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Transcript
- 06:27 What is Methylation
- 07:41 Over-methylation and Under-methylation
- 10:20 Knowing your Methylation Status
- 12:25 Testing for Methylation Status
- 17:34 Methylation and Genetics
- 25:52 Methylation Status and Methylated B Vitamins
- 30:19 Genetic Testing
- 35:53 Turning Genes On and Off
- 38:47 Detoxification
- 40:30 What Can You Learn from Genetic Testing
- 42:41 Nutrigenomic Profiling
- 45:39 Practitioner Training
- 50:27 The Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today
- 54:18 Where to Find Michael McEvoy
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and you can find me at myersdetox.com. And you can find this video podcast on the YouTube channel WendyLiveto110. Please go there and subscribe. And you can find the video also on the corresponding blogpost on my website.
Today we have Michael McEvoy on the podcast. He’s going to be talking about methylation and genetics, and how they’re interrelated. A lot of people are confused about methylation. And it’s something that I think everyone looking to improve their health and needs to learn their status. Are you an over-methylator or an under-methylator? It can have profound impacts on your health and any diagnosis that you may have.
We’ll also talk about genetics, the 23andMe test and any kind of health apps. Michael has his own app that you can run it through to learn about your genetic snips and what consequences those snips have on your health. So lots of great info on the show today.
I am so excited with the launch my Body Bio Rehab Program. You can learn more at BodyBioRehab.com. I wanted to create an online program like this that addresses the very basics of health, the basic things that you need to do to live a long healthy life.
This program contains five modules. There’s one on diet, the type of diet you should be eating; exercise, what type you should do, how much; stress relief, I think stress is one of the number one killers and you need to have lots of things in your tool kit to reduce stress;
Then we have asleep, many people are not getting adequate sleep. You can’t heal your body and you can’t detox and de-stress, et cetera if you’re not sleeping properly. I have a lot of the importance of that and lots of simple tricks that you can do to improve sleep, what types of supplements improves sleeps, which ones are the best;
And then I talked about detoxification, the most important pillar. When people are daily exposed to thousands of toxic chemicals, it’s estimated that there are 80,000 chemicals in our environment. And when we are exposed to all kinds of heavy metals, mercury, cadmium, lead, et cetera, these need to be detoxed from the body or they will eventually cause disease.
And many practitioners, many health practitioners and doctors are not paying any attention whatsoever to detoxification. It continues to blow my mind because in the coming decades, this is going to be more and more important and we‘ll see an increase in diseases., an increase in the prevalence of diseases because of heavy metals and chemicals. So you have to learn how to detox and have a lifelong detoxification plan.
So that’s what I teach you in Body Bio Rehab, how to completely make over your body chemistry from the inside out. So learn more at BodyBioRehab.com. It’s only $49. I wanted to make it very affordable for many people who maybe can’t afford to work with me or people just want to enhance their experience working with me. It’s an amazing program that I spent about six months developing, go enjoy it.
Our guest today on the podcast is Michael McEvoy. He is a functional diagnostic nutritionist, an FDN through the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Institute. He is certified in hair mineral analysis for Dr. Lawrence Wilson’s protocols like myself. Michael is a certified nutritional consultant and a certified metabolite typing advisor. Michael has studied advanced functional blood chemistry analysis, cell membrane dynamics, lipids, and the profound body work of Emanuel Revici, M.D.
Michael’s on the staff of the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Institute, specializing in research and development. He is currently engaged in a 2-year course in Professional Herbal Studies through Michael Tierra’s East West School of Planetary Herbology. Michael is a dedicated health nutrition professional who offers a wide spectrum of services for national and international clientele.
Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Michael McEvoy: Thanks Wendy for having me. It’s great to be here.
Wendy Myers: So we’re going to talk about methylation and genetics, but can you tell the listeners first a little bit about yourself and how you got into methylation and genetics, et cetera and your website.
Michael McEvoy: Well, I’ve been a health practitioner for the past decade and I have developed an entirely web-based nutritional consulting practice. I’m the CEO and founder of Metabolic Healing, Inc. and our website is www.MetabolicHealing.com.
We work with a variety of different types of clients. We have clients that are very sick with chronic illness, chronic fatigue, adrenal and endocrine problems, methylation dysfunction, et cetera. So we found that there’s definitely an integrated approach that can be used when helping to deal with a lot of these types of issues.
We’ve been doing this for several years now. We’ve focused a lot of our attention in the last few years specifically on individuals who have problems with methylation in particular. And oftentimes, these kinds of problems manifest with certain symptoms such as chronic fatigue, autoimmune problems such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, other types of chronic gastrointestinal inflammatory problems, cardiovascular disease specially if there’s a familial risk for cardiovascular disease.
So a lot of these issues overlap, not surprisingly, once you start realizing that the methylation cycle is directly related to each of these types of problems.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, being a health practitioner myself, I decided that I had a genetics and methylation in my practice because it dramatically affects people’s health outcomes and their ability to detox. So many factors can be affected by this. You can’t really help people unless you’re attending to these health issues.
Wendy Myers: So let’s talk a little bit about what exactly is methylation for anyone that doesn’t know what that is.
Michael McEvoy: So methylation is actually a biochemical pathway that’s happening in every cell of the body, something like a billion times per second in every cell of the body. You could think that that’s quite a dance of activity.
The methylation cycle, it is so interconnected with so many things that the body does from heart health, cardiovascular health to endocrine function, to neurotransmitters, so affecting mood and behavior. A lot of people with anxiety and depression and bipolar disorder have problems methylating. So methylation is tied to so many different things and as I said, it’s a biochemical pathway that’s going on in the body continuously.
And we’ll talk about genetics and the possible interaction that certain genes have on the methylation cycle. But methylation has gotten a lot of attention over recent years because there’s so much scientific studies and literature that has been done on methylation, particularly regarding all of these types of health problems that we’re seeing in the 21st century here.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about overmethylation and undermethylation and if you think it’s really that simple?
Michael McEvoy: Yeah, that’s a good question. And so, there’s this discussion of, “Well, what does it mean to be overmethylated? What does it mean to be undermethylated? Is there an overlap? What exactly does this mean?”
So the methylation status is essentially – some clinicians like to classify these things as undermethylated, overmethylated. So what does this exactly mean? So what is methyl? It’s basically this chemical compound that’s in the body, a very simple chemical compound and it’s basically found over the body.
A lot of different nutrients contain methyl, a lot of different important vitamins and minerals contain methyl. There’s certain words called methyl donors and certain nutrients, they’ll donate a methyl group to another molecule and it’s like this race, if you will, of nutrients. You can imagine like your handing of the torch to another runner in a race. In many ways, that’s how the methylation cycle works. It’s where these nutrients are basically dumping off their methyl groups, other molecules. And so in this process, you’ve got all these things that go on, all these things that happen in the body.
So some clinicians talk about undermethylated and overmethylated. Basically, these terms mean, in a nutshell, if you’re undermethylated, it typically means that you have too few methyl groups. You need more methyl in your body. And people that are undermethylated, they tend to have and exhibit certain types of symptoms. They tend to be those, for the most part, that suffer from depression. They may also have high levels of histamine and they have environmental seasonal allergies. And a lot of methyl donors actually can help with those kinds of symptoms specifically.
Overmethylators, essentially, they have too many methyl groups and there’s an overload of these methyl groups. There’s too many of them, the body can’t break them down, get rid of them quickly enough. So, typically, overmethylators, they tend to exhibit anxiolytic symptoms or symptoms of panic and anxiety disorders. They maybe estrogen intolerant, they may be very creative and artistic in nature.
So there are a lot of very interesting traits that are different among the over and undermethylators. It really comes down to how certain nutrients are being used and how enzyme reactions of the body are affecting these particular nutrients.
Wendy Myers: Once you know your methylation status, what do you do? Are there supplements that you should take or foods that you should avoid, et cetera?
Michael McEvoy: Well, there can be. Certainly, everything really depends on each person. There really aren’t broad one size fits all approaches. But once you know if you’re undermethylated, what we do in our practice is, essentially, we do some specific functional lab testing that helps us to see what a person’s methylation status is. But we want to always correlate and corroborate these lab tests with a person’s clinical history, with their symptomology, just knowing more about the person in general.
And so once we kind of get this good idea of what type of client that we’re working with, then we say, “Well, these types of nutrients are likely going to be more useful for you specifically.” So we try to get as individual and as specific as possible.
So, for example, undermethylators tend to respond very favorably to zinc and B6 and methyl donors like methane hydrochloride. And so, often, other methyl donors like SAMe’s, another big one that specially works for the undermethylated depressed individuals, they have depression issues.
But conversely, if somebody’s overmethylated, they may tend to do much better with niacin or niacinamide or vitamin B3, folates, different forms of B12 because the different nutrients, they stimulate different enzymes in the body. And so, if you’re under overmethylated, it really can come down to looking at these nutrient groups as ways to really figure out how it best individualized it.
So the answer is, yeah, there can definitely be a lot of leeway to play with in terms of what individualized nutrient therapies we’re looking at.
Wendy Myers: I agree, it has to be highly individualized. There are so many variances between over and undermethylation.
Wendy Myers: So what are the best test to determine methylation status? How does someone figure out what they are?
Michael McEvoy: So first of all, I wanted to say that in terms of methylation, there’s a lot of overview about different tests that are out there. And the methylation status is probably the best test to gauge if the person is over or undermethylated.
It’s the SAMe to SAH ratio. What does that mean? It’s basically the S-adenosyl methionine to S-adenosyl homocysteine. This is the major methyl donor with SAMe, S-adenosyl methionine. It basically creates this other nutrient called S-adenosyl homocysteine. Basically, the ratio between the SAMe and the SAH tells you a lot about the overall methylation status that a person has. .
There are other indirect ways of assessing overall methylation function and the whole blood histamine is one that we’ve been experimenting with and using in our own practice for quite a while now. And that’s essentially because histamine is a very important and very interesting compound that gets produced from the body.
Histamine, for example, is an inflammatory compound produced by certain immune cell. A lot of people listening to this podcast may already know about low histamine diets and the problem with histamine-containing foods like red wine and aged cheeses and bananas and avocadoes. Some people think they may have histamine intolerance and that very well may be true for certain people.
But histamine is also a neurotransmitter. And by being a neurotransmitter, histamine affects the brain. It affects mood and behavior, mental health. It interacts with other neurotransmitters.
Histamine also is important for gastric acids synthesis. It’s really hugely critical for gut function. And stomach acid is a major component of gut function. Histamine regulates the pituitary and the hypothalamus and specific hormones of those glands produce.
So histamine is actually being metabolized and degraded by methyl groups in the body. And so when a person has high histamine, the reason why they tend to be undermethylated is because the enzymes that metabolize and break these histamines down tend to be reduced. There’s not enough of these enzymes present to break down the histamine. And so by getting them on the protocol, it helps them to modulate their histamine response more.
I don’t know if I answered your question. I went off in a little bit of a tangent.
Wendy Myers: No, we like tangents. We love tangents.
Michael McEvoy: Yeah, so histamine, it’s an indirect biomarker of the methylation status and we find that there’s a lot of correlation between histamine, their methylation status, as well as what types of individualized nutrient therapies they tend to do well with.
So those are the two major ways, but in addition to looking at that stuff, we always want to look at some other evidence, some other lab tests. So in our practice, we utilize functional blood chemistry analysis. Basically, every client we work with. And it’s a very different way of analyzing a blood test than from a western pathological, allopathic way of analyzing blood. We’re looking [inaudible 00:15:48] functionality.
And so there’s certain key nutrient deficiencies that often show up over and over again that you can screen for using routine blood chemistries. So we look at the alkaline phosphatase, the ALT, AST, GGT enzymes, liver enzymes. We look at the mean corpuscular volume. It’s an indirect marker of B12 and folate utilization.
We can look at serum, zinc, and copper as an indicator of zinc and copper metabolism, which that particular nutrient group, zinc and copper, can have a huge role in how the body functions for better or for worse. One of the repeat offenders of nutrient imbalances in the body is low zinc and high copper. And that’s especially true in certain client populations.
People that have mood behavior and mental health issues, they tend to be copper toxic. And it’s frequently found among people that have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, mania, psychosis. High copper is a potential cancer risk factor because cancer thrives when there’s too much copper in the body. Angiogenesis is dependent on copper utilization. And PMS and limin, that’s another thing that tends to exhibit high copper, low zinc.
So these nutrients directly have an effect on how we methylate and how our biochemistry functions.
So we always want to be a thorough as we can. We want to look at specific lab test to give us clues about what a client nutritional protocol should look like.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I agree with the copper is a huge, huge problem. I do hair mineral analysis and other blood work to determine copper dysregulation of the body and it presents a whole host of issues for people including contributing to methylation issues.
Let’s talk a little bit about methylation and genetics and how they’re related. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Michael McEvoy: Yes, so genetic testing has opened up the flood gates in the last five years. It’s this craze of genetic testing probably due to the company 23andMe having this direct consumer genetic testing, which can now screen for nearly a million genetic SNPs, singular nucleotide polymorphisms. And so as a result of that, there’s been a huge amount of attention. People wanted to start looking at their genetic profiles and try to analyze where their heritable strengths and weaknesses are.
So with any kind of a craze, any kind of a health craze, I’ve learned over the years that you have to be really careful about it because there’s always going to be some truths, partial truths and half-truths, and then stuff that’s just completely false. I definitely feel strongly that this is true with regards to genetic testing.
I do believe, and I think that there’s no one that really can argue with this, that the inheritable gene mutations can certainly cause problems. It can predispose people towards adverse health effects in certain symptoms and diseases. I think that’s totally true.
But where my perspective differs is that genetic testing by itself, it really cannot be used to construct any meaningful therapy or protocol for somebody, primarily because your heritable gene status, it does not change, whereas you genetic expression can change. And that’s not the same as saying that you’re just MTHFR C6770++ homozygous for that. That means I’m just going to start taking 5-methylfolate Just to try “bypass” that gene mutation.
Well, some people do well with methylfolate, some people do horrible with methylfolate. And so, the ready-made approach that so many clinicians use is, “Let’s just try to supplement with this nutrient for this gene mutation.” And it would certainly be wonderful if biochemistry was that simple, but obviously, it’s not. Things get a lot more complicated as you start really working with somebody. You’re starting to realize that there are a lot more things going on rather than just a single gene mutation.
If we do find value with genetic testing, by all means, we do analyze certain genetic tests from a functional perspective, trying to understand where the weak points may be found and then try to correlate those genetic test results with some type of other evidence, whether it be a biochemical test or clinical history to try and get more of a holistic understanding of how to best use the gene test result.
But there’s a lot of clinicians out there that I feel are wrongly trained. They use genetic testing a sole approach to generate any kind of a protocol. We just feel that that doesn’t work. We know that it doesn’t work because we’ve tried it ourselves and we’ve seen the pitfalls of it.
So genetics definitely can influence your methylation cycle. I want to be clear about that and not totally throw the whole genetic discussion in the garbage because on the flip side of it, genetics can certainly have tremendous influence on how we methylate. There are certain genes that are operative in the body that directly influence how we methylate and they certainly can influence how our body functions.
This is a very brief, about one minute overview of genetics. You basically have two different kinds of gene mutations. You have what are called ‘somatic gene mutations’, which basically are gene mutations that form throughout the course of your life. So if you’re exposed to certain types of environmental chemicals or radiation, these can cause critical somatic mutations. These somatic gene mutations are not passed down to your children per se.
Heritable gene mutations are also referred to as ‘germ line mutations’ and these are what are passed down from generation to generation.
So, these are two different kinds of gene mutations.
So what does a heritable gene do? For example, your genetics, your DNA is like a big biological template, the instruction manual of how the body works. We’ve got all kinds of different genes in our body. The instruction manual of our genes then gets basically translated into what’s called RNA, ribonucleic acid. And the RNA’s how we make these enzyme workers, these worker bees if you will, that direct the show of the biochemical activities that’s going on all of the body.
So there’s all kinds of things that we don’t even understand yet about genetics. Problems in the transcription process, the copying the DNA into the RNA, we don’t understand all the different myriad factors that can be influencing it all of the time.
There’s a big discussion about epigenetics and how epigenetics, which is regulating genetic expression as possibly more important than just your gene status alone.
Again, there are so many more factors to look at with regards to just saying, “Here’s a genetic test result, you have certain disease risk, et cetera.” There’s a lot more going on that that. I think that our overall understanding of genetics is in its pre-infancy.
That said, in terms of how genes affect your methylation status. They certainly can, and if you are, let’s say, predisposed, if you do have them THFR gene mutation, if you’re a homozygous (you have a double mutation of one of those key 2 alleles), then it certainly can impact how your body makes methylfolate.
But at the same time – I want to give an example. This has already been documented in literature. Let’s say you have a pair of identical twins. They have identical DNA. But twin number one takes extraordinary care of their health. Let’s say, they both have the MTHFR double mutation, but twin number one eats a whole food diet consisting of very high levels of natural folates found in foods.
But on the flipside, twin number two consumes a junk food processed food diet that’s depleted in folate and other nutrients.
I’m going to bet the house that twin number two winds up developing cardiovascular disease whereas twin number one won’t because through the control of dietary and environmental factors, despite having identical DNA, twin number one has truly bypassed their gene mutation whereas twin number two succumbs to their genetics.
So this is already been shown that identical twins can have totally different outcomes with regards to their health despite having identical DNA. And so, we cannot just look at heritable gene status alone as knowing what’s wrong with a person.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I like looking at the genes to try to dictate how you should live your lifestyle and what kind of diet that you should potentially eat. Like for me, it was very profound when I learned I had a gene that reduces my metabolism of estrogen. So for me, that’s a red flag. Maybe I need to reduce my caffeine because caffeine reduces the body’s ability to metabolize excess estrogen, really pay attention to my liver health and do coffee enemas, liver flushes, et cetera, because the liver metabolizes estrogen, et cetera.
So they can have really profound influence when people learn what their genetics susceptibilities are and that can have a profound influence on their behavior and their lifestyle.
Michael McEvoy: Yeah, it certainly can, but it’s important to keep a broader perspective in terms of really understanding what the body’s doing at any given point in time. So if somebody does come to us with a certain gene mutation, we’re always wanting to put all of the evidence together about that particular gene.
So if somebody has the MTHFR mutation, for example, there’s about 20 questions that we need to ask to understand if that gene mutation is causing a major problem with that person or not. And we also have to look at certain lab tests that are going to help to validate whether or not that person is able to “bypass” that mutation as they’re currently living.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about people’s methylation status and methylated B vitamins? For instance, many people that are overmethylators have issues with certain methylated B vitamins. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Michael McEvoy: Yeah! So there are definitely some B vitamins that contain methyl donors to them. So for example, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate is one of them. Another one, another B vitamin is methylcobalamin, which is the form of B12 in the cells. Some people actually have problems with these types of B vitamins because of the methyl. In the instance of methylfolate, it may not only be the methyl that people react adversely to, but it could also be the glutamic acid conjugates that are found in the folates in general.
So if you look at the different kinds of folates that exist, you have folic acid and then you have another one called folinic acid or calcium folinate, and then you have 5-methyltetrahydrofolate. So these are all your different kinds of folates.
Folic acid, for example, is synthetic. It’s not found in the nature. It’s actually poorly metabolized by the body. The liver doesn’t contain enough of the FOLR2 enzyme to metabolize it in any active form. And so you wind up having an excess amount of folic acid that’s circulating the blood.
Folinic acid is a precursor to methyl folate and it’s typically tolerated well.
Methyltetrahydrofolate is the active form in the cells. It contains its own methyl group, but it also has nine or 10 glutamic acid conjugates. A lot of the common symptoms of methyl folate supplements is anxiety or mania even. And we’ve had people before taking 15 grams of Deplin (the drug form of methylfolate), they would come to us and they are hospitalized because of some psychotic episode after taking it.
And you have to realize that methylfolate is loaded with these glutamic acid conjugates, which can increase the free pull of glutamate in the system, which is an excitatory neurotransmitter that can lead to a lot of those symptoms.
So it does contain methyl as well. And sometimes, people react adversely to methyl. Same thing with methylcobalamin. Sometimes, you need to give another form of cobalamin like hydroxycobalamin, which is the form that’s actually found in foods – or adenozylcobalamin or even cyanicalcobalamin, which is demonized even though it’s an acceptable form of B12.
So methyl can adversely affect certain people, it’s true. And for some other people, it could actually be very important for them, I should say.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, because there are some people — I was just about to say that there are some people that can’t convert certain B vitamins in their raw form to the methylated forms in their body. So they need the methylated forms.
Michael McEvoy: Another key nutrient that tends to not be absorbed well or it’s one of these repeat offenders of nutrient deficiencies is pyridoxal-5-phosphate.
And so just as a recap, you have nutrients and then you have the co-enzymated nutrients. And so, co-enzymated is the actual form that the body uses for enzymatic reactions.
So in the instance of vitamin B6, the active co-enzymated form is called P5P or pyridoxal-5-phosphate. And from our own research, this is probably one of the most common nutrient deficiencies and there are certain gene mutations that can predispose or prevent somebody from being able to convert pyridoxine into its active co-enzymated form. We just see it over and over and over again. So many people do fantastic when they start supplementing with a little bit of P5P into their body.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah, I’ve started taking that myself and I really felt a big difference in that. Also, a lot of people need B5 as well. So if they have adrenal fatigue, they need to take extra B5 every day.
Michael McEvoy: Yeah, pantothenic acid, B5, is definitely one of those hard to get nutrients not because it’s not found in foods, but because pantothenic acid as a molecule. It’s very large. It’s difficult to take up in high enough quantities in the intestinal mucosa. And so supplementing with B5 could definitely ensure that you’re getting more of it in the body.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk about some of the test that you can do to learn more about your genetics? We know about the 23andMe. I had a lot of clients come to me and their doctor tested them just for MTHFR, which is probably not enough. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Michael McEvoy: Yeah. So this is a great example. You’ve got certain doctors and labs like LabCorp or Quest or basically running these relatively expensive gene test, but they’re only testing single nucleotide polymorphism.
So somebody would say, “Oh, their doctor clinically diagnosed them with the MTHFR C6770 double mutation,” but they didn’t test any other SNPs that are related to that particular gene. So, it’s like, “What’s the point?” This is just an illustration of how reductionistic you could possibly get. Let’s look at the smallest possible fragment of a chromosome and try to have any sense of idea about what to do based upon that alone. So to me, that’s a very fragmented, reductionistic way of looking at genetics.
A more holistic way of looking at the genetics just by itself is by looking at a bunch of gene SNPs that are related to one another, that interact with one another or are found on the same chromosome. So in the instance of MTHFR, I will want to look at all of the other enzyme, the other status, the other genes in that methylation cycles, so MTRR or MTR or BHMT or MAT or CBS, all of these other enzymes are related.
Nitric oxide synthase is another big one because methyl folate influences how we make nitric oxide. So there could be all kinds of implications for what’s going out if you have compound homozygous status. So let’s say somebody’s MTHFR++, but they’re also NLS++, that means that not only do they may have a problem making methylfolate, but they also may have problem making nitric oxide for two reasons because those genes are involved in nitric oxide reaction.
So you got to look at the whole picture just in terms of genetics. In our practice, we have developed a reporting system, a nutrigenomics analyzer reporting system that basically takes the 23andMe raw data file of our clients and then automatically analyzes it and converts it into a PDF document. It looks at about 200 of those singular nucleotide polymorphisms.
And to me, that’s a better way of getting an overall profile of some of these genetics that they want. And there are all sorts of apps that are out there that are doing these kinds of things as well. But we do recommend using 23andMe if somebody wants to test their genetics or wants to learn more about their heritable gene status. We recommend it because it’s only $99.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s so inexpensive.
Michael McEvoy: So inexpensive and then to run it through our app, it only cost another $37. So for a $136, you have a lot of genetic data on what your inherited strengths and weaknesses are and a good list of some of the genes that you have — obviously, not all of them because we don’t have that yet. No one does.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know. No one does. Where can you find that app?
Michael McEvoy: We have a link which I can provide you with and you can give that to your viewers. It’s basically very simple. You go, you pay the $37 and you get an automated email and it just basically sends you, tells you how to upload your data from your 23andMe results. It’s very simple, a 5-minute process and that’s it.
Wendy Myers: Great! And that link will be in the YouTube description or the corresponding blog post on myersdetox.com if you want it. I think that’s incredibly valuable to do because you go to the 23andMe.com, they only give you ancestral information like what your family history is, et cetera. They’re not allowed to do health information anymore.
Michael McEvoy: Exactly! So even if people say, “I went to 23andMe website and it says that they’re not offering health data anymore,” just ignore that. That’s just their disclaimer. They’re still testing for the whole genetic profile, the whole genome profile through their saliva testing. All you want is to get that raw data file. If you want to learn about ancestry, that’s all fine and great, that’s what they’re basically offering. But if you want to really get the meat of the report, you got to dig a little bit. You got to be a health detective and dig into that raw data file.
Wendy Myers: Are there any other genetic test that you perhaps don’t recommend?
Michael McEvoy: That I don’t recommend, hmmm…
Wendy Myers: Because there are a lot of genetic testing out there.
Michael McEvoy: Well, there’s a lot of different genes that are being analyzed for a lot of different things. As we progressed to the 21st century, there’s going to be thousands more genes that are being studied.
I’d say these are the things that I’d not necessarily recommend per se, but I’d say look for a genetic testing that will help to get more of a holistic perspective of how it really fits into your health rather than the end-all be-all. And so I’d be wary if anything that claims to be the end-all be-all of anything because I’d only [inaudible 00:35:28] end-all be-all to anything. Health is an endless unfolding process of discovery and genetics is really one part of it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think genes are great way to look for healing opportunities to see what further testing you need to do, what more do you need to explore. There’s just not a one-size-fits-all. “You have this gene, it means this. This gene, take a supplement.” It’s not just quite that simple.
Can you talk a little bit about can gene mutations be healed? Can you turn your genes on and off? It’s something maybe a lot of people don’t understand.
Michael McEvoy: Well, heritable genes will never change. What you’re born with and what you’ve inherited from both parents, that will remain forever in terms of the status of those particular genes.
But the “expression” of certain genes, they can change. That’s a really complicated discussion that really goes way beyond this call. But there is a way to attenuate how our gene mutations are expressed.
So in the example that I gave before about the identical twins with identical DNA, yes, they have certain gene mutations, which may predispose them towards a certain problem, but there are ways of attenuating you genome through looking at the epigenetic expression of how diet and environmental factors and stress really does play a huge role in how certain genes do get expressed.
I should also point out that in terms of just somatic mutations, which are, again, those types of gene mutations that are not inherited from the parents, but we have developed after conception. This is basically how many forms of cancer are formed, through somatic gene mutations.
There are a lot of discussion of how environmental triggers are a huge component of this. It’s not a discussion, it’s a known fact right now. There are a number of carcinogens that exist which have the ability to create various somatic gene mutations through the process of what’s called ‘mutagenesis’.
And so many people aren’t even aware that common household chemicals are known mutagens or known to cause genetic mutations, somatic genetic mutations.
And so, for example, bromide is a mutagen. Mercury, cadmium are mutagens. The different types of chemicals that you find in household cleaning products can be mutagenic and carcinogenic.
So this is really critical and these things really need to be understood. And as Wendy pointed out earlier, bringing it back to methylation, realize that our body’s ability to repair our DNA to prevent continual somatic gene mutations from spiraling out of control, we have to methylate properly. And once we’re methylating properly, one of the major things that we’re doing is we’re helping to regenerate and repair damaged DNA that happens on a daily basis for various reasons, from the aging process, et cetera.
So methylation not only helps to regenerate our DNA, but it also is a pathway that’s called biotransformation. It helps to detoxify a lot of these carcinogens that were being exposed to, that we’re breathing in, that we’re drinking, that we’re consuming on a daily basis even if we don’t even know it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think that’s so important to talk about detoxification and how certain chemicals and heavy metals can affect our genetics because when our genes are copying, when they are transferring, the heavy metals and mineral deficiencies can interfere with how our genes our copied and cause mutations. It’s not just that there’s a defect in our body. Heavy metals and chemicals and mineral deficiencies are causing this. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Michael McEvoy: Absolutely! And we need nutrients as the main fuel of every biochemical pathway inside of the human body including the methylation cycles. Nutrients are not just things you take a supplement for. People think, “Oh, I’m just going to take a supplement and take a multivitamin.” Well, realize that those nutrients are actually the chemical field that your cells are using to work.
And that’s true of your food, obviously. That’s what the food and nutrients do. They fuel these biochemical processes that repair tissues that repair damage to certain tissues and organs, so that we can offset the effects of aging on our cells.
If you open up any biochemistry textbook for example, every single biochemical path that exists in the human body, thousands and thousands, they‘re all driven by nutrients, nutrient substrates or nutrient cofactors or promoters. So all the B vitamins, all the minerals, all the trace minerals, macrominerals, these are all involved and operative in the biochemical processes including methylation as a way to keep the body operating. And certain gene mutations can influence how we use these nutrients for sure.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, can you tell a little about what else you can learn from getting your genes tested? What are some of the things that people can find out by doing a 23andMe test?
Michael McEvoy: So 23andMe, their genetic testing is a way to learn about your ancestry. This is a really cool thing if you haven’t done this before. It will help to track where your family came from in certain parts of the world, certain parts of Europe, certain things that I learn about myself that I have no clue about before, about having Asian descents and having South American descents and sub-Saharan African descent. It leaves you wondering, “Where along the genetic line did this all happen?”
So that’s really one of the cool things that I think is really good about doing 23andMe, it does give you that information.
Wendy Myers: Is there anything regards to health that people can learn about? What things can they learn based on their genes?
Michael McEvoy: Well, I don’t know specifically if they’re still doing any health-related information anymore because the FDA put the [inaudible 00:41:32] on that. But they were for a while. And I don’t know if anybody’s already done it before the FDA gave them that notification, but there were certain clinical disease risk percentages they were giving. That’s very controversial stuff. A lot of people think that, “I have such and such gene mutation, therefore the only real solution to that is excise my breast and to remove organs to prevent diseases like cancer.” That’s a very controversial and really touchy subject.
But I think it’s one that’s really important to bring into the open because as we learn more about genetics, we really understand that the heritable gene status is not the only thing that really matters and that controlling gene expression through the epigenetic modification of our genome is just as, if not more important, than the actual gene status itself.
And so, I really think that our present understanding of genetics is still in its infancy. In a hundred years from now, we‘re going to have a lot better understanding about what the genome really is and what it’s doing in the body. And even on a daily, monthly basis, there’s so much research coming out on genetics and epigenetics that it’s really mind boggling.
Wendy Myers: So when someone runs their 23andMe through your genetic app, what kind of things can they learn? That they can learn about the GAH, will they have more anxiety, some of the things like that?
Michael McEvoy: So in our nutrigenomics profile, we screen for couple of hundred of these gene variance called SNPs. So here’s the other thing, each gene has all these different variants of itself called SNPs, commonly abbreviated as SNPs, which means singular nucleotide polymorphism.
And then if you look at the literature, there are certain SNPs that have been studied more than others as being really influential. So in terms of the MTHFR, for example, of all the different SNPs, the MTHFR SNPs is about two SNPs that have been studied. It probably include more than 90% of the total research in that single gene for just those two SNPs. So they definitely have a big wheel of influence.
So that’s true of other genes as well. What you get with our report, you get an overview of what the gene status is with certain SNPs. And then, you also get a description of what each SNP has been shown to do.
So what we’re really concerned with is the function, understanding the function of what each of these genes are operative, what they’re doing in the body. For example, with MTHFR, it’s donating a methyl group for the purpose of re-methylating homocysteine. And so we give this overview what each of these genes does.
You brought up GAD1, glutamate decarboxylate, it’s the gene that converts glutamate into GABA, which is an important tool for neurotransmitters that can go wrong if you have compounded mutations in these particular genes.
And also, every gene that the report assesses, it’s just being cited back to the scientific literature about what‘s known about that particular SNP.
Wendy Myers: I learned that I have a few of the GAD mutations and that can cause people to have more anxiety, more addictions and [inaudible 00:44:46] or what-have-you and they probably need to take some GABA to try to regulate that since we’re not really making enough GABA.
Michael McEvoy: Or taking more thiamin and P5P because those are the cofactors with the glutamate GABA conversion. If somebody were to come to me with a high frequency of GAD1 double mutations, what I’d want to do is I’d want to look at the key nutrients, so look at some lab testing that would tell us more about B6 deficiency or thiamin deficiencies. We might run a urinary organic acids test to get those indicators.
And you could also look like a neurogistics urinary neurotransmitter test to see what the glutamate and the GABA levels actually are. If you’re seeing correlations there, then it’s a good indication that there may be some problems going on with the GAD1 gene.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s so interesting. You can go down so many rabbit holes when you’re already looking at genetics. I love it.
Michael McEvoy: Yeah, it’s really true.
Wendy Myers: So you offer several courses to help practitioners into the public. Can you a little bit about those?
Michael McEvoy: Over the past several years since we’ve been working with individuals with various gene mutations and just as importantly, looking at certain functional lab tests that are associated with these gene mutations or at least can be associated with them, basically, over the last several years of working this kind of in-depth client management, the culmination of which have created a clinician master course, clinical master course called the ‘MTHFR Methylation and Biochemistry Master Course’. And it’s essentially a 10-hour training program that is basically consisted of two different modules.
Module one teaches the clinician all about the major methylation related genes. It also basically gives you an overview of what genes are for, how we convert DNA into RNA and just a very, very basic genetic one-on-one assessment of all that. And then we look at an animated version of the methylation cycle and how all these things are fitting together. So you can actually see the dance of nutrients moving in an animated fashion.
And then, module two is called ‘Implementing Methylation of Biochemistry Specific Nutrition’ and it’s all about the implementation of nutrient therapies that are specific for an individual. So this includes analyzing not only using a gene test, but also looking at certain key functional lab test that could be real deal makers with certain clients since we look at the urinary organic acids test, we study the functional blood chemistry analysis, we look at plasma amino acids, we look at histamine, zinc, copper, urinary pyrrols, all of these other functional test that from a clinical perspective can really be huge. They’re important for understanding what’s going on with somebody.
And so, again, it’s this really holistic interpretation of how to really vastly use a genetic test in combination with these overall holistic clinical investigative process. And so, we go really in-depth and there’s really no other course that exist that does this material.
The other thing I always kept in mind while I was creating this course was that I realized that all the other methylation courses that exist out there are so genetically oriented. And I found that just in my practice alone from a clinical perspective, trying to treat genetics – and I try to do it that way for a long time, “Just try to use this gene mutation and use a genetic test to try to really get them on a certain supplement protocol without really paying any attention to these other important tests,” what I found was it just doesn’t work. When the rubber meets the road, it doesn’t work that way.
So the best way to use a gene test is in concert with all these other investigative process. And so this is truly a holistic course that really empower the clinician to help their clients to adapt to their health/lifestyle problems are or whatever their genetics are. This course will teach clinicians how to teach their clients how to adapt and how to get an ideal level of health despite their gene mutations.
Wendy Myers: You teach this course also at FDN, The Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. You teach an abbreviation version of that, correct?
Michael McEvoy: Well, in the FDN module two, I’m basically inthe staff as the head of research and development. I’m part of the RND team with FDN. And basically, module two, FDN II, I created a course which was specifically to teach clinicians about how we can use the environmental pollutants test combined with the organic acids test, how to interpret the organic acids test. So that was a very beginning phase.
But FDN practitioners, if there are any FDN practitioners are listening to this, my methylation course is approved for CE units, for continuing education units, about 10 hours material.
Wendy Myers: Oh, okay. Fantastic! It looks like an amazing course, a fantastic course. I was searching around for methylation courses and I came upon you at your website and I thought it looks fantastic. That’s why I wanted to have you come on the show and talk about it.
Michael McEvoy: Again, I’m not opposed to – I appreciate all of the other work that other clinicians are doing out there regarding methylation and MTHFR, but I feel that there’s this overemphasis on genetics in general without necessarily looking at how to really do good clinical investigative work and use biochemical testing in concert with it. That’s the beginner course.
Wendy Myers: Yes, yes, yes. Well I have a question I like to ask all of my guests, what do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Michael McEvoy: Besides ignorance?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, exactly.
Michael McEvoy: I mean, the big one. I don’t know. Well, that’s a good question and in the 21st century, I think that there’s some unique things that we’re really going to have to deal with that we weren’t having to deal with even 50 years ago. I’d say that probably one of the most pressing concerns in my opinion is the prevalence of varying forms of environmental toxicity.
The reason I bring that up is that if you look at what human were exposed to in terms of environmental pollutants a hundred of years ago, there was really no such thing as environmental chemicals a hundred years ago.
Yeah, there was mercury and cadmium and lead and heavy metals and we’ve known about the effect of toxic metals on health since antiquity for thousands of years. But the presence of environmental chemicals, like bisphenol A for example, glyphosate, these types of chemicals are very new. And the human body, I don’t know if it can process or remove these chemicals to the degree that it needs to to achieve an ideal level of health or at least it makes it very challenging.
And there’s very little research that’s been done on the compounded effect that environmental chemicals have. So we know that certain chemicals cause cancer, but we don’t know what happens when you combine that chemical with six other chemicals or ten other chemicals or 80 other chemicals, which in reality is what people are being exposed to today. We’re not being exposed to five chemicals, we’re being exposed to 80,000.
So to me, the pressing issue of the 21st century is how to adapt biologically despite this myriad of environmental toxins that are affecting us on a day-to-day basis. And I think that we’re going to continue to see the rises of neurologically inflammatory diseases like autism disorder because of environmental toxins like mercury and other chemicals and heavy metals, but other types of conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, I think these diseases are going to continue to be on the rise and I think that environmental toxins, which is so ubiquitous in the environment, are definitely a huge role in gene expression and in the development of these types of problems.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I completely agree with you and that’s why I advocate, as much as I can, the use of infrared saunas. This is one of the only ways that people can get these chemicals out of their bodies, sweat them out of the body. The liver can’t handle them. The liver has never seen any of these chemicals and our livers are so overloaded. You need to do an infrared sauna to bypass the liver and get these chemicals out of your body. I think it’s the only hope, I think, for many people to live a long disease-free life.
Michael McEvoy: Yeah, we frequently recommend sauna therapy to our clients. And there’s been a lot of research going back more than 40 years now showing the actual benefits of sauna therapy.
For example, numerous toxic metals and chemicals have been shown be increased in very high amounts via the sweat glands even more so than the urine and through the kidneys and through the liver and gallbladders.
So, sauna therapy, from the perspective of removing the toxic chemicals and heavy metals from the body certainly has its place. And in addition to that, sauna therapy’s been shown to be very effective at raising nitric oxide levels, which is especially critical for anybody dealing with cardio vascular disease, diseases of neuropathy, problems with microvascular circulation, things like these.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think the benefits are too numerous list even in a one hour show. But they’re just incredible, I love my sauna.
Wendy Myers: So can you tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself and where they can find you?
Michael McEvoy: So again, my name is Michael McEvoy and I’m a nutritional consultant. I’m the CEO and founder of Metabolic Healing. We have an online web-based nutritional consulting practice and educational programs that we offer to clinicians as well. And our website is www.MetabolicHealing.com. That’s MetabolicHealing.com.
Wendy Myers: Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
Michael McEvoy: Thanks Wendy for having me. It’s great to be here.
Wendy Myers: And stay tuned, listeners if you want to learn more about how to heal your health conditions naturally, detoxification, and the Modern Paleo diet. Go to my website, myersdetox.com. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.
