270: Influencing The Expression Of Our Genes
with Steve Ottersberg
I have invited the brilliant nutrigenomic consultant, Steve Ottersberg to the show today, and we are talking about how you can affect the expression of your genes. We’re getting into ‘all things' epigenetics today, from mitochondrial function to why toxins, poor diet, and toxic thoughts influence mitochondrial function and health.
Additional Information:
Next Live it to Lead it event in Newport Beach Nov. 14-17
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
Join me on this episode of CellTV. You have questions about cannabis, CBD oil? Yeah, well, this scientist is going to talk about why it may be the biohack of this century because of stress and how it affects your endocannabinoid system and how that can be an answer to your stress and, believe it or not, even an answer to help you burn fat as energy, change your mitochondrial health. By the way, are you defining yourself with a SNP, like the MTHFR gene? You better watch this episode. He brings some science to that. It may not be what you think. I’ll just say that.
Also, we’re going to shed light on mitochondrial health. This is why people can’t burn fat for energy. They can’t lose weight, don’t have energy period, brain fog, digestive issues, mitochondrial issues. He has some really cool biohacks. We talk about some really cool stuff around that. Join me on this episode of CellTV.
Ashley:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. Today we are going to be discussing epigenetics and mitochondrial function with nutrigenomic consultant, Steve Ottersberg. Just a bit about Steve—this is a great episode. He’s going to be such a great guest. With graduate training in drug design, Steve was immersed in a world of genetic code, enzyme kinetics, and toxicology. From biochemical pathways, cellular function, to physiology, the mitochondria is the key to health. Cancer cells that have depleted the mitochondria can lead to cancer progression, and Steve is here to discuss all of this with Dr. Pompa. It’s going to be just a mind-blowing episode, so I’m going to turn it over to you. Welcome, both of you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, thanks, Ash. Yeah, Steve, it’s funny. You said you could just introduce me as the chief egghead, and I thought that was pretty funny. I look at your pedigree here, I mean, my gosh, I mean, obviously, top biochemistry and studying of epigenetics, which is one of my favorite topics, and the mitochondria, one of my huge topics. I mean, when we look at people today, lack of energy, can’t lose weight, autism. I can go down and keep going down, cancer, a lot of different diseases, Parkinson’s, all which are being affected by this massive insult that we’re having today because of today’s stressors, honestly, of the mitochondria. You bring a whole new light to that.
Now, I have to tell you, you know how I found out about you? I was interviewing your wife, Nasha, and Dr. Nasha, she’s a naturopathic doctor. Matter of fact, Ashley, you can add her interview to this because I think we discussed you a little bit, Steve. Anyways, she was basically telling me what her husband was doing in the other room. I’m like what’s he doing? He’s what? Oh, yeah, he talks about epigenetics. I’m like I have to interview him. This is one of my favorite topics, so here we are with an interview that I think you are going to bring your egghead views to a topic that so many people need to hear more about, honestly, Steve, so thank you for being on CellTV.
Steve:
Of course, my pleasure, I’m absolutely honored.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely, I have to ask you this. I mean, I don’t know how you ended up with all the areas of study you did, so you might want to just tell a little bit about your story. Then you married a naturopathic doctor. I mean, you were developing drugs for Merck. Am I right about that? I mean, how did you enter our world, dude? Is it just marrying into it? What happened?
Steve:
How far do we need to go back? I mean, number one, I’m youngest of ten kids, and almost all of my family members are scientists of one flavor or another. My wife and I, we met in undergrad, in anatomy and physiology lab back when I was in a premed track. I ended up deciding going through undergrad, as most people do, that medicine was not for me, and part of it was I fell in love with organic chemistry. That’s how I ended up doing drug design.
Dr. Pompa:
It was a financial mistake but anyway.
Steve:
Probably.
Dr. Pompa:
A lesson in love.
Steve:
I also have this ultra-acute sense of smell, so I don’t know if clinical medicine is absolutely the right place for my acute sense of smell.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s funny. I have a very acute sense of smell too. It came out of my chemical sensitivity from when I was sick. I still can go who has their shoes off? What’s going on?
Steve:
In grad school, I did drug design because I just have a really innate talent in organic chemistry. It’s just something that makes sense to me. The three dimensional aspect of organic chemistry and a lot of—the chemical aspect…
Dr. Pompa:
I did too, actually. It was the geometry aspect that I just got whereas regular chemistry, ahh, the formulas, blah, blah, blah. Organic, I got that.
Steve:
Yeah, same here, I was an average student in general chemistry. When I got to organic chemistry, it’s like my brain for the first time in my life realized, oh, my God, this is where you’re supposed to be.
Dr. Pompa:
We have one thing in common, maybe the last thing, well, no, our love for mitochondria, our love epigenetics.
Steve:
Yeah, there’s plenty and our love for Dave Asprey too. I mean, that was where I first heard you.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great.
Steve:
Nasha and I met in undergrad, and we ended up going to grad school together. I chose the graduate program that I did because Nasha and I were struggling between I wanted to go to the Linus Pauling Institute in Oregon when she was looking at naturopathic school in Oregon, and somehow we ended up in Tempe, Arizona between Washington and Oregon.
Dr. Pompa:
Nice [00:05:55].
Steve:
Yeah, don’t ask me about that, totally opposite climate of what we were looking at, but we both ended up going to grad school together. In grad school, I ended up doing cancer drug design, which ended up landing me in the middle of Merck Pharmaceutical because Merck had been working on the same class of drugs that I was working on in grad school, and they were getting ready to launch this class of drugs as I left grad school. That took me into the pharmaceutical world for four years, which was weird because I was the only pharmaceutical rep with an honorary naturopathic degree. I had gotten an honorary naturopathic degree because for about six years for grad school and a couple years after grad school I had been teaching biochemistry board reviews to Nasha’s classmates. Because of that, they gave me an honorary MD, but they also taught me so much because naturopathic medical students have the best biochemistry questions ever across the board. They helped reaffirm my love affair with the mitochondria.
This is probably because, to me, the mitochondria like the liver—I refer to the liver and the mitochondria as the ghost of each other because the mitochondria is the Grand Central Station of all chemical reactions in the human body, and the liver is Grand Central Station to all physiological reactions in the human body.
Dr. Pompa:
Explain that a little bit better. I mean, I get—some people are watching this going what is the mitochondria? I swear. It’s where you make energy. It’s the powerhouse, if we go back simple biology. The liver is where you process all your toxins. Draw that inclusion in simple terms again.
Steve:
When you look at—so do you remember in medical school—do you remember the giant biochemical pathway that took up an entire wall?
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah.
Steve:
The central pathway to all other biochemical pathways is the mitochondria. It’s not just where energy is produced. I mean, I keep referring to it as Grand Central Station because it’s where all chemicals meet in terms of all biochemical pathways.
Dr. Pompa:
Which explains why we see so much mitochondrial dysfunction today at the heart of most conditions because of what you just said right there. Very few people are actually talking about that. I mean, all the way back to Otto Warburg where he said it’s a mitochondrial issue. This thing’s malfunctioning. I mean, it’s ancient glycolysis, and it’s causing this respiration issue and bad cells.
Steve:
For Otto Warburg, that was his natural conclusion because he is a cell biologist, and for the cell, the mitochondria—and when I say mitochondria, that’s plural. We look at our textbook drawing of a cell, and we have one mitochondria per cell. That’s not how it is. Cellular function is defined by the number of mitochondria that that cell can possess, and I say that arrogantly. I might irritate the DNA, the DNA biologist, but DNA is important. The nucleus is important, but remember that mitochondria has its own DNA.
Dr. Pompa:
I was just going to say that. Mitochondria has its own DNA. What you mean by that is meaning that heart, your eyes, they have far—the cells have far more mitochondria because they require so much more energy, right?
Steve:
Yeah, and what histological cell type has the most mitochondria?
Dr. Pompa:
I thought the eye. No, am I wrong? I guess I’m wrong.
Steve:
The eye is pretty dense, but look at the color of the liver.
Dr. Pompa:
The liver is brown.
Steve:
Yeah, I mean, a lot of that is from the cytochromes, from detoxification, but here’s the thing about the liver that most people don’t think about in—everybody thinks, oh, the liver is there for detoxification. The liver is also there as an organ of management of all of our cellular energy. Did you know that the liver has a greater capacity of controlling blood sugar than the pancreas does?
Dr. Pompa:
I knew that.
Steve:
Of course you did.
Dr. Pompa:
Most people don’t, right? The liver has so much to—look, toxic people, they can’t control glucose. Obviously, the cell itself is a big part of that, but the liver is a massive part of that as well. I mean, just [00:10:31] glucose, for goodness sakes.
Steve:
Yeah, absolutely. The mitochondria, to me, I started coming up with this conclusion of the importance of the mitochondria teaching naturopathic medical students about how the pathways tie together. I was teaching them to prepare for their NPLEX board reviews. They have to take their basic science boards at the end of their second year before they can get into clinic, and their board review questions were always very physiologically relevant. I couldn’t talk about glycolysis without talking about how glycolysis is related to glucogenic amino acids and ketogenic amino acids and fat metabolism, and that relationship between all of those pathways is the mitochondria.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, so how you use fat, how you utilize sugar, how you burn fat for energy or not, I mean, all these aspects—I mean, how much energy you have throughout your day, I mean, basically, all of that is governed by what you’re talking about here. Okay, so we have a lot of conditions that are being affected by the mitochondria, why people can’t lose weight, brain fog. I mean, I’m just bringing it to the average person watching this show going that’s me. We’re telling you, yeah, you have a mitochondrial issue to one degree or another. Obviously, the extremes are cancer and some other extremes. I mean, it starts with the brain fog, the lack of energy. You can’t lose weight, right? This is where mitochondrial issues start.
Okay, so what do you say the biggest effect is on these areas? What’s affecting the mitochondria to give those symptoms that most people watching this have? What’s the big one?
Steve:
Here’s where I start losing friends, sugar.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah, we just lost half of our viewers. Okay, come on back. We have solutions.
Steve:
Yeah, well, I mean, here’s the thing is, when I first started studying physiology, I was an Olympic hopeful triathlete. I was interested in learning physiology because I wanted to make it to the ’92 Olympics, and as a triathlete, I trained tirelessly. I mean, I would go to swim practice five days a week. I would do 50 to 70 mile rides 3 or 4 times a week, so my very existence was dependent on optimizing my physiology so that my mitochondria would give me more endurance. I learned early on that sugar is not necessarily the best fuel for endurance athletes. I started to struggle with that in undergrad because I had a very, very, very deep-seated sugar addiction.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, many endurance athletes do because they buy into carbohydrates are the fuel, carb, carb, carb, and they’re high carbers. They all end up with metabolic problems later, another story, but you’re right about that.
Steve:
Yeah, correct. Over time, I learned that fat was a better fuel as an endurance athlete than sugar was because it gave me sustained energy. I mean, you know the term bonk. Endurance athletes will talk about bonk.
Dr. Pompa:
You waste your stored sugar out, all your glycogen in your gut because your inability to burn fat for energy.
Steve:
Yeah, so when somebody says that they’re bonking, they say that they go hyperglycemic. What that is is it’s that transition between burning carbohydrate and burning fat. There’s always a little bit of a chunky situation when you can’t stop and rest. For the endurance athlete, when they start out burning sugar but then they try to transition into burning fat in midrace, often they’re going to struggle through that transition period between the burning of sugar and the burning of fat.
Dr. Pompa:
One of the things that people have to understand is the key to being fat adapted athletes—and I’ve done shows. I interviewed Zach Bitters, all these guys breaking these barriers. They’re all fat adapted, but the difference is it’s not that they don’t use sugar. When you go high intensity, you’re burning sugar. The problem is is most of the race you’re not. Then your body can hold on to that sugar when it needs to pass someone, or accelerate, or do a high burn, but most of the time, you’re burning your stored fat, your own body’s fat. Therefore, you’re using your sugar when you actually need it. These other athletes not using their fat and they’re just using up their stored sugar, so they have to do this the whole time they’re running.
Steve:
Exactly, well, I think the key is what you said is fat adapted. It’s that metabolic flexibility that is lacking, and let’s go back to sugar. I mean, the fact is that today—I mean, what does the average American consume in terms of pounds of sugar per year? Last time I researched, it’s like 185 pounds of sugar on average. I’m not in the average. I’m way below average, so there’s somebody else out there that’s eating 200 times that.
Dr. Pompa:
That doesn’t account for the processed carbohydrates. That doesn’t account for the white bread, the white rice. I mean, all the carbs, for that matter, it really ends up turning into sugar. They’re talking about just processed sugar there with that number.
Steve:
Yeah, exactly, the physiological consequence of eating a five day supply of sugar for every meal of the day is an inability to be fat adapted, which is a result of poor mitochondrial function. I mean, when you look at the physiological consequence of eating that much sugar, in that concentration, sugar is a—I call it a mitochondrial poison because the normal regulatory mechanism of those pathways shuts off the mitochondria when there is that much sugar present.
Dr. Pompa:
I mean, Steve, people would argue, okay, the mitochondria is, obviously, set up to use sugar, aka glucose. What you’re saying is it’s the volume that becomes the poison in the destruction to the mitochondria itself.
Steve:
Correct.
Dr. Pompa:
Without geeking out here, which I know you so want to do, why is that? Too much sugar, what is it doing to the mitochondria that it’s shutting it down?
Steve:
The natural consequence of having a high state of glucose is that, when your blood glucose is high, your body thinks it’s in a well-fed state, which is normal. Your body should feel that on occasion, but when you look at our 200 year history—think back 200 years ago. How often was the human body in the well-fed state that we experience today?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, periodically at best, right?
Steve:
Right, harvest time. In the fall, when the fruit was ripe, we would gorge ourselves on sugar. We would have periods of low calorie intake or high fat intake because the sugars all gone because the apples are all gone and our cider is gone. All we have left is tallow to get us through the dead of winter.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, you just described my feast-famine cycling, my diet variation principle. Our DNA is set up to have times of feast and famine. The feasts, when they’re done periodically, are actually healthy. They remind [00:18:34] starving and all these good things happen, but you take the famine away; now you got a problem.
Steve:
That’s precisely the problem is that we do not—we don’t any longer have cycles of feast and famine. We just have cycles of feast, and that’s why we are metabolically inflexible is because our mitochondria are continuously downregulated from a high sugar diet. Our mitochondria don’t get to flex their fat burning muscles, and without practice we downregulate the number of mitochondria that our cells have. Then we start to have issues like degenerative diseases, like cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS. All of the degenerative diseases that are growing today in our modern society could be prevented by simply instilling a fast with our famine. I mean, we have to have feast with our famine. We can have feast, but we have to fast after we feast.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, you need both. Matter of fact, my new book coming out, Beyond Fasting, it’s coming out the end of this month. I talk all about my feast-famine concept, right? When I looked at the literature on diets, they compared diets of low-fat diet continually, high fat. I mean, they did all the different diets. You know what worked the best (a diet that varied)? Feast-famine always worked better for weight loss. Therefore, I’ll conclude that because it forces the body to adapt in some genetic way and you can explain it better than I, something really good is happening to the mitochondria when we do feast and famine together versus one diet all the time, so to speak. Yeah, bring some light to that. Adaptation obviously is the key here.
Steve:
It is, and still, this is the thing with genetics. Our genetics is relatively static. We’re going to die with pretty much the same genetic blueprint that we’re born with. We have some events in life that will change our genes, but for the most part, you can think of your genetics as being static. Here is the thing about your genetics is you have the genes to encode for every possible epigenetic trigger that your body or your ancestors have been exposed to.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, so for example, Steve— just back up because you said something very big there. As humans, we have how many genes, 25,000, 26?
Steve:
Yeah, I mean, it’s huge, gazillions, like 27 billion.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m talking about as our actual genes that we get, right? You know what I’m saying? Epigenetically is where all of the big changes in who you are, Steve, right? In other words, who you are is an epigenetic issue more so than—explain the difference because there’s a big difference of genes and what happens epigenetically in question.
Steve:
Let’s just look at—if we look at one gene for one enzyme in the mitochondria, let’s just look at a single—let’s not even name it. Let’s just say that it’s gene X in the mitochondria that that gene contains the information to code for a protein that has something to do with mitochondrial function. You can encode that—your gene contains the information to encode that protein under five or six different conditions, so that protein can change based upon the epigenetic triggers that you are currently experiencing.
Let’s say that you are in medieval England, and you’re eating a diet that’s high in protein, low in vegetables. You might produce one epigenetic expression of that gene. Then you place yourself in New York City, 2017, and you’re drinking Starbucks. You’re going to have a different epigenetic trigger, and that gene is going to produce a different protein than your old ancestor did.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, this explains why you can have identical twins, and if they grow up in the same environment, I mean, they’re—you can’t even tell them apart, right? I mean, it’s like the way they speak, the way they do this. You pull them aside. Grow up in different environments. Now they’re liking different things. Their tastes are different. This is different, same hardware. Maybe it’s best to explain this to people as hard drives and software, right? They have the same hard drive. Yet, they plugged in different software because their environment was different, which changed their genes, and they come out to be so different.
Steve:
Yeah, I think the hard drive analogy is great because you can imagine that if you have—if your DNA is your hard drive, that’s not necessarily going to change, but it’s going to hold the information for the applications that you run, correct? Let’s just say that, if you had an identical twin that grew up in a different environment than you, your identical twin is going to be running application 1.0A, and because of your environment, you’re going to be running application 1.0B.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, therefore, now we have two very different people expressing very different lives with the same hard drive. Okay, so that explains then that epigenetics rules. I mean, there’s diseases that are pure genetic diseases, chromosomes misplace. What percentage is that, Steve?
Steve:
The genes that are—the diseases that are absolutely genetically based is a very small percentage.
Dr. Pompa:
Very small.
Steve:
Yes, most disease that we are experiencing in modern medicine today are lifestyle diseases. There are a small percentage of cancer patients that doesn’t matter what they do. They’re going to get cancer. The largest percentage of cancer patients today can completely redirect their prognosis with diet and lifestyle.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. Here’s the point, folks, that Steve and I are getting at. That environment, stressors, physical, chemical, emotional can turn on your set of genes and start expressing things for worse. Now, there is good news. We’re going to talk about things and how to turn them—turn the bad ones off and turn good ones on. That too has been an area of your study, right? That we can actually change our expression if a cancer gene, a thyroid, an autoimmune gene is triggered from a stressor, turned on, but we could actually change it.
You talk about a lot of these epigenetic changes happening in the mitochondria so talk about that. We talked about sugar. That can turn on genes in your mitochondria, and now you’re stuck just being able to use sugar. You go I have to eat all day long instead of utilizing your fat, right? That’s a gene that can be changed. Am I right?
Steve:
That is correct. I have a very specific example for that. The enzyme lactate dehydrogenase is very important in metabolic flexibility, and this is something that Nasha taught me. She has taught me some of the most amazing biochemistry tricks, and we teach each other back and forth. One of the things that she measures regularly in blood work that she does on her patients is lactate dehydrogenase. In a cancer population, when epigenetically the patient is leaning towards a cancering state, meaning that their cancer cells are starting to direct their physiology, this is when lactate dehydrogenase enzyme in the plasma starts to creep up. When Nasha sees somebody with an elevated blood sugar, elevated hemoglobin A1c, and an elevated lactate dehydrogenase, it starts to ring the bells of metabolic inflexibility, and it’s an epigenetic trigger that the cancer cells are starting to influence the relationship between the liver, muscle, and adipose tissue.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, I have to do a shameless plug. She’s speaking on Saturday at my event in Nashville. That’s the day that it’s open to the public, so folks, Ashley will put the link on how you can sign up for that and even get the—we’re doing a livestream because we literally sold out the event. Ashley can give you that, but yeah, she’s speaking. She’s going to be talking about that very testing and how she looks at that, brilliant.
Steve:
We all have the gene for lactate dehydrogenase, but we don’t always express it at levels that are causing problems. That’s the thing. Here’s the beautiful thing about what Nasha does. I mean, just by putting somebody on a low carbohydrate diet, in a short amount of time, we can start to see their lactate dehydrogenase epigenetically reverse back to a state in which is more healthy. That is a sign of metabolic flexibility.
Dr. Pompa:
To your point, clinically what we would see is someone who needs to eat all the time, hypoglycemic. They’re skinny fat. They’ll break their muscle down before they’ll burn their own darn fat, right? They crave carbohydrates, fail on every diet. I mean, I can keep going down a list describing somebody who’s stuck as a sugar burner with the inability to use its own fat as energy. There’s the word metabolically flexible, meaning if I eat sugar, I’m going to burn the sugar up. It’s dangerous. It’ll burn right up. If I’m not eating, my body burns its fat, so I don’t have cravings. You stay lean, and you have lasting energy. I mean, that’s the metabolic flexibility thing.
Okay, here’s the issue. That some people, even on a low-carbohydrate diet, speaking clinically now, they just don’t make that transition. We know that toxins play a big factor here. Let’s talk about toxins effect on the mitochondria and even—you like to talk about it even, mitochondrial epigenetics, right? It can keep that gene turned on so talk about that.
Steve:
Let’s pick on heavy metals first of all.
Dr. Pompa:
One of my favorite subjects.
Steve:
Yeah, I mean, this is—and you actually taught me something about how heavy metal toxicity can be carried generationally. To me, that was—I mean, it makes sense, absolutely, but it was shocking to hear. Oh, yeah, if a mother is exposed to mercury in utero, the baby is going to have mercury exposure as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Part of the other problem, Steve, is that the baby also inherited its genes turned on that mom had turned on.
Steve:
Correct.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s a lose-lose.
Steve:
Yeah, so when we look at mercury toxicity, there is a number of different things that’s happening with mercury toxicity. The number one thing for me as a biochemist, when I look at mercury, mercury is a soft—here goes my general chemistry terminology. It’s just gone. Mercury is a soft metal, and we refer to metals as Lewis acids. Lewis acids catalyze the reaction…
Dr. Pompa:
I forgot about that word.
Steve:
Yeah, do you remember Lewis acids and Lewis bases?
Dr. Pompa:
[0:30:57].
Steve:
Right, I had a little brain glitch there getting it into my terminology because I haven’t used this terminology in a while.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think I purposely forgot about Lewis acids but anyway.
Steve:
Yeah, most of us do. The whole issue with Lewis acids is they catalyze oxidation reactions. This is one of the many issues with mercury is that mercury as a Lewis acid is catalyzing oxidation of sulfur atoms that are bound to molecules. When you look at energy metabolism and methylation in particular, there are a lot of sulfur containing biomolecules that are targeted by mercury. There’s a physiological effect because of this pro-oxidative effect of the heavy metal, but then because mercury is fat soluble, it tends to get into the nucleus. Remember that when we talk about genetics and epigenetics, in order for genes to be expressed, the histones have to open up, right? I mean, if you think about—think about your DNA as being in a wallet. If you’re going to spend your money from your DNA, you’ve got to open the wallet.
That’s the analogy I like to use, histones. Histones are your DNA wallet. Your DNA is wound up around histones when it’s in its stored state. In order to open those histones, the histones have to be methylated, and that’s where methylation is the first step of an epigenetic trigger is that the histones have to be methylated to be opened up to express the DNA. It turns out that mercury directly influences your ability to methylate your histones and open up your histones to express your DNA.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, and then, boom, it gets—certain genes get turned on. Now, here you are expressing something you don’t want to express, whether it’s [00:33:05] or weight loss resistance, diabetes. I mean, again, we can keep going down the list.
Steve:
Like every other disease state, what is being expressed during heavy metal toxicity is the stress responses are what’s being expressed, and there’s a time and place for that.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that’s why one of the things it leads with mercury is people can’t sleep. They have bad energy. Yet, they can’t sleep right. Even when they do sleep, they don’t get into deep sleep, and most of them wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep. They have anxiety. I mean, all of these symptoms, part of what your saying is why they occur.
All right, so we have over sugared. We have over toxic, all affecting the mitochondria, directly creating oxidation. It interferes with the way it works and also turning on the genes in the mitochondria, so now you’re expressing what we just talked about. Are we doomed, man, or can we turn these genes off? What do we do?
Steve:
We are absolutely not doomed. Here is the best part of human physiology. Human physiology is incredibly adaptable. In order to get human physiology to adapt, we have to give it the right conditions. Number one, stress is the biggest limitation of physiological adaptability. The stress hormones absolutely inhibit metabolic flexibility. The first thing that we have to do in order for us to be able to have an adaptable physiology is we have to be able to manage stress. If we’re constantly releasing cortisol, we’re not going to be able to be metabolically flexible. There is nothing that we can do to the cortisol state that’s going—we can do any diet we want, but if we’re adding a good quality diet on top of cortisol, it’s not going to ever fix the problem.
Dr. Pompa:
Steve, I mean, some people think, okay, managing emotional stress is very difficult for some people, which there are strategies. We’ve done a lot of shows on those strategies, but there is the upstream toxic effect, right? We find that people have hidden infections in their jaw, I mean, metal in their brain. That’s a constant stressor, chemical stressor, and that’s where my cellular detox comes down to lower that stress bucket. What are other ways we can lower the stress bucket to mitigate what you’re saying?
Steve:
In terms of physical stress or emotional stress?
Dr. Pompa:
Any of it, I don’t know. Here’s the point, the body doesn’t know the difference.
Steve:
Correct, yeah, absolutely. I mean, here’s the thing, is regardless of whatever your spiritual beliefs are, you have to have some mental, emotional, and spiritual support in your life.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree.
Steve:
That’s absolutely essential, and I don’t care what you call it, yoga, meditation, prayer, religion, community. Anything that brings you a sense of community, a sense of belonging, nurture that. It’s absolutely essential. Then you have to eat good food with those people that are nurturing your spiritual and love and all of that. You have to provide your body with the fuel to detoxify. I mean, if you’re heavy metal toxic and you don’t eat vegetables, well, you’re going to continue to be heavy metal toxic, right?
Taking out the garbage is mental and emotional. It is not putting garbage in your mouth, but it’s also not putting garbage in your field of vision. How many people are filling their minds with garbage and then wonder why they’re sick? If you are just continuously filling your mind with garbage, your mind is going to output garbage, so fill you mind with the things that give you peace and give the world peace.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s an interesting biohack that you’re an expert in. You’ve lectured maybe around the world, many, many lectures that I saw on your bio. This is a topic of many people’s interest, cannabinoids, aka CBD, aka hemp, marijuana. Now I’ve got everyone’s attention. You found that it has a profound effect. Some of the benefits that people receive from cannabinoids—and by the way, that’s the active ingredient. I’ll let Steve explain it more in what’s in CBD.
You found a profound effect on changing the epigenetics to good. It has a profound effect on the mitochondrial epigenetics and a downregulating of cortisol and our cannabinoid system, which we recently discovered, how that plays into our hormone system and helps with adaptation. This is a good biohack, talk about it. You’ve lectured a lot on this topic.
Steve:
Here’s the thing with the endocannabinoid system is, when you think about neurotransmission, neurotransmitters convey specific messages, but in general, we can break neurotransmitters down into excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters.
Dr. Pompa:
These are signals from our brain to our cells through nerves. It can be excitatory, contract, contract, or inhibitory, relax, relax, right? That’s what you’re saying.
Steve:
Exactly, yeah, so let’s look at dopamine, for example. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that’s very important for problem solving. Your baseline level of dopamine is what gives you the ability to think. Your dopaminergic neurons are important for your day-to-day cognitive function, and so the balance of dopamine transmission is very important. Where the endocannabinoid system comes in is the endocannabinoid system acts as a safety mechanism within the dopamine system, within all neurotransmission. What it does is, when you have a spike in dopamine response, your endocannabinoid system will take that spike, and it will modify it so that it does not cause problems.
You have a basal level of dopamine. Then you’re walking down the beach. You see a girl in a bikini, and your dopamine levels spike. People are addicted to dopamine. This is video games. This is pornography, cocaine, all of these things.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:40:11]
Steve:
Yeah, your iPhone is dopamine.
Dr. Pompa:
When you’re expecting, it’s like gambling. Oh, an email, oh, ooh, dopamine spike, dopamine spike.
Steve:
Yeah, so dopamine is important in the pleasure and reward response, but you can’t have dopamine firing all the time. What the endocannabinoid system does is it takes these spikes in dopamine, and it applies the antilock brakes. It doesn’t stop the dopamine response or any other response that it’s acting upon. What it does is it modulates the response so that it does not overtax the neurons that are undergoing this dopamine spike, and so one of the important functions of the endocannabinoid system is fear response extinction. If you ever had a kid in your practice that has bad dreams over and over and over again…
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, when I was sick, when I was mercury toxic, I called them adrenaline dreams. I hated it.
Steve:
Yeah, if you have this fear response over and over and over and over, that’s a sign of poor endocannabinoid function. Your endocannabinoid system, one of its purposes is to help you to forget painful memories. Does that make sense?
Dr. Pompa:
How does CBD, which contains cannabinoids—it obviously affects this endocannabinoid system. That’s why it helps so many people, and it also can downregulate epigenetics. What got you studying this? Talk about how it does that.
Steve:
One of the reasons that I have always been interested in cannabis and in cannabinoids in particular is because of cancer in my family. My oldest brother died of pancreatic cancer. I have a sister that is about 12, 13 years out of treatment for ovarian cancer, another sister with ovarian cancer. There’s a lot of cancer in my family. It was one of the things that we just always knew. Oh, well, if you have nausea and vomiting, this is a really good way to help.
Throughout the course of my education, I’ve been exposed to people like Dr. Ethan Russo. Ethan Russo is an incredible resource. He’s a neurologist, and he’s an incredible resource on endocannabinoid function and the cannabinoids that are produced by the plant Cannabis sativa. One of the things that Ethan Russo says about cannabis as a therapeutic agent is one of its benefits is it helps people that have terminal diagnosis, and it helps them with the perception of that diagnosis, which can often be more damaging than the diagnosis itself. If somebody tells you that you have a terminal cancer, how are you going to process that diagnosis in terms of your emotional state? More than likely, you’re going to play that diagnosis over and over in your brain because it’s such a traumatic thing that you need help to extinguish that fear response associated with that diagnosis. Does that make sense?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we know that our thoughts can actually turn genes on and off, right? Therefore, to your point, that focus on it can actually keep genes, certain genes turned on and even turn on others that will not work for you but against you. The mindset plays a critical role. I don’t care what condition you have. People don’t get that, but there’s science behind it, right? I mean, our thoughts change our genes.
Steve:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely, the science behind the endocannabinoid system is emerging because of political status of endocannabinoid science in the United States has been really challenging from a scientific perspective because of the federal classification of CBD and THC being Schedule 1. It’s really difficult to get an institutional review board to approve any kind of scientific study associated with cannabis. I just spoke last week at a cannabis conference in San Diego. The first two speakers of this conference were vets, and they were talking about the desperate need that vets have for the treatment of PTSD. When you think about what happens to a young or maybe not so young soldier that’s out in the battlefield, that constant stress of being in the battlefield, whether you’re in action or not, I mean, I can only imagine what must go through the young soldiers’ minds when they’re in the foreign land, walking through the battlefield in the middle of the night. What kind of stress response is going through their brains? I mean, it has to be tax season multiplied by three trillion, and you don’t sleep for months.
To me, this is one of the reasons why I’m passionate about education about the endocannabinoid system and education about the legitimate medical role for cannabis. Whether it’s in the form of hemp or whether it’s in the form of medical marijuana, it’s a really important clinical tool because there are people that don’t have—I mean, epigenetically, or genetically they’re not hardwired to be able to extinguish their fears the same as others. There is a molecule that’s part of the endocannabinoid system called anandamide. Anandamide is Sanskrit for bliss. They called this molecule anandamide because, when it was first isolated, it was discovered that it is what causes bliss in mice. Here is another crazy thing that nobody is really talking about the endocannabinoid system is that it’s built upon dietary fatty acids, and so your dietary fatty acid intake directly influences your endocannabinoid [00:46:48]. That high omega-6 diet that is so bad in terms of outcome for so many disease states is not only bad from an inflammatory perspective, but it’s also bad from a mental functional perspective.
One of my heroes in the scientific community is a researcher by the name of Olivier Manzoni. He works in France, and he does endocannabinoid studies on mice. He has shown in mice that mouse—in mouse studies, when mice are fed an omega-3 deficient diet, they lose neuroplasticity that is a function of their endocannabinoid tone.
Dr. Pompa:
I think, in today’s diet, you have vegetable oils and everything, even in whole foods. You have canola, I mean, all of it. You got brain-fed everything, and that creates the imbalance. Could that be one of the reasons why that people seem to have such a positive effect with cannabis, meaning that—come on. I mean, how could we need cannabis, meaning that it wasn’t like our ancestors were walking around smoking marijuana all—I mean, all of a sudden, there’s this greater need for it in the sense of, when people take it, they feel better. Is it all the stressors combined, and it’s just tapering down that dopamine expression? What is it exactly?
Steve:
Number one, my ancestors were walking around smoking cannabis all the time. I’m kidding. No, I mean, that’s part of—this is part of the issue. I mean, our diet and lifestyle set us up for being hyper-responders to them.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and cannabis is a check. It just helps it. It’s a perfect antidote in a stressful day and age, toxicity, physically.
Steve:
Absolutely, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why it’s such a big player and the fats, to your point, the fats that we’re eating. We have all these bad toxic omega—I mean, omega-6 is good, but it’s the toxic rancid omega-6 that we’re getting in the diet and too much of all of this that is also affecting this cannabinoid system. It’s yet another reason endocannabinoid system—another reason why cannabis can really help people.
Steve:
Absolutely, here’s one of the coolest things that I learned in preparing for last week’s talk. You know the importance of DHA, talking about fish oil.
Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.
Steve:
DHA is absolutely one of the best…
Dr. Pompa:
I would say from fish more than fish oil because so much of its—anyway, another subject.
Steve:
Yeah, absolutely, good point there. When you take in a good quality DHA, one of the things—one of the fates of DHA in human brain is that DHA is converted into an endocannabinoid that has the name synaptamide. Yeah, what does that make you think about the neurological function of that endocannabinoid?
Dr. Pompa:
Synapsis helps your brain fire better.
Steve:
Yes, absolutely, so when you consume a healthy form of DHA, your brain converts some of that DHA into synaptamide. It’s called synaptamide because it is a major stimulator of synaptogenesis, so if you want to produce new neurological pathways, eat a good healthy source of DHA to feed your endocannabinoid system.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and you don’t even need a lot to benefit. The problem is, again, all the rancid fats that we’re getting out there makes it even more important, a fascinating conversation. Again, I guess you’d make the argument that everybody could benefit from some CBD. Would you make that argument?
Steve:
Absolutely, yeah, I mean, the thing with CBD is CBD is—I don’t like when people call it non-psychoactive because that’s not true. CBD is psychoactive, and it’s an [00:51:04]. The thing with CBD is CBD supports a normal endocannabinoid system whereas THC is like the heavy hammer. When things are really bad, there is a time and place for THC, but I think, on a day-to-day basis, I don’t think that there’s anybody in our modern world that would not benefit from CBD, especially when they combine it with some good, healthy, essential fatty acids.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, when you see these kids smoking marijuana day in, day out, there’s no doubt their brain’s shrinking. There is no doubt it’s having a negative effect. You’re right. I mean, someone in a very stressful situation, someone with cancer, someone with—the THC I think can bring a benefit. When we look at the ancient hemp plant, it was very little THC. It was definitely more focused on the cannabinoid—well, the CBD.
Steve:
We always talk about the cannabis plant just in reference to CBD and THC. Those are just the two most predominant. There’s a whole family of non-psychoactive cannabinoids that we’re going to see coming out of the cannabis industry that are going to bring a lot of healing potential without the psychoactive properties as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, wow, a great combination, one last question. Right now it’s in vogue right now. Everybody’s testing their SNPs, and they’re being put on a lot of supplements for their SNPs. They’re labeling themselves. I’m homozygous. I’m MTHFR. They have all the labels. What’s your thoughts on that, which is very different than the epigenetics that we’ve been describing, SNPs? What’s your thoughts on that?
Steve:
I think there’s a time and a place for that. If you as a health-seeking individual want to get some clues on what might be the most high priority supplements for you to include in your diet, run your DNA test.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it gives you clues. I agree.
Steve:
Yeah, I’m not going to say that everybody that has MTHFR is expressing and needs—but if you have MTHFR and your homocysteine is 20, you are the person that should be a form of a poly and riboflavin and magnesium and all of the other—and see, this is the thing is MTHFR is one enzyme out of a family of enzymes that are involved in a pathway that utilizes B-12 and 5-methylfolate, and they do a lot of very important functions. If your MTHFR is not expressing and you have a normal homocysteine level and you’re taking handfuls and handfuls of 5-methylfolate, you might just be wasting money on 5-methylfolate.
Dr. Pompa:
Exactly, the system’s very complicated. When you look at methylation alone, I think there’s 21 steps in this methylation pathway, right? It’s very complicated. I think we’ve learned more over the years. Just because you have a SNP, epigenetically, the body finds ways around things, and as a practitioner, we don’t know where you are in this process of the innate intelligence going, okay, we struggle here on this SNP. However, we found a way around it, so you don’t express it, right? I think that’s the mistake that we’re seeing right now is people are getting these tests, and then they’re just I’m that. Then they think that they’re that, and then they’re taking supplements based on they’re that. It might not be that. That’s what you’re saying.
Steve:
Yeah, and that’s why I always recommend a series of blood work. If you don’t see signs of B-12 deficiency in somebody with MTHFR, they probably don’t—they’re probably not going to benefit from a strict regime of supplementation.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, they’re not expressing that gene. The clues, it gives you clues. I couldn’t have said it better, Steve. Listen, thank you so much for clarifying so many things genetics, epigenetics, the diet’s role. The mitochondria is being—I guess it’s a cornerstone today, right?
Steve:
It is, absolutely, without a doubt.
Dr. Pompa:
The good news is is you gave us some great advice on how to change those genes in the mitochondria. Become a fat burner. Become metabolically flexible. It’s possible. You can change it back.
Steve:
It is. It is possible. You can affect the expression of your genes with everything that you do on a day-to-day basis.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, stress reduction, toxin reduction, diet changes, getting rid of the sugar, absolutely, and forcing adaptation, right? It’s like exercise.
Steve:
Express more love.
Dr. Pompa:
There you go. Thoughts also change the genes for better or for worse and the last piece of advice, cannabinoids, CBD. I think in today’s day and age, you made an argument for fats. You made an argument for the stress that we’re under, how it affects the endocannabinoid system. It’s under stress. There’s the biohack, got that too. All right, Steve, thanks for your brilliance, man. You’re more than an egghead. You’re a lot of fun too.
Steve:
Thank you, Dr. Pompa. It was a pleasure, absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
We love your wife and join us at the seminar. Are you going to come with her at the seminar?
Steve:
No, I will be on dog sitting duty here in Mexico. It’s our last week in Mexico, and I’m going to be getting our truck packed up while Nasha’s in Nashville.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we had that conversation because I’m like—I love the summers and the falls and the springs here in Park City, Utah. I’m just tired of the winter. I think I’m going to do what you guys did. I’m going to pack—we have dogs, so we have to go somewhere to drive. You drove through what part of Mexico?
Steve:
We’re just north of Puerto Vallarta, a little town of Bucerías. We’re just down the road from you in Durango in the summertime. We pack up our dog—our two dogs and our cat and a truck full of surf boards and windsurfers now. We take about four days driving down here. You know what we don’t bring (snow shovels)?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, I’ll be leaving those behind. That’s my future. I’m driving my dogs.
Steve:
Good, I can’t wait to get some healthy sunshine with you down here to strengthen your mitochondrial function.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ll be in Cancun again in April.
Steve:
Cool, well, I hope you enjoy it.
Dr. Pompa:
Not far, okay, hey, we’re going to have you on again because I think you have some other topics I want to pick your brain about. Thanks, Steve.
Steve:
I’d love that. Thank you.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com for more information. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at podcast.drpompa.com. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, and sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here, and as always, thanks for listening.