January 14, 2025 • 61 mins
In this episode of Power Up Recovery with Nutrition, host Christina Veselak explores the fascinating world of genetics, nutrigenomics, and epigenetics, breaking down how these factors influence mental health and addiction disorders. Joined by special guest Val Prisecaru, Christina delves into how targeted nutritional strategies can effectively address genetic factors, offering a precise and powerful way to support recovery. Tune in to learn how understanding your genetic blueprint can transform your mental health and addiction recovery journey.
Meet Our Guest
Val Prisecaru, MS CN LDN, With over 25 years of experience in clinical research and wellness, Val specializes in multi-omics, nutrigenomics, and bioinformatics. Holding BS and MS degrees in nutrition from the University of Illinois, he translates complex science into practical health strategies. Val develops cutting-edge protocols, researches emerging health concepts, and leads the Nutrigenomics program at John Patrick University.
🌐 Website: www.geneticwellbeing.com
📱Facebook: www.facebook.com/GeneticWellbeingChampaign
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
welcome to power up recovery with nutrition it is time to make nutrition
(00:06):
part of the conversation I'm your host Christina velock and I'm so glad you're
here did you know that it's our brain's job to allow us to cope with stress
gracefully but to do that it needs to be fed optimally have you ever wondered why so
many committed people relapse or maybe even die why so many people on
(00:31):
psychotropic medication still feel lousy and still have cravings What if the missing piece is
food the right food what if the right nutrients like amino acids or even
eating protein every 4 hours could actually balance your brain chemistry
and your mood without medication and support lasting recovery in this podcast
(00:57):
we explore the powerful connection between feeding your brain well mental health relapse and recovery from
addiction we will share insights from experts inspiring recovery stories and
practical strategies you can use today whether you're in recovery a health care
professional or someone passionate about emotional well-being this show is for
(01:22):
you let's dive in and discover how fueling your body and brain with the
right food the right vitamino acids and other key nutrients can fuel your
transformation today welcome welcome to another episode of
Power Up recovery with nutrition I am Christina velock your
(01:47):
host and today we're talking about the amazing world of genetics and
neutrogenia and epigenetics we'll explain all those terms in a minute
and how they can impact and sometimes even drive mental health issues and
addiction disorders and therefore when addressed effectively using
(02:14):
nutrition this is where the neutrogenia comes in how we can positively and in a
very precise directed way impact your recovery Journey we're going to
introduce B prar today Val welcome so much for being on
our show and thank you so much for agreeing to speak at our conference in
(02:39):
Columbus in May oh uh thank you very much the the pleasure is all mine I'm very much
looking forward to it and uh I'm really glad to be here with you
today so can you tell us a little bit about you your expertise and what brought you to this
amazing speci specialty oh um sure so I'd always been
(03:04):
interested in health and nutrition uh I grew up in Los Angeles and um I was
introduced to some alternative medical and alternative Wellness principles back
in the 90s uh eventually I went to school for it I went to University of Illinois and I got uh my bachelor's and
(03:25):
Masters in nutrition now I'm working on a doctoral program um at the University of
Bridgeport and uh one of my uh focuses is actually uh neurotransmitters and
some things in the uh in the addiction and mental health space I am currently
um the genomics neogenomics consultant at designs for health it's a wellness
(03:50):
neutral company they used to do just supplements but in the last um in the
last couple years they've gone into the testing uh space as well so they have different
types of tests because uh in order to know what is best for you as far as
Foods supplements lifestyle then knowing
(04:13):
Labs you know microbiome metabolomics genomics really you can
fine-tune um your Wellness protocol so I've been doing a little bit of that Consulting with a few companies okay uh
doing a little research and uh just trying to help as many people as I can and however long I'm here for that's
(04:34):
amazing we're really talking about Precision medicine aren't we which a lot of people call the future of healthcare
yeah that really is true um medicine used to be uh quite
imprecise I mean to the point where doctors would uh uh taste a patient's
urine just to see if it's sweet to know if someone had diabetes we're talking many many decades ago of course now
(04:59):
we've come a long way but in my opinion even 10 20 years from now we're going to
look back on 2024 and say hey we were in the Stone Age back then that's how far I
think we're going to be uh advancing uh in the coming years and
decades well I think so I heard Dr Daniel aan speak recently about how
(05:24):
tragic it is that Psychiatry is still really in the dark Pages because again
it guesses it doesn't look it doesn't take off the hood and actually look into
the engine itself to see what's wrong and then they wonder why they have to move somebody from one medication to
(05:45):
another to another because they're not getting the results they want it's incredibly
imprecise yeah absolutely and the field of Psychiatry is imprecise for several
reasons um um I would say one major reason is there's no strong financial
impetus to do more natural medicine Andor preventive uh research so if
(06:14):
you're Pharma company can profit a billion dollars off of a drug uh that
will help reduce symptoms they'd rather do that than figure out what the actual
problem is because then you would get off of them completely like for example um I did some uh I did some
research into uh sales and uh marketing of mental
(06:41):
health uh Pharmaceuticals in the US last year and I think if you if you look at
all drugs prescribed if you take away uh medicine for high blood pressure
which doctors almost forc people to be on hey you're going to die and if take away insulin right which also like you
(07:03):
could die right if you don't have if you're a type 1 diabetic or if you have very severe type 2 diabetes if you take
away those just those few essential medicines guess what the number one most
prescribed medicine in America is ader Aderall oh my goodness proac is
high up there too and so is so is Rin and you know all those
(07:27):
ceraline and then you get later on down the line you get benzo diazines and some other ones but but really um
snris ssris and SN ssnr those three are really really
really highly prescribed so then the question begs why do you need a
(07:49):
norepinephrine or a dopamine reuptake inhibitor when you can just increase
dopamine or maybe increase the health of the cell
um you know of all your cellular membranes with Omega-3s and some other
things um maybe you can inhibit the genes like
(08:10):
CT that break down dopamine to increase it naturally and there are even natural
supplements that also reduce re-uptake of some of these neurotransmitters so
why not just do it naturally right well that's because there's no billion dollars you can't I mean I can go buy a
Year's worth of five HTTP for like a hundred bucks you know you could and probably St
(08:36):
John's wart too which that's that wonderful you know reup St John's word yeah St John's word really really really
has um great effects on some people I remember a couple years ago I think I
bought 40 years worth of vitamin D for 40 bucks so you know if you if you uh if
you look at the numbers then it starts to begin to make sense you know what's
(09:01):
the prime directive well for a for a corporation that has some ethics it
would be make money and help people right but for a corporation that let's say is run by uh not very ethical people
then the prime directive is to make money and they don't really care if they help people as long as they look like
(09:22):
they're trying to help or they sort of help then um then that's okay with them
but obious viously it's not okay with us and it's not okay with people in general so that's the whole that's part of the
whole process of waking up people are waking up now they're like wait a minute you know I thought that was just uh some
crazy Theory but now it's actually true oh yeah well yeah you know the biggest U the biggest payouts the biggest uh uh
(09:50):
crimes the biggest uh civil lawsuits unfortunately have been against
pharmaceutical companies so they haven't well and that's why this podcast is
titled power up um recovery with nutrition because my goal and I think
yours is as well is to empower the general public with this
(10:14):
information so that none of us are dependent upon um Pharmaceuticals or
psychiatrists to repair and support our brain function and therefore by by
repairing and supporting brain function improving mood improving Behavior
(10:36):
improving addiction treatment and recovery and thriving as human
beings right yeah it's really important um long-term
long-term uh good health and improved outcomes uh I think would help
everybody and if we if we focus
(11:00):
on um the positives and not necessarily the negatives I think we'll be able to
do even better so I'm not really I'm not really against um pharmaceutical companies
there are some drugs that I think are great and they work and and they save lives yeah and they save lives so even
(11:21):
even things like uh you know uh Aderall riddlin Prozac Zoloft uh in certain
segments of the population based on genetics U something like that
temporarily could you know really impact uh someone's health so I'm not really against that however uh if you look at
(11:46):
the actual State of Affairs the State of the Union so to speak
today in theory doctors temporarily prescribe benzos temporarily prescribe
SSR temporarily prescribe this or that and then it just becomes you just keep taking it right or temporarily prescribe
(12:07):
Suboxone and methadone which is how they were originally designed to be
shortterm detox supporters the problem is is is nobody was working on
rebuilding neurotransmitter systems so you get a heroin onto Suboxone and then
they try to pull people off Suboxone and the Brain goes crazy and so do people because their
(12:32):
neurotransmitters are still very very depleted that the brain cannot function
without that type of support as we both so well know once you bring in that
neurotransmitter support um with def phenoline with um
all the aminos to rebuild PC which is the precursor to our
(12:55):
endorphins and etc etc now the brain is getting what it needs and once it gets
what it needs people can come off Suboxone they can come off methadone they can come off these other drugs
because the brain is is functioning you know an analogy Val short story I had a
(13:16):
client come to me who said she was going to need years of emotional um of
counseling for her emotional eating that she was a compulsive overeater for 30
years turned out she was eating potato chips Non-Stop and her that's another problem
so yeah in her 3-day food diary this woman was eating potato chips vanilla ice cream and had exactly two deep fried
(13:44):
uh chicken legs in the entire three-day span and my heart broke for her and I
said look I'm not going to take anything away from you but let's just add a few things would you be okay with adding a
few things so we added 80 gram of protein 20 gram every 4 hours and nine
servings of fruits and vegetables because my theory was that her brain was trying to make up in quantity of potato
(14:10):
chips what it was missing in nutrients yeah absolutely that next week
that woman came in radiant Bell she had not had one potato chip nor one bowl of
ice cream the entire week she hadn't wanted it at all because her brain was now f finally being well
(14:31):
fed and that's what we do with these neutrals yeah that's that's a very good
point once you have the right the proper uh the proper nourishment macronutrients
micronutrients some different Botanicals uh you combine that with a little bit of exercise and Stress
Management all of a sudden it's a new person you've got a new person and these things can help you sleep better and so
(14:58):
sleep is is crucial as well because you know we don't believe in a onelegged sto it's not all brain chemistry we also
believe in you know healing trauma and lifestyle and spiritual growth and all
of that but we do have to feed the brain what it needs to function optimally for
everything else to work so given your expertise and
(15:23):
neutrogenia and epigenetics and if you could explain those terms
how can we use that to precisely determine what any particular person's
brain needs well that's a that's a very good question Christina and I think to start
off I would say what I do when I first uh get a
(15:48):
patient and they're having some symptoms where I think maybe there's some addiction issues or some uh
neurotransmitter col catac colomine issues uh the first thing I do is of course I
just talk to the person and just kind of get an idea of is this person having
more uh anxiety or more depression I like to I like to take things that are U
(16:17):
that are bodal kind of see along what part of the spectrum someone lies then
maybe I'll ask about activity level is this person completely sedentary a
little exercise exercise over day maybe over exercises
are they you know training for a marathon um I look at dietary
(16:39):
habits I try to um get an overall picture of nutriceutical
supplementation protein Powers bars Etc and then we dive into the biology of it
so we look at genomics I usually run a genomic panel um and then occasionally
(17:02):
uh I uh we do a stool sample a microbiome test and then a a metabolomic
which is a urine do at home tests all these tests do it do it at home really nice to do
and for neurotransmitters there are of course
several different you know besides endorphins you you also have a tryptophan and its
(17:28):
eventual conversion to 5htp and serotonin and melatonin then
you have the korine pathway which there are ways to there's like a korine ratio
and quinolinic acid ratio there's different types of ways to measure whether you're creating some toxic um
(17:52):
compounds in your brain or not so using simple metabolomics labs and genetics
you could figure figure out which way someone's going the same way if someone had some sex hormone issues where they
have like a beta versus Alpha um this is a issue that happens uh
(18:14):
for the conversion of DHT dihydro testosterone some people have like very
very uh you know Ying versus Yan so this is a this is a Yan very male DHT
dihydrate testosterone production or whether it's low they have the other U
they're high in the other pathway so you're able to figure that out with genomics um well you you are I want to
(18:39):
um interrupt you for a moment and just point out this chart that we use along
with everything you've mentioned to identify where people the symptoms of
neurotransmitter depletion people have because this chart will then allow us
okay people have symptoms of low seratonin or symptoms of low catac colomines either low dopamine or low you know
(19:04):
norepinephrine symptoms of low endorphins or Gaba and from this we can then say ah they're really low in
catacomb meines they have low energy they may have ADHD they may be craving
you know stimulants and buying ader all you know off the street I wonder
why I wonder why right and then we can
(19:29):
use all of the so we can use this to drive amino acid therapy and other
nutrient therapies but then the answer to the I wonder why question is all the
testing that you were talking about the the looking at the gut looking at the
different genetic Pathways in the production of um dopamine or the
(19:54):
production of neopine phrine or whether giving somebody Crypt ofan is going to
cause more toxicity in their brain or actually help them sleep better right
right yeah very good point and so uh all of these should be taken into
consideration by the practitioner and uh unfortunately current allopathic
(20:21):
medicine doesn't really teach too much maybe you take one course in nutrition and that's about it but I think the
field of functional medicine is really booming um like for example I gave a
gave a talk at a4m in Boston last month and uh there were there were dozens of
uh functional medicine practitioners U all types MDS NDS dos
(20:47):
chiropractors and uh had quite a few discussions so I'm really really looking
forward to how uh the overall uh subfield of preventive medicine evolves
over the next even even the next few months I mean there there are things that are happening at a much faster rate
than they used to have that's right that's right so if somebody has um
(21:14):
say a poly drug user you know they're just going to use whatever they can get their hands on to
relieve emotional pain how could you using some of your
genetic testing determine where the brain chemistry
(21:35):
issue is originating from we can identify the trauma issue we can identify all of that but it's all
mediated through the brain right some people can have a traumatic incident or
more and be really resilient and come through in flying colors and other
people struggle their whole lives and can't get over it and I believe it's because there's genetic blockages in
(22:01):
these Pathways in the brain can you speak to that oh yeah absolutely so
there are many genetic blockages and there are uh basically there's there are
several different types of issues the first would be if you have a blockage in
a pathway or network so for example let's say you're not really good at
(22:24):
breaking down dopamine so you have um you have uh very low maoa very low
comt and both of those are the main drivers of metabolizing dopamine right
so you may have high dopamine levels and part of that has uh will also impact
(22:47):
negative feedback loops because those are in place so you may have reduced
production of dopamine and inability to control
dopamine levels so there's not much to go anyway but then once it's there it
builds up really high and it goes high and low it's kind of like a high tide and low tide right um but you don't want
(23:13):
that because that can cause you know a lot of maybe mood swings me different
types of imbalances and the same thing if it's the other way let's say you're really
good at breaking down dopamine right so you break it down so well you have low
dopamine so now you have that's what Dr Blum was famous for is for figuring out
(23:36):
RDS reward um reward deficiency issues
and so that causes addictions and a whole slew of other issues depression Etc so the question is what which of
these Pathways the dopamine pathway the serotonin dopamine toep norepinephrine
conversion which of these does a person have and I could do a I could do a quick share screen to show kind of how this
(24:00):
works if you'd like are you are you able to see my screen we go into all of this in great detail in the courses offered
by the academy for addiction and Mental Health Nutrition ah my favorite chart so
this chart was uh was developed uh initially by um a very nice gentleman
(24:21):
named Peter Dr Peter diadamo creator of the blood type diet between him and his
dad James diadamo and he is a doctor but he's also a coder
so he wrote this program in Pearl back in 20145 it's called Opus 23 and this is my
genome so let's see here we can we can look up do a Power analysis and see just
(24:46):
how high or low every Gene is so we'll we'll zoom in here here's tryptophan right tryptophan is converted to 5htp
and that is affected by tph1 and two so tph1 function is a little bit uh below
optimal but as you can see here Christina tph2 is all the way down in the toilet for me so what does this mean
(25:10):
this means I have less five HTTP what do people with less 5 HTP have they have
less serotonin and less melatonin well no wonder it works really well for me so
if I want to know exactly which tph2 genes I have then I can actually click on the gene it'll tell me a little bit
about it I'm actually the the editor for those programs so a lot of the Snips you see here I'm the one who put them in in
(25:33):
addition to Dr diamo and another gentleman uh Dr Greenfield from the UK
so I can see exactly which Snips I have and then I if I want to click on the
snip I can find out like for example this one's associated with Heroin addiction another snip might be
associated with uh increased chronic fatigue fibromyalgia early onset OCD
(25:58):
reduced vascular endothelial growth factor increased stomach cancer ulcerative colitis etc etc but the other
Al linked to obesity waist circumference Bell's paly so there are different uh
benefits and drawbacks to each snip each gene and also bh4 production and
(26:19):
MTHFR affects neurotransmitter creation or
manufacturing of it and if we look all the way on the left side of the screen El tyrosine eventually is converted to
elopa and by virtue of DDC finally ends up as a dopamine so you have tyrosine
(26:40):
and you have tryptophan all end up with serotonin or dopamine which then get
broken down by dbh the maos and compt or comt right so it's nice to see which
Pathways uh people who have low dopamine but high energy like the Ty typical adht
ADHD person that you would Envision they would have very high dopamine beta
(27:05):
hydroxy a and they have very low maoa so then dopamine turns into norepinephrine
and then just sits there so you have low dop low dopamine and you have high norepinephrine and
epinephrine it's bad combination yeah that's a very very ADHD
combination so if I look at this there's no impulse control yeah not much impulse
(27:29):
control and there are some other genes too that also play a factor but this is one of the these are uh like the main
sets of Pathways for it so basically if somebody comes in with a mental health issue and I look at their genomics and
then I run their metabolomics urine test it's I mean I don't want to say that I
do this but it's almost like I don't even need to ask them what the problem is I kind of already suspect it you know
(27:55):
just because I've seen it over and over done I mean I've done hundreds and hundreds of these analyses on people so
the same things keep coming up so it's it's pretty uh it's pretty evident when that happens sure and just looking at
this for instance you'll know then that you want to give somebody 5 HTP rather
than tryptophan because tryptophan might have a really hard time making it to
(28:21):
5htp and it's going to be a lot more likely than to go down some of these other Pathways that's exactly right yeah
that's exactly right and I also do um some confirmation analysis and also
other other uh types of mental health analysis with the other program I'm working on
(28:42):
which is this one uh this program is called self decode and I'm actually
working with um the primaries in both companies to uh to do a joint venture
sort of like a a little uh um participation behalf of both companies
to create a new test so we're working on some new things right now that'll probably be launched uh sometime in
(29:10):
spring or summer so St stay tuned for that one but uh the thing I like about
self decode is it looks at U many different types of uh
biomarkers like for example in the biohacker Hub app so to speak of the
program you can look up and see if you have a high or low phase one detox so
(29:34):
phase two detox and uh compare the two so phase one detox of course is sip 1 A1
sip 1 A2 you know all the major ones sip 2d6 all the main liver enzymes so here I
think I helped um I was on a two or three person team to develop this uh
it's either this one or the other one the detox and there's a few of the panels cool so here is an incomplete
(30:03):
list of the 32 variants I think they list up the 2025 of them so you can see
here sip 21 there's several Snips there and there's your sip 1b1 there's the 1
A2 there's the 2d6 I'm sure 1 a1's hanging out somewhere over here if it's not listed and these these sip jeans
they regulate the breakdown of your psychotropic medications as well as other toxins in the blood don't they oh
(30:29):
yeah like sip 2d6 I think sip 2d6 metabolizes some obnoxiously High number
like 25% of all drugs I mean it's just it's just ridiculous um just how impactful it is
to know hey I'm really high on Nat 2 I'm low on sip 2d6 I have high sip uh you
(30:51):
know 19 etc etc there's so many of these um so for example where some of those
like um genom mind some of those other genetic tests that psychiatrists are using to determine what might be the
best psychotropic medication choice for a patient or why the meds just aren't
working or creating all of these horrific side effects exactly so here
(31:16):
for example so this snip if you have if you have both copies of the AAL which
15% of people are CT heterozygous so I guess a lower percentage would be
TT but if you have that you are sixfold
more likely to have side effects if you switch anti-depressants sixfold more that's
(31:43):
600% that is a huge number if some snip had even a 20% increased risk would be
significant right and this is 600 so yeah you can see just from just from a
simple ad hoc exploration and Analysis of just one snip in one gene uh is very
impactful for improving not only short-term symptoms but getting to the
(32:07):
root cause of whatever issue or illness or it's usually a combination of issues
that's leading to the symptoms and that's that's the beauty of a highlevel
deep dive neutrogenia I can look up someone's tnf
wait could could you go back to that chart again that you were showing us of all of the
(32:31):
different um Snips and the different um Pathways that one yes because you
know so many people have heard about
MTHFR and but they don't really understand what it is or why it matters
but their doctor May say to you say to them oh you have MTHFR and so they come to me or one of
(32:55):
my trained coaches and say I have MTHFR and I we say well you have one two
three or all four of the potential Snips and they
look at us blankly and say I don't know right that this is a problem where
(33:19):
um a lot of the medical professionals actually may not understand some of these distinctions
themselves but it actually matters for for those in our audience who have heard
about MTHFR could you speak to that a little bit and how it impacts mental
health and therefore addiction oh of course absolutely and
(33:44):
how we might want to address it um you know n nutritionally oh yeah um so
MTHFR is of course very relevant for um for a lot of different health aspects
one of which is uh mental health but there are a lot of other things too uh one of the
(34:05):
most common uh and well researched aspects of different MTHFR genetics is
uh homosysteine and cardiovascular health one of the biggest problems is that people with homozygous MTHFR
mutation especially both of the big ones the 1133 and those are those people are
(34:28):
usually have reduced methylation and it connects with
other genes in those same Pathways and networks for methylation and we'll look
at in a minute we jump just for a secx so yes we if
(34:51):
people are under methylators they are much more likely to not be making
not be turning the amino acids into the neurotransmitters right because in the
pathway that turns tyrosine into dopamine and neurin that turns 5htp into
(35:13):
serotonin we actually need enough methyl groups running around to make that
happen and that's can be one reason why amino acids don't work and a huge reason
why psychotropic medic may not work that that's exactly right
and uh there are some doctors that min minimize the effects of MTHFR they say
(35:38):
oh genetics that's just Hocus Pocus there's not enough research and they say
the same thing about tph2 Snips they say the same thing about DDC maoa
CT uh even pnmt dbh all of these and you know what by
themselves these researchers these critics are absolutely correct by themselves they have a small impact not
(36:03):
really a huge deal however and there's a big however if you combine several of
them in a row so if you have low tph2 low DDC low maoa now all of a
sudden you have systemic blockages in Pathways and networks and that can
become a bigger problem it's the same thing with anything else if you just look at glyphosate glyphosate is a
(36:30):
little bad for you but it's not horribly bad for you and they did test after test study after study and they're showing
yeah glyphosate is a little bad but you know what when I eat um when I eat some
corn chips I'm not just getting glyphosate I'm getting glyphosate and
about another couple hundred other other chemicals some of which have been in the soil for decades like DDT some of which
(36:55):
are new some of which are not that persistent others of which are very precis and they're going to be in there
for decades and when you combine all of those it becomes incredibly incredibly
bad for you very delerious to our health effects and the same thing can be said
for vaccines every vaccine has been studied very very closely by themselves and no
(37:19):
vaccine is like really really bad for you right there are benefits you get antibodies to certain diseases but when
you have the entire schedule pumped and all at the same time then the question is okay well there's obviously something
going on I'm not saying all vaccines are good or all vaccines are bad but certainly uh the schedule should
probably be looked at right we should analyze it and that's another problem that I see um there's a big there's a
(37:45):
big Push by um Pharma subsidized entities organizations and Pharma
themselves to to call anyone that questions anything that they don't want
questioned crazy or not smart yeah or sensationalist
or fake so I don't think that's a really good approach I think a good approach is to
(38:10):
be to have healthy skepticism and have an open discussion and not uh not censor people
right so absolutely and and it seems to me that with this VX conversation right and you just said it
with the schedule where you know a young child is getting exposed or even
somebody going into the military is being exposed to all of these vacines
(38:35):
all at the same time it seems to me we could go back to that um list of cyp sip
variants and the detoxification Pathways and I think that every baby should be
given a full genetic test at Birth and their detoxification pathway should be
(38:57):
be analyzed as to whether that child is capable of
detoxifying a variety of vaccines and everything in the vaccine all at the
same time or if there are children because of their genetic Pathways and
their detoxification systems are at really high risk for getting overloaded
(39:21):
and therefore really really sick we know that not all children get really sick the question is why why if you look at
these Snips they can tell you exactly why yep so for example I ran I ran a
simple uh search in the uh program literature for pusis right whooping cuff
(39:45):
and there is a gene called esr1 estrogen receptor one which actually interacts with
CT and people who have mental health people
who have the teal or especially both copies of the teil have increased risk of
prusis and there are several genes and Snips that are associated with whether
(40:07):
it's prusis diptheria any type of mencal diseases a
Hebb all of these so you can tell but look at that V we also have increased
schizophrenia increased alcohol intake increased depression increased
postpartum depression increased mood and Sleep Disorders they all run together yep
(40:32):
exactly and and a lot of these have to do uh it's because of uh uh increased
estrogens and reduced testosterone in some people and if you look at the other copy if you have the sealil what does
that have that have incre that has increased testosterone so there's a testosterone to estradiol connection and
(40:53):
U they're obviously neurotransmitter is isues because as I said comp and esr1 are very
connected um so this is one way to figure out what you have issues with and what
are potential like are there increased side effects from one particular vaccine
which very much speaks to your point that you made a couple minutes ago really you know compared to3 $40,000
(41:21):
that people drop at Cleveland Clinic Mayo Clinic for various issues genetic
testing is it's just a few hundred bucks it really should be conducted on everyone it's probably what 3 or 4% of
the cost of a birth nowadays so we're really talking about very very you know
(41:42):
Pennies on the dollar uh for potentially very important information and not to
get too off topic here but yeah that that goes in any field so if you look at any one thing you zoom out and you see
the entire system or network um then all of a sudden drugs supplements lifestyle
(42:03):
different types of decision decisions like that become a lot more
clear here's one oh go ahead go on go on oh I wanted to show you um one of the um
hold on see if I could find it here well while you're looking I've got
(42:24):
a question I've heard that there are some genetic sniff that actually determine to what degree you might get
or be affected by PTSD is that one of the serotonin
Snips oh yeah uh PTSD there's actually uh there's
actually a PTSD algorithm based on very large numbers of
(42:49):
genetic uh test that were done on people it's called These are called gases
genome wide Association studies and PTSD um there's an algorithm
available that looks at about half a million Snips and gives you a very very
precise uh Point like how much PTSD do you have so it's called psychological
(43:15):
trauma in this H particular test and I'll zoom in a little bit here
so for me personally I am on the 22nd
percentile so I don't have a lot of PTSD genetics I'd probably I probably
wouldn't be here if I did just because of just the different things I've seen in my life uh women are
(43:43):
generally a little bit more prone to PTSD than men uh part of that has to do
with estrogen and testosterone ratios uhuh and that even happens like
even in a cycling woman like during a part of the menstrual phase when she has
higher testosterone just mentally right she is
(44:06):
calmer less phased and then and then when that the shift happens with the LH
and FSH then progesterone of course changes and there's more estrogen and
less testosterone and then there's just like a greater imbalance right that um she's
more emotional things affect her more and that's one reason why you really
(44:29):
need to look at your genetics because you don't have to have a bunch of PMS
you can actually uh I mean I'm not saying you know take a bunch of drugs and narcotics to combat it but you can
gently do certain things to uh certainly to to balance out those ratios between
the different hormones you know PMS is a major risk factor for relapse in women
(44:57):
it's the highest uh risk time during the month for relapse as well as mental
health issues as well as being arrested for Crime W I did not know that makes
sense yeah we have found that simple interventions such as eating protein
every three hours rather than every four hours to stabilize blood sugar taking
(45:20):
extra 5htp because as estrogen drops at the
end of the month so serotonin as progesterone drops at the end of the
month so does Gaba so by bringing in extra Gaba or Gaba support bringing in extra 5 HTP or
even St John's wart it evens everything out taking an
(45:46):
phytoestrogenic herb like black kohos can modulate estrogen and
again people just women just like stabilizing again and feel normal again
and their relapse risk drops down to zero right isn't that
(46:07):
something so uh so here are the recommendations based on this one program for PTSD let's say I have some
PTSD symptoms uh the first recommendation is psychotherapy and the recommendations
are listed in order of uh evidence and impact so that would be one of the one
of the more significant ones but there's no there's no nutrients there uh no so
(46:33):
this is divided into supplement dietary and lifestyle so as far as supplements
Omega-3s are the highest ranked DHA allinine NAC deserene
carnosine um notice how amino acids are missing in here that's just because of
the lack of evidence uh the lack of the high level evidence unfortunately that's
(46:58):
required by they just not done the research they've just not done the research
because practice I can tell you exactly what amino acids help my clients with
PTSD and we'll be uh and the new programs that I'm working on will have
those so all all of our inputs will be in here as as we launch those I know
(47:21):
what you mean and uh and I'm I'm uh excited to see what uh What Becomes of
that as we you know as we evolve in that in that realm that domain so uh this is
essentially how this works the other one I wanted to show you is really cool medical reports so this one actually
(47:44):
shows you risk of pretty much all diseases based on hundreds of thousands of these genomewide Association studies
so the the triangle shows the highest risks that would would be a cataracts
prostate cancer seizures bipolar and Celiac then you have the
octagons and the Octagon exclamations are increased risk so that's going to go
(48:09):
you know heart failure liver failure enyma Etc and then you get this you this
is me yeah ouchy and here are the check marks so
the uh the square or the diamond check marks is average risk so you know
systemic sclerosis mythia gravis I just don't have the genetics for it I can
(48:32):
still get it but it'd be milder and it would be a reduced chances of me even getting it right like for example um I
think I had schizophrenia you have more chance to getting bipolar disorder but less chance of becoming schizophrenic
exactly and then if you go all the way down to the bottom see there's heart attack liver sclerosis uh dementia if you go down to
(48:55):
the bottom you get to the green and so the green is all the diseases that
you're actually protected from so mon neuropathy I'm actually I have a reduced
than average odds of getting it and if I did get it maybe it's milder
Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma probably not going to die of that diverticulitis rheumatic heart disease
(49:19):
thyroid cancer bladder cancer etc etc so you could see how knowing your genetics
it's really important um here's the longevity screener this this is the last one I'll show you before we go into the
other stuff so this one looks at your genetics and it also asks you a
questionnaire about family history personal history where your grandparents were born Etc and this is a very
(49:44):
accurate longevity screener so lifetime risk of prostate cancer and bipolar is
highest for me this is 34 Times Higher this one's three times Tire none of the others usually people have like three or
four items in the red but I only have two you only have two so what are you doing to prevent your risk of bipolar
(50:07):
disorder what do you mean bipolar disorder trying to be funny um when uh
sometimes patients they have like depression and I tell them I'm sorry well that's really sad and then they start
laughing so you have to have a little fun or else you know you're going to go crazy with this stuff exactly
EXA yeah it's true with bipolar I uh if something requires my attention I can go
(50:32):
from 0 to 60 in about two seconds however I keep it very controlled right
um as opposed to wild animals you know we have Homo sapiens right we think and we we have feelings and we understand
things exactly and we can make we can make decisions so what what are you
using any neutrals to support your brain around the bipolar disorder risk
(50:57):
um well I haven't really I haven't really had a lot of uh bipolar Tendencies although I could totally see
it in me um so I haven't really done too much of that for me ADHD has been more
of an issue ah okay ADHD canot run
together right right uh so I do a lot of U different amino acids um NAC I use
(51:23):
anasl fish oils some B vitamins uh lithium and some
other things so I uh I self-medicate intelligently based on genomics and
metabolomics but the important thing is if you take away what you're probably
going to die of then you're not going to die of that or there's a less reduced chance of it so I like to think of the
(51:49):
analogy of um a bunch of grim reapers sitting around at a long table and then
the uh the process cancer Grim Reaper as well I can't kill Val because he's taken all this stuff to uh improve his
prostate health so he he's not going to get that so then the heart disease guy goes well I can't take Val out because
he's taking all this stuff and he's doing well and you know so basically they're just sitting around a table for
(52:14):
decades and decades waiting for someone to finally uh get me so it's going to take a lot longer you see if you have
Vision yeah so that's that's one of the ways you can um improve your odds of uh of
having a good health uh not just lifespan but Health span yeah yeah the
(52:38):
ideal uh life is you know a long fruitful life and then you're not sitting around in a hospital for years
or decades right being sick you maybe like everything goes
out right or being depressed or being so anxious you can't leave your bedroom
right right and if and if you're if you're so depressed or anxious or you
(53:00):
have OCD or phobias or panic disorder or anything like that and it affects you uh
significantly in some ways you've already died which is very sad and but in but the benefit of that is you may
have in certain ways already died but in actuality you're not dead you're alive so you can fix things and you can get
(53:22):
back to where you were uh before or even better like for example right now um at the age of
50 I have uh better thinking than I did
when I was 20 or 30 in some aspects and I have a um better physical fitness in
(53:44):
some aspects than maybe 10 or 20 years ago because of different things that I'm doing uh with my body as far as you know
diet lifestyle supplements that I didn't know back then like for example
me too me too yeah like uh I was uh as a
kid I was chronically constipated I probably had significant IBS uh now I
(54:08):
don't have much of it at all and I don't have any constipation issues or any kind of issues like that at all and all of
that um is possible for almost anyone so it's it's really
nice to be able to uh to see that and then I wanted to show you um okay you can show us one more thing
because then we do have to wrap this up sure so this is a uh genomic Spotlight
(54:36):
sample report let me uh get it open so this is
a a genetic test that you can do at designs for health you could upload other programmatics to and the person
who wrote this is also Dr diamo he worked in conjunction with Dr David Brady to design genomic spot so here's
(54:57):
my genomic Spotlight and it kind of looks at different hormonal protocols
prostate Supreme libido stem these are different supplements that work based on
um recommendations made risk of prostate cancer exactly and that's that's one of
the things I do I try to think outside the box right and there are eight
(55:23):
categories in the test and I'm trying to to oh I I see
what's going on so the program froze a little bit there it goes now it's
working so this is the hormonal multi-lip algorithm so I have low likelihood of
high cortisol but I have increased risk of low testosterone and I also have
(55:46):
reduced uh TSH levels so it's nice to be able to see what your genetic Tendencies
are and here are some of the Snips that were used in the report there's a gastrointestinal protocol for which I'm
currently using a canab Omega and imun mod imun mod has a lot of naacal
glucosamine canab Omega has fish oils and CBD oil so here's a predict
(56:13):
predicted serotonin gut serotonin activity elevated gut serotonin so if
someone has let's say someone has chronic diarrhea right and they have predicted elevated gut serotonin activ
are you going to give them 5 HTP probably not because then they're going to have even more diarrhea sure they
(56:34):
might their mental health G give it to them sublingually rather than in a oral
Capsule that's gonna go to tummy that's right because a surprising a surprisingly little amount of it
actually gets out of the GI tract and goes to the brain um higher support for
acromania that's probably because I'm a fot two nonsecretor Le nonsecretor
(56:57):
status affects um diversity and a lot of other things in the microbiome lactose
intolerance I have the lactose intolerance genetics candida High candida Carriage I just did a microbiome
test and I don't have any candida because I know how to prevent its accumulation in the body so if uh if you
(57:19):
had candida it's a lot easier to get rid of it if you know which Pathways to you
know to work on gluten sensitivity anyway there's a bunch of these uh there's one for mental health there's a
methylation one um there's one sounds like very very good and we're going to
put this in the show notes so people can have access to you and to some of these
(57:42):
tests so if somebody wants to get in touch with you Val how do they do it oh
they would just uh send an email to genetic wellbeing gmail.com okay and then we would order
some of these uh designs for health tests or there's some other tests as well that
um there's a genomic Spotlight there's also a genomic Insight test and there's
(58:06):
a lot of them everybody uh eventually settles on what they want to do so we figure out what
their goals are you know what they want to spend people are on a budget I would say just
get the labs through your doctor uh or I could order them some discount Labs you
know just BAS basic Labs you know cortisol sex
(58:30):
hormones cholesterol blood sugar A1C you know calcium sodium you know all the
standard cbcs and then maybe like a a low-level genetic test that wouldn't be
too expensive people who want to spend a little bit more money you can get just
an obnoxiously good amount of information for you know maybe a thousand bucks or two you could really
(58:52):
really get to the root cause of uh pretty much anything and for very ill people and I would say
your chronic relapsers your person who's gone from program to program to program
it might be worthwhile investing in some of this to actually identify the
underlying biochemical brain chemical reasons for this right right
(59:17):
exactly that about that about says it well Val thank you so much this has
been very Illuminating um it certainly answered some of my questions about some
of these genes and how we identify them and what to do about them and I so look
forward to seeing you at the conference in May you got it it it will be my
(59:38):
pleasure I I will see you there probably before as well probably before as well yeah we we've got some things we're
planning exactly all right well I really wish you well and thank you thank you Happy New Year Happy New Year to you
thank you for tuning in to power up recovery with nutrition I'm Christina velot your host and I hope today's
(01:00:01):
episode has inspired and equipped you with new insights and tools to support
your recovery Journey or practice if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe
leave a review and share it with others who could benefit from the knowledge shared here stay connected with us for
more episodes filled with practical advice expert wisdom and inspiring
(01:00:26):
recovery stories remember nutrition is a powerful tool in mental health and
relapse prevention power up your recovery today I'm Christina velock and
I'll see you next time
welcome to power up recovery with nutrition it is time to make nutrition
(00:06):
part of the conversation I'm your host Christina velock and I'm so glad you're
here did you know that it's our brain's job to allow us to cope with stress
gracefully but to do that it needs to be fed optimally have you ever wondered why so
many committed people relapse or maybe even die why so many people on
(00:31):
psychotropic medication still feel lousy and still have cravings What if the missing piece is
food the right food what if the right nutrients like amino acids or even
eating protein every 4 hours could actually balance your brain chemistry
and your mood without medication and support lasting recovery in this podcast
(00:57):
we explore the powerful connection between feeding your brain well mental health relapse and recovery from
addiction we will share insights from experts inspiring recovery stories and
practical strategies you can use today whether you're in recovery a health care
professional or someone passionate about emotional well-being this show is for
(01:22):
you let's dive in and discover how fueling your body and brain with the
right food the right vitamino acids and other key nutrients can fuel your
transformation today welcome welcome to another episode of
Power Up recovery with nutrition I am Christina velock your
(01:47):
host and today we're talking about the amazing world of genetics and
neutrogenia and epigenetics we'll explain all those terms in a minute
and how they can impact and sometimes even drive mental health issues and
addiction disorders and therefore when addressed effectively using
(02:14):
nutrition this is where the neutrogenia comes in how we can positively and in a
very precise directed way impact your recovery Journey we're going to
introduce B prar today Val welcome so much for being on
our show and thank you so much for agreeing to speak at our conference in
(02:39):
Columbus in May oh uh thank you very much the the pleasure is all mine I'm very much
looking forward to it and uh I'm really glad to be here with you
today so can you tell us a little bit about you your expertise and what brought you to this
amazing speci specialty oh um sure so I'd always been
(03:04):
interested in health and nutrition uh I grew up in Los Angeles and um I was
introduced to some alternative medical and alternative Wellness principles back
in the 90s uh eventually I went to school for it I went to University of Illinois and I got uh my bachelor's and
(03:25):
Masters in nutrition now I'm working on a doctoral program um at the University of
Bridgeport and uh one of my uh focuses is actually uh neurotransmitters and
some things in the uh in the addiction and mental health space I am currently
um the genomics neogenomics consultant at designs for health it's a wellness
(03:50):
neutral company they used to do just supplements but in the last um in the
last couple years they've gone into the testing uh space as well so they have different
types of tests because uh in order to know what is best for you as far as
Foods supplements lifestyle then knowing
(04:13):
Labs you know microbiome metabolomics genomics really you can
fine-tune um your Wellness protocol so I've been doing a little bit of that Consulting with a few companies okay uh
doing a little research and uh just trying to help as many people as I can and however long I'm here for that's
(04:34):
amazing we're really talking about Precision medicine aren't we which a lot of people call the future of healthcare
yeah that really is true um medicine used to be uh quite
imprecise I mean to the point where doctors would uh uh taste a patient's
urine just to see if it's sweet to know if someone had diabetes we're talking many many decades ago of course now
(04:59):
we've come a long way but in my opinion even 10 20 years from now we're going to
look back on 2024 and say hey we were in the Stone Age back then that's how far I
think we're going to be uh advancing uh in the coming years and
decades well I think so I heard Dr Daniel aan speak recently about how
(05:24):
tragic it is that Psychiatry is still really in the dark Pages because again
it guesses it doesn't look it doesn't take off the hood and actually look into
the engine itself to see what's wrong and then they wonder why they have to move somebody from one medication to
(05:45):
another to another because they're not getting the results they want it's incredibly
imprecise yeah absolutely and the field of Psychiatry is imprecise for several
reasons um um I would say one major reason is there's no strong financial
impetus to do more natural medicine Andor preventive uh research so if
(06:14):
you're Pharma company can profit a billion dollars off of a drug uh that
will help reduce symptoms they'd rather do that than figure out what the actual
problem is because then you would get off of them completely like for example um I did some uh I did some
research into uh sales and uh marketing of mental
(06:41):
health uh Pharmaceuticals in the US last year and I think if you if you look at
all drugs prescribed if you take away uh medicine for high blood pressure
which doctors almost forc people to be on hey you're going to die and if take away insulin right which also like you
(07:03):
could die right if you don't have if you're a type 1 diabetic or if you have very severe type 2 diabetes if you take
away those just those few essential medicines guess what the number one most
prescribed medicine in America is ader Aderall oh my goodness proac is
high up there too and so is so is Rin and you know all those
(07:27):
ceraline and then you get later on down the line you get benzo diazines and some other ones but but really um
snris ssris and SN ssnr those three are really really
really highly prescribed so then the question begs why do you need a
(07:49):
norepinephrine or a dopamine reuptake inhibitor when you can just increase
dopamine or maybe increase the health of the cell
um you know of all your cellular membranes with Omega-3s and some other
things um maybe you can inhibit the genes like
(08:10):
CT that break down dopamine to increase it naturally and there are even natural
supplements that also reduce re-uptake of some of these neurotransmitters so
why not just do it naturally right well that's because there's no billion dollars you can't I mean I can go buy a
Year's worth of five HTTP for like a hundred bucks you know you could and probably St
(08:36):
John's wart too which that's that wonderful you know reup St John's word yeah St John's word really really really
has um great effects on some people I remember a couple years ago I think I
bought 40 years worth of vitamin D for 40 bucks so you know if you if you uh if
you look at the numbers then it starts to begin to make sense you know what's
(09:01):
the prime directive well for a for a corporation that has some ethics it
would be make money and help people right but for a corporation that let's say is run by uh not very ethical people
then the prime directive is to make money and they don't really care if they help people as long as they look like
(09:22):
they're trying to help or they sort of help then um then that's okay with them
but obious viously it's not okay with us and it's not okay with people in general so that's the whole that's part of the
whole process of waking up people are waking up now they're like wait a minute you know I thought that was just uh some
crazy Theory but now it's actually true oh yeah well yeah you know the biggest U the biggest payouts the biggest uh uh
(09:50):
crimes the biggest uh civil lawsuits unfortunately have been against
pharmaceutical companies so they haven't well and that's why this podcast is
titled power up um recovery with nutrition because my goal and I think
yours is as well is to empower the general public with this
(10:14):
information so that none of us are dependent upon um Pharmaceuticals or
psychiatrists to repair and support our brain function and therefore by by
repairing and supporting brain function improving mood improving Behavior
(10:36):
improving addiction treatment and recovery and thriving as human
beings right yeah it's really important um long-term
long-term uh good health and improved outcomes uh I think would help
everybody and if we if we focus
(11:00):
on um the positives and not necessarily the negatives I think we'll be able to
do even better so I'm not really I'm not really against um pharmaceutical companies
there are some drugs that I think are great and they work and and they save lives yeah and they save lives so even
(11:21):
even things like uh you know uh Aderall riddlin Prozac Zoloft uh in certain
segments of the population based on genetics U something like that
temporarily could you know really impact uh someone's health so I'm not really against that however uh if you look at
(11:46):
the actual State of Affairs the State of the Union so to speak
today in theory doctors temporarily prescribe benzos temporarily prescribe
SSR temporarily prescribe this or that and then it just becomes you just keep taking it right or temporarily prescribe
(12:07):
Suboxone and methadone which is how they were originally designed to be
shortterm detox supporters the problem is is is nobody was working on
rebuilding neurotransmitter systems so you get a heroin onto Suboxone and then
they try to pull people off Suboxone and the Brain goes crazy and so do people because their
(12:32):
neurotransmitters are still very very depleted that the brain cannot function
without that type of support as we both so well know once you bring in that
neurotransmitter support um with def phenoline with um
all the aminos to rebuild PC which is the precursor to our
(12:55):
endorphins and etc etc now the brain is getting what it needs and once it gets
what it needs people can come off Suboxone they can come off methadone they can come off these other drugs
because the brain is is functioning you know an analogy Val short story I had a
(13:16):
client come to me who said she was going to need years of emotional um of
counseling for her emotional eating that she was a compulsive overeater for 30
years turned out she was eating potato chips Non-Stop and her that's another problem
so yeah in her 3-day food diary this woman was eating potato chips vanilla ice cream and had exactly two deep fried
(13:44):
uh chicken legs in the entire three-day span and my heart broke for her and I
said look I'm not going to take anything away from you but let's just add a few things would you be okay with adding a
few things so we added 80 gram of protein 20 gram every 4 hours and nine
servings of fruits and vegetables because my theory was that her brain was trying to make up in quantity of potato
(14:10):
chips what it was missing in nutrients yeah absolutely that next week
that woman came in radiant Bell she had not had one potato chip nor one bowl of
ice cream the entire week she hadn't wanted it at all because her brain was now f finally being well
(14:31):
fed and that's what we do with these neutrals yeah that's that's a very good
point once you have the right the proper uh the proper nourishment macronutrients
micronutrients some different Botanicals uh you combine that with a little bit of exercise and Stress
Management all of a sudden it's a new person you've got a new person and these things can help you sleep better and so
(14:58):
sleep is is crucial as well because you know we don't believe in a onelegged sto it's not all brain chemistry we also
believe in you know healing trauma and lifestyle and spiritual growth and all
of that but we do have to feed the brain what it needs to function optimally for
everything else to work so given your expertise and
(15:23):
neutrogenia and epigenetics and if you could explain those terms
how can we use that to precisely determine what any particular person's
brain needs well that's a that's a very good question Christina and I think to start
off I would say what I do when I first uh get a
(15:48):
patient and they're having some symptoms where I think maybe there's some addiction issues or some uh
neurotransmitter col catac colomine issues uh the first thing I do is of course I
just talk to the person and just kind of get an idea of is this person having
more uh anxiety or more depression I like to I like to take things that are U
(16:17):
that are bodal kind of see along what part of the spectrum someone lies then
maybe I'll ask about activity level is this person completely sedentary a
little exercise exercise over day maybe over exercises
are they you know training for a marathon um I look at dietary
(16:39):
habits I try to um get an overall picture of nutriceutical
supplementation protein Powers bars Etc and then we dive into the biology of it
so we look at genomics I usually run a genomic panel um and then occasionally
(17:02):
uh I uh we do a stool sample a microbiome test and then a a metabolomic
which is a urine do at home tests all these tests do it do it at home really nice to do
and for neurotransmitters there are of course
several different you know besides endorphins you you also have a tryptophan and its
(17:28):
eventual conversion to 5htp and serotonin and melatonin then
you have the korine pathway which there are ways to there's like a korine ratio
and quinolinic acid ratio there's different types of ways to measure whether you're creating some toxic um
(17:52):
compounds in your brain or not so using simple metabolomics labs and genetics
you could figure figure out which way someone's going the same way if someone had some sex hormone issues where they
have like a beta versus Alpha um this is a issue that happens uh
(18:14):
for the conversion of DHT dihydro testosterone some people have like very
very uh you know Ying versus Yan so this is a this is a Yan very male DHT
dihydrate testosterone production or whether it's low they have the other U
they're high in the other pathway so you're able to figure that out with genomics um well you you are I want to
(18:39):
um interrupt you for a moment and just point out this chart that we use along
with everything you've mentioned to identify where people the symptoms of
neurotransmitter depletion people have because this chart will then allow us
okay people have symptoms of low seratonin or symptoms of low catac colomines either low dopamine or low you know
(19:04):
norepinephrine symptoms of low endorphins or Gaba and from this we can then say ah they're really low in
catacomb meines they have low energy they may have ADHD they may be craving
you know stimulants and buying ader all you know off the street I wonder
why I wonder why right and then we can
(19:29):
use all of the so we can use this to drive amino acid therapy and other
nutrient therapies but then the answer to the I wonder why question is all the
testing that you were talking about the the looking at the gut looking at the
different genetic Pathways in the production of um dopamine or the
(19:54):
production of neopine phrine or whether giving somebody Crypt ofan is going to
cause more toxicity in their brain or actually help them sleep better right
right yeah very good point and so uh all of these should be taken into
consideration by the practitioner and uh unfortunately current allopathic
(20:21):
medicine doesn't really teach too much maybe you take one course in nutrition and that's about it but I think the
field of functional medicine is really booming um like for example I gave a
gave a talk at a4m in Boston last month and uh there were there were dozens of
uh functional medicine practitioners U all types MDS NDS dos
(20:47):
chiropractors and uh had quite a few discussions so I'm really really looking
forward to how uh the overall uh subfield of preventive medicine evolves
over the next even even the next few months I mean there there are things that are happening at a much faster rate
than they used to have that's right that's right so if somebody has um
(21:14):
say a poly drug user you know they're just going to use whatever they can get their hands on to
relieve emotional pain how could you using some of your
genetic testing determine where the brain chemistry
(21:35):
issue is originating from we can identify the trauma issue we can identify all of that but it's all
mediated through the brain right some people can have a traumatic incident or
more and be really resilient and come through in flying colors and other
people struggle their whole lives and can't get over it and I believe it's because there's genetic blockages in
(22:01):
these Pathways in the brain can you speak to that oh yeah absolutely so
there are many genetic blockages and there are uh basically there's there are
several different types of issues the first would be if you have a blockage in
a pathway or network so for example let's say you're not really good at
(22:24):
breaking down dopamine so you have um you have uh very low maoa very low
comt and both of those are the main drivers of metabolizing dopamine right
so you may have high dopamine levels and part of that has uh will also impact
(22:47):
negative feedback loops because those are in place so you may have reduced
production of dopamine and inability to control
dopamine levels so there's not much to go anyway but then once it's there it
builds up really high and it goes high and low it's kind of like a high tide and low tide right um but you don't want
(23:13):
that because that can cause you know a lot of maybe mood swings me different
types of imbalances and the same thing if it's the other way let's say you're really
good at breaking down dopamine right so you break it down so well you have low
dopamine so now you have that's what Dr Blum was famous for is for figuring out
(23:36):
RDS reward um reward deficiency issues
and so that causes addictions and a whole slew of other issues depression Etc so the question is what which of
these Pathways the dopamine pathway the serotonin dopamine toep norepinephrine
conversion which of these does a person have and I could do a I could do a quick share screen to show kind of how this
(24:00):
works if you'd like are you are you able to see my screen we go into all of this in great detail in the courses offered
by the academy for addiction and Mental Health Nutrition ah my favorite chart so
this chart was uh was developed uh initially by um a very nice gentleman
(24:21):
named Peter Dr Peter diadamo creator of the blood type diet between him and his
dad James diadamo and he is a doctor but he's also a coder
so he wrote this program in Pearl back in 20145 it's called Opus 23 and this is my
genome so let's see here we can we can look up do a Power analysis and see just
(24:46):
how high or low every Gene is so we'll we'll zoom in here here's tryptophan right tryptophan is converted to 5htp
and that is affected by tph1 and two so tph1 function is a little bit uh below
optimal but as you can see here Christina tph2 is all the way down in the toilet for me so what does this mean
(25:10):
this means I have less five HTTP what do people with less 5 HTP have they have
less serotonin and less melatonin well no wonder it works really well for me so
if I want to know exactly which tph2 genes I have then I can actually click on the gene it'll tell me a little bit
about it I'm actually the the editor for those programs so a lot of the Snips you see here I'm the one who put them in in
(25:33):
addition to Dr diamo and another gentleman uh Dr Greenfield from the UK
so I can see exactly which Snips I have and then I if I want to click on the
snip I can find out like for example this one's associated with Heroin addiction another snip might be
associated with uh increased chronic fatigue fibromyalgia early onset OCD
(25:58):
reduced vascular endothelial growth factor increased stomach cancer ulcerative colitis etc etc but the other
Al linked to obesity waist circumference Bell's paly so there are different uh
benefits and drawbacks to each snip each gene and also bh4 production and
(26:19):
MTHFR affects neurotransmitter creation or
manufacturing of it and if we look all the way on the left side of the screen El tyrosine eventually is converted to
elopa and by virtue of DDC finally ends up as a dopamine so you have tyrosine
(26:40):
and you have tryptophan all end up with serotonin or dopamine which then get
broken down by dbh the maos and compt or comt right so it's nice to see which
Pathways uh people who have low dopamine but high energy like the Ty typical adht
ADHD person that you would Envision they would have very high dopamine beta
(27:05):
hydroxy a and they have very low maoa so then dopamine turns into norepinephrine
and then just sits there so you have low dop low dopamine and you have high norepinephrine and
epinephrine it's bad combination yeah that's a very very ADHD
combination so if I look at this there's no impulse control yeah not much impulse
(27:29):
control and there are some other genes too that also play a factor but this is one of the these are uh like the main
sets of Pathways for it so basically if somebody comes in with a mental health issue and I look at their genomics and
then I run their metabolomics urine test it's I mean I don't want to say that I
do this but it's almost like I don't even need to ask them what the problem is I kind of already suspect it you know
(27:55):
just because I've seen it over and over done I mean I've done hundreds and hundreds of these analyses on people so
the same things keep coming up so it's it's pretty uh it's pretty evident when that happens sure and just looking at
this for instance you'll know then that you want to give somebody 5 HTP rather
than tryptophan because tryptophan might have a really hard time making it to
(28:21):
5htp and it's going to be a lot more likely than to go down some of these other Pathways that's exactly right yeah
that's exactly right and I also do um some confirmation analysis and also
other other uh types of mental health analysis with the other program I'm working on
(28:42):
which is this one uh this program is called self decode and I'm actually
working with um the primaries in both companies to uh to do a joint venture
sort of like a a little uh um participation behalf of both companies
to create a new test so we're working on some new things right now that'll probably be launched uh sometime in
(29:10):
spring or summer so St stay tuned for that one but uh the thing I like about
self decode is it looks at U many different types of uh
biomarkers like for example in the biohacker Hub app so to speak of the
program you can look up and see if you have a high or low phase one detox so
(29:34):
phase two detox and uh compare the two so phase one detox of course is sip 1 A1
sip 1 A2 you know all the major ones sip 2d6 all the main liver enzymes so here I
think I helped um I was on a two or three person team to develop this uh
it's either this one or the other one the detox and there's a few of the panels cool so here is an incomplete
(30:03):
list of the 32 variants I think they list up the 2025 of them so you can see
here sip 21 there's several Snips there and there's your sip 1b1 there's the 1
A2 there's the 2d6 I'm sure 1 a1's hanging out somewhere over here if it's not listed and these these sip jeans
they regulate the breakdown of your psychotropic medications as well as other toxins in the blood don't they oh
(30:29):
yeah like sip 2d6 I think sip 2d6 metabolizes some obnoxiously High number
like 25% of all drugs I mean it's just it's just ridiculous um just how impactful it is
to know hey I'm really high on Nat 2 I'm low on sip 2d6 I have high sip uh you
(30:51):
know 19 etc etc there's so many of these um so for example where some of those
like um genom mind some of those other genetic tests that psychiatrists are using to determine what might be the
best psychotropic medication choice for a patient or why the meds just aren't
working or creating all of these horrific side effects exactly so here
(31:16):
for example so this snip if you have if you have both copies of the AAL which
15% of people are CT heterozygous so I guess a lower percentage would be
TT but if you have that you are sixfold
more likely to have side effects if you switch anti-depressants sixfold more that's
(31:43):
600% that is a huge number if some snip had even a 20% increased risk would be
significant right and this is 600 so yeah you can see just from just from a
simple ad hoc exploration and Analysis of just one snip in one gene uh is very
impactful for improving not only short-term symptoms but getting to the
(32:07):
root cause of whatever issue or illness or it's usually a combination of issues
that's leading to the symptoms and that's that's the beauty of a highlevel
deep dive neutrogenia I can look up someone's tnf
wait could could you go back to that chart again that you were showing us of all of the
(32:31):
different um Snips and the different um Pathways that one yes because you
know so many people have heard about
MTHFR and but they don't really understand what it is or why it matters
but their doctor May say to you say to them oh you have MTHFR and so they come to me or one of
(32:55):
my trained coaches and say I have MTHFR and I we say well you have one two
three or all four of the potential Snips and they
look at us blankly and say I don't know right that this is a problem where
(33:19):
um a lot of the medical professionals actually may not understand some of these distinctions
themselves but it actually matters for for those in our audience who have heard
about MTHFR could you speak to that a little bit and how it impacts mental
health and therefore addiction oh of course absolutely and
(33:44):
how we might want to address it um you know n nutritionally oh yeah um so
MTHFR is of course very relevant for um for a lot of different health aspects
one of which is uh mental health but there are a lot of other things too uh one of the
(34:05):
most common uh and well researched aspects of different MTHFR genetics is
uh homosysteine and cardiovascular health one of the biggest problems is that people with homozygous MTHFR
mutation especially both of the big ones the 1133 and those are those people are
(34:28):
usually have reduced methylation and it connects with
other genes in those same Pathways and networks for methylation and we'll look
at in a minute we jump just for a secx so yes we if
(34:51):
people are under methylators they are much more likely to not be making
not be turning the amino acids into the neurotransmitters right because in the
pathway that turns tyrosine into dopamine and neurin that turns 5htp into
(35:13):
serotonin we actually need enough methyl groups running around to make that
happen and that's can be one reason why amino acids don't work and a huge reason
why psychotropic medic may not work that that's exactly right
and uh there are some doctors that min minimize the effects of MTHFR they say
(35:38):
oh genetics that's just Hocus Pocus there's not enough research and they say
the same thing about tph2 Snips they say the same thing about DDC maoa
CT uh even pnmt dbh all of these and you know what by
themselves these researchers these critics are absolutely correct by themselves they have a small impact not
(36:03):
really a huge deal however and there's a big however if you combine several of
them in a row so if you have low tph2 low DDC low maoa now all of a
sudden you have systemic blockages in Pathways and networks and that can
become a bigger problem it's the same thing with anything else if you just look at glyphosate glyphosate is a
(36:30):
little bad for you but it's not horribly bad for you and they did test after test study after study and they're showing
yeah glyphosate is a little bad but you know what when I eat um when I eat some
corn chips I'm not just getting glyphosate I'm getting glyphosate and
about another couple hundred other other chemicals some of which have been in the soil for decades like DDT some of which
(36:55):
are new some of which are not that persistent others of which are very precis and they're going to be in there
for decades and when you combine all of those it becomes incredibly incredibly
bad for you very delerious to our health effects and the same thing can be said
for vaccines every vaccine has been studied very very closely by themselves and no
(37:19):
vaccine is like really really bad for you right there are benefits you get antibodies to certain diseases but when
you have the entire schedule pumped and all at the same time then the question is okay well there's obviously something
going on I'm not saying all vaccines are good or all vaccines are bad but certainly uh the schedule should
probably be looked at right we should analyze it and that's another problem that I see um there's a big there's a
(37:45):
big Push by um Pharma subsidized entities organizations and Pharma
themselves to to call anyone that questions anything that they don't want
questioned crazy or not smart yeah or sensationalist
or fake so I don't think that's a really good approach I think a good approach is to
(38:10):
be to have healthy skepticism and have an open discussion and not uh not censor people
right so absolutely and and it seems to me that with this VX conversation right and you just said it
with the schedule where you know a young child is getting exposed or even
somebody going into the military is being exposed to all of these vacines
(38:35):
all at the same time it seems to me we could go back to that um list of cyp sip
variants and the detoxification Pathways and I think that every baby should be
given a full genetic test at Birth and their detoxification pathway should be
(38:57):
be analyzed as to whether that child is capable of
detoxifying a variety of vaccines and everything in the vaccine all at the
same time or if there are children because of their genetic Pathways and
their detoxification systems are at really high risk for getting overloaded
(39:21):
and therefore really really sick we know that not all children get really sick the question is why why if you look at
these Snips they can tell you exactly why yep so for example I ran I ran a
simple uh search in the uh program literature for pusis right whooping cuff
(39:45):
and there is a gene called esr1 estrogen receptor one which actually interacts with
CT and people who have mental health people
who have the teal or especially both copies of the teil have increased risk of
prusis and there are several genes and Snips that are associated with whether
(40:07):
it's prusis diptheria any type of mencal diseases a
Hebb all of these so you can tell but look at that V we also have increased
schizophrenia increased alcohol intake increased depression increased
postpartum depression increased mood and Sleep Disorders they all run together yep
(40:32):
exactly and and a lot of these have to do uh it's because of uh uh increased
estrogens and reduced testosterone in some people and if you look at the other copy if you have the sealil what does
that have that have incre that has increased testosterone so there's a testosterone to estradiol connection and
(40:53):
U they're obviously neurotransmitter is isues because as I said comp and esr1 are very
connected um so this is one way to figure out what you have issues with and what
are potential like are there increased side effects from one particular vaccine
which very much speaks to your point that you made a couple minutes ago really you know compared to3 $40,000
(41:21):
that people drop at Cleveland Clinic Mayo Clinic for various issues genetic
testing is it's just a few hundred bucks it really should be conducted on everyone it's probably what 3 or 4% of
the cost of a birth nowadays so we're really talking about very very you know
(41:42):
Pennies on the dollar uh for potentially very important information and not to
get too off topic here but yeah that that goes in any field so if you look at any one thing you zoom out and you see
the entire system or network um then all of a sudden drugs supplements lifestyle
(42:03):
different types of decision decisions like that become a lot more
clear here's one oh go ahead go on go on oh I wanted to show you um one of the um
hold on see if I could find it here well while you're looking I've got
(42:24):
a question I've heard that there are some genetic sniff that actually determine to what degree you might get
or be affected by PTSD is that one of the serotonin
Snips oh yeah uh PTSD there's actually uh there's
actually a PTSD algorithm based on very large numbers of
(42:49):
genetic uh test that were done on people it's called These are called gases
genome wide Association studies and PTSD um there's an algorithm
available that looks at about half a million Snips and gives you a very very
precise uh Point like how much PTSD do you have so it's called psychological
(43:15):
trauma in this H particular test and I'll zoom in a little bit here
so for me personally I am on the 22nd
percentile so I don't have a lot of PTSD genetics I'd probably I probably
wouldn't be here if I did just because of just the different things I've seen in my life uh women are
(43:43):
generally a little bit more prone to PTSD than men uh part of that has to do
with estrogen and testosterone ratios uhuh and that even happens like
even in a cycling woman like during a part of the menstrual phase when she has
higher testosterone just mentally right she is
(44:06):
calmer less phased and then and then when that the shift happens with the LH
and FSH then progesterone of course changes and there's more estrogen and
less testosterone and then there's just like a greater imbalance right that um she's
more emotional things affect her more and that's one reason why you really
(44:29):
need to look at your genetics because you don't have to have a bunch of PMS
you can actually uh I mean I'm not saying you know take a bunch of drugs and narcotics to combat it but you can
gently do certain things to uh certainly to to balance out those ratios between
the different hormones you know PMS is a major risk factor for relapse in women
(44:57):
it's the highest uh risk time during the month for relapse as well as mental
health issues as well as being arrested for Crime W I did not know that makes
sense yeah we have found that simple interventions such as eating protein
every three hours rather than every four hours to stabilize blood sugar taking
(45:20):
extra 5htp because as estrogen drops at the
end of the month so serotonin as progesterone drops at the end of the
month so does Gaba so by bringing in extra Gaba or Gaba support bringing in extra 5 HTP or
even St John's wart it evens everything out taking an
(45:46):
phytoestrogenic herb like black kohos can modulate estrogen and
again people just women just like stabilizing again and feel normal again
and their relapse risk drops down to zero right isn't that
(46:07):
something so uh so here are the recommendations based on this one program for PTSD let's say I have some
PTSD symptoms uh the first recommendation is psychotherapy and the recommendations
are listed in order of uh evidence and impact so that would be one of the one
of the more significant ones but there's no there's no nutrients there uh no so
(46:33):
this is divided into supplement dietary and lifestyle so as far as supplements
Omega-3s are the highest ranked DHA allinine NAC deserene
carnosine um notice how amino acids are missing in here that's just because of
the lack of evidence uh the lack of the high level evidence unfortunately that's
(46:58):
required by they just not done the research they've just not done the research
because practice I can tell you exactly what amino acids help my clients with
PTSD and we'll be uh and the new programs that I'm working on will have
those so all all of our inputs will be in here as as we launch those I know
(47:21):
what you mean and uh and I'm I'm uh excited to see what uh What Becomes of
that as we you know as we evolve in that in that realm that domain so uh this is
essentially how this works the other one I wanted to show you is really cool medical reports so this one actually
(47:44):
shows you risk of pretty much all diseases based on hundreds of thousands of these genomewide Association studies
so the the triangle shows the highest risks that would would be a cataracts
prostate cancer seizures bipolar and Celiac then you have the
octagons and the Octagon exclamations are increased risk so that's going to go
(48:09):
you know heart failure liver failure enyma Etc and then you get this you this
is me yeah ouchy and here are the check marks so
the uh the square or the diamond check marks is average risk so you know
systemic sclerosis mythia gravis I just don't have the genetics for it I can
(48:32):
still get it but it'd be milder and it would be a reduced chances of me even getting it right like for example um I
think I had schizophrenia you have more chance to getting bipolar disorder but less chance of becoming schizophrenic
exactly and then if you go all the way down to the bottom see there's heart attack liver sclerosis uh dementia if you go down to
(48:55):
the bottom you get to the green and so the green is all the diseases that
you're actually protected from so mon neuropathy I'm actually I have a reduced
than average odds of getting it and if I did get it maybe it's milder
Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma probably not going to die of that diverticulitis rheumatic heart disease
(49:19):
thyroid cancer bladder cancer etc etc so you could see how knowing your genetics
it's really important um here's the longevity screener this this is the last one I'll show you before we go into the
other stuff so this one looks at your genetics and it also asks you a
questionnaire about family history personal history where your grandparents were born Etc and this is a very
(49:44):
accurate longevity screener so lifetime risk of prostate cancer and bipolar is
highest for me this is 34 Times Higher this one's three times Tire none of the others usually people have like three or
four items in the red but I only have two you only have two so what are you doing to prevent your risk of bipolar
(50:07):
disorder what do you mean bipolar disorder trying to be funny um when uh
sometimes patients they have like depression and I tell them I'm sorry well that's really sad and then they start
laughing so you have to have a little fun or else you know you're going to go crazy with this stuff exactly
EXA yeah it's true with bipolar I uh if something requires my attention I can go
(50:32):
from 0 to 60 in about two seconds however I keep it very controlled right
um as opposed to wild animals you know we have Homo sapiens right we think and we we have feelings and we understand
things exactly and we can make we can make decisions so what what are you
using any neutrals to support your brain around the bipolar disorder risk
(50:57):
um well I haven't really I haven't really had a lot of uh bipolar Tendencies although I could totally see
it in me um so I haven't really done too much of that for me ADHD has been more
of an issue ah okay ADHD canot run
together right right uh so I do a lot of U different amino acids um NAC I use
(51:23):
anasl fish oils some B vitamins uh lithium and some
other things so I uh I self-medicate intelligently based on genomics and
metabolomics but the important thing is if you take away what you're probably
going to die of then you're not going to die of that or there's a less reduced chance of it so I like to think of the
(51:49):
analogy of um a bunch of grim reapers sitting around at a long table and then
the uh the process cancer Grim Reaper as well I can't kill Val because he's taken all this stuff to uh improve his
prostate health so he he's not going to get that so then the heart disease guy goes well I can't take Val out because
he's taking all this stuff and he's doing well and you know so basically they're just sitting around a table for
(52:14):
decades and decades waiting for someone to finally uh get me so it's going to take a lot longer you see if you have
Vision yeah so that's that's one of the ways you can um improve your odds of uh of
having a good health uh not just lifespan but Health span yeah yeah the
(52:38):
ideal uh life is you know a long fruitful life and then you're not sitting around in a hospital for years
or decades right being sick you maybe like everything goes
out right or being depressed or being so anxious you can't leave your bedroom
right right and if and if you're if you're so depressed or anxious or you
(53:00):
have OCD or phobias or panic disorder or anything like that and it affects you uh
significantly in some ways you've already died which is very sad and but in but the benefit of that is you may
have in certain ways already died but in actuality you're not dead you're alive so you can fix things and you can get
(53:22):
back to where you were uh before or even better like for example right now um at the age of
50 I have uh better thinking than I did
when I was 20 or 30 in some aspects and I have a um better physical fitness in
(53:44):
some aspects than maybe 10 or 20 years ago because of different things that I'm doing uh with my body as far as you know
diet lifestyle supplements that I didn't know back then like for example
me too me too yeah like uh I was uh as a
kid I was chronically constipated I probably had significant IBS uh now I
(54:08):
don't have much of it at all and I don't have any constipation issues or any kind of issues like that at all and all of
that um is possible for almost anyone so it's it's really
nice to be able to uh to see that and then I wanted to show you um okay you can show us one more thing
because then we do have to wrap this up sure so this is a uh genomic Spotlight
(54:36):
sample report let me uh get it open so this is
a a genetic test that you can do at designs for health you could upload other programmatics to and the person
who wrote this is also Dr diamo he worked in conjunction with Dr David Brady to design genomic spot so here's
(54:57):
my genomic Spotlight and it kind of looks at different hormonal protocols
prostate Supreme libido stem these are different supplements that work based on
um recommendations made risk of prostate cancer exactly and that's that's one of
the things I do I try to think outside the box right and there are eight
(55:23):
categories in the test and I'm trying to to oh I I see
what's going on so the program froze a little bit there it goes now it's
working so this is the hormonal multi-lip algorithm so I have low likelihood of
high cortisol but I have increased risk of low testosterone and I also have
(55:46):
reduced uh TSH levels so it's nice to be able to see what your genetic Tendencies
are and here are some of the Snips that were used in the report there's a gastrointestinal protocol for which I'm
currently using a canab Omega and imun mod imun mod has a lot of naacal
glucosamine canab Omega has fish oils and CBD oil so here's a predict
(56:13):
predicted serotonin gut serotonin activity elevated gut serotonin so if
someone has let's say someone has chronic diarrhea right and they have predicted elevated gut serotonin activ
are you going to give them 5 HTP probably not because then they're going to have even more diarrhea sure they
(56:34):
might their mental health G give it to them sublingually rather than in a oral
Capsule that's gonna go to tummy that's right because a surprising a surprisingly little amount of it
actually gets out of the GI tract and goes to the brain um higher support for
acromania that's probably because I'm a fot two nonsecretor Le nonsecretor
(56:57):
status affects um diversity and a lot of other things in the microbiome lactose
intolerance I have the lactose intolerance genetics candida High candida Carriage I just did a microbiome
test and I don't have any candida because I know how to prevent its accumulation in the body so if uh if you
(57:19):
had candida it's a lot easier to get rid of it if you know which Pathways to you
know to work on gluten sensitivity anyway there's a bunch of these uh there's one for mental health there's a
methylation one um there's one sounds like very very good and we're going to
put this in the show notes so people can have access to you and to some of these
(57:42):
tests so if somebody wants to get in touch with you Val how do they do it oh
they would just uh send an email to genetic wellbeing gmail.com okay and then we would order
some of these uh designs for health tests or there's some other tests as well that
um there's a genomic Spotlight there's also a genomic Insight test and there's
(58:06):
a lot of them everybody uh eventually settles on what they want to do so we figure out what
their goals are you know what they want to spend people are on a budget I would say just
get the labs through your doctor uh or I could order them some discount Labs you
know just BAS basic Labs you know cortisol sex
(58:30):
hormones cholesterol blood sugar A1C you know calcium sodium you know all the
standard cbcs and then maybe like a a low-level genetic test that wouldn't be
too expensive people who want to spend a little bit more money you can get just
an obnoxiously good amount of information for you know maybe a thousand bucks or two you could really
(58:52):
really get to the root cause of uh pretty much anything and for very ill people and I would say
your chronic relapsers your person who's gone from program to program to program
it might be worthwhile investing in some of this to actually identify the
underlying biochemical brain chemical reasons for this right right
(59:17):
exactly that about that about says it well Val thank you so much this has
been very Illuminating um it certainly answered some of my questions about some
of these genes and how we identify them and what to do about them and I so look
forward to seeing you at the conference in May you got it it it will be my
(59:38):
pleasure I I will see you there probably before as well probably before as well yeah we we've got some things we're
planning exactly all right well I really wish you well and thank you thank you Happy New Year Happy New Year to you
thank you for tuning in to power up recovery with nutrition I'm Christina velot your host and I hope today's
(01:00:01):
episode has inspired and equipped you with new insights and tools to support
your recovery Journey or practice if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe
leave a review and share it with others who could benefit from the knowledge shared here stay connected with us for
more episodes filled with practical advice expert wisdom and inspiring
(01:00:26):
recovery stories remember nutrition is a powerful tool in mental health and
relapse prevention power up your recovery today I'm Christina velock and
I'll see you next time
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