March 23, 2024 • 52 mins
Do your genetics really ditate your health, or are there other factors at play? Afterall, if you;ve got an illness, there's a good chance your doctor has just told you that it's genetic: everything from obesity, to diabetes and gut disease.
But this is all bullshit, and in this episode we're speaking with world renowned epigenetics expert Dr. Ben Lynch about the roles your genes really have and what you can do about it.
Topics Discussed:
- The roles of your gut microbiome
- How we all have weak links in our genes and
- How modern toxins and foods are exploiting these weaknesses to harm us
- What we can do to improve out genetic outputs and outcomes
- And how your genes are actually EMPOWERING, rather than giving you the problems your doctor keeps telling you they do
Are you ready to get help with your gut and reverse IBD? Join our community on Skool using this link below!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Josh (02:43.542)Ben, thanks for joining us.
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Dr. Ben Lynch (03:06.773)Awesome to be here, Josh.
Josh (03:08.486)I am stoked to have you on board. You know, I was thinking about you today actually, I got an entire box full of Seeking Health stuff. I just picked up, I love your products, I love your stuff. I've used it to completely eradicate my ADHD symptoms. Yeah, it's brilliant stuff and I'm sure we'll get into all these things. But before we dive into it, so I mean, before we get to the details, the nitty gritty, can you give us kind of a bird's eye view? So we often hear.
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:15.629)Hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:23.056)Oh nice.
Josh (03:35.594)about this gut-brain connection. I think it's really misunderstood and miscontextualized, if that's a word. Can you give us a high level bird's eye view of how the gut and the brain are connected?
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:47.721)Well...
Think of it this way, think of your mouth as a tube that ends at the bottom of your butt. So we know whatever you put in your mouth ends up going through the tube at the other end, and that tube is basically solid all the way through. It should not be, you should not be able to have any food or drink going out at all through that entire...
you know, tube and however many yards of, or meters or whatever distance you want to use of intestines and colon and all that. So, and, but there is a significant surface area and a lot of people equate. If you took the small intestine and you unfolded it and you took the amount of
Dr. Ben Lynch (04:49.507)which is hard for me to believe. It could cover the size of a tennis court.
Yeah, I'm thinking that doesn't make any sense. So they must be using some type of other thing. But the point is if, if we have this really compacted area that allows for absorption of nutrients or chemicals or toxins, um, or macro nutrients like protein, fats, and you know, carbs. Then, and that.
is essentially as large as a tennis court, that is getting into your blood and blood flows everywhere. So blood goes into your brain and they've also found that your lymph vessels go into your brain. So your immune system can get into your brain and a significant amount of your immune system is actually found in your gut. So there's a Galt immune system called Galt.
gut associated lymphatic something. What's that? I think you're right. Yeah, nailed it.
Josh (05:57.582)I think it stands for tissue. I think it's tissue. I think it's gut associated lymphoid tissue. I know guys as smart as you have trouble finding easy words, I get it. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (06:06.711)Appreciate that. So yeah, so you have a gut associated immune system and you have gut associated nutrients that your microbiome produce themselves. So bacteria create compounds. They create compounds that are good for us. They create compounds that are bad for us. And it also depends on, um, the food that you eat. It depends on the chemicals that you consume. It depends on the nutrients that you eat, you know, in herbs. Um,
And it depends on a lot of factors, but you are absorbing these compounds that the microbiome is producing and you have about five pounds of bacteria in your stomach or in your digestive systems at all times. And if you have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, you probably have even more. And, and with SIBO, you're also absorbing these water soluble B vitamins in high amounts. And so actually.
A doctor's, if they're astute or health professionals, generally speaking, if they see high levels of say vitamin B6 or high levels of B12 or high levels of folate, you know, they always say, are you supplementing with these? The question, that's fine. But another one should be, hmm, are you very sensitive to a lot of foods? Were you on probiotics for a long time? Is your gallbladder functioning well? How's your gut digestion and so on? Because
these bacteria produce these water soluble nutrients and you're absorbing them. And it can actually affect your blood work. So a it's gut brain connection is, is very, very huge. And there's actually probiotics, um, marketed and research to show how specific strains can lead to calm moods and specific strains can lead to more insane, uh, hyperactive moods like streptococcus. If you give.
a kid who's on the spectrum, uh, or extremely irritable, cranky kid, anyway, streptococcus strain back, you know, probiotic, a good commercial grade probiotic, they can turn into monsters and I've had it happen, um, multiple times with patients. So the gut brain connection is, is proven. There's no doubt. And, uh, it's a very, very important one to address.
Josh (08:27.374)Yeah, I think it's really interesting. We talk about foods and chemicals and I know today we have so much to address in the way of learning memory and focus and maybe it's part of it. You know, my youngest brother, he has Asperger's, he's 15 years old and any kind of food dye, red 40, red three, yellow number five, all those things, they set him right off. He's moody, he's irritable, he can't focus, he's hyperactive, it really messes with the brain.
Dr. Ben Lynch (08:43.521)Bye.
Dr. Ben Lynch (08:52.395)Yeah. So the food dyes, I forget what, uh, enzymes specifically. Um, but their food dyes affect. Like reuptake, uh, enzymes in the brain and another ones, I'm probably multiple. Um, so they, they definitely affect how our neurotransmitters are functioning. And so food dyes are, are really, really a problem and we need to be pulling them out and in Europe, they actually do pull them out. So.
(00:22):
If you look at an M&M's package in Europe, and you look at the food coloring label there compared to ours, they're very different.
Josh (09:30.122)It's interesting how different the food in Europe is compared to here. I mean, if you look at even something like Mountain Dew, they have, I forget the exact name of the chemical. Um, I want to say it's bromelain, but bromelain is a, uh, anti-inflammatory. Maybe it's tartrazine. It's used in fire retardants. And they put these crazy, is it tart? Yeah. They put all these crazy chemicals in the food, food dyes, food colorings, what, everything they make in the States compared. Look at French fries, right? You go to McDonald's or French fries, it's potato, whatever oil and salt.
Dr. Ben Lynch (09:42.863)Tartrazine.
Dr. Ben Lynch (09:46.855)Yeah, I think it's tartrazine.
Josh (10:00.018)Over here there's 17 ingredients in the french fries. You know, it's absolutely crazy. So let's talk about focus, learning and memory. What chemicals do we need to make these things happen? I realize these are really broad questions. So what chemicals do we need to make those functions function and what does your gut have to do with it?
Dr. Ben Lynch (10:02.959)Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (10:20.991)Yeah, so again, gut is your absorption machine. So if you are ingesting food, then you want to be absorbing the nutrients from that food, otherwise it's not doing very well for you. So let's talk about a medical condition that leads to problems. Celiac disease. Celiac disease is a condition where people
need to be avoiding gluten 100% of the time, all the time. And if they don't, that gluten causes a such amount of inflammation in their digestive system that it became, it becomes basically on fire and part of it melts away. It just goes away. And the part that goes away is contains a cell called enterocytes and there's other components in there too, but you really need those enterocytes
Dr. Ben Lynch (11:12.275)is known that ciliacs are deficient in vitamin B12, and they're deficient in other things as well. So if you are having focus and memory and learning issues, then perhaps you are eating inflammatory foods that are affecting the health of your enterocytes. And if that's happening, you can be deficient in a myriad of nutrients. And if you're deficient even in just vitamin B12,
that is going to be causing all sorts of neurological problems, not only in your brain, but in your fingers and legs and arms and toes. And you're going to start getting numb and peristeges and so on, but you need vitamin B12 to help synthesize and make dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. And these are really important for learning and memory and recall. Uh, and not only that, but mood, you know, having a healthy, stable mood. Um,
Another one is histamine. We have to have histamine in the right amounts. Histamine is negatively looked upon. And if you have, well, let's go back to the serotonin real quick. I want to hit this. Most serotonin is produced in our guts and serotonin is actually produced by our bacteria. And I would say about 95% of the serotonin
Well, 95% of the tryptophan that we absorb is used by our microbiome for various reasons. And that tryptophan can be making serotonin. And then we get it into our brain. And that is massive. And so if you have serotonin issues due to a microbiome that is not producing serotonin for you, you are going to have mood issues. And that's why they have probiotics that support that. I don't remember the exact strains. Otherwise, I would tell you.
Josh (13:01.29)They're probably called serotonin or mood boosting probiotics or something on the bottle anyway. Easy to find.
Dr. Ben Lynch (13:01.676)I'm sorry.
Dr. Ben Lynch (13:05.811)Yeah, exactly. They're out there and they're great. They help people. And so a sign of low serotonin too can be constipation. So if you're having constipation, then you might be having low serotonin levels in your gut. Also another sign that could be leading to is low histamine. So you could have low histamine and low serotonin and have constipation. And so if you supported
histamine producing compounds like kefir, you know, apple cider vinegar, you know, bone broth. I mean, all these things, cap, you know, what am I? God, what do you call that stuff? The cabbage, sauerkraut and kombucha. I mean, all these things are really popular these days and a lot of people are actually experiencing benefit from it. If I take a sip of kombucha, I can get, I can actually literally feel
Josh (13:52.918)or ferments and stuff, right?
Dr. Ben Lynch (14:04.703)my brain clear a little bit and I get a little bit of energy. If I drink too much, I get a headache and that's where that sweet spot is. So, histamine, low histamine, you're not going to be able to learn very well. You're going to be sleepy. You're not going to be focused, but if you have the right amount of histamine, you're going to be on point. You're going to be alert. You're going to be focused and you're not going to be sleepy. And actually on the back of antihistamine medications, you will see...
It'll say in small print, uh, caution when taking these, uh, do not drive heavy machinery, um, as it may cause drowsiness because his you need histamine to stay alert and you can't learn or focus if you're not alert. So that's a, those are two big neurotransmitters associated with learning and we haven't touched others.
Josh (14:54.922)Yeah, there's so many. I mean, histamine, you're right, they looked on very negatively. It's an allergy. It's this, it's that. You have mast cell activation syndrome, which is becoming more popular now. Those of you listening might know it as MCAS. And for me, I do have histamine intolerance for whatever reason. Maybe it's my gut inflammation. I did get a GI map done. I tested for a whole bunch of stuff. There was H. pylori, provatela, massive overgrowth of candida, all kinds of stuff, which can explain a lot of my issues.
But if I have histamine heavy foods, I get very flemmy, instantly very flemmy. I get really brain fogged and I don't feel very good at all. But they never talk about histamines being a necessary neurotransmitter for alertness, wakefulness, focus and concentration.
(00:43):
Dr. Ben Lynch (15:26.467)Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (15:38.859)and not only that, but it's a signaling molecule. So histamine can stimulate the release of various things. So and I don't remember offhand, but I'm just going to say I believe that histamine stimulates the release of things like dopamine from your brain. So neurotransmitters are stored in vesicles in your brain and they're stored there safely until they're needed and they're not needed
utilized. And whatever signals those are, will, you know, eventually occur and then those neurotransmitters will release. Let's say you have low histamine. Well, if you have low histamine, then even though if you have sufficient dopamine in your brain, and it's not releasing, because maybe the signal isn't there because low histamine is actually needed to release the dopamine, then that's going to be a problem. And that's one example, again, I don't know if I'm entirely correct on that, but I am correct that
neurotransmitters are stored in vesicles in order for them to be activated, they need to bind to receptors. And so various compounds in the environment, chemicals will bind to these receptors and block their activation. For example, organophosphates are a huge problem for acetylcholine receptors. So organophosphates will bind to acetylcholine and acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter really important for learning.
focus, memory and recall and dreaming as well. So if you have, if you're consuming non-organic, conventional foods, especially, I forget which ones they are, but there was a list I just talked about. Do you remember, I just gave you that my presentation, you remember what foods were really high, basil is really high in organophosphates? There was some other ones.
Josh (17:33.418)Yeah, those were details I didn't retain. There were so many in there. I mean, I saw stuff with choline and phosphatidylcholine. There was a lot of salmon and other dark fruits and fatty fish and stuff that was in there as well. Let me see.
Dr. Ben Lynch (17:37.049)Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (17:40.513)Right.
Dr. Ben Lynch (17:45.399)Mm hmm. Yeah. So organophosphates are high in non-organic foods. So if you're consuming these, they're binding here's acetylcholine receptors, which prevent your acetylcholine from binding. Remember, neurotransmitters have no effect on your body at all unless they bind to receptor. So if you eat, let's say you love pesto and you have a whole bunch of basil and it's non-organic
You say, God, I feel really stupid today. My recall is bad. My, my learning isn't on point. What is going on? And Pesto's great. Pesto's healthy. But if it's not organic, you just consumed a ton of organophosphates. All right. You consumed a shit ton of organophosphates and your acetylcholine is trying to dock the receptor for you, but it can't because your organophosphates there. So, um,
Josh (18:29.73)You can say shit on my podcast. That's okay.
Dr. Ben Lynch (18:42.143)And not only that, but the organophosphates affect your microbiome. So, and Roundup kills your bifidobacteria. So people say glyphosphate, but let's, let's just call it like it needs to be, it's Roundup. And, uh, so, you know, there's, there's so many factors. And part of the reason I'm kind of going this and that way is, is I'm, there's, there's so many important points to address. This is like, where do you, where do you go? Um, but the.
Josh (19:05.187)Yes.
Dr. Ben Lynch (19:09.759)I would just say right now, it's the fundamentals. You know, eat like a pilgrim would 100 years ago. And you're probably pretty good, Jay.
Josh (19:17.76)It's kidding.
Yeah, I mean, for the most part, it's getting scarier and scarier. I mean, if you look at farmed fish versus wild caught, for example, the ingredients and then they put food dye in it, they put dioxins and mercury and all kinds of antibiotics in the feed. I mean, arguably, farmed fish is as toxic as licking the inside of a dumpster in New York City. Like it's just, it's really toxic stuff. And now they've approved lab grown meat, artificial 3D printed meat.
for consumption in the US and it's coming to Canada.
Dr. Ben Lynch (19:51.883)Yeah. And, and, and Bill Gates and his cronies have invented some spray that you can put on fruit to keep them, uh, more shelf stable for a longer period of times, and you cannot peel off this, um, stuff it's just sprayed on and you can't wash it off either. Um, so that's no good.
Josh (19:59.466)Appeal.
Josh (20:13.738)Yeah, they call it appeal and I think it's a play on words. Like it's got a great shelf appeal. It looks really good on the peel of the fruit. On the other hand, I think the irony is honest with the joke. If you think about aerobic or anaerobic, I'm thinking this is going to be a, or without the ability to peel it off. Like it is stuck there forever. This stuff it's, it's just, it's pretty nasty. What it comes from. It's all vegetables, oil source. And I think it's going to do some damage. We'll see in the next couple of years. So I do.
Dr. Ben Lynch (20:41.547)Well, and then what does that do to the soil? You know, we talk a lot about our own microbiome, which is essentially a fertile ground for growing things, and hopefully good ones and not candida and, you know, proteus and other things, but we definitely can do that. But if we are throwing away produce that contains this stuff that Gates and his cronies made into the ground, plus all this other garbage,
(01:04):
pesticides and herbicides and roundups and so on. What is that doing to the microbiome of the earth and the soil? And then if that's not healthy, then the soil that we're growing our food in, it's absorbing this stuff and we're eating it. And we're not eating nutrients because now the soils are so nutrient non-dense because there's no microbes in there that are actually producing the vitamins and minerals, or not minerals, but the vitamins anymore.
So, you know, soil is extremely important and it's not talked about enough. And a buddy of mine, Hendrika Straven is a, an expert on soil health and soil integrity and actually utilized his soil in my, my yard and he used compost tea and it's just amazing stuff. Um, but it's, it's something that's not talked about. And I'll just say that.
Josh (22:10.214)Yeah, it's a conversation topic I'd like to learn more about. You know, I've got Temple Grandin coming on next week. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her and her work. So Temple Grandin, she got very, very famous actually. She does work on autism. She's autistic herself, was born I think 1947, and she did all kinds of work on the cattle industry. She completely reinvented the entire cattle industry, the slaughter industry, all of that, and she's done Ted talks. You might know her if you pick up some of her stuff, but she's very well renowned in that industry.
Dr. Ben Lynch (22:18.488)Mm-mm.
Josh (22:39.722)And she's coming on to talk about cattle and farming and the land health with cattle and other farm animals and stuff on it versus not. But, uh, there's some guys I'm actually trying to get a hold of for farming and soil, like Joel Salatin, Jordan Rubin, a couple of those guys who specialize in biodiverse and completely regenerative farming, but that's a, another topic for another time. So we talked a bit about learning and memory. We talked about some of the chemicals. We talked about.
Dr. Ben Lynch (23:00.492)Yeah, yeah.
Josh (23:08.334)I mean, there's many, we can get phosphatidylcholine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, all these. We kind of touched on food and diet, but let's get into some of the things we see struggling or people struggling with day to day. The top two most common learning disabilities that I've seen in my practice, number one is going to be ADHD or ADHD or a non-diagnosed ADHD that happens to be brain fog and flightiness, the other being something like dyslexia. Let's talk about that.
I want to say is it a real diagnosis? I use air quotes because I see a lot of diagnosis simply being a word that describes the current state of affairs, not a permanent condition. So that being said, is ADHD in your opinion a real diagnosis? And if not, where does it come from and what can we do about it?
Dr. Ben Lynch (23:56.096)Well...
When I was a kid in school, ADHD was not a diagnosis. It didn't exist, as far as I know. And autism was also really, really rare. So, most labels are created by pharma to funnel people down a specific path for doctors to prescribe specific drugs.
Dr. Ben Lynch (24:31.147)That's essentially med school. Medical school is essentially here's how the body works for two years, you study that. Then for the next two years you learn how the body breaks. And then for the rest of your life you learn how to fix it, essentially. That's why they call it medicine practice because you're constantly trying to apply what you learned and then you're... Yeah, it's... Yeah, and that's another good point too.
Josh (24:52.73)Doctor of medicine. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (24:59.979)Medicine is not healthcare, it's actually sick care. It promotes sickness, and I'm sure you already resonate with that. My point is that ADHD, while I believe the symptoms of ADHD, meaning that you are hyperactive, you're not able to sit still and pay attention to people when they're talking, you interrupt constantly.
Josh (25:08.726)very much.
Dr. Ben Lynch (25:27.307)you're one of those people that are just constantly bugging and teasing people and you're getting a rise out of them because it makes a rise out of you. Um, you know, these, these types of things are happening all the time. So that type of behavior exists. Now, is that something that requires medication? Is it something that requires a medical label as ADHD? And do you say that, Oh, that person has ADHD?
that person is ADHD and having medical labels assigned to you can be, depending on how you want to perceive it, it can be damaging heavily to you, it could be motivating to you, and it could be also enabling you and saying, oh I have ADHD therefore I can't pay attention and therefore that's why I am who I am. Or it could be motivating and say, damn it.
I don't like having this label. Why am I feeling this way? What do I need to do to change it? And it could also be, damn, I thought I was fine. Now I have this label. Now the teachers don't like me. My parents are yelling at me and I have to be put on this medication. And you don't have the surrounding community support or the resources to understand that you actually can.
support it naturally and with your next meal, your next bite of food, the next activity that you do can support an improvement in your symptoms. So while I believe again ADHD symptoms exist, I do not like the label behind it and that actually ties into my exactly what my book is about dirty genes. A gene is simply a tool that your body uses to create
things. A gene has a job to do. Sometimes a gene has one specific job to do or a gene can actually have multiple different jobs to do. You have genes that produce histamine. You have genes that help carry your histamine around your body. You have genes which help bind histamine receptors. You have genes which help detoxify certain compounds like our kind of phosphates. You have 18,000 different genes in your human body and they have specific jobs.
Dr. Ben Lynch (27:53.023)and genes make enzymes typically, and these enzymes are the actual things that make the work, get the work done. So genes are the blueprint, the map of saying, okay, this is the blueprint of the enzyme that we need to build, and we're gonna build it, and here's the enzyme, and enzymes require vitamins and minerals, typically in order to function. Without vitamins and minerals, even if you have a healthy enzyme, it won't function.
and there's chemicals and things can also interfere with these enzymes so they also won't function even the vitamins and minerals are there so organophosphates for example and then if you have these enzymes and these genes not working very well you're going to get symptoms you're not going to be focused you're not going to be able to learn you're going to get bad grades in school you're going to get yelled at by your parents your teachers are not going to like you they're going to say you're a failure and it's a vicious cycle
(01:25):
And so dirty jeans is a concept that jeans do work and they can get dirty. And if they get dirty, you're going to get symptoms. If you clean them up, they're able to perform. If I spilled milk all over my keyboard right now, it would probably jam. And I will milk is a bad example. Let's say I had peanut butter and I had peanut butter on my fingers and I went to go type. Yeah. Right. But it's worse. Yes, but it's not going to ruin the keyboard.
Josh (29:09.062)I already know that is so much worse.
Dr. Ben Lynch (29:16.311)So I wouldn't have to throw it out. Maybe I would, but something is on my fingers where I'm trying to type and my fingers stick, honey. Honey, peanut butter sandwich. But if I cleaned off my fingers, then I can type just fine. So just think of your enzymes and your genes being covered with peanut butter and honey, and you just clean them off, then you're good to go.
So that's what I see ADHD. And there's gonna be moments in your day where you have ADHD symptoms. Not all day long, very rarely all day long are you gonna be on point. And there's gonna be moments where you're ADD, where you are just tired and you spent your entire day thinking and your brain doesn't have the resources to continue thinking because you already thought for four hours.
So if I'm on stage presenting to a group of doctors and I'm just all in the zone and I'm on, and I come home to my wife and my kids and I'm just drained because my brain has been on, you know, high mode for four hours lecturing to doctors about complicated stuff and answering questions and so on, my brain is used up. So now I kind of have an ADD type thing going on where
just I can't learn anything right now, my brain is done. So are you going to label with me ADD or the situation creates a lack of resources because I burned them all and now I need to replenish my brain. And does that also mean that I need to take a medication like Ritalin to stimulate my brain? Because now I'm brain tired and fatigued from lecturing for four hours. Or maybe I just need to rest and chill out and look at the sun or go swim or something else where it's...
is not requiring a mass amounts of cognitive abilities. And we're staring at our damn phones all the time, depleting our dopamine because we're staring at Instagram or TikTok all day long. And then you go to class and you're trying to learn, but you just blew your dopamine load on TikTok and Instagram. So you have finite resources in your brain. And the food that you eat, the sleep that you have or you don't have.
Dr. Ben Lynch (31:40.195)the community that is positive or negative around you. These are all things that either support or dirty your ability to focus and concentrate. And we all are on the spectrum of ADHD and ADD a few times a day. And some people are like that all day. And if you're like that all day, then yes, you definitely need some significant learning to understand why you're in that shape. And if you're
If you do the right things, you can snap out of it literally the next day or within, God, even 30 minutes if you have the right resources at your fingertips. And you're like, oh my God, that's how I should be feeling right now. And I'll give you an example if I may. Do you have any questions before I go to that example?
Josh (32:30.534)No, this is blowing my mind. This is brilliant. Keep going. I wouldn't dare slow you down, Ben.
Dr. Ben Lynch (32:36.1)Sounds good. I actually took some acetylcholine about acetylcholine support about 20 minutes before I got on just to put me in the...
Josh (32:44.238)I took a shot of B vitamins, I have a low liposomal, I took some lithium orotate and I took another folate as well and 250 milligrams of L-theanine. I'm rocking.
Dr. Ben Lynch (32:50.807)Now.
Yeah. See? Yeah. You got the perfect blend of a little stimulation, a little calming. Yeah. So you got to amplify yet, you know, kind of make it a little bit more timid. Um, tame. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Everybody's like, Oh, Torian stimulating. Actually, no, it's not. It's to offset that massive amounts of caffeine you just drank. Um, so I've got lots of.
Josh (33:05.862)That's why they put taurine in energy drinks, isn't it? Really to keep you from buzzing off your chair.
Josh (33:17.291)Hahaha
Dr. Ben Lynch (33:22.807)stories in terms of this, but I'll share one for my, uh, son. So my youngest son, he struggled in school basically his entire life. And, uh, I was terrified as a father and as a health professional, I'm thinking, what the hell is going on here? And, um, did all sorts of things, tried all sorts of supplements, did all sorts of testing.
Nothing was really popping up. He's a mouth breather. That doesn't help. Um, he's, he's improved that a lot, um, through myofascial.
Josh (33:58.994)Just for our audience, you literally mean like he breathed through his mouth. He's not stupid. Yeah. Breathing through your mouth is a problem. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (34:03.047)Yeah. He literally breathed through his mouth. Yeah. And he's been breathing through his mouth since he was a baby. And so we did myofascial exercises and he's done, you know, certain myobraces and what have you. So it's better. And now it's just like, I look at him and say, Hey dude, mouth closed and he'll close his mouth. So it just becomes a habit. But regardless, I, he was really frustrated because his older brothers are
Excellent in school and you know, got into great college and, and performing. And they had never, I never had to help them in school and they were basically straight A students. And the only time I would help them was with their writing to, you know, teach them to be better writers, because that's a skill that is sadly going out the window and Chad GPT is not helping with that. Um, but this guy, he would look at his brothers and he would feel really badly because he's like, dad, I just got a D on my test and I studied in.
(01:46):
Josh (34:50.382)Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (35:00.523)And then I try to sit down with him with his math and I will teach him, let's say it was 44 times 12, right? And I'll teach him the steps of how to do 44 times 12. And he would get it and he would do that and I would do 44 times 12 again. And I said, okay, now you're do it. And he do it. He nailed it. He's be all happy. I was like, okay, then I do 12 times 44. He would freeze.
It's like, dude, it's the same thing. And he was just like, I don't know what to do. I said, Theo, all I did, dude, I just changed the numbers around. So I, well, and he just, and then I started arguing with him. He started arguing with me and he put his head down and he started crying. I'm like, oh my God, what is wrong here? And so spatial orientation is extremely important. And if you have a kid or yourself suck with trying to
Dr. Ben Lynch (36:03.508)or put things together, or you bought something in Ikea, or you're trying to do math or what have you, and you're not really good at spatial orientation, that's acetylcholine. And now I don't want to exclude all our newer transmitters, but I have looked specifically at this. Well, I didn't intentionally look at this, but spatial orientation and having that ability to do things like that,
Josh (36:15.222)Hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (36:30.371)from the research that I have read, acetylcholine is associated. Other neurotransmitters could be as well, they probably are, but that was just the research that I read. And so I didn't know about that with Theo at the time. And so I actually took Theo to Dr. Daniel Amon and did a brain scan, did a spec scan. I was like, wow, this is 6,000 bucks and insurance doesn't pay for it.
But it's like, I'm at a loss here. And if I get some benefit out of this, then I can tell people it's beneficial. And if I don't get any benefit out of it, I can tell people that it's. Not beneficial and don't waste your money. And so before you do the scan, uh, you, you go in, there's two scans. There's one scan. It's kind of a baseline scan. They scan his brain and then you come back, um, like a week later or something and they scan it again. But before they scan it again, they.
have you or someone, depending on the test, sit down, look at a computer screen and hit the space bar. And if you see the letter X on the screen, you hit the space bar. That's it. There can be an O, there can be an A, there could be a one, there could be a zero or a cow X, you know, hit the space bar and so on. And that's the exercise. And I was watching Theo from a distance and he'd be sitting there and he was just like this and he was hitting space bar.
And the X could be different parts of the screen or it can, you know, it look like part of an X, but it's not. And I don't think he got one wrong. I think he nailed it. I was like, Oh, that's cool. Scan his brain. Week later, get on the phone with Dr. Daniel Eamon and he was like, Theo. Theo was like, yeah. He's like, dude, what were you thinking when you were doing that, that test? He was like, I don't know, just hit space bar. When I saw an X he goes.
Your entire brain was lit up. The whole brain was lit up for you to hit X in a space bar to hit X. So you are such an over-thinker. You are over-analyzing like crazy. And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. And so I tried giving him, so the prescription that Dr. Eamon gave him, a supplement, I think it supported dopamine.
Josh (38:25.528)Hmm
Dr. Ben Lynch (38:51.831)That backfire didn't work. And I started formulating stuff of my own to calm him down. I was like, why would I give him dopamine if his brain is already overthinking? Maybe Daniel Lehmann knows something that I don't, I'm sure he does, but it didn't work for Theo. So I went to drawing boards for three years. I was trying different things for Theo, wasn't working, wasn't working, wasn't working. Finally, I said, okay, I'm going to really hit acetylcholine. I'm going to do everything I can for acetylcholine because acetylcholine is a calming neurotransmitter. Dopamine?
histamine, serotonin, glutamate. These are excitatory neurotransmitters. We know that Theo has a lot of that in his brain because his entire brain was lit up on fire. Calming neurotransmitters tame that down. It kind of calms it down a little bit, keeps it under control and Theo didn't have apparently sufficient acetylcholine or sufficient GABA and I didn't know which one. I think I actually tried GABA for Theo and I think I just made him sleepy.
And GABA is a weird, weird compound actually. Yeah. I don't like it. It's, it gives you a kind of a calm stimulated feeling because it, let's say you're irritated, I'll get out deviate here for a little bit. If you take GABA and you have a high amount of glutamate, which is stimulatory in your brain because MSG, monosodium glutamate, you go to Chinese restaurant, you get all headachy and irritable possible migraine. Um, and you can't fall asleep. You get insomnia.
Josh (39:53.982)It makes me very sleepy.
Dr. Ben Lynch (40:20.855)that's glutamate. And so I say, Oh, you can counter that by taking GABA. Well, you put you put GABA in the system, but you still have that huge amount of glutamate in your, in your head. So now you're stimulated, but you're tired. It's a really weird feeling is not good. So anyway, so I, I gave Theo the acetylcholine supplement. And it was amazing. It was, it was quick.
It was when about 30 minutes, you could just see kind of, kind of a sense of calm come over him. And he wasn't so combative. He wasn't so quick to interrupt. He was just calmer. And then, I can't remember when this happened, but he had a test coming up in school and he always freaked out. He always did poorly on tests. So did I. I...
do not test well. I always freak out, overthink it, and I get the answers wrong. Get me in front of a patient and patient care. I'm amazing. I'm really great with patients, but put me on a test. I just have to try to calm myself down. So wonder where Theo got it, huh? So Theo texted me from school and he goes, dad, I aced the test. I got an A. I'm like, sweet, awesome. So I was like, does that supplement seem like it's helping you? He goes, yeah, definitely.
I was like, okay, well, next time you have a presentation or you're stressed out at school, we'll give it to you. You're not going to need it every day. He goes, okay. And the next day he's like, dad, where is it? Where is it? I want to take it. I've got to, you know, I just want to be good at school. I'm like, okay. So I gave him one serving size was three, is three capsules. I gave him one. He goes to school, teacher's asking questions and he, and apparently Theo's answering them all. And the teacher goes, is.
Is there anybody else in this class willing to engage in besides Theo today? Yeah. He's just on it. And he goes like, dad, I was answering everything. It's like, damn. And then he gets, he has another test nails it. And I was like, wow. And, um, so, and he's, he called it as a genius pill. And to this day, he, he still uses it. And I get texts from other kids. Um, it's like, yeah, I got an A and my last one, I got a D. Where is that stuff? I need it.
Josh (42:24.11)He was just out on the ball.
(02:07):
Dr. Ben Lynch (42:48.879)literally feel stupid without it. And so that's acetylcholine. Now what I want to add to this is there's a lot of talk about APOE4-4. APOE4-4, bear with me on this very important point, APOE4-4 is a genetic, APOE is a gene, it's a very important gene for memory and recall and so on.
Dr. Ben Lynch (43:18.539)genetic combination called APOE-4-4, that is associated with adult early onset dementia, forgetfulness and so on, memory loss and what have you. That's what it's known for. If you have APOE-4-4, you get that on your genetic test and you're like, shit, I've got early onset dementia. And that's kind of what you hear about it. And you read books about it. End of Alzheimer's is a good book.
Um, that helps you with that. There's another book about Alzheimer's that talks about sleep or Alzheimer's, however you want to pronounce it. Um, and sleep is extremely important for this, but what nobody is talking about, nobody is talking about is APOE 4, 4 is associated with the reduction in the ability to make acetylcholine. If you have the combination of APOE 4, 4 or APOE 3, 4, like I do,
And Nadia is my wife is APOE 3-4. And now Theo got the 4-4. And the other kids got the 3-4s. And so with Theo's combination of the 4-4, I was thinking when I read the research, huh, and is there a learning difficulty with this? So I typed in APOE 4-4 learning difficulties or learning. And I threw that in Google and I found some research papers and I said, yes.
APOE 4.4 is associated with learning difficulties in kids, especially women. So girls are even more significantly struggling in learning. So if you do genetic testing and you have an APOE 3.4 or a 4.4, the more 4s you have, the higher increased risk you are for reduced acetylcholine production. Now get this, acetylcholine is known as a learning memory and recall neurotransmitter.
but it does more than that. It's actually a natural anti-inflammatory to the brain.
Dr. Ben Lynch (45:22.031)Think about this, APOE-4-4. You do a brain scan on an APOE-4-4 person, they have brain, they literally have damaged brain. And they have protein buildups and what have you. They have brain inflammation, neuroinflammation. Well, if they have reduced acetylcholine levels in their brain, because they have a reduced ability to make it because of that gene combination, then they are more susceptible to brain inflammation.
and brain inflammation stimulates, get this, the breakdown of acetylcholine.
So if you have APOE 4-4, you do not have the ability as effectively as if you're an APOE 3-3 person to make acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is anti-inflammatory. If you have inflammation in your brain, you break down acetylcholine faster. It's a vicious cycle. If you break down acetylcholine faster, you have less acetylcholine available, you have more neuroinflammation. Now you're gonna have, it's just gonna be a quick spiral. And if you do that through a lifetime,
Josh (46:28.302)It's a perpetual breakdown machine. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (46:30.623)Yeah, it's, it's horrible. And so, and I, what I noticed when I was supporting with the CO choline and I saw this with, with multiple people is, cause I, I test my supplements before I go to market with them to make sure I'm not going to hurt somebody. And I've got some stories on those too. They, uh, I've adjusted some dosages. Um, I'll just say that. So, uh, if you take.
Josh (46:45.326)Sure. I hope so.
Josh (46:54.979)Hehehe
Dr. Ben Lynch (47:00.631)this acetylcholine supportive supplement, you'll be good, depending on if you need it or not. And so for me, it's very useful, but I will find the next day, it's like, okay, do I need this? No, I'm actually feeling pretty good right now. I feel on point. I feel like my recall is pretty good. My mood's good. I actually don't need it today. And I'm starting to wonder is if this acetylcholine support supplement has kind of...
knocked down some neuroinflammation and acted as a natural inflammatory to the brain to allow a lot of other things to work well in the brain, like your dopamine, your histamine, your serotonin and other peptides or what have you. So it just kind of put a little bit of a, you know, whatever fire was in there out a little bit more that allowed my brain and other people's brains to function better because again, acetylcholine is apparently not just a neurotransmitter, but it's an anti-inflammatory and I never knew that.
Josh (48:00.866)So this acetylcholine and these doses you've been taking, even though they're not every day, it's not required for functionality. But what you're saying or hypothesizing is that it sort of allowed your brain to recover in such a way where it can maintain its own homeostasis as it should be in a healthy functioning brain.
Dr. Ben Lynch (48:15.847)Yes, a supplement is literally defined as to add to or enhance. Many people when they buy a supplement, if they buy a supplement, they think they have to take it every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I remember sitting in nutrition class and my nutrition professor said that a lot of he finds a lot of people over supplementing.
They have an excess amount of nutrients. And I was sitting in class and was like, wow, you're an idiot. Supplements are so important. And I just missed the boat. I mean, I totally, I was not listening and it took me probably five to 10 years after that class to realize that he was extremely on point. And, um, so over supplementing is extremely important to realize.
Josh (48:49.731)Hehehehe
Dr. Ben Lynch (49:12.823)because oftentimes if you go to the health professional for a problem, you need to look at what you're currently swallowing because that may be contributing to your problem. So.
Josh (49:24.822)That's really fascinating.
(02:28):
Dr. Ben Lynch (49:26.479)Even, even if the supple, this is what's confusing about it. If you are taking a supplement and you feel amazing, it was actually the missing supplement for you. Let's say you're taking the secilicalin supplement as like, wow, game changer. You take it and you're excited about taking it the next day. You take it to the next day, man, you're, it's even better today than it was yesterday. I couldn't believe that was possible. You take it the next day on point again, you like this for
three weeks to a month. Now you're starting to get a little bit dizzy. Your muscles are spasming. You're having loose stools. You're kind of having a headache. You're feeling more tired and just not as quick. And you keep taking it, keep taking it. It's like, God, what the hell? It's not working anymore. No, it's working all right. Now you got an excess amount of acetylcholine in the brain. And what's the brain do when there's an excess? It down-regulates the receptors.
And acetylcholine doesn't only act in the brain, it acts heavily in the muscles. It acts heavily in the gut, affects everything. So don't just assume that when you're swallowing a pill, it's going to target the main problem that you want to target. It's going to go systemic. And so you have to understand the effects of acetylcholine in the brain, on your muscles, in your eyes, in your gut, in your libido, all these different aspects. And if you don't,
you're going to be thinking, well, that supplement sucks or, you know, or something else and, um, you know, or something else is wrong with me. And I need to go to the doctor to fix it. Well, no, you just taking it too much. So with any neurotropic, extremely important point, any neurotropic, I don't care who it is or what they're promoting. Any supplement that you are taking that is supportive of creating or balancing or however you want to say it.
neurotransmitters are in your brain, you need to pulse them. You need to use them for about three to four days on, and then stop for a couple days, at least. And then you can take them again. If you don't, you're going to be kind of doing, well, you're going to be beating a dead horse because those receptors, they get sensitized. And if you keep providing neurotropics to the receptors,
Dr. Ben Lynch (51:54.431)At some point, if they're constantly working, they're going to say, wow, we're actually being overstimulated and they're going to close up and down-regulate. And that's insulin, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome. You eat a shit ton of sugar. Then you got all this glucose flooding around. The, these receptors bind the glucose, pull it into the cell. The cell signal says, wow, we we're full of glucose. I'm not going to send that receptor back up yet until this cell is burned. It's fuel.
So you go to the doctor and you don't change your diet. They give you more insulin. They inject it in you and they're cramming more glucose into the cell, which you don't need, but you're getting it out of the blood. So it's not as inflammatory. You do a blood glucose test, HbA1c test. You're like, oh, I'm improving. But your cellular health is just jammed full of glucose and it's not helping you. Look at your fatty liver and other things. So your body has a natural response to
Josh (52:31.022)Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (52:52.587)Say, okay, this is enough. I'm going to protect you and I'm going to down regulate. So you have to be careful with neurotropics and you have to rest them. So I've got my supplements sitting on my desk. I literally have like six bottles on my desk, but I take them. You know, as I need to, I don't take them every day and I don't take all six every day. I take maybe two or three. A couple of times a week. That's it.
Josh (53:22.306)just supplementing, not replacing, you're allowing the body to normalize. Well, that is an excellent wind down here, Ben. We've got a couple of minutes left. I do have to hit us at four o'clock for another call I have coming up here. But my favorite question to ask at the end of any interview, is there any ground we haven't covered? Is there anything we haven't talked about? Anything you'd like to mention in last words to the audience that may be listening?
Dr. Ben Lynch (53:25.891)Right.
Dr. Ben Lynch (53:48.115)Yeah. When I wrote the book, Dirty Jeans, my agent told me to call it the seven deadly genes and I was like, no, A, they're not deadly and two, that's scary. She goes, yeah, but news will eat it up. They'll talk about it. I was like, well, yeah, the news sucks. Um, and, uh, I said, I'm not about scaring people because it's, I want to empower.
Josh (54:06.289)Yeah
Dr. Ben Lynch (54:14.387)So if you've done a genetic testing or if you haven't done genetic testing because you're scared or you've done genetic testing and you found things like APOE 4, 4 and you get scared. I was terrified when I saw that my son had APOE 4, 4. I was like, damn, my kid has got that. I want you to be empowered. I want you to learn that, okay, this is my genetic makeup. What can I do to support it and nurture it? And we all have weak links elsewhere somewhere.
And genetic testing allows you to identify where those weak links are. And if you know where the weak link is, you can do things to support that weak link instead of pulling it all the time, or just have it break on you at some point in your life and get hurt. So my goal is to whatever condition you have or whatever family history you have, you can do a lot of things to support you. I've struggled my entire life with high histamine issues. They're gone.
I get histamine issues sometimes now, but I know what to do about it. Um, Theo was struggling in school horribly was felt like a failure. He's thriving. Um, he's amazing on guitar and it's just awesome to see him. And now I know not to put him in, in sports that get hit in the head all the time too. So, um, and I'm going to be teaching him as, as he gets older, he's 15, but as he gets even
uh, more wise and be teaching him that he needs to be being more mindful because he has these susceptibilities. And I'm gonna say it's not scary. It's just, you need to be mindful about what you're doing. Um, so I want to empower you, not scare you.
Josh (55:54.27)I love that. Well, Ben, it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you, to speak with you, to learn from you, and to have you on here. Just the wealth of knowledge and expertise. So now we spent some time bouncing around, but you're right, there's so much to talk about that it's hard to pick one path, but I think we really nailed it. I think we really found our flow, and I really hope this episode helps people figure out learning memory and focus from a different level. So thank you.
Dr. Ben Lynch (56:16.735)Awesome. Appreciate it.
Josh (02:43.542)Ben, thanks for joining us.
(00:01):
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:06.773)Awesome to be here, Josh.
Josh (03:08.486)I am stoked to have you on board. You know, I was thinking about you today actually, I got an entire box full of Seeking Health stuff. I just picked up, I love your products, I love your stuff. I've used it to completely eradicate my ADHD symptoms. Yeah, it's brilliant stuff and I'm sure we'll get into all these things. But before we dive into it, so I mean, before we get to the details, the nitty gritty, can you give us kind of a bird's eye view? So we often hear.
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:15.629)Hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:23.056)Oh nice.
Josh (03:35.594)about this gut-brain connection. I think it's really misunderstood and miscontextualized, if that's a word. Can you give us a high level bird's eye view of how the gut and the brain are connected?
Dr. Ben Lynch (03:47.721)Well...
Think of it this way, think of your mouth as a tube that ends at the bottom of your butt. So we know whatever you put in your mouth ends up going through the tube at the other end, and that tube is basically solid all the way through. It should not be, you should not be able to have any food or drink going out at all through that entire...
you know, tube and however many yards of, or meters or whatever distance you want to use of intestines and colon and all that. So, and, but there is a significant surface area and a lot of people equate. If you took the small intestine and you unfolded it and you took the amount of
Dr. Ben Lynch (04:49.507)which is hard for me to believe. It could cover the size of a tennis court.
Yeah, I'm thinking that doesn't make any sense. So they must be using some type of other thing. But the point is if, if we have this really compacted area that allows for absorption of nutrients or chemicals or toxins, um, or macro nutrients like protein, fats, and you know, carbs. Then, and that.
is essentially as large as a tennis court, that is getting into your blood and blood flows everywhere. So blood goes into your brain and they've also found that your lymph vessels go into your brain. So your immune system can get into your brain and a significant amount of your immune system is actually found in your gut. So there's a Galt immune system called Galt.
gut associated lymphatic something. What's that? I think you're right. Yeah, nailed it.
Josh (05:57.582)I think it stands for tissue. I think it's tissue. I think it's gut associated lymphoid tissue. I know guys as smart as you have trouble finding easy words, I get it. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (06:06.711)Appreciate that. So yeah, so you have a gut associated immune system and you have gut associated nutrients that your microbiome produce themselves. So bacteria create compounds. They create compounds that are good for us. They create compounds that are bad for us. And it also depends on, um, the food that you eat. It depends on the chemicals that you consume. It depends on the nutrients that you eat, you know, in herbs. Um,
And it depends on a lot of factors, but you are absorbing these compounds that the microbiome is producing and you have about five pounds of bacteria in your stomach or in your digestive systems at all times. And if you have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, you probably have even more. And, and with SIBO, you're also absorbing these water soluble B vitamins in high amounts. And so actually.
A doctor's, if they're astute or health professionals, generally speaking, if they see high levels of say vitamin B6 or high levels of B12 or high levels of folate, you know, they always say, are you supplementing with these? The question, that's fine. But another one should be, hmm, are you very sensitive to a lot of foods? Were you on probiotics for a long time? Is your gallbladder functioning well? How's your gut digestion and so on? Because
these bacteria produce these water soluble nutrients and you're absorbing them. And it can actually affect your blood work. So a it's gut brain connection is, is very, very huge. And there's actually probiotics, um, marketed and research to show how specific strains can lead to calm moods and specific strains can lead to more insane, uh, hyperactive moods like streptococcus. If you give.
a kid who's on the spectrum, uh, or extremely irritable, cranky kid, anyway, streptococcus strain back, you know, probiotic, a good commercial grade probiotic, they can turn into monsters and I've had it happen, um, multiple times with patients. So the gut brain connection is, is proven. There's no doubt. And, uh, it's a very, very important one to address.
Josh (08:27.374)Yeah, I think it's really interesting. We talk about foods and chemicals and I know today we have so much to address in the way of learning memory and focus and maybe it's part of it. You know, my youngest brother, he has Asperger's, he's 15 years old and any kind of food dye, red 40, red three, yellow number five, all those things, they set him right off. He's moody, he's irritable, he can't focus, he's hyperactive, it really messes with the brain.
Dr. Ben Lynch (08:43.521)Bye.
Dr. Ben Lynch (08:52.395)Yeah. So the food dyes, I forget what, uh, enzymes specifically. Um, but their food dyes affect. Like reuptake, uh, enzymes in the brain and another ones, I'm probably multiple. Um, so they, they definitely affect how our neurotransmitters are functioning. And so food dyes are, are really, really a problem and we need to be pulling them out and in Europe, they actually do pull them out. So.
(00:22):
If you look at an M&M's package in Europe, and you look at the food coloring label there compared to ours, they're very different.
Josh (09:30.122)It's interesting how different the food in Europe is compared to here. I mean, if you look at even something like Mountain Dew, they have, I forget the exact name of the chemical. Um, I want to say it's bromelain, but bromelain is a, uh, anti-inflammatory. Maybe it's tartrazine. It's used in fire retardants. And they put these crazy, is it tart? Yeah. They put all these crazy chemicals in the food, food dyes, food colorings, what, everything they make in the States compared. Look at French fries, right? You go to McDonald's or French fries, it's potato, whatever oil and salt.
Dr. Ben Lynch (09:42.863)Tartrazine.
Dr. Ben Lynch (09:46.855)Yeah, I think it's tartrazine.
Josh (10:00.018)Over here there's 17 ingredients in the french fries. You know, it's absolutely crazy. So let's talk about focus, learning and memory. What chemicals do we need to make these things happen? I realize these are really broad questions. So what chemicals do we need to make those functions function and what does your gut have to do with it?
Dr. Ben Lynch (10:02.959)Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (10:20.991)Yeah, so again, gut is your absorption machine. So if you are ingesting food, then you want to be absorbing the nutrients from that food, otherwise it's not doing very well for you. So let's talk about a medical condition that leads to problems. Celiac disease. Celiac disease is a condition where people
need to be avoiding gluten 100% of the time, all the time. And if they don't, that gluten causes a such amount of inflammation in their digestive system that it became, it becomes basically on fire and part of it melts away. It just goes away. And the part that goes away is contains a cell called enterocytes and there's other components in there too, but you really need those enterocytes
Dr. Ben Lynch (11:12.275)is known that ciliacs are deficient in vitamin B12, and they're deficient in other things as well. So if you are having focus and memory and learning issues, then perhaps you are eating inflammatory foods that are affecting the health of your enterocytes. And if that's happening, you can be deficient in a myriad of nutrients. And if you're deficient even in just vitamin B12,
that is going to be causing all sorts of neurological problems, not only in your brain, but in your fingers and legs and arms and toes. And you're going to start getting numb and peristeges and so on, but you need vitamin B12 to help synthesize and make dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. And these are really important for learning and memory and recall. Uh, and not only that, but mood, you know, having a healthy, stable mood. Um,
Another one is histamine. We have to have histamine in the right amounts. Histamine is negatively looked upon. And if you have, well, let's go back to the serotonin real quick. I want to hit this. Most serotonin is produced in our guts and serotonin is actually produced by our bacteria. And I would say about 95% of the serotonin
Well, 95% of the tryptophan that we absorb is used by our microbiome for various reasons. And that tryptophan can be making serotonin. And then we get it into our brain. And that is massive. And so if you have serotonin issues due to a microbiome that is not producing serotonin for you, you are going to have mood issues. And that's why they have probiotics that support that. I don't remember the exact strains. Otherwise, I would tell you.
Josh (13:01.29)They're probably called serotonin or mood boosting probiotics or something on the bottle anyway. Easy to find.
Dr. Ben Lynch (13:01.676)I'm sorry.
Dr. Ben Lynch (13:05.811)Yeah, exactly. They're out there and they're great. They help people. And so a sign of low serotonin too can be constipation. So if you're having constipation, then you might be having low serotonin levels in your gut. Also another sign that could be leading to is low histamine. So you could have low histamine and low serotonin and have constipation. And so if you supported
histamine producing compounds like kefir, you know, apple cider vinegar, you know, bone broth. I mean, all these things, cap, you know, what am I? God, what do you call that stuff? The cabbage, sauerkraut and kombucha. I mean, all these things are really popular these days and a lot of people are actually experiencing benefit from it. If I take a sip of kombucha, I can get, I can actually literally feel
Josh (13:52.918)or ferments and stuff, right?
Dr. Ben Lynch (14:04.703)my brain clear a little bit and I get a little bit of energy. If I drink too much, I get a headache and that's where that sweet spot is. So, histamine, low histamine, you're not going to be able to learn very well. You're going to be sleepy. You're not going to be focused, but if you have the right amount of histamine, you're going to be on point. You're going to be alert. You're going to be focused and you're not going to be sleepy. And actually on the back of antihistamine medications, you will see...
It'll say in small print, uh, caution when taking these, uh, do not drive heavy machinery, um, as it may cause drowsiness because his you need histamine to stay alert and you can't learn or focus if you're not alert. So that's a, those are two big neurotransmitters associated with learning and we haven't touched others.
Josh (14:54.922)Yeah, there's so many. I mean, histamine, you're right, they looked on very negatively. It's an allergy. It's this, it's that. You have mast cell activation syndrome, which is becoming more popular now. Those of you listening might know it as MCAS. And for me, I do have histamine intolerance for whatever reason. Maybe it's my gut inflammation. I did get a GI map done. I tested for a whole bunch of stuff. There was H. pylori, provatela, massive overgrowth of candida, all kinds of stuff, which can explain a lot of my issues.
But if I have histamine heavy foods, I get very flemmy, instantly very flemmy. I get really brain fogged and I don't feel very good at all. But they never talk about histamines being a necessary neurotransmitter for alertness, wakefulness, focus and concentration.
(00:43):
Dr. Ben Lynch (15:26.467)Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (15:38.859)and not only that, but it's a signaling molecule. So histamine can stimulate the release of various things. So and I don't remember offhand, but I'm just going to say I believe that histamine stimulates the release of things like dopamine from your brain. So neurotransmitters are stored in vesicles in your brain and they're stored there safely until they're needed and they're not needed
utilized. And whatever signals those are, will, you know, eventually occur and then those neurotransmitters will release. Let's say you have low histamine. Well, if you have low histamine, then even though if you have sufficient dopamine in your brain, and it's not releasing, because maybe the signal isn't there because low histamine is actually needed to release the dopamine, then that's going to be a problem. And that's one example, again, I don't know if I'm entirely correct on that, but I am correct that
neurotransmitters are stored in vesicles in order for them to be activated, they need to bind to receptors. And so various compounds in the environment, chemicals will bind to these receptors and block their activation. For example, organophosphates are a huge problem for acetylcholine receptors. So organophosphates will bind to acetylcholine and acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter really important for learning.
focus, memory and recall and dreaming as well. So if you have, if you're consuming non-organic, conventional foods, especially, I forget which ones they are, but there was a list I just talked about. Do you remember, I just gave you that my presentation, you remember what foods were really high, basil is really high in organophosphates? There was some other ones.
Josh (17:33.418)Yeah, those were details I didn't retain. There were so many in there. I mean, I saw stuff with choline and phosphatidylcholine. There was a lot of salmon and other dark fruits and fatty fish and stuff that was in there as well. Let me see.
Dr. Ben Lynch (17:37.049)Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (17:40.513)Right.
Dr. Ben Lynch (17:45.399)Mm hmm. Yeah. So organophosphates are high in non-organic foods. So if you're consuming these, they're binding here's acetylcholine receptors, which prevent your acetylcholine from binding. Remember, neurotransmitters have no effect on your body at all unless they bind to receptor. So if you eat, let's say you love pesto and you have a whole bunch of basil and it's non-organic
You say, God, I feel really stupid today. My recall is bad. My, my learning isn't on point. What is going on? And Pesto's great. Pesto's healthy. But if it's not organic, you just consumed a ton of organophosphates. All right. You consumed a shit ton of organophosphates and your acetylcholine is trying to dock the receptor for you, but it can't because your organophosphates there. So, um,
Josh (18:29.73)You can say shit on my podcast. That's okay.
Dr. Ben Lynch (18:42.143)And not only that, but the organophosphates affect your microbiome. So, and Roundup kills your bifidobacteria. So people say glyphosphate, but let's, let's just call it like it needs to be, it's Roundup. And, uh, so, you know, there's, there's so many factors. And part of the reason I'm kind of going this and that way is, is I'm, there's, there's so many important points to address. This is like, where do you, where do you go? Um, but the.
Josh (19:05.187)Yes.
Dr. Ben Lynch (19:09.759)I would just say right now, it's the fundamentals. You know, eat like a pilgrim would 100 years ago. And you're probably pretty good, Jay.
Josh (19:17.76)It's kidding.
Yeah, I mean, for the most part, it's getting scarier and scarier. I mean, if you look at farmed fish versus wild caught, for example, the ingredients and then they put food dye in it, they put dioxins and mercury and all kinds of antibiotics in the feed. I mean, arguably, farmed fish is as toxic as licking the inside of a dumpster in New York City. Like it's just, it's really toxic stuff. And now they've approved lab grown meat, artificial 3D printed meat.
for consumption in the US and it's coming to Canada.
Dr. Ben Lynch (19:51.883)Yeah. And, and, and Bill Gates and his cronies have invented some spray that you can put on fruit to keep them, uh, more shelf stable for a longer period of times, and you cannot peel off this, um, stuff it's just sprayed on and you can't wash it off either. Um, so that's no good.
Josh (19:59.466)Appeal.
Josh (20:13.738)Yeah, they call it appeal and I think it's a play on words. Like it's got a great shelf appeal. It looks really good on the peel of the fruit. On the other hand, I think the irony is honest with the joke. If you think about aerobic or anaerobic, I'm thinking this is going to be a, or without the ability to peel it off. Like it is stuck there forever. This stuff it's, it's just, it's pretty nasty. What it comes from. It's all vegetables, oil source. And I think it's going to do some damage. We'll see in the next couple of years. So I do.
Dr. Ben Lynch (20:41.547)Well, and then what does that do to the soil? You know, we talk a lot about our own microbiome, which is essentially a fertile ground for growing things, and hopefully good ones and not candida and, you know, proteus and other things, but we definitely can do that. But if we are throwing away produce that contains this stuff that Gates and his cronies made into the ground, plus all this other garbage,
(01:04):
pesticides and herbicides and roundups and so on. What is that doing to the microbiome of the earth and the soil? And then if that's not healthy, then the soil that we're growing our food in, it's absorbing this stuff and we're eating it. And we're not eating nutrients because now the soils are so nutrient non-dense because there's no microbes in there that are actually producing the vitamins and minerals, or not minerals, but the vitamins anymore.
So, you know, soil is extremely important and it's not talked about enough. And a buddy of mine, Hendrika Straven is a, an expert on soil health and soil integrity and actually utilized his soil in my, my yard and he used compost tea and it's just amazing stuff. Um, but it's, it's something that's not talked about. And I'll just say that.
Josh (22:10.214)Yeah, it's a conversation topic I'd like to learn more about. You know, I've got Temple Grandin coming on next week. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her and her work. So Temple Grandin, she got very, very famous actually. She does work on autism. She's autistic herself, was born I think 1947, and she did all kinds of work on the cattle industry. She completely reinvented the entire cattle industry, the slaughter industry, all of that, and she's done Ted talks. You might know her if you pick up some of her stuff, but she's very well renowned in that industry.
Dr. Ben Lynch (22:18.488)Mm-mm.
Josh (22:39.722)And she's coming on to talk about cattle and farming and the land health with cattle and other farm animals and stuff on it versus not. But, uh, there's some guys I'm actually trying to get a hold of for farming and soil, like Joel Salatin, Jordan Rubin, a couple of those guys who specialize in biodiverse and completely regenerative farming, but that's a, another topic for another time. So we talked a bit about learning and memory. We talked about some of the chemicals. We talked about.
Dr. Ben Lynch (23:00.492)Yeah, yeah.
Josh (23:08.334)I mean, there's many, we can get phosphatidylcholine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, all these. We kind of touched on food and diet, but let's get into some of the things we see struggling or people struggling with day to day. The top two most common learning disabilities that I've seen in my practice, number one is going to be ADHD or ADHD or a non-diagnosed ADHD that happens to be brain fog and flightiness, the other being something like dyslexia. Let's talk about that.
I want to say is it a real diagnosis? I use air quotes because I see a lot of diagnosis simply being a word that describes the current state of affairs, not a permanent condition. So that being said, is ADHD in your opinion a real diagnosis? And if not, where does it come from and what can we do about it?
Dr. Ben Lynch (23:56.096)Well...
When I was a kid in school, ADHD was not a diagnosis. It didn't exist, as far as I know. And autism was also really, really rare. So, most labels are created by pharma to funnel people down a specific path for doctors to prescribe specific drugs.
Dr. Ben Lynch (24:31.147)That's essentially med school. Medical school is essentially here's how the body works for two years, you study that. Then for the next two years you learn how the body breaks. And then for the rest of your life you learn how to fix it, essentially. That's why they call it medicine practice because you're constantly trying to apply what you learned and then you're... Yeah, it's... Yeah, and that's another good point too.
Josh (24:52.73)Doctor of medicine. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (24:59.979)Medicine is not healthcare, it's actually sick care. It promotes sickness, and I'm sure you already resonate with that. My point is that ADHD, while I believe the symptoms of ADHD, meaning that you are hyperactive, you're not able to sit still and pay attention to people when they're talking, you interrupt constantly.
Josh (25:08.726)very much.
Dr. Ben Lynch (25:27.307)you're one of those people that are just constantly bugging and teasing people and you're getting a rise out of them because it makes a rise out of you. Um, you know, these, these types of things are happening all the time. So that type of behavior exists. Now, is that something that requires medication? Is it something that requires a medical label as ADHD? And do you say that, Oh, that person has ADHD?
that person is ADHD and having medical labels assigned to you can be, depending on how you want to perceive it, it can be damaging heavily to you, it could be motivating to you, and it could be also enabling you and saying, oh I have ADHD therefore I can't pay attention and therefore that's why I am who I am. Or it could be motivating and say, damn it.
I don't like having this label. Why am I feeling this way? What do I need to do to change it? And it could also be, damn, I thought I was fine. Now I have this label. Now the teachers don't like me. My parents are yelling at me and I have to be put on this medication. And you don't have the surrounding community support or the resources to understand that you actually can.
support it naturally and with your next meal, your next bite of food, the next activity that you do can support an improvement in your symptoms. So while I believe again ADHD symptoms exist, I do not like the label behind it and that actually ties into my exactly what my book is about dirty genes. A gene is simply a tool that your body uses to create
things. A gene has a job to do. Sometimes a gene has one specific job to do or a gene can actually have multiple different jobs to do. You have genes that produce histamine. You have genes that help carry your histamine around your body. You have genes which help bind histamine receptors. You have genes which help detoxify certain compounds like our kind of phosphates. You have 18,000 different genes in your human body and they have specific jobs.
Dr. Ben Lynch (27:53.023)and genes make enzymes typically, and these enzymes are the actual things that make the work, get the work done. So genes are the blueprint, the map of saying, okay, this is the blueprint of the enzyme that we need to build, and we're gonna build it, and here's the enzyme, and enzymes require vitamins and minerals, typically in order to function. Without vitamins and minerals, even if you have a healthy enzyme, it won't function.
and there's chemicals and things can also interfere with these enzymes so they also won't function even the vitamins and minerals are there so organophosphates for example and then if you have these enzymes and these genes not working very well you're going to get symptoms you're not going to be focused you're not going to be able to learn you're going to get bad grades in school you're going to get yelled at by your parents your teachers are not going to like you they're going to say you're a failure and it's a vicious cycle
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And so dirty jeans is a concept that jeans do work and they can get dirty. And if they get dirty, you're going to get symptoms. If you clean them up, they're able to perform. If I spilled milk all over my keyboard right now, it would probably jam. And I will milk is a bad example. Let's say I had peanut butter and I had peanut butter on my fingers and I went to go type. Yeah. Right. But it's worse. Yes, but it's not going to ruin the keyboard.
Josh (29:09.062)I already know that is so much worse.
Dr. Ben Lynch (29:16.311)So I wouldn't have to throw it out. Maybe I would, but something is on my fingers where I'm trying to type and my fingers stick, honey. Honey, peanut butter sandwich. But if I cleaned off my fingers, then I can type just fine. So just think of your enzymes and your genes being covered with peanut butter and honey, and you just clean them off, then you're good to go.
So that's what I see ADHD. And there's gonna be moments in your day where you have ADHD symptoms. Not all day long, very rarely all day long are you gonna be on point. And there's gonna be moments where you're ADD, where you are just tired and you spent your entire day thinking and your brain doesn't have the resources to continue thinking because you already thought for four hours.
So if I'm on stage presenting to a group of doctors and I'm just all in the zone and I'm on, and I come home to my wife and my kids and I'm just drained because my brain has been on, you know, high mode for four hours lecturing to doctors about complicated stuff and answering questions and so on, my brain is used up. So now I kind of have an ADD type thing going on where
just I can't learn anything right now, my brain is done. So are you going to label with me ADD or the situation creates a lack of resources because I burned them all and now I need to replenish my brain. And does that also mean that I need to take a medication like Ritalin to stimulate my brain? Because now I'm brain tired and fatigued from lecturing for four hours. Or maybe I just need to rest and chill out and look at the sun or go swim or something else where it's...
is not requiring a mass amounts of cognitive abilities. And we're staring at our damn phones all the time, depleting our dopamine because we're staring at Instagram or TikTok all day long. And then you go to class and you're trying to learn, but you just blew your dopamine load on TikTok and Instagram. So you have finite resources in your brain. And the food that you eat, the sleep that you have or you don't have.
Dr. Ben Lynch (31:40.195)the community that is positive or negative around you. These are all things that either support or dirty your ability to focus and concentrate. And we all are on the spectrum of ADHD and ADD a few times a day. And some people are like that all day. And if you're like that all day, then yes, you definitely need some significant learning to understand why you're in that shape. And if you're
If you do the right things, you can snap out of it literally the next day or within, God, even 30 minutes if you have the right resources at your fingertips. And you're like, oh my God, that's how I should be feeling right now. And I'll give you an example if I may. Do you have any questions before I go to that example?
Josh (32:30.534)No, this is blowing my mind. This is brilliant. Keep going. I wouldn't dare slow you down, Ben.
Dr. Ben Lynch (32:36.1)Sounds good. I actually took some acetylcholine about acetylcholine support about 20 minutes before I got on just to put me in the...
Josh (32:44.238)I took a shot of B vitamins, I have a low liposomal, I took some lithium orotate and I took another folate as well and 250 milligrams of L-theanine. I'm rocking.
Dr. Ben Lynch (32:50.807)Now.
Yeah. See? Yeah. You got the perfect blend of a little stimulation, a little calming. Yeah. So you got to amplify yet, you know, kind of make it a little bit more timid. Um, tame. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Everybody's like, Oh, Torian stimulating. Actually, no, it's not. It's to offset that massive amounts of caffeine you just drank. Um, so I've got lots of.
Josh (33:05.862)That's why they put taurine in energy drinks, isn't it? Really to keep you from buzzing off your chair.
Josh (33:17.291)Hahaha
Dr. Ben Lynch (33:22.807)stories in terms of this, but I'll share one for my, uh, son. So my youngest son, he struggled in school basically his entire life. And, uh, I was terrified as a father and as a health professional, I'm thinking, what the hell is going on here? And, um, did all sorts of things, tried all sorts of supplements, did all sorts of testing.
Nothing was really popping up. He's a mouth breather. That doesn't help. Um, he's, he's improved that a lot, um, through myofascial.
Josh (33:58.994)Just for our audience, you literally mean like he breathed through his mouth. He's not stupid. Yeah. Breathing through your mouth is a problem. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (34:03.047)Yeah. He literally breathed through his mouth. Yeah. And he's been breathing through his mouth since he was a baby. And so we did myofascial exercises and he's done, you know, certain myobraces and what have you. So it's better. And now it's just like, I look at him and say, Hey dude, mouth closed and he'll close his mouth. So it just becomes a habit. But regardless, I, he was really frustrated because his older brothers are
Excellent in school and you know, got into great college and, and performing. And they had never, I never had to help them in school and they were basically straight A students. And the only time I would help them was with their writing to, you know, teach them to be better writers, because that's a skill that is sadly going out the window and Chad GPT is not helping with that. Um, but this guy, he would look at his brothers and he would feel really badly because he's like, dad, I just got a D on my test and I studied in.
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Josh (34:50.382)Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (35:00.523)And then I try to sit down with him with his math and I will teach him, let's say it was 44 times 12, right? And I'll teach him the steps of how to do 44 times 12. And he would get it and he would do that and I would do 44 times 12 again. And I said, okay, now you're do it. And he do it. He nailed it. He's be all happy. I was like, okay, then I do 12 times 44. He would freeze.
It's like, dude, it's the same thing. And he was just like, I don't know what to do. I said, Theo, all I did, dude, I just changed the numbers around. So I, well, and he just, and then I started arguing with him. He started arguing with me and he put his head down and he started crying. I'm like, oh my God, what is wrong here? And so spatial orientation is extremely important. And if you have a kid or yourself suck with trying to
Dr. Ben Lynch (36:03.508)or put things together, or you bought something in Ikea, or you're trying to do math or what have you, and you're not really good at spatial orientation, that's acetylcholine. And now I don't want to exclude all our newer transmitters, but I have looked specifically at this. Well, I didn't intentionally look at this, but spatial orientation and having that ability to do things like that,
Josh (36:15.222)Hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (36:30.371)from the research that I have read, acetylcholine is associated. Other neurotransmitters could be as well, they probably are, but that was just the research that I read. And so I didn't know about that with Theo at the time. And so I actually took Theo to Dr. Daniel Amon and did a brain scan, did a spec scan. I was like, wow, this is 6,000 bucks and insurance doesn't pay for it.
But it's like, I'm at a loss here. And if I get some benefit out of this, then I can tell people it's beneficial. And if I don't get any benefit out of it, I can tell people that it's. Not beneficial and don't waste your money. And so before you do the scan, uh, you, you go in, there's two scans. There's one scan. It's kind of a baseline scan. They scan his brain and then you come back, um, like a week later or something and they scan it again. But before they scan it again, they.
have you or someone, depending on the test, sit down, look at a computer screen and hit the space bar. And if you see the letter X on the screen, you hit the space bar. That's it. There can be an O, there can be an A, there could be a one, there could be a zero or a cow X, you know, hit the space bar and so on. And that's the exercise. And I was watching Theo from a distance and he'd be sitting there and he was just like this and he was hitting space bar.
And the X could be different parts of the screen or it can, you know, it look like part of an X, but it's not. And I don't think he got one wrong. I think he nailed it. I was like, Oh, that's cool. Scan his brain. Week later, get on the phone with Dr. Daniel Eamon and he was like, Theo. Theo was like, yeah. He's like, dude, what were you thinking when you were doing that, that test? He was like, I don't know, just hit space bar. When I saw an X he goes.
Your entire brain was lit up. The whole brain was lit up for you to hit X in a space bar to hit X. So you are such an over-thinker. You are over-analyzing like crazy. And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. And so I tried giving him, so the prescription that Dr. Eamon gave him, a supplement, I think it supported dopamine.
Josh (38:25.528)Hmm
Dr. Ben Lynch (38:51.831)That backfire didn't work. And I started formulating stuff of my own to calm him down. I was like, why would I give him dopamine if his brain is already overthinking? Maybe Daniel Lehmann knows something that I don't, I'm sure he does, but it didn't work for Theo. So I went to drawing boards for three years. I was trying different things for Theo, wasn't working, wasn't working, wasn't working. Finally, I said, okay, I'm going to really hit acetylcholine. I'm going to do everything I can for acetylcholine because acetylcholine is a calming neurotransmitter. Dopamine?
histamine, serotonin, glutamate. These are excitatory neurotransmitters. We know that Theo has a lot of that in his brain because his entire brain was lit up on fire. Calming neurotransmitters tame that down. It kind of calms it down a little bit, keeps it under control and Theo didn't have apparently sufficient acetylcholine or sufficient GABA and I didn't know which one. I think I actually tried GABA for Theo and I think I just made him sleepy.
And GABA is a weird, weird compound actually. Yeah. I don't like it. It's, it gives you a kind of a calm stimulated feeling because it, let's say you're irritated, I'll get out deviate here for a little bit. If you take GABA and you have a high amount of glutamate, which is stimulatory in your brain because MSG, monosodium glutamate, you go to Chinese restaurant, you get all headachy and irritable possible migraine. Um, and you can't fall asleep. You get insomnia.
Josh (39:53.982)It makes me very sleepy.
Dr. Ben Lynch (40:20.855)that's glutamate. And so I say, Oh, you can counter that by taking GABA. Well, you put you put GABA in the system, but you still have that huge amount of glutamate in your, in your head. So now you're stimulated, but you're tired. It's a really weird feeling is not good. So anyway, so I, I gave Theo the acetylcholine supplement. And it was amazing. It was, it was quick.
It was when about 30 minutes, you could just see kind of, kind of a sense of calm come over him. And he wasn't so combative. He wasn't so quick to interrupt. He was just calmer. And then, I can't remember when this happened, but he had a test coming up in school and he always freaked out. He always did poorly on tests. So did I. I...
do not test well. I always freak out, overthink it, and I get the answers wrong. Get me in front of a patient and patient care. I'm amazing. I'm really great with patients, but put me on a test. I just have to try to calm myself down. So wonder where Theo got it, huh? So Theo texted me from school and he goes, dad, I aced the test. I got an A. I'm like, sweet, awesome. So I was like, does that supplement seem like it's helping you? He goes, yeah, definitely.
I was like, okay, well, next time you have a presentation or you're stressed out at school, we'll give it to you. You're not going to need it every day. He goes, okay. And the next day he's like, dad, where is it? Where is it? I want to take it. I've got to, you know, I just want to be good at school. I'm like, okay. So I gave him one serving size was three, is three capsules. I gave him one. He goes to school, teacher's asking questions and he, and apparently Theo's answering them all. And the teacher goes, is.
Is there anybody else in this class willing to engage in besides Theo today? Yeah. He's just on it. And he goes like, dad, I was answering everything. It's like, damn. And then he gets, he has another test nails it. And I was like, wow. And, um, so, and he's, he called it as a genius pill. And to this day, he, he still uses it. And I get texts from other kids. Um, it's like, yeah, I got an A and my last one, I got a D. Where is that stuff? I need it.
Josh (42:24.11)He was just out on the ball.
(02:07):
Dr. Ben Lynch (42:48.879)literally feel stupid without it. And so that's acetylcholine. Now what I want to add to this is there's a lot of talk about APOE4-4. APOE4-4, bear with me on this very important point, APOE4-4 is a genetic, APOE is a gene, it's a very important gene for memory and recall and so on.
Dr. Ben Lynch (43:18.539)genetic combination called APOE-4-4, that is associated with adult early onset dementia, forgetfulness and so on, memory loss and what have you. That's what it's known for. If you have APOE-4-4, you get that on your genetic test and you're like, shit, I've got early onset dementia. And that's kind of what you hear about it. And you read books about it. End of Alzheimer's is a good book.
Um, that helps you with that. There's another book about Alzheimer's that talks about sleep or Alzheimer's, however you want to pronounce it. Um, and sleep is extremely important for this, but what nobody is talking about, nobody is talking about is APOE 4, 4 is associated with the reduction in the ability to make acetylcholine. If you have the combination of APOE 4, 4 or APOE 3, 4, like I do,
And Nadia is my wife is APOE 3-4. And now Theo got the 4-4. And the other kids got the 3-4s. And so with Theo's combination of the 4-4, I was thinking when I read the research, huh, and is there a learning difficulty with this? So I typed in APOE 4-4 learning difficulties or learning. And I threw that in Google and I found some research papers and I said, yes.
APOE 4.4 is associated with learning difficulties in kids, especially women. So girls are even more significantly struggling in learning. So if you do genetic testing and you have an APOE 3.4 or a 4.4, the more 4s you have, the higher increased risk you are for reduced acetylcholine production. Now get this, acetylcholine is known as a learning memory and recall neurotransmitter.
but it does more than that. It's actually a natural anti-inflammatory to the brain.
Dr. Ben Lynch (45:22.031)Think about this, APOE-4-4. You do a brain scan on an APOE-4-4 person, they have brain, they literally have damaged brain. And they have protein buildups and what have you. They have brain inflammation, neuroinflammation. Well, if they have reduced acetylcholine levels in their brain, because they have a reduced ability to make it because of that gene combination, then they are more susceptible to brain inflammation.
and brain inflammation stimulates, get this, the breakdown of acetylcholine.
So if you have APOE 4-4, you do not have the ability as effectively as if you're an APOE 3-3 person to make acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is anti-inflammatory. If you have inflammation in your brain, you break down acetylcholine faster. It's a vicious cycle. If you break down acetylcholine faster, you have less acetylcholine available, you have more neuroinflammation. Now you're gonna have, it's just gonna be a quick spiral. And if you do that through a lifetime,
Josh (46:28.302)It's a perpetual breakdown machine. Yeah.
Dr. Ben Lynch (46:30.623)Yeah, it's, it's horrible. And so, and I, what I noticed when I was supporting with the CO choline and I saw this with, with multiple people is, cause I, I test my supplements before I go to market with them to make sure I'm not going to hurt somebody. And I've got some stories on those too. They, uh, I've adjusted some dosages. Um, I'll just say that. So, uh, if you take.
Josh (46:45.326)Sure. I hope so.
Josh (46:54.979)Hehehe
Dr. Ben Lynch (47:00.631)this acetylcholine supportive supplement, you'll be good, depending on if you need it or not. And so for me, it's very useful, but I will find the next day, it's like, okay, do I need this? No, I'm actually feeling pretty good right now. I feel on point. I feel like my recall is pretty good. My mood's good. I actually don't need it today. And I'm starting to wonder is if this acetylcholine support supplement has kind of...
knocked down some neuroinflammation and acted as a natural inflammatory to the brain to allow a lot of other things to work well in the brain, like your dopamine, your histamine, your serotonin and other peptides or what have you. So it just kind of put a little bit of a, you know, whatever fire was in there out a little bit more that allowed my brain and other people's brains to function better because again, acetylcholine is apparently not just a neurotransmitter, but it's an anti-inflammatory and I never knew that.
Josh (48:00.866)So this acetylcholine and these doses you've been taking, even though they're not every day, it's not required for functionality. But what you're saying or hypothesizing is that it sort of allowed your brain to recover in such a way where it can maintain its own homeostasis as it should be in a healthy functioning brain.
Dr. Ben Lynch (48:15.847)Yes, a supplement is literally defined as to add to or enhance. Many people when they buy a supplement, if they buy a supplement, they think they have to take it every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I remember sitting in nutrition class and my nutrition professor said that a lot of he finds a lot of people over supplementing.
They have an excess amount of nutrients. And I was sitting in class and was like, wow, you're an idiot. Supplements are so important. And I just missed the boat. I mean, I totally, I was not listening and it took me probably five to 10 years after that class to realize that he was extremely on point. And, um, so over supplementing is extremely important to realize.
Josh (48:49.731)Hehehehe
Dr. Ben Lynch (49:12.823)because oftentimes if you go to the health professional for a problem, you need to look at what you're currently swallowing because that may be contributing to your problem. So.
Josh (49:24.822)That's really fascinating.
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Dr. Ben Lynch (49:26.479)Even, even if the supple, this is what's confusing about it. If you are taking a supplement and you feel amazing, it was actually the missing supplement for you. Let's say you're taking the secilicalin supplement as like, wow, game changer. You take it and you're excited about taking it the next day. You take it to the next day, man, you're, it's even better today than it was yesterday. I couldn't believe that was possible. You take it the next day on point again, you like this for
three weeks to a month. Now you're starting to get a little bit dizzy. Your muscles are spasming. You're having loose stools. You're kind of having a headache. You're feeling more tired and just not as quick. And you keep taking it, keep taking it. It's like, God, what the hell? It's not working anymore. No, it's working all right. Now you got an excess amount of acetylcholine in the brain. And what's the brain do when there's an excess? It down-regulates the receptors.
And acetylcholine doesn't only act in the brain, it acts heavily in the muscles. It acts heavily in the gut, affects everything. So don't just assume that when you're swallowing a pill, it's going to target the main problem that you want to target. It's going to go systemic. And so you have to understand the effects of acetylcholine in the brain, on your muscles, in your eyes, in your gut, in your libido, all these different aspects. And if you don't,
you're going to be thinking, well, that supplement sucks or, you know, or something else and, um, you know, or something else is wrong with me. And I need to go to the doctor to fix it. Well, no, you just taking it too much. So with any neurotropic, extremely important point, any neurotropic, I don't care who it is or what they're promoting. Any supplement that you are taking that is supportive of creating or balancing or however you want to say it.
neurotransmitters are in your brain, you need to pulse them. You need to use them for about three to four days on, and then stop for a couple days, at least. And then you can take them again. If you don't, you're going to be kind of doing, well, you're going to be beating a dead horse because those receptors, they get sensitized. And if you keep providing neurotropics to the receptors,
Dr. Ben Lynch (51:54.431)At some point, if they're constantly working, they're going to say, wow, we're actually being overstimulated and they're going to close up and down-regulate. And that's insulin, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome. You eat a shit ton of sugar. Then you got all this glucose flooding around. The, these receptors bind the glucose, pull it into the cell. The cell signal says, wow, we we're full of glucose. I'm not going to send that receptor back up yet until this cell is burned. It's fuel.
So you go to the doctor and you don't change your diet. They give you more insulin. They inject it in you and they're cramming more glucose into the cell, which you don't need, but you're getting it out of the blood. So it's not as inflammatory. You do a blood glucose test, HbA1c test. You're like, oh, I'm improving. But your cellular health is just jammed full of glucose and it's not helping you. Look at your fatty liver and other things. So your body has a natural response to
Josh (52:31.022)Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ben Lynch (52:52.587)Say, okay, this is enough. I'm going to protect you and I'm going to down regulate. So you have to be careful with neurotropics and you have to rest them. So I've got my supplements sitting on my desk. I literally have like six bottles on my desk, but I take them. You know, as I need to, I don't take them every day and I don't take all six every day. I take maybe two or three. A couple of times a week. That's it.
Josh (53:22.306)just supplementing, not replacing, you're allowing the body to normalize. Well, that is an excellent wind down here, Ben. We've got a couple of minutes left. I do have to hit us at four o'clock for another call I have coming up here. But my favorite question to ask at the end of any interview, is there any ground we haven't covered? Is there anything we haven't talked about? Anything you'd like to mention in last words to the audience that may be listening?
Dr. Ben Lynch (53:25.891)Right.
Dr. Ben Lynch (53:48.115)Yeah. When I wrote the book, Dirty Jeans, my agent told me to call it the seven deadly genes and I was like, no, A, they're not deadly and two, that's scary. She goes, yeah, but news will eat it up. They'll talk about it. I was like, well, yeah, the news sucks. Um, and, uh, I said, I'm not about scaring people because it's, I want to empower.
Josh (54:06.289)Yeah
Dr. Ben Lynch (54:14.387)So if you've done a genetic testing or if you haven't done genetic testing because you're scared or you've done genetic testing and you found things like APOE 4, 4 and you get scared. I was terrified when I saw that my son had APOE 4, 4. I was like, damn, my kid has got that. I want you to be empowered. I want you to learn that, okay, this is my genetic makeup. What can I do to support it and nurture it? And we all have weak links elsewhere somewhere.
And genetic testing allows you to identify where those weak links are. And if you know where the weak link is, you can do things to support that weak link instead of pulling it all the time, or just have it break on you at some point in your life and get hurt. So my goal is to whatever condition you have or whatever family history you have, you can do a lot of things to support you. I've struggled my entire life with high histamine issues. They're gone.
I get histamine issues sometimes now, but I know what to do about it. Um, Theo was struggling in school horribly was felt like a failure. He's thriving. Um, he's amazing on guitar and it's just awesome to see him. And now I know not to put him in, in sports that get hit in the head all the time too. So, um, and I'm going to be teaching him as, as he gets older, he's 15, but as he gets even
uh, more wise and be teaching him that he needs to be being more mindful because he has these susceptibilities. And I'm gonna say it's not scary. It's just, you need to be mindful about what you're doing. Um, so I want to empower you, not scare you.
Josh (55:54.27)I love that. Well, Ben, it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you, to speak with you, to learn from you, and to have you on here. Just the wealth of knowledge and expertise. So now we spent some time bouncing around, but you're right, there's so much to talk about that it's hard to pick one path, but I think we really nailed it. I think we really found our flow, and I really hope this episode helps people figure out learning memory and focus from a different level. So thank you.
Dr. Ben Lynch (56:16.735)Awesome. Appreciate it.
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