Speaker 1: You're listening to Maximum Medicine Radio with host Doc Martin.
Speaker 1: How do you step into your maximum potential? How do
Speaker 1: you connect your spiritual drive with your physical path? Get
Speaker 1: ready to meet the maximum you the world needs on
Speaker 1: Maximum Medicine Radio with Doc Martin.
Speaker 2: Now, Hi, everybody, Maximum Medicine Here. I'm here with doctor Samshay. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly how I was introduced to doctor Sam,
Speaker 2: but what I've found in the reading I've done, and
Speaker 2: he's going to tell you all about it, is here
Speaker 2: is a healer who has gone from chiropractic to acupuncture,
Speaker 2: to functional medicine, to DNA, the whole gamut. So I
Speaker 2: want him to tell us what he's seeing nowadays in
Speaker 2: his clients and some help for us, because, let's face
Speaker 2: the world is crazy and we need help to stay centered,
Speaker 2: we need help to stay chill. But doctor Sam, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad you're here. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 3: Thank you. It's really it's really honored to be here.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate all public educators, podcasts, hosts, summit leaders,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Like This type of public education was just
Speaker 3: simply not available twenty thirty forty years ago, and the
Speaker 3: entire reason I got into this field was because I
Speaker 3: was deeply unwell as a child, starting at age six.
Speaker 3: And the yeah, tell.
Speaker 2: Us, because I saw that in your website you've managed
Speaker 2: to heal a lot of ailments. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Sure, So my story, like the details of my story, differ,
Speaker 3: but the story ARC is very familiar to most people.
Speaker 3: It's a story of the wounded healer. Kirn. You know,
Speaker 3: it's so cliche. It's a constellation. Not that I'm tying
Speaker 3: in astrology to this, it's just it's around so long
Speaker 3: that it's literally across thousands of years, across multiple cultures.
Speaker 3: The the trope of a wounded healer. A wounded healer
Speaker 3: in short, is the person themselves or a dear friend
Speaker 3: or family member was incredibly sick. But usually it's the
Speaker 3: person themselves. And then through their entire long circuitous healing
Speaker 3: journey ARC, they pick up a lot of tools and
Speaker 3: understandings and frameworks that they used to help with themselves,
Speaker 3: and then they just want to reduce suffering for those
Speaker 3: around them. They don't want others to suffer as they did,
Speaker 3: so it becomes their their passion and their profession to
Speaker 3: share all the frameworks and tools, because it's just they
Speaker 3: know how how awful it is to suffer with with
Speaker 3: with physical physical uh and in physiological and psychological concerns,
Speaker 3: and they just they just want the suffering to stop.
Speaker 3: So and so that that's the that's the arc. That
Speaker 3: the details in short, because there's a lot of details,
Speaker 3: but I'll just keep it really brief. It's started at
Speaker 3: when I was six years old and my parents had
Speaker 3: a nuclear divorce in which me and my siblings were
Speaker 3: caught in the blast radius. And uh so, it was
Speaker 3: it was very deeply unhealthy and damaging. And on top
Speaker 3: of that, this was the eighties, so there was like
Speaker 3: high gluten, high carb, low fat diets and like lots
Speaker 3: of chemicals, fast food, box cereals, candy, spaghettios, I mean,
Speaker 3: and just Heine's ketchup. Like it's just all I mean,
Speaker 3: it's amazing that even survived. Just it was just pretty
Speaker 3: much just terrible food, which led to really terrible digestive problems,
Speaker 3: embarrassing got problems, and a failure to thrive. On top
Speaker 3: of that, I had crippling insomnia for over twenty years
Speaker 3: because of the gas lighting and emotional abuse at home
Speaker 3: and then the physical and physical abuse at school, with
Speaker 3: a lot of violence at school, and this is the
Speaker 3: eighties where you were just told to rub some dirt
Speaker 3: in it. And then I also contracted lyme disease at
Speaker 3: summer cramp, but I didn't know that until decades later.
Speaker 3: And I was just sickly and unwell and tired and
Speaker 3: a target.
Speaker 2: And that's a whole bunch of bad things all landing
Speaker 2: on you, isn't it as a child?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then and then developed a sugar addiction, in
Speaker 3: a video game addiction to try to cope. And I
Speaker 3: decided as a teenager that I had to take charge
Speaker 3: of my own health because the options that were presented
Speaker 3: to me were both and for fun. Both my parents
Speaker 3: are psychiatrists, and so their answer was to drug me
Speaker 3: into submission. And I decided that the tools for what
Speaker 3: I had going for me, the tools of western medicine,
Speaker 3: were not the right choice.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty wise as a teenager to be able
Speaker 2: to sess that out.
Speaker 3: It was pretty desperate, and I fortunately found someone who
Speaker 3: had a more natural frame of mind that was able
Speaker 3: to mentor me. I also ran into doctor by Sheer Luck,
Speaker 3: Doctor Jensen's Guide to Better bowel Care, which was a
Speaker 3: He's considered the kind of godfather of naturopathy in the West,
Speaker 3: and that book radically changed my thinking. I was supposed
Speaker 3: to be the third generation medical doctor in my family,
Speaker 3: but I put took a pivot into natural medicine, and
Speaker 3: then I just went to college, did a glorified pre
Speaker 3: med with extra medical anthropology, philosophy, and organic chemistry, and
Speaker 3: then did a holistic health practitioner degree on the evenings
Speaker 3: and weekends and got into yoga and meditation. And I
Speaker 3: just had a very different college because I knew exactly
Speaker 3: what I was doing and I was going full throttle
Speaker 3: right into it.
Speaker 2: And I'm just sitting here. Let me take a minute
Speaker 2: to reflect. If you haven't done this for yourself, that's
Speaker 2: amazing self knowledge, self reflection, and the ability to take control.
Speaker 2: We're talking teenage to college, that's amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: On a spiritual level, I would say you must have
Speaker 2: had some serious spirit helpers.
Speaker 3: I can't vouch for that. I've had. I've had people
Speaker 3: who are of that persuasion say confirm that. And I
Speaker 3: have people who are just diehard atheists or agnostics saying like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you made the best of a really terrible situation, and
Speaker 3: you just wanted to end suffering for yourself and others,
Speaker 3: and this was the most logical direct pathway forward, and
Speaker 3: and whatever, whichever, whatever is the ultimate reality. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just know that I want to reduce suffering and
Speaker 3: help other people.
Speaker 2: And my are you a Buddhist?
Speaker 3: People think I am. I'm a pragmatist. People ask me, that's.
Speaker 2: A kind of a very cliche Buddhist approach, You know.
Speaker 3: Sure, I wouldn't. I consider Buddhism more of a I mean,
Speaker 3: I've I've met the Dalai Lama, And he said explicitly,
Speaker 3: explicitly on stage, he said that the Buddhist religion and
Speaker 3: Buddhist culture is for Buddhists. Buddhist philosophy is for everybody.
Speaker 3: So he was making a distinction between the religious and
Speaker 3: the cultural practices and the philosophy. I'm totally cool with
Speaker 3: the philosophy. I have no interest in the religion or
Speaker 3: the culture. And I.
Speaker 2: Don't see you as a dogmatic love joining kind of guy.
Speaker 3: No, I did that. I was ten years in a
Speaker 3: Hindu cult for ten years at one point, starting in college,
Speaker 3: and I got out of that in twenty ten that's
Speaker 3: going to be the subject of a comedy show at
Speaker 3: some point. Oh spoiler. I'm also a stand up comic
Speaker 3: as part of my advocacy, and don't let the academic
Speaker 3: vinear fool you. I do. I have a full one
Speaker 3: hour show called Neurospicy Love Life and Comedy on the Spectrum,
Speaker 3: which is available for free on YouTube, and it's about
Speaker 3: what it was like to grow up with Asperger syndrome
Speaker 3: and obviously still have it. And it's clean observational comedy,
Speaker 3: so there's no politics, cursing, or gratuitous body fluid jokes.
Speaker 3: So it's clean comedy. And it's the hour I wish
Speaker 3: I had forty years ago to share with family, my friends,
Speaker 3: the schools, the other gatekeepers in the community at large.
Speaker 3: And it's the way that I can kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: we're talking in kind of some spiritual terms for lack
Speaker 3: of and the karma of what happened to me by
Speaker 3: creating a way that's easily consumable and transmissible, scalable of
Speaker 3: like how to better understand people like me so I
Speaker 3: didn't that wouldn't suffer us so unnecessarily growing up. And
Speaker 3: I'm working actually on my next comedy show, which is
Speaker 3: what it was like to grow up in the eighties
Speaker 3: on I'm talking about the eighties through the metaphor of
Speaker 3: my breakfast in the eighties. So like the eighties was
Speaker 3: equal parts of nostalgia and sinister. So on the one hand,
Speaker 3: you had like parachute pants and the Rubik's Cube, but
Speaker 3: then you had parental neglect and toxic food. And I
Speaker 3: have a working theory is that one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why Stranger Things is such a massive cultural hit for
Speaker 3: the past several years is because this is where art
Speaker 3: imitates life, where all the children of the eighties are
Speaker 3: now working out their unresolved trauma of the eighties in
Speaker 3: real time. I'm collectively by watching the show about the
Speaker 3: eighties and like literal like like like the shadowy, dark
Speaker 3: forces contrasted next to the cute se nostalgia and uh
Speaker 3: so I'm I'm going through like the orange juice and
Speaker 3: it's just mostly like sugar and pesticides. The the dairy
Speaker 3: industry actually models the same business plan as the as
Speaker 3: the street drug industry, you know, because what is an
Speaker 3: ice cream truck but nothing but a mobile dealer announcing
Speaker 3: his presence to get kids hooked on that sweet sweet
Speaker 3: milk and the high gluten foods, the process, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, a coffee. You know, there was no fancy
Speaker 3: moucacino back then, but like rancid folders. So so I'm
Speaker 3: I'm used comedy as my way to educate and advocate.
Speaker 3: It's it's so I've got a show on what's like
Speaker 3: the Asperger's, I'm working on what it's growing up in
Speaker 3: the eighties, and toxic food. I'm working on one on
Speaker 3: escaping called another one on getting out of my two
Speaker 3: addictions of sugar and video games. And I got a
Speaker 3: couple others in the works as well, And these are
Speaker 3: these are like three year projects each. But you know,
Speaker 3: the the the intention again is to reduce suffering, and
Speaker 3: so you can do it directly with individual or group coaching.
Speaker 3: But then there's the larger scaling of how do you
Speaker 3: change consciousness at a larger level, And that I've concluded
Speaker 3: the best approach for me, aside from writing writing books,
Speaker 3: is the stand up comedy.
Speaker 2: So that's brave because I don't think I first of all,
Speaker 2: I'm not that funny, but I'm too serious. But I
Speaker 2: also anyway I can stand up and lecture and teach,
Speaker 2: but I don't know comedy. I would feel vulnerable.
Speaker 3: Comedy is very vulnerable. I do recommend, as if you know,
Speaker 3: if people want a spiritual practice, take a comedy class
Speaker 3: to just do your first five minutes, like, look, if
Speaker 3: you want, if you want, it's a very it's a crucible,
Speaker 3: for sure, But the first five minutes is the hardest
Speaker 3: five minutes. And the thing about stand up comedy is
Speaker 3: that it's maybe a better thinker, a better speaker, a
Speaker 3: better writer, because it teaches you how to be concise,
Speaker 3: like what is the most important things to say in
Speaker 3: a memorable way that's impactful the end. And there's two
Speaker 3: tricks to writing good stand up comedy. Never aim for funny,
Speaker 3: aim for truth. Find the funny and the truth, not
Speaker 3: the truth in the funny. So as long as you
Speaker 3: have a problem you want to solve and you're aiming
Speaker 3: at truth, you can always find the funny in the truth.
Speaker 3: And I always reckomon people write with a group. I
Speaker 3: always write in a group. I have a writer's group
Speaker 3: that I'm a part of. And and you can totally
Speaker 3: do it, and it's worth it. I think it's it's
Speaker 3: a really valuable experience for people to go through. Uh,
Speaker 3: and you'll you'll get the level of confidence encourage that
Speaker 3: you earn and you being on stage in lecturing is
Speaker 3: relatively easy. I've been lecturing for twenty five years. That's easy.
Speaker 3: Just get it up and talk, no problem.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, because you go there holding a position, an
Speaker 2: inherent position of superiority, so you can have that to
Speaker 2: bolster you. They have to listen to you. You're the
Speaker 2: one who knows all the facts. You're the one who's
Speaker 2: got the you know, the brass key, the key of
Speaker 2: the brass ring or whatever. But comedy, you're putting something
Speaker 2: out there and you're not sure how it's going to
Speaker 2: be taken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the only art form that's never complete because
Speaker 3: it's the audience that determines if your art is done
Speaker 3: or not. It's it's not And you can't just repeat
Speaker 3: your same jokes. It's not like music. You can't get
Speaker 3: up there and play the same song you've been playing
Speaker 3: for forty years. You have to do new stuff. So
Speaker 3: it's it's a crucible. It's worth it. I think that
Speaker 3: people are looking for a new practice. So my so
Speaker 3: I went through college and then I went to chiropractical school,
Speaker 3: and I got very heavy into functional neurology and nutrition
Speaker 3: and graduated top of my class and ran a bunch
Speaker 3: of clubs and was a tutor and a TA and
Speaker 3: then I traveled and taught around the country to other
Speaker 3: chiropractice had to pass their national registration exams in both
Speaker 3: clinical and basic sciences, and then went abroad to open
Speaker 3: my practice, my first practice, and was there for eight years,
Speaker 3: and then got an acupunctual degree, got very heavy into
Speaker 3: functional medicine, studied with doctor Kalish in the Kalish Institute
Speaker 3: and then the Institute for Functional Medicine, and in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen I discover genetics. So I'm in my ten year guniversary,
Speaker 3: so to speak. And what I discovered is that what
Speaker 3: I discovered is that most people, whatever concern they're having,
Speaker 3: whether it's there dealing with stubborn weight or hormone imbalance,
Speaker 3: or they've got anxiety and high stress, or they're dealing
Speaker 3: with just a chronic it's just getting chronically sick all
Speaker 3: the time, or they're they're chronically fatigued, or they're in
Speaker 3: chronic pain, the thing that people were missing is they're
Speaker 3: missing a framework. They're missing a framework to analyze how
Speaker 3: to understand what's going on with their health because a
Speaker 3: lot of people are you know, talking about shiny objects centro.
Speaker 3: This is my primary criticism of the biohacker community is
Speaker 3: that they're just throwing out lots of shiny objects, shiny
Speaker 3: expensive objects, but there's no map the objects. You know,
Speaker 3: the shiny The tools are great, asterisk if the tool
Speaker 3: is appropriate for the situation that people are in. I
Speaker 3: love all the tools that are coming out, But is
Speaker 3: the tool what you need? That's the issue.
Speaker 2: So tell me what you mean by the framework in
Speaker 2: the structure.
Speaker 3: So when you're looking at when you're looking when you're
Speaker 3: when you're wanting to work with a functional functional medicine,
Speaker 3: functional health practitioner, you got to make sure they have
Speaker 3: two specific frameworks. They have a framework for lifestyle and
Speaker 3: a framework for labs. So a framework means do they
Speaker 3: have a system to analyze exercise, digestion, posture and pain, diet,
Speaker 3: you know your nutrition, toxic exposures, your morning and evening routines,
Speaker 3: stressors and unresolved traumas, hidden exposures to infections or mold,
Speaker 3: sleep hygiene, those That's an example of a framework like,
Speaker 3: that's that's my framework. It's it's looking at these pillars
Speaker 3: of health, and I have the ten pillars of health.
Speaker 3: Other people have the triangle of health, or the six
Speaker 3: steps of this, or the invert the triangle of that,
Speaker 3: the inverted highpot news of wells. I don't care some
Speaker 3: just some framework because otherwise it's like just shooting in
Speaker 3: the dark and like like hoping you're going to find
Speaker 3: something if you ask random questions or they don't ask
Speaker 3: the questions. So having a framework about lifestyle means you're
Speaker 3: looking at someone from the outside in. Then you have
Speaker 3: a framework for labs where you looking at people from
Speaker 3: the inside out, looking at the physiology of the biochemistry,
Speaker 3: the nutrition, the toxic exposures, all from the inside out.
Speaker 3: So when you combine lifestyle and labs, a framework for
Speaker 3: looking from the outside in and a framework from looking
Speaker 3: from the inside out, you combine them together. Congratulations, that's
Speaker 3: holistic medicine. That is my definition holistic medicine. I like functional.
Speaker 3: I would call functional medicine as using leveraging the best
Speaker 3: of Western medicines lab diagnostics with the best of natural medicines,
Speaker 3: lifestyle dit nutrition interventions. So holism is when you combine
Speaker 3: lifestyle and labs together and the framework for labs. Look,
Speaker 3: i've got my framework. I've got there's five lab categories
Speaker 3: gut hormones, mitochondria, metabolism, the weird stuff, lime, mold, toxins,
Speaker 3: environmental environmental toxicity, metals, and weird viruses and infections. And
Speaker 3: then the fifth one is genetics. So we got gut hormones, mitochondria, metabolism,
Speaker 3: the weird stuff, genetics. Framework. To people of other frameworks, sure,
Speaker 3: just have a framework. And if you don't have a
Speaker 3: framework for labs, then you're just guessing or you're just
Speaker 3: running people through a thing that is just like, this
Speaker 3: is my practice. We could do this lab in this lab,
Speaker 3: which is fine if you have a practice that attracts
Speaker 3: people who on the majority really do need that specific
Speaker 3: lab and there is value to like these kind of
Speaker 3: lab in a box practices. Was like, I found that
Speaker 3: these are the three most important labs that everyone does
Speaker 3: because eighty percent of the people needed eighty percent of the time,
Speaker 3: and there is a value to that. Is it as
Speaker 3: specific as it could be? No, but it's something. It
Speaker 3: is a framework of sorts, but it's not as fully
Speaker 3: customizable as it could be. I mean, the really good
Speaker 3: practitioners have kind of like a hybrid where they've got
Speaker 3: I mean, the really really good ones like customize right
Speaker 3: from the beginning with. But the good hybrid is that
Speaker 3: they've got like, here's my three labs, and if these don't,
Speaker 3: if you plateau and it doesn't get the results we want,
Speaker 3: then I've got this this buffet of a stable of
Speaker 3: other labs will draw on to figure out what's missing,
Speaker 3: which is a totally fair approach. So and that that
Speaker 3: that's a framework of sorts. So my my encouragement to
Speaker 3: everyone listening is just like, as a general rule, when
Speaker 3: you're gonna work with someone, make sure they have a
Speaker 3: framework both lifestyle and labs. And there is value to
Speaker 3: just getting a singular lab like genetics. Genetics is unusual
Speaker 3: because your history doesn't influence what your genes are, whereas
Speaker 3: knowing what you're what you've been through affects and influences
Speaker 3: how you look at what you're, say, like your gut
Speaker 3: test looks like or your hormone panel looks like like
Speaker 3: like what like like you're you can be as sleep
Speaker 3: deprived as anything, and your genes are gonna be the
Speaker 3: actual gene readout is going to be the same. How
Speaker 3: your genes express will change obviously how you're sleeping in
Speaker 3: your lifestyle. But if you're wanting to know the raw
Speaker 3: data of like what are your genes, then the history
Speaker 3: is not necessary because that doesn't influence what we're seeing
Speaker 3: in the generic report. Now, how you live your life
Speaker 3: and your lifestyle will affect how your genes express. And
Speaker 3: the best way I think about genetics is like think
Speaker 3: of it not as a switch, but as a dial
Speaker 3: that people have genetic We call them green, yellow, red dots.
Speaker 3: And just to best understand that, yea a green dot
Speaker 3: means air quotes good gene is that people have they
Speaker 3: inherited the good. The air quotes good version of the
Speaker 3: genes from both mom and dad. That's a green dot.
Speaker 3: A yellow dot is they got one bad air quotes
Speaker 3: bad version from mom one and a good version from
Speaker 3: dad or the reverse and one that doesn't matter from
Speaker 3: what side. And then a red dot is I got
Speaker 3: to quote too bad versions. And the thing that most
Speaker 3: people think of these as switches, and that's not true.
Speaker 3: They're more like dials. So people's default setting is how
Speaker 3: they were born. So if I have a lifestyle, and
Speaker 3: if I'm living my life, I will default to the
Speaker 3: green expression or the yellow expression, or the red expression
Speaker 3: of a gene, like to say, for inflammation, or for
Speaker 3: histamine intolerance, or for vitamin D absorption, or any number
Speaker 3: of things, And my lifestyle will nudge that expression either
Speaker 3: towards the green or towards the red, depending on how
Speaker 3: I live. But if I want to move it in
Speaker 3: a specific direction and keep it there, I have to
Speaker 3: maintain a lifestyle to keep that gene expressing in that direction.
Speaker 3: Like I can have red and yellow dots, but according
Speaker 3: to my lifestyle, if it's a good lifestyle, then I
Speaker 3: can make those green and yellow. Those red and yellow
Speaker 3: dots not be green, but behave green like the When you.
Speaker 2: Say lifestyle, are you mostly focusing.
Speaker 3: On nutritional No, so nutrition is a major portion of it.
Speaker 3: But there's also exercise and sleep and uh morning in
Speaker 3: circadian rhythms and and and like morning and evening routines
Speaker 3: and digestion and yeah, quit quitting smoking and like all
Speaker 3: all all the you know, removing toxic exposures, whether they're
Speaker 3: self inflicted or or or from or externalized. That that
Speaker 3: the good news about running genetics is that now you
Speaker 3: know what what you're like. Like I mentioned before, like
Speaker 3: you asked me what am I? I'm a pragmatist. So
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of reality, big fan of reality, and
Speaker 3: I want to know my genetic reality. I want people
Speaker 3: to know their genetic reality, and their genetic reality is like,
Speaker 3: what are the boundaries of play here? So some people
Speaker 3: like me. I found out in twenty sixteen that I'm
Speaker 3: a hyper inflamer, which explained why I was so sick
Speaker 3: growing up. Now, I was so sick because I had
Speaker 3: a combination of really vulnerable genetics and really terrible lifestyle.
Speaker 3: I didn't know any better. I was a kid, and
Speaker 3: it took me to my teenage years to figure out
Speaker 3: I had actually more agency in how I live my life.
Speaker 2: And what do you mean by a hyper inflamer.
Speaker 3: So when you look at someone's genetics, when we look
Speaker 3: at genetics from a functional or more holistic lens, we're
Speaker 3: looking at We're not chasing down an individual gene necessarily,
Speaker 3: We're looking at clusters of genes and how they behave
Speaker 3: in concert. We're looking at the orchestra of genes. So
Speaker 3: there are sixteen major pro inflammatory genes in the body.
Speaker 3: There are hundreds of genes that influence inflammation directly indirectly,
Speaker 3: but I want the most important ones, and there's sixteen
Speaker 3: of them. So by hyper and flamer, I'm talking about
Speaker 3: someone who's got like eleven and above of those sixteen.
Speaker 3: So it's looking at like the entire constellation of inflammatory
Speaker 3: genes is like really inflammatory. I have fourteen out of
Speaker 3: sixteen genes as red and yellow dots, so a hyper
Speaker 3: and flamer meaning that I could be eating, you know,
Speaker 3: my terrible breakfast growing up, and another family members eating
Speaker 3: the same breakfast, but they're not as affected as I
Speaker 3: am because my genes react much more inflammatory in much
Speaker 3: more inflammatory ways than they do.
Speaker 2: Have you seen that in your in your clients? I
Speaker 2: mean the level in my practice, which is traditional Western medicine,
Speaker 2: the amount of things that I can attribute to inflammation
Speaker 2: is sky high.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but most people, but some people are more sensitive
Speaker 3: to it. And how I have a faster on ramp
Speaker 3: to the inflammatory response than others. I can give you
Speaker 3: some examples. There's that. In the genetics tests that I designed,
Speaker 3: I've identified three major ways people retain stubborn weight, inflammatory
Speaker 3: water weight, hormonal toxic weight, and caloric fat weight, the
Speaker 3: inflammatory water weight by far is the most common cause
Speaker 3: of stubborn weight gain by far. Here's an example. I
Speaker 3: actually call this the muffin test, not the muffin top test,
Speaker 3: the muffin test. So the muffin test is you eat
Speaker 3: half a muffin and proceed to put on an extra
Speaker 3: one to four pounds in a single day. Just PuF
Speaker 3: just poof, just more weight. Now, unless that muffin, half
Speaker 3: a muffin, came from last year's regifted Christmas fruitcake, it
Speaker 3: didn't weigh one to four pounds. So where did all
Speaker 3: this extra weight come from? If the muffin, it's half
Speaker 3: the muffin was absolutely not a pound or certainly not
Speaker 3: four pounds.
Speaker 2: All the downstream cascade of crud that gets stimulated.
Speaker 3: The inflammatory response, and then the body retains. So why
Speaker 3: do we retain water when there's inflammation? Well, when all
Speaker 3: the inflammatory chemicals. So you got you got the muffin,
Speaker 3: You've got the gluten, the dope, conditioners, the preservatives, the colorings,
Speaker 3: the sprinkles, whatever leaged in from the plastic rapido in
Speaker 3: it like just the sugar, all of it creates inflammation,
Speaker 3: and it creates inflammation in the gut, which is like
Speaker 3: it creates just just cascades inflammation through the whole body. Well,
Speaker 3: inflammatory chemicals are damaging, they hurt cells and tissues. So
Speaker 3: what happens is the body will retain water in what's
Speaker 3: called the interstitial space, which translates from Latin Greek. I
Speaker 3: forget the space in between the cells. So it will
Speaker 3: put water in between the cells to dilute the damaging
Speaker 3: chemicals from hitting and damaging cells and tissues. So you
Speaker 3: the weight is not coming from calories. It's coming from
Speaker 3: water retention secondary to the inflammatory response from the toxicity
Speaker 3: in those calories that came bundled with the calories. The
Speaker 3: calories are the least issue. It's the inflammatory stuff that
Speaker 3: came bundled with it. Granted sugar, yes it is technically
Speaker 3: calories and is inflammatory in its own right. But the
Speaker 3: so the inflammatory water weight. People who have very pro
Speaker 3: inflammatory genes, they have this response to the Muffin test.
Speaker 3: People who don't really have an inflammatory response like that
Speaker 3: don't have that response. They don't have that they're not
Speaker 3: triggered by the Muffin tests. You see it in other
Speaker 3: ways too. You see it in CrossFit. I can walk
Speaker 3: into any CrossFit gen look around and know who's a
Speaker 3: hyper inflammer and who's not. You can just look around
Speaker 3: because the people who are hyper flamers, they may be strong,
Speaker 3: but they don't look cut. They don't have their definition
Speaker 3: because they've got this layer of inflammatory water weight over
Speaker 3: all their muscles because they're over exercising and their exercise
Speaker 3: is now net pro inflammatory, not anti inflammatory. So I
Speaker 3: see this all the time with people who are in CrossFit,
Speaker 3: the people who are hyper inflamers, so they have they
Speaker 3: have a different version of the Muffin test. If they
Speaker 3: don't exercise for a week, whether they're injured or they're
Speaker 3: traveling or the gin clothes or whatever, and then they
Speaker 3: come back a week later, they look better, they feel better,
Speaker 3: and they live stronger. Why because their body had a
Speaker 3: weak to deflame. So people who are hyper inflamma. So
Speaker 3: people who are who over exercise, I actually have to
Speaker 3: pull them away from exercise and put them on recovery.
Speaker 3: Like they can still do their high intents the intermal
Speaker 3: training twice a week with at least two days break
Speaker 3: in between.
Speaker 2: I bet they're not happy with you for that.
Speaker 3: Oh no they're not. Oh they're very angry. At me,
Speaker 3: but they can't deny the truth of what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: They're convinced that that is the key to good health
Speaker 2: and longevity.
Speaker 3: Well, well, here's the thing is that they usually come
Speaker 3: back all sulky when they do have a week off,
Speaker 3: whether they want to or not, and they admit that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I look better, I feel better, and I actually was strong.
Speaker 3: I had a new pr personal record. And I'm like, so,
Speaker 3: are we gonna debate this any further? Or are you
Speaker 3: gonna cling on to this lie You've been living for
Speaker 3: how many years? What would you like to do? Just
Speaker 3: let me know? And and I so here's look, I
Speaker 3: bag on crossfitt a lot, but I also salvage it.
Speaker 3: And here's how I salvage it. Here's what they do right.
Speaker 3: They built a community. They built the community based on
Speaker 3: celebration of progress, and they have a routine and a
Speaker 3: culture that supports progress. The problem is that they overdo
Speaker 3: it and people get injured, and they don't have like
Speaker 3: a way to dial it back. And so the way, So,
Speaker 3: how do I thread the needle if they want to
Speaker 3: keep their CrossFit community and stay healthy as opposed to
Speaker 3: hurt themselves. Very straightforward, you keep going to the gym
Speaker 3: on the hour, you do a day or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: but you don't do high intensity interval stuff. You do
Speaker 3: like walking light by. You do movement, not exercise. I
Speaker 3: make that distinction, movement not exercise. Moving is good over
Speaker 3: exercising bad. So they get to stay in their community,
Speaker 3: they get to keep going to the gym, but they
Speaker 3: don't overdo it. So you work. So this is the
Speaker 3: way to thread the needle that to accomplish both. So
Speaker 3: the same thing with the inflammation with diet. I'll give
Speaker 3: you one example. My father took me years to convince
Speaker 3: him to just do one day where he wouldn't eat
Speaker 3: toasted bread and cheese, you know, a couple times a day.
Speaker 3: And he's overweight and hates exercise. And I just convinced
Speaker 3: him for one day to have as much chicken, broccoli,
Speaker 3: coconut oil and coffee as he wanted, and he didn't
Speaker 3: have to exercise, which he doesn't do anyway. And I
Speaker 3: just wanted to show him that he can lose a
Speaker 3: lot of weight without cutting calories, because he's inflamed, not fat.
Speaker 3: He's inflamed from water, not in flame from calories. Finally,
Speaker 3: he did it. I watched him. I was there, didn't
Speaker 3: do any exercise, shocker. But he ate chicken, broccoli, coconut oil, coffee,
Speaker 3: didn't have any dairy, didn't have any gluten. He had
Speaker 3: plenty of calories, he weighed. He weighed himself every day,
Speaker 3: done it for decades. Weighed himself before, weigh himself the
Speaker 3: very next morning. He lost four pounds according to him.
Speaker 3: So what he lost was not calories because he ate
Speaker 3: and he didn't exercise. What he lost was all the
Speaker 3: water weight that was retained by inflammation. His body had
Speaker 3: one precious day, one day to drop inflammation.
Speaker 2: Did he notice it?
Speaker 3: He's on who told me?
Speaker 2: But I mean he felt it in his body.
Speaker 3: He felt it. But the problem is is that when
Speaker 3: you're dealing with someone who prefers comfort over longevity, he
Speaker 3: just went back to eating what he firmly, comfortable and tasty.
Speaker 3: So I gave up after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have about eight to ten minutes left.
Speaker 2: What else do you see in your practice and what
Speaker 2: things have you noticed that are going on in the
Speaker 2: world today?
Speaker 3: Sure so from a genetics standpoint, when people are concerned
Speaker 3: about their long term health, well being, longevity, or just
Speaker 3: simply like their mood. What I've noticed that people genetically
Speaker 3: are influenced in several major ways in the genetics tests.
Speaker 3: If you're hyper and flamer, it's gonna affect your mood
Speaker 3: because if your brain's inflame, then you can't what's called
Speaker 3: inhibit your olympic centers. You can't inhibit the animalistic stress responses.
Speaker 3: Your frontal lobes are very fragile on the very vulnerable inflammation.
Speaker 3: So if you know genetically that you're a hyper inflamer,
Speaker 3: and you take on the strategies that are offered from
Speaker 3: a genetic level, then you can drop the level of
Speaker 3: inflammation global in your body and including your brain. As
Speaker 3: a hyper inflamer, I had lots of anxiety and anger
Speaker 3: and skin rashes and physical pain. I had inflammation in
Speaker 3: my joints like an eighty year old man, even though
Speaker 3: it was in my thirties. And then when I got
Speaker 3: my genetics reports back, it took only a couple months
Speaker 3: of changing my diet, my lifestyle and nutrition, et cetera.
Speaker 3: According to my genes, and all the pain in my joints.
Speaker 3: In a way, my skin cleared up. Okay, my anxiety
Speaker 3: reduced and anger reduced, and it's just like their tools
Speaker 3: offered in genetics you cannot find in the other tests.
Speaker 3: Other things that I learned is that people are worried
Speaker 3: about stress and anxiety. Well, you want to get your
Speaker 3: genetic tests want to include are you for your caffeine sensitivity,
Speaker 3: which I have. I have a big red dot in
Speaker 3: caffeine sensitivity because if you're genetically sensitive to caffeine, you're
Speaker 3: gonna get what's called, and this is true, caffeine induced
Speaker 3: anxiety and depression. Caffeine induced anxiety and depression. So people
Speaker 3: who think that they're taking coffee and shoving it full
Speaker 3: of coconut oil because it's you know, it's bulletproof, which
Speaker 3: is what I did. I was conflating anxiety for energy
Speaker 3: and genetic so I got off coffee a caffeine because
Speaker 3: it was in my genetics. I just had to take
Speaker 3: myself accountable. It's no different than a crossfitter having to
Speaker 3: come to terms with the fact that they're over and
Speaker 3: flamed and they have to change their lifestyle. I had
Speaker 3: to come to terms that I was hyper sensitive to
Speaker 3: coffee and I had to get off caffeine. I look,
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't when I when I talk about
Speaker 3: this towards the crossfitters. I'm speaking from my own experience too.
Speaker 3: I'm an over inflamer. I couldn't over exercise because I
Speaker 3: got weaker if I over exercised. So other things around
Speaker 3: mood is some people are genetically histamine intolerant. Now, histamine
Speaker 3: is an adjacent inflammatory pathway to the body. It's basically
Speaker 3: the body's flood switch. When a bee stings your arm,
Speaker 3: the bee did not inject a half quart of water
Speaker 3: into your arm to make it swell. What happened is
Speaker 3: that it's venom. Like a bee, a wasp, a spider,
Speaker 3: a centipede, a snake, it's venom certain plants. You know,
Speaker 3: your body will pull the flood switch of histamine to
Speaker 3: drown the area in water to dilute the venom. It's
Speaker 3: no different philosophically than your body having an inflammatory response
Speaker 3: from the muffin to dilute the toxic chemicals inflammatory chemicals.
Speaker 3: But this is venom, so it's like rapidly flood the
Speaker 3: area locally. So if you are very sensitive to histamine
Speaker 3: and you eat high histamine foods like and I say
Speaker 3: this a great personal risk avocados, you are doing the
Speaker 3: equal of eating a slow moving, full body beasting and
Speaker 3: creating a global inflammatory a histamine response, and people who
Speaker 3: struggle with with hives and water weight gain and foggy
Speaker 3: brain and water weight and just like that, you may
Speaker 3: be sensitive.
Speaker 2: What else are high histamine producing foods? Because I'm the
Speaker 2: kind of person one mosquito bite my whole arm is.
Speaker 3: Uh so, so there's whole there's whole lists of them.
Speaker 3: But like the big ones that people have are age
Speaker 3: meats and cheeses, long term leftovers, cacao, tea, alcohol, citrus fruits, avocados.
Speaker 2: Kind of interesting. A lot of those things trigger migraines.
Speaker 3: Correct histamine and tyramine, so you get you get headaches
Speaker 3: and migrants from history, but also tiraene and tyramine and histamine. Uh.
Speaker 3: Usually are are are in the same foods, not not all,
Speaker 3: but usually very similar. Uh. And putting someone on an
Speaker 3: antihistamine diet is really hard because there's so many quote
Speaker 3: health foods that are high in histamine. And fortunately, like
Speaker 3: with the genetics test, I've developed a diet that is
Speaker 3: a wenable high histamine elimination diet. And I developed the
Speaker 3: diet after I argued with one with a client of
Speaker 3: mind for forty five minutes of robocados. You just wouldn't
Speaker 3: let it go. You just wouldn't let go Like okay,
Speaker 3: I find to find a different system here to how
Speaker 3: to make this work?
Speaker 2: So, Doctor Sam, how can people? How can people find
Speaker 2: you and work with you?
Speaker 3: Sure? So? The the easiest way is to go to
Speaker 3: my website Doctor Samshay dot com, d R s A
Speaker 3: M s h A y dot com. D R s
Speaker 3: A M s h A y dot com. You can uh.
Speaker 3: Then you can opt in for my free masterclass. My
Speaker 3: DNA Decoded program is right at the top of the screen.
Speaker 3: There of people use the code gold one hundred FO
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars off the Gold program. The Gold program
Speaker 3: includes group coaching with me for the genetics and the
Speaker 3: and if people are wanting if there anyone here listening
Speaker 3: is a is a certified health coach or a licensed
Speaker 3: practitioner and you want to run my genetics in your practice,
Speaker 3: you can go to fit GENESUSA dot com f I
Speaker 3: T G E N E S USA dot com and
Speaker 3: you can sign up to become a practitioner and I
Speaker 3: train you how to run these genetics tests in your practice.
Speaker 3: I've solved for a number of major issues in the
Speaker 3: genetics space. The first problem people struggle with is they
Speaker 3: get a genetic test from another company and it's hundreds
Speaker 3: of genes with the attending hundreds of lifestyle recommendations, and
Speaker 3: it's overwhelming, confusing, and ultimately paralyzing. I figured out how
Speaker 3: to prioritize these are the things to do for diet, lifestyle, exercise,
Speaker 3: nutrition in this order, so it's it's way simpler. I've
Speaker 3: reduced the interpretation time down from hours to a fraction
Speaker 3: of that because now you have prioritized genes and prioritize
Speaker 3: lifestyle recommendations, and the reports are beautiful and they're practical,
Speaker 3: and the lay public can really really understand them, and
Speaker 3: they're not drowning in like these hexadecimal hieroglyphic RSID numbers
Speaker 3: that you see of all these genetics. It's like all
Speaker 3: these other genetic reports are so difficult, and these are
Speaker 3: now simple to understand and more importantly implement. The last
Speaker 3: thing I would say is that there's a unique genetic
Speaker 3: test that is so rare to find, and this is
Speaker 3: one where we're looking at a very specific gene, not
Speaker 3: the version of it, but how many duplicates of it
Speaker 3: that tells you are you more ideally suited for keto, Paleomediterranean,
Speaker 3: or high carb or some shade of gray in between.
Speaker 3: We can end this whole nonsense of like this diet's
Speaker 3: the best, this die's theod No, how about this guy
Speaker 3: is the best for you based on your genetics, and
Speaker 3: we can stop arguing between carnivore and vegan and high car.
Speaker 3: We can end all that by finding out what's relevant
Speaker 3: to you. And that's a part of my DNA de
Speaker 3: coded program for individuals who just want their genes, and
Speaker 3: it's also part of what I train health coaches and
Speaker 3: practitioners into running their own practice. So that's what I'm
Speaker 3: the offer. I'm also coming out with a Fit Genes
Speaker 3: podcast where I educate the public and practitioners how to
Speaker 3: better understand the genes.
Speaker 2: Wonderful. I appreciate your smarts so much, your big brain
Speaker 2: that has taken these things that are out there that
Speaker 2: people get so confused by and made them accessible and understandable.
Speaker 2: So everybody, if you want to work with doctor Sam,
Speaker 2: it's doctor Samshay dot com. Dr Samshay dot com, thank
Speaker 2: you so much for being here with me.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for hosting me.
Speaker 2: It was very nice meeting you too.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Maximum Medicine Radio with Doc Martin,
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Speaker 1: Doc Martin and Maximum Medicine, visit www dot Sharon Martin,
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