Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: What's worthwhile considering what we consume, believe, say and do towards peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit? I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. Here's some more healthy living motivation and discussion.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: The one that stuck out to me when I got my genes tested was the vitamin D receptor. So I can't absorb vitamin D, and for me, it answered a lot of questions. One is, why was my vitamin D always low? No matter how much vitamin D I took, I could not move the needle. And so I was like, okay, well, sucks to beat me or cancel. Can we do something about it? But the other thing, when I started studying, I started doing a deep dive into what does the vitamin D receptor do?
And it's involved in how our brains make serotonin and dopamine. It actually activates the enzymes that convert tryptophan and tyrosine into serotonin and dopamine.
And I was like, oh, wow, this explains my depression.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Hey there, it's Ramsey here.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: That was Dr. J. Ann Dunn. For more than 38 years, Dr. J has practiced natural medicine, researched alternative and emerging solutions, and taught groundbreaking techniques to thousands of people seeking relief beyond allopathic medicine.
Her own health challenges became clear when a chiropractor used applied kinesiology to figure out why she was having headaches, nausea and other symptoms.
She began to study, get certified, and then practice with many healing modalities.
These days, Dr. J is particularly focused on genetics and how individuals have specific challenges based on the genes they were born with.
I spoke with her about two topics I'm no expert in, but was eager to learn, kinesiology and methylation.
Dr. J will define those for us, but here's a preview. Kinesiology is the study of muscles and movement, and it can be applied to determine what's going amiss in body systems.
Methylation is a chemical process that the body uses to turn genes on and off to do important functions.
But here's where it gets interesting.
Many of us have genetic variations that make aspects of methylation not work the way it's supposed to, leading to troubles like blood sugar swings, toxin buildups, and other issues.
Dr. J founded a company called My Happy Genes that does DNA testing to identify where individuals need support with things like methylation. Listen to the end of the podcast for a coupon code to get a 15% discount off of testing.
I just ordered my test kit and in future episodes I'll share with you what I learned.
All right, let's jump into the conversation.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: Hey Dr. J. How are you doing today?
[00:03:24] Speaker B: I'M good, Ramsey, how are you?
[00:03:27] Speaker C: I am doing well. Hey, thank you so much for coming out and spending some time with me today. You know, I'm excited to speak with you because you are an expert in two fields, which I am kind of aware of, but don't really know a lot of details about, but I am interested in, and that is kinesiology and methylation.
But first, would love to hear more about your background.
You know, what was your early life like and what sort of set you on your own kind of health journey?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: That is a really good question. And, you know, a lot of natural healthcare practitioners started out with kind of like looking for their own answers.
No exception to that. I was a pretty sick puppy in my 20s. I had constant headaches and nausea and fatigue and just felt lousy all over. And I was a single mom at the time, and I felt like my daughter was kind of raising herself and being very stubborn, but also being raised in the medical model. I kind of went. I went back to them finally, you know, reluctantly.
And they did a bunch of blood work, and they did all these exams, and they said, we, you know, all your blood work is normal. Everything's fine. Here's a prescription for headaches. And it just struck me as wrong. You know, they're covering up symptoms, but they don't know where that's coming from. And it wasn't there a year ago. Something is causing it. And they had no ability to really kind of figure that out. So it led me to starting to look for my own answers. And, you know, I thought, well, maybe it's my diet. Maybe my McDonald's hamburgers and milkshakes aren't the best diet.
What?
What?
And I was working in a bookstore, and so I was reading all these books on nutrition. I was like, all right, this got answers. Gotta be in here somewhere. So taking books home and I'm reading about, you know, natural diet and eating more fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. And I started to eat that way, and I got worse. I actually felt worse. More headaches, more nausea, more fatigue. And I was like, wait, you know, that's. This is supposed to be the answer. Ended up at a health food store. Well, maybe I'm just deficient in some kind of vitamin or mineral or something. And so I talked to the woman at the health food store, and I'm looking around, and it's like, there's so many different things that you can take. It was all very confusing to me.
20 brands of vitamin C. You know, it's like, how do you pick.
So I was talking to her at the front and describing what I'm feeling. She said, you know, have you ever tried chiropractic? And I was like, what does that have to do with nausea and headaches and fatigue? And she's like, oh, you'd be surprised what chiropractors can do. It's like, okay, I'll try it. So I went to a chiropractor. I got adjusted. No difference. It didn't help me at all.
I'm like, okay, cross that one off my list.
But a friend of mine was going to a chiropractor who did kinesiology. You know, the word that you mentioned at the beginning.
And I went in, and he's got. Got me laying on the table, and he's got my arm up in the air and he's pushing on it. And that's what we call applied kinesiology. Different from the definition of kinesiology, as you know, is like the study of muscles and motion. But applied kinesiology is actually a clinical science.
It's using muscle testing, or the neuro system, nervous system, to kind of give feedback about the body. So anyway, he's. He's got my arm up in the air, and I'm going to. This is weird. This is the weirdest thing I've ever had anybody do. Pushing on my arm within 10 minutes. He told me exactly why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I was like, okay, that was weird. But I'm going to do exactly what he told me to do, which was stop eating all the roughage that's upsetting your digestive system and your ileocecal valve and creating inflammation down there. And he gave me some adrenal support, and he adjusted me, and I went home. And I was like, all right, I'm going to give it a go. Within a week, a whole new human being. I was like, how did he do that? You know, all of these other people, nobody was ever able to help me. But the kinesiology pinpointed exactly what was going on with me very quickly.
And so I was like, wow, I gotta do that. That was cool. And so I kept going back and working with him and getting better and better. And he, you know, he worked with me on all kinds of conditions. A certain point, we hit a plateau.
And I went to a different kind of kinesiologist who did something called kinesionics. And it took me to a whole nother level of healing. I was like, I gotta learn how to do this. This is just stunning. What it's done for me.
And I started studying that and I got certified in kinesionics and started working on people. It was a six month course, so it wasn't like super in depth, but we studied herbs and the human body and la.
Not licensed to practice, but I was practicing on people and doing the kinesiology and getting stunning results with all kinds of conditions. It's like the body will tell you what's wrong through the muscle testing or the kinesiology. And I was like, whoa, this is cool, but I want to know more. So I went off to chiropractic school. I was like, I want to know it all. I want to study the human body to the nth degree. I want to dig in deep, get as many answers as I can possibly get.
So I got my chiropractic degree. I'm a doctorate in chiropractic and then functional medicine, went into functional medicine. But still, you know, when I was practicing, I had 30 years under my belt and I still had people that weren't responding. And I had a lot of tools in my bag at that point. I've got emotional work, I've got nutritional work, I've got structural work, I've got spiritual work. We did it all.
But there were some people that didn't respond no matter what we did. And I was like, all right, we're missing something. There's another piece. I know there is.
And for me, I was one of those people that didn't respond. I still had depression after.
Everything else was good with me, but I couldn't shake the depression and I couldn't shake the chronic fatigue that I had.
And nothing worked for me. All the new tricks in my bag, changing diet, none of that, none of that worked. The emotional work, nothing worked.
And then I got my genes tested and, you know, because I kept hearing this word, methylation, I was like, methylation, what is that? I'm hearing it over and over again. What it was, it was about 10, 15 years ago.
I'm like, methylation, what is it? So I took a deep dive, watched a YouTube video by this guy named Rich von Koninenberg, and he was, he was looking at chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalitis, it's now called in the context of genetic variants. And I was like, what?
The genes can really lead to this? And so I. It was like my head exploded.
I was like, oh my God, this, this has to be the missing piece. And so I got my genes tested and turned out that I have homozygous variants. And just for edification there, when you inherit genes, you can have like the right gene for making an enzyme work correctly in your body, or you can have a variant that you inherit. So one parent gives you a ROM code in your genes. That's what we call a heterozygous variant. Both parents give you the wrong code. That's what we call homozygous variant.
So it can reduce the activity of the enzyme that you're coding for in the genes by about 70% when you have a homozygous variant. And the one that stuck out to me when I got my genes tested was the vitamin D receptor.
I have a genetic, I have a homozygous, I have several homozygous genetic variants there. So I can't absorb vitamin D.
And for me, it answered a lot of questions. One is, why was my vitamin D always low? No matter how much vitamin D I took, I could not move the needle.
And so it made sense to me that the receptor wasn't working, open to accepting vitamin D.
And so I was like, okay, well, sucks to beat me or can we do something about it? But the other thing, when I started studying, I started doing a deep dive into what does the vitamin D receptor do?
And it's involved in how our brains make serotonin and dopamine. It actually activates the enzymes that convert tryptophan and tyrosine into serotonin and dopamine. And I was like, oh, wow, this explains my depression. I wonder if there's an answer.
And my dad died of lung cancer when he was 55.
Big smoker. Everything he could do to get cancer, he did it. But the mystery came when his best friend married my mom after my dad died. And he was doing the same things, lived another 30 years. And so, you know, all we can do about that is go. Good genes, right?
Smoking. My dad couldn't, you know, what's the difference? Often it's genes. But that vitamin D receptor, one of the first studies I found said that when you have that genetic variant and you smoke, much higher incidence of lung cancer.
I was like, okay, well this is making sense.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: So you hit upon two really interesting, very different kind of modalities.
They both sound diagnostic to me.
The applied kinesiology, if I understand what you were telling me, is, you know, testing the muscles and looking at and them giving answers about the body. I want to dig into both of these topics. Let's start with the applied kinesiology. Tell me more about how it is that you can sort of get answers from the body about what's going on using that methodology.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good question. And it all comes down to a reflex. You know, when you like tap your knee and your, and your leg kicks out, that's a reflex. We're working with the nervous system. And so when I touch an area that's out of balance, there are reflex points all over the body corresponding to different organ systems. So, you know, there's the thyroid here, you know, the pituitary here that, you know, there are different points on the body that correspond to organ systems. And when we touch that point, if there's an imbalance there, it short circuits the nervous system, the body, and the muscles will go weak all over the body. Not just your arm, but the whole body momentarily. It blows the circuits essentially in your body.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah, so it'll tell you. Oop, there's the problem right there because you just, your whole body went weak when you touched it. If you touch it and the signals are correct, the nerve signals are going through that organ correctly, you won't get an interruption in the nervous system function.
So it really tells you where imbalances are even before you're gonna see a pathology. It's not necessarily like, oh, I touched the liver point, you went weak, you got liver disease. No, it's like your liver's struggling to really kind of work at optimal levels. So it can pick up imbalances even at the subtle level that are beginning to show.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: So how, how widespread are practitioners that are trained in that modality? And you know, who are they, you know, how, where do people go to get those types of exams? And just generally speaking, typically chiropractors are
[00:15:12] Speaker B: the most common people that do applied kinesiology. And there's a, an organization called the International College of Applied Kinesiology. So you can actually get an advanced degree in applied kinesiology through there. It's like a two year degree, 100 to 120 hour courses that teach you the ins and outs of using it. There are also, you know, naturopaths use it, dentists use it, all kinds of natural healthcare practitioners can use it. In fact, I learned it even before I became a practitioner. I learned it as a layperson and began using it. So there are classes that you can take even, you know, as a, as a layperson.
The Touch for health class is, was one of the beginning classes that I took that teaches you how to test individual muscles. You know, this all came from the physical exams that, you know, like, are different medical doctors or different, like physical therapists would use to evaluate muscle function. So, like, if you, if you isolate out your, you know, your biceps muscle by pushing on your wrist, you can determine if that muscle is working correctly. Right. That's, that's kind of the origins of, of kinesiology. And if that, that muscle is weak, it's going to, that muscle will test weak and, you know, there's a problem there. But it can also point to a problem in the spine. In the spine, the nerve coming out to that muscle. So the chiropractor started going, oh, we can, we can look at, is the spine out of alignment by testing the different muscles, you know, to see if that spinal segment is getting to that muscle. So.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: Well, apparently there's a whole new world of study that I need to begin to explore. But that'll, that'll have to be on a different day.
No, but that's a great, that's a great introduction for me.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Look, we all deal with stress. Stress is not the problem.
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[00:17:47] Speaker C: Let's talk more about methylation.
So that's something that I also know a little bit about.
It's a little bit more personal for me, which I'll tell you little bit more about, about later.
But without getting into, you know, the depths of biochemistry, generally speaking, what is methylation? And kind of, more importantly, why is it important? Why is it critical for the body?
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Good question.
It's a big topic and there's, I think there's a lot of misinformation about it out there. But a methyl group is a carbon molecule with three hydrogens attached to it.
And methylation is the process of taking that methyl group and applying it to other enzymes to activate them or applying it to our DNA to either turn it on or, sorry, turn it off and removing it to turn it on. So our body uses methyl groups to kind of express genetic variants or turn them off. And so if you don't make methyl groups correctly, and that takes sufficient amounts of folic acid and B12 in the active forms, so I don't know, you're probably Familiar with mthfr? Is that what you were referring to? Yeah, yeah. That is the most well known genetic variant in the methylation cycle. It's only one of many different genetic variants in the methylation cycle but its job is to convert folic acid into the active form 5 methyl tetrahydrofolate.
And if you can't do that efficiently, then you can't methylate well and you are susceptible to environmental damage. So let's say you have a gene that could express cancer if you don't turn it off and protect it from the environment, which is what methylation does, then the environment can turn those things on and cause that gene to express a cancer. Well, one of the big things that methylation does is repair RNA and DNA. So every day you get damage, you get damage from, you know, radiation, even from the sun, from chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, all of those things can damage our DNA.
Our system repairs it through methylation. Methylation goes in and goes, okay, we're going to tie this back together again and make it work correctly. Without proper methylation you get DNA damage that just stays and continues to kind of snowball. The other thing that it does is make creatine.
You know, a lot of people take creatine for energy, for muscle energy, for brain energy. It's one of the most important nutrients. But our bodies make it naturally, we don't have to take it as a supplement. If you're methylating correctly, the majority of methyl groups go to making creatine. So not a lot of people realize that it's how we upregulate. Like the catecholomethyltransfer. There are a bunch of different enzymes in the body that are upregulated by methyl transformation, including the breakdown of histamine requires methylation to work correctly. The production of our brain chemicals, our dopamine and serotonin that I mentioned require methylation as well. So lots of things affected by it, but it's not just mthfr, it's other genes as well.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: So I'm, I'm kind of a nut when it comes to Legos.
Like I, I really like building things out of Legos and you know, I, I, I did that when I was a kid and then I stopped for many years and then I just later on in life as an adult I was like, forget, I'm just, I'm going back to Legos because I really like them.
But so my mind works in Legos and what I'm hearing, what I'm imagining as I hear you is like, there are certain pieces that are really, really critical when you're building something out of Legos. There's certain pieces that are, they like hold things together and you have to like, put the thing on the end and in order to build whatever you're trying to build. Like, for me it's, I always build cars.
If I didn't have the little piece that could hold the wheel on, then I couldn't really, you know, build my cars because it couldn't, I couldn't get the wheels to stay on.
So is that a half decent analogy about, you know, like, if you're like, these methyl groups are a certain spot, specialized piece that are required to make certain chemicals do the things that we need our body for them to do, but they need the, the right attachments on the ends.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: They do, and they, they need the right nutrients to really make it work as well. So we look at, we look at CO factors. So let me see if I can figure out how to put that into a Lego analogy. But imagine that you have.
So the vitamin D receptor. Let me go back to that. So here's the vitamin D receptor. It's closed. I can't get vitamin D in.
And the cofactors that every enzyme in your body works with, cofactors or coenzymes, and those are vitamins or minerals. So if you get the right cofactor for that particular enzyme that is working on a slow level and get it working faster, then everything starts to feed up, speed up, feed, speed up in the body. So the CO factors, there are a couple of cofactors for the vitamin D receptor, which I discovered opens it up. Vitamin D can get in now, my brain can make serotonin and dopamine and boom, my depression was gone that fast. And I was like, oh my God, I think this is happy. I'd heard about it, but I never felt it because my brain could not make those neurotransmitters correctly. So it was like, oh my God. So every enzyme in the body has a cofactor. So the MTHFR that you mentioned, it has a cofactor. It's CO factors riboflavin. And so instead of taking methylfolate, if you give the body riboflavin, it can make its own methylfolate. So it's a much more elegant way of getting the body working correctly, giving the body exactly what it needs to kind of make up for a genetic variant that you inherited. You're going to need, if you have that mthfr, you're going to eat higher levels of riboflavin than somebody that doesn't have that.
So it's, it's dialing in the exact nutrients to get your body working correctly in all areas, whether it's detox, methylation, histamine breakdown, neurotransmitter production and breakdown, hormone production, you know, all the ATP, the mitochondria, all the energy production pathways.
All of these pathways that happen at the cellular level require a specific cofactor or coenzyme. Cofactors are minerals and coenzymes are vitamins.
So if you get the right one for you, it's magic. It just turns your body back to like as fully functioning as it could be. So I'm having a hard time relating that to the Legos. It's probably there.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: No, that's okay. That's okay.
So, you know, also for me, I suspect that I probably have that MTHFR snip as they call it.
The.
And that's because, uh, you know, I spent most of my life sort of being hypoglycemic and you know, needing to just always carry protein bars with me and always knowing exactly when and where my next meal is going to come from so that I could continue to function in society and not just be a mess in terms of, you know, losing it or being hangry or passing out, you know, on the floor.
But then I sort of stumbled upon getting these, you know, methylated B vitamins and they definitely help me, the ones that I'm taking. But is that, you know, are the, is that exactly what I need or do I actually need some other stuff too?
I don't know because I haven't really, you know, looked into that. But there are lots of different potential genetic variances. Right. So how do people figure out, you know, if they have some of those and if they do, which ones they are?
[00:26:28] Speaker B: That's a really good question.
That's why I created a genetic testing program platform. It's called My Happy Genes. And we look at, yeah, so when you take methylated B vitamins, you're actually starting up a detox situation. The pathways for detox, if you have genetic variants down below that are, are going to inhibit your ability to detox correctly, you're going to create more problems. So we look at the interplay, not only mthfr, we look at mtrr, we look at S, U, L, T, what's, what's happening downstream when you make.
Because when you, when you take methylated B vitamins, you're turning homocysteine into cysteine. And then sulfur. Then if you've got a genetic variant that doesn't get rid of sulfur, then you're. You've just created another problem. So we look at those pathways, we test you for over 600 genetic variants that look at that interplay. So if you had to do that in your head, be kind of difficult, you know, to understand the interplay. So the software does it for us. You know, it looks at, oh, you've got the mthfr, but not only that, you have the S, U, L, T, but you have this gene variant over here too. So we're going to have to take that into account. And it, it's when, when the practitioner looks at your program. We work with a bunch of practitioners. You can get like the first couple of reports as a consumer, but then we ask that you work with a practitioner to really interpret it and give you the right supplements to make sure that we're not contraindicating something you're already taking or medications that you're on or a situation that may need some tweaking with your program. So we get to that final list that looks at, okay, you've got this combination of different genes. This is your best kind of your genetically designed multiple, designed to optimize all the functions in your body. The detox, the repair, the histamine breakdown, the neurotransmitters, the methylation. All of it should work at maximum capacity when we dial it in. Exactly right. So it's not like you can, I mean, I think you talked about, like, what if we take a multiple? You know, you're covering all the bases. Well, you're actually upregulating something that you probably shouldn't upregulate because it's gonna make a bigger problem down the line and downregulating something that shouldn't be downregulated. So we look at it very, in very precise ways where what is exactly right for you? Turns out we're all different.
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Imagine that.
Being that we're all different.
Who should, you know, really come and get, you know, take advantage of your testing? I mean, the obvious answer is everyone. Yeah, but you know, who in particular or sort of what types of challenges that people are experiencing, you know, might kind of lead people to this being an important piece of the answer for them.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: That's a really good question. I think, you know, there's a lot of people are very frustrated by, you know, they get their blood work done and it looks fine, you know, and the doctor says you're fine, but they're like I don't feel fine. I'm tired, I'm headachy. I don't, you know, I've lost my verve. I'm depressed, whatever. And, you know, we can look. And allergies are a big one. You know, we. We're able to really pinpoint food sensitivities, but also food allergies through looking at, you know, your genetics. Like, you're probably gonna. You're likely gonna have issues with gluten, you're likely gonna have issues with dairy, you're likely gonna have issues with nightshade. So we can. We can pinpoint those things that are actually slowly eroding your overall health. So it's everything from people who are suffering from a really hard to work with disease to somebody that wants to prevent aging faster or just wants to be healthier, wants to understand their body and take back their power. I'm very passionate about people learning about their own bodies. And so when you.
For me, it was hugely relieving to know that it wasn't my fault that I was depressed. That was just. That knowledge was like, oh, my God, it was in my genes.
So it gave me a lot of compassion for myself. It gives me a lot of compassion for my parents, too. My dad was not a nice person, but I look at his genes and I go, ah. I know why now.
He wasn't meaning to be. He was designed that way. He's got irritability genes, you know, so it's anybody who wants to understand themselves, anybody that wants to take back their power, anybody that wants more knowledge about how the body works, you know, and that's what. That's what we teach people, too, is why is this happening? Why did this thing happen to me? We can explain it.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: Yeah. So rewarding, you know, and there's a. There's a balance, right, between your genes and your sort of lifestyle. Lived experience, experience exposures.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: You know, a whole.
Where do you sort of see that balance between the genes that we have and how they express and how that relates to kind of how we live our lives and what gets. What we get exposed to. Sort of talk to me about that whole interaction.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that again, really good question. So. So, you know, the expression that genes load the gun and the environment pulls the trigger is very true.
Definitely. And here's the really interesting thing, Ramsey, is that, you know, after practicing many, many years and giving people advice about what to eat and how to eat and how to exercise and how to sleep, and they'd go.
And then they'd go home and Go right back to doing what they were doing.
The really interesting thing was when we got their biochemistry balanced, they did it naturally. They're like, sugar doesn't even sound good to me anymore. Really interesting cases. Even all the way up to methamphetamines. I had a patient just completely quit doing methamphetamines because her brain was balanced. She was like, it just doesn't sound good. I'm like, are you kidding? And it completely got her off methamphetamine. We saw it with alcohol. We saw it with cocaine, so. And sugar. Sugar is a. You know, it's a neurotoxin. It's. It's terrible for the body, but your body's craving it because it's low in fuel. Like you were saying, you're. You know, if you're hypoglycemic and you're tanking, you're gonna reach for sugar. It's just, you gotta survive, right? But if you get your biochemistry balanced, you don't need the sugar. You're sustaining your blood sugar in a. In a much more balanced way. And so you're like, doesn't even sound good. I'm gonna wait till I get home and have a nice, you know, protein, carbohydrate meal or whatever.
You can. You can do that. And it's one of my biggest client.
This is when the shift happened in my brain was she flew out from New York and way obese. You know, I had to buy two tickets because she didn't fit in one seat.
And, you know, I'm talking to her about diet, you know, and are you eating right? She's like, yeah, yeah, I eat healthy.
I don't think you do, but, you know, okay.
And anyway, I got her genes tested, put her on a program for methylation. I call it methylation holistic methylation, where we look at more than just methylation. We look at all those pathways. Put her on a program, sent her home. And she called me about a week later, and she's crying. And I was like, elaine, what's going on? And she said, it wasn't my fault. And I said, what wasn't your fault? She said every night I would get these incredible cravings for Oreos. I had to eat a whole package of Oreo before I went to bed. And I was like, well, it was pretty obvious to me that you were putting on calories somewhere. She said, it doesn't even sound good anymore. I have stopped eating sugar, and the weight is coming off.
And I was like, oh, that's that's it. You know, it's craving those things is the sign that you're out of balance, that we had it backwards. We're beating people up for like, stop eating sugar, put the ice cream down and go for a walk.
It doesn't work that way. You get them balanced and they want to do that. Their bodies tell them it's time to walk, it's time to eat. Right. You know, so it's kind of a paradigm shift.
So I don't know if that answered your question.
[00:34:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's really. That's really tremendous.
Yeah, no, I think it does.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
There are people. To answer your question, too, about the toxins. You know, definitely when you get exposed to certain toxins, it will cause certain genes to express. So making sure your body detoxes regularly is part of the. Part of what we're doing is getting the detox pathways started up so that it's constant.
The damage that can come, though, can damage your mitochondria, and that is a little bit tougher. That's beyond genetics. That is like, you know, the mitochondria are the little organelles inside our cells that create energy, and they can be damaged because they're really vulnerable to the environment. And that's heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, radiation, electromagnetic fields and certain medications will damage mitochondria, and that will cause some of that hypoglycemia that you're talking about. It's not always just methylation. It's not always mthfr. MTHFR gets blamed for everything pretty much. But there's so much more to the story. If your mitochondria is damaged, you will be craving sugar and your blood sugar will be unstable because you don't have. You don't have fuel in your tank. So you're going to be looking for fast energy because you'll run out pretty quickly.
[00:36:18] Speaker C: And do we have a. Does the body have a repair system for mitochondria?
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Yes, we do. And there are certain nutrients that really repair it. And so that's one of the biggest things we focus on in both holistic methylation and my happy genes is energy production. ATP, which is our basic unit of energy in the body, is critical for all the other enzymes to work correctly. All the enzymes require ATP, you know, to. To do what they're supposed to do. Even the MTHFR requires ATP. So it's core. It is really core. And that's where we focus first getting. Getting that. There's hardly anybody I know that doesn't have damage to the Mitochondria. It is rare because we're always exposed to electromagnetic fields and radiation and chemicals and pesticides and medications. So it's pretty rampant.
[00:37:10] Speaker C: All right, let's talk about some practical things. So if somebody wanted to get the genetic testing, what does that process look like from sort of a practical sense? What do they have to do?
[00:37:23] Speaker B: They have to go to our website.
There are a bunch of different genetic testing sites. We're the only one that really puts it together with biochemistry. But they go to myhappygenes.com all one word. My happy genes.
Not J, E, A, N, S, but ge.
That's a whole nother topic. Yeah.
[00:37:45] Speaker C: My happy jeans are the ones with the holes in the box.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: That's right. Anyway, keep going and then you can purchase your, your kit there and it'll come to your house. So it's just a swab. You just. Very easy to do. It's mailed to your house. You swab the inside of your cheek and put it back in the envelope and send it to the lab.
We contract with a lab and they will test that where they're testing for over 600,000 SNPs.
We report on 600 of those, but we have, we have room for reporting on more. So I'm always adding in a new, like I'll read about a SNP and I'm going, well, let's add that one in.
That is a genetic variant, the SNPs. And then within three weeks, three to four weeks, you'll get a notification, your gene report is ready and it's in your account. So you've created an account with us and registered your kit. So it all happens electronically. You just log in there and it'll give you the first report, which is the mood and personality report and the gene list, the list of 600 plus genes that we test for are all, and it's all included in the, in the test. If you want to go further, you can look at diet and lifestyle, you can work with a practitioner and get the other three tests, the one that gives you like your health risks, the biochemical analysis and then your supplements, those are all done through a practitioner.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: But if so, when I hear.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Go ahead.
[00:39:12] Speaker C: When I hear about genetic testing, I, the, I get worried about, you know, where my DNA is going and what database it's going to be on and who's gonna, you know, start, you know, whether my social media companies are going to start selling me different products based on my genetic profile.
What, what happens with the information that you're Collecting and tell me about privacy.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Excellent question. Because this is something I'm really passionate about because of 23andMe and ancestry and all this.
[00:39:49] Speaker C: Yeah, they got hacked. Who knows who they sold it to, but they also got hacked.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Exactly. They sold. They sold the data too. They sold the DNA data. I will never do that. But how it's protected is. The only thing that our lab has is a barcode. It's a barcode number. So MHG 006785. That's all they have. They will never have your name or any information about you. That information comes back to our website. Whatever email you created, you can make up an email and you can make up a name. I don't care what name you put in there, as long as you remember the email, because that barcode is connected to that email. So that's the only thing we have.
When you buy the kit, you're giving your name and information to, you know, Stripe or the.
What they do is different. But what we collect none of that information. We don't have any information about you, so we protect you that way. But also we'll never sell your data. It's not something I ever wanted to do and that's part of why I created this company was because I was very passionate about protecting privacy.
So you're never going to get hit by a third party. You're never going to get your data shared. It's just.
And hacks happen.
But we have very, very secure cyber security going on. On the, on the actual DA DNA information, it's de identified so it's not even going to have your name. So they could hack in and get a bunch of DNA information but they won't know it's you.
[00:41:19] Speaker C: So that's right. Right.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: Type 2 in a lot of different ways.
[00:41:24] Speaker C: Okay. And you mentioned you get a report and is the report something that you can readily understand yourself and. Or you also mentioned you can be working with a practitioner. Is that really a requirement or is that if you really want to sort of go beyond and dig in and do that sort of thing. How much of it is sort of user interpreted versus how much much of it is leading you into a, you know, more sort of comprehensive. Working with a service provider.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Yeah, good question too. You got great questions. You ought to be a podcaster. Have you ever thought.
[00:42:09] Speaker C: I'll keep that in mind. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so we wanted to. The first report is the mood and personality and it's really, really cool because it easy to read. It's like oh, you have a slight high risk of autism, or you have a high risk of learning disorders, or you have a high risk of addictions, or it's really easy to read. They're sliders. So it's going to show you how high or how low.
But we're just implementing a really cool AI that's private, it's an LLM, and it's going to pull that data and give it your story. It's really cool because they're really stunning, what you would get from looking at the genetic data and going, this person thinks outside the box. They're really creative. They have a brain that thinks differently than most people. You know, it's wired differently. And this, they've struggled with this, but this is their. This is. These are their strengths. So it's really cool what it gives you. And everybody that's had it done has gone, oh, my God, I feel seen. That's. This is crazy.
Like, your risk of being an entrepreneur, not a risk, but your tendency toward being an entrepreneur, those kind of things are in there.
My risk of depression was very high. And I was like, no wonder it's genetic, you know? So that's the comparison piece. It's like, oh, it wasn't me just having a bad attitude, it was my genes. It's like, I get it. So that's the first piece, understanding yourself, why you are the way you are. And the second piece that you can get as a consumer is the diet and lifestyle. Easy to read. You know, these are your not good foods. These are your okay foods. These are your good foods.
This is the best ratio of macronutrients, whether it's fats, proteins, carbs, which is best for you. Because we're all like, oh, everybody should eat vegan, everybody should eat vegetarian, or everybody should eat carnivore. It's an everybody should kind of thing. But it's never that way. It's always very different for each person. So it really gives you very good information about how the best way to eat to complement your genetics. And that alone is very powerful.
Again, easy to read.
Backing up the mood and personality has the list of 600 genes plus genes that we test. And you can click on any of them and open them and it'll tell you what that enzyme does, how it acts in the body, what the biochemistry is. It'll give you a ton of information. You can, you can click on any of the SNPs and it'll define it and show you what it's all about.
And then if you want to work with a practitioner. So you want to go even further. We have practitioners that are trained.
We have over 600 people so far that are trained in looking at genetics this way around the country, some in other countries as well.
But they can take you to the next level. So I want you to be under the care of a licensed healthcare provider because you might be taking a medication that is contraindicated by a supplement that we recommend. I don't have a way of knowing that.
So it's a liability issue. And it'll also tell you what diseases you may have a sensitivity toward.
Doesn't mean, like you say, it's not just your genes, it's your environment too. So if you do all the things to prevent that, you know, what's, you know, what's kind of your risk. There's a lot of things you can do to prevent it. And so that is all done under the guidance of a healthcare provider. But the other three reports.
[00:45:43] Speaker C: Well, I have to say I think I'm pretty convinced that I would like to do it. I would. That I would like to do it for myself.
You know, perhaps some listeners. Listeners are feeling that way too. Would you like to, I don't know, offer us a discount? I would for doing that.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: I would.
So if they use the coupon worthwhile 15, they'll get 50.
[00:46:12] Speaker C: Fantastic.
So if people are ready to do it, then they can go to your website site.
If they use the coupon code worthwhile 15, they can get 15% off on the DNA DNA kit and testing.
The website is myhappy jeans.com.
is that also where they should go if they have questions or if they'd like to, you know, connect with you directly or are there any additional places that they should look for you online?
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah, they can do it there. We have a chat bot. I also have a live person who answers the phone like, you're not going to get a phone tree. You're going to get a.
I know it's revolutionary. It's crazy. But she's so great and answers the phone almost every time.
If not, she'll call you right back.
So we want. We're passionate about that too, because so many companies are like, you know, you get on those phone trees and it's like, dial one firm.
[00:47:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Where you can't find. You can't get a person at all.
We wanted to be that company who has a live person to answer your questions. But also my YouTube channel, you can look under Dr. J. Dunn or My Happy Jeans and there's a Ton of videos.
I do a Q and A with Dr. J series that has all different kinds of topics so you can get a sense of what we're doing and how we work and ask questions there too.
But, yeah, infoyhappy jeans, you can ask questions there on email.
So lots of places you can reach us. We are very accessible. And if you decide to get your jeans done, I can do a consultation with you. There's a link to consult with me directly if you want to, after you get your genes tested.
That's an option.
[00:48:13] Speaker C: Terrific.
Well, Dr. J, thank you so much for explaining all this to us. Giving me an education on both applied kinesiology and methylation and also offering this opportunity. And I really think that we have this sort of dual causation. I believe as people that it's. We have this basis of our genetics and then we have all of the, you know, environment that we live in, and we have our upbringing and all the things that we experience over the years.
And knowing and understanding what we're predisposed to, I think is just gonna be very empowering and enabling for a lot of people.
And then with that, you can have a better sense of, you know, what you should be trying to do within your lifestyle patterns and what is really, really critical to expose yourself to in a positive way and what to not. Not expose yourself to in a negative way. So I'm excited about this and it was great to learn more about it today. And, yeah, hope to speak with you a whole lot more in the future. Thanks for being here.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much, Ramsey. It'd be cool to do, you know, to get your genes tested and then we can talk about.
Talk about it if you're open to it on another episode.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds great. We can bust out my happy jeans and we can see, you know, which ones are the cut off and which ones have holes in them and.
Oh, boy, I better wrap this up before we go a little too crazy.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: Sounds good. It was great talking to you, Ramsey. Thank you so much for inviting me onto your show.
[00:50:13] Speaker C: Yeah, you too.
[00:50:15] Speaker A: Ready for more? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to listen to podcast episodes. Master your response to stress by reading my book, Stress Response, available through. Through Amazon. Or to get better before burnout sets in by requesting the free guide. Regardless of where you are in your journey, I'd love to hear from you and talk about how we might move forward together. Please contact me, Ramsey Zimmerman through the website or on social media like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or X. Thanks,
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Sam.
