintuitive that okay, play golf a little less and choose a different golf course.
[00:11:47.170] – Kashif
Well, it was a couple of dials to turn. It was that it was adopt new habits. But it was also now that we know that your body doesn't do this job well, how can we supplement it? So there's two dials to turn, get rid of the exposure. That's not always easy. Let's also support your body's biological function. We made a cocktail form as a friend. I made him some supplements that supported detoxification of the body cellular resiliency, mitochondrial function. And then his cells started to behave as if he did have the good version of the genes.
[00:12:18.960] – Allan
Awesome. So now you brought up something in the book, I think with onslaught of diabetes and you have some experience in your family and you're up with this. Is that some point everybody's going to have insulin resistance and diabetes even if they not have a genetic preference. But can you talk about how genetics drives insulin resistance?
[00:12:37.850] – Kashif
Yeah. So right now, the United States is presumably 95% metabolically unhealthy. This is coming from the CDC. They're saying only 5% of Americans actually have good metabolic health. And that's mostly driven by our food supply. The high carb, low fat myth that was completely wrong and the road we went down and where we're now at. And so the actual straight out insulin response is genetically driven. There's a gene called TCF seven L two, which determines how efficiently you actually manage your insulin levels and how do you respond to glucose in the bloodstream. And are you bouncing up and down or is it more even keel? And if you're not doing well, there a big red flag. Points to diabetes. AMY1 is a gene that helps you break down starches and metabolize them and use them as fuel. Some people do really well there and we don't tell them you need to go on a low carb diet. They actually thrive on carbs. A lot more people, however, don't do so well there. Then there's also fat metabolism. I can't tell you how many people we have to tell them that the reason they don't feel good is because they're on a keto diet.
[00:13:40.050] – Kashif
And I'm not saying not go on a keto diet for the person who's wired for it. There's nothing that will make them feel better and healthier than that thing. But for the person who's not wired for it, who has the suboptimal version of the ap2 gene, as it's called, they may feel good in the first two or three weeks because ketones start firing. The brain feels good, you're using fat as fuel. But five, six weeks into it, you start to get sluggish. And you don't blame it on the keto because you felt so good in the first two, three weeks. So you start looking for other problems. Right. And a lot of people, we've had to unwind and change their diet. So all of these things equal metabolic dysfunction, which then lead to insulin resistance, which then lead to a whole scope of problems, from cardiovascular disease to cancers, to diabetes to dementia and Alzheimer's. We need metabolic health as a baseline foundation for other chronic diseases to not set in.
[00:14:30.040] – Allan
And I think this kind of speaks to the whole idea that, well, it worked for him, it should work for me. I watched them do this way of eating, and it works, and they're just in brilliant health and I want some of that, and then I eat that way, and my results are just not even close to that. Can you dive a little deeper into how our genotype affects the nutrition that our body needs?
[00:14:54.990] – Kashif
Yeah. So this is a big challenge in today where information is so easy to access. And so you go to YouTube or you go to a podcast like this, for example, and you hear something that the person speaking says, this changed my life. And they're probably correct. But if you ask them how they got there, it was probably five, six, seven years of trial and error. And that's why exactly,
[00:15:20.440] – Allan
you got me eight years.
[00:15:22.550] – Kashif
But, yeah, eight years of like, this sucks, this sucks. I'm like, oh, wow, I feel incredible. And you feel so good that you want to scream for the rooftops and tell everybody, and that's why you have this incredible podcast. Right. But the pain it took to get there, we don't talk about. And all we're saying is that, yes, it works for you. If a genetic you comes along, it will also work for them. If they're not wired like you, they're going to say, this doesn't work. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Right. So all we're saying is, day one, there's an instruction manual in each one of your 50 trillion cells that's telling your cells how to do their jobs. And those manuals are not the same for us. So when it comes to nutrition, like you just asked, if we aren't precise in terms of what our bodies need, yes, you can trial and error it until you figure out what feels good, and then eventually you'll be great. That takes years, typically. Or you can go straight to the genes that direct all these processes, starting with the brain. When it comes to diet, nutrition, the first thing we usually look at is how do you even perceive food?
[00:16:21.900] – Kashif
There's genes around satisfaction of the palate and people that need to binge and snack because they can't get satisfied. I need my doritos, I need my cookies. Right? Then there's genes around satiety of the gut and your ability to actually feel full. And that signal from the gut to the brain is just sometimes slower for people. And so we have to structure their food. Then there's people that can't experience pleasure as efficiently as others. Their dopamine pathway is broken, so they become addictive or they become bingers, and they use food as coping mechanism because their emotional pathways are off. So decoding the brain step one is really important in terms of decoding how to eat the way you want because you may think you're doing it, but depending on the day and what you're exposed to, you probably aren't.
[00:17:02.410] – Allan
Yeah, so this is talking about our relationship with food and satiety and how we approach it. It's talking about how we metabolize the different macronutrients and it even gets as deep as how we deal with the micronutrients and how we balance that out. I haven't done mine. I will. I promise. I'm on it. Back to the States. I'm a spit in the tube, but I have a problem with low sodium and low potassium and I have to kind of manage and make sure that I'm getting a sufficient amount of that in my diet. I only know that from the error that happened.
[00:17:35.920] – Kashif
Right.
[00:17:36.280] – Allan
And every time I go get blood test, I have seen that it's low. And I'm guessing there's probably a profile in my genetics that is putting me at a predisposition for that.
[00:17:46.700] – Kashif
Yeah, likely the ability to actually metabolize. So there's different steps to using nutrients. There's getting it in the blood, which is what we measure, but there's also using it. So there's a big difference between understanding how much is in the blood and how much is in the cell where your body actually needs it. And genes that drive those steps are unique and separate. And so we can get really precise, especially when it comes to vitamin D. It's a really complex pathway. But vitamin D is probably the most important micronutrient that you need out of the 22,000 genes that make up your Genome 2000. So almost 10% of your human biology requires vitamin D at the adequate right level to express your genes properly. Meaning that for your genes to do their jobs, whether it's hormones, brain, bone, skin, whatever, if you don't have the right amount of vitamin D, you're not doing those jobs well. And vitamin D has a complex pathway because if you think of our ancestral traits, they were out in the sun. Here's you and me indoors on a zoom call, right. That was not the reality of what worked. Like 200 years ago and then go beyond many thousands of years.
[00:18:52.800] – Kashif
So we now have this ability to mitigate and reduce our vitamin D utilization, which doesn't fit our current lifestyle. Step one, there's a gene that takes vitamin D from D Two from the sun and converts it to D Three. So how efficiently do you do that? Step two, there's a gene that then transports it to the cell where it's actually used. How efficiently do you do that? Step three, there's a gene that binds it and actually gets it into the cell. And how efficiently do you do that? So now not only do we know how much vitamin do you need, but maybe how frequently. If you don't transport and bind it, the first dose, you might only use 20% of what you put in. So you need to take two or three doses in a day. That one thing. I can't tell you how many problems we fix just by fixing this. From anxiety to bone issues to I can't get out of bed with depression and issues. So much get fixed just with this one thing.
[00:19:44.330] – Allan
And I think that's why a lot of people notice when they start eating right, they start feeling better. These feelings and emotions, all this stuff, it's like, well, food is not supposed to help me with depression, but yes, it does if you eat the right food.
[00:19:57.230] – Kashif
Yeah, there was a report that just came out that if you take the best antidepressant drug and then you compare it to exercise, exercise is a 50% better outcome than the number one antidepressant drug, which, by the way, only works 40% of the time because it's just masking the symptom and hiding the fact that there's biological dysfunction. And it usually has to do with gut and body, like not moving your body and not supporting your gut, which both equal brain problems, neural inflammation, disconnect in general. So yeah, food and exercise will resolve most mood issues.
[00:20:34.170] – Allan
So let's do that. Let's jump into fitness and talk about how our genotype drives the type of fitness that we should be doing. Because I know some people sit there and say, well, you can look at this person and they're long and lean and they do yoga. Well, yoga didn't make them long and lean. They're good at yoga because they're long and lean. Or you can look at a sprinter or you can look at a marathoner and say, okay, two totally different body types that make them better at their sport. But when we look at training, though, there's still training that's best for us. How does that all work?
[00:21:05.640] – Kashif
So that's a big thing that we talk to parents about because you can imagine the five, six, seven year old child where it's like, hey, I want my kid to play football. I want my kid to be a hockey player. Do you know what they're going to look like when they're 15 and imagine all the effort you're going to put into this to see them fail because you didn't pick the right path, when guess what? Their hormones tell us exactly what they're going to become. And that's also true for you and me, the 40 plus crowd, right? We understand exactly why we've been challenged and why we hit plateaus. So take me, for example. I produce a lot of testosterone. My genes say that very clear, but I also clear it very quickly. So I have this use it or lose it type hormone profile, where if I do actively go to the gym regularly, which I do, I can fairly easily maintain the physique I want. But as soon as I stop, it all comes crumbling down, right? I can't get big and I can't deadlift 400 pounds because I don't make enough estrogen, which is there's a myth that strength and weight comes from testosterone actually is driven by estrogen.
[00:22:08.340] – Kashif
So I don't make enough estrogen to get the mass. I'm more of a Captain America and less of a Dwayne Johnson, let's say. Right? If I do everything right, there's a certain body type that my hormones are already dictating, and that helps me determine how I need to work out. For example, I used to do four or five sets of everything and I was over training, and my recovery didn't facilitate that. Well, now I do two sets, and every single trainer I talk to says, that's not how you work out. Well, guess what? I'm in the best shape of my life and I'm able to go to the gym more often. And I feel better mentally because that's exactly what my body needed. And yes, it's unique, but great, that's what I need. It doesn't matter to me what works for everyone else, right?
[00:22:50.600] – Allan
Yeah, exactly. And so by getting your genetic profile done, you're going to have some ideas, okay, how's my body going to respond to exercise? What am I going to get the most benefit from? How is my recovery work? Which is going to also then help you understand, okay, what volume should I put on myself? And so many people just think more is better, but that's not the case.
[00:23:11.630] – Kashif
Since I reduced it, I have far better outcome. So recovery, the word you use, is very important. So we're in Toronto and we work with a lot of NHL hockey players. It's like a mecca of hockey training up here, right? So in the offseason, they're all here, and recovery is always a question mark. So we work with a lot of players and we have to show them that their regimen is the problem, it's not the recovery. They're just over training. And when we reduce their training to align with their mitochondrial resilience so we can actually determine how efficiently the mitochondria functions, which then determines how quickly they recover. So, again, we turn both dials, we supplement them to help their mitochondria and to help them recover faster, but we also adjust the load to make it align with what they're designed for. And all of a sudden, again, they thrive. They actually don't need to train as much, but a guy like me, I need to train consistently, meaning every day, but a small load per day, right. There's some guys that we tell them, you got to go three days a week and you got to go heavy.
[00:24:09.460] – Kashif
Right. There's some days people that got to go heavy every single day. So it depends on who you are and how you're wired. And all of a sudden, when it's aligned and personalized, you get the best outcome.
[00:24:18.220] – Allan
Yeah, and that's so hard for people because they just say, okay, well, this person's working so hard, especially a professional athlete, but just everyday people, you go in the gym and you see someone working really hard, and they built this body, and it's like, oh, wow, well, I want that body. Genetically, that body might not be possible, but beyond that, you have to put in the right kind of work, the right amount of work, and at the right times to make this all work out. And a good genetic profile like what your company does, will give us that information to help us understand our fitness and recovery better.
[00:24:50.160] – Kashif
And the other big area is the delineation between male and female training. So most of what we know and understand is based on, how do I take a 20 year old guy and make him a weightlifting champion? Right? That's where everything comes from because that's the industry. It's competitive training is at a youthful age, and it's around men. It's recently become a phenomenon with women, with TikTok and all these videos and everything. So everyone wants to look like everybody else now, right? So women, whereas men have a daily hormone cycle, and your genes will determine sort of little nuances in that cycle for a man. We have a menstrual cycle every day. Men have a hormone cycle, right? Sorry, I should say a Manstrual cycle. Women have a menstrual cycle. They do it every month. So the exact same thing that we do every day, women do it on a monthly basis. So it's stretched, meaning it's not, here's what I do every day, or here's what my week looks like. What does my month look like? Because the hormone levels in week one are here, and then they're down here, and then they're back up here.
[00:25:51.540] – Kashif
It's a roller coaster. So your body whereas in the beginning, for a woman, it's more akin to weight training and putting on muscle. Then in the following week and your estrogens go crazy. You're more prone to injuries. You want to get off the heavy weights. Right? Then in the following week, your body wants to get into recovery mode and start prepping for that lining release. So if you understand the cycle, which we map out a lot. And you understand. Are you more estrogen dominant, more testosterone dominant? Do you make toxic hormones, which then causes inflammation, which you need to reduce? Then you can be really particular on how to make that ideal month. And then women get unstuck, let's say. They really feel stuck all the time.
[00:26:31.840] – Allan
Yeah, I can definitely see that. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:26:41.260] – Kashif
So I would say the big sleeper that gets ignored isn't spoken of is environmental health. So the thousands of people that we reviewed, the one thing that consistently was a drip of toxic insult that was outside of their awareness was what's in their environment? What are they breathing? The chemicals on their desk, the pesticides that make their lawn so beautiful, the Teflon coated frying pan could be something that your neighbor sprayed in their garden. So the toxic chemical burden that we have versus what we're wired for, giant misalignment, huge problem and is the root cause of a lot of problems. Right. So I would say that's the number one thing to look out for, number two is to understand that we walking on this planet, have genes, an instruction manual on our body that is approximately 200 to 250,000 years old. We haven't changed since then. Now, our current reality is a post 1950s reality. So compare that to 250,000 years, a tiny, tiny blip in time in terms of food, stress, sleep, chemicals, everything. Right. We are not designed for how we live, which is why we have a $4 trillion health care budget, of which 90% truly is spent on chronic disease, all of which is preventable.
[00:27:54.670] – Kashif
So $3.6 trillion a year the United States spends on treating things that never needed to happen in the first place. Right. So just understand that in order to truly be healthy, this thing that you're walking around in is not ready for the environment you're walking around in and the food you're eating and for the stress you're having and for the lack of sleep and all. So you need to work on all of those things. Try and be more like your cavemen ancestors if you can. Right. Number three thing I would say is consistency. And I've learned this from myself, in myself, trying to be better and eliminating five chronic diseases. I don't have any of them anymore, and I haven't had them for years. When I had five years ago, all five of them at the same time. Things can come back. We get sort of comfortable. Right. And consistency is key. You can never stop doing the work. You have two choices. You either do the work now or you pay for it later. And you can pick one. You cannot do anything. Fine, then, okay. Enjoy the medical system, which is, I will do whatever I want.
[00:28:57.160] – Kashif
And when I break myself, it's the doctor's job to fix me that's one way or I could understand what might break and prevent that from happening and go into my 90s, riding my bicycle and playing with my grandchildren. That's a very different way to live than the American dream right now, which is the last 15 years or spent in treatment. That's actually the average. So that becomes a choice. In order to maintain that choice, you have to be consistent. It's not a task, it's a lifestyle. It's every day you wake up, you're working on your health.
[00:29:24.080] – Allan
Excellent. Now your company, the DNA company, is going to give the listeners of the 40+ Fitness podcast a 10% discount on the DNA workup. You go to thednacompany.com/40plus. So the discount code is 40 P L U S. You can go there and get a 10% discount off of the test. Is there somewhere else that you'd like me to send them, Kashif?
[00:29:46.240] – Kashif
Sure, I mean, anyone that's interested in learning more the book, which was big news for us, is coming out right around the corner. So if you go to thednaway.com, you'll be able to be connected to a retailer that can supply the book. But this was really exciting for us because one of our patients was a CEO of a publishing company and when he heard what we're doing he's like, well, you guys need a book out there because everyone needs to know that this tool should be part of their toolkit. And most people don't. Most people don't know that they can prevent and reverse and read their human instruction manual. And so I spent late nights for a good year writing this book. It wasn't my intention to be an author, but when I started I couldn't stop. It was a really pleasurable thing to do and so it's now finally being released and our mission is that we can bring personalization to health and wellness. Even just by reading the book, you can understand my journey and how I fixed myself, which allows you to start thinking about yourself in a different way. So again, that's thednaway.com, and it's launching May 16.
[00:30:47.790] – Allan
Great. And that was what was really cool was that you took the time to walk us through your DNA and how that's changed your lifestyle choices. So it's a really good practical way to demonstrate the benefits of how this all works, plus lots of opportunities shared with different people that you've worked with and how you've helped them set their course. Thank you for that. Kashif, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:31:10.850] – Kashif
It was a pleasure. Amazing talking to you.
Post Show/Recap
[00:31:14.010] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:31:15.650] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. I always love talking about DNA and it is still on my list of things to get done. But now I've got something to think about because my hospital network can do some genetic testing. They also accept genetic testing through another outside platform. But then it sounds like Kashif has a different company, the DNA company, that might be even more thorough. So now I kind of got to compare to see apples to apples what I can get out of this DNA testing.
[00:31:46.570] – Allan
Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, the testing that they do. Everything's a step change as things go, and technology changes, and the costs come down on some things, always going to go up on other things. But as they come down on these technologies, they're able to do more. As they learn things, they're able to do more. One of the interesting things about his company is at this point, they've served 7000 people. And that doesn't maybe not sound like, but that's a nice size sample of looking at people and their situation and then looking at the lifestyle changes that those individuals make and what it means in their life. So when you kind of take it from that context, it's like, this is a pretty cool deal. The 23 AND ME was kind of like the first one out the gate doing this stuff. And when they did it, they tried to tell you things like, you have a propensity for Alzheimer's or not, you're probably going to be lactose intolerant or not, you're going to be bald or not. They could do that, and they could also then start telling you about your heritage and where you're from.
[00:32:54.820] – Allan
Now, they got in a little bit of trouble at the beginning because the FDA is like, you're diagnosing diseases. So there was a whole lot of fighting infighting things that was going on between the government and that company. Fortunately, they got past a lot of that stuff. So while your DNA cannot diagnose an illness, it can tell you a lot about the way that you do things in your body that can give you the information to make better choices. Okay. And where that's valuable is if you say, okay, well, I like fruit, and it's like, great, you like fruit, but your body doesn't process fruit the same way as someone else. So you can have some fruit, but just not as much fruit as you might be eating today. So I know everybody's like, well, it's natural food. Yes, it is natural food, but your body might not process fructose as well as somebody else, and you have to take that into account or not. I mean, it's your choice. That's why I wanted to start I started that conversation with him about informed choice about that, because if you have the information, then you can make those choices.
[00:34:02.450] – Allan
And there are privacy concerns. Who has access to your genetic information, and how can that be used in the future? Right now, nobody knows. But it could be, and it's something to think about, because if someone has your genetic information and decides they don't want to write an insurance policy for you, that could be a big deal. So there are some concerns. There some things for you to think about, but here's a way, and mine's been tested, so if they want to clone me, please go right ahead. Nobody wants to clone me, but if you want some information, some data that's going to help you, this is the way to go.
[00:34:44.680] – Rachel
Well, the interesting thing that you touched on briefly is about cholesterol. I think it was his friend that had high cholesterol and was trying to go golfing and walking and being outside and wasn't helping his cholesterol. And then maybe he got this DNA testing and found out, well, there's other problems to how he was attempting to resolve a high cholesterol. I know that with menopause, my cholesterol is expected to raise. My dad's got high cholesterol. It could be a genetic factor, but it would be interesting to know, well, if I should be on statins, or if statins won't work, it should be nice to know that. Or like when you talked about choosing different diets, maybe I should try a Mediterranean diet or vegan. But I sure would like to know whether my body would respond as well to that or another. I mean, it just would be nice to cut through the chase and instead of experimenting with all these different things to try and control my cholesterol. What can I learn from this data and implement a lot faster?
[00:35:48.110] – Allan
Yeah, well, again, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/dna that'll take you to the page. And they run discounts, they do different things, but it's not out of reach for most people to make this investment and kind of know those things with his friend, kind of the scenario was that his friend was an avid golfer and he was out on the golf course all the time. Now they're up in Toronto, so their golf season is like, over the day it starts. It's pretty short to keep the grass going and to keep everything they used a lot of chemicals and everything to keep the grass growing all the way through the winter and have it ready for the season. And so it was just really that exposures to toxins that this guy was not his body was not equipped to do very well. And so daily, almost daily, like four times a week, exposure to toxins was causing some issues. Now it's one of the weird things of traveling up to North Carolina. Our days down in Panama are twelve and twelve. I mean, like literally 6:30 6:30 daylight period. We're up here now. Last night we're like, walking around at 8:30 and it's still daylight.
[00:36:56.680] – Allan
We're like, this is insane. Up in Toronto, it's even more insane. Like I said, up in Canada, their days, so he can get off work at 05:00 and play a whole round of golf before it even starts to get dark walking. And so this guy's out there playing golf, and he's getting some good walking in. He feels like he's taking care of himself and his body's just not dealing with the toxins, and that's just causing all kinds of problems in his body. And so nobody would know that. They'd be like, this was a healthy guy. He played golf four times a week. Why is he having a heart attack? Nobody would know that. And he thought he was doing everything right and it wasn't working out. So it's just kind of one of those things. This technology right now is available to you, which is what's important to take away from this call. Eventually, this information will be a part of how your doctor cares for you. Your doctor is going to say, Well, I know, okay, there's eight statins on the market right now, and I know you're not going to tolerate any of them.
[00:37:57.930] – Rachel
Right.
[00:37:59.530] – Allan
What we're going to do is we're going to prescribe this other medication, and we're not going to make you go through the grief of struggling with the statins. And so you think about that, where instead of a practice with this trial and error stuff, with all the different drugs, they'll literally know this is the drug that's most likely to help you right now, based on what we know about your genetic profile and what will work for you. And when we get to that level of personalized medicine, then our life expectancies can go astronomical, because you're not going to waste a whole lot of time trying to treat something the wrong way.
[00:38:36.200] – Rachel
That would be so wonderful. That's what I love about this DNA, just the science. And like I said, cutting to the chase sure would save a lot of time and money and effort instead of the trial and error things that we do right now.
[00:38:49.600] – Allan
Yeah, if you're interested in all this, you can go to their website, 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/DNA, and that'll take you to the website. And I don't think they gave me a discount code, but there are different codes out there you can use if you want to book one of these. Maybe 40plus.
[00:39:06.260] – Rachel
40plus.
[00:39:07.090] – Allan
40plus. Okay, I wrote it. Okay. Yeah, use the discount. 40plus, they'll give you a discount. They might be offering one. That's better. That's fine. Take the discount if it's better, but get some money off of it. Again, if you want to act on data and you want to kind of go to the next level with how you approach your health and fitness, this is not a bad tool to have.
[00:39:29.260] – Rachel
Yeah, that's really cool. Well, thanks.
[00:39:31.560] – Allan
All right, well, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week.
[00:39:34.310] – Rachel
Sounds good. Take care.
[00:39:35.850] – Allan
You too.
[00:39:36.730] – Rachel
Thank you. Bye bye.
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