Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized Wellnesshttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/737afb4d-8acc-464f-83a3-b45100d46fce/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:* Dr. Sam Shay Official Website (https://drsamshay.com) * FitGenes USA (https://fitgenesusa.com)

𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮:* Instagram – (https://www.instagram.com/drsamshay/) * YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@drsamshay * Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/drsamshay * LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsamshay

𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝘀:* DNA Decoded Program * FitGenes Genetic Blueprint * Neuro-Harmony Framework

Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized Wellness00:00 – Introduction to Functional Genetics & Personalized Health

01:40 – What Functional Genetics Actually Means

05:00 – The 7 Main Drivers of Disease Explained

09:30 – Why Vitamin D Receptors Matter

17:30 – Methylation & MTHFR Myths

24:00 – Exercise Genetics & Recovery

29:00 – Overtraining, Inflammation & Weight Gain

37:00 – Carb Tolerance & Personalized Nutrition

45:00 – Sugar Cravings, Satiety & Eating Behaviors

50:00 – Genetics vs Epigenetics

53:00 – Histamine, Caffeine & Alcohol Sensitivities

1:00:00 – The Neuro-Harmony Health Model

1:05:00 – Why Personalized Health Needs a Blueprint

1:07:00 – Final Thoughts & Closing Remarks

Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized WellnessDr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, personalized medicine is definitely the way of the future. And with all the technology that is becoming available to us, it’s an exciting prospect to think that so much of our health journey through life can be personalized and what could be more personal than your own genetic profile.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get some idea of, some of the drivers of disease and to see whether you are predisposed to them. What about nutritionally? What is your genetic predisposition for various nutritional approaches? And also what about exercise? Well, my guest today is Dr. Sam Shay and Sam is a functional medicine expert specializing in fatigue, brain fog, hormonal balance and personalized health.

So after, after overcoming his own complex chronic illness, he developed a practical approach that combines genetics, functional testing, and nervous system regulation to help patients understand why they feel unwell. And even, even when they’re lab tests, sell them their normal and guide them back toward more vibrant health.

Look, so much of this program is about personal empowerment and being personally empowered with your own genetic predispositions seems a very positive step in a personalized medicine journey. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Sam Shay. Welcome to the show, Sam.

Dr Sam Shay (01:40)

Good to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:41)

Sam, we’re going to be talking about functional genetics and how you got involved in it. But I guess that’s the first question I think we should cover. Give us functional genetics 101 for those of us that aren’t aware of it and want to know more about it.

Dr Sam Shay (01:55)

Sure. So there’s four main types of genetics tests out in the world and functional genetics is only one of the four. The first thing when people think about genetics testing is usually like what percentage Irish are you? Like that’s that’s genealogical. And then the other type of that’s not what I’m talking about. The one the the other type of test is like, who’s your daddy? This is not paternity testing. Third type of test is checking usually at birth for do you have a hardwired genetic issue that’s going to have meaningful formative consequences that’s just hardwired in.

It’s like Trisomy 21, Huntington’s disease, and other hardwired genetic issues that are extremely problematic. And those are hardwired. That’s not what I’m talking about here. The functional genetics, we’re not looking at pathology genes. We’re not looking at the genes of disease. We’re not looking at the genes of cancer, stroke, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia.

We’re not looking at those genes. We’re looking instead of two different classes of genes. And we only looking at those two class genes within those two classes that we can do something about, but we can change how the genes behave. We will not change the genes themselves. We will just change their behavior. And that’s important for people to understand.

We only functional genetics is a message of optimism and a message of self agency and a message of hope because there are genes that you canshift how they behave in the ways we want. There’s tens of thousands of genes, like 25, like there’s about 30,000 genes, like, and we’re, only looking at 140 or so, that’s it. And we are looking at these, of those 140, they’re split roughly in two, and you have diet genes and some exercise genes, and then you’ve got the drivers of all diseases genes.

Now,some people say, wait, you said we’re not looking for disease genes. We’re not. We’re looking at the drivers of disease genes. It’s a very important difference. So the drivers are, we’re looking at the genes that look at these in one or more of the seven main categories of the drivers of all disease. So we’re not looking at the genes that are the cancer gene, heart disease, stroke disease, dementia gene, et cetera.

We’re looking at the genes above them that if they’re provoked, we’ll go and poke downstream at those quote disease genes. So the seven drivers are in order of priority, inflammation. So we’re looking at the genes that are willing to the most upstream genes that control inflammation. So there’s hundreds of genes that control or influence directly and directly inflammation. I’m not interested in all of them. I’m only interested in the top 15 or 16. And I want to know, because they’re the ones that control the ones underneath.

So I want to know which of those 15, 16 genes that I’ve got that are that that have a non-ideal version. So genes can have, you know, three versions that can have green, yellow, red, like a traffic light. That’s the convention that the genetic community at large decided decades ago. So green means you got two good copies, a good copy from mom and dad. A yellow means one good copy from mom or dad, a bad copy from mom or dad. And a red is two bad copies.

Now, I want to know how many of those 15, 16 inflammatory genes have red and yellow dots. And just for people thinking like, you know, people have different relationships with the yellow traffic light, you know, some people that think it’s just, it’s just a mildly tinged, it’s just kind of a mistinged green, you just have to hit the gas harder and you can go through it. And other people just interpret as a red, a stop, as a stop, other people interpret it as a green.

Now, in in in almost almost all cases in the functional genetics world yellow is We take very seriously it is Nearly as bad as a red. It’s not middle of the road between green and red It’s not just a slightly less less less good version of a green note we treat yellows extremely seriously a couple exceptions that that thing a bit too granular to go into but just as a general rule of thumb, we treat yellow seriously like we treat reds.

So I want to know if I’ve now for me personally, of those 16 inflammatory genes, I have 14 out of the 16 as red and yellow dots. That’s terrible. That is terrible. For seven years, I had the goal. was a gold medalist in the crappy Gene Olympics. Since I’ve started running genetics as a gold medalist, I got dethroned after year seven to silver medalist, and then got dethroned again the next year to bronze medalist. It’s not a competition.

I’m, I think I guess I’m not pouting, you are, I’m pouting. So what that means is that I’m not looking at 14 separate recommendations. I’m looking at what are the fewest number of recommendations, lifestyle, diet, nutrition that help the most number of those 14 most important genes. So I’m looking at like three things to do, not 14 things to do, because those three things cover all 14 you know, an overlap into like one thing covers 12, another thing comes 10, another thing comes eight, whatever.

So that’s the strategy around functional genetics is you identify the most important things you can do on the highest priority genes that are the most important to look at for the most important things for the longest period of time. That’s functional genetics. So you look at the seven drivers of disease, we talk inflammation, 15, 16 genes. Then we got free radical damage scavenging. There’s only three genes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:37)

Yep.

Dr Sam Shay (07:42)

Here’s a great example of prioritization where ninety five percent of all free radicals generated

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:43)

Go on.

Dr Sam Shay (07:44)

Mitochondria. Okay. There are three superoxide dismutase genes in the body. SOD genes. That’s the first step for quenching free radicals. The most important enzyme for quenching free radicals. Only SOD2 lives in the mitochondria where 95 % of the free radicals are generated. So just by the numbers, do I really care about SOD1 or SOD3? Comparatively, not at all. I only care about SOD2 because I’m not looking to capture every last percentage of possibility to support genes. I’m looking at the highest priority gene.

So I want to look at the most important genes that are in the most important hotspot of where you find the most free radical damage. So I’m looking at SOD2, catalase, GPX1 or glutathione peroxidase. But SOD2, that’s the kicker. That’s the one that crunches about, I think it’s like four million free radicals a second or something insanely high. Like it is the most power, I call it the head janitor of the mitochondria. So, free radical inflammation, free radical damage scavenging. Then we have liver detox. And so there’s about seven, eight most important genes for liver detox split roughly between phase one, phase two. Then we have vitamin D receptors. So EDR1, VDR2. Now vitamin D receptors,

This is not making vitamin D from sunlight. That’s great. There’s about six genes between the sunlight and us. That’s wonderful. Thumbs up. That’s not the important bit because you can get vitamin D from food supplements, not just sunlight. And most people don’t even get it from sunlight because one, they’re not outside enough. And number two, if they are inside, they’re covered up. Number three, they’re not outside at the time and the season when there’s UVB out. mean, it’s not reliable. It’s just not reliable.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (09:47)

Particularly Sam, I would argue in the context of following public health advice, stay out of the sun. It’s very, very dangerous.

Dr Sam Shay (09:56)

Yeah, I think part of the problem, part of the issue with the stay out of the sun is that people are so nutritionally depleted that they don’t actually can actually make the enzymes to deal with UV UV damage. So what is the issue the sun or is the issue crappy nutrition? Which means they’re not able to handle the sun. But the other thing that there’s another there’s another strategy here that I’ve heard about. And it makes it makes sense.

The first principles is that you can do sun spotting where you can be out for like five minutes or so and get sun and then like all your enzymes to ramp up, because there is your enzymes to deal with the free radical damage from the sun or the UV damage, they ramp up, but they have an upper limit. it’s like you can get, if you have concentrated sun that’s on you and your enzymes are rising up to meet that challenge.

But there’s, comes up an inflection point where the intensity of the sun is exceeding the capacity of the enzymes to deal with the damage. But if you go into the brief, you know, then the input of more of the sunlight goes down, but the enzymes are still active. So there’s a way of kind of, and there’s articles written about this by other people more knowledgeable it’s it’s it’s it’s even then if you have poor enzymatic capacity you can still have strategies to be outside and get safe amounts of sun right so

Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:26)

Talking about the seven main areas and inflammation free radicals, liver detox and vitamin D receptors.

Dr Sam Shay (11:37)

The receptors are, the important thing about the receptors is that it’s the thing that gets the vitamin D into your cells. Getting vitamin D into the blood is sunlight, food and supplements. getting to the cells is a completely separate set of genes called BDRs. Now, the thing about vitamin D is that, mean, technically, as most people, hopefully nowadays know that it’s actually a hormone, not a vitamin, it was just misnamed. That vitamin D controls anywhere between three and 5 % of your entire DNA. That’s massive.

And most of the work vitamin D does is not for bone density does do that thumbs up, but that’s not the important thing about it. Vitamin D actually does is control inflammation in your immunity. Very important, like super important. In fact, it’s so important. I made an observation after doing hundreds and hundreds of these gene tests. I found in every single case of someone with chronic disease that I worked with, with only one exception, had yellows and red dots in their VDR receptors.

Only one exception and that person with the double greens had horrific stress of a nature I will not mention but it was formative and would drive anyone to chronic disease and kind of the exception that proved the rule and I went and asked the chief scientist at the lab and also to ask him to ask his other top practitioners is there a correlation between VDR variations, yellow red dots and chronic disease? He got back to me. I don’t know if it was a month or three months. It was a while ago. He said there’s absolutely correlation. I think you’re onto something.

Am I saying that every person that has VDR variations will have chronic disease? I don’t know. But in my practice, I saw everyone chronic disease minus one. Yes. Had had had VDR.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:17)

I mean, this throws a whole added perspective, if you like, onto the whole vitamin D story, because, you know, I think it’s pretty well accepted that vitamin D deficiency is pandemic or epidemic, depending on how we define it.

But, but I think, you know, I know there was a study done and we talked a lot about vitamin D just at the time of the pandemic and, and shared an article from a emergency, say emergency room saying 70 % of people admitted to ICU for treatment, ⁓ vitamin D deficient. So adding the, the, commonality of vitamin D deficiency to this very common vitamin D receptor issue is a double whammy really, isn’t it?

Dr Sam Shay (14:06)

Well, there’s even more to that story. I know what you’re talking about with that article. It’s even more sinister than that. the things that suppress VDR expression, meaning that it withdraws receptors from the cells, it, mean, deficiency is one thing, but now you don’t even have the docking sites on what little vitamin D you’ve got circulating. What withdraws that is smoking and pollution.

So when you look at Italy that got hit seemingly the hardest, at the very beginning, a lot of smoking there. there’s, there’s, you have people that are vulnerable for the vitamin D deficiency, but then you’re also withdrawing a lot of the receptors from them even to be able to use what little vitamin D they have. And there’s not, that there’s not a lot of things that upregulate vitamin D receptors. I one of them is avoiding smoking of all types, first, third, first, second and third order to be exposure. Also want to avoid air pollution. Sulfuraphane is one of the few things that has been shown to upregulate VDR receptors. I predicted five years ago or more that sulfuraphane is going to eclipse turmeric as the most important anti-inflammatory substance in the world.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:28)

That again, just the compound you took not so for so for a fine okay

Did I hear correct? I heard once, and it was a pretty profound, a harm moment for me that, ⁓ there are two things that are on every cell receptors on every cell in the body. One of them is a vitamin D receptor.

Dr Sam Shay (15:53)

The other is only two cell types that don’t red blood cells and dead skin cells on the surface of your every other cell type except those two but

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:58)

Okay, The other one is thyroid hormone.

Dr Sam Shay (16:04)

I feel that that that sounds familiar. I’m sure there’s an exception here there, but that sounds right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:05)

Not sure about that.

Dr Sam Shay (16:30)

That’s why there’s receptors for thyroid hormone because the mitochondria is the business end of the thyroid. The whole reason why thyroid acts, the whole point of T4 is it’s ⁓ called the four wheel. It’s a four wheel drive car that leaves the thyroid gets on the superhighway of the bloodstream and then pulls into the parking lot of the mitochondria makes that transformer noise like from the movies and like one door opens and becomes an arm.

So not to T3, it’s three wheels and that extra arms that button matches on the control panel to dial up the activity of the mitochondria. So T4 becomes T3. like the, the cardiology is good, right? And then, and a button mashes that now the T3 is the, is a robot engineer. And now it activates the mitochondria. Now, if you don’t have mitochondria working in your cells, there’s a problem. That’s really bad. So that what you said about thyroid hormone from first principles, that feels very accurate to me. So we’ve got vitamin D receptors, inflammation free radicals, liver detox, vitamin D receptors.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:05)

Luckily

Dr Sam Shay (17:28)

Then we have methylation. Methylation is the fifth priority, not the first. And this is a big problem in the genetics world where you have MTHFR, suffers from Founder’s effect, where it was the first really popular functional genetics test that everyone freaked out about and has undue precedence in the consciousness.

And if people want my very long angry rant about it, I have three separate podcasts after I heard the Gary Brekka go on Rogan and talk about all you need are these five methylation genes. I was like literally screaming into my podcast player. And when I get angry, I make a PowerPoint.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:02)

Okay. Give me an abridged version. Give me a brief version and try to contain your anger, but I’d to hear what you have to say.

Dr Sam Shay (18:08)

Don’t make me in the terms of the Hulk here on camera. So I think Hulk was just hangry. I think just throw him some cashews. He would have calmed down. I think talking him down was just not the right strategy. Anyway, so the abridged version is that genes operate in order of priority. Methylation is controlled by inflammation. If you want to control methylation, work on inflammation. If you want to work on methylation, and I showed the receipts, I have all the scientific references, all that.

At best, Methylation is bi-directional and it’s influenced between liver detox and vitamin D receptors and free radical scabies. It was very clear inflammation controls methylation. So the idea that to put methylation as the top of the piles of the five most important things is utterly bonkers and utterly bonkers. it’s not a very empowering message to tell people that, my God, methylation is everything. You’re going to die tomorrow because you got a red dot MTHFR. First off, there’s about a dozen and a half super important methylation genes, not just MTHFR.

I mean, it’s like, you know, comp CBS, MTR, MTRR, BHMT, TCN, FUT2, like I can just rattle them off. You know, even some three of the major liver genes, GCL, CGS, TP1, GCLM, those are part of the methylation pathway that converts homocysteine down the CBS pathway into glutathione. So you’re, you actually can make glutathione from, from homocysteine, but you actually use liver genes to do that.

So there.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (19:38)

You’re highlighting something, you know, you’re talking about seven or so different methylation genes, at least, know, this is part of the challenge of getting into the genetics, isn’t it? I mean, I think it’s great that you’re saying we’re really only going to deal with those that we can do something about because it can be overwhelming.

But even the combination of those that we can do something about, you know, when we get one or two genes, have four different combinations. When we have three genes, have nine different, you know,

Dr Sam Shay (20:10)

I just also that so this is the good news. It’s like, let’s like I’ve solved for that. And that’s I’ve been involved with the next over 10 years. And you actually this is this is where prioritization comes on. Okay, the prioritization is the key. So more genes is not better. No better prioritize genes is better. This is the problem with with other genetics tests where they just shock on you with 300 plus genes and with the attending 300 health tips that are prioritized. That’s self sap that that’s not effective.

That just says the overwhelm nihilistic paralysis and like, ⁓ I’m to give up just pass the turnkeys. The way to do this is to know the order of priority. Inflammation number one, free radical damage, scavenging, liver detox, vitamin D receptors, then methylation, then it’s cardiovascular circulation, then it’s fat and energy metabolism. So once you know the order of priority, that’s the first variable. Then you look at how many red and yellow dots are there amongst all of those highest priority genes.

Then you look at what are the fewest number of genes that have peer reviewed research done on humans, not wombats or nematodes that show that the lifestyle diet nutrition change alone will beneficially shift the expression of these red and yellow dots to behave more green like. Because that’s the goal is to make the red and yellow dots behave more green like.

But the better goal is what’s the highest priority genes to become more green like even better. What’s the fewest number of lifestyle recommendations that help the most important and most number of those highest priority genes behave more green like. And that’s where you can whittle down your recommendations down to like, here’s the top five supplements based on your specific genes in order of priority.

Here is your diet. If you haven’t gotten to the diet, we will in a minute. Here is the most important things you should do for your diet based on your genetics. Here’s the most important shifts you need to do for your exercise. You start there.

The 300 other health tips, they’re waiting for you. They’re excited to meet you. But you don’t like you can only shake so many hands. Like we’re going to start with we’re going to start with the most important things to do. And that’s what makes genetics now winnable as opposed to overwhelming, complicated and so on. One of the things that I’ve done with my genetics reports is I’ve taken the the like, let’s say, let’s take the 16 inflammatory genes. So

You can actually now have a weighted average of like, where is someone in their inflammatory load? Like, are you globally weighted in your relationship to inflammation as such, a yellow dot or red dot or a green dot? And then you can take all the recommendations that are listed in your priority and you can just psychologically like, okay, I’m just an overinflamer. Just, okay, I know that. So I have to live in anti-inflammatory lifestyle.

That automatically just solves so many issues and answer so many questions. I am an overinflamer, period, full stop, end of story. I now have to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Now, like your level of awareness and how you should focus all your lifestyle changes is now permanently changed to be put through this one singular filter. That does wonders by itself. Then you’ve got the specifics. Here’s the top five supplements. Here’s the exercise. Here’s how you recover. Here’s your diet.

it just condenses it into something very, very practical. you can have, and like in my report, I look over the dozen plus methylation genes, but here’s how I talk about methylation. Focus on inflammation first. That’s how I do it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:49)

Well, well, I mean, it is as any regular listener of this podcast would know, we all, listeners know that inflammation is the common denominator in all diseases and actually physical and mental. You know, it’s the common denominator. So to hear you place inflammation at the top of the pyramid, of the pyramid there, you mentioned also some, because you’ve gone through very eloquently. love this seven prioritized areas.

And you finished with after methylation, cardiovascular circulation and fat metabolism. Let’s just focus a little on the diet and, and exercise genes. I’m fascinated about shows as well.

Dr Sam Shay (24:30)

So the exercise genes, you’re looking at three, there’s four or five major components of exercise genetics, but the top three are number one, what’s your fiber type? The action three gene is, are you a slow twitch, fast twitch or an intermediate twitch? It’s meaning that are you built more for sprinting, for endurance or some mixture and the intermediate which is really weighted towards sprint, but not as much as the sprint.

So that’s important because if you are trying to fit a square peg and round hole with your performance and you got the wrong Twitch fiber type, well, that’s going to lead to injury, disappointment, inflammation and low self-esteem. Because if you’re trying to compete in a long distance thing, but you’re a fast Twitch fiber type, you ain’t going to win. And if you’re doing sprints and you got a slow fiber type and that means you’re more built for endurance, you ain’t going to win.

So knowing your fiber type means you can actually pick the sports that you are more optimized for. The second thing to look at is what is your relationship to collagen? There’s two major collagen genes that dictate, are you, I mean, there’s more than two collagen genes, just to be clear, just like there’s more than 15, 16 inflammatory genes. So like asterisk for all the early damless folks out there who are now screaming at this podcast. Fair call.

So there’s two major ones. And if you’ve got red and yellow dots between them, that means that your collagen fibers are not as flexible and more easily damaged. what does that mean practically? That means you’ve got to nourish your collagen better than other people. So that means like taking things like collagen, vitamin C, inositol, creatinine, and you’ve got to focus on your recovery. The biggest thing about exercise that people don’t do when they get into exercise is they don’t recover. I’m looking at you CrossFit.

And I just, I just, and I, I’m, mean, CrossFit don’t get along because I’ve seen so many people injured and I talk very publicly about this.

Promotional (26:36)

Hi, Dr. Ron here and I want to invite you to join our unstresshealth community. Now like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing unstressed health advisory panel.

Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership, we have our Unstress Lab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstresshealth Community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel,

Click on the link below or visit Unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you.

Dr Sam Shay (27:42)

And the the if you do not recover when you have genetic vulnerabilities, you will get injured. So then the third thing, which is related to collagen, it’s not identical. Which connects back to inflammation is like, you over inflamer? Because if you’re an over inflamer, when you over exercise, you are now going to create net

gain of inflammation, not negative reduction of inflammation. And the four genes I look at and have a weighted average of them is VDR1, VDR2, TNF-alpha, interleukin-6, the four most pro-inflammatory genes we got in the body. In fact, I’ve actually had a gentleman’s argument at a genetics conference with the chief scientists where I thought VDR1 and VDR2 were actually more important than the top 15, 16 inflammatory genes precisely because they controlled inflammation more than the 15, 16 inflammatory genes.

It was a fascinating dialogue. Basically, he said, you have a valid point and dot, like it’s like two done has one or the other. the point from my standpoint, VDR1 and VDR2 are inflammatory genes that should be shunted up on a priority precisely because of inflammation, not because they’re something above inflammation.

The point being is that if someone is a hyper inflamer, they are more likely to over inflame as a result of over exercising. And I actually lectured in genetics conferences on the topic of and this is real, exercised induced obesity. So to get exercise induced obesity. Okay. And before some before everyone’s brain explodes, let me explain.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:34)

Give us the elevator pitch.

Dr Sam Shay (29:37)

Is that when there are three types of weight gain I’ve identified in the functional genetics, inflammatory water weight gain, hormonal toxic weight gain, and then there’s fat calorie weight gain. The least common type that affects people weight, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen clinically, is the fat calorie weight gain. The most common type is the inflammatory water weight. Why does that put on weight? Why does inflammation put on weight? Very simple. When you become overinflamed.

The inflammatory chemicals are really, really bad to circulate in your body for long periods of time. They hurt and damage and destroy cells and tissues. So your body will retain water in the interstitial space, which is Scrabble speak, nerd speak for the spaces between your cells. So if you dilute these damaging chemicals with extra water, the solution to pollution is dilution. The solution to poison is dilution.

The solution because inflammatory chemicals, if they stick around and there’s too much of them, they cause damage. So your body will retain water. So you swell up with water. You see this in CrossFit all the time. You walk in, people are strong. Some people are strong, but they don’t have definition. You can’t see their muscles like this water weight, like this water layer on top of it. They’re over inflamed. You can literally see it. Face is kind of ruddy. Like they just look like they’ve got this water layer on them. So it’s this inflammatory water weight.

And if you over exercise and you’ve got a specific set of gene combinations in there, you will start to put on water weight the more you, particularly if you over exercise, you don’t give yourself time to recover. you do like twice a week with two days break in between, you do proper recovery, like it’d be very rare someone to actually be inflamed if they actually do the, something else going on like a hidden infection that’s another night of inflammation or whatever.

But like there’s what I did for my, had three case studies. One guy who was just he lost 40 pounds in one month because I asked him to not exercise more and eat less. That was very silly. I’d be very silly. I put him on an anti-inflammatory diet, liver supporting diet to help him deal with the inflammation and get some other toxic issues going on as well.

He actually has developed man boobs. And if your liver is inflamed, because he can’t process all the inflammation. He’s got genetics to make his liver over inflamed to begin with. And he’s constantly inflamed. His body won’t prioritize detoxing hormones because if the kitchen’s on fire, but you also have a full garbage can, you’re going to prioritize the fire. So his he had all this excess estrogen build up because he was also having exogenous oxygen exposure, which I discovered. So the fat was redistributing to his chest because he had excess estrogen from exogenous estrogen, but his liver was overwhelmed with all the inflammation, so he couldn’t even detox the estrogen.

So he started to develop estrogen dominance. And so he started to develop man boobs. But the trick was to deflame on the diet, deflame with nutrients, stop over exercising, increase recovering. I’m not saying not exercise. I’m saying don’t over exercise, remove the poison of the exogenous estrogens, et cetera, et cetera. He lost 40 pounds in one month. Man boobs completely went away. The other guy took him.

11 to 13 weeks somewhere. was some prime number above 10. I can’t remember which one is 11 or 13 weeks. He also lost about 40 pounds. He didn’t do all the recommendations. I didn’t do like some of them. So that’s why I took them longer. Three months instead of one. in the third case study, he had the same thing. Man boobs, lots of weight, more is working out. The more pain he was, the fatter he got. Third case study was a female where more she’s joined a CrossFit without telling me.

And she started helping pain, water weight started looking worse, feeling worse, and her she didn’t develop ⁓ larger breasts, her cycles went sideways. That’s what happened with her as female physiology. So that same thing, just follow the genetics, the simple recommendations shifted around the exercise, increased recovery, etc. She totally normalized got her figure back cycles, normalize.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (33:50)

Sam, you mentioned water, inflammation, water, fat, calorie. was the third hormonal toxin?

Dr Sam Shay (33:56)

Monotoxic fat. That’s more that’s more you’ve got problems with your liver detox pathways plus exogenous exposure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:04)

And I’m just intrigued because I have some misgivings about it too, but I’d love to hear your short assessment of what is wrong with cross.

Dr Sam Shay (34:12)

How you said short very definitively. Why ever ever? When have I ever will sound unattended? am offended. Okay, yes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:22)

I have the sense that we could be talking for a very long time, which I totally would enjoy. But listen, just want to know briefly what, what your problem with CrossFit is. I agree with you, but I’d love to hear you articulate.

Dr Sam Shay (34:41)

Let me, let me start off by steel manning them. What’s, what’s the good parts of CrossFit just so they don’t completely alienate the CrossFit community. So the good parts of our CrossFit is that you have a community and you have consistency and you have a lot of support and you achieve that dopamine hits of achieve going through your personal records, your PRs. And you, you have a culture of progress and support in a community.

And it’s, it’s, it’s because as our modern culture dissolves more and more communities and replaces them with networks. Having communities that are reliable towards a common goal, we’re supporting each other. And there’s you can, you don’t have to you don’t have to feel awkward about talking, you just talk about the common activity like exercise or say good job.

So there’s a massive set of positives that are, I you can take those positives and transpose them to other different communities. doesn’t have to be exercise, can be some of the things, but CrossFit has a uniquely effective culture for those positives. Now, here’s the downside. The downside is that the local culture of CrossFit can pressure people to over exercise and go beyond their limits and get injured and then dilute themselves into some sort of no pain, no gain philosophy and to ignore the feedback systems and messages from one’s own body that you’re doing too much or the wrong thing.

And there’s the same culture that really encourages personal records. You can do it, you can do it. Can be counterproductive by encouraging people to go beyond their own capacity or their self-awareness and lead to injury. And that’s the issue.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:30)

Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I agree with you. Totally agree with you. Listen, I love this, this exercise profile on genetics of this idea of being able to identify your type fiber type, your collagen, which is all about holding you together and repairing basically. And this over inflamer. love this. Okay. What about, let’s talk a bit about nutritional, you know,

Dr Sam Shay (37:00)

So in diet, there’s a couple major levers to pull. you’re looking at… So in genetics, there’s… Do you have these set of food triggers? What is the three main categories? What are your food triggers? What are your genetically driven eating behaviors? What’s your carb tolerance?

Those are big three. We’ll start with the carb tolerance. Carb tolerance is. Can you generate enough? Enzyme to break down carbohydrates. If not, you can have the best quality. can have organic quinoa grown by left handed monks harvested on the last wolf moon and each individual grain was delivered by newly hatched monarch butterflies.

If it’s not a quality issue, it’s a quantity issue. This is what I had. I was having a perfect Mediterranean diet. And I mean, perfect. I knew the names of my farmers and their chickens. And it was a Mediterranean style diet because that’s what the science said, because that’s what the bell curve says. You have to be Mediterranean diet because that’s what the science says. guess what? You know what defines a bell curve? The other ends of the bell. There’s people that live on the other sides of those bell like me.

It turns out genetically, I’m a low carb paleo borderline keto carb tolerance. It’s a different type of genetics test. It’s not green, yellow, red dot. It’s actually looking at the duplicates of this amylase producing gene. So you can have between one and 20 copies and it’s additive. So someone with one copy produces approximately one tenth the amount of enzyme, someone with 10 copies.

Someone with two copies generates one tenth the amount of proximal with 20 copies or one fifth the amount of 10 copies. So it’s additive. So what that means is that if you have a fewer number of these things, your body is a fort, your digestive system is a fort and the carbs rushing your digestive system are Vikings. And the number of genes are the number of cannons lining your fort to mow down these Vikings. That’s the easiest analogy I could think of. If you have number of cannons, you’re going to a hard time with those Vikings.

So, this is the case that you got some genetic sets that claim, well, it’s the version of the can because the Amy one gene we’re talking about has a green, yellow, red. It’s the version that is no, doesn’t. This is one of the few cases where the green, yellow, red dot distinction is trivial. It’s actually the number of duplicates of the gene that matters. I would rather have 10 red cannons than one green cannon.

So the fewer number of copies, the less carbohydrates you can navigate. So on average, a Mediterranean diet is about a six, seven number of copies. I had a grand total of two. Just so and it’s the same. Now my lineage comes from the northern latitudes of Russia. Not a lot grows there. And you know who also has the lowest numbers of these copy numbers between one and four? The same people have the highest rates of diabetes, the Inuit Pacific Islanders, aborigine native american.

The fewer number of copies you have, the less carb tolerance you have. So what this means is you can find out what your carb number is, your carb choice number, and then you can know if you are more suited for a keto style, a paleo style, a Mediterranean style, or a higher carb style. And yes, higher carb styles exist.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:49)

I was going to say, I was going to say to you, cause we’ve done so many programs on type two diabetes on, insulin resistance, which I think we can all agree the lower the insulin level, all diseases are better for that. But, but, interesting to given your experience of looking at many profiles of people, how many people out of a hundred, let’s pick a figure you would say have a carb tolerance issue. Is it a 50-50 split or is it an 80-20 split or is it? Can’t we even say that?

Dr Sam Shay (41:23)

So it really depends on what your long-term lineage is. So in Asia, particularly China, it’s an average of an eight.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:31)

Eight out of 14.

Dr Sam Shay (41:33)

And 20 but but here’s the let me let me give you the cutoffs. So ones are just like almost straight up keto, two to two to fours or paleo now know to cannot has only half as many carbs as a four. So there’s some shades of gray there. There’s nuance.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:47)

the because we use the word Amelies as though we knew everybody knew what that meant. Just paint a picture as to what the score of one, two, three to 20 is and the significance of Amelies to carbohydrate.

Dr Sam Shay (42:06)

So amylase is salivary amylase is the enzyme in your saliva glands made mostly by your parotid glands, which is on the side of your cheeks. This is the enzyme that is the first enzyme that meets carbohydrates in your mouth. And it’s a critical first step to digest your carbohydrates through your whole system.

If you don’t have enough amylase, you cannot properly digest carbohydrates, which lead to digestive issues digestive issues, inflammatory issues, mood issues, and energy issues, which was what I was dealing with with my Mediterranean diet, even though it was all organic and local, I was having mood, digestive, and energy issues cycling through the day. And then within one week of changing to a low carb diet, I individually, my own genetics should have been, those things leveled out. Now, people have different capacities genetically to make amylase.

Amylase is the enzyme, how much of it you make is depends on a couple factors. The number of genes that you can have one gene, two genes, three genes, four genes, five genes, 16, seven, eight, nine, 10, all the way up to 20. That’s the that’s the that’s what I mean by your score of a 123. It’s literally like how many copies you got. Your score of a one is you got one G score of a two is you got to score of a 10, you got 10 copies of this thing.

So the things that regulate your amylase production is number one, how many genes you have. So how many cannons? The firing rate can shift based on are you engaging in, are you eating slowly and enjoying your food and engaging parasympathetic activation so that you’re actually generating more saliva and the intending amylase that comes with it? Are you eating foods that support amylase production? Things like lemon juice, lime juice, things that make you salivate.

There’s a whole in the report. There’s a whole list of foods that increase Emily’s production. Then there’s some foods that shut down Emily’s production that that makes it harder now this rice strangely enough is one of them and this is why I think I Hypothesize that the reason why it’s an average of an eight in China and eight in Europe and a six in Europe is because There was a micro genetic pressure in a five thousand year old rice culture that they had to genetically pack on some extra copies of the amylase gene in order to make up for the depression of the production of amylase per unit gene.

So they needed to have extra cannons because their firing rate was lowered because the thing they were eating was lowering the firing rate, if that makes sense. So you have different, so on average, like what is the number of this? It depends on what population you’re looking at Maori, Inuit, Native American, Pacific Islander, Abirji.

One and four that between one and four, that’s the average northern latitudes like where I come from, northern Russia, one and four, central European, six, seven, China, eight. So it really depends on what demographic that you’re looking at. But it’s those numbers are not you can you can get estimate based on your lineage. But, you know, it’s better just to know based on the

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:23)

Okay. So we’re talking about carb tolerance. We’re talking about the other two food trigger and eating and eating behavior.

Dr Sam Shay (45:31)

So the eating behaviors are this. There’s a couple of big ones. Satiety gene. How full do you feel after normal amounts of food? Some people do not feel full after normal amounts of food because feeling full is in the brain, not the stomach. It’s a signal to the brain, which is genetically mediated. So if you have a red and yellow dot in the satiety genes, which I do, that means that you have a tendency to overeat.

Now, some people may hear this as well. I just will give up because my gene says this. No, no, no. What you can do is not your your for war, just for armed with like, what is your genetic reality? I’m a big fan of reality. It’s for these people, including me, you now give them this one instruction. This one instruction is worth price of admission to this podcast. It is easier to change your environment than to change your willpower.

It is easier to change your environment than to change your willpower. So what that means is if someone tends to overeat, you don’t bring the things into the house that you have a tendency to overeat on. I don’t buy bread because I’m not stronger than bread. I’m smarter than bread, but I’m not stronger than it. Half of it will make it to the car from the grocery store and the other half will make it to the house as I ate it on the way from the drive from the grocery store.

So it’s it’s I make my environment unfailable. That’s how to win at that. Then there’s some other things like the increasing fiber in your diet slowing down when you eat, because then you give more time for that signal to hit your brain. You don’t watch social media. You don’t argue while you eat. You don’t do stressful things because you tend you actually give your body a chance to actually engage with the signal and more time for it to engage in the signal.

So that’s a satiety. The other is some people over crave sugar and also a separate gene over over consuming sugar. Now, some people may think, well, that’s really unlucky. Why would, how would that make any anthropological sense that someone would over crave sugar? Well, because if you crave, now had a very meta experience.

I was recording a video for my training program and for my learning library for people who do the, whether it’s health coaches or life practitioners who want to run my genetics in the practice or for people who lay public who just want to run their genetics with me. I have a learning library and I have a meta moment where I was recording the video on sugar craving.

And it was on Mother’s Day. The reason I know this is because natural grocers, the local store here, had to think, get a free chocolate bar, organic chocolate bar when you come in, buy anything for Mother’s Day. I had this gene where I over craved sugar. And guess what? My hyper foraging mind just kicked in. This happened. went, I went to high gear where my foraging mind, I had a million years of evolution of trying to forage for quick calories, just go six gear. And all I could do was think about that chocolate bar as I was recording the video on sugar craving. And I said it, like, explain this like-

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:29)

Sam, it almost sounds like you’re human, but, god.

Dr Sam Shay (48:32)

Amazing

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:35)

It’s reassuring, you know, it’s reassuring

Dr Sam Shay (48:38)

So what happened is that if you if you have this sugar craving gene from an evolutionary, biological and evolutionary psychological perspective, you will forage harder. So you will go an extra five minutes a day, an extra 15 minutes a day. So you will have a net. Eventually, you’ll hit a score of blueberries, raspberries, apple tree, like you will. It creates an evolutionary benefit.

Chlorically, if you have this gene that makes you a little crazy around sugar, the promise of it. So the reason I’m sharing this is that some people, and I’m a former sugar addict and I had the genetics to prove it. I didn’t find out about it I was like 35, 36. But what happened is I forgave my body when I saw my genetics. Like, oh, I’m not a weak willed loser. I’m actually hardwired and I have to stop trying to force my willpower.

I have to just change my environment. And that’s that that is so freeing. It was so freeing to now come from a place of agency instead of I’m a moral failure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:46)

Yeah. Well, you’ve raised a very important point and you’ve mentioned it a couple of times that we’re not a victim to our genes. In fact, this is very much about personal empowerment. And I have to say, as you go through your dietary and exercise, genes predispositions and the seven drivers, I think this is a really exciting and empowering idea because a lot of people’s experience with genetics is they go to see their doctor, usually a medical practitioner or specialist. They’ve just been given a diagnosis of colon cancer and they say, how did I end up with it? And the doctor who probably doesn’t know the answer to that question will say, it’s just genetics. Look, there’s not much you can do about it. And this leads me to the next, a very important question, which I think we should articulate for our listener.

And that is the difference between genetics and epigenetics because ultimately that’s what we’re talking about here.

Dr Sam Shay (50:51)

Absolutely. So the best way I like to describe epigenetics, which is the whole reason we’re doing this type, which is the whole point of functional genetics is to find genes you can do something about. There’s something about that’s epigenetics. That’s gene functional genetics is not a switch. It’s a dial. That’s the way to think about it. It’s a dial. So you’ve got with the exception of that Amy one carb tolerance, carb choice thing that that’s that’s the number of do-blins.

That’s something separate. But even then you can do behaviors to increase the firing rate. So even then you can dial up and dial down. The green, yellow, red dots. Okay. So someone’s a red dot or yellow dot or a green dot. What that means is your default setting of the dial is that color. I default, if I’m a green dot, I default to green, which means I have to work hard in the wrong direction to make it behave like a yellow or red dot.

If I’m a yellow dot, I have to work hard consistently to push the behavior to dial it to green like behavior. It won’t become green. It will behave like a great. If I’m a red dot, I default harder. It’s have to work even harder to get it to behave more green like epigenetics is the lifestyle diet nutrition to change the dial to behave more green like. That’s it. That’s epigenetics. Just shifting the dial.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:10)

And I, think that is a very important message. Well, it’s actually the whole reason for this podcast is all about personal empowerment, but when it comes to genetics, so often, so often, and I hear is it, and it’s often comes from medical practitioner who cannot bring themselves to say, you know what? I don’t know. Oh, we, I should find this out rather than say those words. They will often dismiss the patient and say, look, there’s nothing much you can do about it.

It’s your genes, but as we are learning here now, there is a great deal that you can do it. And I’m guessing this is the DNA decoded program that you are, you are championing and teaching and using in your practice. I’m, I’m fascinated by it. I’ve had some connection with a DNA program called self decode many years ago. was, I’m an old, always an early adopter, but talk about, ⁓ overwhelm.

Dr Sam Shay (53:18)

Just quick. What you want to check for new genetics or trigger foods is the following. Are you histamine sensitive? That’s a big one. Going on an anti histamine diet is nontrivial because a lot of quote health foods are high in histamine like cacao and avocados, citrus fruits and so on. Bone broth. Yeah. Well, some ways of making the broth makes a much higher histamine than others. But yeah, like in general bone broth.

OK, there’s so I want to just give people, when people do my genetics and they come up with they need a high anti-histamine elimination diet, I’ve made a giant diet chart for people. And here’s how to win at histamine. Histamine is dose dependent. So it’s like the more histamine foods you have and the more higher amounts you have, like the more variety, like it’s going to fill your histamine bucket.

So the way to get started in transitioning to a low histamine diet is you your top 10 to 15 high histamine foods favorite because it’s quality life or convenience. Like ground meat is super convenient. It is, this is reality. So you pick the top 10 to 15 and you keep eating those, asterisk, assuming you don’t have an anaphylactic reaction to like a hyper high histamine sensitivity, but you know that if you are, you would know that by now. You pick your top 10 to 15 and you keep eating those and you just eliminate the rest. It’s an 80-20 game.

You pick the 20 % of high histamine foods that give you 80 % of the value. And I promise you, it is not as bad as it sounds. I do this. I’m histamine sensitive. have my top 10. I stick to my top 10. It is totally… I once argued with a client who ran his… We spent 45 minutes on avocados, arguing about far-fetched avocados. That’s when I made the list. I was like, okay, we can’t do this anymore. We cannot argue over avocados for 45 minutes. So pick your top 10 of 15.

Because the lower the fewer number in the field level, you’re going to be winning the histamine game. That’s how to win. So, okay, so check for histamine sensitivity. You check for caffeine sensitivity. Very, very important.

There’s a meaningful percentage of a minimum 10 % of population has caffeine induced anxiety and depression like me. I have this. I don’t care how bulletproof you make it. I know because I tried. You can stuff as much coconut oil as you want into that. Doesn’t work. You become an I became an anxious depressed mess when I had coffee and I was just like, oh, look, I’ve got all this energy. No, I had anxiety. That’s what it was. So you figure out if you’re caffeine sensitive. That’s real. Take that seriously.

People, if you’re worried about your unstressed health, literally, it’s in the title of your thing. Unstressed health. You must find out if you’re caffeine sensitive. You must do this because if you have any caffeine, you have these genes and you’re trying to live as unstressed life as possible. You will at best hit a plateau in your unstressed life. histamine sensitivity, caffeine sensitivity, gluten sensitivity. Got to know if you’re vulnerable to celiac. If you are, get off gluten. Lactose intolerance, alcohol sensitivity.

And are you reactive to food allergens in general? So the test doesn’t check for specific food allergens. It’s like, are you just in general reactive to allergenic foods, which the strategy behind that is that you remove as many. Highly known, probable allergenic foods as possible, like you want an elimination diet, so that’s like.

No shellfish, no soy, no dairy, no gluten, no tree nuts, et cetera. And just as a general rule, you stay off those things because you’re more prone to having a disproportionate immune response.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (57:12)

Sam I’m really interested in this too because alcohol and caffeine is so ubiquitous, particularly alcohol and methylation, the link between the methylation genes and the alcohol. What’s your thoughts on that? I mean, it’s there,

Dr Sam Shay (57:29)

It’s there mean, the methylation connection is there, but there’s the aldehyde dehydrogenate, like there’s there’s there’s the LD aldehyde, dehydrox, aldo something I’m blanking at the moment’s been a long day. They there’s there’s multiple genes involved with detoxing alcohol, multiple, but there’s some major ones. And if you don’t have the these genes as green dots, what’s going to happen is that the alcohol itself will now be become even more toxic in your body.

And this is what we call, see this in Asia a lot. It’s literally called the Asian flush. Like this, this gene variations are so common in Asia. It’s literally called the Asian flush where they get the red, the red complexion. feel really unwell. And it’s, it’s, it’s just real. Like an eye look, I spent eight years in New Zealand where the only thing more popular than rugby was drinking. And the

And it’s like, it’s just bonkers how much people drink over there. And I’ve had about a half dozen people quit alcohol on the spot when they saw their genes for alcohol. Many other people didn’t, unfortunately, but those six did. I’m proud of them. And it’s just a reality. fan of reality. Know your genetics, know your reality.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (58:53)

Yeah. And, and one would say, at least, you know, at least, you know, you’re making an informed decision one way or another.

Dr Sam Shay (59:02)

Yeah, you can’t blame ignorance on this one anymore. need to poison yourself in a very specific way. Do it consciously and don’t kid yourself.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:05)

Yeah, yeah, Yes. Yes. Well, you’ve made a very compelling outline there. have to say having been a little familiar and I’m not pretending to be an expert by any means.

Dr Sam Shay (59:23)

Can see all the books behind you even though Yeah, yeah, that’s

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:25)

Just know that’s just photoshopped photoshopped them all

Dr Sam Shay (59:28)

Okay, alright, I’m gonna get you much credit then

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:30)

But actually one of them is mine. have to send you a copy, but that’s another story. The other one, the, you’ve got the DNA decoded program, which I love this, this structure. And it makes a lot of sense. And it’s very accessible, very doable, very practical, very functional. What a wonderful term. But there’s another area called the, that you focus on, which is neuro, the neuro harmony model. And I was intrigued, intrigued by that. Tell us briefly about that as well.

Dr Sam Shay (1:00:00)

So that’s pretty straightforward. So you have the mind-body connection, but what’s been missing is the chemistry that links the two. And so the mind-body connection, what mediates the connection between the mind and the body is biochemistry. So the neuro-harmony model, the way you look at the mind, body, and chemistry is you have a framework for analyzing lifestyle and a framework for analyzing labs.

And when you combine the two together, lifestyle and labs, you get holistic medicine. That’s holistic medicine. If anyone listen to this, if you are going to work with a functional medicine practitioner or natural or whatever, what are you going to call it?

The best practitioners are the ones that have a framework for analyzing your lifestyle and a framework for choosing and analyzing labs. Both. Together. If you just go to someone who just does labs.

It’s not the full story. If you go some just who does lifestyle, it’s not the full story. There are places to have, you know, compartmental like focus here and focus there. But it’s like the neural harmony model is specific to frameworks, one for lifestyle, one for labs that have combined that are very logical, very structured way to precision personalized analysis for your particular situation with lifestyle and labs.

Now we don’t have time, it’s gonna be separate podcasts. The lifestyle thing is 10 colors of health. The labs are five lab categories. We’ve covered one, genetics, but there’s gut labs, hormone labs, mitochondria metabolism labs, and then what I professionally call the weird stuff, metals, mold, toxins, infections. then there’s, so those are the broad categories gut hormones, mitochondria, weird stuff, genetics, but there are sub tests and subcategories underneath them. But just those are the big five.

And on other podcasts I’ve taught, I’ve just gone through those five in much more detail or I’m on summits or whatever. But that’s an example of a framework. Other people have other frameworks for their labs, other frames for the lives of minds, the temple as well. Some people have like the triangle of health or the five pill steps of this or the Inverting Hypotenuse of Wells. I don’t care something they’ve got to have a framework.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:02:29)

Yeah. No, no. I, well, I have my own framework, but it’s not about me. This is about you today. And I, and I love the way you’ve structured it for practitioners or coaches who were interested in learning a bit more about this, how, and wanting to access these kinds of tests. Tell us a little bit about how they might do that.

Dr Sam Shay (1:02:48)

So the primary thing I’m training on at the moment is the fit genes, is the genetics. ⁓ If there’s enough interest, I could do a teaching cohort for the 10 pillars ⁓ and the other five labs. But my primary focus is to really help practitioners and health coaches get the genetics testing into their practice.

FitGenesUSA, F-I-T-G-E-N-E-S-U-S-A.com. And I’m the lead trainer for fit genes around the world. And I’ve created ⁓ my own lab reports. I have training videos. I do trainings for people that are just interested in just getting their genes done. That’s the DNA Decoded program. That’s on my website, DrSamShea.com. And that involves the genetics test, a six month implementation program, the learning library.

And then there’s a gold program version where I do six months of group coaching. And that for people that are interested in that, you can use a coupon code gold 100 for a hundred bucks off for the gold program. that’s, that’s how I find the genetics is really, really well suited for group coaching because a lot of people just have the same questions around their genes and people don’t feel so alone.

And it’s a really efficient and cost effective way to engage with me personally, if you’re wanting to just get your genetics done. But the Fitching USA, that’s where I’m training practitioners and health coaches. And if you’re outside the Western Hemisphere, like I do this, that’s for people in like Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, there’s the Fitching itself, is an Australia Nutrisurch is a distributor in New Zealand, but I also train people there. So you’ll still get access to my reports and get access to my training, no matter where you are in the world that are wanting to do this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:04:54)

Yeah. Well, we’ll have, course, links to that, your website and people can access that. it’s, we will get you back to talk about the 10 lifestyle and five testing breakdown. just want to finish by asking you this question because we are all on a, we all are, we’re all individuals on a health journey in this modern world. And taking a step back from your role as a health practitioner, what do you think the biggest challenge for us as individuals on that journey is?

Dr Sam Shay (1:05:25)

Individuals on the journey for optimal health, not having a blueprint

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:05:34)

Not having a bloop

Dr Sam Shay (1:05:35)

Having a blueprint. mean, I mean, not not to be more even more self referential. I mean, I literally the two names of my reports are called the fit genes, genetic blueprint, and then the carb choice blueprint. Like, so it’s like the blueprint is like, okay, diet supplements, exercise. What is my unique blueprint? Because otherwise, if you’re trying to be optimal, you’re going to end up like a biohacker. Like I, my first ebook was criticizing the biohacker community. It was shiny objects chase is shiny object syndrome.

There was no map. There was no blueprint. And that was my 10 pillars of health. That was my answer. I was like, look, love the shiny objects. Awesome. Super shiny. Great. How do know if you actually need them or not? You don’t. You’re guessing you’re just buying shiny stuff and hope it works. Instead, have a road map, have a blueprint to analyze what you actually need and then pick the appropriate shiny object as needed and combine them where appropriate.

That’s the issue. And same thing with labs. People are just like, I’m just going to do a lab. I’m just going to do a lab. No, okay. Well, once you pick the lab that is the most relevant to you and the combination is most relevant to you. And it’s the blueprint because we’re, it used to be, it used to because you asked about today. The problem is today. It used to be 40 years ago, no one had access to information in the lay public.

There was no podcasting. There was no internet. There was no, you know, like health books were in a super niche corner, probably next to the occult section in the bookstore. Like there, there was no information that was easily accessible. We now have the opposite problem. We have information overwhelm. So that’s where having a blueprint is is the most important thing, not more information. It’s the blueprint for which you can now nest all the information and filter the information you’re being bombarded with.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:30)

Well, Sam, that’s a great note for us to finish on and particularly at a time when personalized medicine is being championed as the medicine of the future. Thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Dr Sam Shay (1:07:44)

Thank you for hosting. This was a lot of fun.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:46)

Well, I’ve often said that this podcast is a really self-indulgent form of education for me. get to ask people that know so much more than I do about a subject. I ask them questions and they answer them and I learn and I hope you do too. And in this journey of personalized medicine and in general and genetic testing in particular, it’s been something I’ve been very interested in for some time. I’ve explored other platforms.

I’m exploring this platform, FitGenes which I’ll be looking at and our follow up program on this will be Sam going through my genetic ⁓ profile and I don’t mind sharing it with you and we’ll all learn a lot from it. Look, we’ll have links to Sam Shea’s site, the FitGenes site as well.

I would also hope that you could leave some reviews for the podcast and I’d encourage you to join the unstressed health community, which you’ll be hearing more about in a moment. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

Promotional:

Feeling stressed, overwhelmed? It’s time to unstress your life. Join the unstresshealth community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness from self-sabotage to self-mastery and together let’s not just survive but thrive. Expert led courses, curated podcasts, like-minded community and support and much more. Visit unstresshealth.com today.

Transform your health with the Unstress Health Membership