Hack Your Genes To Live, Age, and Perform Better
When we have a conversation about longevity I'd say that the majority of people do this crazy new diet: you basically don't eat for six days and then you just snort green tea and then you're going to be like this super biohacker.
I would say the aspect of true longevity that perhaps is ignored or isn't given the respect that it's deserved and that is the longevity of the brain. If you look at all of the people that you know in your life and I guarantee you every single person knows when you look at the people that are above the age of 80, 90 and 100 years old and you speak to them the one thing you notice is that their physical capacity and their physical capabilities long left them.
They're not necessarily extremely ripped or jacked and have full muscle in the full vitality, but the one thing you will notice in every single person who's living a happy and healthy life 90 plus is they're super mentally sharp. Their willpower, their motivation, their ability to think critically and sharply - leads us to believe or predict that your brain plays an incredibly important role in your overall longevity.
If I were to ask you what the difference is between an Olympic gold medalist or goal-winning medalist and every other sportsman on the planet, what do you think? I heard fitness, I heard practice, I heard mindset. Dr. Andy Walshe is a former director of high performance at Red Bull, he said something so incredibly brilliant, when it came down to this talking because he works with high-level Olympic athletes regularly. He says "I've been working with these guys for years and years and here is the defining difference between an Olympic gold medalist and every other competitor, you have to think about something the folks that you see performing in the Olympics those are all the cream of the crop every single one of them has an equal chance to win. The difference between them and every other competitor is they are normal competitors who know how to effectively respond to craziness happening in their environment, a crazy situation."
I'll give an example, an Olympic medalist will train for months and years because the event only happens once every four years, and they're consistently breaking their records in practice. But here's what happens when they get to their event they're high up on endorphins. They're super pumped up and then they get a phone call and it's the mom and she says "I ain't making it to your event. I'm not going to see you perform. I'm not going to be able to get there in time. I'm going to miss this", and a lot of these Olympic level athletes, they're probably training in the favelas in Brazil, or they're training somewhere, so this is the only chance for their parents to see them. Think about what that does to your psychology. Think about what that does to your ability to focus. So an Olympic gold-winning medalist, the difference between him and everyone else there is he's able to effectively remove the factors that cause him stress, the factors that cause him to freak out, the factors that cause him anxiety long enough for him to perform the same way.
What does that tell us about the mental condition? It tells us that if we can understand what moves us, what drives us, what motivates us, what convinces us to do the things that we do. Then we can understand what to do about it and this is where the genes come from.
When people think about DNA testing, there are two areas that people think about. They think about the diagnostic realm: do I have the disease, do I have Huntington's or sickle cell, or do I have some sort of genetic mutation. Then they look into consumer testing like 23andMe and the consumer tests out there. We like to position ourselves in the area which allows you to understand how your genes, first of all, interact with each other and secondly, how epigenetic factors like diet, lifestyle, environment influence the expression of that gene at any given time. One of the most powerful applications of these genes is as it relates to the mind specifically as it relates to the major neurotransmitters that are responsible for your mood and your behavior things like dopamine, noradrenaline your fight-or-flight neurotransmitter, things like serotonin things like brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So the best way for you to understand this is if I tell you a story.
Let's paint the picture: mom comes home from work. Mom's a sales executive at some hotshot startup, and she's had a not-so-great day. One of the kids is like mom's not in the mood to talk. The other kids like "What did I do? I must have done something. I must have not cleaned my room right.". So then the kids are like oh it's time to eat cookies. Mom sees them, she's like you better not touch those cookies until you clean your room right. So mom goes upstairs to take a shower and unwind from her tough day. The kids are kids and so they're not going to listen to mom, they're going to go and eat the cookies. So mom comes down, finds them with their hands literally in the cookie jar red-handed and she yells at them. Kid number one's like mom's not happy today, so I'm just going to go to my room, chill out, play some video games and she'll get over it. Kid number two goes through life's over. I'm going to run away. Mom doesn't love me. Mom straight-up hates me. I've done something wrong. What is the difference between kid number one, who's able to assert that mom's had a bad day, and it's not that she doesn't love him, and between kid number two who's convinced that his mother hates him?
The answer comes down to the way their brains process certain neurotransmitters. In this case, we're talking about dopamine and noradrenaline. What is noradrenaline? Noradrenaline is your fight-or-flight neurotransmitter that hits when you're walking down the street, and the dog barks, and you clinch yourself right, you feel your aisle your pupils dilate, you clench your muscles and you get ready it gets, you prepared for a fight or flight. Most people will hear the dog bark, they'll see the fence in the way, they'll recognize that the threat isn't there and they'll continue with their day. But certain people will hear that dog bark and they're going to be so hypersensitized to that dog barking, that every day for the next week they're going to walk and be like no, I'm not going to go there. They're going to walk away. Why? Because the noradrenaline receptor in that individual who knows that there's a problem there, it's hypersensitive and that's a genetic predisposition, that's something that's genetically built into you some individuals carry a variation in their genes.
Let's talk about couples counseling. Biohacking technology. The second half of our conversations, when we invite couples to do our DNA tests, turn into couple counseling sessions. For this very reason, because there's always one (and it's funny how many times this is the man, not the woman), can remember every single word from that argument six months onwards the wife is over in six hours so she's like why is it that you're telling me about this argument we had six months ago and you're focused on that argument well I've already forgotten it. Again it's down to genetics, one of the individuals in the couple is so influenced by the emotional memory of that conversation it drives their decision-making from weeks, months, years.
You talk about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), you talk about childhood trauma and childhood abuse. How is it possible for us to identify who individuals are going to be able to respond better to the stressful factors in their life? How do we apply this to Biohacking for longevity? Let's dive into some of these neurotransmitters and their impacts. Dopamine is often understood as the pleasure hormone. It's a neurotransmitter that drives the pleasurable response. If I say the word "cheesecake" how many people start salivating one or two of you? It comes down to your genes. Individuals with the Compt-A version, meaning a slower version of their Comp gene, are the folks who love to sink their teeth into their pleasurable moments. These are the bingers who are like to watch Netflix every day, but once a month I'm going to binge "Game of Thrones" or "Sex education".
When do I say what's your idea of fun, how many people think skydiving, bungee jumping, extreme sports? Is their idea of fun like you could do that every day and if you don't do that you don't feel pleasure enough. You don't feel challenged enough, and so you're bored with the average things.
Comes down to your genetics, comes down to your ability to metabolize dopamine way too fast, so you're a serial entrepreneur, you're the risk-taker you're the high-risk stock investor, but when you don't have those challenges in your life, when you don't have those risk-taking opportunities in your life, you feel like you're missing something and what does that lead to symptoms of depression, symptoms of addiction. The addiction that develops is a byproduct of not being challenged enough in your daily life being unable to feel pleasure. So now when I understand exactly how my genes are influencing my relationship with pleasure, with emotion, with the ability for me to feel full, when I've eaten food, I can understand how to structure my life to achieve longevity sustainably.
How many emotions do you think a snake has? It only has two emotions. It has "stop" and "go". So a snake isn't ever afraid of anything. It simply has established a threshold that if you cross this line I'ma bite you, that's what it's saying, so you stay behind that line I'm not going to bite you. That's serotonin, that's your ability to determine where my boundaries are. Serotonin dysfunction means they're unable to compartmentalize stimuli that are causing their attention by their priority. If I'm going to build a longevity plan that's going to extend my lifespan I have to understand how the decisions I make from food, water, drink, sleep, exercise, etc, are going to be influenced by my mental state.
What difference does it make to you to be on that ketogenic diet if you don't feel like eating today if bad things are just happening in your life and you just don't want to deal with being healthy? Every one of us feels that when you wake up one day you're like I'm not feeling it today right and how do I address that?
What we do at The DNA company, we help you understand not only like I could talk to you about the impact of the FOXO3 gene on the anti-oxidation capabilities and how that's a literal longevity gene. I could talk to you about the fact that there are at least 28 % of individuals in this room, right now, if they were to continue with cardiovascular exercise they would cause a heart attack to themselves. I could tell you about one in four individuals in this room right now, that if they were to get on a ketogenic diet they would have diabetes within a year without eating any sugar. I could do that for you and that's what we do with the genetics we get personalized, we get into it. But if I don't explain to you how you're going to respond to the information you receive, how you're going to respond to the factors that cause you to stress, if you don't know how to deal with that you're already starting at a disadvantage. When it comes to your longevity, where are the top four things that people tell you to improve your life? "I want you to eat better", "I want you to sleep more", "I want you to have less stress", and "I want you to do more exercise". Everyone will tell you the same four things, I didn't need to go to a doctor for you to tell me that. I could have checked google for that. I could have found a thousand people telling me a thousand ways to fix all those things, but if I said "listen, here's your Dietary Profile. Here's how you respond to fats, here's how you respond to carbs, here's how you do this, but I'm also going to tell you that when you are upset about something the only thing that's going to make you happy is a tub of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Genetically wired to feel happy when I eat ice cream. By the way, I could tell you that listen there's a gene out there called BDNF and if you were to pick up most genetic testing products reports they'll tell you that BDNF influences your motivation to go work out if you got this gene you are like hyper-motivated to work on the reality couldn't be further from the truth brain-derived neurotrophic factor improves and produces new neuronal connections in your body after the body's experienced some sort of trauma.
How do I structure a plan for a person if I understand that their BDNF levels are low? What is the first thing I'm going to tell you? I'm going to tell them: "Listen, you need to wake up at this time during the morning, you need to work out between the hours of 6 a.m to 8 a.m. If you're a male you can drive the production of testosterone, so you can boost levels of BDNF and when you boost levels of this gene then you're going to be more motivated to continue down your path throughout the rest of the day, and when you get to sleep you're not going to use digital screens. The digital screens lower the production of BDNF. So you're going to avoid that. I've built you a personalized plan and I've walked with you every step of the way and I've explained every single gene that's going to influence your decision-making process daily to you know exactly what it is you need to do from a mental perspective, from a physical perspective, from a dietary perspective, from an exercise-based perspective everything is laid out for you personalized, unique individual just like you and me. If you and I are individuals and that's what we used to describe ourselves then.
2 % of the human population can survive sustainably on a plant-based diet. It comes down to tinkering and twisting and trying things out and putting your body through that experiencing all those different things so you find a diet that works for you, based on your genetics, based on your lifestyle, based on your environment, and based on the things that will improve get you to where you want to get to. So this is functional genomics. It's about understanding how the genes that I carry influence the decision-making process that I own, and influence the ability for me to deal with certain macronutrients. Micronutrients influence my ability to respond to infections and diseases and how do I fight those diseases. Once I have a full understanding of this I know this might seem overwhelming, but when you look at it and you start influencing you start implementing it naturally. Things become so much easier.
To reduce your risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease, you should implement cardiovascular exercises to lose weight. Let's talk about cardiovascular biohacking health for a second. So you understand from a genetic perspective, 4 factors influence your cardiovascular health:
- when your body is exposed to a toxin. How does the body deal with those toxins, how do you get rid of those toxins?
- once the body is exposed to those toxins, what's the anti-inflammatory capacity of my cells, what's the ability of my cells to say this is a problem I have to address right now.
- when my body cannot deal with these toxins, what's going to happen to the endothelial lining, the inner lining of my blood vessels?
- what is my body going to do to address that inflammation? It's going to send something called Cholesterol, which is your body's internal vaseline.
BJ Fogg, Ph.D. has written a book called "Tiny Habits". He's helped develop some of the behavioral change techniques that we employ in our reports and he says that the biggest problem with people improving their health is they all try to achieve level 10 from level zero they want to change their sleep, reduce their stress, eat better and exercise more the minute they hurt that they learn that they're in trouble. But you can't get to level 10 without starting at level zero. And level zero means "I am not going to use my phone after 10 pm", that's level zero. You've spent 40 years of your life not 100 sure about how you should be taking care of it you are not going to see a change in four weeks, you're not going to see a change in four months you have to change the way you approach your health has to be a frameshift, you are not on a diet you are changing the way you approach food and that's what personalized functional genomics does.
BiohackingCongress Team is very grateful to Harris Khan, Director of Product Development and Co-Founder of The DNA Company for joining the BiohackingCongress and giving an incredible lecture.
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Based on the lecture by Harris Khan
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