Transcription
Hello everyone. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to a conceptual class. We're going to get conceptual on you, and it's a pretty big topic. We called it functional genomics, right? So, I'm waiting. People are kind of streaming in still. Let's give people a minute.
Well, we're waiting for everyone else to arrive, I will tell you why I'm wearing a t-shirt. Because you're thinking, "Well, usually when Dr. Keller gives talks, he's wearing either a suit with a very nice tie, or at least he's wearing a shirt that has buttons." But this is a very special time because the Warriors, this is a Golden State Warriors t-shirt, and I think actually this one is signed on the back. We're in the Western Conference Semifinals and Conference Finals coming up very soon, and so we are very excited about this because we are lifetime Warriors fans. When I was like eight or nine years old, my dad started taking me to Warriors games in the 1970s. They were actually a really good team. And then there was like a thirty-year period where they just sucked. They were just not a good basketball team. But anyways, faithful. I started bringing my son to games when he was eight or nine, just 'cause that's what we do in my family. I'm not even really a sports man. I don't really even get into any other sports, but the Warriors team games. And uh, it's kind of funny, not a sport guy at all. But anyways, go to Warriors games like my dad did. And my son and I got into it. My son played basketball when he was younger, and and now they're like the best team in the history of the planet. So we're very excited. We've been there through the hard times, and we could appreciate the good times now. And I'm not going to say they're the best basketball team ever assembled, but I feel like they're the best basketball team ever assembled in the history of the world. So, pretty excited about that.
Okay, so enough about me. We're going to start. And this is so hard. I don't even know where to start, but I'm gonna just show you guys like some big-picture stuff. And these are the, a lot of the slides that I use in my doctoral training program to try to, you know, get conceptual ideas across to the doctors that we train as well. And, well, this is obviously more patient-oriented. So let me start with the most important thing. Hang out here. It is.
Alright, so this is a book that was written by my current teacher. His name is Richard Lord. The book is called "Laboratory Evaluations for Integrative and Functional Medicine." It is a very dense book. It is sort of the scientific work in the area of functional medicine. The only book of its kind. And Richard Lord, who wrote the book, is, you know, by definition, really the lead scientist in our field. If you have ever taken a test called the GI Effects test from Genova, that was Richard Lord's creation. If you've ever taken an organic acids test, we're going to talk about today, organic acids testing, companies have them under different names now. Sometimes it's called a Nutri-Eval, sometimes called an OAT panel. That was originally Richard Lord's creation. So he's really the founder of our field in terms of laboratory analytics in a lot of different ways. And a couple years ago, Richard, you know, found me struggling in my own little world. And, you know, I thought I was pretty good at lab analytics, but he's really up-leveled my understanding of this. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. Because there's like a surface level that we can all understand this at, and then there's like, really what's going on. And tonight is the, my attempt really, to explain really what's going on, you know, as an outgrowth of Richard having trained me these last couple years.
And so, just to give you an idea, you know, like I started my practice in 1992-93. I started seeing patients '95. I started working in my first official, you know, own clinical practice. So I've been doing this for a while. And in the last two years, my laboratory analytical skills have, I would say, about doubled. So, in other words, that first 20 to 25 years, I learned a certain amount. And then the last two years, I learned about that same amount. And I think part of that is because I had a good platform to understand what was going on. And the other part is that just Richard Lord's teachings just accelerated me. You know, when someone's hounding you once a week, day in and day out, year after year, I mean, you just learn a lot, right? So I'm very excited to be talking about this now because I really want to share this with people so you guys can see what's going on.
So I always think about this bigger picture, you know, health and human suffering thing in terms of systems. But what we're talking about now is sort of, it's like a, it's a very abstract and it can be hard to communicate. But it's a, there's a layer beyond these systems, which is our genetics. And that layer informs and creates pretty much everything that's happening. And we're not, it's not a fate situation. You're not fated to live out your genetics. But the genetics have a really strong influence on things. And the genetic code that you all have, if given the right triggers, will express in a variety of different diseases. The genetic code that you all have, if you remove those triggers, those genes will never express. And so the genes don't create what happens, but the genes interacting with the environment make you susceptible to certain things. And so when I use that term functional genomics, we're talking about, you know, how the genes are being expressed and how we can do a functional assessment for what's really going on.
And so, in order to get a little bit of background, I want to talk about two really good friends of mine. One is Dr. Ben Lynch. Who many of you may know. If you don't know about, like, Ben Lynch, don't go online right now. Give me a few minutes to finish my talk. But as soon as my talk is done, go look up Ben's stuff. Because Dr. Dr. Ben Lynch is an incredible human being. He has an incredible doctor. Hands down, one of the smartest people I've ever met. One of the most compassionate people I've ever met. And so we should all know everything that Ben is teaching. Okay. And he teaches, he teaches at a very high level about the genes and this sort of way of analyzing the genes, which is very sophisticated and very modern. And I won't go into any detail on it because it's a whole another subject matter. But I just want to say that I totally embrace Dr. Lynch's work. He's a very close friend of mine. And we're not talking about something that's better than what he's doing. We're talking about an adjunct to the work that, that Ben Lynch does. Gain. So that's, that's one thing to think about.
There's another doctor. I'm in this really privileged position where these people actually really, you know, people I know and respect and I talk to. And we go out for dinner and we go for drinks when we see each other, you know, we just, you know, this is like folks that are in my world. You know, the other one is Dr. Nathan Morris. So Nathan Morris is the Chief Medical Officer for Pure Encapsulations, one of the big supplement companies. And he also has just come out with this program called Pure Genomics. Which again, is another way of looking at these 23andMe type labs, like Ben does, but from an analytical perspective where you can start to see what genes that you have and what risk factors you have because of those genes, right? And so again, that's Pure Genomics, Nathan Morris, Ben Lynch, and all the work that Ben does on his side. These are really incredible people that are looking at their 23andMe data, you know, where you go and you actually map out your SNPs. It's very, they call them single nucleotide polymorphisms, right? Single nucleotide polymorphisms. And these are, they're like the big famous one that Ben really launched was MTHFR, which many of you probably heard of. But anyways, what these things mean is that you have a susceptibility to a certain problem. But what I want to talk about tonight is the functional testing, which I'm learning now from Richard Lord, which very much complements the work of Dr. Morris and Dr. Lynch, but is different in that it shows what genes are actually expressing at the level of physiology and function. Okay? So, in other words, you can look at the whole genome and you can look at all your SNPs. And that is with the work of these other doctors. I don't do that work and I don't teach that work because I don't understand it. You know, this is complicated and that is important. But within that work, also connected to that work, is are these genes expressing or not? How can we map out whether that's happening? And that's what I want to talk about tonight.
And this work goes back a long ways to a man named Roger Williams, who years ago wrote a really famous book called "Biochemical Individuality." And this is 1950s, I think. You can still buy it. "Biochemical Individuality." Here it is. Roger Williams. So you can still buy the book if you're really interested in the subject. It's a classic and should be read by all of us. And it just, you'll get a sense of, wow, this guy was so far ahead of his time, like 60 years ahead of his time, okay? Understanding that there were genetic variations which caused all kinds of mental health problems and actually developing treatments using B vitamins to reverse them, okay? Without any lab testing like we have in the modern era. So this goes back, is a long history to this work, okay? This is not a new idea. But what I really want to focus on now is how we can start to look at the lab testing that's often done in our industry, in the world of functional medicine, but from a functional genomic perspective. In other words, not just looking at these markers as nutrient deficiencies, but looking at them as expressions of genes that aren't working properly. That's the heart of what I want to talk about.
And why is this even important? But we can look at that. Let's look at, look at a, let's look at a lab for a second. So I want to point out the various markers that we're even measuring. And I want to do a series of these. So we're going to cover each of these topics in much more depth. Tonight is just about the introduction to this concept, really. So if you're, again, knew that there's many different names for this test. It could be a Nutri-Eval. I use one that's called an OAT panel. It's very similar. They're almost identical. So they look at amino acids and they measure the individual amino acids. I'll come back around and explain what all this means. They measure the homocysteine levels in the body. They measure toxic elements. These are, and, and, and the healthy minerals. So the toxic elements are things like aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, the stuff that's bad. The good stuff, mineral-wise, would be potassium, magnesium, calcium, zinc. That's all measured. And this is measured in the blood. They measure a variety of nutrients. CoQ10, vitamin E, and I mean, lots of things you may have heard of. They look at vitamin D. We've all heard of that. Oxidative stress. That's a really important one. We'll talk about later. There's a very extensive fatty acid profile that's within this test as well. This is an incredibly complex, complex area, just as one portion of the test. And more fatty acids, it goes on for pages, quite literally. Up. And then we get to organic acids, where we're looking at metabolism. That's how you break things down for energy. Fat metabolism, carb metabolism, making energy. B vitamin markers, which are really, really, really, triple important. Methylation markers, which goes right to the heart of this genetic issue we're talking about. And what could be more important than your brain? These neurotransmitter markers. And I'll talk about one genetically based condition tonight that's directly related to that marker there, which is incredibly, well, more common than I realized. That's just put that way. And then detoxification. And we want to talk about that tonight, a little bit in detail as well, because that's a really important area. Toxins and detoxification. And then there's a section on this test that looks at the various bacteria and yeast overgrowth issues that can happen in the gut. Okay? So it's a broad test. You can see there's many, many areas. Took me a minute or two just to get through the categories. But what I want to focus on is that you can analyze this test at different levels.
So, as a simple example, you can analyze this test and we just pick out a really simple example. So we can use this here. It, hang out. Let me look at the next one. I want to show you this one thing. I think it's on the next test here. Here we go. This one will do. Okay. So you can look at this test like, and let's look at that like at a superficial level. I'm gonna blow this up so you can see it's a little bigger. You can look at it and you can see, "Oh, well, they're measuring this amino acid called tyrosine." Many of you have probably heard of tyrosine. It's a supplement you can buy. And this test will tell you if your tyrosine levels are high, that means something, or if they're low, that means something different. Okay? So on its superficial level, obviously, if you have low tyrosine on the test, you would go out and you would buy a bottle of tyrosine and take it, and then you would feel better. And then that would be, you know, again, the most superficial understanding possible.
And then, if you want to look at this from a deeper perspective, you start to think, "Well, why would that person be low in tyrosine?" Okay? Why would that person be low in tyrosine in the first place? And I'm going to just make this up because though this is, I'm going to put a little mark here. So this, pretend that this patient has tyrosine that's right here that's low. Okay? So why would that be? Well, it could just be a dietary issue, that's sort of obvious, right? You're not eating enough protein, or not kind of the right kinds of protein, or you're not absorbing or assimilating protein. Or perhaps you're burning up and using your tyrosine at a great rate. So with an amino acid, as with any nutrient, you have to look at what's coming into the system and then what's being used and going out, right? So what's coming in is coming in from your diet or supplements. And then what's going out is, you know, how you're utilizing, how you're using the product, like what you're using it for. So what tyrosine, what's coming in could be related to what you're chewing and eating. It could be related to your ability to assimilate and digest in your gut. So a gut problem could cause low tyrosine. A poor diet could cause low tyrosine. The same time, you can look at what's going out of the system. So you might be just using a lot of tyrosine for some reason because you're stressed. It's an amino acid that's used to produce catecholamines, which are produced when we're stressed. So just being stressed out for a really long time could cause you to deplete your tyrosine because you're burning it up or using more of it. So with any nutrient, just think about what's coming in to the system, and then what is your system using? How is it burning? What's the rate at which you're burning through it?
Now, there's a famous genetic condition called PKU where children are born with the inability to convert phenylalanine into tyrosine. And so what you'll see in those children, and this is usually caught at birth, right? Because it's potentially life-threatening if you don't know about it, is that the phenylalanine levels will be extraordinarily high, and of course, the tyrosine levels will be really low. And I'll show you some diagrams on that in a minute. So this is a well-known genetic condition. Everyone who's been to, you know, any kind of medical type school, chiropractic school, you've been probably dental school, you learn about this pretty much everywhere because it's one of the more famous, you know, genetic conditions people are born with. And if you don't identify it young enough, then the, you know, the person could potentially die. It's life-threatening.
So what's interesting though, is that in adults who we test, we sometimes see high levels of phenylalanine along with low levels of tyrosine. Okay? So that's a functional genomic problem. Is that life-threatening? Absolutely not. Obviously, the person made it all the way through their childhood, they didn't even know this was going on. Is it life-ruining? Yeah, it can really ruin your life when you start to see what phenylalanine and tyrosine actually do. Okay? So that's a really great example of a genetic condition which is well known, which can be life-threatening when it's taken to the extreme. But when there's a very, very mild expression of that, it can show up on these labs and alert, you know, the practitioner to the fact that there's something really serious going on.
And let me show you here. And I want to also talk a little bit about why all this matters. And we just use this as a simple example. So here's how you make the brain chemicals, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Your body takes the food that you eat, is the diet, right? It pulls phenylalanine, the amino acid we just looked at, out of your diet. It's from proteins, an amino acid. It converts that phenylalanine into tyrosine. And then from the tyrosine, you make your thyroid hormones. Tyrosine has a huge impact on your skin. Melanin is the, you know, what gives the color to your skin. And then for our purposes tonight, that tyrosine has also turned into dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. So you can see this phenylalanine going to tyrosine thing is really important. Without that happening, your thyroid doesn't work, your skin would look really strange, and your brain would shut down. Not a great combination of problems to have, right?
So in the genetic condition PKU, phenylalanine doesn't convert to tyrosine. So phenylalanine ends up being very high, and tyrosine ends up being low. And as a consequence of that, you'll see on these labs, homovanillate and vanillylmandelate being really low. So it impacts your brain. So again, we're talking about a genetic condition which is, when it's taken to the extreme, can be life-threatening in a newborn baby. And an older adult, someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s, that has the same gene, but it's only expressed very slightly. They might end up with extremely low dopamine levels. And now that I understand that this is possible, of course, I'm seeing this everywhere in my labs with my patients. And this is a perfect example of a functional genomic problem. Okay? So it's functional in that it's not life-threatening. There's no pathology. There's no disease. It doesn't kill people, right? So it's a functional problem in terms of its, you know, affecting the function and physiology of the body. Functional medicine, right? It's not a pathology. It's not a disease. It's life-threatening. It's a functional problem where the functioning of the body, the basic functioning of your physiology or biochemistry is thrown off. And yet, it can be really crippling in terms of symptoms that it causes, right? And you can see all this on the lab.
Now, again, this isn't the best example, but imagine here, a high phenylalanine with a low tyrosine. Now, remember, I mentioned there's other reasons why that could happen. It could be that it's related to diet. It could be related to your gut. So you have to, you know, have a broader perspective. Not saying everybody with low tyrosine has got this problem, but it's something to be aware of. And when I've seen this now, I don't know, in the last, in the last month, I've seen this with three cases. So I'm like, "I better do a talk about this because this is kind of important."
Now, if we cut over here, I'm going to show you another marker here. So you can see how these things can tie together. Hang on a second. Sorry, I got a lot of labs here loaded in. Got a lot of stuff I want to talk about. Let's see. On this one. Hang on. So what you'll see on a patient with that pattern, and this is the other, it's like the other side, the other level of manifestation of this, is you'll see a really low homovanillate. And this is a marker for dopamine. So this marker would be really low in someone like this. Okay? So if you just see a low dopamine marker and you suffer from depression, or chronic fatigue, or some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or you're just physically tired all the time, or your body hurts all the time, all these different problems that could be related to dopamine. It may not be your diet. And it may not be your fault. And it may not be your digestion that's not working. It could be a functional genomic problem.
And why does that even matter? Well, because it changes the name of the game, right? It means that if you clean up your diet and eat healthier, it's not going to matter. And so a lot of people get frustrated because they're doing all these things with their diet and it's not working. It could be that you meditate every day and you calm yourself to some spiritually high plane, but it's not working in terms of helping your brain because you've got this biochemical problem that's genetically based, and you're not going to eat your way out of that or meditate your way out of that because your brain just doesn't push the phenylalanine over to tyrosine. And so patients with these problems, I find emotionally overwhelmed because they're trying so hard to do the right things and they're not getting the result that they should. And we run these labs and you see, "Wow, it's because there's a functional genomic problem." Your body's not functioning because you have a gene that's blocking this particular issue from working properly. Okay? And this is, in the last couple months, I've solved some really hard cases using this approach. And for me, it's really enlightening to be able to take all the things I've learned about lab work and then bring it up to this higher, higher level of understanding. You know, it's really quite profound.
So that's a simple example. Let me just kind of backtrack a little bit and show you guys a little bit more about what we're talking about here. So if we go to, like, the classical functional medicine model that I like to teach, where we're talking about a neuroendocrine system that's heavily dependent upon the GI system, and a GI system that's heavily dependent and related to the detox system, right? These interactions back and forth. And so, as a simple example, I'll show you here. As a super simple example, and this is what I always kind of, how I always look at this, just again, to keep it simple. When we're under stress, there's a death in the family, you go through a divorce, you have your second or third child, that's for women, that doesn't count for the man. This woman who's usually gets worn out from that. You're working too much, you know, there's a neuroendocrine response to that. Your hormones and your brain respond to that. And then that weakens your immune response, your GI tract, you can get inflamed and damaged. And then that can spill over and then up causing toxicity reactions and problems with your liver, etc. Okay? So there's, you know, predictable ways in which people break down. But what we're talking about is outside of all of this. This is not something that you did to yourself. This is something that's just happening because you were born this way. Okay? So, in other words, you could go through, like, the death of a parent and have your stress hormones go crazy and develop a digestive problem. And then, you know, five years later, you cure it. You figure out, you know, how to meditate, you figure out how to deal with the emotional disruption of the grief and loss, you eat really healthy, and then you get better. Okay? Those are people that don't have this functional genomic problem. Okay? Those people are getting better because they're reversing this process and they're getting better. What I'm talking about tonight is people who are doing the right things and are not responding. All right? They're doing the right things and they're not responding because there's some subtle or hidden genetic disorder that's driving it. And this is crazy-making, I'm telling you, because these patients always show up and they're on a GAPS diet and SCD diet, and they're on a low-histamine, low-FODMAP, you know, you know, Paleo diet, all at the same time. And they're eating like asparagus and turkey and that's all, whatever they're doing, you know, they're just trying all these different things because there's an underlying problem that they haven't figured out yet.
Okay, now let's go back. And this is not an easy thing to figure out either, right? This is why you have to be involved in doing a fair amount of lab testing. So let's take a step back for a moment and look at the categories again of the test. So you can start to see where the different areas might even be and how they could impact you in terms of symptoms. So area number one, the first part of this test looks at the essential amino acids. You've heard of most of these, if not maybe most of them, but a lot of these, probably lysine, methionine, tryptophan is pretty famous, glycine is pretty famous. These are the amino acids. These are units of life, really. You take amino acids and you assemble them into proteins, which is your entire body, you know, minus the fat and water and a few other things, right? This is a really kind of core for brain function, liver function, cardiovascular function. This is just how you're literally building yourself and building your tissues. So each one of these individual amino acids, if it's low or high, can mean something. And if we start to see patterns that are unusual, that don't fit with a patient's medical history, then we can start to suspect there could be a genetic problem with amino acids and how they're being produced and used in the body. Okay? And that was the example I gave, phenylalanine converting over to tyrosine, kind of a classic example. There's more amino acids in here. Again, each one of these is related to different functions. For example, our genes really strongly correlated with cardiovascular function. We've got a whole bunch of these related to the brain, not only tyrosine and phenylalanine, but tryptophan and taurine. You've got detox-related amino acids, methionine and taurine again shows up there. Those are ones that really help with getting rid of toxins. And again, you know, whole variety of different uses for these amino acids. So then you imagine if there's a genetic defect with an amino acid. Let me just, let's just look at the different things that could go wrong, right? If you had a genetic defect with tryptophan, you could have a sleep disorder, you could be depressed. You know, those would be probably the two I would think of. Oh, you could get anxious. Anxiety, for sure, could be related to that. If you had a genetic disorder related to phenylalanine, like we just mentioned, that could trigger a thyroid problem, dopamine problems. It could be your brain, could be a thyroid, could be a variety of different things. Histidine, some of you may have heard of histamine-related problems. If histidine is off, you could have a histamine-related problem. Again, cardiovascular function. If you have, you know, you're suffering from problems with peripheral blood flow or anything to do with the cardiovascular system, it could be related to arginine or taurine. The brain is huge in this area. All kinds of things with the brain, ADHD, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, really just about any mental health crisis kind of issue can be related to neurotransmitter production. And these amino acids here are essential for making all the brain chemicals. And you should, you know, be a little bit familiar with the names: phenylalanine, tyrosine, tryptophan, glutamic acid, and taurine. Okay? So that's your brain right there. As I mentioned earlier, the sulfur-containing amino acids have to do with glutathione and detoxification. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. All right. That's very, very important because toxins can build up and damage all these different tissues that we're talking about. What could be more important? Again, we're going to talk about this more. Ammonia detoxification, your body's ability to get rid of really harmful chemicals from your tissues. And then we have another little section here on brain. Okay? And that's just amino acids. All right. Look again. Homocysteine is related to the inflammatory response in the body. Puts people at high risk for things like cardiovascular disease. And then I'm sure heard of most of these minerals: potassium, magnesium, calcium, zinc, and copper, and selenium. There are books written about each one of these, right? In terms of nutritional science and what they do. Magnesium is essential for energy production. It's essential for muscle contraction. Calcium, you wouldn't be alive for 30 seconds without adequate calcium stores. Calcium is really, really important for everything from your nervous system to your muscle contraction. Calcium is super key. Zinc is a little bit, maybe not as popular as calcium for it as a supplement, but very important for immune response and skin and all kinds of other things. Copper is a little bit, not so often you think of copper really as a supplement, but some people are low in copper and it can have a really big impact on your brain. And selenium is sort of the ultimate protector. It's a mineral, but it's an antioxidant, and it's very famous for protecting your body's tissues. Okay? So that's another area. And you can have a gene which doesn't allow you to use magnesium properly, or a genetic problem which creates an issue with copper that's going to disrupt your brain function, right? So this can all be functional genomic related stuff.
Now, aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. These are bad, right? These are heavy metals that are toxic. So there are issues, and I'm going to talk about in a couple minutes that have to do with clearing toxins that can lead to problems with these kind of metals. So, for example, and this came up a couple years ago, the same for mercury toxicity. You could have a person, you could have two people that each decide that they're going to have a can of tuna fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a month. Now, I've actually had patients who have done this, not on purpose, but, you know, there are people who go out for sushi every day for a few months. And so every day they're having a whole bunch of tuna. Or they're, this is a little bit old, but maybe 15-20 years ago, I used to work with a lot of weight lifters and bodybuilders. And some of those people would just eat like, literally, just have a box of tuna, you know, canned tuna in their car and just take, eat tuna left and right, like multiple cans of tuna every day. I'm just kind of disgusting, but whatever you want to do to try to build big muscles. So you can have someone, let's say that's eating a can of tuna every day. Two people eating a can of tuna every day. And if your detoxification pathways are all working great, you could measure your mercury levels, even though you're eating a can of tuna every day that's chock full of mercury, and you're just clearing that tuna out, I'm gonna clean the tuna out, clearing that mercury out every day. You're getting exposed to the mercury, your body's binding it up and getting rid of it because your detox pathways are working great. And then another person standing right next to that person, eating the same can of tuna, right? The same amount of tuna every day, who has poor detoxification pathways, could have a mercury level just through the roof. So when it comes to heavy metals and chemicals, our ability to clear the toxin is as important as how much you're being exposed to. It's probably more important because you can have a lot of toxin exposure, and if your clearance rate, your clearance ability is good, you're just going to kick this stuff out. Okay? So that's a very, very strong genetic component to whether people become toxic with heavy metals. In fact, this is like a really, really big problem, you know, for people who can't clear heavy metals because we're all getting exposed to these now. And if you're not good at getting rid of them, you're just going to get sick. Similarly with antioxidants, the same kind of thing. If you don't have any oxidant protection, you know, bad things are going to happen.
And then, let's take a look at this one last section that I want to show. I want to focus on detox. These fatty acids. So I've learned a lot about the fatty acids lately. And you can have, oh, here this is the case right here. So you can have, and you guys have probably heard of these omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids. And you can have high levels of three or low levels of three, high levels of six or low levels of six. But look at this particular lab. You'll see that there's low levels of omega-3. And you're thinking, "Okay, well, that's why I take my fish oil or krill oil." Or everybody knows about omega-3. It's probably one of the most common supplements that people buy because if you're low in omega-3s, getting your omega-3s up can really help. You can do it with plant-based sources, you can know how to do it with fish. But, you know, you need to do something that's going to get your omega-3s up. So that is not too surprising. But what about, what would you expect if the omega-3s were low? Would you expect the sixes to be low also? No. But look, for these markers in the omega-6 category are incredibly low. So this is a patient of mine from last month who had both omega-3 and omega-6 levels low. Like, honestly, with all the studying I've done in this area in 25 years, I didn't even know that that was possible. And if you go and you trap your average naturopathic, natural medicine, integrative medicine, functional medicine doctor, you know, in an elevator and give them a cocktail and then ask him, "Could you have low omega-3 and omega-6s at the same time?" I bet most everyone would say, "Yeah, I don't think so. I've never heard that. I don't think that can even happen." Hey, it happens. And how could this happen? Well, there's an enzyme, a single enzyme at one point in these various pathways by which we process fat, which is responsible for both threes and sixes. And that is a gene. So this patient has a genetic defect in that specific enzyme. And so her threes and sixes are both low. So what did we do? We put her on omega-3 and omega-6 fats at the same time, which again, never would have occurred to me in the history of my life to do that, in very high dosages, because this has been going on for a long time. And as a caveat, this woman's diet is perfect. She eats really well. She does not, this was not coming because of her food. This wasn't happening because of her food. So the first thing you think about would be food, right? But this was not a food-related issue. And we put her on high dosages of omega-3 and omega-6s, and then BOOM, within like two weeks, her brain just reregulated itself. It's one of the most dramatic cases I've ever had. And, you know, it's basically, for me, because I had never done this woman before, I'd never given someone high dosages of threes and sixes, and never occurred to me to even try that. And I certainly didn't expect to get a really amazing response. But it was just like turning a light switch on. It just completely solved her depression and anxiety problems, like in two weeks. Okay? So that is a genetic disorder that this young woman has processing omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. In a million years, I never would have understood that without this test. And honestly, without Dr. Lord, I wouldn't have understood that there is an enzyme defect that's genetic that can cause this. You know, in deference to me, you know, it took him a few minutes to figure it out. It probably took him 30 to 40 seconds, maybe almost a minute to figure this one out. You know, he didn't just look at it and know off the top of his head. He had to think. Because I remember him thinking, I remember him saying, "Hmm, haven't seen that before." You got to imagine an older gentleman in his mid-70s with a southern accent. He's from Georgia. He's like, "Never imagined. Oh, I know what that is. It's this enzyme, and it does." He's like, "Ding." So even for him, it took a minute or so to figure that one out. And she will probably need to take omega-3 and omega-6 supplements the rest of her life. Does she care? Absolutely not. It's better than taking, you know, antidepressants and mood-altering medication every day. Relatively minor solute, you know, thing in terms of solutions. There are. And we're not going to get into tonight also measurements for omega-9s, for monounsaturated fats, for saturated fat, and these other things like the trans fats, etc.
Okay, so let's take a look now. This is the big picture idea. Oh, and Connie is asking, this particular test in my clinic, we charge $750 for it. Okay? And you have to get your blood drawn, you have to do a urine sample. And I'll tell you what's happening right now in my life is that if you're a patient of mine and you order this test, I every Monday take that test and I review it with Dr. Richard Lord. And we'll spend typically an hour, sometimes two hours, on every single case. And then I don't charge for my time working with Richard Lord because that's me learning how to do this. And then I will then present it to you. And of course, I charge for my time. I do consultation with you. But you basically get, you know, free access to Richard Lord's interpretation. And then I explain what he thinks is going on. And I'm getting better at it too. I would give myself a little bit of credit. You know, he's, he's been training me for about two years now. And I'm starting to get it down, you know, really. Um, and I had a good background for this obviously before too.
So now, I also make one little comment here. And this is, I don't want to disparage anything or anybody. But the, these tests, and the Nutri-Eval does this as well, the OAT panel does this, the labs generate an automatic report, kind of computer-generated thing to show you various categories like cardiovascular system, fatigue markers, metabolic syndrome. But, and this is a can, remember in the beginning of the talk, I said there's a superficial level to this, where you can just look at a marker and say, "Oh, that marker means you need B5, you know, and take B5," or "that marker means you need tyrosine, take tyrosine." But then what? And so I'm not against these automatic generated reports. But what we're trying to talk about tonight is that you can look so much deeper into this and see these layers that are much deeper down and figure out things like, you know, an enzyme deficiency, which is an enzyme problem, a genetic enzyme disorder, which is causing omega-3 and 6 problems. So that we want to tell all of us, up-level all our skills and our understanding of how to interpret these labs. So, for example, the automated, automated computer-generated thing caught the essential fatty acid insufficiency, right? But we're trying to bring that to another level of understanding of why that's happening, what specific pathway is wrong, and how can we fix that directly? You know, what's really going to make it work?
And by the way, oh, and is asking, yes, so I work with patients all over the world over the phone. So whether you live in California or Bahrain, you know, if you sign up as a new patient, you can get access to these tests. And I will interpret it with Richard Lord and go over it with you. Let me cut over now because I want to talk about is one of the themes, which is detoxification. So, big picture, let me just review. Right? We talked about there's this amazing test. I'm just kind of waking up to it, live, late to the game. But in defense, you know, there's, there's only a handful of doctors that can really interpret these at the level that I'm learning. And, and most of them are my friends. I can tell you who they are. Todd Lapine, he can do this. No, I mean, Todd's been doing this for decades. Kara Fitzgerald, did you guys know Kara? She can do this. Dr. Sankar. I mean, there's a handful of doctors in the United States who are, you know, at the level of interpretation that I'm getting up to be. And so I'm not saying I'm the only one that can do this at all, but it's really cool for me to be able to get my skill levels, you know, advanced like this, you know.
Okay, so, um, I want to talk about, we talked about the idea of functional genomics, right? Where there can be these problems that are genetically based that are then triggered. And we talked about tyrosine and phenylalanine and the how that can be involved. And then we talked about the simple way of analyzing the test and then this deeper way of analyzing the test, right? And so I want to now step back from that bigger picture. And I want to, in a series of talks, and this is just the first one, I want to go through, by the way, all no questions at the end, okay? So hang around. Please, if you're asking questions, I'll handle all the questions. I want to now just introduce this one subject of detox. And then we'll pick up on detox in the next talk in much more detail, okay?
So why is detox so important? Because it's one of the most common, in some ways, I would almost see it as the most common manifestation of what we're talking about. So, in other words, we have, I don't know, last time I counted, was there 350, 400 million people in the United States? You know, hundreds of millions of people in the United States who are all getting exposed to chemicals and metals. And because 82,000 chemicals in the environment, you know, we're launching new chemicals every day, whether it's an air freshener, or it's a pesticide, or it's mercury, or whatever it is, you know, we're basically all supersaturated with chemicals and toxins. And so then why are some people definitely ill and sick because of this? And why are some people just walking around thinking that the deathly ill and sick people are a little crazy? You know, all of that centers around two things: one is your exposure rate, and the other is your clearance rate. So if you're genetically disposed to not clear toxins very well, and you have a high exposure rate, you're in serious trouble.
At an amazing version of this last month, new patient, we're talking on the phone, I'm trying to figure out, "Why are you so toxic? Why is your liver so messed up? Why was your brain so messed up?" And towards the end of the hour, you know, finally he says, "Well, could it be related to when I was growing up? My family owned a mortuary, and all the kids worked and embalmed bodies." And so he did that from the, I don't know, maybe like high school all the way through college years. When he was at home working in the family business, he was around formaldehyde and embalming bodies. And it turned out that that huge chemical exposure, year after year after year, damaged his brain and his liver. All right? And that there were other family members that were experiencing the same kind of depression and anxiety type symptoms. In a different, you know, family with genes there may have been in the, I'm sure if you looked at every family that runs a mortuary, you're gonna see some like his family where that exposure to daily formaldehyde makes everybody sick, depressed, anxious, and, you know, creates a lot of mental health problems. And there might be other families, you know, at the next town over who have great liver clearance ability, who are relatively unaffected by it. Okay? So anyways, the next talk I want to do, we're going to get into toxicants and detoxification because this is the most obvious way that we see the expression of these genetic variabilities. Another classic example would be autism. Why do some children have a vaccine or a series of vaccines? But if some children get exposed to certain chemicals or metals, why do some children when they eat gluten or dairy, all of a sudden end up with, you know, neurological problems? And there are other kids right down the street who are being exposed to the exact same foods and toxicants and have absolutely no problem. Okay? A lot of that is going to rely upon, again, your exposure level and rate. But even more importantly, your ability to clear toxins. Okay? So that would be our next talk.
And let me get to questions before we wrap up here and we go back to the question frame. Here, whether it be available as a recording. Yep, we'll record this and we will email out. If you're on the list that you signed up, then we would email you out a link to the recording. And you're welcome to share these recordings with other people. How much does this test cost? I think I answered that. I charge $750 for it. You might have different pricing in different areas depending on what your doctor does. I live in Venice, California. Can I take the test and go over it with you? Absolutely. I work with people over the phone. So you, but you would have to sign up as a new patient first. What's the difference between the OAT panel and the comprehensive organics? The OAT panel includes the organic acids test. Includes the organics plus all those other things that I was talking about. Okay. How high was the dose of threes and sixes they gave? So yeah, the dosage, we tapered her up. And the dosage, you know, we took, you know, we took two weeks. We started her on double the normal dose that I give to the average patient. And then we increased it until we had the therapeutic effect. Right? And the answer, John, is yes. The higher dose overrides the enzyme deficiency. That's the key to this. So you have this enzyme deficiency, let's say this, let me just make up some numbers. Let's say that you have an enzyme deficiency with an amino acid, so your brain's not working right, or with a fatty acid, so your brain is not working right. And let's say that the enzyme is working at 50% capacity. If you just give the patient double the amount of tyrosine that the normal person takes in their diet, boom, the brain will work properly. Same thing with the fatty acids. If your enzyme is working at half, it's slow and sluggish and not working well, let's say it's working at half the rate. If you give the person twice as many omega-3s and 6s as the average person needs, the enzyme problem is overwhelmed, right? It's overcome. You're getting around that problem. So you can solve these issues. That's the exciting part. Every functional genomic problem has a potential solution in a specific nutrient to push that pathway along. Is an OAT profile blood test in Sydney, Australia? We have a lot of Australian patients and a lot of New Zealand-based patients. So absolutely. We work with people overseas all the time. If you're interested, contact the office. And if we even worked with people in Canada. That's a joke. Always make a Canadian joke because the Canadians are so nice that if you're from the United States, you're a little embarrassed about our entire culture because when you go to Canada, everybody there is just so nice. New Zealand actually was really similar experiences. People are so nice. Why, why can't we be like this in the United States of America? I don't know. A lot of problems here in our country.
Okay, I'm going to wrap it up for now. There will be another part of this, another chapter where we're going to jump into the toxicants and detoxification section. Today was really just about setting the stage. So tell all your friends and neighbors. I really want to kind of try to communicate as much as I can about this work. And we hope to join you the next time we do this. Will be sometime next month. Okay? We'll send out announcements. All right. Bye for now.