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  • 01:46 About Dr. Tina Christie
  • 04:18 What You’ll learn with a Genetic Test
  • 10:31 Common Genes
  • 27:34 Gene Mutations
  • 33:16 Genetic Testing Labs
  • 37:14 Behavioral Genetic Profiles
  • 40:33 Hormonal Genetic Profiles
  • 43:43 What is MTHFR?
  • 51:42 What is Methylation?
  • 54:11 The Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today
  • 55:53 Lifestyle is the New Medicine Summit
  • 58:05 Where to Find Dr. Tina Christie

Wendy Myers: Hello! My name is Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. You can find me on myersdetox.com and you can find this video podcast at the YouTube channel at WendyLiveto110 and on the corresponding blog post.

Today, we have Dr. Tina Christie on the podcast. She’s going to be talking about genetics and methylation and a lot of interesting SNPs, which are single nucleotide polymorphisms like MTHFR and how those affect our health and can possible disease. Genes are the gun, but our diet and lifestyle are the trigger. So we’re going to talk about that today on the show.

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. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging on any treatment that we suggest today on this show.

I’m so excited of my new online program. BodyBioRehab.com has launched. Go check it out! At BodyBioRehab.com, I talk about all of the five pillars of health, all the ways that I think you need to be engaging to get the health results that you seek.

In this program, you’re going to learn how to increase your energy, how to banish brain fog, how to lose 10 lbs. in 30 days with my 4-week meal plan. There are lot of really interesting tidbits and tons of videos. There’s a video for every single module. Just go check it out at BodyBioRehab.com.

01:46 about Dr. Tina Christie

Dr. Tina Christie obtained a bachelor degree of science in biology and chemistry from the University of Toronto and then went on to study naturopathic medicine at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto. She’s completed training in Mind, Body Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Bowen Technique. She has lectured for Nike Canada, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Brampton Fibromyalgia Group, the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and various probus groups as well as giving private lectures to individual groups.

Dr. Christie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Dr. Tina Christie: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Wendy. It’s great to be here.

Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into medicine.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah! I’ve been practicing as a naturopathic doctor for the last 13 years. But as a kid, I wanted to go into conventional medicine. Ever since I was five, I wanted to go into conventional medicine. But I was a sick kid. I had all the typical problems that you think of when someone tunes into this kind of information. Now, I know I have problems with dairy, with gluten, with my immune system, with my digestive system, skin. I was tired all the time. It was never ending.

And when I was 17, I got sick with my stomach. I got gastritis, which is not an ulcer – ulcer is a hole, it’s an irritation of your stomach lining. I got really upset. I was 17 and I had a prescription pain killer for some menstrual cramps that I had. I didn’t use them that much. And now, I had a stomach pill too. So I had two prescriptions at 17. I just thought, “This is ridiculous! This is horrible. I’m only seventeen. Where am I going with this?”

It was actually in that moment that I decided I was going to find something better for myself. I was seventeen, so I was thinking about university at this point. I thought, “Well, how can I go into medicine if I’m not going to do this for myself? How can I make a living doing this for people?” So I’m like, “Great! Whatever I find for myself, that’s what I’m going to do.”

And as cliché as it sounds, I went to the public library in the city where I live (which is much smaller than it is now) to get a bunch of books on herbs and other random holistic things. That’s where it all started.

04:18 What You’ll Learn with a Genetic Test

Wendy Myers: Well, let’s about genetics. I want to delve into this subject because so many of my clients want genetic testing. I was very fascinated when I finally got around to doing my genetic testing with all the implications that it can have in our health. So let’s talk about genetic testing and what is it all about? Why bother testing if our genes can’t be changed?

Dr. Tina Christie: Ah, by the way they express themselves can be changed. The kinds of things they do or don’t do can be changed.

So you could have a gene for – I don’t know, a predisposition to kidney disease and it never happens because you take care of that.

A big reason to test for it is because for many people, there can be a lot of frustration and even mystery around certain symptoms that they’re having or certain health challenges that they’re having. Without genetic testing, there sometimes can be a lot of guess work. And in that guess work process, things don’t always go very well. People don’t always get better. That’s when they feel like, “Oh, I go to see this person, I go to see that person. It helps a little” or, “Everything that they do with all their other clients, they’re doing with me. Nothing is working,” or they’re following great advice and things just aren’t working out. They can’t figure what it is.

And then when you get that genetic information, sometimes it can just blow the doors wide open. You have such a deeper understanding of what’s going on with your body and the way your body is made.

These genes can be worked around. In genetics, genomics, there’s the concept, the word or the term
‘epigenetic’. ‘Epigenetics’ means ‘above the gene’. Just think of it as we can do things that are above the genes. It’s like they’re higher than the gene. They have power (if you want to call it that) over the gene because genes can be expressed or unexpressed. So there’s knowing what’s going on.

One of the most, I guess, emotionally loaded examples of this – and I wasn’t going to get into this example specifically. This gene isn’t actually something I normally address with patients, but there’s a gene that highly, highly correlates to Alzheimer’s disease. I think if you have this gene, you’re like 90% that you’re getting Alzheimer’s.

But if you take certain measures where you get around this gene, you’re probably not going to get it until you’re in your nineties versus your sixties.

Wendy Myers: Ah! Mm-hmmm… you’ve got to detox aluminum too. Aluminum is a big factor in Alzheimer’s and all forms of dementia.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah, yeah. For sure. So the genetics themselves can’t be changed.
A great example is that our genetics load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. So the loaded gun can sit there and never go off. That’s the power that we can have. We can’t unload the gun, but it never needs to go off.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. I was really surprised when I did my genetic testing. I found out I had a gene called FUT2.

Dr. Tina Christie: Ah!

Wendy Myers: I was very happy to learn it. I already knew it intuitively that I needed more carbohydrates and less fat than a lot of Paleo diets and the slow oxidizer diet and things like that that hair mineral analysis that I need more carbs and less fat than a lot of other people. So that’s why I’m not a big fan of hardcore Paleo diets and why I developed my own version called Modern Paleo because everyone is so different. And if you have this FUT2 gene, it very much influences the kind of diet and the macronutrients that you need to be eating.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah! And that’s one of the things that genetic testing really brings to light, our differences. The hardcore Paleo people or the big vegan people will have you believe that we’re all the same, that we’re human and there’s one diet that works for everybody or one lifestyle that’s going to work. It’s so untrue. That’s where a lot of people get really frustrated.

I don’t need quite as many carbs and fat as yourself, but I need a lot less fat than the hardcore Paleo. When I went hardcore Paleo eating lots of fat, I blew up like a balloon. It was horrible! I’m like, “How could the avocado and bacon make me fat? They say it doesn’t!”

Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s 70% fat and that works for very young males, young males that are touting the 70% fat. It doesn’t quite work for everyone especially menopausal women or premenopausal.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. No, it’s just not the same. And I think it really helps a lot of people too to see the test results and go, “Ah! Okay, yeah! That’s just the way I made” versus, “Oh, there must be something wrong with me. This isn’t working for me. What am I doing?” or, “Oh, yeah. I just get stressed out all the time. I’m so crazy.” Meanwhile, maybe a higher propensity towards stress is in their genetics, so you still need to take care of that. But you’re not crazy. You’re predisposed to this. That’s how your body is made, whereas someone else, maybe it’s not.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I found out for me, I had a BHMT. I had two alleles expressing for that. There’s a few of the BHMT SNPs or single nucleotide polymorphisms, but that’s when you’re kind of an internal stressor. I have a lot of clients that have this where they’re just wound up inside.
But you can do lots of things like tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), biofeedback and other things like that to get around that. That’s your workaround for that.

10:31 Common Genes

Wendy Myers: Can you talk about some of the other genes that are popular that we want to be looking for on a genetic test or a 23andMe.com test?

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah, another great one, just because you mentioned stress is the 5HTTLPR. It’s a long name. There’s no short name for that one. There is what they call the L. You can be LLLS or SS. And if you’ve got an S in there, people tend to stress much more and produce a lot more cortisol if you’re the LS or the SS. So this is the typical not-chill, not relaxed kind of person. It tends to have a stress response.

Wendy Myers: And you know who you are.

Dr. Tina Christie: And when those people with an S, the LS or the SS, meditated, they had a cortisol or a stress response just like the LL people who were the ones that don’t have the big stress response. So that’s actually a recent study. It just came out I think a few months ago.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, there are lots of research going on. It’s a new field, but we have a pretty good grasp I think of the genes that are currently on many genetic tests like 23andMe.com. But still, I think it’s in its early infancy of study and research.

Dr. Tina Christie: It definitely is. One thing I just want to caution your listeners with is getting a genetic test and interpreting it yourself because the genes aren’t plug n’ play. You can’t say, “Well, I’ve got this gene, so I react this way.” They tend to interact and they’re all more together.

So if you do get a test done, I think it’s important for people to make sure they’re consulting with someone who has some expertise in the area because it can be a bit of a web and get a little complicated. I had to put that out there.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. There are some genes like the NAT2 will promote weaker adrenals or maybe more pronounced adrenal fatigue. And that will be even more pronounced when you have the COMT genetic SNP.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. COMT is actually one of my favorite genes. You can have a normal, slow or a fast COMT gene and that does a couple of things. It’s actually involved in estrogen metabolism. So if that gene is slow, you won’t metabolize estrogen as well. And for women, you can be predisposed to PMS or just other uncomfortable period like painful periods, heavy periods and things like that with your estrogen really being out of whack.

But also, the COMT gene breaks down dopamine and it breaks down adrenaline and noradrenaline or epinephrine and norepinephrine. They’re the adrenaline rush hormones.
When that breaks down slowly in people, these people have extra stimulation. So they put up dopamine, which is the feel-good hormone. It’s easy to put out adrenaline too especially with the pace of society today.

And then if we’re just looking at the COMT gene, there’s another factor in this that we can talk about in a sec. If we’re just looking at the COMT and we’re breaking dopamine, the feel-good, stimulating hormone slowly and you’re breaking down adrenaline slowly, these people can just get stimulated and wired and stay that way, which is a drain on your adrenal glands, a drain on your system as a whole when you get excited and you’re not able to just calm back down. You stay up there.

But the other one that that really interact with is something called DRD2. COMT breaks down dopamine, which is the feel-good neurotransmitter. Serotonin is feel-good from a ‘life having joy’ and ‘life having pleasure’ point of view. And dopamine is feel-good from a motivational point of view. It stimulates the pleasure center of your brain, the same part of your brain that’s stimulated by MSG and cocaine and stuff.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, cigarettes.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yes. And so DRD2 is dopamine receptors (how many places your dopamine has to bind). Someone could have, let’s say, a slow COMT. They’re breaking dopamine down really slow and they’re breaking down adrenaline really slow as well, but they don’t have a lot of dopamine receptors. The DRD2 gene for the receptors, it can be a low number, a moderate number and a high number. So if you’ve got a lot of dopamine, but not a lot of places for it to bind, it mitigates the effect versus having a medium number of places for it to bind or a lot.

Often, when there are a lot of places for a lot of dopamine to bind, you have a lot of anxiety in people as well because these people are just so stimulated. They’re frequently very stimulated. They have a lot of trouble calming down because they’re not breaking down the dopamine and there are lots of places for it to go.

When people have a very fast COMT (and they’re breaking down dopamine and they’re breaking down adrenaline really quickly especially if there are, let’s say, not a lot of dopamine receptors or there’s only a moderate amount), there can be a lot of depression because dopamine is energizing and motivating.
These people can be prone to depression or drug addiction as they’re constantly trying to boost their dopamine. These people could have trouble learning from their mistakes. That’s an interesting psychological one because they don’t have the reward pathway for learning something and changing something and getting that shot of dopamine that’s like, “Yes! I did it.” That reward pathway is dopamine. And if they’re not getting that, it’s not feeding back and they’re, “Yeah, whatever” versus that, “Yeah!” that others of us might get.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, you know who you are, the ones that don’t learn from their mistake.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah.

Wendy Myers: I might be a little guilty of that, but…

Dr. Tina Christie: That’s okay. I get a little too much dopamine. I have a slow COMT, so I always have to chill out.

Wendy Myers: Another gene I’m really interested in is the CYPE1 and 2. These are the genes where if you have this (like I do, like many of my clients have), you have a reduced ability to metabolize estrogen. And if you drink caffeine, if you’re drinking two or more cups a day, caffeine reduces the body’s ability to metabolize estrogen. If you’ve got a fatty liver, you have a reduced ability to metabolize estrogen and this can lead to estrogen-dependent cancers, which are so rampant and prevalent in our society today.

So I think it’s important to know if you’re expressing for that gene. You need to watch it. You need to fix your liver, clean your liver. Maybe do a coffee enema here and there and reduce the caffeine. Eliminate it or reduce it to that one cup a day.

Dr. Tina Christie: And that’s something important as well that you have mentioned or that you just said. Our genes are what they are, but then how are they being expressed. So you don’t want to just do a test for that and go, “Oh, my estrogen is not being metabolized well clearly from my genetics, so I’m going to get estrogen cancer.”

First of all, these genes, we can get around them. But doing testing to see where you’re at is pretty important. Depending on some of the other genes you have present, your environment, your stress level, how well you take care of yourself, you can be sitting in a sea of estrogen or it could not be quite as bad. It’s important to test for that.

And with the detox enzymes, especially if the CYP1a2 is fast – some people can have a fast CYP1a2 and then the other, the CYP2a1 and 3a4, they’re slower. So phase I, the liver detox. You’ve got phase I and phase II. If phase I is going fast and phase II is not keeping up, then you’ve got the toxic intermediates. Between phase I and phase II, you get a backlog. And that backlog is really damaging. It damages DNA and stuff like that.

Although the CYP1a2, when estrogen goes down that first pathway, it’s a less harmful pathway in terms of the estrogen breakdown products than some of the other ones, which go down more harmful estrogen pathways.

I know some genetic experts who call the hormonal pathways a sailing expedition. It’s different every time. It’s not a straight course. There are huge zigzags. And with zigzags, you never know what you’re going to get.

And then COMT is involved in there as well in terms of the estrogen breaking down. It can produce a lot of free radicals – some free radicals and some other metabolic intermediates. They can be really damaging to our DNA. The COMT enzyme can thwart some of that before it goes down and create some of those really toxic metabolites. COMT can take it down another pathway that’s a little less harmful.

There’s something called the SOD, the superoxide dismutase, the gene that codes for that enzyme, that could quench some of those free radicals as well. Especially if people are looking for hormonal stuff in a genetic panel, it can really help to have a consultation with someone who knows what they’re talking about before you just spin yourself around.

Wendy Myers: Are there any other genes that you really like that you think the listeners should know about?

Dr. Tina Christie: One that’s really interesting is called ADRA2B. ADRA2B is – I won’t call it a ‘trauma gene’, but people who have one end of the ADRA2B can just remember everything, every trauma. They’re the, “You look at me the wrong way ten years ago” type of person.

Wendy Myers: You know who you are.

Dr. Tina Christie: And then there’s the people in the middle who, they can let stuff go, but they can remember stuff too, but it’s a little more balanced. They can have empathy, but they also don’t necessarily [inaudible 00:21:51], ruminate a bit. It’s kind of in the middle. And then there’s the pp at the other end of the spectrum who nothing bothers them.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, every day is a new day. They don’t remember anything. No bad stuff.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. And these are the people that can actually sometimes lack empathy because they’re like, “What’s your problem?” “It doesn’t bother me.” That’s a real funny gene. And especially the people who tend to hold on to stuff, they can really struggle with that. Sometimes, I think it can help to know, “Oh, okay. That’s my genetic. So this is something that I address specifically or something that I need to be mindful of.” So ADRA2B is an interesting one.

I also really like the NOS3. It’s a nitric oxide synthase enzyme. This produces nitric oxide to dilate our blood vessels, which especially comes when we’re exercising and doing cardiovascular exercise.

Some people, especially if that gene is – it can be full. In the same sense, you get maximum or optimal amounts of nitric oxide. It can be so-so or it can be where you’re getting low amounts of nitric oxide. If it’s not optimal and you’re getting lower amounts of nitric oxide, you need to watch the amount of cardiovascular exercise you do because your blood vessels don’t dilate as well, so they can incur more damage. There can be higher rates of cardiovascular disease with intense cardio exercise.

And that’s another thing that can be like being Paleo or vegan or eating bacon and avocadoes every day, being Paleo. A lot of the times, with exercise, there’s no ‘one thing is right for everyone’. “Be a marathon runner. Do triathlons. It’s great for you!” For some people, that’s damaging.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I knew that from a very young age. I never went running. It’s not for me.

Dr. Tina Christie: Good for you! But you know what?

Wendy Myers: I go flamingo running or giraffe running.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah, I could never do it either. I could never run. When I do cardio, I can expand my capacity a bit. These people can expand their capacity, but that kind of intense cardio like two and three hours worth of stuff, it’s just brutal. And usually, those people know that they don’t do well with it. But sometimes, they might think, “Oh, maybe I’m just lazy… maybe I’m just too out of shape… why can’t I do that?” So that’s a cool gene.

Wendy Myers: These are also the people that purchase Viagra, correct? Viagra, it increases nitric oxide, right?

Dr. Tina Christie: I haven’t seen that correlation, but there should be a study for that.

Wendy Myers: Well, that’s what it does. It increase nitric oxide, so your blood vessels can dilate.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do a genetic panel on all the Viagra buyers and see what their NOS is.

Another one that I really like is the ACE enzyme. And one of the reasons I find it particularly fascinating is because that was a real eye-opener for me. I’ve got the least desirable form of it myself.

What the ACE enzyme does, these are the people who don’t tolerate salt. They tend to get swollen really easily when they eat salt. Their kidneys don’t eliminate the salt well. The angiotensin converting enzyme system which regulates blood pressure and how your kidneys are clearing sodium and things like that, that system tends to be overactive and their kidneys keep excess sodium, which is where the spike in the blood pressure comes from.

These people need to have lower sodium – not buying low sodium products, but eating whole food or maybe using unrefined salt or Celtic Sea salt or Himalayan salt. There is a predisposition to chronic kidney disease or kidney failure in these people with a lifetime of eating too much salt.

I remember when I got that test back, I thought, “Oh!” because I never tolerated salts. I get easily puffy under my eyes. And in Chinese medicine, that is a kidney weakness. And if I do eat salt, I call it ‘big face’ because the next morning, I can feel that my face is really big.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, if you have pickles and pickle hams.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah, pickle hams.

Wendy Myers: Pickle fingers.

Dr. Tina Christie: I remember thinking, “That’s so strange. There’s no kidney disease in my family. Where did I get my gene from?” After having the test done, I actually asked my dad. Three of his relatives have died of kidney disease and none of them even had diabetes, which is a huge predisposing factor to kidney disease.

So sometimes, this genetic testing for some people, like myself, uncovers these things that you didn’t even know ran in your family up until – I don’t know how long ago. What? A hundred years ago or so may years ago. People died sometimes of stuff and people weren’t even sure what it was.

Wendy Myers: I think it also depends on how it’s expressing. I have the homozygous for one of the ACEs. Both my parents had high blood pressure because I’m homozygous, I’m not going to express that. I’m not going to have high blood pressure as a result. I actually have low blood pressure. No matter what I do, I always have low blood pressure. So there can be a good expression of that as well.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

27:34 Gene Mutations

Wendy Myers: We touched on this a little bit already, but a lot of people are led to believe that certain mutations lead directly to disease. And certainly, when you’re studying the gene mutations, there’s always a couple of diseases associated with this mutation, how bad it is and depending on how bad it’s expressing, you can have a worse form or a lesser form of the disease. What’s your take on that?

Dr. Tina Christie: In terms of a gene leading to a disease?

Wendy Myers: Yeah.

Dr. Tina Christie: Well, no because everything (almost everything, most of the genes that are being tested for in these genetic panels that people are consulting on), they’re all modifiable.

Wendy Myers: Yeah.

Dr. Tina Christie: The ACE gene, for example. I don’t have to have kidney disease. Nobody has to have it. Neither do you. But if I would’ve eaten, let’s say, salt or what’s in what they called ‘standard American diet’ where everything is just loaded with salt, then yeah, I’m probably getting kidney disease. But without it, then no.

And that’s one of the great things. A lot of these genes that they’re putting into panels, they’re not just finding genes and associating them with diseases and putting them into the panels. They’re finding genes, seeing how they can be modified in what diseases they’re associated with and what kind of modification that creates and then saying, “Hey, if you have this, you can do something about it.”

So you might want to test for it because then, you can optimize around it.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Yeah. It’s true! You’re not a victim of your genes. Your diet and lifestyle and other habits very, very much influence your genetics.

And I think many people know that. They’re aware of the science of epigenetics where we have the choice to turn our genes on and off.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And once upon a time, people thought that we were victims of our genes. And sometimes, I’ll still have patients that are, “Why would I test if there’s nothing I can do?” I’m like, “Ooh, have we not been talking?” So sometimes, people need to break that belief , which can be so ingrained. “Oh, I’m overweight. My whole family’s overweight.”

There’s actually a gene – argh, I can’t remember what it’s called. It codes for amylase, the enzyme in our saliva that breaks down carbs. And so it’s one of the genes that they have, something called ‘copy number variant’.

So not every gene has two parts that combine. Some genes have what’s called ‘copy number variant’ where you could have none, you could have one copy, you could have two copies, you can have three copies. So this gene for amylase, you can have up to ten copies and these are the people who, when they eat, let’s say rice or something starchy, it will taste sweet in their mouth (which I actually didn’t know that anyone tasted sweet in their mouth, so I guess I don’t have a lot of copies for that). In a lot of Asian cultures or east Asian cultures, people have a high number of copies of the genes that encodes for amylase. So they’re really breaking the starch down really, really well in their mouth with their saliva.

And then the other thing that that often pairs with in a lot of place for, I guess, more traditional societies is insulin receptors on their cells – lots of insulin receptors, so that the carbohydrates get into their cells and don’t stick around in the blood stream to cause high blood sugar. And that’s why some other people with a low number of copy number variants for the amylase enzyme won’t break the starch down as well in their mouth. They get gassy and bloated because the microbes in their gut are breaking down what they didn’t break down in their mouths. And so they’re not processing it as well.

Wendy Myers: And that’s why I love hearing things like this. If any of the listeners out there, you’re overweight and you’re eating perfectly (or what you think is perfectly) and you’re exercising and you’re doing everything you can to lose weight, sometime, there’s so many different factors that can negatively impact our waist line that have to do with our genetics, have to do with toxins in our body, that have to do with copper disregulation and other problems. It’s not just a problem with your will power or that you’re not trying hard enough because biology will always overcome will power.

So there are so many other things that you have to look into. I’m actually writing a book about this called The Roadblocks to Weight Loss, all the many different things, all the little checklist that you have to go through and a lot of things that are not in typical weight loss books that you have to discern to find out all the roadblocks to weight loss that you may have.

I was just on a tangent there. Don’t give up hope. There’s so many more things that people can explore when it has to do with weight loss and it’s not just diet and exercise.

Dr. Tina Christie: And that’s the thing. I love that you’re writing that book because there’s often so many things and people get hard on themselves or they feel just really discouraged and they think there’s something wrong with them or they hate their body. They think there’s something wrong with their body, that it just doesn’t work right.

Meanwhile, it’s just something in their genetics or in their metabolism that’s different than other people and it’s not being addressed because they don’t know about it.

33:16 Genetic Testing Labs

Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about some of the genetic direct-to-consumer testing out there. What are some of the testing places that you like?

Dr. Tina Christie: You know what? My favorite one is actually a company here in – I’m based out of Toronto, Canada. It’s a company here called Unique. They’re not as cheap as 23andMe. They’re not as inexpensive as 23andMe. Their testing is done at Sick Kids Hospital. I don’t know if your viewers are familiar with that. Sick Kids is world renowned. It’s at Sick Kids Hospital at the University of Toronto.

The thing that I really like about them is they do tons of research, they offer tons of support. You do need to go through them, through a practitioner to get it done. Let’s say you go to a practitioner and you get a report done, there’s just so many combinations and there’s so many variations between all the different genes. It’s not clear, let’s say, to the practitioner. It is an emerging field. There’s only so many experts in the world really, so many people that are really, really well-versed in this.

So let’s say they get the person’s report back and it’s not clear, they can call the company (because they’re one of their customers) and have a genetic consultation with one of the world’s best experts. They put out a lot of research and a lot of practitioner support as well. So I’m heavily biased towards that because I feel that the interpretation of a genetic test is just as important or even more important as the test itself. If you can’t interpret the information properly or you don’t understand what you’re looking at or it’s stressing you out, then you’re not going to get that much from it.

I know 23andMe is really popular. Lots of people go to them. A lot of practitioners will send their patients through there as well. It’s not just a direct-to-consumer company either.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I like to do that one, then I have clients run it through an app. There are many apps. There’s Genetic Genie and there’s Sterling’s app. I like Sterling’s App. I think it’s one of the most up-to-date ones. Fifty pages, you have a 50-page report of all the health SNPs and things like that. Unfortunately, 23andMe, they were kind of shut down by the FDA in giving health reports. So if you go there, you can only get ancestral reports, which is interesting. I found out I’m 60% British. I thought I was more German, but I guess not. I’m only 9% German. It makes me kind of sad.
But yeah, one of them is Sterling’s App. It’s $30, not expensive. You can find out a lot of information. Of course, you still need to have a professional look it over. It really doesn’t give you a lot of information, if any information at all as a lay person. You definitely have to have it interpreted.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. Like I said before, it’s not like a plug n’ play type of thing, “When you have this gene, it means this. You’ve got this.” They’re not all independent. The way they weave together makes a difference.

So I think as a practitioner, getting that information is really helpful. But yeah, as a lay person, it’s really not going to tell you that much or enough to interpret what’s going on.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I forgot to mention. You can go to Sterling’s App and run your raw data, 23andMe data through MTHFRSupport.com. That’s where you find that. And hopefully, the owner of that app, Sterling Hill, hopefully, I’m going to be getting her on the podcast soon.

Dr. Tina Christie: Oh, fantastic!

Wendy Myers: … and talk to her about genetics because it’s so interesting.

37:14 Behavioral Genetic Profiles

Wendy Myers: So let’s talk about what can be done with some different profiles, say behavioral, for instance.

Dr. Tina Christie: Okay, behavioral. Methylators are great, things like SAMe, even B12 folic acid, but those can also overstimulate people. So one of my favorite things to do to, let’s say, calm down a behavioral profile where place are overstimulated is meditation especially for that 5HTTLPR gene where people are putting out extra stress hormone in response to stressful situations. Meditation has been shown to decrease how many stress hormone goes out.

And the other thing that I like about if someone is slow on COMT, it breaks down dopamine slowly. So if you put out less dopamine, you put out less adrenaline. There’s less there to be broken down slowly so it’s preemptive.

And SAMe works great as well. SAMe actually speeds out the COMT enzyme. It uses a lot of magnesium. I know I was having a problem with one of my patients where I would give her SAMe and she’s like, “Oh, I feel so much calmer. It’s great!” and then, she was having all these foot cramps. I was trying to replenish her magnesium. She would be fabulous and the second I gave her SAMe, she would have foot cramps again. So we just switched over to meditation and she’s doing great. That can be really helpful as well.
Let’s see. Some of the other behavioral…

Wendy Myers: And detoxification…?

Dr. Tina Christie: Ah! So my favorite thing to do – I mean, turmeric is great for slowing down phase I because you don’t want phase I to be too fast again. It produces all those toxic intermediates. Turmeric or curcumin is probably one of the best ways to slow down phase I. I also really like adding in phase II support and things broccoli sprouts. For supporting phase II, selenium, glutathione, glycine. There’s some detox protein shakes, that’s support phase II that I really, really love to use.

Not everyone necessarily wants to take, “Oh, here are these five nutrients.” Speed up phase II and you’re taking a handful of pills through this one thing. So sometimes, there are detox protein shakes that I’ll use when I do detox with patients. But sometimes, with patients with a slow phase II, I’ll just have them do a scoop or two a day as their snacks on an ongoing basis.

And most people are so busy today that having a protein shake to use as one of their snacks throughout the day or every other day, something like that, those people, I find, are pretty happy with that. They can just add water, shake it up and keep going on with their day.

40:33 Hormonal Genetic Profiles

Wendy Myers: And so what about some of the hormonal profiles?

Dr. Tina Christie: The hormonal profiles. The glutathione is good. Calcium glucorate helps to improve estrogen metabolism, anything that also reduces the amount of free radicals you produce, anything that also overall reduces your toxins. You need to use less of your SOD enzymes to neutralize the free radicals in those toxins, so there’s more SOD enzyme to address the free radicals produced by estrogen metabolism.

Taking the pressure off your COMPT enzyme is another indirect way, but it’s a great way because the COMT also is active in a couple of places in the estrogen metabolic pathways. And when it comes in, it makes things better. It diverts the estrogen metabolism away from some of the more undesirable end products.
So the same things that I mentioned for COMT and reducing toxins, SAMe, activated B12, activated folic acid, meditation. Decreasing the amount of dopamine and adrenaline, that COMT needs to breaks down. It frees more of it up to work with those estrogen pathways as well.

And another thing that’s not quite genetically related, but it’s important is for estrogen metabolism, having proper bowel movements because you reabsorb estrogen if you’re constipated. There’s actually a bacteria in our gut. Our liver conjugates estrogen, so it attaches something to estrogen, so you can eliminate it. You’re not going to reabsorb it when it’s conjugated. If it’s sitting in your gut because you’re not having good bowel movements, then there’s bacteria that unconjugates. It just takes that part off and you reabsorb it and it’s active estrogen. So probiotics.

And one thing I just want to add (it’s a little off-topic) is if you eat every day, you should poop every day. Some people will say, “Oh, it’s just normal for my body. My doctor said once every other day or twice a week.” No, it’s not.

Wendy Myers: No. It absolutely is not. You need to be aiming to win those poop pageants for sure. So yeah, do you want to add anything, sorry?

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah, that’s okay. I love it.

Wendy Myers: Third grade humor, it just never gets old.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. I never heard that before actually, poop pageant.

Wendy Myers: That’s from Diane Sanfilipo. She invented that. Well, she didn’t invent it, but she made it very popular among the Paleo crowd.

Dr. Tina Christie: Excellent!

Wendy Myers: The pooping Paleo crowd.

Dr. Tina Christie: Wonderful!

43:43 What is MTHFR?

Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about the king mother, the genes MTHFR.

Dr. Tina Christie: Ah, yes.

Wendy Myers: It’s an important test because 50% of people will have at least one allele in this SNP. Can you talk a little bit about MTHFR.

Dr. Tina Christie: I was actually just interviewing Colin Walsh the other day. She had a great explanation for it. MTHFR is like the momma bear of this whole pathway called ‘methylation’. The methylation pathway is – this is Colin’s analogy – like the Olympic rings. There’s like these four rings and they intertwine. Everything connects to everything.

But the MTHFR one sits right in the middle. There’s a lot of things that people with – if you have MTHFR, if one of the alleles is less desirable, you make 30% less what they call ‘methyl factors’. And if you’ve got both of them, you can make up to 70%. I’ve even seen some numbers a little higher, less methyl factors.

These methyl actors are important for so many things. It’s absolutely incredible. They’re important for hormone balance, they’re important for mood. It messes with you. It can mess with your serotonin, your dopamine, your adrenaline. They’re important for detox, important for elimination of heavy metals and energy production. It’s associated with autism, allergies, asthma, anxiety, depression.

The list of things that MTHFR abnormalities, if you want to call it that, are associated with is it’s one of those lists that’s just so long that there’s very few things that are not on the list. It’s associated with higher cholesterol levels and higher homocysteine levels. Sometimes, people who have a family history of cardiovascular disease, a family history of cholesterol, the MHTFR can be an issue. It’s associated with infertility or recurrent miscarriages. And sometimes, some women that, again, they’re not getting pregnant and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why. There can be an MTHFR problem there as well.

Wendy Myers: And then they’re taking folic acid like it’s going out of style. It can cause more problems.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. I’m glad that you mentioned that. All the folic acid in a regular supplement, a multivitamin, prenatals, the folic acid that’s in fortified grains and cereals and breads and blah-blah-blah, everywhere you see ‘folic’, it’s all synthetic folic acid. The body doesn’t use it nearly as well as natural folic acid, which you get from –

One of the big places is raw leafy greens. But you could also buy activated folic acid. If you do have that problem, that’s where you want to have someone prescribe it to you because it can get a little funny. Sometimes, people can take folic acid and get overstimulated and they can get anxious or they get depressed.

Ben Lynch is a big MTHFR guy. I’ve seen some case studies of his saying he put a kid on activated B12 and folic acid. It was too much for them. They flew into a rage, they were breaking walls at home and just crazy things. He would adjust their protocol and they would calm down. So that’s not really something to fiddle around too much by yourself.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think when people have anxiety issues, they really want to be careful about the methylated B’s for sure. Be very, very careful when taking that. Take small doses to start. And then see how you feel, see what symptoms that manifest after taking it.

Dr. Tina Christie: And getting the synthetic folic acid out, which really just converts people to a whole foods diet, getting away from fortified stuff with cereals with all the synthetic B vitamins added. I like to tell patients that if you see a product and it has vitamins added, basically what they’re saying is, “Our product had so little nutritional value that we added synthetic vitamins. Don’t you want to buy it?” That would be a red flag. Just stay away.

Wendy Myers: And isn’t MTHFR an inability to convert folic acid to the active methylated form, correct?

Dr. Tina Christie: Correct. So it stops that pathway. The folic acid goes down. It gets converted to methyltetrahydrofolic acid. And then it’s going through the pathway and donate. Methyl groups are passed around like a baton in a race. The baton keeps getting passed around, so the race keeps going. But if your folic acid can’t get through because you don’t have the enzyme, well then, it just stops and people tend to be deficient in these methyl factors. That’s where the hormones get out of balance, the immune system can get out of balance. The methyl groups are just used for so many reactions. And it’s not enough of them there, all kinds of things either start slowing down or grinding to a halt, not going well.

It’s also associated with fibromyalgia. That’s another big one. And often, people with fibromyalgia with MTHFR just feel like everything is going wrong. One big reason for that is often that a lot of things are going wrong because there’s not enough methyl factors in all these different locations.

Another thing that people with the MTHFR gene often have a problem with is gluten and dairy. I think a lot of people who tune in to health information like this are often people who have problems with gluten or dairy or health problems, fibromyalgia and things like that. So I can imagine that among your listener base, the incidence of the MTHFR problem is probably much higher than 50%.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, definitely. Anyone with a chronic health condition probably need to eliminate gluten and dairy.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. And getting your MTHFR checked out is always a good idea as well. I know you’re on big on minerals and heavy metal detox. And again, these people aren’t going to be able to detox their metals very well.

Autoimmune disease is another one with MTHFR. It’s a big predisposing factor. I had a patient the other day. She was a new patient with rheumatoid arthritis. Her chiropractor told her, “You should get lymphatic massage.” She was just new like two days ago, so I don’t know her MTHFR status yet, but she was sick for weeks afterwards.

That’s another clue for a lot of people that have MTHFR problem. There can be other issues as well with the SNP enzymes that we talk about, but they often don’t handle detox well. So place take milk thistle, they do a detox from the store and their skin goes insane and just doesn’t get better or they feel sick and the detox reaction that was supposed to last 24-48 hours doesn’t go away after days and days and weeks. And then they give up on the cleanse and someone says, “No, you shouldn’t have given up. It was going to go away.” These people usually know that something is off, “I don’t respond well to that, but I don’t know why not” and that can be an MTHFR issue as well.

51:42 What is Methylation?

Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about methylation? What exactly is methylation for any of our listeners that don’t know what that is?

Dr. Tina Christie: Ah, yes. So methylation or the methylation cycle is this big web-like pathway in our system where these – I like to call the m-factors to make it easy, but it’s where these little methyl groups get passed around, it gets shunted around to all these different hormones and components of these pathways that make up our neurotransmitters, make up our hormones, that make up our cholesterol cycle.

They do other things too. They can, what they call, ‘methylator genes’. Often, when a gene is methylated, it’s turned off. So that’s why you talk about how stress – or actually, we haven’t talked about it today. Stress can turn genes on. So sometimes, people will have genetic issue, but they’re like, “I didn’t have this five or ten years ago.” When you go through a period of stress, it can be turned on.

But when we talk about genes being turned off, let’s say, the 5AHTTLPR example where people meditate and they respond more like someone who doesn’t have the S allele that makes them have a higher stress response, when they go in and look at these people’s genes, let’s say they’re LS, the S will be methylated. So it’ll be covered by these methyl factors and your body can’t use it when it’s covered by methyl factors. So they do that as well.

So it’s passed around through these pathways. So the way your body recycles hormones and neurotransmitters and produces them, it just kind of shunts these things around, for lack of a better term. In order for all these pathways to keep going, you need methyl factors at so many different points.
And again, when you don’t get these methyl factors – a great example is cholesterol. Homocysteine builds up, cholesterol builds up because you’re not recycling your cholesterol properly. You’re not recycling your homocysteine properly.

Is that clear?

Wendy Myers: That was very clear. That was a very good explanation.

Dr. Tina Christie: Oh, okay. It’s been a long day.

Wendy Myers: Yeah. No, it’s very, very good. Thank you.

Dr. Tina Christie: Okay, yeah.

54:11 The Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today

Wendy Myers: So I have a question that I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?

Dr. Tina Christie: Ah, wow! Okay. What do I think is the most pressing health issue in the world today. I would say that people aren’t taking care of themselves. A lot of people are crisis-minded, they go to the doctor when there’s something wrong versus prevention-minded. That’s what I mean by not taking care of themselves.

If you’re prevention minded, we’re all so different. For some people, the toxins in our environment and in our products are what’s basically killing them. When they eliminate the toxins, the whole world changes. And for other people, stress is killing them. When they meditate or they bring nutrients to help calm themselves down, their whole life changes.

And I guess if we had a different conversation about stress and GMOs and food and all these different things, I would say that each one was the worst problem. So I think it’s the lack of [recording issue]…
…problems once they come up and what I call ‘crisis control’.

55:53 Lifestyle is New Medicine Summit

Wendy Myers: So you did a summit called the Lifestyle is New Medicine Summit.

Dr. Tina Christie: Yes!

Wendy Myers: You were gracious to ask me to speak in the summit. I was very, very happy to contribute. So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about the summit and when it starts, et cetera?

Dr. Tina Christie: Yeah. And it was so wonderful to have you on the summit. Your interview goes live on the second day. The summit starts tomorrow. The summit starts May 7th and your interview, Wendy is going live on May the 8th.

I called it ‘Lifestyle is the New Medicine’ because really, how we live and the choices that we make every day is, at the end of the day, what determines our health. And like I said, I see such a lack of prevention. I want to educate people around living the kind of lifestyle. That’s my little thing at the beginning of each interview, ‘living the kind of lifestyle that supports you to be vibrantly healthy, so you could get the most out of life.” That’s really what it is.

When you’re not healthy, when you’re not feeling good, vibrant, energetic, you can’t get the most out of life if you’re anxious, depressed, exhausted, focused all day long at how bloated and uncomfortable you feel in your pants. You’re not really able to fully engage with life and what’s going on.

So the food we eat, the exercise we do, our mindset, how we manage our stress, the toxins in our environment, what we do with our adrenals, what foods we eat or don’t eat really feeds into our quality of life in such a way that it shapes our life.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, I was really happy to participate in the summit. I spoke about food sensitivities and how those things dramatically impact our health and promote inflammation and how to discover your food sensitivities. I think it’s very, very important for anyone that is seeking health to test for food sensitivities and eliminate those foods.

So tune in to that summit. It’s an amazing summit, an amazing line-up of speakers. Check it out!

58:05 Where to find Dr. Tina Christie

Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your website?

Dr. Tina Christie: So my website for the summit is LifestyleistheNewMedicine.com and my website outside of that is called theMindBodyDoctor.com.

One of the things I found more and more is that naturopathic medicine seems to be veering more towards supplements and protocols and things like that. I like to do that with patients, but I also really like to incorporate the mind-body approach. I think that really rounds out the lifestyle concept. For all the people who do amazing exercise and they eat healthy, but they’re miserable or they’re angry or they’re stressed out and ran down, that’s not any better than just being miserable.

So I take the approach of really looking at everything. How are you sleeping? How’s your energy? What are you eating? How stressed are you? What’s your mood like? And then I like to go in and look at all of that foundational stuff. If people are eating well, but they’re not sleeping well, then I’ll address that first. I really like getting people on whole foods, the real food movement. I really like getting people on that.

I don’t know if that’s because I’m a naturopath or I’m half Italian because my mom was Italian so we were raised very much that way. I mean, my parents would not even order pizza on my birthday. My dad was like, “No, I’m making pizza.”

Wendy Myers: Oh, no! You couldn’t go to Chuckie Cheese. I’m so sorry.

Dr. Tina Christie: I went for other kids’ birthdays. But for mine? Absolutely not. My dad would sooner make six pizzas for all my friends than order pizza. So I really grew up with that, “If you want something, you just make it.” As a kid, I hated it because all my friends bought stuff out and I wanted to too. And then as I got older, I was like, “Oh, this is just the way life is.”

So really coming from that holistic “eat real food and nurture your relationship and look at your stress level” and make sure that you’re doing all of the foundation things, the lifestyle versus trying to use pills to compensate for your lifestyle.

Wendy Myers: Well, I love it when I have doctors like yourself on the show and they’re attending to functional medicine and they are talking to their clients or patients about diet and lifestyle, et cetera because that’s what you have to focus on if you’re going to get your patients better.

So I love interviewing doctors like yourself. I think you’re the wave of the future. Conventional medicine is going to go to the wayside because people are waking up. They are getting a clue that drugs and surgery by themselves aren’t working and only serve to make people sicker faster. So thank you so much for what you’re doing.

Dr. Tina Christie: Oh, thanks so much, Wendy.

Wendy Myers: Thanks for coming on the show. And listeners, if you want to learn more about me, you can go to myersdetox.com. You can learn about detoxification and how to heal your health conditions naturally and about my version of Paleo, the Modern Paleo Diet.

Please go check out my new online health program. This just launched a few days ago, BodyBioRehab.com. You can lose 10 lbs. in 30 days. I’ve got a 4-week meal plan, lots of fun stuff in the program. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.

Dr. Tina Christie: Thanks so much for having me, Wendy.

Wendy Myers: Bye bye.

Dr. Tina Christie: Bye!