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Transcript
- 01:57 About Shawn Bean
- 13:59 The Center for Bio Individualized Medicine
- 08:01 What is MTHFR Gene Mutation?
- 21:37 Prevalence of MTHFR Gene Mutations
- 23:24 Correcting Mutations
- 24:46 Raw versus Cooked Greens
- 27:22 Symptoms of MTHFR Mutations
- 28:42 Symptoms of issues in the detox pathways
- 32:48 Fixing Neurotransmitters
- 36:51 Other Common Mutations
- 41:13 Tools for correcting mutations
- 44:08 Finding a qualified practitioner
- 45:01 More About Shawn Bean
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and I am your host today on the show. We’re going to be talking about MTHFR mutations. This is a big problem a lot of people are dealing with and I wanted to do a show about it with Shawn Bean. He’s an amazing practitioner that is a specialist in MTHFR mutations and of course, other genetic mutations as well that interfere in our detox pathways. When these are interrupted, we build the toxins and heavy metals that make us sick, can cause cancer and other diseases.
But first, we have to do the disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 Podcast is solely informational in nature so please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment that we suggest on the show.
And you guys can go and sign up for my free Live to 110 by Weighting Less e-guide and five free Modern Paleo Survival Guides. I also have a brand new Mineral Power E-Guide that talks a lot about my Mineral Power Detox and healing program. Definitely go sign up and check that out on the site absolutely free.
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I’m really excited. I just wrapped the Women’s Gluten Free Summit with Dr. Mark Hyman. It was a huge success. There were over 300,000 downloads of all the presentations. My presentation was about how to do a food elimination diet. You can still purchase it. Just go to womensglutenfreehealthsummit.com and you can purchase the whole package, all the presentations for – I think right now, it’s $99. So definitely give that a look.
And as promised, we have Shawn Bean on the podcast. He is the co-founder for the Center for Bio Individualized Medicine and head of the department of clinical nutrition. He also specializes in clinical nutrition having several years of experience working with challenging medical cases. In fact, I send my challenging cases to him.
He possesses a bachelor of science and exercise science from Westchester University and has earned numerous certifications from the World Institute of Integrative Health Science, also neuroendoimmunology – that’s a mouthful – NLP (neurolinguistic programming) and clinical hypnotherapy.
Shawn specializes in alternative medicine including biochemistry and the neurology of autism, depression, chronic fatigue, weight loss, nutrition, GI imbalances, environmental toxicity, hormones, gene mutations and lifestyle modifications. He has completed all the necessary requirements for certification of completion in methylation courses given by Dr. Ben Lynch who’s a big advocate and voice in the world of genetic mutations including MTHFR.
Shawn assists Dr. Ben Lynch and other researchers helping to navigate the complex enzymatic pathways involved in methylation as well as other biological systems. And Shawn is one of the few specialists in the U.S. specializing in genetic SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms and over the past several years, he has collaborated with medical professionals and clients locally, nationally and internationally to help them identify hidden imbalances.
Shawn, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Shawn Bean: It’s an absolute pleasure, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners first about how you got into consulting with clients about detox issues and genetic mutations like the MTHFR. I like to refer to it as the ‘motherfucker mutation’ because when I first saw the acronym, that’s the first thing that come to my mind.
Shawn Bean: Obviously, this isn’t a family show, so maybe it is. But we’re all free to speech. Basically, how it came about was – let me give you a bit of background how I got into this whole avenue of methylation and just alternative health.
Basically, roughly about 10-12 years ago, I was a national level competitor body-builder. That lifestyle is not necessarily the best to begin with because it’s got a lot of stress involved, heavy lifting. You’ve basically got to pedal to the metal 24/7. You’re doing that for several years – the constant pounding, the extreme dieting. Your body takes a beating from it.
When I was prepping for a contest, I finished the contest and after I got done, I decided to go celebrate. Well, I decided to go celebrate on sushi. Well, I haven’t had sushi in six months and my immune system was at a complete compromise and I was having problems and stuff doing contest prep. It doesn’t feel right starting the afternoon naps and so forth.
And then, as soon as I had sushi, what happened was I got sick within 24 hours afterwards. So I went to the doctor. I said, “Listen, Doc. I got some gut problems going on. I feel bloated. I had sushi” and they completely ignored it. They’re like, “Oh, you know, you just got a little bit of gas.” So what do they do? They gave me Lactulose – and I was lactose intolerant to begin with.
So here I am in the gym. I’m farting so bad that it’s stinking up the place. They almost had to tell me I had to leave because of the gas I was producing. It was so obnoxious it was ridiculous.
So I took that for a little while and I’m like, “Nah, this isn’t working.” I went back. And all of a sudden, my strength starting dropping, my weight starting dropping. Usually, after I diet down and usually, I put about 30 lbs. or 40 lbs. back on afterwards. This time, it wasn’t happening. My mom was getting a little concerned. So here I was piling 5000 or 6000 calories in my system and still dropping weight. I’m like, “Something’s still not going on here.”
So I go back to the doctor, they test my testosterone levels and it’s forty. I said, “Forty?!” “Yeah, 40.” Sa I said, “I want to re-test on that.” They did a re-test. It was a repeat and the answer is 40 again. I said, “Alright! Something’s not right up here.” He said, “We’ll send you off to a GI specialist.” They looked at my diet. They’re like, “Your diet is really clean and stuff. There’s really nothing here you can modify.” I’m like, “Well yeah, I’ve been doing this for 15 years. I know the human body very well.”
As you would know, we are our own best advocates. No practitioner knows our body better than our own unless they’ve gone through it and they’ve experienced it. They can only go by what they learned through reading and doing their own research, but you know your body the best.
So to make a long story short, I went to the GI doctor. It ended up going to 10 different doctors. Then all of a sudden, neurological symptoms started coming on – depression, anxiety. I was out in the middle of no man’s land. Something’s up here.
So to make a long story short, I went three years like that. Within the first nine months, I went from 235 lbs. at a low body percent fat to 165 lbs. about 15% body fat. So when you calculate the body mass loss, you’re looking at about 100 lbs. body mass loss. That’s basically half a person. And it wasn’t fat that was lost. My body was feeding off itself.
So this started the whole cascade. Year after year after year, doctor after doctor after doctor, they tried to put me on anti-depressants, it just wasn’t working. So you know what? Screw the system. I’m going to go underground and try to figure stuff out on my own.
And that’s when I started to go in the forums back in 2006. People were just starting on their thyroid and adrenals, so I went that avenue. And then eventually, it would became a dog chasing its tail.
So I said, “You know what, I’m going to come out the forums. I’m going to start researching at the government databases.” That’s when I stated to find out the relationship between autism. When I started to look at the chemistry of autism and the neurology, I’m like, “Boy! It really mirrors just about everything we do.”
And then when I went to a naturopath and I did an organic acid test and it came up saying I had my excitatory is a little bit on the high end and I had dysbiosis. I’m like, “No… duh?” I went to the naturopath with all these information in the first place about adrenal fatigue and candida. I’m like, “I’m just paying you $600 to tell me what I already knew. But what can we do about it?” He didn’t know what to do about it.
So what I did was I ripped that test apart for an hour for over 1 ½ years. It finally dawned on me. I’m like, “Wait a second. My chemistry is that of an autistic child” and I started looking at other people’s chemistry and I’m like, “There’s something really going on here.”
And then this led me to finding somebody online who was a nuclear biochemist. She was a nuclear physicist and she started talking about methylation magic and orthomolecular magic. I’m like, “What is this woman talking about?”
Well, she took me underneath her wing. She introduced me to methylation. And then it just started from there.
And then back in – it was actually 2006 that I started talking about methylation on Stop the Thyroid Madness board.
Wendy Myers: Oh, yeah.
Shawn Bean: People were ignoring me because I said, “Listen, I bet you these people have hypothyroidism are going to have a higher risk of cancer.” Well, guess what? After doing my own research (years doing research), I was able to pinpoint the reason why it happened and I started to develop this ability to pattern-recognize.
And that’s what I do when I take on clients. I don’t just look at the person as a system. I look at a person as each individual system and then how those systems are integrated together.
So during my journeys, I was introduced to a very loving medical doctor, Dr. Michael Overbeck who actually took me underneath his wing and gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. I worked with him for almost 10 years in helping educate him on challenging cases.
We learned from one another. He had the medical site, I turned to the other side. We were dealing with people from all over the United States who have been with top specialist. When we’re dealing with those types of cases, we never once addressed methylation whatsoever. We just went back to the basics and that’s how the people got better, just through simple testing and making recommendations. The majority of them were just a change of lifestyles. There wasn’t any cause.
What I’ve learned to do with doctors and stuff and educate them as we move on through the interview, we’ll start to use analogies and stuff, which will actually start making people think like, “Wow! is it really this simple?”
Wendy Myers: So you were able to heal your pathways, clearing your methylation issues?
Shawn Bean: Yeah. Luckily, I wasn’t so genetically screwed, so to speak with methylation, but I was screwed in other ways. When I did further research, I looked at specific genes related to Asperberger’s. Actually, out of the 21 of the specific gene mutations, I had 17 of them (heterozygous or homozygous).
Even as a child, I was weak in many ways – photographic memory, score straight A’s on tests, fall asleep on class, boredom. I never carried books or did homework, but I was still a straight A student. Teachers got really pissed off. So I had to prove that by taking tests in the subject.
Second of all, back when our generation was going, they didn’t understand about autism. They didn’t understand about special and gifted children. I was a special child, but I was a gifted child in the special education. I had a speech impediment growing up. I didn’t talk until I was four or five years old. But once I went through a speech pathologist, I wouldn’t shut up. My IQ was well over 140, but they put me in special educational classes.
So I had learning abilities, I had learning disabilities, but I had abilities to do things other kids couldn’t do.
So following my senior school, listen, I was on the lowest level of this class, I said, “Give me some challenge.” So I actually jumped from the lowest level of science all the way up to the AP Gifted class. That’s when the reality hit. It’s like, “Wow! I’m not screwing the valedictorian school in science and keeping up with these people.”
So it was a good challenge. But basically, it was a journey that started and now, it’s manifested into the ability to help people, to help educate people and to help them separate the bullshit from the facts.
Wendy Myers: Well, why don’t we talk about the Center for Bio Individualized Medicine? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that and why you co-founded that?
Shawn Bean: The Center for Bio Individualized Medicine was a brainstorm of mine and I did with co-founder Dr. Armine. Dr. Jess Armine was a chiropractor who kept showing up at these conferences that I was going through for neuroscience and kept scratching his head and stuff and figuring, “What is this guy talking about methylation? What’s this methylation?”
And then finally, one day, he decided to pull me aside and goes, “What are you talking about?” And then he finally said, “I got a case I need help on. It was this little girl who was eight years old who was having neurological problems whose methylation was completely screwed up.” He didn’t understand the cycle.
I went through and I explained the cycle. And over time, it was one of the missing keys to help this little girl who had schizophrenia actually be able 60% to 70% of the side effects. And then further as we got better educated, I started to train him.
People think that you can learn methylation in two hours. No, that’s not true. To learn methylation, to learn about MTHFR, it took me over a year to train him one-on-one, to get him to the level that he’s at today. There’s probably only a few people on the field who has a really good grasp on this. Dr. Jess, Dr. Ben Lynch, myself. You’ve got Cynthia Hill. We’re all part of the Center for Bio Individualized Medicine and now, methylation.
We created this center because we were just getting bombarded with people who have been from doctor to doctor to doctor, who have been to this institute, this clinic and not getting no answers. So we wanted a place where people could come or more so – not just a place, but a philosophy.
The Center for Bio Individualized Medicine should not be associated with just a center. It’s a philosophy. It’s personalized medicine, yes. But what personalized medicine doesn’t do is they don’t show you how to connect the dots.
You’ve got adrenals, you’ve got hormones, you’ve got methylation, you’ve got this test, that test, every test. It doesn’t show you how to connect the dots. So when I’m on a consult and stuff with doctors, I can take all their information from every different lab test and back each one of them up, show him how the genes are testing based upon clinical evidence, based upon lab testing that they have – not one, not two, not three, not four, but five different lab tests you can use to back and verify up.
That’s why we created the center. We got tired of hearing about these cases and we really wanted to focus on helping people and bringing it all together.
Wendy Myers: Where can someone find this center? Do you have a website? Where can someone find this center?
Shawn Bean: The Center for Bio Individualized Medicine is located at – I believe it’s at drjessarmine.com.
Wendy Myers: Okay.
Shawn Bean: They can go there and there’s Dr. Jess Armine. We have Dr. Schubert onboard who’s an MD who’s overseeing us. We have IV therapy there. We can do anything that needs to be done anywhere.
Wendy Myers: Where is it located?
Shawn Bean: It’s located in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, right outside Philadelphia. It’s easy access ability from Philadelphia International Airport, no more than 15-20 minutes.
Wendy Myers: And you get cases over the phone.
Shawn Bean: We do cases over the phone or we can do cases in-person. Since we do IVs and stuff, we always want to see the people do the IVs first just to see how you respond.
Wendy Myers: Okay.
Wendy Myers: So let’s talk about MTHFR. Basically, why don’t you tell the listeners exactly what an MTHFR gene mutation is and how it’s not a permanent affectation or diagnosis?
Shawn Bean: Yeah, that’s a very good question. MTHFR is basically a gene that people have that gets expressed. You have to look at the underlying expressions of why it’s happening in the first place.
Just to summarize it in a nutshell, whenever you see C677 MTHFR, you want to think about cardiovascular. So whenever you see a history of cardiovascular disease, your brain should automatically focus on C677. Clots, atherosclerosis, heart attacks, anything that’s cardiovascular-related.
If you have this 1298, you want to think of neurological conditions, more neurological. The ratio they tend to put them at is C677 is usually 80% cardiovascular and 20% neurological. And the 1298 is more 80% neurological and 20% cardiovascular.
Wendy Myers: And what about a simple explanation? From what my understanding is it’s just not that you have your genes forever – you know, there’s something wrong with that, that you were born this way. It’s more that it was a gene copying error and that because of nutrient deficiencies and heavy metal chemical toxicities, it’s interfering in the copying of the genes and then it can be healed.
Shawn Bean: Correct. What happens is when you have MTHFR mutation, your body is not converting folic acid into its active form, which is 5-methyl folate. There are several factors that go into that. First of all, you have folic acid receptor issues, which means we’re removing dairy from the diet. If a person who has FLLR1, 2 or 3, then you can suspect that there’s going to be a high probability – if they have calcium in their diet, they remove it, then what happens is they’re going to reduce the chances of having a folic deficiency or what we call cellular folic deficiency.
So here’s a very interesting point that needs to be made, if a person was on Deplin (who is being medically treated) and you identify that they have the folic acid receptor issue and you suggest you remove milk from their diet, they need to be aware that they may actually overdose on the Deplin and actually may cause them agitation and other neurological impacts.
Wendy Myers: And what is that medication for?
Shawn Bean: Deplin is used to override MTHFR using refractatory depression. A lot of psychiatrist give them medicines. When psychological meds aren’t working, they’ll tend to complement it with Deplin or what they’ll do is they’ll see the MTHFR and instead of [inaudible 00:21:04] on small dosages, they’ll hit them with 50, 10, 15, 30 – up to 50 mg. of Deplin.
The problem about that is folic acid or 5-methyl folate has the ability to push the gas pedal down and to increase catecholamines. So if you have other mutations downstream and you give 5-methyl folate and you’re causing agitation. That tells me that most likely, they’re C1T.
Wendy Myers: What’s the prevalence of MTHFR gene mutations do you think?
Shawn Bean: By just doing a general population, I have people walking in that have no health problems and 80% of them at least have one or two copies of the MTHFR. My personal opinion, people come in, I’m like, “What are you [inaudible 00:22:00]?” If you listen to the history, if you listen to the person, you’ll be able to find out what gene mutation they have already without testing.
A lot of companies, insurance companies are rejecting testing for it and charging people $2000 to $3000 for one stinking test which you can get done through spectrocell or other companies for $149.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’ve had the 23ME. In other companies, it’s $99 for the 23ME.
Shawn Bean: Well, for the 23ME, you’re gaining several hundred thousand different genes. And then you use an application for MTHFRSupport.com Sterling’s app to break them down to show you exactly what genes that you have. It tells you their hetero- and homozygous. Then you need a practitioner to say, “Okay, just because you have these genes, are they expressing?”
Wendy Myers: Yeah, okay. So you like spectrocell? You prefer them?
Shawn Bean: Well, spectrocell is good in nutritional testing. If people just want to spend the money, you’re better off to spend the $99 getting the 23ME done and end up with a whole plethora. For $120, you can have a plethora of tests done where you spend $149 on one test.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
Wendy Myers: Can these mutations be healed? Can they be corrected?
Shawn Bean: Yes, you definitely can correct them. You can actually correct them with food because what happens is a lot of refined methyl folates found in your foliage. But again, if a person is eating a high dairy-based diet (i.e. raw milk, oganic), they’re thinking they’re eating healthy, they may actually be the type of person with more imbalances that they know about without knowing mutation.
So for some people, if I get their genetic profile, I see that, “Hey, listen. You’re doing a lot of dairy. You have the folic acid receptor going there. Let’s remove the dairy” and now all those greens that you’re eating and stuff, now you’re getting the full benefit of them. That way, you may have to take 5-methyl folate and supplement.
Whenever you can, Wendy, you always want to use God’s own resources versus synthetic because what happens – God forbid, what happens if there’s a governmental thing to where they pull and you can’t get gain access to this. So you have to think about those situations and how to circumvent them.
Wendy Myers: And so what about the raw versus cooked greens. I know Ben Lynch advocates raw greens because he says the folate is destroyed. What is your take on that? From my understanding is that cooked greens, you get more nutrients out of them. But is the folate destroyed in the cooked greens?
Shawn Bean: The way he would actually explain this is let’s say you had a head of lettuce. You took the head of the lettuce out of the ground, put it on a truck, transported it to where it’s going to go to where it sits on the stand.
Let’s say that has 400 micrograms of folic acid from the ground. By the time it goes on to the truck, you could probably cut about half of that. Then it sits there, you’re probably going to get about 80 micrograms out of the whole head of lettuce.
Now, think about the stuff that you buy in a store. If you pull it out of your garden, absolutely. Then you get the more benefit out of them. But if it sits, you don’t know how long it was sitting for, you go home and cook it, then any kind of heat is going to denature stuff.
So I always tell people go raw as much as you can, but we have to remember too that some people got maybe so inflamed that even vegetables and stuff can be irritating to the GI tract.
Wendy Myers: …or they won’t be able to absorb the nutrients.
Shawn Bean: They won’t be able to absorb the nutrients. As you know, when you cook food, you actually have all the juices and stuff and a lot of times, of the potassium and sodium are stored there. That’s where a lot of the nutrients are, it’s in the juice.
Wendy Myers: And so do you think people can still get some folate from cooked greens?
Shawn Bean: I think they can still get folate from some cooked greens, absolutely, maybe not the quantity that you would if they’re raw, but like we said, if we have other variables in play, it doesn’t matter.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, if they cut off the milk, the dairy.
Shawn Bean: That’s the biggest thing.There’s a test called the folic acid receptor antibody test. All it does is it tests your folic antibodies. All it has to do is tell you to cut your milk. I mean, you could save yourself two to three hundred dollars by just cutting your dairy out.
Wendy Myers: Do you recommend that for all clients across the board pretty much?
Shawn Bean: Absolutely. My whole thing is I want to get people into an anti-inflammatory state. Gluten, soy and dairy, it’s got to go even if it’s raw. It’s the casein that people tend to have a reaction to.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, okay.
Wendy Myers: And so what kind of problems or symptoms does a MTHFR (or motherfucker) mutation cause?
Shawn Bean: It can cause schizophrenia. It can cause cardiovascular disease. It can cause problemswith detoxification because you need MTHFR for proper glutathione production. It can cause a lot of different things.
It’s still not a metabolic roadblock like people think it is. It’s just a small – it’s like a zip code on the United States map. It’s a small part of the puzzle, but it is a crucial piece of the puzzle because it does when it includes – like for example, when you look at MTHFR on a genetic variance report and you see that there’s multiple of them (it’s not just the C677, it’s not just the 1298), when I see a plethora of them down the side, that usually means that there’s neurological conditions within the family side. And that’s why you always want to ask the history, “Is this gene expressing?”
1298 causes more anxiety problems. So you’ll see more anxiety from a 1298, more neurological problems. But in certain ethnic groups, C677 could cause neurological problems, just not as prevalent, that’s all.
Wendy Myers: So what are some of the other symptoms as well for people that are having – because now I’ve got some clients on my program and sometimes, they’re having a real tough time with all the detox symptoms like headache and nausea and things like that. What are some of the common symptoms that place just think of or they just kind of learned to live with that could actually be a sign they’re having a problem with their detox pathways?
Shawn Bean: In relationship to the MTHFR or just in general?
Wendy Myers: In general, yeah.
Shawn Bean: Whenever you’re trying to detox a person, the first thing you always want to do is number one, if you detox a person, that’s going to put stress to your immune system. When you put stress on your immune system, if you already have an up-regulated immune system, those the same receptor sites that are occupied by the immune systems are occupied by those neurotransmitters. So this gets into the breaking gas system.
So before trying to detox a person, I want to stabilize that person if there’s neurological conditions involved first. If you don’t and they’re already up-regulated, you cause more upper regulation, it’s going to cause more neurological conditions.
This is the major problem that I see in a lot of clinicians. They do a great job with their gut, they do a great job in this area here, why aren’t these people getting better? Why are the people with Lyme coming to me not getting better? Because of antibiotics. You’re trying to run before you could even crawl.
In this situation, what you want to do is – the analogy I use is this. Imagine your friend comes to you. They come to your house at five o’clock in the morning and they’re like, “No, Wendy. Get your ass out of bed. We’re going to run the Boston marathon.” You’re like, “You got to be kidding me. You’re freaking crazy.” But then you put your clothes on, you shower and you try to go run and you fall on your face two miles in.
Wendy Myers: That’s me.
Shawn Bean: But just imagine if they came to you one year before and said, “Wendy, we’re going to do the Boston marathon,” you’re like, “Okay.” Well, you train, you eat, you supplement, you carb load. You do all the necessary things. And then when it comes time to run it, you can finish it.
Now, this is the same thing that’s happening with people. They’re trying to accomplish something before even doing the basics first. If you don’t do the basics, you’re never going to get to the end product.
Wendy Myers: So are you balancing their neurotransmitters? Is that what you mean by correcting neurological issues?
Shawn Bean: Yeah. Correctly neurological issues – psychology, in a nutshell is basically two sentences. You either pull up on the gas pedal or you apply the braking system. That’s psychiatry, okay? That’s all they’re doing.
They’ll try to push down the gas pedal and there’s no braking system in place and then they start manipulating around different factors. But when they think about it, if they look up at the underlying pathology first, what’s driving it? What’s driving the immune system? What’s driving the other factors?
In I’d say probably about 80% of the cases, it’s biologically based. Pathogens, they call it ‘lyme rage’. I call it ‘Jekyll and Hyde syndrome’. It’s kind of hilarious when people, “Oh, yeah. Based upon this profile and stuff, these are people that usually go Jekyll and Hyde.” When they have two people in there, the other one looks at the other person like he nailed you, he describes you to a T. That’s because they’re completely normal until the infection happened.
Once the infections happen or the stress, it triggers these predispositions.
Wendy Myers: For anger or things like that?
Shawn Bean: Anger, anxiety, depression, whatever it can be – cancer and all that stuff. Probably later down the road, you’re going to find that bartonella is probably going to be increases of specific cancers because number one, it tends to aggravate the vascular interior growth factor, which actually goes into another precursor, into HIF1, which is elevating people that tend to have cancer.
Wendy Myers: And so when you fix people’s neurotransmitters, are you doing that with amino acids or how are you balancing that?
Shawn Bean: When you’re balancing neurotransmitters, the first thing you always want to do is you want to look at why they’re low. Second of all, you want to look at the co-factors of the actual enzymes themselves.
So we do neurotransmitters or use neuroscience testing, which I think is the gold standard because I’ve done probably close to 2000 or 3000 of those things. The accuracy rate on those is probably about 90% or better when properly interpreted because whenever you’re doing neurotransmitters, you got to take into consider the neurological drugs that they’re on and how it affects it.
So the practitioner needs to make those adjustments. If you send them to a psychiatrist and he says, “Oh, wow! Your serotonin is a little low” and they’re on Paxil and they give them more Paxil, it’s going to make them worse because you’re trying to run a car a hundred thousand miles and expecting to get the performance of it when you first got it. The oil hasn’t been changed, the filter hasn’t been cleaned and the motors going to clock.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And that’s what psychiatrist do. They just up-regulate the medication or they just switch it to a different one. I hope that works. Without any testing, there’s very few psychiatrist doing testing.
Shawn Bean: No, there’s going to be more of that in the future. I’ve got connections over in Australia. It’s a huge psychiatry place. I think it’s Black Dog University, which is really interested in what I do. What you’re doing is you’re taking psychiatry from a subject of science into a true science.
By using the 23ME, the results you get from MTHFR, variance report, you’re actually able to gauge what meds would work in certain situations versus what meds may not be as effective. And then you ask specific questions.
I ask psychiatrists to send me their people’s profiles. Don’t tell me their symptoms. I let the 23ME dictate what’s expressing and what’s not expressing by asking questions. And this is one of the things that we’re going to present in our upcoming seminar, what questions can you ask as a practitioner to know genes are expressing? That’s the $64 million question. Are these genes expressing?
So for example, if you have this person’s C1T, they’re going to respond to [inaudible 00:35:23], they’re going to respond Pheni-Tropic. But guess what? That gas pedal is down and their braking system is broke
You have the C1T, low cortisol, high norepinephrin, a little magnesium, those people are going to be literally climbing up the walls because your cortisol increases norepinephrin and norepinephrin can’t be broken down.
Magnesium is needed for probably 30% of the enzyme functions in the first place. So that’s why when we have C1T, you givemagnesium, you work on the GABA system and sometimes, the glutamate system. Those people tool right out and they’ve been on antidepressants for a long time. And they tend to respond to benzyls. They also tend to respond a lot to Effexor too or Wellbutrin.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Shawn Bean: So you can see how psychiatry is more in the science now. Whatever psychiatrist tends to adopt it, that’s what’s going to be your goal, to educate them and say, “Listen, why don’t you look at this.”
I’m working on cases along with some of the best psychiatrist in Lyme right now. I got a couple of people I’m working in conjunction with. I’m not changing or altering their meds or anything. All I’m doing is I’m complementing what the psychiatrist is doing in the first place and trying to convince them and say, “Well, let’s try to look down this avenue.”
Wendy Myers: And so what are some of the other mutations that are very, very common besides the MTHFR?
Shawn Bean: Oh, we’ve got NAT2 or we’ve got NAT. You’ve got ACE deletion 16. When you have NAT2 with ACE deletion 16, you usually have a paradoxical effect. ACE deletion 16 is usually associated with high blood pressure. When you have NAT and you have ACE deletion 16, it’s low blood pressure even if they’re homozygous because that is reflective of the adrenal impact.
Normally, if you see NAT, the way I train practitioners is I train with keywords. NAT is cheap date because they can’t tolerate alcohol. So they’re usually cheap dates. I joke with my clients, “Listen, if I was out in the dating world and stuff, all I would need is a picture along with your 23ME and I would know exactly who to take out and who not to take out.
It’s true! Because after doing this, after doing so many of these, you really don’t need the person’s profile, you only need the history because you’re sitting there asking the question and they’re sitting there shaking their head and some people get freaked out by it.
I have people come to me and I look at them and said, “Have you been raped in the past?” right out of my mouth because certain mutations tell me that they’re an internal stressor, that they’re a stress-eater and that they’re overweight. You can see the anxiety on their face and stuff.
And it’s not common for clients when I’m face-to-face with them to start crying because you’re hitting chords and stuff. Sometimes, I may be abrupt, but you know what? I get the information out because I start clawing my way.
And once I start seeing certain mutations, I can start asking specific questions to start digging to find out what’s going on.
BHMT, that’s basically ADD, OCD and also lack of internal peace. Soldiers come back from Iraq, they have BHMT, don’t even waste your time on cognitive therapy. You can do the cognitive therapy to understand and help them cope with their feelings, but we’re going to the root cause of the problem because the root cause of the problem is PTSD, which is not on the conscious level, but on the subconscious level.
So those people respond good to EMDR and ET. So when you see certain patterns and stuff, you can start the work with a psychiatrist and be able to gauge what therapies they may engage in to help them better on with their current, existing condition.
You’ve got COMT. We already discussed the MTHFD1, which is intestinal hyperpermeability, which is [inaudible 00:39:35]. You’ve got SHMT, which is basically the leaky gut gene. So in this situation, you just want to pull off all the anti-inflammatory foods.
People are like, “What should I eat?” I’m like, “Just remove the normal ones, soy, gluten and dairy” and a lot of times, that tends to solve the problem. Sometimes it takes three to four weeks for them to feel the effects and some people, believe it or not, I had that got back to me, if you removed all that stuff, a lot of them have increased anxiety because we know that gluten works on the opiate receptors and basically, it’s almost like taking a crack addict off drugs.
So if you’re working with somebody who’s totally gluten-sensitive and they start to experience anxiety and they haven’t changed anything else, it’s probably because their body is going through drug withdrawal.
So you’ve got the GADS. GADS are the addictions gene. COMT, guess what? That person’s got COMT,BHMT and GAD1, guess what happens? That person, the GAD and the BHMT are going to emphasize the COMT because whatever the activity that they participate in to reduce the stress is going to be reinforced. That’s why people can go into a bar, have a few drinks and leave versus the people that have a few drinks and end up being an alcoholic.
Wendy Myers: And so how do we change this? How do we heal these? What’s in your arsenal? You said food, you use supplements and enzymes and things of that nature?
Shawn Bean: Yeah. To heal these mutations, the first thing is you want to find out what’s expressing. You always want to look at the underlying pathology of the problem. That’s why a detailed history along with supplementations and you always want to ask your clients what made you feel better in the past. That will give you a clue. What supplements you have responded negatively to?
As you going through the 23ME, you ask these questions. Have you responded negatively to methyl folate? Yes. Here’s the six different metabolic pathways that could be expressive of that. What are the lab tests you’ve had?
Sometimes, it’s a combination of just looking at the neuroendocrine and the immune system and just finding the imbalances. And once you find those pieces, then you can curtail a customized approach in order to get there.
Sometimes, you may have to do this area first. There’s really no set protocols in doing this. It is a science and it is an art form. That’s where the difference lies. It’s because a lot of practitioners are doing cookie-cutter approaches, which are doomed to failure. There’s practitioners out there who are charging – who made books and call themselves methylation experts who haven’t been to doctor – I went to Dr. Lynch’s seminar. Well, guess what? That doesn’t make you an excellent methylation expert.
Are you doing the research? Are you contributing to the field? Is there a research being shown up on the MTHFR or variance reports? What kind of relationship do you have with this practitioner or that practitioner?
So you need to ask questions of how experienced they are. “Oh, I specialize in MTHFR,” great! Do you specialize in other snips. How do you find out if they’re expressing? What testing do you do? Do you use lab testing? “No, I use biofeedback.” I’m like, “Okay, great.”
I tend to come from a clinical experience because that’s how I was trained. When I work with a doctor, we have to [inaudible 00:43:31] and cross our teeth because we’re dealing with insurance. So the approach that I take is totally clinical. Every rhyme or reason that supplements or testing I suggest to the doctor is backed by clinical research.
If God forbid anything happens and I get audited, I am able to back myself up and say, “You know what? Here’s the reason I recommended these supplements for the doctor to review.” And that way, it protects yourself.
Wendy Myers: Is there place you can go to see a website where you can see a list of really qualified practitioners that do this?
Shawn Bean: MTHFR.net does them and they are very, very good. But again, you have to call and interview these people. You have to do your homework. You have to listen to podcasts. People may talk a good game, but we know what you practice is what you preach.
I have read beautiful books from people who are supposedly the specialists in the field and I have clients that have gone to them and asked specific questions and they start back pedaling. As practitioners, there are some people who are good teachers, there are people who are good practitioners.
Wendy Myers: Ideally, they should come to you. Where can they find you? Where can someone find you to work with you?
Shawn Bean: If somebody wants to work with me, the can contact me at info@matrixhealthwell. I’m currently in the process of putting up my website. Hopefully, it should be done in a few weeks to have that out. I had Suzie Comen who is a great friend of mine help and assist me with that. I have my lovely fiancée, Laura Koffman also help building that website.
Wendy Myers: And so what do you charge? What do you charge for a consultation to look over someone’s older testing and what-not because there’s many, many people that are just like yourself, they got to doctor after doctor after doctor and nothing works. And so what do you charge and what is your whole process in working with you?
Shawn Bean: The whole process in working with me is they contact me, I send out my introductory information. My normal charge is $350 for initial consultation. It would last about 75 minutes to 90 minutes. But you also have to remember – the fact is all the research that goes in either contacting other doctors, which I do once the case gets going, I may spend sometimes two to three hours talking to other specialists with these complex cases. It’s $350 for initial visits and then it’s $150 for 45 minutes and it’s $50 for each additional 15 minutes.
If it goes over, I try to [inaudible 00:46:40]. I don’t want to be by the clock. I just want to charge to help people and just make an honest living about it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. Well Shawn, thank you so much for coming on the show. That was so informative. I know there’s a lot of people that are going to have a light bulbs going off for them. They’ve been troubleshooting their health. This is something that many doctors are not aware of and not testing for. So I’m hoping that a lot of people will be looking into this in regards to their health once they hear this podcast.
Shawn Bean: And another service that I do offer is I do peer-to-peer reviews, which means if you have a doctor who is stuck on a case, I would be glad to review that case with him and they can contact me as well because just helping one case may help ten other cases. I work with multiple doctors in Canada, United States and Australia in helping educate them in these complex cases. You just may need a half hour or so and ask some specific questions that you may be stuck on.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well Shawn, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I definitely want to have you come back on again and talk a little bit more about other kinds of mutations in the future. So thanks for coming on the show.
Shawn Bean: Alright. Thank you.
Wendy Myers: So listeners, if you want to learn all about detoxification and the Modern Paleo Diet, you can go to myersdetox.com. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.
