Root Cause Solutions For You

Unlocking Health Secrets: A Conversation on Genetics with Chris Lippe

• Fabiola Reyes, BCHHP - Root Cause Expert, Cert. AK, CellCore & Nutrition Response Testing® and Quantum Nutrition Testing Practitioner • Season 3 • Episode 3

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Ever wondered why certain diets or supplements work wonders for some people but leave you feeling worse? The answer may lie in your genetic code – your body's unique instruction manual that determines how you process nutrients, handle stress, and even your susceptibility to certain health conditions.

In this eye-opening conversation with Chris Lippe, founder of Reveal My DNA, we explore the fascinating world of genetic testing and how understanding your DNA blueprint can transform your approach to health. Chris shares his personal journey into genetics after losing his father unexpectedly to a heart attack, discovering that a specific gene mutation affecting his homocysteine levels might have been the culprit – and how this knowledge may have saved his own life.

We dive deep into methylation, that crucial biological process affecting everything from energy levels to mood stability to detoxification capacity. Did you know that up to 45% of people have genetic variations in their MTHFR gene that can reduce their ability to process certain nutrients by as much as 60-95%? This explains why blanket health recommendations often fail – your body literally processes food and supplements differently based on your genetic makeup.

The conversation extends beyond methylation to explore connections between genetic variants and Alzheimer's risk, cardiovascular health, immunity, and even structural integrity of ligaments and tendons. Perhaps most importantly, we discuss how genetic information empowers you to take preventative action decades before symptoms might appear, potentially altering your health trajectory with targeted nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle modifications.

What distinguishes this approach from basic consumer genetic tests is the clinical-grade analysis – using next-generation sequencing that achieves 99% accuracy – and the translation of complex genetic data into practical recommendations like personalized food shopping lists based on 840 scientific studies. And unlike many genetic testing companies, Reveal My DNA maintains strict privacy standards, never selling customer data.

Ready to decode your body's instruction manual and discover exactly what YOUR unique biology needs to thrive? This conversation might just be the key that unlocks your optimal health potential.

Ready to take charge of your health from the inside out?

Let’s uncover the unique blueprint your body is working with—and use it to guide your healing journey.

Email me at fabiola@rootcausesolutionsforyou.com to get started.

It's time to stop guessing and start understanding. Your health transformation begins here. 

Disclaimer: The Food and Drug Administration has not evaluated these statements. This podcast is not a medical service; the information provided is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. The Root Cause Solutions For You, its practitioners, and employees make no warranties, express or implied, concerning the contents. The information shared in this episode is the opinion of the speaker and should not be considered medical advice. You should never disregard medical advice or delay seeking it because of the contents of this episode.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Root Cause Solutions for you. My name is Fabiola and I am your host, and today I have a very special guest with us. He is Chris Lightby and he is a founder of Reveal my DNA, which I have to tell everybody. I am obsessed with this technology, this amazing information that we get from genetics. Over the last, I would say, month and a half, maybe two months, three months I've lost count I've just been really digging in into the benefits of genetics, so I'm super excited to have Chris here with us today. Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, outstanding, and I'm so excited. Hearing your excitement makes me excited, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun today.

Speaker 1:

I think so. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself. What led you to you know dabble into this field?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so genetics isn't something that I necessarily, you know, studied or focused on. Early in my career I actually used to own a chain of coffee houses and sold that business and then moved into healthcare, specifically nutrition. But then, as the path kind of goes, things always take little turns or you hit, you know, Y's in the road and I started looking at, you know, how do we identify what is truly needed for nutrition? And there's an assortment of different ways out there, from blood tests to an interview to other techniques, and I shouldn't say I stumbled across it, but a friend of mine introduced me to genetic testing and I just started looking a little bit more into it, and I've had some family things in the past too that, if you want to, we can talk about that later. But it really helped me solidify in building what nutrients I need to take from a supplement standpoint, but also what I should be eating on a regular basis, Because I think a lot within nutrition and supplements that we take you know we have to remember that it's the word supplement we're supplementing what our diet should be.

Speaker 2:

So within our tests and our reports, we also give you a diet recommendation guide. You know what you should be shopping for when you go to the grocery store, and all research-based. And again, we can hit on all of this. But so I'm passionate about how it provides a scientific, a validated scientific output of not just the genes but also the different food markers that we use. So it's really truly amazing and I think people love it. We've heard from lots of different practitioners that their patients and their clients love it as well, so I'm excited to have this conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're right, I love it. And yeah, a lot of people have confusions about nutrition supplements. I think nowadays we're inundated with so many messages. Many different practitioners focus on magnesium, focus on liver, cleanse gallbladder, and so people get confused. What should I eat? What's the best thing for me? And one of the things I love teaching about people is like you need to understand your biochemistry. And now with genetics, if you understand your genetics, what your blueprint really needs in order to function, it just it's not longer my opinion. What should you eat or what supplements you should take. It's your body commanding. You know calling the shots pretty much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's really a good point there, Fabiola, is that you can do an interview with a patient and maybe hear that they've got certain symptoms going on, and from that you might be able to derive what you think using your clinical experience, which is extremely valuable. But now you can also back it up and quantify it with a genetic test, giving you that blueprint the word that you used and when you put that together with your experience, that's where we find the outcomes of patients are tremendous. So, giving the utmost in science and the quality of testing, all of that along with your input as a clinician, that's where you get truly successful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree, I did my test. I just I got the results a few weeks ago and I cannot put it down. I'm like, oh my gosh, this, there's so much information in there, but I'm literally like understand, trying to understand every single one of my strengths, my weaknesses and, um, and I love to talk about epigenetics at some point, because we have genetics but we also have epigenetics right, which is that to me, a game changer when it comes to really understanding what type of lifestyle you should have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think one of the things to your audience is that to have at least an understanding of is that, to have at least an understanding of defining a few terms, because genetics can can be confusing, you know, and and you hear a lot of different words and things like that. So I think it might be good for us to maybe lay down as a few little basic things that you might hear, so you become a little bit familiar. I don't want to get too technical and I'm not a geneticist. I majored in finance, so I'm I'm not a geneticist. I majored in finance, so I'm I'm. I'm a business guy that you know have partnered with other people that handle the tech science side of things. But I think it'd be good to lay some of that groundwork. Would you like to do that? Fabiola is kind of you go through a few things, Okay, good, so just starting out is to really have a you know, an understanding of of DNA, you know and think about it. It is kind of that. Like you said, the blueprint, it's the makeup of our body, it's a series of molecules and within that they are built on these protein chains and what they really do. That's different than anything else which we hear protein, and we can build that with different amino acids, et cetera. But what's important about DNA is that it holds instructions to tell the body what to do in virtually every situation that we have going on. And if we have a clear pathway, then there's no breaks in that genetic makeup. And if we have a mutation or a break somewhere, then some of our function becomes less than optimal Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have you tomorrow, wake up and have this or have some diagnosis. What it does is it gives you that blueprint. Okay, hey, I'm going to be less than optimal in this one section, so let's eat a little bit more of those lima beans or whatever it might be that you need for certain nutrients that can help you kind of get past some of those breaks that you may have.

Speaker 2:

So really, that's kind of the breakdown and there's terms you know like heterozygous and homozygous and alleles. Just remember this is that everybody inherits a gene that comes from mom and comes from dad and each of those is called an allele and there's different variations of those alleles and within that, if they're both the same, that's homozygous. If they're different, then that's heterozygous. What does that really mean to the end user, to the patient, not a whole lot. That's more for you as the practitioner to kind of look at. It can give a little bit of guidance around where certain health things come from.

Speaker 2:

And it might be actually interesting for me to kind of tell my story here in a second about this, because it really does fall to that that my brother and I both have inherited something that we got from my father. So I'll jump into that here in just a second. But just on the term side of things, just know that every organism out there has a makeup of DNA, and DNA is that hardwired blueprint within us. You mentioned a word earlier called epigenetics. Epigenetics is different than the DNA hardwiring. That's how genes get turned on and off based upon our lifestyle. Things that we eat, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the stresses that we're under, those sorts of things can turn genes on and off. So that would be more of the epigenetic side. Our test, this particular test, does not cover epigenetics at this point. So we're talking about a hardwired test where we test for 92 genes, 112 SNPs, in eight different health categories and then from there there's the ones that are really popular that we'll also kind of touch on. But I'm actually going to go into just my story really quick because I think it lays a bit of a groundwork as to where my passion comes from with this right now.

Speaker 2:

Fabiola, my father, passed away the day after Thanksgiving back in 2005. And he was a young man, at 74 years old and seemingly had no health issues, taking no medications, was one of the most robust retiree guys out there, constantly going to sporting events, car shows, living life to his fullest, and woke up on the day after Thanksgiving and fell over of a heart attack in his bathroom and my mom found him and that was it. It was goodbye to dad the night before, and so we didn't really know what had happened because we didn't have any idea. Well, in talking to the doctors at the hospital afterwards, we started looking at some cardiovascular issues and they were able to actually run some tests and find a few little things that were going on, but nothing that we could really take and definitively look at. Well, is there something you know genetic going on here, or is there something you know just familial going on? Is there high blood pressure, whatever it might be?

Speaker 2:

Well, fast forward years and I get into this genetics business and I do this test and I see a few breaks. Now when I say a break, what I mean by that is a mutation in some gene, so a SNP. A mutation is when there's a variation, so we want it to be perfect like this, and if there's a SNP, it can is when there's a variation, so we want it to be perfect like this, and if there's a SNP, it can be bent a little bit to where it's not going to allow certain things to happen at that optimal functioning space. So what we noticed was there's a gene by the letters of CBS and within that particular gene there's a lot of regulation and instruction around homocysteine and homocysteine audience may or may not know of this particular amino acid can be very damaging to the inner lining of veins, arteries et cetera, putting little kind of almost scratches in it, and what the body does inherently is it uses cholesterol to go in and fix that Well as it does that the veins become less flexible and that is something that ended my father's life.

Speaker 2:

Well, upon me taking this genetic test, we find that I've got this mutation and I had been running high in homocysteine, but no one really could figure out why or what to do about it, and I tried all sorts of different things from nutrition, you know, onward. There's not a whole lot in Western medicine that they do, but there's a few things that we tried Wasn't having a whole, whole lot of success. Well then I find this CBS gene, and I wasn't having the traditional pathway under AHCY or under COMPT, and my brother got tested. He had the same mutation, and so in looking at that, we found some research out of Oxford University that talked about an amino acid by the name of glycine and trimethylglycine. I started taking this at the recommendation of reading this study, and literally 30 days later I checked my homocysteine and it went from 14 to 8.9. Wow, and for years I hadn't been able to find what it was, and so it's an amazing thing that this is something that hopefully now is going to help my entire vascular system so that I can live a long, healthy life.

Speaker 2:

I'm in my mid-50s, I have a young one, I have a little two-year-old here at home, so I want to be around for a long time, and I feel like I was able to find that information that I may not have found before, because doing genetic tests provides you that blueprint. It's very intricate. Keep in mind that there's 25,000 to 30,000 different genes that make up a human body and we're testing for 92 of those with 112 SNPs. So the most common things you're going to find are with us and then you can go and dig deeper with it. So you know, you get into those eight health categories.

Speaker 2:

So, keeping my homocysteine lower, what else has happened? My blood pressure was running about 138 over 95. On the higher end. It has naturally also brought that down to where I'm typically in the morning when I'm waking up to check it now is 118 over 85. So I've made these improvements with literally a nutrient and in doing that, you know, heck, I feel like I've got, you know, extra years kind of added to my life here.

Speaker 2:

So that's my story, you story and everybody's going to have that. I've got good friends of mine that have found other things around cortisol and stress relations. The biggest thing out there that people talk about we hear it in the news a lot or even on social media is methylation. We can go into that too, but I just wanted to tell you the little story and define a few terms there for you, fabiola. So I'll let you continue, because I know that we've got a list of questions here and, if you don't know that, we only talked for 10 minutes or so, but I'll talk all day long, so just that's all right, I'm a talker too, so I tried also not to, you know, go on a tangent.

Speaker 1:

That's fascinating, you know you mentioned homocysteine and I think it's. You know it and that's fascinating. You mentioned homocysteine and I think it's something you get checked through blood. It's a blood test. I believe. In my opinion, it should be part of the gold standard when you're running a cardiovascular panel. Know to do what they know to do, which is to you know, do a prescription to try to control that. But I do think that homocystin is such an important marker to check, you know, if there's family who has had you know, heart events or if you're concerned about you know your heart. And there's a really good books called toxic legacy by dr stephanie seneff and she talked about how damaging glyphosate right, this herbicides, this pesticides, are in regards to dna and how it it really damages dna, specifically that glycine that you were talking about, and you can see the domino effect right from the different stressors that impact our body. So yeah, I don't know, it's fascinating.

Speaker 2:

You touched on a really important point because, as I've had a few things cardiovascularly that I always ask my physician about because of my father, they always wanted to tell me like, hey, you need to lower your cholesterol, and it wasn't real high, but enough. And thank goodness that I didn't do that because, to be honest, it was helping to. You know, all this little damage that I had in my arteries and my veins was actually being plugged or fixed by that cholesterol, which is what it's meant to do, and so thank goodness I didn't have it slammed really low because, who knows, maybe something would have happened to me. So it's a fascinating world. And then, on top of it, knowing I've had high homes for years but not being able to get it under control until we found this one particular thing.

Speaker 2:

So again, that's where the genetic piece kind of came in. That was pretty unique and within our test, you know, 92 genes, 112 SNPs, and then we have 900 peer-reviewed research studies that support the genetic output. So when you get the report that comes from us, which you're reading through now, which is like a book, there's 900 different resources that are coming together to give you why those particular genes are picked there. Now there's another 840 studies that we've put together that give you the dietary recommendations that come through the shopping list of what you should be eating more of as well. So really fascinating stuff to be able to find that. And, again, not everyone's going to read through everything. So, yes, it's a big, very, very complex and complete report, but you can also look at two or three pages and find your weaknesses and go in and hit one or two of those things that also cross over to with, maybe a symptom that you might be presenting with, and you just start there and it's a great little spot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and what I love about it? It puts you on the driver's seat. You can think, oh, I have this mutation or I'm predisposed to, you know, alzheimer's, depending on what's going on, and but what can you? I feel like it gives you the tools to be able to do something about it. It puts you, you're in control, and one of the things that I love teaching people about is you have to become your own doctor. You have to be your own practitioner, because you know there might be a point where you and I are not going to be working together. But you've, you've learned enough to be your own health advocate, and I think the DNA, the DNA testing, really just gives you those tools to become that health advocate that you know that you can be for your own health.

Speaker 2:

That's. That's. That's true. I love it and and you know, I think that again to your audience you know it's. It's a great price point for the quality of the test that you get and this is something that you'll have with you. This isn't something that you need to take a test, you know, every year or every two years. This is your blueprint. This is okay. Conception Boom. We started laying out what that blueprint looks like. That is you. You now have a book that you can keep with you For as long as you are a practice member or a patient with Fabiola. You'll work on that together with her, but someday maybe you're not, you move somewhere else or you go in a different direction with your health. You've still got that blueprint. It's an amazing book to have of your health and health and pretty, pretty, pretty cool stuff.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree, like I. You know, I got into it cause I wanted to know about methylation. I could tell you know, something was like Hmm, something's not right and that's why it kind of led me to be like, okay, I just need to do some, some of this testing to really get information about methylation and liver function and hormones and all that stuff. It is definitely true. You know that there's a lot of social media out there when it comes to methylation and COMT and all that stuff. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. There's many different people out there talking about methylation, and rightfully so. It is something that it helps to govern how well we truly live our lives. From the most simple thing of waking up in the morning with kind of a fogginess, of a headache maybe, or not feeling clear or not feeling clear, or it could be something where you're getting tired in the afternoons there is all sorts of different things or it could be moments where you feel anxiety or a bit of extra stress that takes you over. There are so many different things that happen in life that stem from methylation. What methylation is just to really simply kind of break it down for you out there is that when you eat some food and you put that in your mouth and you start chewing it up and you swallow it, your body is going to breaking it down. It literally needs to convert that food into usable nutrients so that it can feed cells in the body, to give it energy, repair, etc. That conversion process is what's called methylation.

Speaker 2:

So if you are not methylating properly or at the optimal function, then you will have some level of impairment. So, for example, the most common gene out there that's talked about is called MTHFR, and with this, if you have a break or a mutation within MTHFR, you then, if you've got it from one parent, you're going to lose somewhere between 40 and 60% of your ability to utilize nutrients as you should. There are ways to get past that, to get around it, and that's part of having that knowledge, so that you can eat a little bit differently or possibly supplement a little bit differently if you need to. Now, if you have both breaks, both parents have given you the mutation. Now you're impaired at a much higher rate. It doesn't necessarily mean you're completely impaired, but it could be up as high as 85 to 95%. But it could be up as high as 85 to 95% and at that point you really need to focus on it and do some work there, because it will lead to other health issues or health concerns.

Speaker 2:

So methylation is, you know, in all of these different processes in the body, methylation is at that component. So there's five kind of primary genes within around methylation there's lots of other sub genes, but MTHFR is really important MTR, mtrr, conc-t, ahcy, cbs is in there, as well as another one and then PEMT, and they all have different spaces, kind of, in what they look at in methylation, starting from your digestion what we call upper digestion all the way through to lower digestion, and where is it that you're actually converting those nutrients to the usable form so that your body can use it? So if there's literally one thing that you learn is you want to look at that top of the funnel, which is a gene called MTHFR. Now there are variations within there there's 677, 1298. So there's different little small markers underneath it. We don't want to worry about that, unless both things are really impaired.

Speaker 2:

Then you want to dig deeper to find out. You know, where do we need to kind of focus, what do we need to really do? And so there's an assortment of different things that you can do. From a nutrient side, I'll be able to. That's where you would be able to step in and recommend. You know, different things to be eating eating more fully, rich foods, but also supplementing, possibly with certain supplements. You know, based upon what it is that you've got going on there and I don't want to just toss out things that you could try to take because you really need to know and you know, for the cost of the test if you're going to get anything out of it that one gene around MTHFR is so vital. I mean, if you think about it, if you've got Hashimoto's or thyroid issues, there's a methylation component.

Speaker 2:

If you've got a child, this is a great little piece that we've been doing. There's a pediatric chiropractor in San Diego that's been using our tests on all of their kids and they're able to find out kind of, hey, you know what, you've got the MTHFR break, and they're wondering why some of these kids are having trouble with ADD and ADHD. And when they've got that break and they eat what's called fortified foods, which is where we're spraying this B vitamin on foods. It's a synthetic B vitamin. You can't convert that when you have that break.

Speaker 2:

So what does it do? It backs up as a toxin. The liver can't process all of it and then it creates these neurotransmitters in your brain to not function properly and in doing that you tend to have these moments of you don't know when it'll happen. It could be in the backseat of the car, or it could be at school. So there's all these different moments and you can't really pinpoint where it's coming from. It's typically because there's an MTHFR break, and so I really think everybody kind of needs to know it at least that, if not. You know the whole other components of the test that we can look at in the cardiovascular side detoxification et cetera. So does that kind of cover it for you around the whole ocean?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a hundred percent, you know. I mean I think we're like you know, do a gallbladder detox or do a liver detox and then people get stuck on those detoxes and they're like, why am I reacting more? Or I can't get out of the bathroom if I'm doing a liver detox or whatever they're doing, it's because you might be a poor detoxifier, whatever you're. So you're pushing, pushing all these detoxes and if people cannot methylate, if they cannot detox properly, I think they're just making things worse. And as soon as I got my report that's literally the section I went there first and then I I didn't.

Speaker 1:

I saw it's like, oh my gosh, I really there's something going on here. No wonder I'm having a hard time detoxing mold, because you know I have hashimoto and I was like all the pieces just come together and I ran to my fridge and I started reading all my labels. I mean I'm careful with what I'm buying because you know. But you know, sometimes there's no way around it. You know there might be some stuff and even some like healthy options. But I ran to the refrigerator and I looked at all my plant-based milks and I was like is there any folic acid in here?

Speaker 1:

That was my little. Oh my gosh. What do you think is causing some of this methylation issues? Because you know we live in a very toxic world and I don't believe that we've always been really bad detoxifiers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So when you look at detoxification, that's a grouping of genes that falls under called CYP, and CYP really pulls into that detoxification pathway. So it's slightly different than what we get with the methylation side. When the methylation is not working right, then CYP or the toxins start to back up, and if CYP is not helping to flush some of those toxins, now you can have additional issues that you started to mention too. It could be estrogen, it could be testosterone, aldosterone there's all sorts of different things that could become issues as well. So I think that the reason it's there is that close to 35 to 45% of the people have some sort of genetic break around methylation, and I think it's been that way probably for a very, very long time.

Speaker 2:

The problem is this is that you mentioned the word folic acid. Folic acid is not a nutrient that comes from food, it's synthetic, and even when you find a food that says it's fortified, that sounds good to you, oh, it's fortified, it's good for me. They've sprayed it with folic acid. It's a chemical that your body can't recognize and convert to use, so it becomes toxic, and I think the reason is because of the quality of our food. That is falling so much is why we're having a higher incidence of things like ADHD, anxiety issues, things like that. I think it's been there, but in the past we've eaten more whole foods.

Speaker 2:

My background I'm Czechoslovakian. I remember having that conversation with my mom about this. Is you know to her? She would go to the grocery store. They grew up in Chicago. She would go to the grocery store on their street corner three to four times a week to pick up groceries and they'd be picking up you know, vegetables and the fruits and if there was, you know, a cream sauce or whatever it might be, they would make it from scratch. And so it's a lot different than what we do today. If things are in a package, there's a preservative there. When there's a preservative there, they tend to spray it with other things, and those toxins are what's hard for our bodies to kind of to take.

Speaker 2:

So really it comes down more to a food thing, in my opinion, than it does necessarily that we're all inherently bad that 40% of us have this MTHFR mutation. I think that's just been there. It's one of those possibly weaker genes you know, just in humans, and there's others out there as well. Genes you know just in humans and there's others out there as well. They're still doing a lot of research around some things around cognition and APOE. We can touch on that if you'd like as well. It's a really kind of burgeoning, you know, area of science right now. In the last, I would say, 14 to 16 months, there's been some great research and great studies out there around a bunch of different things. As far as solutions go around that, there's a fat-soluble wrapped vitamin B1 that is having tremendous responses back to helping patients and that's for Alzheimer's right.

Speaker 2:

It is yeah and so not to mix it up with the NTHFR. But there's certain genes that just inherently have some weakness to them. And if we have that, but we eat good food, if I'm out eating lentils and things that are growing from the ground that don't have all of this processed chemical in it, my body's going to break it down and use what it can and excrete the rest, and I just need to know that I can't. I'll eat a little bit more. Typically, what causes cravings?

Speaker 2:

There's several different reasons, but genetically, if I have an MTHFR 1298 break, I'm going to crave more things that are fully rich, because my body knows that I need to eat more of it to get what I need, because it's naturally going to be not having it all pass through or be able to convert to a usable form. So the body's very intelligent. So anyway, I think it's our food supply. Hopefully those things start to change a little bit. But to undo what we've done for the last, you know, 50 years of really kind of, you know, adulterating our foods. I mean, it started way before that. It started probably back in the twenties honestly thirties quite a bit as well, but then in the early 1970s, you know, there's lots of legislation that passed that allowed, you know, bleaching of flour, and our bodies just aren't meant to eat that stuff.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's kind of my thought about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're right. And then you know I was thinking all the prenatal vitamins. You know they have a lot of those synthetic. You know folic acid stuff and you know that. And then we wonder why you know there's mental issues with with kids and obviously, as we, you know, grow up and you know there's mental issues with kids and obviously, as we, you know, grow up and you know not be able to detoxify some of those chemicals. But you know, like, as you were saying, you can just focus on, for example, mtfhr and not know what's going on with you know your liver process. So I think you know it's all together. It's kind of like having a chapter of a really good book and you're like, well, what's the ending where you kind of need the whole test. You know to know.

Speaker 2:

There's so much inner workings of this.

Speaker 2:

Interestingly, we are working with a university that is doing our genetic test on their athletes their student athletes and they're doing it to prevent injuries, and there's a section within here that we talk about ligaments and tendons and fascia.

Speaker 2:

So that's the primary thing that we're looking at. But what we found in the research was the majority of the support coming to those ligaments and tendons was actually coming from certain markers in the immune system, and we had never seen this before, and so we started asking a lot of different questions, different practitioners, et cetera, and so we started kind of uncovering this relationship within the immune system and how, when certain things were being broken down in the immune system, especially through T cells, over time it leads to the breakdown of some of those tendons and ligaments as well. So it's a fascinating little thing and I don't want to go into the weeds on that, but there is a lot of crossover and you might have what you think is here and you go okay, mthfr, well then, what else? Because now we want to find a little bit more and look at other parts of the puzzle that we pull together. That makes sense.

Speaker 1:

So, anyways, I think yeah I think we're having a lot of fun with these genetic tests I'm sure.

Speaker 1:

And as technology advances, you know, there's more discoveries and as people do it, more, you know, with that intention of finding out more about health and prevention. I think it's super important. You mentioned Alzheimer's a little bit. There are those genes that check for that.

Speaker 1:

I have a young woman. She's a college student, and for many, many years she was just not doing good. You know, like really a lot of depressive episodes before her cycle and just you're just not doing good and I'm like you're too young to feel. You know the way you feel. And so she was looking for help and she did the DNA test and you should have seen her face when she was.

Speaker 1:

We were going over her, her report, she, she was like her whole expression, her whole physique just changed right before my eyes. And the one thing she said is that I finally understand myself, I finally understand why my body does this, I finally understand why my mind does this, and she is, you know, of the genotype that you know, if she doesn't get her butt in gear, you know potentially Alzheimer's for her in her future, potentially Alzheimer's for her in her future. And she says well, two of my family members women specifically, unfortunately already have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And she said to me now I have the information to prevent that from happening to myself. And I was like, oh my God, I was like literally almost crying as we were going through her report because just to see her face was priceless. But tell us a little bit about that Cause you know no one wants to have Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2:

A few things here to unpack is number one. You know you being able to, you know, deliver and go through this test and to see someone's face light up. We hear that so often because people will sit there and they may not have told their practitioner everything that they've got going on, but then they see certain things in the test and it starts to bring up questions in their mind and they're like, oh yeah, actually I do do that sometimes and it's amazing how much it really reads like a book of your life, of health. So that's one part of it that I heard you kind of say there. I do want to touch on a couple of things because you brought up a few really good points in that statement. There is the quality of testing. I do want to touch on that regarding our test and what's different out there in the marketplace and why you should be visiting Fabiola to have your test done. So there's probably three or four different ways to look at genetic testing and the quality of things. So the very first, which is the most common and we see it run in companies like Ancestry and 23andMe and many others out there they use something called genotyping. Genotyping is very broad, meaning it's going to take that cheek swab and it's going to run it through a system to separate out some of the proteins one or two times and then it's going to get you close to accurate. Close to accurate means about 80% accurate. So that's good for saying, hey, you're going to have green eyes and you're from Eastern Europe. But the more specific you want to get, you want to get further down the cone of when we take DNA and we spin it. We start at the top of a cone and it has 64 cycles that it'll go through. When it reaches the bottom of that, that gets you to the most specific genetic makeup and that's where the accuracy comes into play. So to do that, to spin it all the way down to that accuracy, it takes anywhere between four to five days of running. In our system and our lab is in Houston. It runs through the system there before we start putting together the raw data for you.

Speaker 2:

So that type of testing is called next generation sequencing.

Speaker 2:

This was developed by a company in Southern California by the name of Illumina years ago, and now there's many other companies that run it as well. The third of quality is something called mass spectrometry. And why this is important is mass spectrometry and next-generation sequencing get you the same results, the same quality of result, but the mass spectrometry because you're now weighing that genetic matter. But the mass spectrometry because you're now weighing that genetic matter and once you have a definitive weight of that molecule we can take and put it in and get a result much faster. So we're starting to do these tests now under mass spectrometry as well and we're returning tests sometimes back as soon as four or five days as a complete test coming back. So it's improving the time and we're constantly looking at what barriers do we have out there. And two years ago the same test that we run right now used to run at about $1,900. It's now down well into the I'm not sure what you guys charge in your office there, but in the mid $400 to $500 to $600 range.

Speaker 2:

So it's a really nice priced test now because the advancements are happening Well now, the speed of it. It used to take a month to run these tests and then we cut it to 15 days, then we cut it to 10. Now we're down to four to five. So it's really pretty fascinating how we're going through this. So the quality of our tests is something that we really kind of hitch ourselves to, that we are at the forefront of making sure that our lab again in Houston. We're the second largest tester of genetic material in the United States and we love the fact that we have great technology. We have a great team. There's 190 employees in Houston and we're just running tests literally all day long and it's robotic. There's a lot of really cool stuff that we're doing now to have this functioning in your favor.

Speaker 2:

One other piece that we haven't touched on but I do want to make sure I touch on this piece is because it comes up and it's probably the first question after methylation, and that is well, what about my data? What about the privacy of my data? So I just want to touch on this really quick. It is, I literally think, that our principles that we have listed. It is number one, meaning that your data is your data. You swab your cheek, you put it in a little vial of buffer, you send it to us. It comes in with your name and a kit number on it no-transcript. At that point they pull the raw data From there. They send it through another firewall to match it back up with your name. So each of the different testing sequences that we go through, there's no way of putting it together and know who someone is.

Speaker 2:

So we couldn't go out and actually sell the data. We don't sell any data. We don't rent it. We don't give it away. Actually sell the data. We don't sell any data. We don't rent it. We don't give it away. It's just something that we believe. Your data is your data. You're paying for it. We're not making money on the backend to sell your data. Oftentimes, when you see these tests that are down at $69 or $159, the reason they're so inexpensive number one is it's probably genotyping, but number two is they're selling your data to someone else and that's how they make the money on the backend. So we do not do that. Your data is not sold or rented. It's just a very straightforward, great quality test and we think everybody should have one of these tests on their family.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, thank you. I was going to ask you about that because sometimes you know what I mean. Obviously not sometimes, but people do ask that question and I know that there's several steps, security steps, like you just mentioned, to keep everything secure, and isn't that after a certain point, those data get deleted? Maybe I have that wrong. After a certain point, those data get deleted, that's correct. Maybe I have that wrong.

Speaker 2:

So the cheek swab, the actual material that gets destroyed at 180 days and the reason that it's kept for 180 days is if there's a test that's run and you get one report, which is the comprehensive report, and then out of that you see that you want to order a different report because we've got multiple different reports available.

Speaker 2:

Say you want to dig deeper into longevity and take a look at the FOXO3 gene and what can I be doing to live longer, and so forth. You can come to us, or through you actually, and you just log into your portal and you can reorder. They don't need to do another cheek swab and you can reorder the report off of that. So if they want a deeper dive into longevity or detoxification or into methylation which is a very popular test that we do, but say someone does have a break within methylation and you want to go deeper, we'll test another 18 to 20 genes. That goes even deeper level, so that you really understand where am I not converting things? Which types of foods and nutrients might I have more trouble with? And that would come through our methylation test.

Speaker 2:

So at 180 days, the sampling is destroyed. If you want it destroyed after week one of the testing, you can do that as well. You just send us an email. We have a dedicated email and you just send us the information and we'll go ahead and pull it and get that destroyed immediately.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's pretty cool. I must admit I can't quite remember. We talked a little bit about the different genes that talk about Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, of course. So Alzheimer's, dementia, cognitive health. In our comprehensive test you get a great overview of this and the one primary gene that people are looking at and, to be honest, methylation is number one. But APOE status and cognition is becoming a very close second to methylation, and the reason being is Harvard and John Hopkins co-sponsored a study that they did that completed about 18 months ago and was published, I believe, in JAMA, and it talks about certain markers and the percentage that will actually get Alzheimer's, that is, if you don't have any type of intervention. And actually it brings me to a point I was both talking about this earlier.

Speaker 2:

I don't want people to be afraid to get a genetic test done. It doesn't mean that you're going to get that. It gives you a predisposition. So if you don't do anything, you're heading in that direction. But your DNA doesn't necessarily manage your destiny. What you want to do is work with someone like Fabiola that can guide you on your lifestyle. It could be simple things like taking deep breaths to help relax, and it can be doing other things to help reduce cortisol levels so you get great sleep at night. Sleep is so important. But of course, food, you know, and what supplements are we putting into our bodies? We want a good, high quality supplement so that you're doing the best possible that you can. And then what are you shopping for? So your DNA is not your destiny, it's just giving you the blueprint so that you can build the most perfect body house that you have out there. So back to APOE, really quick.

Speaker 2:

Apoe has different variations. In those variations I had mentioned earlier something called an allele. That's the same gene with slightly different kind of setups. So as we look at the APOE gene, there's a designation of a two, a three or a four and if you have a four, four, your percentage of developing Alzheimer's at a fairly early age. I think the age again, I'm not going to quote myself exactly on this, but I think it was 63. The percentage goes into the 80% category and that's pretty incredible that if we have this information and we know it, so the earlier we can get tested and understand what our APOE status is, we can do things throughout our life.

Speaker 2:

You know I mentioned earlier that I have a young one too. I also have a son and a daughter a little bit older, and my son, taking a look at his, he learned a lot of things that he's now 22, just leaving college, and he's eating differently because he understood that and you know he looks at the future and doesn't want certain things to develop. So he's making those better choices now, and so it's really, it's a fascinating thing. So APOE is something that is able to be mitigated through some diet, stress relief, things like that. There's lots of different biohacking things out there and some of that works. Some might not work. I'm not sure. I'm not necessarily a biohacker per se, but there's a lot of people doing these cold plunges that you may have heard about.

Speaker 2:

There is some evidence starting to show that that helps mitigate some of the inflammation in the brain. I know that there's studies already that show sauna use I think it's 30 minutes a week, I'm sorry, 30 minutes a day for four times a week has a very positive benefit.

Speaker 2:

So, there's all sorts of things that you can do. It's not just about the food, but there's all sorts of things so you can help to mitigate the chances of getting some of these cognition issues on the road no-transcript certain markers and you can just bring the list with them.

Speaker 1:

You know, I said take your report with you at your appointment and tell them, based on my DNA report, this is what you have to run because I need to. You know, know about more. You know those different markers. So I created this nutritional coaching program that is literally based on the results of the DNA and blood chemistry to really give people the power about their own health. Now you have that manual. You know, I think a lot of people I wish I had a manual to you know be healthy. Well, that is your manual. You know, that is like. You know what, what you have to work with and how early can a test be done? Like infants, right, like babies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can do it, you know at any age. So it can be done. You know after birth, you know typically, you know again after birth is okay for me personally, and again this is there's zero guidance on this from a science basis. But if a child gets to about the age of two, they've started to set up some of the gut bacteria that they're going to have and that will inhibit or start to kind of show some of the genes that changed when they were in the mother's womb.

Speaker 2:

So epigenetics starts after conception and so, as things can start to change until birth, so at about two or so you really get some good guidance. There's no harm in doing it earlier, but you can still have things kind of be on or off a little bit more at about the age of two. So somewhere around the age of two or so is kind of what I would say. I think there's nothing scientific behind it. That's for me that my wife and I have had discussions about. She's a practitioner as well, and so that's where we think you can start. You can start at any time, but that would be a good safe number.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. So for practitioners who might be listening to our episode, how can they find, reveal my DNA?

Speaker 2:

Yep. So Reveal my DNA, just to not bore anybody too much with this. But Reveal my DNA is a wholly owned company under Agent Genomics and you can find us at revealmydnalife. As a practitioner, you can open an account with us. It takes about a day or so. We just kind of check a licensing or credentialing to get an account and gets it opened up pretty quickly for you. Then there's an onboarding process, a series of emails that you go through to learn how to log into a portal, get the results, things like that. We have an education team. We have a great bank of information that you can look at to learn about genetics. Our director of education produces content every two weeks and post that so you can have access to see that. We have an administration team that can help with registering kits for patients etc.

Speaker 1:

And then if you're a patient or a client of Fabiola ask her about the test and she can get it right there at the office. Yeah, that's awesome. Oh my gosh, chris, I love our conversation. This has been so insightful and I know that we could go on forever, because you mentioned there's all these genes, all these SNPs, that we could go on forever because you know, you mentioned there is, you know, all these genes, all these SNPs that we could potentially talk about each of them, but I think we covered the main ones, the main ones that people have, you know, concerns about. But I honestly just take the test. You know it's super simple. Instructions that come with the kid.

Speaker 2:

I think that there's just this invaluable set of information that you get from the test, from a shopping list mine's two pages and I can print it front and back and walks through. And the nice part about this is that, since we've got a background in nutrition, we didn't want all of the fortified cereals et cetera. There's other companies out there that are very similar space, but you look at their dietary recommendations and they say, hey, go get a fortified cereal for heart health and I'm like that's completely against what I'm talking about here. So there's this misunderstanding. So I think we've got this thing really dialed in. I think that your customers will be super happy with it your patients, your clients or other practitioners that might be hearing this. But yeah, we'd love to have people take the test. And it's a booklet, it's 110 pages, 112 pages that you get back, and you've got a lot of content, a lot of information in there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think one of them was 155 pages. Lot of information in there. Yeah, I think one of them was 155 pages and I was like, oh my gosh, this is like a lot of information. Mine was like 115, another one was like 110. But you know, before we, before we go, one of the things that you know, we tend to focus on the weaknesses and like, okay, what's going on, what are my variations? But it also tells you your strengths. You know, like, so let's celebrate those things that are working for us and with our genetics, right, because it's what's the point of just focusing on, you know, the, the weaknesses, so that's something that the test also includes all those great strengths that you know that we have.

Speaker 2:

Fabio, I'm so glad you just said that we have Fabiola, I'm so glad you just said that and, to be honest, I do interviews like this weekly and I hardly ever get asked that. But when you take the test and you see a report, everyone wants to turn to find their weaknesses, like you mentioned. But make sure you go to the strength side as well. For me personally, the strength side was within the cognition side of health, and so that made me feel really good. I'm like that's one thing I don't need to maybe concern myself with as much as long as I do some basic things. So it lists the strengths. We do put the weaknesses first because we want people to see what their needs are so they can address that. But take a look at the strikes as well and congratulate yourself for that, because I think there's some things there that you can take off the table and not have to worry as much about.

Speaker 2:

Again, this is a guide, it's this roadmap, so it doesn't necessarily mean say, oh, it all looks great, so you never have to pay attention to it. As you age and you go through things, certain things might get switched on or off. We talked about epigenetics and that is something that we have coming here soon. Epigenetics has been around for a while, but they've never been able to get past that 75% to 80% accuracy within epigenetics, and so we have a test now that's been studied and, and and we're we're close to that 99% mark, which is where we want to be. Once that's ready, we'll have that out to you guys as well through our, through our portal. So we're excited about that. But, yeah, take a look at the strengths, cause you, there's a lot of um, you don't want to get caught up in health, as it's just always negative. There's a lot of really positive things that we do, and we try to eat right and we try to exercise and laugh and enjoy this world, and so, anyways, I'll let that kind of go on to you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I love it. We covered so much, but was there anything that you wanted to cover before we end off? Anything else?

Speaker 2:

I think we've covered a lot, which is really good, and if you might be thinking, is this right for me? Honestly it is right for everyone. We see groupings of people that are the weekend warrior athletes that want to know a little bit more about what they can do to help within their body or protect against strains and sprains. Then we get high-performing executives that want that little bit of extra edge. Then we get the mom that's staying home with the three kids and by two o'clock in the afternoon is full. You know raising children and how difficult that job is, and so there's lots of little things that you can learn about yourself that you might already know, but how do you address it, how do you do things to help you through that? And you're going to get that through this blueprint. So I think everybody should should give you a ring.

Speaker 1:

That's right, awesome. Well, thank you so much, chris, for telling us about the wonderful things that you and your company are doing and all the people and practitioners that you are helping, and thank you, everyone, for tuning in and we'll see you on the next episode.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, Fabiola. Thank you so much. Have a great day.