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Wendy Myers: Ben, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Dr. Ben Lynch: A pleasure to be here, Wendy, thank you.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, and how you’ve gotten to the health field. How did you come to specialize in genetics?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Well, I’m a naturopathic physician. As a naturopathic physician, we really enjoy looking for the root cause, and identifying it, and restoring function to the body. When I had patients come in with various different conditions, I would say, “Okay, well, these conditions are caused by dysfunction,” and then I will give them the same nutrients or protocol as other patients, and some of them wouldn’t respond. Then I said, “Okay, well, there must be some genetic component to this.” Then one day, I had this individual come in asked me about bipolar, and I Googled it really fast. I realized that there is genetics which interfered with folate with those who had bipolar.
I was like, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” Then it was pregnancy, and I just kept going. I was like, “Okay, this is really important. Now, that’s starting to explain why some people are more sensitive to others, and why some people can eat McDonald’s or other fast food all day long, and be totally fine. It was really interesting when I saw that one, that genes really control our symptoms and cause them, and also make them go away, and two, that we can do something about it, and I got really excited.
Wendy Myers: Yes, because there are some people population that I work with myself that want to detox. They know they need to detox, but they’re so, so sick that they’re not able to. We know that people that the more ill somebody is, the more their genetic pathways that are favorable to detox have been compromised, or their genetics are … They have their positive for certain genetic pathways where they have compromised detoxification. Why don’t we talk a little bit about how our genes interfere in detoxification, or what are some of the signs? Let’s take PMS for instance. What are some of the genetic pathways that promote PMS?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Well, a big one is being able to modulate, not modulate but process estrogen. If women’s estrogen levels are really high, then that can be a problem, and contribute to PMS. We know that. Research supports it. Doctors treat it all the time. They support the litter. They support the microbiome. They help process the estrogens and they do a lot of other things too. There’s a big gene with estrogen, and that has to do with it’s called COMT. COMT’s job is to help break down one component of estrogen, not all of them. There’s many genes for estrogen metabolism, but one of them is COMT. Now, if this gene is working slowly, then there could be estrogen levels that are sticking higher around for some women.
What can happen is when we start getting closer, not we because I’m not a woman, but when women start getting closer to menstruating or that cycle, the estrogen levels will spike. The COMT’s job has to deal with that. If it can’t deal with it, COMT’s job is also not just to deal with estrogen but also with dopamine and norepinephrine. If a woman’s estrogen is high, and it can’t get out because of the slower COMT and her norepinephrine levels are high, she’s going to turn into a rage monster. Every month, she sees this coming. Every month, she’s like, “Man, I don’t want this to happen,” but it does, and so she feels that she’s out of control. She’s not her own person, so she tries to hide herself from other people. That’s not cool.
There’s all these jokes about PMS but it’s no joke. It’s no joke. You got to be able to support these genes to move the estrogen, so it can clear and detox the body comfortably, so the woman, even though her cycle is coming, does not turn into a rage monster. Some months, she can have PMS. In other months, she doesn’t, so it all depends on how well these genes are becoming fluid and functioning.
Wendy Myers: Yes, and so the COMT gene is responsible for helping to process excess estrogens. Let’s talk about some ways that estrogen sensitive cancers can be promoted by certain pathways.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Estrogen sensitive cancers are huge. I mean, they’re a really, really big deal. There’s a number of genes in this pathway. COMT is a big one. There’s also Cytochrome P450 that can move quickly. There’s also NQ01s, which are another set of genes in the estrogen pathway as well, and the glutathione genes. There’s a whole bunch of them, but the one I really like to focus on is … well, there’s two. There is glutathione genes, because there are certain estrogens that are really toxic to women. These really toxic estrogens, what they do is they go around, and they wreak havoc on the cell membranes, and wherever there is that toxic estrogen, it’s damaging cells that are around it.
If you’re damaging a bunch of cells, and they don’t have the necessary tools to repair themselves, if you keep damaging them, they’re going to become really sick and dysregulated, and eventually, the body can’t control it. They become cancerous. You can have estrogen sensitive cancers simply by having low glutathione levels. If your GST gene and your GPX genes are not working very well, your glutathione level is low, and your toxic estrogen is accumulating, and you also have COMT whose job is to methylate one component of this toxic estrogen, and get it out of the body as well. It’s two really big ones right there that are really, really important.
Wendy Myers: I think, women that have these compromised genes or these dirty genes, they really have to be cognizant of xenoestrogens in our environment, so using products with phthalates and parabens that mimic estrogen and bind under receptor sites in the body, or drinking water out of plastic bottles, or really avoiding perfumes, petroleum-based products that mimic estrogens in our bodies. Can you talk a little bit about those, and how they interfere in our body’s ability to deal with estrogens or the mimic estrogens in our body?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yes. These xenoestrogens, I haven’t studied them hard enough to understand fully the exact mechanisms, but I know that they can influence estrogen metabolism, and either slow it down or increase the production of estrogens, or they can be mimics and also bind the receptors and block them from processing estrogens. There’s many different mechanisms which these chemicals in our environment can disrupt our own estrogen metabolism. You’re right. The more we can avoid them, the better off we are. These things are everywhere. I feel for women who are working at cash registers, because they’re handling receipts all day, and these receipts are lying with bisphenol A, which is a really, really potent xenoestrogen.
In fact, this BPA was supposed to be used as a drug for women for hormone metabolism. What they found was, “Oh, we can’t do that because that’s too strong and too powerful, so let’s just put it in plastics.” I mean, who would have thought? One from a drug to thickening in plastic, but now we have plastic everywhere, and it’s still affecting our hormone levels, and especially women. If women are working at cash registers or handling loaded bisphenol A all day, their load of bisphenol A after that day is very, very high. It is not just BPA. It’s all the BP whatevers. I mean any type of plastic. If you get BPA free, that’s great, but it’s still plastic, so don’t be fooled that BPA is okay. It’s not. You got to get rid of all plastics.
Wendy Myers: I agree. I feel bad for the women at cash registers. Also, I don’t want to touch the receipts because I know they’re full of estrogenic substances in them. Let’s talk a little bit about fatty liver. This is something that afflicts millions of Americans. Let’s talk about maybe some of the genetic reasons why people have fatty liver.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yes, this is a big one. This is really big. We have to understand first the premise. Genes are not static in us. We talked about the glutathione genes. We talked about these estrogen genes. Know that yes, you might be born with these genes that are slightly dirty and not able to work as fast as maybe your neighbor or your sibling, right, but understand that you can influence them through your lifestyle, the choices that you make in your life. That’s the good thing. Don’t forget that. Just because you might be struggling with PMS now doesn’t mean you’re destined to be the rest of your life. Even if you’re born with these dirty genes, you can change it.
I’ve done it. I’m sure Wendy has, and many people fixed this. In terms of fatty liver, there are many, many genes which contribute to fatty liver. There’s no one gene. Fatty liver is the fastest growing condition today. Number one, corn syrup is a big one. Corn syrup is a huge, huge issue. If you look at the genetics of fatty liver, there’s a number of them, but one in particular is in the folate pathway, and it’s called MTHFD1. Not many people talk about this gene. I did not talk about this gene in my book, but you need to understand that this gene increases the risk of fatty liver by 70 times, 7-0. If you are a homozygous for this dirty gene of MTHFD1, then your risk for fatty liver goes up 70 times compared to someone who does not have that dirty gene born dirty.
Yous truly, me, I’m homozygous for this, and I’m also a compound heterozygous, meaning I have one bad copy of MTHFR or a slow copy. I shouldn’t say bad, and ar copy from my mom, so I have a very slow MTHFD1, and I have a very slow MTHFR, which means my folate cycle is very slow, and my methylation cycle is slow. 85% of our methylation occurs in our liver, and if we cannot process things very well, and our liver gets sick, then we get fatty liver. Fatty liver is nicely diagnosable. It’s more symptomatic, and it’s mainly lifestyle changes that fixes it, because there’s no cure. There’s no medicine for it. They’re trying, but there’s no pharmaceutical medicine for it.
The number one recommendation for me for fatty liver is one to support your liver. Don’t eat so much. Do intermittent fasting. Use glutathione, and basically, don’t eat too much, and avoid corn syrup. Thank God.
Wendy Myers: Coffee enemas.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yeah, coffee enemas.
Wendy Myers: Those are helpful.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yes, those are surprising. They’re weird. It’s like, “I thought you drank coffee.” Well, yeah, you can, but coffee enemas do show a lot of promise for supporting and moving the stuck bile out of the gallbladder, so they’re really good for that.
Wendy Myers: Yes. I’m a huge proponent of those for detoxification, and they’re great for fatty liver. You have a book coming out called Dirty Genes. Tell us a little bit about what someone can expect when they read your book. Tell us some little tidbits in there.
Dr. Ben Lynch: What someone will expect when they read Dirty Genes number one is empowerment and hope and excitement. I recently asked a group of individuals who got Dirty Genes early. I had them on a call, and I asked them what the good parts of Dirty Genes were, and what the negatives were. One lady for the negative, she goes, “Well, I’ll tell you what one negative was, and it happened to me in every single chapter. Every chapter, I wanted to call 10 friends and say, “This is what’s wrong with you, and then I can help you.” I thought that was really cool, because it explains the why behind so many things. There’s a lot of books on weight loss, and detoxification, and Hashimoto’s, and whatever XYZ condition you want to name it, but there’s no real book that’s describing these thing at a genetic level, and a plethora of them.
Dirty Genes teaches you how your body works, and it shows you at the genetic level of what can happen when these genes are not working right. Then it tells you how to fix them yourself, and then it gives you a quiz to see if your genes are working right or not, and which ones are a bit sluggish. Then you go through a program to clean them up, and then you take a quiz again, a different one, a more extensive one. Then you’re specifically directed towards really cleaning up that particular gene, but in a certain order, and you’re basically really identifying the cause of your condition really at the genetic level.
These seven genes that I talk about are there’s main requirements for them to be in the book, because there’s 19,000 genes in the body. I reduced it to seven in the book, so how is that useful? Well, every gene that’s in the book, if one of them is dirty, you’re guaranteed to have multiple symptoms. We’ve already talked about a few here, Wendy, right?
Wendy Myers: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Ben Lynch: If COMT is dirty, you’ve got PMS. You have irritability. You’ve got high estrogen. You’ve got estrogen sensitive cancers. You’ve got glutathione issues, and now you’re sensitive to chemicals in your environment. That’s just a few, and we got others. Fatty liver is another one. Then you go through it, and you can take care of yourself the basics. Let’s say you do the second quiz, and you’ve improved say 30%. You’re not all the way there, right? You’ve improved quite a bit, but not so much. You’re not too happy about it. Well, there is a whole appendix in the back of the book that is directing you towards which labs you should order, or show your doctor for really diving deeper. Then if you do that with your doctor, you’ll really accelerate, because I’ve shown you which test to order, why, and which markers are out of whack, and how to support them.
Wendy Myers: Yes, that’s fantastic, because there’s a lot of confusion out there about genetics, about genetic testing. There’s a wide scope of how genes can be interpreted. What is your take on the viability of some of the genetic tests out there like say the 23andMe? What is your preferred genetics test route? What kind of test do you like?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Man, that’s a great question, Wendy. To be honest, I don’t like any of them right now. I mean, I like them. They still serve a purpose, but what I don’t like about genetic testing is how people are receiving them and thinking what next steps they take, because what happens is when you get your genetic results back … Let me show you something real quick here. If you get your genetic test back, and you get this, right?
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Dr. Ben Lynch: You get all of that. You see the red, and you’re thinking, “Well, now, what do I do? That looks bad to me, and it looks I’m in trouble.” Number one, you get your results back, the immediate thing is fear. Then you react because you’re scared, and you’re focusing on this one particular thing. In this in individual, it’s a red [inaudible 00:16:31]. You immediately think, “Oh, that’s bad. I’m in trouble. How do I fix this, because we think we’re broken?” First is the mindset shifts. You can’t fix that. That’s your computer. I’ve got a MacBook Air in front of me, so I can put garbage on it, and make my system not work very well. You get PCs. PCs are more hit by viruses, and that’s their weak link.
PCs, you can put antivirus. For this individual, they have a faster [inaudible 00:17:06] here, which means they’re burning through their serotonin. It doesn’t mean that they are. It means they’re susceptible to it, but there’s cool things you can do for that. I talked about those genes in Dirty Genes, but basically right now, I would say that 23andMe is still the best test to do out there. I would use the less expensive version, because I think their healthy ports are okay if you’re really interested, but they’re not really useful. They’re not really useful. Then you have to export the raw data into various tools. I developed one called strategy, and that’s what you just saw there, part of it, but there’s diagrams which put them together.
If you focus on genetic reports and the results, you look at the one gene in isolation versus the whole picture. That’s where the concept of Dirty Genes came from, because when I first started, I was doing that. I saw that I was MTHFR, and I tried to fix my MTHFR. I just took methylfolate, and I got this plain horrible migraine. I was like, “Well, I have MTHFR. I should be taking methylfolate.” Not necessarily. In Dirty Genes, with the book, there’s no lab testing required. There’s no genetic testing required. There’s quizzes that you take. I’m asking you specific questions that show how your genes are responding right now real time for you. There’s no testing required. That’s the really cool thing about it.
Wendy Myers: Is that some of the drawbacks of testing 23andMe or running them through an app to spit out certain kinds of data? Are you saying that some of the problems with this test is that they don’t factor in epigenetics, whether that gene is expressing currently or not, that they’re kind of static, and maybe it’s not a descendant so to speak if you’re double homozygous, that your genes can change. They could be manipulated, and if you change your diet and lifestyle, and detox, then they could express it more positively.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Exactly. For example … We talked about COMT, right? If you look at this individual, their COMT is minus, minus. See that? You look at that, and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t have a problem there.” That’s what people think, but this is how you’re born, but you can still have a problem there, like you said, through epigenetics, through your lifestyle choices. Even though you’re COMT minus, minus, and typical of the population, they can still be dirty. You’re still susceptible estrogen sensitive cancers. You still can have PMS. Even though this gene is supposedly working faster, you can dirty it through your lifestyle actions.
That’s the biggest problem with genetic testing is they look at that, and they’re like, “Oh, that gene is fine. I’m born fine there.” You buy a new computer. It can still break. You can still put a virus on it. We have to have that mindset that, “Yeah, these genes change their function based upon what we choose.” The real unfortunate thing, Wendy, is we are all consumers, and there’s many, many businesses out there that prey upon that, and they also prey upon fear. Genetic testing, there’s a lot of fear involved, and they promise a solution. If you have a certain genetic problem, they tell you that, “Oh, you got to take these supplements to fix this particular gene.” They completely ignore if that person even has any problems in that particular gene.
It doesn’t matter. They just recommend you supplements. Then you’ll willingly pay $300 for six supplements because you want to fix that problem, and you think you can. We’ll, you just lost $300 because you’re not going to fix it that way. That’s the unfortunate thing. In my genetic report, there is no supplement recommendations period.
Wendy Myers: That’s great, because we know that someone has a problem with … You have a methylation pathway. If you have a problem say up here, upstream in the methylation pathway, that could be causing problems down here. You can’t just fix the problem down below. There’s lots of different things that are going to affect the pathways up above.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Exactly. It’s very simple if you have a glass of water or let’s say a cup of coffee at the restaurant, and the waitress comes over and asks if you’d like some more. You said, “Yes please,” and they fill it up. You take a few sips, and you put it down. She comes back within 10 minutes, and she fills it up, and then she spills it all over the counter. You have to have the genes working everywhere, and not just one particular gene yourself. You weren’t drinking that coffee fast enough. She filled it and made a mess, so you were the downstream gene, and the coffee was the upstream gene, and so she overflowed it and caused, and that overflow is symptoms.
You have to see what’s filling up your cup, and you have to work with all of them. In the Dirty Genes, I picked these seven genes because these seven genes work in major, major body systems. I’ve covered all the major body systems, and so when you clean them all up, you’ve had essentially cleaned up all your major body systems at the same time. That’s the other thing too. There is too much confusion out there, and it needs to get cleaned up.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about some more symptoms so that people can relate what we’re talking about to their symptoms. Let’s talk about chemical sensitivity. This is a problem with a lot of people, so a lady walks past you with perfume, and you just instantly would get a headache. What is that caused by?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Well, that’s caused by a lot. It is basically your entire system is not working well. You’re not able to get rid of the chemicals or the toxins faster than they’re coming in, so you become chemically sensitive at the slightest whiff. Basically, you’re so slow in being able to process these chemicals out that the next insult will set you on the floor again. It’s a whole slew of combinations. You can have concurrent infections. You could not be deep sleeping. Your diet could be not conducive towards supporting your body and healing, because these genes, they require nutrients. I mean, you look at MTHFR. It requires vitamin B2 in order to run.
If you’re not eating foods containing vitamin B2, MTHFR, whether you have a genetic problem there or not, is dirty, and it’s not working. Your body needs these nutritional components, and anytime we have insults, our body has to respond to those. The more insults you’ve had throughout your life, and you’re not dealing with them, you’re going to get dirty. Imagine that if you cook oatmeal, and you slightly burned it on while you’re cooking because you walked away and took care of a kid, I go, “Crap, I left on the stove.” Now, you burn the bottom, and it’s harder for you to clean. If you left it overnight, it’s going to be even harder to clean.
If you have an insult, you need to address it right away. If you don’t, that gene is dirty, and so you get another insult. It’s dirtier, and then they’re dirtier. It’s this accumulation of life and you not taking a timeout and saying, “Okay, I need to fix this.” There are certain genes which will push us to keep contributing or to keep pushing in life. Like COMT, if it’s slower, we have higher dopamine and higher norepinephrine levels, and we go, go, go, go. That added stress. It will put a burden on our body. Then if we get a chemical exposure, we become sensitive to that. Is that we’re sensitive to the chemicals in the environment, so is it always having genes to do with detox that predisposes the chemical sensitivity, or is it stress which made our whole system weaker, which made these other detox change weaker?
It’s all together. It’s multifaceted, and the body is harmonious and beautiful on how it works, and it has multiple routes to fix these things. Yeah, there are absolutely genes which are not working right for moving out chemicals, but there’s also genes which push us to work harder, which push us not to sleep well, which push us to make poorer decisions with food. Then we get more susceptible to chemical sensitivity. In short, to target one particular gene, there is a glutathione S-transferase gene that I discussed in Dirty Genes. Its job is to bind chemicals and to get them out. If your glutathione S-transferase is slowed down or deleted, go on. Then your ability to take arsenic and get rid of it is slowed down. As a result, your arsenic accumulates.
Then that arsenic goes around, and it slows down a bunch of other genes. Those other genes might be getting rid of other chemicals for you. Now, they’re slowed down. It’s a multi-step process, and then also mercury is involved with this gene. That’s one gene. That is a specific answer for you. Glutathione S-transferase gene is a really big one.
Wendy Myers: You’re talking about GPX, correct?
Dr. Ben Lynch: GST.
Wendy Myers: GST.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yeah, GPX is hydrogen peroxide. If you have early onsite graying hair, that’s a sign that your GPX is dirty, one of them, a chemical sensitivity too.
Wendy Myers: What’s the significance of the difference of the GST snips and the variants like theta1, P1, mu, et cetera as far as glutathione S-transferase, which is involved in the bonding of glutathione or different molecules. If you have a deletion in mu, do you have a decreased ability to detox arsenic?
Dr. Ben Lynch: I don’t know which one is specific GST. They are super confusing. Research is contradictory a bit. We spent a lot of time differentiating between the different GSTs, mu, and pi, theta, and all the other ones, but just simply know that some GSTs, mu … Hypothetically, I don’t know, but let’s say GST mu’s job is to process arsenic, and GST theta’s job is to process mercury. I don’t know. Again, it’s conflicting. Then they process a bunch of medications and other chemicals in the environment. On StrateGene, we have a whole paragraph. I don’t think this individual has a GST1. No, we don’t. This one here, you can see GST P1 is what we’ve tested for this individual. We have a bibliography, which explains more which they do.
Also, there’s benefits to these snips. Sometimes, you want the gene to work more slowly, because if you take a medication, and glutathione binds the medication, then you actually make it more toxic, not less. It all depends. The biomechanics can get really tricky really fast.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about insomnia. That’s a problem a lot of people are having. How do genes relate or promote insomnia?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Great question. Yes, this is a big one. There’s two real big players with insomnia, and we have to define which type of insomnia. Is it insomnia where you can’t fall asleep at night, and you’re staring at the ceiling, or it’s an insomnia where you fall asleep just fine, but you wake up early, and now you’re staring at the ceiling halfway through the night, and you can’t fall back asleep? The genes which really predispose us to not being able to fall asleep at night are genes which process our excitatory neurotransmitters in our brain. These neurotransmitters that are excitatory that allow us to focus right now from this video for example are dopamine and norepinephrine. These are really important, also histamine.
Histamine is also a neurotransmitter. We don’t think about that, but it’s … Is it a neurotransmitter, or is it a signal to stimulate neurotransmitters? A research is out on that too, but regardless, it’s stimulating. If our genes or dopamine and norepinephrine, and histamine are slow, then these chemicals in our brain stick around longer, right? We need to make that gene work a little bit faster. If you’re born with a slightly slower variant in these particular genes, and many, many people are, then you might be staring at the ceiling. I’ve had my kid’s friends come over, and their parents say, “You know, you have to get my son melatonin, because otherwise, you won’t sleep.”
Parents know this. I’ll walk in there sometimes, and I’ll see my kids just flat out staring at the ceiling, and we’ll talk. I’ll sit down. I didn’t sleep all night. I’ve learned that what you can do then is genes produce. They do work. They do work by producing enzymes. The enzymes require co-factors, and co-factors require vitamins and minerals typically. If you give particular vitamins and minerals to speed up these slower genes, as Dr. Bruce Ames had researched this, he found that if you have a gene that’s slightly slower, if you give it the vitamin and mineral it needs a co-factor, you can speed it up, which is really cool. This is the promise behind orthomolecular medicine. With COMT, if it’s slower in this individual, they’ll be staring at the ceiling.
How many women are magnesium deficient, Wendy?
Wendy Myers: 80%.
Dr. Ben Lynch: The co-factor for COMT, one of them is magnesium. If your magnesium levels are low, you’re staring at the ceiling, and you’re not falling asleep. Also, the other co-factor for COMT has to do with methylation. That’s your body’s number one methyl donor, which is CME. CME gets … It’s not easy to make. This is very, very difficult to make. You need enough B12. How many people are deficient in that? You need a bunch of methylfolate. How many people are deficient in that? You need to have normal levels of homocysteine, not high. Tons of people have high homocysteine. Making CME is difficult, so I find that if people take magnesium and CME, if their methylation is working well, they fall asleep within 20 minutes.
It’s a beautiful thing, and if you have a slower COMT, that means you have higher dopamine levels, and higher norepinephrine levels. Well, what amino acid is a building block for dopamine and norepinephrine. Tyrosine, tyrosine comes from what? Protein, so if you basically don’t eat protein for dinner, or very little of it, then you are not producing that much dopamine and norepinephrine, so you reduce your protein intake at night, and you should sleep longer, or you fall asleep better, which is really cool. That’s just one instance.
Wendy Myers: These are really good examples, and it’s incredibly important to take magnesium every single day, because you need it for your genes to function, your enzyme sites to be working, and just need it for so many different things. This is something the women listening are going to want to hear about. What are some of the genes that promote early graying of hair?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Well, again, I’ve drawn a lot of pathways over the years, biochemical pathways. I geek out. I mean, for me, these are a lot of fun, so I’ll draw these things, and I’ll totally geek out. I’ve got sketches all over my table here. I’ll tell you Wendy that it comes back to stress. It comes back to stress, and we know that. Stress is such a cop out word as Dr. Jillian Teta said, but it really comes down to stress, but to directly answer this, which I tend not to do, is glutathione peroxidase. There’s a gene called glutathione peroxidase. Its job is to get rid of hydrogen peroxide.
Ase means an enzyme, so if you A-S-E after a word in science, it usually has to do with an enzyme, so glutathione peroxide-ase. This is a gene that chomps up the hydrogen peroxide with the help of glutathione, and it turns it into water. Now, I don’t know if when you were a kid, but I had family members trying to bleach their hair, and they use hydrogen peroxide, so hydrogen peroxide will whiten your hair. If I pour hydrogen peroxide on this shirt, it will turn it gray or white as well. If your GPX gene is dirty, you can have early graying of hair. When you’re stressed out, you’re breaking down serotonin and norepinephrine and epinephrine. When you’re breaking these down, these same genes would break these neurotransmitters down.
As a result, they release a ton of hydrogen peroxide, a ton, so that gets in your brain. It gets in your body, and your glutathione gets depleted, and you get early graying in the hair. How many times have you seen super, super, super stressed out people, or you’ve heard stories about it where you see them, you’re like, “Whoa, you aged in the last year,” or you see them, and you don’t want to say anything. You don’t want to be rude, but like, “The last time I saw you, you were fine. And now, you’ve got like gray everywhere.”
Wendy Myers: We can see that from our presidents from Clinton from the beginning of his administration to the end. Obama, same thing.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Exactly. I think, the residents of America are going to get early graying of hair from the president.
Wendy Myers: My feelings exactly.
Dr. Ben Lynch: We can always laugh, because laughter is actually the best medicine, right? We talked about stress, so you got to laugh. You got to smile.
Wendy Myers: You have to have a sense of humor. Let’s talk about food sensitivity. This is something that affects a lot of people and some people can be even down to just being able to eat five foods. I have some clients coming to me that’s just sad to see. They are just so limited in the foods that they can tolerate. Let’s talk a little about some of the dirty genes that can promote food sensitivities.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Well, there’s a really, really big one in the gut, a really big one. We always talk about gut health. You hear it said all the time. Like, “Oh, you got leaky gut, or you need to fix your gut, or you need to heal your gut, or you gut leaky gut syndrome.” You hear this all the time, and people get sick of that. It’s like saying the word you’re stressed out, and then you calm down. You’re reacting to foods. You gut leaky gut. You need to fix your gut. Again, it’s that cop out. Well, being reactive to foods does tell you that you are having and experiencing leaky gut syndrome, but leaky gut is caused by multiple things, infection, stress, lack of nutrients to repair your gut lining, because your gut lining is regenerated every seven days, which is amazing if you think about it, so you need sufficient folate for that.
Your MTHFR gene needs to be working well and getting sufficient folate, so you can repair the cells in your gut, and so your gut lining is intact, but that’s not … That’s important. That will help prevent and heal your gut. I have MTHFR, so my gut healing was slower, and I struggled from it, and I will continue to struggle from it if I don’t take care of myself, but there’s an even bigger one. This gene is called DAO. The official name is AOC1, but everyone calls it DAO. Its job is to process histamine from your food, from your drink, so anything that you’ve taken and swallowed through your mouth. Also, histamine has produced bio microbiome.
Any histamine that is outside the cell is processed by DAO. This gene can get born dirty definitely. My wife has a dirty DAO. The rest of our family, not so bad. The amazing thing is this gene can get dirty very, very easily. If you get food poisoning, you’ll have explosive diarrhea. Well, that’s massive amount of histamine to bring in a bunch of water to get it out, but histamine to higher levels can also puncture and increase holes in your gut. You can also get reactions from the food. You can get headaches. You can get migraines. You can get insomnia. You can get irritable. You can hot.
An easy way to check if you’re high histamine is to take your fingernails, and scratch yourself. That simple. I just scratched myself pretty hard, and I used to have raised red lines down my arm. Nothing now. Nothing at all. It hurts. It’s a little bit actually. You can see it’s actually a little bit red there now. Can you see that?
Wendy Myers: Don’t hurt yourself Dr. Lynch.
Dr. Ben Lynch: No, yesterday or two days ago, I did that, and I had no problem at all. It wasn’t red at all. That’s very slightly red, but two days ago, I had nothing, but last night, I went to bed late. I went to bed at 1:00 in the morning, and I woke up at 6:00 this morning because there’s so much work going on. I dirtied my jeans, and I increased histamine. That’s a sign that I’m dirtier than I need to be, than I should be. This DAO gene if you have a gut infection, you have to find it. If you’re taking certain probiotics that are histamine producing, not every probiotic is for everyone. There are some probiotics that really can produce histamine like lactobacillus bulgaricus or lactobacillus acidophilus. These can produce histamine.
There’s others as well. Bifidobacteria do not produce this. In fact, they can eat up the histamine in your gut. If you have high lactobacillus, and you have low bifido, and you have a gut infection, and you’re drinking wine, and you’re eating cheese, and eating high histamine foods, you’re going to be struggling with all these high histamine problems, especially if you have leaky gut. Then what you’re doing is you’re cutting and eliminating all these high histamine foods, because you find this out, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I need to reduce my histamine bucket, so I’m just not going to eat any of these histamine containing foods.”
Now, your menu choice has gone from super wide to super low, and you’re totally stressed out because now you have no variety in your diet. Now, you’re also getting more nutritionally deficient because you’re not eating a variety of foods, and now you’re getting stressed out about it. You’re getting more tired, and now, you’re getting even more leaky gut, because you’re no nourishing your gut with a wide variety of foods. Yasmina Ykelenstam of healinghistamine.com had a beautiful transition. Her website used to be called the Low Histamine Chef, which means how to cook with low histamine containing foods.
Eventually, she said, “You know what, that’s not the solution. Eliminating histamine from my life is not the solution. The solution is healing histamine,” which is why she renamed her website healinghistamine.com. That transition is a huge one, and I hope you caught that, because she healed her body, reduced her stress. I had stress a bit yesterday because I didn’t sleep well. As a result, my histamine levels go up, and stress is a huge one. Supporting your gut, fighting infections, using the right probiotics, reducing histamine containing foods and drinks is a huge one for this gene in your body.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about some of the genes that interfere in detoxification. What snips interfere in detoxification>?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Well, there is a whole slew of them. The big one is the Cytochrome P450s. In cytochrome P450s, there is probably … God, I’m going to [inaudible 00:41:57] to say 1000 significant snips found in the cytochrome P450s alone. They will speed the gene up. They’ll slow it down, and they might even be deleted and gone and not working at all. These genes, if your cytochrome P450s, which is the step one of detoxification in your liver, if your cytochrome P450s detox are working fast, and producing all these chemicals, they’re taking a chemical and they’re turning it into something else, so your body can get rid of it. A lot of these chemicals has to be transformed.
If the P450s are working really fast, and your glutathione genes of GST and GPX are working slowly, you get sick period, period. You need to make sure that your phase two detoxification is working faster than your phase one. I can’t tell you how many times, Wendy, I saw a lot … I still see a lot of detoxification formula sold by many reputable supplement companies that push phase one detox, and they provided the co-factors for these genes, but they don’t support the sulfur downstream of phase two. They also don’t encourage bowel elimination and phase three of getting the stuff out through your kidneys and such and you lymph.
There’s many, many genes, and I’m working on a detoxification pathway, that’s far from done, but it’s a big one. There’s a lot of nuances with this. What I will say is Tylenol should not be in any home in this house or in the world.
Wendy Myers: I agree with you. It does terrible, terrible things to the body.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Dr. Jared Skowron said a ridiculous statistics like 15 million doses a day of Tylenol are consumed, a day. One dose of Tylenol would deplete your glutathione. We’re giving it to kids post vaccines, and we’re giving it to ourselves when we have fevers or sick, and we need the glutathione during these times really, really, really badly. If you have glutathione deficient genes already, and you insult the body with a medication that’s as strong as Tylenol, you are making yourself even sicker. Do not use Tylenol period.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know there are some studies that are showing that giving Tylenol post vaccination is actually that link between what’s promoting autism in children, because they can’t protect themselves from the toxic insult that’s in vaccines and the analyzed aluminum and the other adjuvants and vaccines. That’s really that link there. Let’s talk a little bit about GST. If you have a compromised GST that can lead to higher metal accumulation, can you talk a little about that?
Dr. Ben Lynch: GST is a gene whose job is to bind to various metals and other things. I mean, medications too, and to transform them so we can pee them out. If your GST is not working very well, these metals accumulate. For example, GST should bind to arsenic, transform it, and then carry it basically out of the body. If it can’t do that, if you have arsenic, and we all have arsenic, every single one of us have high arsenic everywhere. Dr. Joe Pizzorno in his book The Toxin Solution is screaming that people need to be testing their arsenic levels, and the best way to test your arsenic levels? I have no idea. Toenails, it’s like, interesting.
Urinary arsenic, half life is too fast. You’re going to miss it. Blood arsenic? Maybe but toenail is the best long-term storage marker for that, but regardless, if your GST genes are not falling out these heavy metals for you, they’re accumulating. That’s the bottom line. What happens then is that arsenic, and the mercury, and then all these other metals would bind to all these other genes, and slow them down. We have 19,000 of other genes in our body, but if our glutathione S-transferase, our GST gene isn’t working and pulling these metals out, all these other genes in our body are slowing down, and becoming dysfunctional, all of them because they’re interfering with their function.
If I spill a bunch of honey and peanut butter all over my fingers, and you told me to type 50 words a minute, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Just imagine the mercury and the other heavy metals are like putting honey and peanut butter all over your GST genes and the rest of your genes. It’s not conducive towards health.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about MTHFR. That’s a big buzz word. Everyone is thinking of that when they think of genetic testing. Some medical doctors are only testing MTHFR, which is hilarious. MTHFR leads the methylation production, and if it’s low, you get low glutathione production. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yes. We have to understand what MTHFR’s job is. For the gene, MTHFR’s job is to make the enzyme of the MTHFR. Then that enzyme will take and will make the body’s number one form of folate. Everybody hears about folic acid, and they think that they have to take folic acid, so I was like, [inaudible 00:47:34], too many things to throw out of your house. Folic acid containing supplementation and folic acid processed foods is another one. Ideally, you can have some but let’s try to minimize it, and then Tylenol. Get rid of those out of here. Just go on. MTHFR makes methylfolate, and 80% of your folate in your body should be methylfolate.
Did you hear that? Methylfolate supports your methylation. A quick marker to see if your methylation is not working well is look at your homocysteine, because homocysteine is it needs the metal group. Once homocysteine is methylated, it’s not as toxic as it normally is. You methylate the homocysteine by putting the methyl from the methylfolate onto it, and the methyl from the methylcobalamin, which is vitamin B12, so it gets double methylated. Then it become methionine, which is methyl homocysteine. If your MTHFR isn’t working right, then you get lower levels of methylfolate, higher level of homocysteine, and higher levels of homocysteine will run around just like the heavy metals do wrecking havoc all over your body causing what’s called homocysteinylation.
Homocysteinylation will actually ruin your glutathione as well. It will bin your glutathione and destroy it. It will bind to your neurotransmitters, and break them. It’s toxic stuff. It will cause seizures and a bunch of other things. Nobody talks about this, but there’s another gene called Poland 1, which helps prevent homocysteine from becoming homocysteine thiolactone, and there was a gentleman who had epimorphism, a strong, strong snip in Poland 1, which slowed his ability to get rid of homocysteine thiolactone. Research shows that if you have higher levels of homocysteine thiolactone, you get seizures. Well, this guy was having like 30, 40 seizures a day.
I was saying, “How do I fix this,” and so I found this one medication. The name escapes me at the moment, but I’ve put him on this med, because that’s the only thing I could if we would help lower homocysteine thiolactone, the seizure’s gone. I mean, gone. It was amazing. That’s the cool thing about understanding biochemistry in our own bodies, because this guy was struggling for a long time with these seizures. It was really scary for him. MTHFR’s I call it the methylation practice because its job is support methylation, and if your mehtylation’s messed up, you have 200 plus other genes that are messed up.
Just because you read the research on MTFHR, and some papers will say, “Yeah, it’s associated with this,” and some people say, “Yeah, not really, no, it’s not,” but you just need to understand. Its job is make methylfolate, and if you’re not eating the greens or you’re consuming a bunch of folic acid, your MTHFR is dirty because you’re not getting good folates.
Wendy Myers: I want to ask you one last question. It’s just a personal question. I do a lot of metals testing with clients. You have many options. You can do hair mineral analysis, or urine DMSA challenge test, but not everyone can do a urine DMSA challenge test because of DMSA sensitivity reactions. That’s why I always first start with the hair analysis. Is there a genetic basis for DMSA’s sensitivity reactions, which some people can have when trying to do metal [inaudible 00:51:07]? We know it may involve the SULT genes, but there are other genes that may be involved. Why do some people get these reactions from very low amounts with DMSA while others do not?
Dr. Ben Lynch: Great question, that’s a great question. I saw this in clinic all the time. I specialize in environmental medicine. I love it. I think, it’s a phenomenal modality. We should all be specialists in environmental medicine. We gave DMSA to patients. Some patients tolerate just fine, and some patients like you said just got red rash all over their chest. They got horrible headaches. They got nose bleeding. They got itchy skin. They had difficulty breathing. They got irritable. They had horrible gas that just [inaudible 00:51:57]. My colleagues were like, “Oh, you’re just detoxing. It’s fine.” I was like, “No, no, not right.”
What DMSA is it’s a sulfur-based compound. When you give a sulfur-based compound, the body will process it, and so DMSA has a half-life of what? Four hours? Every four hours, half of that DMSA is gone. It just doesn’t disappear on its own. It has to go through different genes. I mean, that’s how it’s gone. It doesn’t just go through pipes and leave us. The genes have to do their work. There’s a really, really big one. You talked about the sulfurtransferase gene, which are you’re right they’re big, but the salt genes, they’re very important for sulfur metabolism, but they play a really minor role in sulfur metabolism, because they’re easily saturated.
The next step for that is glucuronidation pathway. Glucuronidation pathway can be also overwhelmed in people who have gut issues. Again, back to leaky gut issues or infections in the gut, and you have glucuronidase enzymes not working as well, or are on high speed, what have you. Then looking at calcium d-glucarate as a supplement to help also get rid of the sulfur-based compound will also help, because sulfrurtransferase enzymes are easily saturated and overwhelmed. They can handle it. DMSA, you typically give some pretty [inaudible 00:53:33] doses especially when you’re challenging. Now, there’s another one called SUOX, S-U-O-X. SUOX’s job is that’s sulfite oxidase. There is that ase again.
Its job is to get rid of sulfites, and turn the sulfites into sulfate. Once that happens, your body will pee out the sulfate. These sulfur test strips that people have to see if they’re peeing out sulfur and all that, I think, they’re a bunch of nonsense personally, because it’s a protective mechanism that’s designed by your body to get rid of excess sulfate for various reasons. You need a co-factor for SUOX, the vitamin and minerals. Remember, we need vitamins and minerals for these genes to work. You need the mineral molybdenum. That’s a hard word to say, but M-O-L-Y-B-D-E-N-U-M.
Wendy Myers: I like to say people just need momo. That’s [inaudible 00:54:28].
Dr. Ben Lynch: Yes, momo. Yes, use molyb. Get some molyb. 75 micrograms to 500 micrograms of molyb can change your life. Really, if you smell, and if you have flatulence that will just recollect sulfur, and just horrific odor. You’ve got possibly hydrogen sulfite containing bacteria in your gut. Then you take DMSA, which is also feeding those hydrogen sulfite bacteria. Plus, your SUOX is lacking molybdenum, and your salt enzymes are probably more thick and snipped out, and your glucuronidation pathway is overwhelmed from gut infections. You’re absolutely going to be reacting to DMSA. Doctors don’t know attempt of what you and I just talked about.
Wendy Myers: Dr. Ben, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate your insights and your intellect, and your sharing your vast knowledge about genetics in relation to detoxification with us. Tell us more about where we can get your book Dirty Genes, and where we can find you.
Dr. Ben Lynch: Thanks for that. Dirty Genes is available anywhere books are sold starting January 30th. It’s available now on barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, [inaudible 00:55:38] and others. Just go to Amazon, and type Dirty Genes, and it will pop up there, or you can go to dirtygenes.com, and go to Books-A-Million, or Barnes and Noble, wherever you like to shop online, and you can reserve your copy there. It’s topping the charts, so I’m really excited to see that. I’m really excited to see that, because I know this book is going to help a lot of people.
It’s a tremendous guide. It’s not a book that you curl up next to the fire, and read a nice romantic novel. This is a meaty book that you’ll read a chapter, and you’re like, “Wow, that was dense.” Easy to read, but still dense. It’s going to shift your mindset so much about symptomatology and what’s going on with your body. It’s going to start answering questions, “Oh, that explains why I feel like that. Oh, that explains my brother. Oh my God, I got to get on the phone.” It’s really cool. It explains the why behind so many things. It’s a lot of fun. You’ll have a ton of fun with it.
Wendy Myers: Everyone, please buy a copy and give it to your doctor, because I am just embarrassed for the conventional mainstream medical community how they don’t even look at genetics at all when working with their patients, or even running genetic tests to see what medications their body can even handle. I mean, it’s just so far behind mainstream medicine when it comes to genetics. Not everyone, but just the vast majority of people practicing just don’t know anything about it.
Dr. Ben Lynch: They don’t know anything about how nutrition plays a role in how our bodies function. I mean, we have genes. They know we all have genes, but the doctors forgot somehow. I don’t know how, because they were taught biochemistry just like I was and physiology, but in order for genes to produce enzymes, and enzyme to do work, you need co-factors. You need vitamins and minerals. You don’t need pharmaceutical one, two, and three. You need vitamins and minerals and real food. The doctors need to understand this. The cool thing about Dirty Genes is there’s a whole appendix like we said earlier of various labs based on a specific gene that you have, the seven genes.
The doctor will quickly see, “Oh yeah, that lab is good, or this lab is supported for that. And this is what lab I should order it from.” Both are there. If your doctor is a skeptic, which is totally fine to be skeptical as long as you have an open mind towards it, there’s a full bibliography in the back, which have ton of research for people, so COMT, PMS, and estrogen metabolism reference. Nose free and not breathing properly, open-mouth referring reference, MTHFR and folic acid problems reference. It’s cited. This is a very, very scientific book, and they can’t argue with published studies in PubMed. If they do, well, good luck being a doctor for very long.
Wendy Myers: Yes. I think, some doctors are just lazy who just are comfy in their practice, and don’t want to learn anything beyond what they were taught, because they don’t make anymore money from that.
Dr. Ben Lynch: They don’t, and it’s hard. It’s hard to learn new things. They get 50% of their patient population a bit better, and that’s good enough for them. That’s not good enough for me.
Wendy Myers: Me neither. Dr. Lynch, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You’re one of the speakers on the Heavy Metal Summit, so excited to have you on talking about dirty genes and how they affect detoxification example of what you talked about, the snippet of what you talked about on the Heavy Metal Summit. Thank you so much for being a part of it.
Dr. Ben Lynch: My pleasure. I look forward to tuning in some of those talks as well. Thank you.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much for coming on.
