Interview with Dr. Lee from Gene Solve on health optimization

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife. com. Thanks for stopping by. Welcome to the podcast. In this episode, I am going to be interviewing Dr. Richard Lee from GeneSolve. GeneSolve is a company that Kelly Starrett actually turned me on to when he was on the show. Sounded interesting. So I went and checked them out and then I got real interested and contacted them to get Dr.

Lee on the show and kind of talk about not just what GeneSolve does. But just genetics and how they affect our health and our ability to perform in general. So Dr. Lee received his MD from Michigan State University in 1988 following bachelor and graduate studies at Stanford. He was [00:04:00] the first resident recipient of the Star Physician Award for Excellence in Patient Care from San Jose Medical Center.

And he won an award in teaching excellence from Stanford Family Medicine in 2001. Through his entire 25 year medical history, he’s always taken a special interest in body chemistry. And as you’ll see, he knows his stuff. And he’s a pretty cool dude. He was fun to interview. So I hope you like the podcast and let’s get to it.

Okay, Dr. Lee, thanks a lot for coming on the podcast. I’m excited to have you because this is the work that you’re doing is very interesting. And this is an area that I don’t know that much about. So I look forward to learning something myself. I can teach you something and have fun at the same time.

Yeah, I think so. All so your mission at GeneSolve isn’t just to help people improve their health but more to help them achieve the absolute best levels of health and performance possible, right? To optimize the human body. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, that, that’s the word we use a lot. And I think if there’s one word to describe what we do, that would be it optimizing.

If we use it. An automotive [00:05:00] metaphor. It’s like performance tuning, which actually I used to do before medicine. And the whole idea is to get the most out of every human being that you possibly can without harming and without increasing the wear and tear. And and have him last a whole lot longer because of it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. That whole world is something just in general. It’s very interesting to me because you have obviously there are a lot of There are a lot of people that are looking to achieve that, and therefore, with people willing to spend money and spend time, you have a lot of bullshit out there.

Yeah. That all kinds of snake oil supplements and weird routines and weird diets and blah, blah, blah. But there actually is a legitimate science to improving the body improving the performance of the body. And you’ll see that a lot obviously, like with I’ll, I’m. I email or social media with quite a few professional athletes, and it’s always interesting to hear what kind of things they’re doing because they need to, as you’re saying, squeeze out.

If they’re looking to just improve some aspect of their performance by 3%, that can mean quite a bit when their livelihood is [00:06:00] on the line, 

Dr. Lee: yeah, absolutely. And the, but you, when you mentioned these athletes are looking at for one thing or another and this is, there’s a problem.

The science is very complex because it isn’t just one thing or another. No physiologic system works in a vacuum or in isolation. So we try and simplify the solution, but we’re still using very complex science to do it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah I’m going to be, you’ve probably read the book, the sports gene 

Dr. Lee: not cover to cover, but yeah.

Mike Matthews: Oh, so you’re familiar with the, I’m to be having the author on the Paul on the next podcast. And just that, you start delving into the genetics and you start, there’s just, it gets so complex as you’re saying and there are so many different variables to to account for. So how do you go about doing that?

How do you go about, Yeah. Pinpointing, what you can do to improve people’s health, improve the performance and how you do it. 

Dr. Lee: It’s interesting because the answer, the first answer may be an unexpected one. We get a really good history. 

I 

Dr. Lee: mean, people are focused on all this quantified self and data and labs and [00:07:00] measurements.

And yes, we do that, but I’m a third generation physician in my family, there’s seven doctors before me. And my grandfather was renowned for being an excellent diagnostician back in the days when you didn’t have the tools. And he told me in my youth, you can get 90 percent of what’s wrong with someone by getting a really good history, knowing to ask the right questions.

We start with that. It, in many ways, it doesn’t matter what your lab is now if we don’t know what you were before. We want to know what happened with you in the past. We want to know what you’re feeling now. And that way we get a better idea of what systems are wrong. We use that his, that history very carefully in a very elegant expert system.

It’s basically applying artificial intelligence. to a complex set of answers to come up with a list of up to 38 different conditions that could be going wrong with you. If you went to your doctor, they say you’re normal, your labs are normal, there’s nothing really that far out of whack, go away, you’re just getting old.

Wow. Starting with that history, we get a real jump start on what could be going wrong. We back it up with [00:08:00] very specific labs. We’re not shotgunning everything. We only use labs for items that we have, that are actionable, that we can change. And for systems that we need to monitor. And in almost every case, the labs absolutely confirm everything we find in the historical diagnosis.

On top of that, we throw in genomics. We don’t do the entire genome, and we don’t even do huge genotyping, because what we’re interested in, again, are the genomics that we can do something about. 

Right. 

Dr. Lee: And your genes, they’re like the blueprint of your house, but they don’t tell you how well the house is built or who’s repairing it.

It’s not your genes, it’s what you do with them, and we figured out what to do with that as well. 

Mike Matthews: That’s really fascinating. What kind of results do you see? What type of changes do people in their, in performance, or health biomarkers, or even overall well being, or? 

Dr. Lee: That’s probably one of the most satisfying things, and our marketing people when they talk to patients, and they get a taste of what I had 20 years of getting a taste of, which, people saying, I never thought I could feel that much [00:09:00] better or I haven’t felt this good in 20 years or I just can’t believe I sleep better.

I think better. My, my mind is sharper. My mood is better. I don’t yell at my wife. I don’t yell at my kids. I wake up in the morning with energy. I’m, I don’t hurt so much. And when I do something physical I’m getting away with going much better, much longer, much faster with less pain and feeling better the next day, whereas before I might be crushed.

So whether it’s and 

Mike Matthews: what I think is so cool about that is, and this is actually funny enough, this is an idea for a book that I want to write. It’s been, the idea is out there, it’s been done different in different ways whenever, but that is what you’re describing where, while it sounds it’s.

It’s definitely extraordinary. It’s not, that’s not the average person. That’s not how they live. They don’t live saying, I have, I wake up every wake up every day with, a bunch of energy. I’m pain free. I always feel great. I’m mentally clear, but that’s how I would say, that’s how things are actually supposed to be.

If you can really give your body what it needs and you [00:10:00] can eat the things you need to eat. You can supplement the way you need to supplement, you can exercise the way you need to exercise. And of course there are other lifestyle factors that could come into play, but I think that’s awesome because I think that is, that’s what people should be striving for.

Not just, oh, yeah, that would be, as if that’s like science fiction stuff that maybe in a hundred years we’ll ever be able to do. 

Dr. Lee: It’s fun because it’s here now. And you mentioned all the things that people are supposed to do, eat, exercise, notice a lot of people don’t talk about sleeping, so many other things and the issue there is. Again going back to the history is what kind of damage have you done? If you’re eating, doing anything right now, that’s fine. But, in your car, did you rip out the undercarriage and not know it?

Is the, you may be fueling it right and driving it right, but are the tires worn? Is it, is a drive, is a clutch slipping? Those things in a physical metaphor are what we find from the history in the labs that go well beyond what you can get from just looking at the surface.

Mike Matthews: That’s interesting. And could you give me an example? Just, I’m just curious. What is, what’s an example of something that you would find [00:11:00] in someone’s history that they’ve done that has caused damage that needs to be repaired, and then how do you actually go about doing that? I’m just curious.

Dr. Lee: Okay. Great question. I don’t know anyone who lives a stress free life or who’s leaves a trauma free life. And those things accumulate little traumas, big traumas. It could be a car crash. It could be a divorce. It could be working under a boss who’s a workplace bully, any and all those things.

The first thing is stress. We’ve learned to historically quantify it. From that, that builds a diagnosis. And then we look at the markers of that. Number one, in most cases, is the stress hormone cortisol. We measure it not only once, but four times a day because it has a different pattern. Cortisol does so many it can do some good things for energy, but it does so many bad things.

It raises blood sugar, it beats down serotonin, which leads to depression. It steals from your sex hormones. You won’t make them if your body’s creating cortisol, and it all goes to waste. It comes [00:12:00] from your cholesterol. So the stress hormone and stress response has a huge cascade effect on your entire neurologic system and on your entire endocrine system.

And if you don’t, if you don’t measure it, you don’t know how to fix it. If you don’t fix it, you’ll never get what you want. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. It’s funny because it’s actually something I wanted to ask after the podcast. My wife has run into problems with that because our son just doesn’t sleep.

She takes care of it at night. I’m up early and I’m working all day. She takes care of him and he wakes her up a lot at night and because she hasn’t been sleeping really correctly for a long time, like she actually just cortisol levels are too high. And then it was the exact same, the doctor that, that we’re seeing.

Is a pretty smart guy. And he also does a whole like history analysis thing, not the same as yours, but he does go about it that way, almost like a Hippocratic type of method. But so anyways I see firsthand what that can do. If cortisol levels get out of whack and you just have, chronic high cortisol levels just really messes with the body.

Dr. Lee: Yeah. And then we’ve also got, that’s the [00:13:00] whole. that the sex hormone and adrenal system. We’ve also got the thyroids to deal with. There are most people have at one time in life a dysfunction of thyroid. It only gets worse with age. And you need to treat that. You can’t treat in a vacuum.

You have to treat it with the adrenals thyroid and vitamin D. This is a vitamin. Both of these, if they’re off, they’ll affect the production and the regulation of your sex hormones. Oftentimes. If you correct those, you can bring someone out of a low testosterone or low estrogen state if you understand how they affect that.

These are just a few examples. We haven’t even got into neurotransmitters or what the gut does and doesn’t do. But you get the idea that they’re all out there and they all affect each other. So you have to understand those relationships to make both the diagnosis and to correct it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally makes sense. So let’s talk about eating foods, right? So everybody knows that eating a bunch of nutritious foods and exercising also, you can talk about that, you just got to lump it in here, are the foundations of good health, but you go a step further by really diving into each individual’s [00:14:00] chemistry and how to change those things to, to fit each person’s body’s needs.

How does that work exactly? Okay. 

Dr. Lee: Okay. On the diet side, we’ll start with first of all, we find out through the questionnaire, do they have any food sensitivities or inflammatory reactions of foods that they’re not paying attention to? We’ll make a diet correction for that. We also include in the genomics the best available tests to determine if there’s a specific diet type that their metabolism would work better with.

Can you give me an example of that? 

Mike Matthews: I’m sorry, what? Could you give me an example of that? Like how, like what are some of the variations that you see? 

Dr. Lee: Okay. We test routinely for four variations of diet. One is the person who’s lucky who could eat almost anything in terms of good quality. 

Yeah.

Dr. Lee: Others that need to be, and a majority of them need to be on a lower carb diet. Some do well on a Mediterranean diet which is similar to that, but has some differences. 

Right. 

Dr. Lee: And others, very few people do well on a low fat diet. 

You’ve got, some people are just born Eskimo.

It’s all fat in their diet and they do well on that. And some are born, Islanders [00:15:00] where it’s all fruits and grains, although that’s more of a rarity. 

Right. 

Dr. Lee: There are genomic markers for that. Also, there are genomic markers that will tell us if they have certain enzyme deficiencies for getting rid of toxins or building neurotransmitters, and we check for those, and we also check the products of those enzymes and adjust accordingly.

So that’s just the diet side of it. Obviously, we have people who are heading towards diabetes and don’t know it. We fix that. And I haven’t found a person yet. Who wasn’t in need of more vitamin D. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I mean I wrote an article recently about vitamin D. I’m always talking about vitamin D. 

Dr. Lee: we’re just not running around naked in the sun enough.

Mike Matthews: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s what it boils down to. If you, here I’m in Florida, so I think when I was writing the article, just doing the research, it would boil down to if I were exposed about, I think it was 75 or 80 percent of my body to the Florida sun in the summer for, I think it was about 20 to 25 minutes a day.

then I’d probably be fine. Who, I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not going to go [00:16:00] out tanning. I’d rather just supplement. And that’s, that’s the majority of people obviously are deficient because they don’t supplement and they don’t get in the sun enough. And that’s it. There’s no other way.

Dr. Lee: Yeah. And now we’re worried about also. Yeah. We’re worried about skin cancer and some, maybe the ultraviolet light consistency has changed in our exposure as well. So you are safer to go out and run around naked a thousand years ago than you are now. 

Mike Matthews: That’s an interesting point. Quickly, I wanted to say something about this on low carb.

So do you find, cause in my there’s looking at the literature and then just working with people. I find that if a person, because carbs are primarily energetic if you don’t move your body, if you’re not exercising much, especially if you’re not training your muscles, which, you know, obviously just through the storage of glycogen, that, that’s a big carb sink and that’s a big major use for the body.

Is the muscles doing things where I find that people that are weightlifting frequently and, probably doing cardio as well, just cut type people that I could generally work with and email with [00:17:00] tend to do better on a higher carbohydrate diet in, in and that’s quantified by, or how they’ll quote, I qualitative thing.

In terms of what they say is better. And I’ve had quite a few people come to me on a low carb diet where they found that there were they felt okay throughout the day, but their workouts suffered. And when they switched to a higher carbohydrate diet and once again, I’m also a big proponent of getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods.

Just because you can eat junk food and maintain a low percent of body fat doesn’t mean you should do it. There are other things to take into account. That they find when they switch from a low carb to a high carb diet that their strength dramatically improves that they find it much easier to build muscle.

They find, if they’re dieting and lose weight, they find that they’re, it provides more satiety. I’m just curious what your thoughts are. But these are, 

Dr. Lee: again, you’re dealing with active athletes. And in that case, it is true because they are burning the, that fuel and you can’t you can only burn fat at a certain rate and you need carbs as a substrate to burn fat anyway.

Protein is mainly there to [00:18:00] buffer the whole carb intake into your body. It’s mainly there to buffer the insulin response, right? And these people, the majority of them have really good insulin responses anyway. For a sedentary person, most of them are going to do better with a low carb diet, but for an athlete, you got to feed them.

If the muscle doesn’t get fuel, it isn’t going to work, it isn’t going to it isn’t going to grow. Yeah, in essence, yes, for that subset, which is probably most of the people that are listening to you, the main thing is to keep the quality of those carbs as good as possible. And be mindful of the fact that there may be foods that you don’t tolerate as well that you don’t know until you stop them or replace them.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, totally. That’s exactly what I’ve found. And what I’ve always recommended is if for sedentary people, how many carbs do you really need if you’re not exercising? 50, maybe 60 grams a day, and you could really just get it from vegetables probably. 

Dr. Lee: Ideally, you may need some, some brown starches, brown carbs basically, just avoid the white ones.

I don’t think gluten is the cause of every problem from communism to cancer, but a lot of people [00:19:00] have an issue with it that they’re unaware of while other people think they do when they don’t. Yeah. I 

Mike Matthews: wrote, I wrote about that recently where a lot of it where, you probably saw that study that just came out recently that basically what people were reacting to were the FODMAPs, the ferment, fermentable autogosaccharide, I forget the acronym, but it wasn’t the gluten per se.

It was a certain type of carbohydrate that, that. that body couldn’t deal with. And you’ll find that in wheat, but you’ll find that in a lot of other sources as well, like legumes and other things. And when they cut out all that stuff, then their irritable bowel symptoms went away. 

Dr. Lee: But then it’s a lot harder for them to find it, find food they can eat anywhere at any time.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I know. That’s I’ve emailed with some people that run into that, ran into that issue and I forwarded them along to the article and it was a pain for them to work out their meal plan, but they were having enough problem, having enough problems where it was like they had to do something and, by cutting out all those types of carbs it, Calm their digestion system down and it, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I’ve seen this that where if somebody is, they their gut is all inflamed [00:20:00] and they do find what their body’s reacting to and they get rid of a lot of that stuff and everything chills out and they’re able to slowly introduce things back in without any problems.

Dr. Lee: Yeah, I’ve seen it measuring antibody levels in true celiac disease. The farther from exposure, the more it drops. In fact, some people who’ve been, have celiac disease, been gluten free, maybe just out of luck all their life, would have low antibodies and be missed except when they eat a loaf of bread, they’re obviously screwed or pizza and beer.

And the other thing we have to think about, it’s not just what you eat, it’s what are you feeding? We’re just touching the tip of the whole. System, the metabiome, all those critters in your gut. And when you travel, they change. When you take antibiotics, they change. God knows for whatever reason, they change.

And we’re trying to learn, one, to identify those. We’re not there yet, but getting we’re watching that. And two, how do you correct for that? Those little critters can can increase uptake of certain foods. They can pass excess carbs that you normally wouldn’t absorb right through your gut.

And that may be the cause of some people’s [00:21:00] obesity. They can also upregulate neurotransmitters. Not just GABA, which reduces anxiety, but also serotonin. So we’re looking at that. We don’t have a way to fix it yet, but we’re aware and hoping to come up with something. So 

Mike Matthews: yeah. That’s very interesting. All right.

So that’s on the dietary side. What about exercise? What kind of things do you find? Okay. 

Dr. Lee: Again, on exercise, we do a genomic. assay to determine first of all, what would they benefit more as a rule from strength training or endurance training? Some people benefit more from both. Most of those tests, however, based on population data that looks at things like blood sugar response to exercise and lipid response to exercise.

Not as much as athletic. Performance with response to exercise. We’re still working on that one. But at the same time, your body will tend to do better what it does, especially if you get some guidance from a trainer. You’ll find out that you hurt yourself if you work too hard at the wrong thing.

What we also look at is what’s behind, what’s the whole endocrine system behind that is everything finely tuned [00:22:00] to preserve and maintain all nerve and muscle and bone and your brain at the same time. So that’s what we’re looking at. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s super interesting. What kind of things do you find?

You find that some people’s bodies, like they’re going to health wise, they’re just going to benefit more from weightlifting than cardio or vice versa. 

Dr. Lee: Yes, and generally, if someone’s really active they’ll discover that on their own. For our patients who are more sedentary, it helps us guide them into not wasting time on things.

That makes sense. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. My general recommendation is Of course you have the maintenance of lean mass. If we’re just looking at health as you age is extremely important. Of course, as that’s, all cause mortality is just correlated to the more muscle you lose, the more likely you are to die of something one day.

So maintaining muscle is important and then. Doing cardio as well for obviously cardiovascular health. And I’ve always just done a bit of both. Like I, whether I like to lift weights. I’ve been doing it for a long time, but I also enjoy cardio and it seems, I guess it comes back [00:23:00] to when you do enough stuff with your body, you do, you can know things you can.

get an idea of it just seems like my body tends to do this or feels better when I’m doing that. And then I’m sure, it could be then actually quantified and measured with something like what you’re doing. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah. And again most of the people who are probably listening to this are fairly athletic and know by now or a trainer or someone who’s observing them and their exercise would have a good idea at that point.

And that’s their skill and observation. We’re look they’re looking at the, measuring down the drag strip around the course. We’re actually looking under the hood. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I like that metaphor. So based on your experience, what are some of the most common things you see that kind of prevent people from reaching optimal levels, health and performance?

Dr. Lee: Okay we’ll start with, again going back to history, traumas, past and present. What were they subject to? One thing that’s really had, affects a lot of people is brain trauma. Even if they haven’t been, seriously hospitalized for it, concussions can in very subtle ways bruise the pituitary gland and all of [00:24:00] the, all the endocrine systems downstream from that will not be stimulated or told to work as hard as they should.

That history sets a pattern to watch out for. The stress level they’re on will tell me how much their cortisol is going to be affected by this. Is it going to be too high? Or do they have their adrenals already burned out? Or are they only burned out in the morning when you need them the most? Their sleep patterns will tell me about their adrenal issues as well.

And that’s all. And then what they eat. Gives us a hint what they crave, what makes them feel good or bad. That’s a start. And then we look at all the other neuroendocrine balances. We’re talking about the vitamins, like I said, vitamin D. We look at proteins that are pre hormones, DHEAS.

We look downstream into estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. We look at the proteins that hold those hormones hostage. Sex hormone binding globulin, often raised by stress. Or raised by someone who’s taking an external hormone and not doing it in the right way. Yeah and we’re finding all those can be off.

Mike Matthews: Interesting, and what [00:25:00] would you say you mentioned sleep a few times. Is that, do you find that a lot of people are not sleeping correctly or not sleeping enough? Or is that like a common thing you run into? 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, you talk to a lot of people and they’ll just say, Oh I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

That may happen sooner than you think. Or you’ll be a zombie before then. You don’t even have to die. You a couple of things. One is everyone is just trying to cram too much of what they need to do and things they don’t need to do into a day. There’s some benefits to the internet, but it’s really screwing with people’s sleep.

The biggest culprit there is that blue screen that’s staring back at you, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a 50 inch plasma or a 3 inch smartphone, that blue glow goes to your brain, it says it’s daylight, you don’t go to sleep until two hours after that, or even if you do knock out, your REM sleep won’t start until sometime later.

Yeah, because it messes with 

Mike Matthews: melatonin, right? 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, it messes. It goes more than that. There’s a, it goes for a little part of the brain called the super chiasmic nucleus which regulates melatonin, but even melatonin can’t overdrive that day night cycle. If you’ve got it to burn into your brain, 

it 

Dr. Lee: helps.

And then [00:26:00] again, your your growth hormone only works in those first REM cycles, right? Your brain recycles and make serotonin during sleep, your immune system. will only communicate more effectively when you’re sleeping. All those T cells get together like a bunch of special ops guys, and they, yeah, and they set who’s a target and who’s not to be damaged.

And if they don’t get those communications, they don’t go after the right targets, and you get sick more often, and they damage the wrong ones, you get more inflammatory disease. 

Mike Matthews: Wow. 

Dr. Lee: All that happens when you sleep right. 

Mike Matthews: And for sleeping right, is that just the standard seven to nine hours?

Is there any, anything else, any other like mistakes, interesting things that, that, get in the way of good sleep that 

Dr. Lee: Jeez I don’t know if I’ve had seven hours in the last 20 years, but anyway it really is it’s not just a quantity of sleep, it’s the quality of sleep, 

The things, their history will tell us we don’t treat medical problems.

So we’re not throwing Ambien or Lunesta, these people that they may come to us on that. But what we will do is we’ll find that we can bring down the high [00:27:00] evening cortisol that creates the monkey mind. We can turn on increased production of their brains GABA, so that it also shuts down the monkey mind and the anxiety and just puts them in a restful state.

Through their own neurotransmitters rather than something we’re doing to try and manipulate them. 

Mike Matthews: And so if a person is in a better state in terms of neurotransmitters, then you’re saying that the quality of the sleep is going to be higher and they won’t necessarily need as, as much as somebody else?

Dr. Lee: Correct. It’s a matter of quality and quantity. Now everyone’s different, but in our question, we ask questions to determine if someone actually has sleep apnea or non REM or non apnea sleep disorder. By, and we’re getting, you have older women athletes. Once they’re starting, their ovaries are starting to go into retirement we tell them they’re all heading south of Florida.

What happened? Yeah, 

they’re 

Dr. Lee: looking at those condo brochures. The estrogen start to drop and it’s very important for sleep. A common problem that’s never addressed in, in pre and perimenopausal, pardon me, in peri and postmenopausal women with insomnia is it’s due to low Functioning estrogen. And because we’re [00:28:00] all outliving our gonads, unfortunately women live much longer than theirs and we without theirs and we do.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s I didn’t know that actually. I didn’t know that there’s a correlation there with estrogen. And you had mentioned cravings now just cause I’m curious about that because it’s something that is on my list of things to research. I get asked about it. What can you tell us about how cravings, various types of foods, does it mean anything?

I’ve heard so many things. I don’t even know what to think. You know what I mean? Yeah, it 

Dr. Lee: does. In fact yesterday I did a long Skype video interview on that. And it craving starts at many different levels. First of all our bodies have not evolved that much past the Neanderthal or cave person stage.

We are still bred and predisposed to craving salt and fat and to some degree sugar, right? Salt and fat being the most Most rare and the most most desired and most needed when you’re trolling the earth trying to hunt and gather what you need to eat. 

Right. 

Dr. Lee: But now it’s in abundance.

It’s everywhere, particularly in the junk foods. And then they’ve added in the [00:29:00] sweeteners, mainly high fructose corn sweetener and other carbs that speak to that reptilian brain in us and make us eat more and more of that crap that we don’t need to. 

We’re staying up later and our food, we’re usually up past time that a good restaurant is over, open, and we don’t like to cook, so we, we go for something that’s quick and that’s going to be something that’s going to be stable on the shelf, or stable in the can for a longer period of time, and more processed, and has more of these little things that meant, that are intended to help our brains eat more of them.

One we haven’t evolved as much as we think we have to. The food has evolved much faster and it’s become much more poor and quality nutrition. And they’re being sold and. And actually put together, if you will, or manufactured in a way that will crave things more and more based on those preferences from 10, 000 years ago.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that makes sense from a business standpoint when you, if you have no scruples, you need people addicted to your stuff and you need them buying it, as much as possible. Figure it out. 

Dr. Lee: We got that. Then, you’ve got the issue of [00:30:00] people will have cravings to try and feed something, smokers by, want more dopamine in their brain and nicotine turns that on. There are also foods that do that. A lot of people when they crave carbohydrates, it will briefly upregulate serotonin in the brain. I said briefly, serotonin is a chemical that provides calm, order, and hope to the brain.

The problem is when they keep spiking, taking those carbs or sweets to spike the serotonin, cortisol starts to rise. The blood sugar goes on a roller coaster, and after a while the cortisol actually poisons serotonin through another neurotransmitter called glutamate. Not too far from monosodium glutamate, but this is inside the brain.

So They’re trying to feed their serotonin by little bits of sugar. They’re trying to feed dopamine by again, fats or certain sugars. And they’ll crave things their body needs. One example that, that surprised me in 1991, I was a physician for the National Geographic Everest Expedition, and our chief scientist has always been a vegetarian, yet at, in, in the [00:31:00] dining tent, he was just scarfing down smoked salmon that was there, and wasn’t even aware of it.

He was just picking at it and talking, and we brought that to his attention, and very smart guy, and he realized what he was craving was omega 3 fatty acids. You’re not gonna get that from lentils and rice, which is the main shrimp affair there. And he needed that to preserve his blood brain barrier so he wouldn’t get cerebral edema at altitude.

Mike Matthews: Right. 

Dr. Lee: We do crave things. The problem is the foods that we should crave are being hijacked by the other cravings. The cravings for sweets and crunchy, salty fatty things. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, and that’s interesting because my experience I eat I eat very well. I, eat probably I’d say three or four servings of vegetables day and I mix them up and I don’t eat I eat a little bit of sugar here and there maybe it’s some chocolate or something like that A high protein diet and I’ve been doing this for a long time.

I don’t eat any like I eat mainly organically foods, which is a whole nother subject. I actually need to write an article on it. But and my primary reason for that is because, the new study just came out, I just saw it just the other day. It was organic produce and I think it was whole grains [00:32:00] and the produce and whole grains had a bit more of the organic, had a bit more nutrients and a bit less heavy metals and other toxins.

And I don’t eat any fast food, so I have a pretty clean diet. And I don’t have, I never crave, like I’ll go out once a week if I’m going to go to a restaurant, I’ll probably eat a dessert and it’s going to be sugary and it’s going to be good and that’s it. Hopefully it’s chocolate. It’s I am pretty into chocolate, but you know what I’ll do is I’ll beat like if I’m doing one meal a week where I’m just going to eat whatever.

And then I’ll, if I do something chocolatey, six weeks in a row, then I’m going to change it up. But so my, my, if I were to say I have any sort of craving, which I don’t even if I’d really call it a craving, but I look forward to healthy, nutritious foods. Like I, when I think about that is appetizing to me.

When I think about, right now, if I’m getting a little bit hungry, I think about eating a candy bar. It doesn’t even, I wouldn’t want, I would much rather go home and make my dinner with potatoes and vegetables and chicken. That is good to me. So is that I guess that’s more how it’s supposed to be 

Dr. Lee: supposed to be you may be lucky that your [00:33:00] sleep is pretty good, that you manage your stress fairly well.

And again even if you eat well, the stress goes up. What happens is. Cortisol rises and it, it can actually make it can increase what we call the glycemic roller coaster, the blood sugar going up and down and up and down to greater swings. 

Right. 

Dr. Lee: And that’s where people who even, you know, even the Dalai Lama given enough stress in his life could end up going for a Twinkie now and then.

Highly unlikely. But anyway, yeah, you’re lucky in that respect. The problem is, there isn’t there’s no meal that you can pull out of a machine or pull out of your backpack, your glove box that’s gonna be that good for you that quick. And that’s the tough part of, and most people don’t have time to even eat real meals.

How many people eat breakfast? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. It’s I deal with this a lot because, just in, in working with people, emailing people and the, what seems to work best is people, they get into the habit of just preparing larger batches of food once or twice a week. And so then they always have stuff, they bring it to the office and then instead of going for chips, they have some other sort of [00:34:00] snack that they’ve made.

A lot of people they start getting creative with it. They start having fun, they’ll make like homemade protein bars or, a lot of yeah. It’s whatever you thought all together, you thought in the oven or even stuff like, like snack foods where instead of eating whatever you could go, you could have some Greek yogurt and some fruit and some nuts or things that you can come to I think there was a guy, I forget, he wrote a book called the man who ate everything or anything, everything. I think it was. And basically he made a list of like his top 30 foods that he hated and like disgusting shit. So who eats this stuff? And he went, it was like he planned out his entire year where he had to eat everything.

I think it was eight times or whatever. And by the end of it. He found that the, he actually came to enjoy it was like a, it wasn’t all, but it was a lot of the foods that were, he hated before. And just by eating it over and over, he just started to like it. I’ve found that people that go from a very.

Diet full of processed foods and the type of stuff you’re talking about where that’s just what they’re used to eating. The transition to a healthier diet can be jarring to their [00:35:00] palates in the beginning. But then if they just stick to it, they start to the body. I don’t know. There’s like their taste buds just change.

And then all of a sudden they think all this food tastes great and they don’t really, maybe they have some junk food here and there, but it’s not anything like how it used to be where they would crave it and they hated vegetables and whatever, 

Dr. Lee: No, they do. It does get better.

And basically, it upregulates their tip. Like you said, their taste buds, they don’t need as much sugar to taste sweet. They don’t need any sugar. They don’t need to salt the hell out of everything. And they’ll recognize the subtleties of what’s in there. On that side of it, it’s true, without going too long into it, you mentioned organic.

The big problem there is organophosphate pesticides. If you look at any area in the nation where agriculture is, Very intense and where winds and tend to accumulate the dust from agriculture, you’ll find the higher degrees of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and whatnot.

That’s tying 

Mike Matthews: into what glyphosate and stuff like that. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Organophosphates. And, there’s a real problem with those. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. You, one other thing you had mentioned was hormone imbalances is [00:36:00] obviously a very hot subject these days. Testosterone supplement, testosterone clinics are like the latest, greatest thing and everyone is on TRT and I, I know people that are in their twenties, early twenties that find, they just want to be on like a, a.

friend of mine. He recently, he never told you and talk to me about it because he probably knew what I would tell him. He recently randomly just came up with the idea that he just wants to get on T because he’s not building muscle fast enough or whatever. So he goes to the doctor, he gets tested.

His his T was at I think it was like seven to 800 NGDL. That’s fine. Exactly. Exactly. Totally fine. I think he’s 25 ish or something like that. 26 maybe. And but it was just some shady clinics, shady doctor. And there was some like, Oh, but is one of his, maybe it was his sex hormone by one of there was somewhat little hormone.

There’s a little bit too high. And the doctor was like, Oh yeah, sure. Here you go. So now he’s on. Testosterone. And so with that being just like a big, button these days, what are some of the things that you what are some of [00:37:00] the, I don’t know if I’d say mistakes, but some of the things that are causing that in, that maybe people could do that could naturally help balance their hormones.

Dr. Lee: Okay. Yeah, first of all, yeah, everyone still fix it on testosterone. Again, going back to mechanic days. It’s, it’s never just that. And, if your car’s running lousy, if your engine’s out of tune, if you’re using crappy fuel and you’re driving like an idiot, it doesn’t make sense to throw a bigger turbocharger on it on its own.

That’s what the T thing is all about. Everyone’s looking for the quick fix the one thing they can just do and make all the difference. But again, it isn’t just testosterone. If the testosterone is truly low, It is a symptom or a marker for a whole neuroendocrine system that’s out of whack.

Right. 

Dr. Lee: And typically, for most people, it’s because their stress is high, they’re stealing from their sex hormones to make cortisol as a stress hormone. 

Cholesterol is the starting point. It’s the mother of all hormones. It goes downstream to DHEA. You could have a low DHEA, because it’s all going to cortisol.

Or your DHA could be high because your nuts aren’t [00:38:00] turning it into testosterone. 

And 

Dr. Lee: the question is to ask why? It could simply be that, that your low in vitamin D, that, that acts like FSH. It acts like a stimulant to your gonads to make all the sex hormones, whether you’re male or female.

Ditto with thyroid. If that’s off, it isn’t going to rise. So if you correct all the nuanced things around that, lower the cortisol, it needs to be lowered. Replace the DHEA or find out why it’s being stolen from, or if it’s adequate, find out what is not telling your gonads to make the hormones, correct all those things, and your body will make the difference.

We’ve done subtle corrections in thyroid, vitamin D, and DHEA only in a cyclist, his testosterone went from 540 to 910. Wow. Yeah, no testosterone and nothing way out of He’s 

Mike Matthews: happy. That’s, I’m sure that’s a big change in terms of how he feels and how he 

Dr. Lee: performs. So the thing is to ask before you start just throwing on testosterone, maybe step back and say why is it off?

Yeah. 

Dr. Lee: Okay. And then is it truly off? I have a hard time believing anyone with a testosterone in the 700s. [00:39:00] Their sex hormone binding globulin would have to be through the roof to bring it down. 

Yeah. 

Dr. Lee: At the same time you could go into your doctor and have a testosterone that’s 500, and by the way the insurance companies will treat will usually pay for testosterone if it’s lower than 300.

The endocrinologist would like at least 400, but you could have a testosterone, I’ve had patients with testosterones in 540, but because that protein, sex hormone binding globulin, was so high, It brought their free testosterone down to about four and that the normal range is nine to thirty These are all in nanograms per deciliter.

So if you’d never measure sex hormone binding globulin, you won’t get the accurate measure of the testosterone and We can lower sex hormone binding globulin not by drugs, but by a couple supplements 

Mike Matthews: Interesting 

Dr. Lee: like what? Probably the one with it. The strength of association isn’t huge. The one that seems to have evidence is the extract of stinging 

nettle, 

Dr. Lee: which also tends to work for food sensitivities.

Also some authors say, I’m still [00:40:00] looking for real good proof, but we found it anecdotally is by taking a supplement called phosphatidylserine, 

Mike Matthews: which is the 

Dr. Lee: phos, yeah, phosphatidylserine does lower evening cortisol. And by doing that, it may indirectly take away the theft. of cortisol and push it back down towards testosterone.

So we know it does that. We definitely know it improves memory. There’s very strong evidence of that in, in randomized clinical trials. Those are the two things we do. But we also try and change people’s sleep and behavior patterns. 

Mike Matthews: So 

Dr. Lee: they aren’t stealing from their hormones so much in the first place.

Mike Matthews: That makes sense. 

Dr. Lee: That, that’s how we deal with sexual hormone binding globulin. And, a lot of people We’ve had refugees from some of these these clinics where all they’re getting is growth hormone and testosterone in injections. Yep. And that, you’re getting hormone spikes all the time.

And we find their thyroids are out of whack, their adrenals are actually trashed. And they’re only getting half the benefit they would with a testosterone that’s 150 percent over the upper limit of normal. Yeah more isn’t always better. There, there’s a degree of awesomeness and when [00:41:00] you go beyond that in testosterone level, you start getting, you’re feeling worse again and really end up being stupid and sick.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s your family. I know. In the bodybuilding community, of course. ’cause there’s all kinds of drug abuse that goes on. That’s a known thing that when you really start, when you really start blasting your tea, your immune system goes to shit. Your body. You just don’t feel, you don’t feel very good.

But then, they’re on so many other drugs in some cases too. It’s it’s a mess. 

Dr. Lee: But that’s their addiction, and yeah, 

Mike Matthews: it’s a psychological thing. I, I. Talk to guys that they don’t care. They talk about it and they’re all different type of drugs are on. And one for one, they just talk about that.

They wish they never started because now they life off of drugs is it doesn’t, how they feel when they’re on the drugs, they feel invincible and then now they can’t enjoy life without the drugs. And that sucks. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah. How many bodybuilders do you know, aside from Jack LaLanne, that ever made it to 80?

Yeah. . All you hear 

Mike Matthews: about are guys that their hearts explode or their livers fail or their kidneys fail. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah. And [00:42:00] as a, you might write an article about a business model for a, an addiction clinic for bodybuilders as opposed to drug or alcohol addiction or what have you, or eating disorder, 

Mike Matthews: yeah. Yeah. There’s a business I don’t want to get into. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah. All right. More questions. What can I answer for you? 

Mike Matthews: Actually, we’re running on just about 40, 50 minutes or here I, whenever I go too long, people go, Oh, you gotta keep it shorter. You gotta keep it shorter. So I think this is a good point to just wrap up.

If somebody wants to get a full rundown of their health from your company, from gene solve, like how does that work? What’s the process? 

Dr. Lee: Okay they sign up, and they get an initial evaluation, and 

Mike Matthews: Is it in person, like they have to come to you, or? 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, they have to see a physic, they have to see a healthcare professional, one of our doctors.

Okay. Currently, we have them in California and Texas. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. 

Dr. Lee: And we have people coming from as far away as New York. We haven’t had anyone come from Europe yet. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I want to come. This 

Dr. Lee: sounds awesome. Sure yeah, the best way is, to come in because we are making diagnoses. Real diagnoses.

You can’t do that without a health professional. And they have to look at you. Some [00:43:00] states we can Skype that, others we can’t. And you’ve got to get an eye on the person anyway. Get a much better sense of what’s going on with them. We hope to expand to the point where we’re in as many states as people want to have us.

We’re early on in that. But so they come to see us they actually fill out this questionnaire that feeds into the expert system. We get labs, we get the genomics, then we sit down with them and we do a brief exam. Most of these people are pretty darn healthy. And then we we tell them what’s wrong with them and then we come up with a tailored plan as to what to fix.

Mike Matthews: That’s great. And who is this for? I, it sounds like it’s for not just people with problems, but people that, they could be healthy, they can be athletes, whatever, and they just want to get more out of their bodies. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah, it’s, like I said, it, we don’t treat disease. We’re actually preventing it by doing this, but it’s anyone who values it.

They have to understand what we’re doing, they have to be committed to making what lifestyle changes they can, they have to be compliant with what supplement programs we give them, and if they’re on any pharmaceuticals, what we’re doing for them. If some, they have to have a mental commitment to it, and if [00:44:00] they do, they’re going to see results.

So it’s anyone who can make it through the door, we’re not going to cure all the other stuff. We generally do not treat people with active cancer we’re that limits what we can do. 

Okay. 

Dr. Lee: I, we did take an 11 year old and we were helping him out in very subtle things. And our oldest is 75.

It’s really a matter of do you want more and can we provide that for you in a lasting and quality way. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s great. And with the type of changes that you were talking about just in the beginning of the podcast, it goes much beyond being able to, squat an extra 50 pounds or something like that.

Dr. Lee: Oh, hell yeah. It’s to live an extra 50 years and have fun every day. In as little pain, in as much communication and excitement and engagement as possible. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Who doesn’t want that? You can’t, that there’s the simple, there’s the one line pitch for it. That’s great. Okay, cool. Thanks a lot for all the information Dr.

Lee. This was awesome. I learned a lot. I think the listeners are gonna like it a lot. And gene solve.com GENE solve.com. 

Dr. Lee: It’s G E N E [00:45:00] dash S O L V E, gene solve. com. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, or just Google GeneSolve and you’re going to find it. I think it’s, great what you’re doing. I think that there needs, this is the, definitely the, where I think the, almost just medical.

profession needs to go where you’re integrating. It’s not just, Oh, here are drugs. Oh, as you’re saying, Oh, here’s some blood work. I don’t know. Things look fine. Or, Oh, your tech, your T’s a little bit low here. Go. Here’s a prescription. Have fun kind of thing. 

Dr. Lee: Yeah we want to fix it all at the same time in the right proportions.

When you do, it makes a difference. If we could get this to the whole public, we’d say billions, if not trillions in healthcare costs we don’t need to spend. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally. All right. Thanks again. And this was super interesting. 

Dr. Lee: My pleasure. Anytime. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe.

I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also, head over to my website at www. [00:46:00] muscleforlife. com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day, actually, I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.