Introduction to Dr. Lois Nahirney | EP002

Today on this episode, we have a very special privilege. Behind every great invention or idea is someone who had the vision to push it forward. I had no idea as a pharmacist that DNA testing was even possible. So with all my medical training, all my nutrition training, all the things I had been through in my life, I had no idea that a simple DNA test could be done and could be so helpful. It has impacted my life in ways that, well, we're going to talk about many times throughout the podcast. But today we get to interview the person behind DNA Power, which is Canada's premier and maybe one of the premier DNA testing facilities in the world. So today, Dr. Lois Nerini has agreed to join us. And Dr. Lois, it's my pleasure to introduce you to the audience and have you talk about your journey, how you got to where you are and why you're so passionate about what you do. Thanks so much, Alan. Well, I mean, I'm always so delighted to work with you. And you and I are both so passionate about DNA and what it can do for people. So thrilled to be able to share this message through your podcast. I got into DNA testing over 10 years ago and I started studying DNA about 25 years ago when I adopted identical twins and very quickly started seeing how these twins were the same DNA, but so incredibly different. And in fact, one of my identical girls is now my son and transgender. And so I ended up studying really early on a lot about genetics and how it works. And at the time where I was trying to learn a little bit more about my twins, I did I had a chance to do one of the very first tests in the world around DNA. And it actually changed the course of my life and my career. I had been struggling as a corporate executive with a lot of health issues. I had shortness of breath. I had chronic fatigue. I was restless leg syndrome. And this this inability to breathe sent me to all kinds of specialists over several years. I went to a respiratologist, asthma specialists. I had horrific periods. I was going to a gynecologist. I was put on hemophiliac medicine to slow down bleeding in my body. We were trying all kinds of things and we couldn't find anything. And finally, it was so bad. I was so depleted that I was ended up being hospitalized for blood transfusions for like two days because I had zero iron left in my body. I was in pretty bad shape. It was shortly after that that I ended up hearing about this brand new thing called DNA testing. It's mean it's been around, but it's it was prohibitive. I mean, the first when they first sequenced, you know, the first genome. I mean, it was billions of dollars to do. And even at the time that I was looking at it was several thousand dollars to do. But I was curious to support my kids, kids and learning more about them. And I thought, well, it's you know, I've had health issues. Maybe, you know, who knows? We'll do it for fun. Well, when I got my DNA results back, it was it was interesting because one of the things that showed me is I have a vitamin B variation, a very classic MTHFR variation. And I thought, isn't that odd that when I travel and I'm taking all of these, you know, NRC type packages and things like that, I feel so much better. And I've never taken vitamins, didn't really believe in them. And so I just started taking B vitamins based on these very early DNA results that I got back. And within two weeks, suddenly I had my life back. It was it was I felt great again. And it turns out, I mean, I just suffer from a pretty classic there's 30 to 40 percent of people who can have issues with this particular with processing vitamin B's and metabolizing in the body. And that's all I need. My my the thing to keep me healthy in my life is vitamin B and probably somewhere in my genetics that downregulated because maybe we had too much meat in our diet or something. But for some reason, I inherited these variations. So, I mean, I got these results back and it was like, are you kidding me? I spent years with doctors, years trying to to feeling terrible. And all I needed to take vitamin B every day. And nobody asked me once about nutrition or diet or or supplementation. And I mean, I couldn't believe it. I thought if it was that easy for me and there was there's got to be more people who can benefit from this. And I ended up acquiring this early stage startup company. And I've been working, looking at how we can use the DNA information that we have researched in labs for years or in in research institutions and make that available to people. So the whole thing we focused on is how do you create and find DNA information, make it available for people to help them with preventative health and to support their longevity? So you said a really interesting thing to me as an allopathic practitioner, because I've got years of schooling. Now, you mentioned you were a corporate executive prior to this, and I don't know if that was a health care type executive or just a corporate executive in another classification. When I went to university, we studied genetics, so I took a genetics course, which turns out to be ancestry, and that was about as far as allopathic medicine went. We weren't looking to differentiate people on the basis of functional genetics, which is what you and I are talking about today, things that have an immediate impact on their well-being. We were just looking at it as sort of curiosity. And if mom's from here and dad's from there, well, then, you know, you have this mix of genes. And we would try to figure out how that was all going to play out. And, of course, Ancestry and 23andMe and those companies, they capitalized on that later on and created companies out of that. But that was not there was nothing in allopathic medicine for us to study. So when you said you started studying because of the adoption, I'm really curious where you went to study, because I've been to University of Alberta, University of Denver, McGill University, and I've never heard anybody talking about functional genetics in a way that you and I are enjoying the benefits of it today. So where did you go to like where did you start to research? Well, it really I was looking just through publications primarily. I already had you know, I'd already done three degrees at that stage as well at different universities. I had done my my doctorate was in in the health care system. And how do you support systems, which is kind of interesting, because that's really what I'm trying to do now. But from the preventative health side, and it was really you know, there's so many twin studies out there because I had identical twins. I would just anytime I could search something up and find something up about twin studies or genetics, you know, PubMed, you know, read lots of stuff from there. It was just where how does in the early 2000s, we didn't even really understand much about epigenetics. So, you know, we'll talk a little bit. And I know about genetics is the code that you're you're born with. Your genetics do not change in your lifetime. It's really easy to do a DNA test because, you know, you with the data that we give you, you only have to do it once. It doesn't change. And so and it is your road map for your lifetime about how your DNA DNA is set up. But what's so so important about knowing your DNA is that your DNA expresses itself based on something called epigenetics. And epigenetics means on top of and the epigenetic factors are essentially lifestyle factors. So diet, nutrition, sleep, stress, toxins, exercise, those sorts of things affect the expression of your genes. So that's this whole new field of epigenetics, which is has always, of course, been there. But we're really just slowly understanding more and more about that. So, I mean, talk about a field where we are learning all the time. We are researching all the time. We are reading all the time. My gosh, like this, the whole genetics field has really exploded from the work that was done in the human genome project to map for the first time, the the full human genome and to and the cost of that at that time into now being able to have lots of universities that study certain genes and impacts and then learning about, OK, you studied vitamin B genes. What does that mean? What can we learn from that? What does that mean for a behavioral difference that can impact it? And now we're really starting to learn more about epigenetics and expression of the genes and how they show up. So this is a an amazing, you know, super high curve learning field where we're capitalizing on all of the research that was already done. And now it's how do we start applying it to people and really understanding the epigenetic impacts? So one of the interesting things you mentioned, the identical twins who were so different in, I guess, responses to life or how they decided to live their life. And that is really what epigenetics is. So for when a person is listening to this and they're they're going, well, I have children. I have like I come from a family of four. We're all male. So there's four males and we're all different. But we only had, you know, the mother and father to the genetics from that. That was our pool to pull from. And yet we turned out with four different personalities. Which is really a response to life. It's our genes directing us to respond in certain ways. And if I'm understanding what you're saying right, we can have maybe deficient, I'm gonna use the word deficiencies because people maybe understand that a little better, or weaknesses in certain ways those genes can express, which then modulates as behavior or as illness or as something else. Would that be a fair statement? Yes, that's right. You're born with genes that are considered normal or varied. And so when the research kind of shows which ones we consider do what they're supposed to do, and the ones that might have a varied reaction. But when you have a variation, whether it expresses itself will depend a lot on your lifestyle. So that's about how are you causing that now with this variation to show up. And the variations show up very differently for people. So you can have, well, I mean, it's a little bit broader right now, but you can have people with certain weak genes that can show up as cardiovascular, could show up like the APOE genes that can show up as cardiovascular issues because it's a placking issue. The placking occurs both in the arteries and in the brain. And if it occurs in the brain, it'll show up as cognitive decline and Alzheimer's. And so again, it sort of depends on the person. But when you talk about having four, the four of you in a family, I mean, you've got your DNA coming from your mother, father, and it comes in and there's two of the SNPs, the alleles that they come from each and you get one from each of them. So you kind of get an interesting combination, which causes some of you to go, oh, I'm just like my father, he was a great runner. And then two of them aren't because they didn't really get quite that combination of genes and epigenetics inherited. And others that go, oh gee, I've got to build like my father who is Ukrainian. My sister is blonde hair, blue eyed, and shorter than me and more like my mother's German heritage. So like we get it in different combinations and yet people will hear me and my sister and go, oh my God, you guys are related. So on the telephone, you'd think we were twins. In person, you wouldn't know we were even sisters. So it's so cool. And that's why learning your DNA is so valuable because it is probably the most foundational information you can learn about your body that doesn't change and that can give you insights into, in our case, we focus on health. We're not looking at ancestry or personality or habits particularly. What we're trying to do is say, if we can help people be healthier through learning their DNA and knowing where they might have issues, now you can live a better, healthier, longer life because we're all working on, we want to have health span, not lifespan. We probably want both, but if you have good health span, you'll have a better lifespan. And so again, for me, what I just love about this whole DNA field is this is the most foundational information people should have about their bodies to live every day in a healthier way. And you can do it from age one to 99. In my view, everybody should get this information like really in their first year of birth so that families know what's the right things for feeding your kids, what supplements might they need or what foods might they need in order to get that nutrition. Should they have lactose or gluten? Our supply isn't all that strong. That's a whole different topic about the quality of our food now, which impacts our bodies. But just think how powerful it is for a parent to know that there are certain things that could be problematic for their child. And then even for the adult that's going, gee, I just don't feel so well, or I'm putting on weight, or I'm just always tired. I hadn't the first clue where to go when that happened to me, as I said, years of doctors. And the answer was in my genetics. You know, it's really interesting you say that because I think we've been trained throughout my life at least. And my own personal physician, we've talked about this because one of the things he would like to see happen is the assertion that you need to check everything with your physician would change. Because like he says, it's impossible for me to know everything. And with the emerging science of genetics and the emerging science of epigenetics, in other words, how we can influence what we've been given, I often kind of look at it like the blueprint of the house, but how you live in that house is up to you, right? So the blueprint is going to stay the same, the room sizes maybe are going to stay the same, but you can change the atmosphere and the environment so that you feel more comfortable in that house. And that's how I kind of look at epigenetics. It's how we're all bodybuilders, but are we building a body that we're comfortable living in, or are we building a body that we're really uncomfortably living in? And to me, that's kind of a definition of functional genetics as compared to, I think, what people think about genetics. They think about what they hear in the media. Somebody's had a genetic test done, so then they have surgery as a result of that to prevent maybe breast cancer, or they think it's this really high level of medical care. But ultimately what you and I are talking about is something that's day-to-day personal care that can be very impactful on the quality of our life. And that's what I love about it. And I know that, and I'd like you to talk about this, that you're expanding your services in that regard and what you can offer people in just living our lives in a more functional and better way. You did mention healthspan, and for our listeners, healthspan is a new term that you're going to hear a lot about. For years, we've talked about lifespan, which is how long. So my father-in-law, we're going to celebrate his 99th birthday coming up. When I tell people that, they're like, oh, well, how is he? Because they always want to know, like, you know, is he still with you in a sense? And he is, he's very bright, he's very current on affairs, and that's healthspan. So not only has he lived an extended life in years, he's also been healthy during those years. So that's what we're looking at is how comfortable and how available the enjoyment of life is to assess our healthspan. You get a blueprint, that's what your DNA is. It is your blueprint. But if you discover the blueprint for that house has one pothole on the driveway when you come in and a leaky roof over another room, well, that's what you've got. Then how do you block or fix or drive around the pothole? And how do you make sure you do something that avoids the leaky room? Or just not go that, you know, like avoid the potholes, and otherwise you're gonna wear things out. And so really, again, the focus of what we've been trying to do with DNA Power is to say, what are the most important genes related to day-to-day health? Because if you live healthy day-to-day, the rest becomes easy. If your body, our bodies wanna be in equilibrium. They want to be healthy, they're trying to be healthy, they're trying to do what they can. We get sick due to toxicity, too much of things that our body shouldn't have, and deficiency. We don't have enough of what we need. So it's when we come out of balance. So deficiency might be I'm not getting enough nutrients, enough food, enough something that my body requires in order to stay healthy. And toxicity might be, oh, we got a lot of heavy metals in some of the stuff that we're having. There's chemicals in my environment, or I was exposed to that. Or I'm eating way too much of sugars and glyphosate-heavy foods or something. So all of those things put us out of balance. And then suddenly, in our 40s or 50s, we're going, oh my gosh, my knee's hurt, or I've got gut issues. Where did it come from? We don't know because there's no clear path. But that's where the DNA now gives you a bit of a roadmap. Because you go, oh, just a minute, my blueprint is weak in these areas. I wonder if the fact that even though I could drink milk all these years, and I've had it since I was a kid because gee, we've been part of our good groups in Canada in particular, and so I'm not allergic to it, but I did not realize that I don't have good genetics for it, and that over time, I wonder if that's why I put on that five to 10 pounds. Or I have an example of somebody who was a long-distance runner, and he was going to physio for a year and a half for his knees, discovered he does not have the lactose gene to break down lactose, went, hmm, I have milk every day or dairy products, cut it out, and it was literally a week later, the inflammation that that was causing in his knees, which he thought was a physio issue, was gone. And suddenly, I mean, he could run without pain again. And for me, that was the other thing I discovered when I did my DNA is that I don't have great lactose genes, so I just cut mine out to, I have a little bit, because I'll have a cream in my coffee, and I'll have aged cheddar, and that's pretty much it. And my body can manage that through my gut, but when I got rid of the rest of the lactose, I suddenly dropped the pound a year I'd been slowly gaining, thinking it was metabolism. No, suddenly, my metabolism, I was working with it, not against it. So again, back to what you were saying, this is about day-to-day health. This is helping make the better small day-to-day decisions. That can impact your entire life trajectory. Right, so as we look at, you've come a long way. I think you were an early adopter in this area and you met the person who'd developed a system to start this, you took over that system. So now where do you see that going in the future? What do you see as an addition to that that will even increase people's ability to live day-to-day on a, I'm gonna say, just a more comfortable and efficient level? Well, I would love to say that DNA is the be-all, end-all. It is probably the first most important piece of the puzzle, but it's not the only piece. But it is a piece that has a lot of answers. So again, the day-to-day living blueprint, it can identify diseases. We don't focus on the diseases because we actually, most diseases result because of other factors triggering the poor expression of those genes. So our belief is do all the stuff right up front. We are adding more testing around, more around cardiovascular, brain, et cetera. But we want, we're trying to always keep it in the realm that people can understand what they should do about it. We've got pharmacogenetic testing that will be starting up soon, which as you know, Alan, you can't just, it's hard to know what to prescribe, which drugs to prescribe to people because their bodies react differently. But if you do a pharmacogenetic test, you can see which genes have issues and then that can direct, if somebody is taking pharmaceuticals and need to, which ones are the best for them to take. So, you know, we've got that. We're also now moving into, you know, when someone has gut issues, it can be both related to foods you shouldn't be eating or things that affect your body. It can be DNA related. And it can be just the health of your gut. Because the more that you consume foods that are not good or right for you, you can get leaky gut syndrome. So molecules go into the body, you start to react to it. And suddenly it's like you're allergic to everything because your body is overreacting and creating inflammatory responses. So we're also introducing in the coming months, a biome test where we can test your biome to see what the balance is and help you to understand where that is today. And I mean, we're just constantly looking at what else will help people to make better day-to-day decisions. And actually to take health in your own hands. Like we always say, take power over your health. The whole goal is what can you learn in the simplest way possible to help you make better decisions? And just as a note from the DNA side, as you know, Alan, we do everything in green and red. It's super simple. So it's, you know, green is good and red is where you've got variations. So we try to make it as simple as possible and a little bit of a roadmap for people to learn what to do. So it's such a great way to start, to figure out where you might be having health challenges or where you need to be proactive. One of the other things that I noticed, Lois, is that you added recently skin DNA. And I thought that was really exciting because I think a lot of people misunderstand skin and its role. Our skin is one of our primary excretory organs. So from a medical standpoint, we look at skin as something where we excrete things from our body. So when we have heavy metals, when we have, we're introduced to toxins. So can you talk just a little bit about the skin DNA test as well? Because it's not, to me, it's way more than cosmetic. It's way more than how good we look. Right. Well, I mean, the skin is the largest organ in the body and it is, when something goes wrong with your skin, it's a sign of something inside that's happening. So health comes from the inside out. So for people who are dealing with psoriasis and rashes and breakouts in their skin, they usually, that's an indication something is not working well in usually your gut as a starting, as a main point. And so, I mean, the skin is a great signpost of what's happening overall for your health. In the skin DNA test, which actually we're gonna be expanding even more as well, we are looking at more specifically what causes, so do you have the genes that support collagen growth? Do you have, or how do you react to sun? Do you freckle? Do you pigment? Does that, does it lead, because that, can that be leading you towards cancer? How would, do you, are you inflammatory? Do you get rosacea? And is there an inflammatory response on your face? And how do you detox? Like is your, can your skin help you detox? So those are kind of the factors in skin that we look at. And then the solutions for that are food, supplements, and there are different ingredients based on the genetics that you have that will support your skin more. And so, I mean, in the skin test, they do actually also look at what are some of the spa treatments that people might wanna do that will, you know, that will support where their skin needs the most help. So that's the skin DNA. We've got other parts that we'll add to that as well. But it's, you know, it's a fun, I mean, you know, how we show up in the world is important to us, and people are very conscious and want to look there and present their best. So from an allopathic point of view, what I used to look at is we have the inside, so when we do a total power test, we're looking at the inside. Then we look at the skin. But what a lot of people don't realize is that is their intestinal tract is really an extension of the organ of the skin. Everything that's inside your intestinal tract is still outside your body. We keep stuff bad, stuff outside of our body in our intestinal tract. So what I heard you say in the last few minutes is not only can we look at the blueprint of the inside, we can look at how it's expressed in the outside through our skin. And now we can look at that really internal part, the microbiome, which is really where a lot of these activities happen that express in our physicality, both from our skin and in other ways. And then on top of that, if someone does have a chronic condition that requires medication, we can now, through DNA Power, when I say we, I'm including you and I in this conversation, but DNA Power can actually test your genetics for the medicine you're taking, making sure that they're most compatible if you need to take them long-term. So ultimately, what I see here is a bridge between what people maybe would call allopathic and then the natural medicine. And DNA becomes really the bridge that joins those two together with information that both can use to better people's lives. So that's kind of my summary of what's coming in DNA Power. And I wanted to thank you so much for what you've done as we wrap up here, because getting my DNA test done as a medical professional was probably one of the most important tests I've ever had. What I've learned from that DNA test, like you say, you only need it once, and now it's up to me to implement the changes that can make my life better. So I wanted to thank you personally for that and also for appearing on this podcast today. And I'm really excited for the future of DNA Power and what it's gonna offer people in the future. So Lois, thank you for your appearance here. Thank you for all your work you've done. And to see that you still have the passion after all, I know that's not easy to develop a company and that you still have the passion to move ahead is very exciting for me, and it should be exciting for everyone listening to us. So thank you for being with us today. Really appreciate it. And we'll look forward to talking in the future. Great, thanks so much, Alan. Thank you for watching this podcast. I'd like to mention that it is sponsored by DNA Power, a British Columbia company located in North Vancouver, BC. DNA is an innovator and currently one of the most popular DNA tests available across the world. DNA's total power is the test that I had done, which gave me the blueprint to help me live a better life. I'm strongly going to encourage you to have your DNA test, and I've included a link below, dnapower.com slash alan53. If you click on that link, you will get a 10% discount on the total power test if you put alan53 in the coupon code at the checkout of the DNA power test.