ultimate human hey guys welcome back to the ultimate human podcast I'm your host Gary Brea I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you guys for listening and I hope you've been enjoying the show you know it's my mission in life every week to bring you guys the most interesting Minds in science longevity anti-aging biohack and everything in between this entire show is designed to turn you into the ultimate human and as we kind of ramp up the show and I hope you've been enjoying it so far I just thought it was important before we go on this journey to just take a minute and really introduce myself give you a little bit of background on myself and tell you what inspired me to start the ultimate human podcast and really bring you guys Along on this journey you know as by way of background I'm a human biologist I'm not a physician um my undergraduate degrees uh are in biology and human biology I went to a branch campus at University of Maryland got my first degree in in biology because I'm just fascinated by the form and the function of the human body um I then went to grad school in in Chicago at the University of uh or the National University of Health Sciences I got a second degree in human biology so it was a four-year concentration in human beings and while I was there um I took an inordinate amount of uh physiology and gross anatomy uh classes cadaver Anatomy gross anatomy neurology and I just became more and more fascinated with the human body and the ability of it to heal itself to heal the world around it and when I left grad school um I went to work in a niche market of life insurance it's called The Life settlement industry and believe it or not every year there are billions and billions of dollars of financial Services instruments that are put in place based on how many more months people have left on Earth and yes how many more months things like reverse mortgages annuities and life insurance are all based on the mortality of human beings so in other words when a life insurance company takes 25 million or5 million or $10 million worth of risk on your life only one variable matters and so I was a part of a team that would assess this information Medical records and demographic information and we would predict for the life insurance company how many more months you had left on Earth and to be honest with you that was very unfulfilling work it was a very inauthentic Time of My Life um I was a partner to a number of people during that time that I wasn't a very good uh partner to um I was very inauthentic about the way that I was living I wasn't making an impact on Humanity I wasn't changing anybody's life I was basically taking all of my education all my expertise and all the long hours at work and I was plowing that into just determining how many more months somebody had left on Earth and giving that information over to an insurance company or an investor so that they can make an educated Financial investment on whether or not that was good risk to take on that person's life and if you don't think that that's accurate science it just think about what happened in the 2008 2009 Financial Services crisis with life insurance companies um we had about 362 364 Banks fail not one life insurance company failed and there's no other financial services Enterprise anywhere in the world that would take that level of Financial Risk on a single variable remember only one thing matters to a life insurance company how many more months you have left on Earth so after Decades of doing this kind of work I woke up one day and I just realized that there were human beings on the other side of those spreadsheets this wasn't just data this was somebody's mother or sister or father or brother these were real human beings and I had the capacity to give information to them that could possibly have changed the entire trajectory of their life and yet I was unable to do so because I was prevented from contacting any of those people or even any of their treating Physicians and for good reason because I wasn't licensed to practice medicine I'm still not licensed to practice medicine but I knew that there had to be something different I knew that I could take this information and somehow help people live healthier happier longer more fulfilling lives and so I decided one day to permanently end that career and I'll never forget I went home and my fiance at the time she's now my wife uh Sage working her I I went home and I broke the news to her that I was quitting my job and that I wanted to start a wellness franchise and much to my surprise uh she agreed and she said you know I noticed you haven't been happy for a long time in your career and if this is something you really want to do I'm all in and at the time she was a real estate agent and I was a human biologist but I was working in this mortality division of of Life Settlements and we just jumped in with both feet and decided to start a wellness practice we called it streamline Medical Group at the time it's now called 10x health and we started it in a in a little strip mall next to an LA Fitness in Naples Florida and it was probably three years before all the hard work in our business really began to pay off I found a great local physician that was willing to listen to what I had to say about uh the 74 biomarkers in the blood and these genetic markers that we were using in the mortality space and he was willing to listen to this and put his license on the line and begin to treat patients in a way that looked at root causes rather than just symptoms of disease we hired physician assistants we hired nurse practitioners and eventually the business really really took off and I'm you know just absolutely blessed to tell you that now I feel like I'm on my passion and my purpose and I know what God's calling for me is and that is to take Ultra complicated information distill it down and distribute it to the masses so they can make real change in their life so that we can actually add not just years to people's life but life to people's years so the ultimate human podcast is for you it's about Decades of research that I've done I'm going to continue to scour the world and meet with the brightest minds and aging and longevity in biohacking and bio optimization and functional medicine I'm going to try to bring those interviews right to this camera and give you practical stories and information that could change the trajectory of your life so I'm excited that you're on this journey with me today I'm going to talk about one of the most important topics um I think in all of human optimization it's a topic called methylation and it's one that I've decided to dedicate the balance of my adult lifetime to and I've immersed myself deep in the study of methylation because human beings go through this process about 300 billion times every single day and yet I still believe that it's one of the most overlooked things in all of modern medicine so many of you that are watching this podcast right now are suffering from common ailments that you're chalking up to the consequence of Aging or your environment or your spouse or your career or your kids or a lack of sleep or so many other consequences that is not a consequence of any of those things it is a consequence of missing raw material in your body and you may be one or two simple nutrients away from being the most optimal version of yourself you might have heard me say that I feel like 60 or 70% of people right now are literally walking around at about 50% of their true state of normal meaning 50% of being optimal and really feeling what normal really really feels like so many times people tell me oh my God Gary I feel amazing after just taking a simple methylated multivitamin or putting magnesium or zinc or trimethyl glycine or any number of these other nutrients back into their bodies that we found on a test and I remind them that they don't actually feel amazing they just feel normal so it's time for you to find that nutrient deficiency in your body and experience what it's like to really feel Optimal Health maybe for the first time in your lifetime all of these things ADD ADHD OCD manic depression bipolar um weight gain water retention poor sleep lack of focus and concentration poor gut health gas bloating diarrhea constipation irritability cramping all of these consequences that we feel are coming from our environment meaning from our lifestyle May in fact not be coming from those things at all they may not be consequences of Aging at all they could be consequences of nutrient deficiencies so I want to go deep down the the path of methylation today I want to tell you what it is um how you can have it tested if you choose to have it tested but most importantly what you can do when you're done listening to this podcast without spending more than 30 or $40 a month and you do not have to spend that with me to possibly change the entire trajectory of your life so listen up because this could be the most important podcast you ever hear so methylation let's talk about what this is in the human body you know I always use the analogy that we pull crude oil out of the ground right but you can't put crude oil into your gas tank the reason why you can't put crude oil into your gas tank is because crude oil has not yet been refined into gasoline so the car doesn't understand that fuel source well human beings are no different we put vitamins minerals amino acids nutrients of all kinds into the human body yet none of them are used in the format that we put them in none of them are used as the crude oil as it comes out of the ground they have to be refined into the US form this refining process is called methylation and if your methylation is broken then you have a deficiency it is this deficiency that leads to some of those common ailments that I just discussed and let's take a deep dive down the road of science so that we can prove we can look at the peer-reviewed published clinical literature so that you guys understand that there's real science real evidence-based science between finding nutrient deficiencies in the human body replacing those deficiencies and then thriving you know I do remember when I was in grad school I had to I had to take all these plant botney courses you might have heard me talk about this because I hated plant botony courses but you have to take them you're getting a human biology degree but they make you take all these courses on plants and I'll never forget that whenever anything was wrong in the leaf or the trunk or uh the branches of a tree if you were to actually call a true botanist a true arborist out to your house and you had a palm leaf that was decaying they wouldn't touch the leaf the first thing they would do is they would CEST the soil and they would cortest the soil and they would look for nutrient deficiencies and they would say you know what there's no nitrogen in the soil and then they would add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf would Thrive only we've stopped thinking about human beings this way as soon as something goes wrong in a human being we immediately go to chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals we immediately think that the solution is found in a chemical laboratory and not found within us we've lost faith in humanity and Mankind we've lost faith in the body's ability to heal itself and heal the environment around us well now science is catching up and the science is dictating otherwise the science says when you find the missing raw material in a human body and you put that material back in it begins to thrive in ways we never imagined possible so let's go on this journey right now let's start talking about methylation and let's start to look at some of the peer-reviewed published science which by the way I'm going to put the links to every article that I talk about um on this podcast I'm going to put them in the in the uh links below so that you can find these but I want to start with how our genes and how our genetics affect this process of methylation remember the process of methylation is the process of taking one raw material that's entered the human body and converting it into the form the body can use and this is a really important concept because if you can't make this conversion it causes a deficiency and it is this deficiency that leads to some of the most common ailments that we face as humanity and then we end up going and getting diagnosed with a condition we don't have treated with a chemical that we do not need which causes consequences that were not necessary so let's talk about how we go hunting for raw material in the human body find these deficiencies replace it and then Thrive so let's start with one of the most common gene mutations in the world it's called the mtfr gene mutation it's estimated that up to 44% of the population has this gene mutation and if you write it out on the screen I don't have to tell you what the nickname is for that Gene um but it's stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase you don't need to know that I just want you to know I'm smart um but this gene mutation which means that now what do I mean by gene mutation well an impaired ability for the gene to function and a gene is not actually performing the function what a gene does is it codes for an enzyme in your body to perform its function so in other words our genes are like the blueprint think of a skyscraper and having a developer set of blueprints on the first floor of that skyscraper it tells you where to run all the plumbing it tells you how to run the electricity where the windows go it actually gives you the blueprint for how to pour the foundation and how to erect this entire structure in a way that makes it functional when it's fully completed well human beings are no different these instructions are coded by our genes and your genes are not your destiny your genes give you information on how to reach your destiny in other words if we could tell which genes are working and which genes are impaired we could supplement for those Target deficiencies and thrive in ways we never thought possible so back to this MTHFR gene mutation one of the most common gene mutations in the world it's been linked to all kinds of things anxiety depression poor gut health um anxiousness ADD ADHD OCD a waking mind at night which interrupts our sleep all kinds of conditions that we then go think are related to a food allergy or food sensitivity or a gut bacteria or our spouse or our career or stress or a lack of sleep but these are things that people have generally had on and off for their entire lifetime so let's look at what some of the science says about this gene mutation and specifically about what the product of this gene mutation causes due to its deficiency so this Gene um is a gene that takes folic acid and its derivatives folate and converts it into the form that the body can use called methylfolate so in other words folic acid is like the crude oil and methyl folate is like the gasoline and this conversion is done by this Gene it's it's coded for by this Gene and if this Gene is broken meaning you got a gene mutation from one parent or you got a gene mutation from both parents um which would be a much more impaired uh functionality then then the body has a hard time um reducing folic acid and its derivatives into methylfolate now why is that so important well remember that um methylation is also called one carbon metabolism and if you look at the molecular structure of things like neurotransmitters and amino acids and vitamin and nutrients by simply adding one carbon metabolism which is a carbon and three hydrogens by actually adding that to a molecule or deleting that from a molecule you change the entire structure and function of that molecule it's much like we tell the difference between different types of fats by the number of bonds that fat has the number of chemical bonds that that fat has the difference between a polyunsaturated and a monounsaturated fat or a fat that is solid at room temperature or liquid at room temperature has to do with these carbon bonds so one carbon metabolism as simple as it sounds is a very important process in human beings because it could mean the difference between a neurotransmitter which creates a mood exhibiting one consequence versus exhibiting an entire diff entirely different consequence so this one carbon metabolism is really at the root of methylation it's coded by our genes and if it's it's broken we have a deficiency so when we look at the very first um gene mutation that I want to discuss the MTHFR gene mutation which again 44% of the people watching this podcast you have this gene mutation or you're you're likely to have this gene mutation when this code is not given to the enzymes and you have a deficient in methylfolate remember that methylfolate um according to several res Arch study and I'm actually looking at the 2018 study from the Journal of nature which I will put in the podcast um explains that folate methyl folate enables the activation and transfer of one carbon units for the biosynthesis of purines um thyadine methionine different different amino acids so what are some of the consequences of having a folate deficiency and what would happen if we supplemented for folate with folate for for this deficiency well folate enables the activation um of one carbon um one carbon synthesis or the biosynthesis of things called purines thymidine methionine different amino acids in the body so when we have a deficiency in this folate what kinds of consequences is it linked to well folate um deficiency has been linked to non uh non-fatty non-alcoholic fatty liver disease um this is associated with uh dietary restriction of folate and the mutation in the gene MTHFR which is required for this one carbon metabolism in patients that had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and this gene mutation they found that supplementing with methylfolate actually helped curb the consequences and reverse this pathology other consequences are the capacity for the body to break down neurotransmitters remember there's a category of neurotransmitters in the body called catacol amines These are commonly referred to as fight ORF flight neurotransmitters they epinephrine edrine which we also refer to as adrenaline dopamine this category of neurotransmitters that it's engaged when we have a fight ORF flight response so if you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife you would immediately have a flood of catac colomines in the brain when you have a flood of catac colomines in the brain your your pupils can dilate your heart rate can increase your extremities flood with blood you start having physiologic response in response to a fear but understand when you have a gene mutation that doesn't allow you to break down these catola means in the brain then they actually begin to rise and you don't need the presence of a fear in order to feel fear this is the Genesis of things like anxiety you know most of you that either have anxiety or know somebody who suffer from anxiety or watched some of my previous podcast you know that you do not need the presence of a fear to start to to feel anxious so there are all these consequences that come as a responsibility of these genes being broken and not coding for the enzyme to break down these raw materials let's talk for a second about a second gene mutation and what kind of supplementation you could take if you had this gene mutation and if you don't know you have this gene mutation you could still supplement with anyway because these are water soluble vitamins that will eventually just spill over into the urine if you take too high of a concentration so and and and remember that we're going to discuss the very specific things that you can do before this podcast is over to maybe change the the impact of some of these gene mutations the second gene mutation that I want to talk about is a gene mutation called MTR and this is not as common as the Mt hfrg mutation but it is quite common and is an impaired ability to metabolize something called homocystine and homocysteine is an amino acid it's in everybody's blood it's it's in your blood it's in my blood it's in everybody's blood that's listening to this podcast but when homocysteine begins to rise because we are not metabolizing it we are not breaking it down through the process of methylation and converting it into something called methionine when the body is not making this conversion you now have a deficiency in methionine which is the starting block for every other amino acid protein in the body so in other words when you can't break down homosysteine you generally have a deficiency in methionine which is the starting protein for every amino acid building block in the body so this homosysteine begins to rise what are some of the consequences of homosysteine rising well in high levels it becomes one of the most inflammatory compounds in the human body and as it rises it starts to irritate the endothelial lining of the blood vessel when you irritate a blood vessel because it's smooth muscle it clamps down and if you make the pipe smaller in a fixed system pressure goes up and this is when you go to the doctor and you say hey my blood pressure is elevated the doctor tells you that your blood pressure is elevated they do all kinds of cardiac workups your EKG is normal your EEG is normal your die contrast study is normal you have normal heart and lung sounds but lo and behold they describe you as having a condition called idiopathic hypertension hypertension of an unknown origin and you start to take cardiovascular meds beta blockers calcium channel blockers diuretics Without Really knowing that the source could via nutrient deficiency in something called Pur oxine vitamin B6 or vitamin B12 methylcobalamin the methylated form of B12 so a deficiency in vitamin B6 and a deficiency in vitamin B12 will further impair this homocysteine metabolism and if homocysteine metabolism is impaired you have the consequences of potentially rising blood pressure you also have the consequences of other pathologies in the body body paresthesia tingling and numbness brain fog because when you start to reduce blood flow to the brain the first thing to go is short-term recall there's a published study um in an ancestral Journey linking the elevated level of homocysteine to the onset of hypertension and also the importance of vitamin B6 in B12 in homosysteine metabolism so patients that actually supplemented with simple B vitamins PID oxine vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 in the methylated form methylcobalamin were able to reduce their homocysteine levels and return pressure to normal I'm not saying that every person walking around with high blood pressure has high homosysteine nor am I saying that homocysteine is the cause of all high blood pressure but what I'm telling you is that very simple fixes exist like supplementing with B vitamins for things like hyper homocystinemia and so as we begin to continue continue down this road of um genetic methylation there is a very very interesting article that was um published in a psychiatric Journal this was uh in 2016 and it talks about the association of depressive and anxiety symptoms with 24-hour urinary catacol amine levels this is a fancy way of saying those fight-flight neurotransmitters that are building up to lels that can be detected in the urine and high levels of urinary catacol amines were associated with anxiety so why would high levels of fight ORF flight neurotransmitters be associated with anxiety or associated with depression because these neurotransmitters are are rising in the brain and if they're not catabolized if they're not broken down at the right rate they can trigger things like the presence of a fear which is what we call anxiety and they were able to lower catac colomine levels in the urine by using methylate trimethylglycine and the B complex of vitamins and catac colomines being tied to anxiety means that they could lower the incidence of anxiety by lowering the incidence of catacol amines through proper supplementation I I would take issue with anybody that says that you can get all of the nutrients you need from your diet it is very very difficult today's world with all the pesticides the herbicides the insecticides the lack of nutrients in our soil the the industrial processed seed oils that we're putting into our bodies for us to get all of the vital nut nutrients that we need for methylation just from diet that's why I am a big fan of supplementing for deficiency not just the sake of supplementing so as we walk through the peer-reviewed literature we find mechanisms for high blood pressure we find mechanisms for ADD and ADHD children with this MTHFR gene mutation were found to have a higher incidence of attention deficit disorder higher incidents of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and if we think about what kinds of foods we feed these children we feed them foods that are very high in folic acid we feed them foods that are fortified or enriched we feed them white flour white rice white bread white pasta cereals and Grains of all kinds any of these foods that are fortif IED or enriched have high amounts of folic acid added to them and these little bodies cannot process this folic acid due to this gene mutation so one of the most important topics to me is this topic of methylation and if you watched any of my podcasts or stage talks or lectures I'm constantly talking about how the body converts certain raw materials but I don't often talk about what could you do if you didn't want to take a $600 genetic test and and to find these deficiencies what could you do leaving this podcast today that could very well change the trajectory of your life well here's one option you could start taking a methylated multivitamin write this word down methylation or methylated multivitamin the difference between a regular vitamin that uses raw materials like folic acid which is synthesized in the laboratory um cyanocobalamin form of B12 which is synthesized in a laboratory and doesn't occur naturally in nature the difference between using those types of vitamins and using a vitamin that is methylated is night and day because if your body can't make a certain conversion you need this conversion to be done for you instead of using crude oil you have to use gasoline and if you use gasoline if you use the methylated form of these nutrients magic things can happen in the human body and so as we go down this path of looking at the research uh there was another interesting um uh in a histopathology journal this one was in uh in 2020 there was a mechanistic explanation for vascular toxicity and neurotoxicity that was caused by hyper homoy anemia and it was it was um supported by many of their experimental findings and it fully agreed with the known protective effects of methylfolate vitamin B6 vitam and vitamin B12 in hyper homos symia in other words vitamin B6 vitamin B12 and folate were the antidote to some of these issues all of us have a relative suffering from high blood pressure or hypothyroid or hyper cholesterolemia or we know women that have estrogen dominance um there is a third gene mutation called compt catacol Oyl transferase that is highly tied to all three of these conditions estrogen dominance poor sugar metabolism and poor catacol amine regulation what is this mean it means if you have this genetic mutation you are less likely to have balanced levels of estrogen in your body when estrogen Rises and gets out of balance with other hormones it begins to retain water and it retains water in What's called the interstitial space I've met a lot of women that come into our clinics that are very frustrated cuz they're doing everything right they're intermittent fasting they're exercising they're eating clean they're getting good sleep but they seem to have a little bubble of water that's right below their belly button it moves laterally around to their flanks and it's very frustrating because they think it's fat well it's not it's called the estrogen band and it's a place where estrogen binds water in the interstitial space and it's very very difficult to get rid of why would a gene mutation cause you to retain water around your waistline well what this gene mutation does is it impairs the ability of the body to get rid of estrogen when women and men cannot get rid of estrogen estrogen Rises when estrogen gets out of balance with other hormones it begins to retain water so what's the answer we can supplement with things that help us to put estrogen back into balance without hormones so supplementing for this gene mutation CT is commonly done with dim dondolo methane dithane or done with methionine or done with a B complex of vitamins when we supplement with these nutrients it helps this genetic deficiency provide the raw material that the body needs to rid itself of estrogen this is why so many of these common ailments are tied to nutrient deficiencies so so far we've talked about high blood pressure anxiety ADD ADHD and OCD D um this includes menic depression and bipolar in many cases elevated levels of estrogen um in the bloodstream causing water retention and mood numbness and then also the very very active mind that so many of you have at night when you lay down to go to sleep and you are body tired but mind awake now why would your body be tired and your mind still awake just going through the day's activities did I get everything on my grocery list did I did my belt match my shoes did I return that email um the reason why this happens is again because of this excess level of catacol amines in the brain catacol amines being fight ORF flight neurotransmitters in high doses in low doses they just create awaken state so what if you were a simple supplement away from having your mind quieted at night so I would encourage you if you're taking a multivitamin spin the back of that bottle around look for these two ingredients if it has either of them throw them in the trash and get a methylated multivitamin and people ask me all the time what are some things that I could do Gary for free that could possibly have an impact on the on the trajectory of my life and I give them the same four things to do every single time so if you're looking for something that you could start to do tomorrow besides going out and buying a $40 bottle of methylated vitamins um or getting a $600 Gene test it would be these four things and that is to develop a a a routine in the morning a 16-minute routine in the morning that really stresses the body and actually feeds the body and makes it stronger remember there's there's a process in the body called hormesis where it you stress the body and it responds by by strengthen it responds in a good way and we have to stop thinking about stress as as always being negative you know telling Grandma not to go outside it's too hot not to go outside it's too cold to eat at the first Pang of hunger just to lay down just to relax um so in the mornings in your morning routine and it's not complicated there are four things that you can do at no cost that really could change the trajectory of your life and if you don't believe me just try these four things for the next seven days go Sunday to Sunday and you see how you feel at at the end of the seventh day the first thing is to get up and expose your skin to first light and I know this is tough for a lot of people but if you want to be disciplined and wake up with the Sun every morning or beat the Sun up every morning and expose your skin to First Light there's some very very special effects from First Light number one there's no UVA and UVB rays for about the first 45 minutes of the day there's very healthy Blue Light which helps to reset cortisol and melatonin uh receptors in the brain um you get vitamin D3 without the risk of a sunburn and the light actually passing through your eyes helps put you in a more wakened state so for free you can go out face the the sun don't look directly into the sun expose your skin to sunlight while you're doing that if you want to put that moment on steroids learn to do three rounds of 30 deep breaths and Wim Hoff um style of of breath work is the style of breath work that I use I actually took his his uh training course online and it's entirely changed the trajectory of my life and so many of the the clients that I work with and that is to sit quietly with your shirt off exposed to sunlight if you're women just maybe wear a halter top expose your skin to sunlight and do three rounds of 30 breaths with a breath hold in between the third thing is to take a cold shower when you're done that routine and you can exercise after your cold shower a cold shower will actually prepare you for exercise you don't want to do cold water immersion after exercise it's best to do it prior to and let your body warm up naturally and the fourth thing you can do is take your bare feet and touch bare soil dirt grass or sand for just just 6 minutes a day so ideally if you had a place outside where you could put your feet on the ground and get earthing and grounding exposing your skin to sunlight and had a place where you could breathe three rounds of 30 breaths and then you took a cold shower to finish it off that would be a zeroc cost way to change the entire trajectory of your life I want you to try it for seven days if you're willing to spend 40 bucks a month then I would start on a methylated multivitamin and if you want to take a deep dive into your genes and find out what deficiencies you may specifically have so you can get more targeted with your supplementation then you can do a genetic methylation test and find out once in your life what you're deficient in guys I really appreciate you giving me your time today and I hope you enjoyed this one-on-one podcast look forward to more guests more exciting people coming on the show every Tuesday and every Thursday tune in to the ultimate human podcast please don't forget to like or subscribe to the podcast it helps me bring in higher quality guests and as always that's just science