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Lab Work Deep Dive: How I Help Clients Optimise their Health and Longevity
101 Plays6 months ago
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Watch the video presentation of this episode here: https://vimeo.com/951138282?share=copy
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Transcript
Introduction to Functional Health and Longevity
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Christian Jourdanoff. I'm a functional health practitioner and author. My latest book is How to Actually Live Longer Volume 1. It's on the topic of longevity. And with this video, I want to do a little bit of a kind of like a case study type video where I will go over some of my rationale about what I do when I get
00:00:24
Speaker
lab work and we're trying to dig deep and find optimizations as opposed to glaring imbalances, which is normally what I, the kind of clients I get is people with a lot of health issues. So when we do lab work, we catch a lot of stuff, right? There's a lot of glaring imbalances that we, most people need to, at least that most people that come to work with me with a health issue that we need to address.
Case Study: CEO Client's Health Journey
00:00:48
Speaker
But I wanted to present a case of a recent client
00:00:53
Speaker
She is a CEO, a lady in her sixties, very busy life, you know, obviously a lot of stress with that kind of role. And she had a journey through breast cancer. So my expectation when we ran, we ran a couple of thousand dollars worth of lab work, my expectation was we're going to find a lot of glaring imbalances because I expect to see that when people come to work with me now.
00:01:20
Speaker
I was very pleasantly surprised that that was not the case. In fact, I had to dig a little bit deeper in my analysis to find things for us to optimize. Not that there wasn't things to optimize. Every lab test found something we can optimize. It's just things were a lot better than I expected. And that's also, that's a great thing. I mean, of course, I'm happy. The less red I see,
00:01:44
Speaker
on the lab tests, the happier I am for the client, of course. It's not that I'm trying to show how smart I am. And look, I told you this test will show us your health is in the gutter. No, no, I don't know. I want ideally to find as little things as possible. At the end of the day, my goal is to get people optimally healthy and keep them optimally healthy.
00:02:08
Speaker
So, as I said, we ran a bunch of lab work, so in the region of $2,000. And what's interesting is to contrast the blood work the client ran with the previous blood work from about three months prior, most
00:02:30
Speaker
of everything was either the same or better but there was a lot of markers where I was, we're talking about a person in their 60s, I was quite surprised to see things like
00:02:46
Speaker
prolactin, so low, C-reactive, so prolactin is a neurotransmitter slash hormone, C-reactive protein, which is an inflammation marker, acute face reactant. That was pretty low. Comocysteine,
00:03:04
Speaker
I've seen these markers way higher in people half her age. And I've seen these markers higher in children. Now, of course, I work with a lot of my clients' children are autistic, so there is that. But for someone in their 60s, to see a homocysteine of 7.6 is really, really good.
The Role and Limitations of Blood Work
00:03:28
Speaker
And a CRP, a C-reactive protein under one, that is really good.
00:03:33
Speaker
So that was good the problem is. A lot of blood work by the time it's in the range where you like okay that's that's something is not right here we need to investigate something the problem if we wait for the blood work to show imbalances.
00:03:49
Speaker
is we're waiting a long time because the blood is buffered to very tight ranges at the expense of the tissues. So we really, it's good to have as our sort of North Star the blood work.
00:04:04
Speaker
but we really need to do deeper dives with some of the lab tests that I run on clients. For example, I started doing this more recently, doing the fatty acid analysis. What I find is this really helps to drive home the point to people about the Omega-6s, the seeds, the seed oils, the nuts, this kind of stuff.
00:04:29
Speaker
Interestingly enough, my clients, total Omega-6 fatty acids were just under 35%. And while that's not great, the reference range is 26% to 43%. And I'm seeing this closer to 40% on the first test with new clients. So while not optimal,
00:04:51
Speaker
It was definitely better than people against sometimes half her age or 20 years younger.
Developing Health Optimization Packages
00:04:56
Speaker
So we're starting from a decent place as far as the whole population goes. Now, of course, my clients, I want to take them down.
00:05:05
Speaker
Get them out of that whole population range into exceptional levels and this is why I love when cases like this come to me because actually this was the reason I Initially got into to the health space is to work on health optimization and stuff like that. I bought a
00:05:23
Speaker
a web domain some years ago called betterexecs.com and I had this really awesome idea on like this executive package that would be a year long and you get your supplements shipped direct to you, you don't have to deal with ordering anything and the lab work would come every year.
00:05:41
Speaker
three months to monitor you so it would be like tuning a supercar like a Ferrari this kind of thing but I very quickly found out that we there's a much bigger problem of people with severe health imbalances and health issues that we need to tackle so that was kind of put on the back burner but when cases like this come to me I'm I'm like a kid in a candy store this is
00:06:06
Speaker
The other topmost joy is to get a person from a really low level of health thriving again. That's true. But this in terms of my leveraging all of my skills and the knowledge I've gained, this is where I can really shine.
00:06:22
Speaker
the linoleic acid was 19%, the total omega-6 fatty acids were 35%. And you have to understand, this will go down very gradually, but very consistently. My personal
00:06:39
Speaker
Omega 6 fatty acids when I did this test last year were 10%. Remember the range is 26 to 43% Omega 6. I was just over 10% and my linoleic acid
00:06:54
Speaker
which is the most abundant omega-6 fatty acid, was about 5%. So I am probably one in a million in that sort of percentile, I would say. So this is my goal for all my clients. If they maintain the dietary guidelines that I provide, they will get there. But that process does take years. I've been doing this very clean eating stuff for six years.
00:07:24
Speaker
with some transgressions along the way, because I also became a parent and that was stressful and the COVID stuff. But in general, it is possible to get down to my levels, even while eating Omega-6 periodically here and there, as has been my experience. But the point of this test is to show people how important these dietary recommendations are.
00:07:46
Speaker
Now the client immediately implemented the dietary recommendations. This is again why I love working with high performing individuals because they're a joy to work with. They're super busy, but it's interesting how they never make any bullshit excuses and they get the stuff done and they
00:08:06
Speaker
They follow the protocols and they don't question the protocols. They ask a lot of questions, a lot of good questions that I love to answer, but they're not questioning the veracity of my recommendation and stuff like that. They're like,
00:08:19
Speaker
curious why this works or how did my blood pressure drop, what's the mechanism there and stuff like
Reducing Omega-6 Fatty Acids
00:08:25
Speaker
that. So really a pleasure to work with clients like this. But the reason we start with the omega-6 fatty acid is this explains a lot of other detrimental processes that we can potentially catch.
00:08:41
Speaker
This will make sense later when we talk about there's a marker for oxidative stress slash DNA damage where that was slightly elevated. It wasn't elevated, but it was on the high end of the normal range. So we'll get to that in a few minutes. But the more of these Omega-6s a person has in their body,
00:09:03
Speaker
the more inflammatory potential they have because these Omega-6s are precursors to inflammatory mediators like prostaglandins, leukotrien, stuff like that. So the more we get these out of our system, which is again takes years and years, the less of these we have. And because these are very fragile and they're very easily peroxidized,
00:09:27
Speaker
The more of these we have in our brain cells, in our vasculature, in our endothelial lining of the blood vessels, everywhere, the skin, the more of them we have.
00:09:38
Speaker
The more of them gets peroxidized, the more damage happens at the cellular level. And at the end of the day, that's how disease, degeneration, and aging occurs. It's damage at the cellular level that is not getting repaired or mitigated or avoided sufficiently. And the more of these Omega-6s we have, the more of this damage
Organic Acids Tests and Health Optimization
00:09:58
Speaker
occurs. So of course, we do things to ameliorate damage while we're getting them out of the body. But the end goal will be to really minimize them as much as possible.
00:10:08
Speaker
But we are starting, given the age of the client, we're starting at a much better place than many people, like I said, 20 years younger. Then we also did an organic acids test. This is one of my favorite tests. It's a simple urine collection. The client collects at home, courier picks it up, we get the lab work, very convenient. And this test is so awesome because
00:10:32
Speaker
It catches a lot of different things in the metabolism, so we often find glaring issues like candida overgrowth, signs of bacterial overgrowth in gut dysbiosis, B vitamin deficiencies, mitochondrial dysfunction markers, which means impaired energy production, which
00:10:50
Speaker
At the end of the day, if you're not producing energy well, a lot of processes in the body can't work optimally. So this is a hugely important topic. Then we can also catch antioxidant deficiencies or indicators that the person, their detoxification capacities are not working optimally. This is another thing that most people with health issues have, but people that feel good, you could be like that for years and years and years and years.
00:11:16
Speaker
and we want to catch it as early as possible because that means we're reducing the damaging processes that are going to lead to faster aging. At the end of the day, aging and disease progression, there's very similar mechanisms that drive these. So like I discussed in my book, How to Actually Live Longer, when we address
00:11:37
Speaker
The causes of aging premature aging or accelerated aging we're actually becoming more resistant to chronic disease because again the same processes same mechanism drive these two some researchers are calling
00:11:51
Speaker
aging a disease in its own right. So what's interesting is with this client, the first page of the organic acids test where we see things like, as you can see here, this is from a 70-year-old gentleman that his lab test was lit up like a Christmas tree. So there was, as you can see, there's yeast and fungal markers for candida. He had Clostridium difficile, the marker elevated, a bunch of other
00:12:19
Speaker
bacterial dysbiosis indicators elevated. Now to contrast that on this client, that page was basically there was no red. There was only one marker that was on the edge and the only way to get it out of the range is to adjust for the creatinine value which indicates the dilution of the sample or the hydration of the individual when they collected that sample. So
00:12:44
Speaker
When I do that make that adjustment a couple of markers do get out of the range, but it's it's quite borderline It's only one marker, but that marker was for aspergillus mode, but it can be elevated for other reasons That's why we don't raise the alarm with one markers
00:13:00
Speaker
almost elevated or just over the range. But there was another marker for oxalate. There's three markers for oxalate under organic acids test. And when those are elevated along with yeast or fungal markers, then there's really good indication that there is an yeast slash fungal issue going on. And this is normally, we catch up normally with autistic kids, with women, it's very common.
Importance of Early Detection in Health
00:13:24
Speaker
In those cases, we definitely need to prioritize that higher in terms of the health building protocols I design. In this case, I just mentioned it to the client because it's also a data gathering exercise because if you say something like, this marker can be elevated because we ate something that had mold on it or we have mold in the home, the person could say things like,
00:13:50
Speaker
or my kitchen was water damaged last year, or I can see mold here on the wall. So when these extra data points are gathered, then we can say, okay, well, maybe at some point we could do a mycotoxin test. For example, the idea again is we don't want to wait until a person has symptoms of mold toxicity. We don't want to wait for people to be diagnosed
00:14:15
Speaker
with diseases. We don't want symptoms that are horrible to start appearing before we do something about things. We want to catch things early. So in this case, we're not going to do anything for now, but I'm going to keep it on the back of my head. If we do the organic acids test again in let's say three, five, six months, and some more of these
00:14:34
Speaker
fungal markers are elevated. Well, at that point, I can build a case to then we can say we can invest another few hundred dollars in a mycotoxin test. And then let's catch this. If this is a problem, let's catch this early. Maybe we can remediate the home or sometimes people can use a different room if it's that one room that has more. So there's a number of different things, but we're thinking five steps ahead.
00:14:57
Speaker
We're not waiting for the symptoms to whack us over the head and then we end up in hospital or at the doctor's office. We want to catch these things before they become an issue. Then the organic acids test has about 11 markers that are related to energy production, so glycolytic psycho, Krebs psycho in the mitochondria, amino acid metabolites.
Exploring Mitochondrial Function and Neurotransmitters
00:15:20
Speaker
On the screen is the 70 year old gentleman that we're using to contrast the worst I've seen, the most we can catch with this test. So basically he had nine out of these 11 markers were way out of range. That's indicating that there's blockages along the energy production cycle because there's enzymes and things going on, there's co-factors at every step that are needed. It could be a B vitamin, it could be
00:15:49
Speaker
let's say a mineral, when there's a blockage, there's a buildup of that substrate, and then that gets into the blood, and that's how they measure the organic acids in the urine. So let's say succinic, in this case, and fumaric are very high in the urine. That means that those steps there, there's a buildup of that succinic or fumaric or whatever else, is because there's not enough of something, some cofactor B vitamin substrate
00:16:16
Speaker
that's needed to progress to the next step. And in this particular example here of the 70 year old gentleman, he was hospitalized prior to this. He had a lot of health issues. He was also on multiple pharmaceutical drugs. So you can see that he had a lot of mitochondrial dysfunction and that means energy is not getting produced sufficiently and that is causing the body over time to
00:16:40
Speaker
downgrade function, right? It's lowering overall function. This can manifest as brain fog. It can manifest as gut dysfunction, as symptoms of like neurodegeneration. And this person definitely had a lot of stuff going on. And the contrast is that with this client, all of the markers pretty much were in the range. So we couldn't really see anything there.
00:17:04
Speaker
So I had to dig deeper. Could there be a need for something still that the lab work is not showing us? So as we continue, we can kind of see that. So the next area that the organic acids test covers that's of interest is neurotransmitter metabolites. So things like serotonin breakdown products, dopamine metabolites, norepinephrine metabolites, epinephrine metabolites, which is adrenaline.
00:17:30
Speaker
And there's a marker for neuroinflammation. And on the screen is this 70-year-old gentleman that we're contrasting with. So he had a couple of markers that were elevated here, and one of them is the quinolinic, which is indicative of neuroinflammation, which is not good.
00:17:48
Speaker
We want to catch this before it's out of the range and with some clients, we've got it where it's not elevated, but it's on the higher end of the range. And I say to people, we want to start doing things now that are going to help us reduce inflammatory processes in the brain.
00:18:09
Speaker
Sometimes these things are long term plays like getting the omega six is out of the diet because again the more of these omega sixes you have in your body the higher your inflammatory burden right remember these things getting incorporated into your tissues that includes.
00:18:25
Speaker
So what was interesting, just in my client's case, the lady, is that this 5HIAA, 5-hydroxyindoacetic acid, that was more on the low end. And what that can actually mean is that it's a serotonin breakdown product. What that can mean is that not that serotonin is low,
00:18:46
Speaker
but serotonin is not getting broken down sufficiently. And the way I sort of arrive at this, it's more of a hunch. I'm not saying that this is exactly, I could be completely off base here, but my rationale is that I also had her test that marker in the blood. And in the blood, it seemed to be very low as well. The problem is that there wasn't a reference range from two. It was
00:19:13
Speaker
under 22 is the reference range. So when you have under 22, you're not really, we can't see what's low, what's high, right? But it looked low because it was a third lower than that. If the range is under 22, we're talking about a seven. So that looked low. So that's another indicator that serotonin is not getting broken down properly. The other thing is because we can check for dopamine metabolites here,
00:19:42
Speaker
I got another test that we ran, the hormone test, the Dutch test. There's also those same markers and they were kind of low there. So this is indicating to me, because serotonin and dopamine are somewhat antagonistic to each other, is that
00:19:57
Speaker
serotonin is not getting broken down optimally and the dopamine is on the low end. So if the lab work was all red with the mitochondrial functions in the east and the bacterial stuff going on and the other things,
00:20:14
Speaker
I may not even have paid too much attention to such nuance on the slap test, right? But what it indicates to me is that just adding a little bit of dopamine precursor support, which is just an amino acid that is found in meat, but we can also take it as a supplement. If we take that on an empty stomach to give the dopamine precursor, I see a lot of benefit, which may not necessarily translate to something noticeable.
00:20:43
Speaker
or at least it won't be immediately noticeable like a drug let's say but we are optimizing something that long term should have benefits because for a few reasons first of all serotonin is not good in excess it can drive vasoconstriction clotting fibrosis in organs
00:21:00
Speaker
and fibrosis is a precursor stage to cancer. So it's actually a very pathogenic molecule in excess and it's actually high in depression, high in migraines, it's high in certain autistic populations. So the whole serotonin is the happy chemical, it's just marketing by drug companies to sell SSRI drugs. Even if you go on Wikipedia, just read
00:21:27
Speaker
read where serotonin is found. It's found in insect venoms, stinging nettle, certain pathogenic amoebas, like antimeba histolytica. They secrete serotonin. So spider venom, scorpion venom. So serotonin is actually harmful in excess.
00:21:49
Speaker
So by supporting dopamine production, we are actually, because they're again, they're antagonistic somewhat, we're actually going to put the brakes on serotonin production. But here's the thing, L-tyrosine, which is this precursor to dopamine. So yes, it can raise dopamine, which what is optimizing dopamine levels do?
00:22:08
Speaker
Better focus, better mood, improved attention span, improved ability to finish tasks. In some people, it can increase libido, just motivation. It's a feel-good neurotransmitter, whereas serotonin is more of a hibernation type thing. It shuts down function. Like I said, it's high in migraines.
00:22:29
Speaker
It can be high in insomnia. It can drive nightmares. So there's a lot of benefit there already. And we're talking about a very benign thing that we're adding to a person's supplement program. And the other thing is, in this client's case, thyroid function does not seem to be optimal for various reasons we can't go into because of time.
00:22:53
Speaker
But L-tyrosine, which is that precursor to dopamine, there's other cofactors needed, sure, but it's the amino acid precursor. L-tyrosine is a precursor to thyroid hormones. So we're supporting potentially thyroid function and also
00:23:08
Speaker
L-tyrosine is a precursor to coenzyme Q10, which people know it as an antioxidant, but it's integral to energy production in the body. So there's so many, see the kind of stuff I recommend to clients, there's the benefits of the stuff for let's say a specific goal that we have.
00:23:28
Speaker
But then there's side benefits because all of these things, nutrients, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, all of these things have countless roles in the body. So when you're adding something like that, instead of, let's say, a drug, you have benefits and you have side benefits that you may feel. And then you have a bunch of other side benefits.
00:23:49
Speaker
that you won't feel because optimizing a lot of things in the body won't necessarily translate into visible effects. It's the same way where having a lot of inflammation, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, you might not feel it for a very long time. It's similar with when we optimize more advanced stuff, more nuanced stuff, you won't necessarily feel it immediately. Sometimes people feel amazing.
00:24:18
Speaker
But a lot of it, this is long term thinking. And this is the problem that a lot of people are stuck in short term thinking. And when it comes to health, it's like investing. So a lot of people are smart about investment. They understand this is a long term play. You know, some of these investments might not even I might kind of leave them for my kids.
00:24:41
Speaker
so they can reap the benefits. Maybe it's a generational thing that we'll always keep, let's say ownership of stock or in a company or gold or whatever. So people know, people understand that about the financial side of things, but it's a little bit more difficult to get this through to the masses because we're so indoctrinated about this paradigm of
00:25:04
Speaker
you start degenerating as soon as you're born and all you can do is manage symptoms of disease with drugs. That's all people have been taught. So that's all people think is an option for them. But what we, my approach is we identify, even if they're minor things,
00:25:23
Speaker
We're investing in the lab work. We're investing in the supplementation in lifestyle and habits and dietary changes. This is an investment into your health that you will only see when you're, you know, 95, 100, 105. And it's difficult to then compare because like with a stock, you could say, well, that stock did, you know, 2000% in my lifetime. And then that other stock
00:25:51
Speaker
only did 500%, so this was a better investment. So we can't clone ourselves and say, okay, my clone died 20 years younger, and we didn't do any of those changes. Therefore, this was a good idea all I'm doing. The only way we can know
00:26:10
Speaker
If what we're doing is correct is when we do lab work and we catch few imbalances or when we catch those imbalances when we do something about them then six months down the line or a year down the line we do the lab work again then those imbalances are
00:26:28
Speaker
The indicators that the lab work is indicating are that we have improved those things like oxidative stress, inflammation, neuroinflammation, stuff like that. Deficiencies, that's a much easier one to quantify. The organic acid test, we can also catch B vitamin deficiencies. A glaring one is often B2, riboflavin. When I see this high, I just tell people, look, please eat more liver. Just figure out how to do it.
00:26:58
Speaker
I know people don't like liver nowadays, but try to eat more liver.
00:27:01
Speaker
There's so much other stuff in there that you need, everything basically that you need is in there. With my client though, there wasn't anything overly glaring, but as we continued down the other lab work, there was other indicators on the hormone test that indicated a need for extra B vitamins in the supplement thoroughly. But another area where I really always focus is when I get the organic acids test result, I look at
00:27:29
Speaker
this marker called pyroglutamic, which is number 58 on the lab test. When that's not basically smack bang in the middle, I am always thinking we need to support antioxidant production. And when I say antioxidant, I mean the glutathione antioxidant, which many people have heard of nowadays, it's known as the master antioxidant in the cells.
00:27:53
Speaker
And when it's out of the range, that's a pretty good sign that there's a deficiency of this glutathione. But when it's kind of close to the end of the range, we know we need to start adding the amino acids required to support the production of this antioxidant. And in this client's case, the protocol was going to address that. She just hadn't started the supplements yet because we were getting kind of a baseline at the beginning.
00:28:22
Speaker
But this is another thing that very few clinicians are talking about. Let's make sure your detoxification systems are working optimally, right? And my approach to detoxification is very comprehensive. We're decongesting the liver. We are supporting detoxification with the co-factors
00:28:44
Speaker
required, the substrates required, the amino acids, the vitamins and so on, the minerals. This is so important for longevity. It's so important for hormone balance as well, right? Because estrogen, for example,
00:28:57
Speaker
which men can have an excess of too, relatively speaking, that's detoxified in the liver. So when I look at the organic acids test, and I see this not smack bang in the middle, I'm always like, we need to create a strategy. And when I say a strategy, something that we add to a person's lifestyle that's easy to do,
00:29:19
Speaker
right, that will support this glutathione production for years down the line. This is something that has to become a part of what you do on a daily basis. And it's usually a couple of supplements, eating more protein, things like that. So my recommendations in most cases are not like some crazy stuff you have to do and waste a lot of time and money on or whatever else, right? These are very basic things that we're
00:29:44
Speaker
We're just lining up a lot of them together that in their whole create an amazing result for a person. The other pretty interesting test that we ran with the client, which I don't run this with all clients all the time, but it's always interesting to use as part of creating a bigger picture. It's like we're using different bits to create an overall map of the lay of the land in terms of a person's
00:30:09
Speaker
physiology, right? And this test is the Dutch test, which stands for dry urine test for comprehensive hormones. And it gives us the daily free cortisol pattern. We can catch if the person is under a lot of stress at which point during the day. And this one on the screen, this is actually from someone in their late thirties that you can see that on the right here, the total metabolized cortisol was just over the range. So we're talking this person
00:30:38
Speaker
It was like, I feel fine. And then we ran the test and you could see that their total daily cortisol production was out of the range, super high, right? And then this allows us to persuade a person to start making some lifestyle changes, to start taking stress reduction
00:30:59
Speaker
a little bit more seriously. Now, in my client's case, there was nothing there of substance we could really latch on to. Basically, adrenal hormone output wasn't very high, which is common for women in their 60s. And then with the Dutch test, we also get this really cool map of how
00:31:18
Speaker
the hormones are getting metabolized. And this is another area where we can catch things. Like for example, this is from the same person from the previous screenshot is we caught, and let me zoom in on this. The estrogens get detoxified down different pathways. And one of these pathways, the one here in the middle with the red arrow pointing to it, that one is known to be, it can be carcinogenic.
00:31:42
Speaker
So catching things like this early, like this was someone in their late 30s, catching this early could really mean a very different outcome for that person when they're 40, 50, 60, 70. Because leaving this to go on unmitigated for years, that can definitely lead to unpleasant outcomes if you know what I mean.
00:32:08
Speaker
Now in my client's case, these pathways here, we didn't really see anything again of much value in terms of guiding the protocols and the other things. But this is again where we can go a little bit more advanced, right? So when there isn't a glaring issue with the sex hormones and the adrenal hormones and the stress hormones,
00:32:30
Speaker
we can then look deeper and find other areas to optimize. For example, there's other markers on this test that are also organic acids, like the organic acids test. So we caught the vitamin B12 marker, which when it's high, it can indicate a deficiency in vitamin B12. So
00:32:48
Speaker
In this client's case, it was right just over the above the range. So this is another clue that adding B vitamins to the protocol is a good idea. Now, normally I actually add B vitamins, but in this case I had decided to hold off because there was a bunch of other things we're trying to address first. But this is a very good sign
00:33:10
Speaker
that this client is going to benefit from additional B vitamins, not just from a supplement, but foods. Egg yolks, obviously meat is a good source, but liver is such a good source because it's the best source of vitamin B too, which it's hard to find in other foods. But the other thing that I also saw is there's two vitamin B6 markers, and one of those was on the high end of the range, which
00:33:34
Speaker
these when high indicate a potential for deficiency. So this is another corroboration of the need for supplemental B vitamins. And actually I didn't mention, but on the organic acids test, the vitamin B6 marker was a little bit on the lower end of the range. So when you, you see, when you get, you can't use one marker
00:33:56
Speaker
Necessarily to make a decision about something sometimes you can but there's so many things going on in the body and these test results if you take them an hour later that could be slightly different quite different not for all the different markets but certain markets are very ephemeral.
00:34:14
Speaker
This is why this is, again, the value of really investing in yourself and doing multiple tests at the same time, because we can, again, take these different areas, different pieces and create a bigger map.
00:34:28
Speaker
and then we can corroborate decisions that we're making based on a much more complete picture, which includes assessment of the person's lifestyle, the metabolic function assessment I do, knowing what the person needs, their stress levels, all that good stuff. Then again, there was that dopamine marker, like I mentioned, that was on the low end of the range. That is again why I would recommend something like a dopamine precursor amino acid. In this case, the
00:34:55
Speaker
quinolinate marker was within range, but definitely it wasn't, I would say not optimal, but because of the organic acids test, it was at a decent spot. I would say this is probably not a cause for concern because again, the client had not started the supplement protocol yet, and a lot of the supplement protocol is designed to help with this kind of stuff with inflammation, oxidative stress, and so on.
00:35:25
Speaker
and also the dietary changes that exclude the omega-6s over time that will also add that benefit of reducing the potential for inflammation in the body. And finally, there's another marker on the Dutch test called 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine, which just rolls right off the tongue, 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine. You can see I've practiced that, right?
00:35:51
Speaker
So that's an oxidative stress slash DNA damage market. Now for this client, it's the top one here. We were at the high end of the range 4.5 and the top end of the range, the range cutoff is 5.2. So I saw this, I immediately said this is way, way higher than we want it to be. Not over the range, but way, way higher than we want it to be.
00:36:17
Speaker
And the reason I immediately knew is because just two or three days earlier I had looked at my wife's
00:36:27
Speaker
Dutch test result from the first time I ran this test on my wife like three times and we've done the cycle mapping where you can map your progesterone and estrogens as they go up and down in the cycle. But I looked at her test a few days prior and I remember well that her value for this marker of DNA damage slash oxidative stress was 1.1. So my client in her 60s, her value was four times higher. Now, do you think
00:36:54
Speaker
I'm going to let my clients walk around with that high of a value in their sixties just because they're not twenty seven which is when we did this test on my wife for the first time. No, hell no, not on my watch.
00:37:09
Speaker
These are not features of increased age. These are not features of aging. These are things that we can spot, we can identify, and we can address. So my client, remember again, she hadn't started the supplement protocol for the most part. So a lot of the supplements, as she layers these in, I am 100% certain that
00:37:36
Speaker
months down the line, if we rerun this test, this value will be a lot lower. And the reason I am also not happy with a 4.5 is because I saw another client that was about the same age, her value was 3.5 and she certainly was not
00:37:54
Speaker
as healthy as my client is, right? So I know that that value being 4.5 is something that we can work, not necessary to get the value of the marker down, which is what a lot of doctors out there, a lot of practitioners, they look at the high blood sugar or high hemoglobin A1C or high cholesterol, which is preposterous, right? And they're like, let's get the marker down. So they will use a metformin or
00:38:24
Speaker
HMG-CoA statin, MJG-CoA inhibitor, just to get the piece of paper to show a lower value. And they pat themselves on the back, I did my job. That is laughable, laughable, okay?
00:38:40
Speaker
You don't need to go to school for eight years to understand that there's a much better way to create health in a person and maintain health. The problem is, again, we are going to people that they were educated by basically companies that sell symptom masks and chemicals for a profit. That is going to be a big problem because there's a massive gap in incentives.
00:39:05
Speaker
There's there's a whole mix up their incentive is their incentive for you to be optimally healthy if you were optimally healthy you will need to go to the doctor so something to think about there. But anyway the point there is when we're not trying to lower the marker on paper we're trying to.
00:39:21
Speaker
create dietary nutritional lifestyle changes and then through that function in the body improves and because function improves less inflammation less oxidative stress less DNA damage less degeneration so on then this marker will just be lower because there's less of these deleterious processes going on in the body so we're not chasing the marker we're trying to understand
00:39:52
Speaker
what causes these processes, which is a lot of things. That's why you have to have a multi-pronged approach and then do those things and allow the body to just function better. And then these markers that are indicating problems are going to indicate less of that problem in the future, right? And just as a curiosity, the bottom most value here of 2.8,
00:40:15
Speaker
That is my test when I ran this Dutch test on myself in 2019, early 2019. And unbeknownst to me at the time, I had a bunch of parasites, Giardia blastocystis hominis and a lot of candida and stuff. So my value was 2.8 at the time, but the range used to be, the high end of the range used to be 8.8. So they actually revised down the range from
00:40:44
Speaker
8.8 down to 5.2. So it's good to see that because what happens with a lot of lab ranges is because people are getting sicker and sicker, they're just extending the lab ranges. So then you might fall into the extended lab range thinking everything is dandy, but the ranges are general for most of these, especially blood work, it's from the population at large.
00:41:10
Speaker
And who goes to the doctor? Usually people with health problems. So being within the range nowadays is no measure of health. There is optimal ranges within the larger ranges. So we really have to think with a more nuanced understanding, you know, a lot of, especially a lot of men, they have this thing where they go to the doctor, the doctor runs these kindergarten preposterous markers like collect the lipids.
00:41:35
Speaker
cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C, stuff like that. Everything is in the range. And the guy goes out of the office thinking, I'm totally healthy. And at the end of the day, and then when we do more in-depth stuff like what I do, the lab work is lighting up like a Christmas tree. So it's kind of a little bit of a travesty, a massive disservice to the clients.
00:42:01
Speaker
If I were to do, let's say tomorrow, blood work on myself, if I go and I can do any blood work I want on myself, I'm going to be interested in things like homocysteine, fasting insulin, prolactin, parathyroid hormone, obviously the sex hormones, the sex steroids, sure.
00:42:20
Speaker
cortisol, DHEA, T3, stuff like that. So a lot of these markers doctors don't run. You have to really beg or go out and get your own sort of direct-to-consumer lab test. But those are the markers where there's a lot of value in catching things early and optimizing things before it becomes a problem. So this is kind of a little bit of, again, a more advanced
00:42:47
Speaker
case here where the person is in good health, and then the lab work corroborated that. But in spite of all of that, we found a lot of really valuable things to work on. And there's also the great thing about the lab work is that it gives us tools or data with which to persuade people to make healthier choices, like getting the Omega-6s fully out of the diet as much as possible, taking more supplements to ameliorate inflammation.
00:43:16
Speaker
oxidative stress damage to support detoxification, right? So I hope you found that useful and I hope it kind of gives you a picture that when you work with me, I'm not just giving you some dietary guidelines and some supplements and maybe some stress reduction stuff and maybe some detox support and maybe some gut health. I am looking at you like a
00:43:41
Speaker
supercar, like a McLaren, like a Ferrari. And you know, you are my sort of this incredible project that I have to help you get one to 5% better, but it could be 10%. Depending on your level of health, your age, if you have any other health issues existing, we could go 20%. Sometimes people go from 20% to 80% and then beyond.
00:44:08
Speaker
So depending on where you are, I'll meet you there. And if we have to work on the basics, we work on the basics. But if you think you're at a more advanced stage, try me. Trust me, you're going to get a lot of value. And if you're in a position where you can invest in your health, if you can invest a thousand, a couple of thousand bucks on the slab work, I guarantee you,
00:44:30
Speaker
absolutely guarantee you that we will find a lot of good stuff that you'll be glad in 10, 20, 30 years down the line that we caught early and you have a plan. And when I give you this plan, you know what to do for life, how to, let's say, keep inflammation low or how to support your detoxification system. So you're investing
00:44:53
Speaker
not just to feel better for a few weeks, you know, you're investing in your health long term. And at the end of the day, that is the best investment bar none. No exceptions. Right. So hope you found this interesting and useful and hope to talk to you soon on a intro call.