We Tested My DNA at 50: Shocked With What We Found

Hi, welcome to Your Second Fifty podcast. I am Laurent Goldstein, co-host of Your Second Fifty, and I am here with my co-host, Alan Ogden. And today, for the first episode, we are going to talk about something super important as we reach 50 and over, and it is to understand more about our DNA. And I really recommend that you get DNA tested like I did, and Alan is going to go over my results, because it gives you a really good roadmap or a good blueprint for things that you should be looking into and improve in order to be able to live Your Second Fifty to be the best part of your life. So, without further ado, I'd like Alan to take over and start talking about the importance of DNA testing and go over some of the results in my own DNA testing that I just did. So, Alan, please join me here. Oh, thank you. The first episode of Your Second Fifty, DNA testing, very timely, very important. The mic is yours. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me. And I want to make a differentiation up front because a number of years ago, ancestry became a very big thing. Checking your ancestry. We're not talking about your ancestry. And I want to make that very clear to people. We're talking about your DNA and how it relates to something we would call health span. So, people have heard of lifespan before. That's how long you live. But health span is how well you live during your lifespan. And this is a roadmap of how you can best work through exercise, lifestyle, diet, supplements, all the things that people are confused about because we get so much information on the Internet. But this is your DNA. It's not going to change. You have this test once. If you haven't had it before 50, you definitely need it at 50 in order to enjoy your life to the max and know that you're doing the right things for you. So, this isn't somebody else's. You know, it doesn't matter if you have people in your background because this is a culmination of all the people in your background and how it relates to you now and moving forward and enjoying your life to the best that you can. Thank you so much, Alain, for making a distinction between lifespan and health span. My focus really in doing the new film, Your Second 50, Live Inspired, is not, despite the fact that I've been attending and filming at several biohacking conferences, is not really to look at ways to increase lifespan, even though that's very interesting. But it has more to do with increasing our quality of life and being able to do what we love to do until the end. It's almost like being a candle burning bright, bright, bright, and then at the end it just flickers out and dies. So, that is my view on life over 50, really. Yeah, and I love your analogy of a candle because your DNA literally is your candle. That's a great way to put it for people to understand. And until you have had a DNA test, you don't know what's impacting that candle and how brightly it can shine. So, we think of a candle, it needs oxygen, it needs air, it needs space, needs all these things to get its maximum, you know, illumination. And this is what DNA is about. It's about you and how you can impact your own life through choices and through things that you can do. So, I can't wait to hear more about my DNA results. I'm super interested in that. So, if I can just give a little background as to what led me here. So, when I was in university, I had a very unique opportunity. I was the last class to get a degree in a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. And that's kind of different because we studied pharmacognosy, which is the use of medicine as plants. We studied vitamins and supplements, which they don't do any longer. But we had a great course of vitamins, supplements, taught by Dr. Ron Kutz, who was a professor of supplementation at that time, a researcher in the supplement industry. Then I went on to take nutrition after that. Then I did actually the very first course that was offered in longevity and aging by the University of Denver many years ago. And I had taken genetics back in university, but there was no practical application. So, when I found out we could actually do this functional, like this is something you can refer to again and again, it's functional for you. This is probably the most important and critical test that I personally have ever had done, you know, as a even a medical professional to have this information at my own hand, to enable me to know what I can do to make my life, that health span as best as I can into the future. So, you know, once again, the differentiation between ancestry, which we don't look at, we can look at ancestry, but it's really, it's not a functional thing. It's interesting. It's a trivia question, if you want to look at that, right? But what we look at, so I want to address this, you know, there's a lot of information right now on methylation and the impact of methylation or the inability to use our methylation genes. We go far beyond that in the tests that we do. So, methylation usually involves five to seven gene pairs that they look at to see how well those work and give you sort of an idea of how they're impacting your day-to-day operation from your brain to your energy, all of those kinds of things. We go way beyond that to 220 different genetic pairs that we look at, and we're expanding that again to include more if people want it. We literally now can even check if you are on medication, you can have a genetic test to see if that medication is the best for your genes, or if there's medication that's actually working against you, which is, you know, just to me is like way out there as a pharmacist having dispensed medication with my fingers crossed hoping, oh, I hope that's the right one for you. And how many times have people gone to a doctor, they've tried a drug and it didn't work and they didn't know why. Well, now we can check your genetics and see what would be if you need a medication. But we're hoping if you get this program in front of you, we would eliminate a lot of need for medication because I think there's a lot of misunderstandings in the diagnosis because your doctor doesn't have access to your DNA, right? That's a problem. It's a big problem. Of course. Yes. Yes. And I'll give you an example. We did a study in autistic children a few years ago, and we found out that a vast majority of them have ineffective methylation genes. They can't use B vitamins, which are necessary for cognition. They're necessary for our central nervous system. So by optimizing something glutathione, we'll talk about that at another time, but optimizing glutathione and getting them proper B vitamins, we saw a tremendous effect and a dramatic reduction in the need for medication in those children. So I did bring your DNA results today. So we can walk through this a little bit and give people a real idea of how important this is, but how in-depth it is. Just up front, I want you to know, like I've got about nine pages in front of me out of approximately 200 pages of information that you would get from your DNA test. If you wanted to go through and read, you can literally read every gene on what it means and how to best handle it in your lifestyle and in your health span. So, but I'd love to go through some of yours if that's okay with you. Yes. First of all, I'd like to ask you, because there's different schools of thoughts around genes and how much the genes we are born with, all the genes we inherit from our parents, obviously, how much they impact actually our life and our health. Could you give us your take on that? Yeah, absolutely. So what you're talking about is the study of epigenetics and that's literally how our genes are expressing and there are definite factors that can improve how our genes will express. You know, in spite of the fact that we might have a very difficult synapse, let's say the Alzheimer's gene. So we look at that gene, we look at Alzheimer's and what's your risk? This is not diagnostic. This is just a measure of risk. So let's say it's a hundred percent risk factor. Well, that doesn't mean that you're destined to get Alzheimer's. It means you can now handle the risks that would push you in that direction. And that's epigenetics, right? That's getting the best out of those genes. But without that information, you're just guessing. And now you don't have to guess. You go, oh, that's where I'm at in this particular gene sequencing. And this is the things I can do about it that I know. And they're kind of clinically proven to help me avoid as much as possible. It's empowering. It's an empowering message. It's super empowering. First, it's super overwhelming, right? Because you didn't know you could look that deep into you as a person. There's so much information. You didn't know you could get that deep into the information. And then after that, it's empowering. I like it. It actually puts you back in the driver's seat. Totally. You're now in control. You're not guessing. Like even we, even in my consultations with people, I will even go through what blood tests they should absolutely do for the rest of their life with their doctor. So you can go, you know, go for an annual physical. They do a blood panel. It's kind of standard, like really, honestly, it's kind of standard. But now you can go to your doctor and say, no, no, really, I need, I had my genetics done. And here's certain tests that I need to follow based on my genetics. And once again, now we're crossing into that area of epigenetics, getting our genes to express in the best possible manner that we can. We can do that with our exercise genes, with our, our VO2 max, and all these things you hear people talking about. Well, now you have in your hand, the actual genetic summary that will allow you to utilize those. What are some of the findings that you, you think are important for me to be aware of? Like the ones that really stand out? I'd love to hear what you have to say. Sure, sure, sure. So just, we did your brain power summary, right? So just on your brain power, for instance, we find a little bit, a 25% risk of Alzheimer's. That's very low. Generally speaking, the 75% of that gene that's good will, with lifestyle, will weigh it, outweigh that 25%, right? So that's, it's a minor risk factor, but it's still a risk factor. So if somebody wasn't aware of that, and they were doing certain things in their life, like not exercising, like not taking care of their vitamins, not just not taking care of themselves, well, then that risk factor becomes more in play, right? For you, for instance, let's look at this one here, you know, emotional eating, 100%, right? Just give you that. Yeah, you can show the audience that one. So they're big red markers. So this is, this is, but isn't this really cool? This is how easy it is to read. This is, this is how easy it is for, so when it comes back, it's data. It's not like mumbo jumbo data that you have to... So what does emotional eating mean? So emotional eating means that when you're under particular types of stress, so I know that you're an athlete, under certain conditions of your athletic performance, your brain is going to send a signal to you that says, I need to eat something, I need to, right? And generally, what we're trying to satisfy then is not a physical body need. It's a brain need. It's your brain saying, it's your brain driving that I need to eat. And generally, we eat something that will satisfy the brain need. I just had that happening to me a week ago at a table tennis tournament in the evening. I just had exactly that. Yeah, isn't that interesting? And I was distressed because I realized I forgot my snack food that I was going to bring. And what do you generally snack? What I had is I eat a lot of nuts. So I had in that, I had in a Ziploc bag, I had put some cashews and walnuts and dates. I like dates when I perform in my sport. So I had a combination of a few nuts and seeds and I left it. I left it at home. So anyway, so it's interesting you're mentioning that because it distressed me. Sure. I was looking for a banana. I was asking, do you have a banana? And I was not able to perform for the last couple of games I had to do after, like I would normally have. Right. Yeah, for sure. Because now your cortisol is up. So now your body has gone into fight or flight. It's not that you wanted it to be there, but your genetics, that's the response, right? And when we look at how you use macronutrients, and this is where genetics really, you can really optimize the knowledge of your genetics. When we look at your protein need, once again, you can show that to your audience. Another big red line there, right? 100% protein need. That's telling us that when that's triggered in your brain, your body's actually needing protein more than anything else. Now, generally we satisfy it with, you're satisfying with nuts, but you're a healthy person. Most people would satisfy that emotional need with something that has salt, omega-6 fatty acids, and carbohydrates. So what is that? Usually it's potato chips. It's usually food that, you know, you think about this, you can sit down and eat a whole 600 gram bag of potato chips. You can't eat a 600 gram bag of carrots. No. You wouldn't eat 600, you know, that's almost- There's no good nutrition in the potato chips. Yeah, that's right. It's addictive. It's addictive, and because of the omega-6, that's satiating to the brain. So now your brain is happy, but you haven't done anything for your body, right? You haven't literally satisfied- That distinction, that's very important. Yeah. So yeah, you're satisfying this brain need, but not satisfying your body need, which is actually where the need is being stimulated from. So generally, the brain is what I go through with people first, because this has so many places it ties into your other genetics and how well you can manage these risk factors. So we see on here, you know, your Parkinson's 100% green. So your likelihood of Parkinson's is zero. That doesn't mean you can't get it, right? But it means it would be something, likely a toxin or something, right, that is outside of your- Outside. Yeah, outside of your lifestyle that would be responsible for that, not something that, oh, genetically. And this is one of the things I love about this is because now you can look at that and go, you know what, if I just do these things, I don't have to worry about any of these, right? They're under control. And when I'm feeling that urge, like, I need to eat, I need to eat, we can satisfy that from a different perspective where we're satisfying our body's need, which will ultimately, of course, and many people don't realize that protein's actually producing energy. You know, if you eat amino acids, one of the amino acids is glycogen. Glycogen breaks down into 30,000 units of sugar, right? So we are getting some sugar, right? Even people that are on a keto diet don't understand your body will never allow you to run completely out of sugar. Of course. It's just impossible. We can't run without it. So our brain does need some sugar. So that's where I like to start with people. Then the other thing I like to do with them is I like to go to their FitPower. I think this is one that's really important for you. I'm just going to let you have a look at it. And tell me, like, you've made the decision. So this is the FitPower. And endurance activity, how suited you are for endurance activities, 71% in green. Right. So I assume that's not too bad. That's great. That's why you would choose something like the sport that you're involved in. Power and sprint activity, 56% in green, which is good for table tennis because that's a quick movement. Yes. Enduring recovery, ligament strength, I'm 50-15. Tendon strength, a little weak in tendon. This is why I've had back-to-back issues over 15 years with temicellular lateral spite epicondylitis. I've had four instances which each of one lasted like six months, so I could not play. So I could see the explanation here, potentially. And you also can see why a sport that you chose, even though you might be just genuinely interested in that sport, but it suited you. It suited me. Right. So think about somebody that, say they're surrounded by a group of people, and this was me when I was young. So I have three older brothers. One of them wanted to be a professional bodybuilder. So as a teenager, him and I built our own gym. In our basement, we cleared out a big place in our basement and we built a gym. We literally built this gym. I don't know if people remember the names, Weider back in the day in the magazine. We fill it up with Weider equipment and he could just excel at that, and I could never keep up to him. I had no idea. I wanted to be that big. I wanted to have the disco muscles, we call them, you know, your pectorals and your bicep, the disco muscles. That's something Olive K. Jr. was very proud of. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah. Look at that. But then I get my genetics and it says to me, oh, no, I should be running like marathons or, you know, I can do all of that. I used to run 70 miles a week. So you found something that was better suited for you. Better suit, but I just changed my exercise. I still work out because body muscle mass is one of the most important things for seniors, right? Maintaining. But now I know how to do it without hurting myself. And like you say, getting into an injury situation where you take months to repair because we did something that wasn't very good for us at the start. And for you, like, because you have that, so I would make a recommendation about consuming collagen protein on a regular basis, collagen protein supplements, along with some other things to make sure, because we now have studies that show the consumption of collagen protein does improve the strength and endurance of your connective tissue by a considerable percentage. That makes sense. Doesn't do anything for lean muscle mass, so. No, that's another issue. That's another issue, right? But now you can see the really good thing about this genetic panel here, and I love this because Dr. Peter Attia did a study on this and he took a group of people in their 70s that had been sedentary all their life, did all their VO2 max, did all their markers that he could, and he compared them to 70 year olds that had exercise and take care of themselves. And in his study, he said, listen, I want, I'm not going to change your lifestyle here. If you smoke, keep smoking. If you drink, keep drinking. I just want you to exercise. And he found that after a period of time, they could, they had the same markers for VO2 max as the people, it was about 24 months later. So these genes are very trainable, if I can use that word, right? This is, now this is the science of epigenetics. This is epigenetics, right? We can take those genes and if we treat them right, do the right exercise program, they will respond. And then he came out with a summary of that test, which said exercise is the greatest contributor to healthspan, bar in spite of smoking, anything else that you would do, exercise is likely the most important thing. And that was a genetic study, right? That's... That is very inspiring. Is it? Because it's something everybody can do. Yes, yes. And it will lead to positive outcomes. There's, and there's no age at which that doesn't work. We did a study on 80 and 90 year old, mostly women, because there's not very many men in that category, unfortunately. But we did a study on them. It was actually a study on osteopenia and osteoporosis. And we wanted to know if we could slow down the condition, the development of osteoporosis. So we had them on various supplements, some were not on supplements, some of them some drugs. And the biggest factor in the recovery was actually exercise. And we had them just doing 15 minutes a day of light band exercise. So we're not taking them to the gym, we're not working out. But just a little bit of exercise was the greatest factor of improvement. So there's literally no age at which exercise will not improve your overall feeling of health and your overall ability to enjoy life. Here's what people don't understand. So I want to go back to that emotional eating thing. And what happens when that is triggered in you. When our cortisol goes up, our insulin goes up, and we're physiologically blocked from reaching our fat stores. So now you're looking for all the sugar, but you've been going at this for hours already, right? So now your body's just scrambling to try to find some sugar. And the only thing it can do at that point is start scavenging amino acids. So it starts a catabolic process of your muscle mass to try to meet its nutritional needs. Right now we want that when we're exercising, we do want a catabolic process so we can stimulate the anabolic process, right? The regrowth, hopefully, of muscle tissue and more muscle tissue than we had before. But in your situation, it's actually the fat stores are not accessible to you at that time. So even though you have that great green gene there, without that protein in your body, and keeping your cortisol low, we can't use that fat. Now you may use it after the exercise, right? Once your cortisol comes down. But literally when our cortisol's, when we're in fight or flight, we can't access our fat storage, right? It's something that people don't really realize. They think, well, if I exercise really hard, I'm going to burn a lot of body fat. You're not burning much body fat while you're exercising because you're inducing a lot of other things that we need to do in order to, like we want to secrete human growth hormone, for instance. With intense exercise, we secrete something called BDNF. BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is really important. If those people have a 75% rate of Alzheimer's gene, right? So there's, I mean, the benefits of exercise are definitely, but the reason you feel so fatigued at that time in your brain, you can't access even fat. And our brain is actually 40% more efficient at burning ketones than sugar, but you can't get there, right? So a little bit of fat and a little bit of protein, like a brain octane C8 or something like that at that time, and some protein, the little B vitamins would fix you. So let's reverse those for somebody. Let's say somebody, we did their genetics and instead of the amount of green that you, you know, what if we reverse that? Like there's, this is where we see these people. There's two reasons that we know that the lady who is 100 and can still swim, if we looked at her genetics, we would see a lot more green in there. Also, if we could test her, and this is a topic for another time, but if we could test her, she probably has a glutathione level in her body of maybe a 30 year old or 40 year old person. And there was a study that was done on this. This is also, we check for your ability to actually modulate this in your body. We don't check glutathione levels, but in your genetics, I can show you the genes that would tell you about your ability. Right here, this is your genes here. So you see that red in your inflammation? So this is your health power summary. So inflammation response, which is so important. Right. Inflammation is a big topic. Inflammation is probably the cause of a majority of diseases that people suffer right now from. How effectively your immune system fights inflammation. And I am only 30% green in there. That's right. So I need help that way. Inflammatory tumor response, 50-50. And that measure, but that tells you how effective your immune system is in fighting acute inflammatory diseases. Only 50% there. And then, methylation. So maybe you want to talk about that. I do want to talk about that, but I also want to flip back here because oxidative protection, which goes with inflammation, right? We talk about inflammation. We talk about free radicals. Yeah, free radicals, antioxidants, super important as we age as well. Right. So you're using a lot of oxygen when you're exercising, and we look at that oxygen gene there, 50%. So once again, you're creating a lot of inflammation. So what I would do is I would have an anti-inflammatory protocol after exercise, right? Oh, I see. Right? So we can now take this. We're going to combine it with your methylation genes. I need to have that information for the US Open because I'm going to be competing between December 16th, December 21st in Las Vegas in the US Open, which means it's every day, several hours. For the day, yes. Serotonin is super, super demanding. So just while we're on that topic, let's go to your diet power genes just for a second. We'll find them here. Well, we'll look at your methylation genes, all right? So we can just see there's a lot of red in your methylation genes. Yes, there is. So except how effectively I can convert almost cysteine to methionine, that's difficult too, and the bioavailability of active folate. So I've got 100% there, but everything else is also ... Yeah, I've got a couple of areas that are at 100%. Most of it is actually ... Yes. So then we combine that with your ability to use B vitamins. Okay. Right? So B vitamins, that's where methylation starts. You've got quite a bit of red there, right? So tie these two genes together. So when we can't use our B vitamins, we have an inability to methylate, and then what your methylation genes are telling you is not the same story, but to a greater extent, right? Yeah. So even if you're ... Let's say your B vitamins didn't have this much red. They had more green. You have significant amounts of red, which means you're not very efficient at utilizing B vitamins. And then we look at your methylation genes, which says you're not very good at transporting B vitamins or getting them to the cell where they're needed, right? So that means we have to ... This is where supplementation becomes not just important. To me, it becomes medicine. It does. So, yes. And so the natural reaction people would have, I guess, when they see that, oh, I need to increase my intake of vitamin B. Yes. Is that going to do the trick? No. They need to have methylated B vitamins. So we need to bypass the genetic inability to utilize, first of all, when you get B vitamins in your food or wherever they come from, we have to activate them in our body. You have some inefficiencies in that activation. Then you have some inefficiencies in transportation. So we have to bypass those by giving you already bioactive B vitamins, right? So as soon as you take them, boom. What about IV? IV would work. IV would work, but IV is not going to be very convenient during US Open. You can't get an IV all the time, so it's not a practical solution. It's expensive, too. Yes. Yeah. So let's look at the differences in B vitamins. So there's three vitamins that are oil they're lipid soluble. So they accumulate in the fat tissues. Vitamin A, you're 100% green in vitamin A, which means you would never have to supplement vitamin A. And actually, vitamin A deficiency is very rare anyway. It would have other symptoms that would lead us to conclude that you're vitamin A deficient. Vitamin D, another one. Now here's a very interesting fact, right? They did a study on North Americans and anybody who lives, you know, when we have six months of winter and we're not getting out, we're all deficient. We're all low. So unfortunately, the range that we measure in a blood test is very broad, 75 to 250, right? So if you're 76... I'm about 40, I think. Great. So, but if somebody gets a blood test and they go to their doctor and their doctor says, oh, you're in range, 76. Well, if they don't know their genetics and know that, first of all, they can't really utilize vitamin D. And if they can't get out in the sun, then supplementation is absolutely necessary. Once again, this is where you can use your genetics in place of, I'm going to just say, or as an adjunct to drug therapy, but vitamin D is now becomes like a medicine to you. My vitamin D. Yeah. So your vitamin D at 140 is good. I like, I would like to see, I keep my vitamin D around 200. So since I found out I raised my intake, I take the 10,000 I use right now. Yeah. And you would do that for a period of time and then you can probably reduce that, right? But that's something, this is what's really great about vitamin D is we can blood test it, right? We can blood test vitamin A. We can blood test vitamin B, but vitamin Bs are water soluble. So if I'm going to drink this water, so let's say I took a vitamin B before I came over here, which I did. Cause to me, I take my vitamin B three times a day. They're water soluble. They only last in your body for a period of hours, like four and a half to five hours. And then your body has utilized what it, and it flushes out. You pee them out. Yes. We feed the sewer rats. And so if I would have had a vitamin D the moment I walked in here and then have another one, when I leave, they're going to be completely different. Right. So a blood test really is, it's not, it's not really acerate. You snapshot your time for vitamin D. That's right. It's a Polaroid. It's a Polaroid picture. Then vitamin E, right, is another oil soluble one. But when we look at your vitamin E, you have 33% red there. So once again, when we combine that with your cardiovascular genes, we look at that and then we would go, yes, we need to make sure you're getting vitamin E in your diet. We would maybe look at what you're taking in your diet and then maybe supplement, but I don't use just alpha, D-alpha-tocopherol. There are more active forms of vitamin E, the tychotrienols. So we would look for a mixed natural source vitamin E. And when we look at the research that was done on vitamin E back in the forties and fifties at the University of Toronto, which showed some great cardiovascular benefits from vitamin E, and then when vitamin E was brought out on the market with synthetic vitamin E, well, it didn't work, right? So we don't use synthetic. We're going to use a natural source vitamin. He does not recognize it. That's right. He doesn't really utilize it, I guess. Yeah. One of the great things for you is your omega fatty acid gene is 100% green. So that's omega fatty acids, of course, very good for our brain, DHA, our brain needs DHA, but they're really anti-inflammatory, right? And so current recommendations for, you know, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who's one of the persons who's done a lot of research in this area, she's telling people we need like 5,000 international units of vitamin, of omega-3 a day, right? Because the American, standard American diet, which you don't eat, but many people do, is so heavy in omega-6. You know, at most we should have like a one-to-one ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. And right now in the diet, it's about 40 to 50 to one omega-6 over, you know, omega-3. So many people, even though their genetics would indicate, when we look at their diet, we would say, whoa, hold back, let's get some really good fat into your diet, right? So these are just, this is just a really brief overview of you, right? But you now have this in front of you as a blueprint, right? Where you can take, okay, I'm going to the U.S. Open, what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to make sure I have protein, I'm going to make sure I have vitamin Bs, I'm going to make sure I have some, something that breaks down into ketones, like brain octane C8, which your body can't break, it can't make up body fat out of that, it just makes ketones. That's really good for that emotional gene, right? It'll satisfy that emotional gene, as will some other MCT oils, you could take them, you want to take them with your protein, but now you have a plan. And then we would do a recovery plan after that of when you're done, how do we fight that inflammation? Not that we want to get rid of inflammation altogether. It does, right? Yeah, so that when we produce lactic acid, it's actually becomes a signaling molecule. So yes, it does stimulate the catabolic activity, but it also stimulates the anabolic activity. It stimulates the secretion of human growth hormone, it stimulates this BDNF, right? So there's many things, but now we have a blueprint. And that's what I love. People, once again, people don't have to do this test more than once. Now, we haven't even touched on your hormones. Sure. So we do test people and their ability to utilize their own hormones. So in men, androgen or testosterone. In women, of course, it's their estrogen. And the one we're really looking for is not only low testosterone or maybe low estrogen in women, but it's the metabolites, right? So with your methylation genes being the way they are, we would have to look at how well you can metabolize your hormones. So when you've used them and they break down into metabolites, can you get them out of your body? Can you conjugate them? Can you just get them out of your body? Because if they build up, right? So estrogen buildup in men is very visible. Yeah. It's a very visible thing. We get man boobs, we get a big belly, which is incorrectly called a beer belly. Although some people might drink beer, but right? That's not full of beer. That's from estrogen. And it's also from a lack of limp function, right? So men have limp basically from their groin to their chin, where women have limp from their knees and down into their calves all the way up. So that's why women tend to get body weight all over, body mass all over, where men tend to accumulate it just in the stomach and chest area. That's where our limp is, right? So that's another thing we would look at is how efficient you are at these metabolites. And what could we do? Like maybe give you trimethylglycine or something else, which is a methylation tool. What does it say? I think that in, because you had, this was a summary test that you'd had another test done before this. Oh, I can't remember. But we have it anyway. So it's right there. There's your hormones. Okay. But so Brian. So you are not efficient at using your own testosterone. I'm not. You're not. So one of the things, here's, this is just so important in men. And now we're seeing even in women, you know, for a long time, testosterone wasn't even a consideration in women. Now it is. Now it is. Yes. We're using low dose testosterone for women as well, for lean body, muscle mass, and other things. But this is telling us, like I would strongly urge you to have a testosterone test and see where you're at. Yeah. I should, I take testosterone. Oh, you're on a, you're on a therapy already? Yeah. You're on an HRT? No, I should get this. Right. So here's, once again, here's how, well, that tells us that some of the testosterone you're getting, you're not utilizing, you're producing estrogen from it. Oh. Right? So now we want to make sure that we're giving you a methylation protocol. We're giving you a protocol to make sure that that estrogen is very low. We can't stop that from happening. That's a natural process. It's, it's, our testosterone is going to break down, but we can help with maybe liver supplementation or something to help metabolize, get this out of your body. So it doesn't cause a problem in the future. And this is, this is, I think, my own opinion about this. I had all of my, I went to my doctor when I was 37 years old, cause I was bagged. I had three drugstores, 200 staff, there were 70 kilometers apart. It was just, I worked 100 to 120 hours a week and I was bagged. Little wonder. And I went and had my testosterone. He said, let's, let's test your testosterone. 37 years old. Yeah. All right. For people to get a sort of visual of that, that's middle age. We don't talk about 37 being middle age, but the average age of men is about 74.8. Yes. Right now. So 37, multiply that by two, that's 74. We're talking middle age. So he said, let's just do this. Let's get a testosterone test. Let's take, it didn't even show up. My testosterone didn't even show up. Age 37. Wow. You had to talk? Well, I should be, well, yeah, it should be in my twenties at a minimum, right? The range 8.5 to 30. I should be at least in my twenties. So I was an early adopter of HRT therapy. I've been on it for years. And of course now the thinking back then, I would every three months for a PSA test, they were so afraid that this might, you know, result in prostate cancer. Now we know that low testosterone has much more play maybe in prostate cancer. Also zinc, like getting me on a zinc supplement because zinc, the most important mineral for our prostate as men also plant sterols and stanols. So I just want to talk about that for a second because there's a lot of people that are vegan and they feel that there's significant health benefits from being on vegan. And I just want to make this point. We did a study, actually, we just contributed. We didn't do the study. The study was done, but on vegan Amish. So you can't have people that have more organic food, right? They've never used pesticides, herbicides, and as far as plant stanols and sterols. So that's the anti-inflammatory immune contributing part of the plant, but they were getting about 40 to 50 milligrams a day. Okay. So these vegan people doing their best getting about 40 to 50 milligrams a day to have an immunological impact. We need 300 milligrams a day, right? It's, it's virtually impossible for us, no matter what diet we would eat. It's virtually impossible to meet some of these benefits that we attribute to food that just aren't there because we can't eat that much food, right? You can't eat 40 pounds of vegetables a day. I mean, people will eat pounds of potato chips, but they can drink it, but it's not the same. Once it's ground up, we're losing the, just the processing and making greens, for instance, that processing damages a lot of the nutrition that's in plants. Cooking is another thing that damages a lot. Although there are some that you, we have to cook mushrooms. You don't, raw mushrooms are no good to us. Peppers aren't any good to us raw. We need to heat them in order to, tomatoes is another thing to get the lycopene out of tomatoes. You actually have to have some for the prostate. That's good for the prostate as well. But eating raw tomatoes is not as effective as eating a cooked steamed tomato. So yeah, so this is, this is what I love. And so at the end of our test, it's fascinating. At the end of our test, right? This is a little, we did this for you and people can get this. It's a summary. So it's going to talk every gene pair, every gene combination that we have checked in your body. It's a reference for you. Now we printed one off. It's just a summary for you. What individuals get when they have their DNA tested is they'll get much more extensive information, literally down to the exact genes that we've checked in their bodies. That's fantastic. So people, when they look at that, they might feel a bit intimidated. Oh my God, what's this process looks like? Oh, it's going to be super expensive. Can you tell us a little bit about the process? And I don't think it is super expensive. You want to expand on that? Yeah, I would love to expand on that because I've looked at a lot of the genetic testing. I looked at a lot of genetic testing before I had mine done a few years ago. And this Canadian company that we use, DNA Power, it's $500 plus the federal tax, the GST. We can't avoid that, but literally anybody in the world can do this test. So DNA Power will literally send a cheek swab anywhere in the world. You do a simple cheek swab, 10 rounds on one cheek and 10 rounds on the other cheek. You do it after you have not had water, coffee, anything in your mouth for about an hour to make sure that we're getting your DNA or the best sample of DNA. Send that away. Three to five weeks later, you get this whole test. It's very simple, very easy to do. Then can people have a consult with you remotely? How does that work? Yes. Once they've had that, a calendar will come up when the results are available. A calendar will come up and they can come in there and they can choose me or one of the other consultants from DNA Power to do their results test. What I like to do is I encourage people to have more than one. So I'm a professional that had this done. I was overwhelmed when I got the information. There's just so much information, just in our hormone panel alone and the impacts of understanding our testosterone and how well we utilize it and the long-term impacts of that. It's huge. You can spend an hour on it. Absolutely. On any one of these, we could spend an hour. So on a second consult, which that costs a bit of money to have a second consult, but we can go through, like I say, the blood tests that are now important to you for the rest of your life. You're going to have your testosterone tested on a regular basis, whether that's annually, biannually, whatever your doctor determines, and depending on your PSA levels at any given time, right? You're going to have that. You're going to have like a C-reactive protein test. You're going to have your triglycerides tested. You're going to do one homocysteine test because we want to see the activity of B vitamins in your body currently. So these are markers that we can tell you. We can't go through all of that in a simple, hey, it's way too overwhelming, right? So we need to book a couple of sessions after that, and all told, it's going to cost people about $800 really to integrate this. It's such an important investment in your life, and it's really, in my opinion, the foundation of what you need to look at with supplementation, exercise, lifestyle, and everything else. So you should do that first, and actually in the long run, it probably will save you money because otherwise you might be spending money on necessary supplements or a variety of other things you might do that you might not need to do. Running back and forth to the doctor, taking time out of your schedule. I'll just give you an example. So I know this gentleman. He's a great public speaker. He's traveling, and he's speaking, and we met, and I said, well, just bring your supplement along with you just out of curiosity, right? So he brings this box of supplements, and so I said, well, how much is that per month? How much are you spending per month? $500. I said, $500, that's one DNA test. I don't know how much is going to be eliminated out of that box, but I can guarantee it's going to be several that are going to be eliminated out of that, or some of the dosages are going to be adjusted, right? So yes, it will save you money. So it is an investment in your health span, right? That's what we're talking about. It's an investment in your health span, right? And now I go to the doctor with knowledge. I need these things tested. I don't need to worry about my B vitamin tests anymore because I'm taking the proper B vitamins. I don't need to worry about some other things, but these things, these are the markers. So for you, for instance, your inflammatory markers, we want to test those. Your testosterone, we want to test those. Are there other things in here? No, we don't. So very simple. Now I go to the doctor. This is what I need to monitor for myself. The other tests aren't that important. And then when it comes to your brain health, even if somebody has a 75% Alzheimer's, they have a Parkinson's, now we know, okay, we're doing the best with the knowledge we have at this time. And I want to mention that I also encourage people to incorporate other modalities like red light therapy, brain tap. We just know that there's so much power in doing other things because we're just overwhelmed. And that's the purpose of doing the film too, because with the movie, Your Second Safety, people are going to discover some modalities, therapies, and nutrients that they were not aware of. I mean, talking about stem cells, talking about peptides, or talking about the C15 fatty acid, or talking about oxygen therapy, red light therapy. I mean, so many things that people will understand that are so important to incorporate in our lifestyle. And if you combine that with a test with DNA power to know actually what your DNA looks like, wow. I think this is the thing. When you're over 50, we don't really have the luxury of trying. We don't really have the luxury of time as much as when you're in your 20s or 30s. It's okay to make mistakes back then with your height and everything. There's a lot of time to correct them. In your second 50, you want to make sure that you maximize all the good things in your life and all the things that will help your body cope better and reduce that gap, in a way, between when you're at mentally, emotionally, in your brain, like thinking that, oh, I feel like I'm a 40-year-old, which is how I feel most of the time, and the limitation of your body. By knowing what you should do that is good for you based upon your DNA, then you can reduce that gap between how your body can perform and how you think you are at, as far as your biological age, psychological age, how to reduce that gap. It's super important, and this is a powerful tool to do that. It takes the guessing away. It does. It takes the guessing away, and yes, that's it. I love it. I'm a fan. So, Alan, I can't wait to have you back on your podcast. There's so many different things we already have planned to discuss. It's super exciting. It was very informative today. Would you like to include a link to DNA Power? Absolutely. I was going to ask you, can you please tell us how people can access this information? Give your contact. Please go ahead and let us know. Yeah. So, I do have a link to DNA Power. It's very simple. We can post it. You can post it. You can also save it. Yeah. So, it's dnapower slash ref reference slash Alan53, and that's the year I was born, Alan53, and we'll post that one. That means that I will know that the test has been submitted. It doesn't necessarily mean that I have to do the results, but I'll know that the test has been submitted, and then we'll know that it's come from this show. So, we've set this up for this particular show. And, of course, they can reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. They can reach out to me that way at just alan. You're going to be part of the theme, and yeah, there will be many other opportunities. We will be also posting. We have a Facebook group now that we just started, Your Second Fifty, and we also have on Microsoft website an area where we promote the products and the companies that we believe in. Okay. Wonderful. Several other views where people can actually find out the information and actually be able to access you. I appreciate that. So, in the meantime, I want to thank our audience very much for being with us today on our first episode of Your Second Fifty podcast. In closing, I would like to remind everybody, live, inspire. Live, inspire. Yes. Live, inspire. Live, inspire. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.