The Most Common Genetic Variations | EP003

Today, we're going to talk about the most common genetic variations that I see when I'm reading people's results of their DNA test. Just for you to understand, when your genetics are tested, and they're done in a very safe environment, as a matter of fact, when your genetic sample goes for testing, there's no personal information accompanies it. So if someone was to somehow hack into that lab, there's no information on you that would connect you to that genetic result. That's done in a different location at a different time. So they would have to hack into multiple locations. And I don't know why somebody would want your genetics, because we're looking at functional genetics. We're not looking at ancestry genetics. And just to tell you the difference between ancestry genetics and functional genetics. So ancestry genetics is just to find out who contributed to your genetics over time. So it could be a surprise to you that somewhere in your background you had some German genetics, or you had some European genetics of some kind, or other genetics from other areas of the world. The reason I said German is because that was a surprise to me. My grandparents are Scottish on both sides. So for something like that to show up, I'm sure it would have been a surprise for them as well. But those don't have anything to do with what functional genetics are about. So functional genetics are actually the genes that are affecting your life right now. They're the genetics of our dietary intake. Things like macronutrients, how we handle protein, how we handle fats, how we handle carbohydrates. There are things like vitamins, minerals, and supplements that we would either get from food or we would supplement with a supplement. There are things like our exercise genes. So how good we are at, say, running, how good we would be at weightlifting, how good we would be at yoga, how good we would be at maybe some things that we love. So we check your genetics for those kinds of things that are functional. Things that we experience throughout our life on a day-to-day basis. Now I've been doing this for a number of years, and I've been keeping track because I wanted to know if ancestry, in other words, where your genetics came from in the world, if that had any differentiation that was noticeable. And I did 400 genetic reviews in which I compared the genetics of people who are from different parts of the world. I've literally done genetic result reviews for people from Australia, from Italy, from Sweden, from Russia, from Czech. I guess it's just now Czech, not Czechoslovakia. That's still hard for me to get in my mind that it's Slovakia and Czechia, not one country. But I've checked then Europeans of all kinds. We've had people from all over the world that have had their genetics done. And I thought it would be a really cool experiment to see if there were variations common to certain individual groups of people. Like for instance, if they're from Italy and they were born in Italy to Italian parents, or if they were born in the UK and their parents are English, or if they're born in India and from Indian parents. What's been amazing to me is to find that there are significant similarities, I'm just going to call them, amongst all of humankind. And this was a shock to me. I really expected something different. Many people have heard of the Blue Zones. There was a book written about the Blue Zones in which they went around the world and they found pockets of people living in particular areas of the world and their lifespan seemed to be longer than other areas. They found some people in Japan, they found some people in Loma Linda, California. There was five or six different areas that they looked at and they found these people that were living to a hundred, they were very active, they were very healthy. They had different lifestyles, they had different ways to live. Some people smoked cigars and some people drank different kinds of alcohol each day. Some people avoided alcohol and tobacco. Some people were vegan, some people were not vegan. So their lifestyles were different, but when it came down to the genetics, and this is what was surprising to me, so there are some variations in genetics that are very common amongst all of us. And the first one is how we handle B vitamins. It's almost universal when I look at people's genetics, they're going to have some degree in their B vitamins in which they're inefficient. It could be vitamin B12, B9, B6, B2. It could be all of them, quite likely it's more than one. And that was a surprise to me that it was so ubiquitous that our ability to use B vitamins. Now B vitamins are involved in all the energy producing processes in our body. Vitamin B6 is used for macronutrient absorption. So macronutrient absorption, that's your fats, your amino acids, your carbohydrates. Those are our macronutrients. If people go on a diet and they're told, check your macros or follow your macros, usually what they're doing is making a list of how the quantity of carbohydrates they're eating in a day, the quantity of fats they're consuming in a day, and the quantity of proteins. And one of the most amazing things out of all of that information. So carbohydrates vary to quite a significant degree. Once again, it's not divided by people's ancestry. It's just a variance in humankind that those particular genes vary. Our fat genes, however, are almost all universally. So our ability to handle LDL cholesterol, dietary saturated fat, dietary unsaturated fat, almost are universally weakened compared to what we would consider 100% normal. And that was a surprise to me. So we're not, we don't have a great ability to handle fat in food as a general rule. There's some exceptions always. There's some people that are very efficient, but they're very rare. And there's some people that are very poor. They're also very rare. Most people are somewhere in the middle. The one that's really the most surprising though, is the ability to handle protein. When we look at what we're made up of, protein makes up most of what we are. We're about 35% collagen when we're younger. That goes down as we get older, but we still maintain around 30% collagen, which is a protein throughout our life. So collagen is our skin. Most people know collagen. If you're going to take collagen protein, you'll see, hey, take this collagen protein. It's going to make your skin glow and shine and smooth and nice and wonderful. So collagen is so highly associated with skin. But there are other areas that collagen is really important. Our ligaments, our tendons, all the structural proteins of our body, our cardiovascular system, our intestinal tract, the vitreous fluid of our eyes, and even our brain is held together in a collagen netting. And it's very, very common that people's ability to utilize protein is something that's compromised. Now back in 2008 to 2013, there was a study conducted by a very credible university here in Canada. And what they looked at was people's protein need over time. So if we look at how people generally eat over time, we eat a lot of protein in our 20s, 30s, maybe our 40s. We start to slow down in our 50s, 60s, and 70s. So while we're having a family, we're usually cooking more food. We're preparing bigger meals to feed more people. And then as those children grow up and they move out, move on, and suddenly we're left either as a couple or a single individual, and protein becomes something that we don't focus on. So maybe we just have an egg in the morning because it's really quick and it's easy to do. But you're not going to cook a big chunk of meat because there's just yourself to do that. What these researchers found is protein does this as people go through the first part of life and then they hit that middle age. And as their kids leave home, and as their lifestyle changes, maybe their routine at work changes, they're not working as much or working as hard. What happens is their protein consumption starts to decline. But in reality, our protein need goes up as we age. There's a very subtle thing that happens in our body as we get older called sarcopenia. So sarcopenia is a big word to say you're losing lean muscle mass. If we don't work at maintaining lean muscle mass by elevating our protein intake as we get older, our body will start using our lean muscle mass for energy production, for repair, and for other things. And our body only has one storage mechanism for protein, which is our lean muscle mass. So suddenly we're losing lean muscle mass and replacing it with some body fat. I've talked to many people who said to me, you know, my weight hasn't changed in a decade. I've been the same weight since I was 50 and now I'm 60. My weight hasn't changed at all. And when we do a DEXA scan on those people, they're very surprised to find out that although their overall weight has not changed, their body composition has changed considerably. We call them skinny fat sometimes because sometimes their weight is within their BMI. But when we do a DEXA scan, they find out that this unfortunate situation is occurring that's very common in people where they're using lean muscle mass. One of the ways that people lose lean muscle mass is by skipping protein. When we get up in the morning and it's called breakfast or breaking a fast for a reason, our body has been in a catabolic state. In other words, we've been using protein during the night. Our brain is 2% of our body weight, but 20% requires the requirement of our energy. So our brain has been using protein all night. We're in a catabolic state. We're repairing things that need to be repaired. And then people get up in the morning and they don't replace protein. They have something else. They have coffee. They have a muffin. They have something else that is easy. Or they have an egg, which is only seven grams of protein. That is not enough to make up for the protein that we've lost during the evening. So one of the things that I've discovered is that for almost everybody I'm talking to, I'm having to educate them on the fact that you need protein first thing in the morning. 20 to 30 grams of protein. Even have it before your coffee. If you have coffee first thing in the morning, you set your body up for diuresis or the removal of fluid. Coffee is a diuretic. The caffeine is a diuretic. It will actually help our body get rid of fluid. So if we have our coffee first and our protein after, then whatever we've put in as food, we already are in diuresis and we're going to lose some percentage of that. It might not be a big percentage, but it is happening. So if you do enjoy your coffee, have your protein first. And then about 35, 40, maybe even an hour later, enjoy your coffee when it's not going to affect the protein that you've consumed early in the day. And this is universal for everyone. This is for men. This is for women. Men might need a little more protein in the morning, but women certainly need some. And what we need is something that contains about two and a half grams of leucine protein, which is the protein that tells the other proteins that they can be absorbed. That our body, it prepares our body to absorb protein. So that's number one out of all the things that I found is protein need is very high. The second thing that I found universally is people have an inability to actually metabolize and utilize omega-3 fatty acids. Fish oils is what they're usually known as, although there are vegan omega fatty acids, which our body can change into the omega-3 fatty acids. But this is another universal problem. The lack of this is one of the contributors to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There was a study done in the United States where they checked the omega-3 fatty acid range. I'm just going to give you numbers. They're not meaningful in a sense, other than from a functional genetic point of view and from a dietary point of view, we know what these ranges should be. It's four to eight. When they did this study on people, they found out the average American was somewhere between 2.1 and 2.8. So literally around half to 60% of our omega fatty acid needs were being met. Where are omega fatty acids most important? Well, the membrane of our neurons is almost entirely made up of omega-3 fatty acids like DHA. Basically all of our cellular membranes are highly fatty acid containing. So having a shortage of fatty acid means we're not making the membranes, cellular membranes at the strength that we should. This leads to inflammation, subclinical, sometimes we don't notice it. Subclinical inflammation is an inflammation that's going on without symptoms, which can be a contributor to long-term illness. Those are two of the most important. So protein need and then our ability to utilize fats, all fats, saturated fat, dietary unsaturated fat and the omega fatty acids. These are genetics that seem to be universal across all types of people, all populations of people. And what's the easy fix for that? Well, it is to eat more protein. It is to eat more protein consistently throughout the day. Some people like to eat two meals a day. There are people that are OMADs, they eat one meal a day, which is a very inefficient way to get protein. They do it for weight management. And while they will lose some body fat, eventually they will start losing lean muscle mass. So these are things that are universal. Another thing that seems to be universal, and this is the final thing, is the emotional eating gene. Now that's a really interesting gene, the emotional eating gene or eating to satisfy our brain. In other words, this gene affects how we look at food, how we understand food and how our body reacts to food. So understand our body is very sensitive, we react to food through smell, through taste and through even looking at food. When we even look at a meal, we start to produce insulin, we start to produce enzymes. When we smell food, we start to produce insulin and enzymes. We're getting ready for that food to become part of us. So this is another area that's almost universal, is this emotional eating gene. And that is the one that can cause us real problems if we don't understand that gene on and into the future. So that's three genes, genetic sequences that are very common amongst people. I feel that these are reason enough to have our DNA tested. If we understood just our macronutrient profile and how we can fix that, we could go a long way to eliminating many illnesses. As a matter of fact, the end of this study that was done, a five-year study, 2008-2013, the researchers concluded that many of the diseases that we consider aging, so lack of mobility, lack of strength, lack of balance, are actually protein deficiencies and deficiencies in fatty acids connected to cognitive decline. I hope you found this really useful. I've enjoyed sharing it with you and I'll look forward to talking to you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to episode three, and once again, if you wouldn't mind just liking and subscribing, that will help other people find this information if you found it useful. 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.