How To Be WellnStrong

65: Why Genetics Are NOT Your Destiny | Dr. Matthew Dawson, MD

September 10, 2024 • Jacqueline Genova • Episode 65

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I’m very excited to welcome Dr. Matthew Dawson to the show today. You may recognize his name from his groundbreaking work at Wild Health. He has revolutionized patient care with his advanced DNA methylation testing protocol and his AI-driven health recommendations. Moreover, Dr. Dawson has also trained thousands of physicians in Precision Medicine online and has lectured in over twenty countries.  Dr. Dawson also co-hosts the Wild Health Podcast, a platform for educating thousands of listeners about personalized, genetics-based Precision Medicine. His passion for helping patients improve their health and perform at their absolute best includes all aspects of their well being; mental, physical, and spiritual. In this episode, we cover the use of diagnostic tests and tools to help uncover as well as prevent disease, the significant role of epigenetics, what precision medicine actually is, and Dr. Dawson's core pillars of health, among other topics. If you want to test out Wild Health, you can use the code "wellnstrong" at checkout for 20% off!

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*Unedited Transcript*
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Jacqueline: [00:00:00] I've been listening to a lot of, uh, your episodes. I'm, I'm a really big fan of your work, so I'm really excited for our conversation.

Kyla had reached out to me and first told me about wild health. I never heard about it before and mentioned your conversation with, Ben Greenfield, who I'm a big fan of. And I was fascinated within the first five minutes of that conversation. So I love what you're doing. Um, I'm also really passionate about it.

So I was just trying to figure out, I was like, what do I talk to him? I have an hour. There are so many questions and I've just been kind of binging a bunch of your other podcast episodes. So we're going to be jumping around a bit, but just thank you for all the wonderful work that, that you're doing in this space.

And again, I'm, I'm really excited to share this with everyone.

Dr. Dawson: For sure. It'll be, it'll be fun. 

Jacqueline: I read about your transition from emergency medicine to founding WildHealth. What drove that shift and where did this concept even come from?

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Dr. Dawson: yeah, so, um, I, I loved emergency medicine, like, to be able [00:01:00] to, I mean, it's such a privilege to see people in kind of their, some of them it was like the worst day of their life, and to be able to help them and make an impact, it was really meaningful. Um, But after doing it for a while, I started realizing like I was seeing the same thing, the same people, and, um, uh, it was making a difference, but I really wanted to kind of, there's a, there's an analogy in a story about, um, a little town village on a river and one day someone's floating by and screaming for help and they run out and, and pull them.

To shore and save their life, which is great. So the next day, the same thing happens. They run out and they save another person. And after three or four days, like, finally someone says, maybe we should go upstream and figure out who's throwing these people in the water. And that's what it felt like in the emergency department.

Eventually I got to the point where, uh, maybe saving someone's life or doing something heroic for them, but the things that led up to that point for them were completely preventable. And I really wanted to make an impact in that way. And I didn't know how until I started [00:02:00] seeing a lot of evidence come out around genomics and precision medicine.

And in my experience with medicine, it's always about 15 to 20 years behind the science. And so I knew this brand new science looked really promising, but no one was doing it. So that was really the impetus to kind of jump in and actually see. Can we do this? Can we apply this to science?

Jacqueline: Yeah, that's incredible. Uh, a coworker told me a few years ago that the future of health is precision medicine and I was like, what, what does that mean? And you obviously speak a lot about precision medicine, which is, you know, what this platform is based on. So for listeners who have never heard that term before, what separates precision medicine from traditional medicine?

Dr. Dawson: Sure. So traditional medicine, um, is, so someone comes in and you basically have kind of very limited, a physician will see you and you have very limited, uh, maybe history, physical, and some lab work, and then you've got to make a best guess as to what's wrong and what we should do with the limited information you have.

Precision medicine is just [00:03:00] gathering and it, And, uh, much, much more data to make a much better decision hypothesis. So as an example, like when we see a patient, we sequence their DNA. Um, to see a patient and not have that human operating system seems crazy to me. So we sequence their DNA, we do really deep dive into their blood work.

We look at all their wearable data. We sometimes look at microbiome. We also. do a lot of questionnaires and find out a lot more about them and who they are than just like the basic lab panels. And then when you have those millions of data points, then you can dig in and say, what should we do to help this person?

How are we going to optimize their health? What's the perfect diet for them? Perfect exercise program? What supplements will or won't work? But you need that data. Um, just talking to you and doing a cursory exam, um, I'm basically guessing.

Jacqueline: yeah, I love that. And you obviously know this very well, but In this wellness space, there are so many people who experience something, whether that's a change in diet, or a new supplement, or a new regimen, that might work for them. [00:04:00] And all of a sudden they go out and say, this is the gold, you know, this is what we've been looking for.

Like everyone needs to do this, recognizing that or not recognizing rather that it's not one size fits all. Right. And just for your context to Dr. Matt, so I started well and strong about four years ago. I actually went to a business school. I don't know if you're familiar with Babson. 

Dr. Dawson: That's awesome. 

Jacqueline: So I concentrated in finance and economics yet here We are having this discussion, you know all about health and wellness, but um, my mom had a recurrence of cancer in 2018 she was the reason why I started this platform I just became immersed in the research specifically in the cancer space on the way we treat cancer today, right?

like There's a lot of money thrown at pharmaceutical medicines, right? That target mutations, but inevitably the cancer will mutate, right? And then it's just hoping that there's another drug that can address that mutation. And there is no, Emphasis based on prevention or lifestyle factors, right? Whether someone is trying to prevent the disease or even just manage it when they have it.

And that's what [00:05:00] really led me into this space because I was like, we need to be advocates of our own health. There's so much that you can do even with the stage 4 cancer diagnosis. So, yeah, I mean, just the focus on precision medicine in terms of understanding that. We are all different and not one thing fits all.

I mean, I've experienced that in terms of trying to pursue different alternative therapies with my mom, right? Because again, in the cancer space, everyone says, you know, this worked for me, mistletoe, hyperbaric, you name it, but it doesn't work for everyone. So yeah, that definitely resonates with me.

But recognizing that everyone is different. I understand that. We can't just say these are the three most important blood tests. I actually had my first, uh, blood work panel done last week with wild health, and I got my results, some of that was very insightful. Um, I didn't previously have certain tests done like APOB, for example.

but with that, if you could only test three markers in a patient, I

Dr. Dawson: Um, wow, that's difficult when I just told you we use millions [00:06:00] of

data points. Um, So, um, yeah. So April B would be. A great one, because it's one singular marker that tells us a lot about your cholesterol and, and obviously that's the number one killer of Americans is cardiovascular disease, and if you have a really high elevated ApoB, that just increases your chances for a lot.

So that's a good one. Um, the other one is, we know kind of the driver all chronic disease, like a big part of that is kind of two things. It's metabolic health, um, and inflammation. So I would A1c, I would probably throw in there, like just a hemoglobin A1c because if, and again, I would have a whole panel of things to look at your insulin resistance normally if I had to pick one, A1c.

great. And then for inflammation, I can certainly like get a CRP, but that changes so acutely up and down that I'm not sure it's the third one that I would add in there. So I think if I was going to add a third one and I could only get three, uh, over [00:07:00] time, um, what I actually may use is kind of an integrator of everything.

And so I, I may actually get a PACE test. So this is a PACE of aging test. And the reason I say that is I picked kind of ApoB and the hemoglobin A1c for metabolic health and kind of cholesterol, because cholesterol has a big part in cardiovascular disease, dementia, everything else. But if there's one integrator of your health, it's um, how fast are you aging?

Like everything affects that and comes together.

Jacqueline: hmm.

Dr. Dawson: So that's one that I would potentially follow because again, if I only had these three and I'm following them over time, I can optimize those first two, but all the other things that go into your health is going to be affected by your pace of aging. So that test specifically, so aging, aging is the number one risk factor for all chronic disease.

Like it dwarfs everything else. It's more than smoking, um, obesity, being sedentary, alcohol, all these things, aging. If you're, if you're, If your age is up, um, there's been these biologic age tests for a long time that have been out there, but I've never been that interested in them because[00:08:00] 

Jacqueline: They're all different. 

Dr. Dawson: well, 

Jacqueline: different results every time, I feel like.

Dr. Dawson: yeah, so most of them are completely useless and junk.

Um, number one, sometimes they're all over the place, like the original. Initial clocks, they, they would be off by four or five years if you do the same test the same day. Um, and even if they're like very good, if you're biologic, if you're chronologically 30 and it tells me you're biologically 26 or 34, I'm still gonna try to optimize you.

The one that I really like. is this, is this one developed by Duke. It's called the pace test. So the reason I like it is it gives you a pace of aging. So like from 0. 8 to 1. 2. And what has been shown is it's very responsive to change and intervention. So, for example, if you get pregnant, that's a physiologic stress that goes up by 20 percent your rate of aging.

It comes back down, you deliver. If you get COVID, or in a car accident, or hip surgery, it goes up, then it comes back down when you get better. So what that allows me to do as a clinician is if someone wants to change their diet, for example, I don't have all their genetics, I don't have all [00:09:00] this other information, and they want to try a carnivore diet, or a vegan diet, or a keto diet.

Um, there's a great study that Stanford put out, just published a few weeks ago, where they looked at omnivore versus vegan diets and they, um, used this pace of aging. And you could see a difference in someone's pace of aging in just eight weeks and switch their diet going up or down. Same thing if someone wants to spend a ton of money on IV stem cells.

Well, how are we going to measure its effectiveness? Let's look at your pace of aging before or after. So it's a really good integrator of everything. Um, and that's why if you finally had three, I may throw that one in there so 

that I could follow 

Jacqueline: That's so interesting. I haven't, yeah, I haven't heard of the pace, so I'm assuming then that you don't necessarily think that the Oura Ring cardiovascular age is all that accurate. I just discovered that about a week ago, it says like your cardiovascular age is, I don't know, minus three years from, uh, my current age, but again, I'm like, how, how accurate could that really be?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah, there's these, there's kind of biologic age tests and like estimates of this all over the place [00:10:00] from just regular lab results, from like questionnaires, from your ordering data, from everything. The only one, really the one that I like that has really tight ICCs, interclass correlations, so it's really tight and precise when you test over time, it's been shown to correlate with morbidity and mortality and really predictive is this PACE test that, that Duke 

Jacqueline: Interesting. Can anyone just take that? Or do you need to have a

Dr. Dawson: No, you can just order it. So, um, Uh, company true diagnostic, uh, is who sells that. And they,

um, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just the pace test. 

Jacqueline: Interesting. Very

Dr. Dawson: They have a, they have a big, they have a big test. It's called the complete has a bunch of different clocks and all kinds of other information. But honestly, it's the pace.

That's what I look at in there.

Jacqueline: How old were you when you first had, uh, your, your biological age tested?

Dr. Dawson: Um, I had it a few years ago. Um, I was probably 39 or 40 the first time I had it tested. Um, I have no idea [00:11:00] and don't remember what the actual age number was. Um, because again, like the only thing I look at is his pace. Cause the other thing is like I, so I, I did emergency medicine for a while. So I was doing these night shifts.

So I was really, increasing, accelerating my aging. So now I feel like I'm doing most things right, but my, I had that, that stuff from the past, I can't do anything about. So what I want to know is like right now, how am I doing? And it's that, that pace of aging right now that I care about and I'm trying to move and I, I actually do those, do the tests like once every one to three months, cause I'm always trying something new, a new

Jacqueline: I was gonna ask how often. Yeah, and that's encouraging to know that you can improve that rate, right? Like it's not, it's not set in stone. And I know another component of wild health is the DNA testing, right? So can you explain a bit how that complements the blood work or provide better insight into like tactical steps to address a condition?

Dr. Dawson: So we were just talking about diet as much kind of omnivore, vegan, keto, all these things. Um, and as you mentioned, like people [00:12:00] sometimes will find what works for them and then they think that this is it. And it's almost like religious wars when people talk about diets, like, cause they think theirs is the best and it makes sense.

Like it works for them. So they think that, It should work for every other human. One of our aha moments with Mike and I when we first started getting into this is we looked at our genetics around food and food sensitivities and what we respond to and what we won't. And he had all of these steps, single nucleotide polymorphisms around saturated fat.

He's very sensitive to it. And I didn't have any of those, but I look to be pretty sensitive to kind of carbohydrates. And so looking at it, it almost looked like we need to be on the exact opposite diets. Like I would do really well with it. ketogenic diet, plenty of animal fats, I'm fine. He needed to be on almost a vegan diet.

And so when we tried this out, it was fascinating. Like, and we did these experiments where for two weeks, we would eat his diet and test our blood before and after, and we'd do these workouts. And I felt like crap and he would destroy me in the workouts and my blood work looked bad. And then we would switch to my diet, like a ketogenic, diet.

And I would kill [00:13:00] him in the workouts and his blood work would look bad. He'd get all the inflammation and everything. And it was such an aha moment of like, we're so bio individual, like we really can tailor things like the diet, uh, to the genetics. If we have these genetics, we can, we can find kind of superfoods and kryptonite foods for us, pulling all those genetics together.

Jacqueline: Are you familiar with MaxGen Labs?

Dr. Dawson: That sounds very familiar. Do they do a genetic

test? They do a DNA, yeah, DNA report. I mean, I have yet to take, um, Wild Health. I'm actually waiting for it to come in the mail. But last year, I did a report with MaxGen. And prior to this conversation, I just kind of revisited some of my results. And I recall reading that it said, I'm very sensitive to saturated fats.

Jacqueline: And it basically said, just avoid them period. So then I started thinking, does that mean I can never enjoy like a grass fed burger again? , so to what extent to, I mean, like, sure, like this information is helpful to know and understand, but I mean, you know, people could be extreme, right?

So how do you take into account, like what to do when you [00:14:00] get that information?

Dr. Dawson: so I'm so glad you asked this question because just to be super clear, I think genetics by themselves are almost useless. Like we have to have the blood work, you have to have the conversation, you have to have everything else. So for, because for example, I was talking about the blood work we got like with Mike and I as well.

Um, if, if we get, we get a hypothesis from the genetics, but let's say for me, for example, I have a FADS2 polymorphism. That means I need more, the active form. of omega 3. I also have a VDR SNP, meaning I probably need more vitamin D. I have a BCMO, probably need more vitamin A. Um, and I have a collagen 5A1 SNP.

So all of these things are needing more collagen protein. So all of these things mean that, uh, the perfect diet, perfect food for me is probably sardines. They have all that omega 3, the collagen protein, the vitamin D, the vitamin A, because all the organs. Um, and if I just looked at my genetics, I would think maybe I need to supplement with all of those things, but I don't.

My levels of all of those are perfect because epigenetically, like what I've done is I eat two cans of sardines every day. That's what will be [00:15:00] my lunch in an hour. And so someone who's already kind of solving these genetic issues with food or other things, like my mother, she had a VDR snip, probably needs more vitamin D.

But then we also need to know what is her vitamin D level before we make a plan. Um, and is she in Florida in the summer or Kentucky in the winter because of the sunlight? And then what will she eat? Like will she eat shiitake mushrooms? Like what are her levels? Do we need a supplement or is it just going to, we're going to be able to just solve it with food?

So all of these things combine, uh, to come up with the plan. So just because like your Maxine report said, you're probably. Uh, have predisposed to be more sensitive to saturated fat. Like we would want to see, like, what is your ApoB level, for example? Is it elevated? If it's not, you're fine. Like, you're not having an issue there.

If you have no inflammation and your ApoB is good, then what you're doing is fine. You wouldn't need to really decrease your saturated fat.

Jacqueline: Right. No, that makes sense. And you mentioned the epigenome and epigenetics is definitely an area that I am [00:16:00] incredibly fascinated with. So for listeners who never even heard about the term epigenetics, what, what is it? What does that mean?

Dr. Dawson: So genetics we've been talking about, and that's like your human operating system, like what are you predisposed to. That only accounts for about 20 percent of your health outcome though. The other 80 percent are epigenetics, so how you turn those genes on and off, what you eat, how you sleep, your stress levels.

All of that, turn these genes, good genes on or off and bad genes on or off. So that is 80 percent of your health, health outcome. And, uh, that's what we work on. That's what we try to do when we find something like my mother has an ApoE4 gene. And my grandmother had dementia. She's two to three times more likely to get dementia.

Well, That's only 20 percent of her potential outcome, focusing on epigenetics and what she eats, her exercise, supplements, all of these things. We're going to prevent her from getting it because we're empowered because of epigenetics.

Jacqueline: Yeah. I love that. And interestingly, too, on the MaxGen [00:17:00] report, it also showed that I had the ApoE4 gene, which at first was alarming, but then recognizing actually it's a data point that, you know, is helpful to me, And I think that if we kind of change this perspective from fear to empowerment, , that changes the game in ultimately what's going to happen with disease progression. So how does that work? Can genes turn on and then turn back off?

Dr. Dawson: Yep, you're doing it right now. So just So for your listeners, you're listening to me and whether my voice is soothing or annoying, I mean, it's causing you to express your genes differently, like surges in, in adrenaline, like this guy's so annoying or like, it's just like relaxing you for whatever reason too.

So everything you do is turn, is turning genes on and off. When you eat, you're turning genes on and off. When you take medicine, you take supplements, all every activity you do. So you're absolutely turning genes. And it shouldn't really say on and off, it's up and down. So what you do is you methylate these genes and so hyper, hypomethylation, we can measure that and see how [00:18:00] much genes are turned up or down.

Jacqueline: Interesting. Here's a question for you for the women who inherit the BRCA gene, right? They're scared they're gonna end up getting breast cancer. There's been a lot of women who just go and Have like double mastectomies just to be preventative. What's your take on that?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah, so it's a really complex and I'll say very personal decision too. If, um, And there's different types of bracket mutations. There's different homogeneous versus heterogeneous and like different types. And so the risks of each are different. So I think for someone who's going through that, it's number one, um, finding out how big of a risk it is and then having a discussion with your provider around your options.

because it's a reasonable option, depending on the level of risk, to just do more intensive monitoring. Like I, I do, um, we frequently with our patients, we use prenuvo. It's a whole body MRI, uh, every so often. [00:19:00] Um, so obviously you could, you could do mammograms or ultrasounds or breast MRI, multiple ways to kind of monitor, but it may just be the increased monitoring.

Um, at the same time, if you just for different people probably have different levels of fear and anxiety around it. And if you feel like the fear and anxiety is, is worse than the thought of not having your breasts and that's like a personal decision that you can make. So it's a, it's getting someone who can accurately describe the risks, accurately describe your options and then you making that personal decision that only you can make is I think a way to approach that.

Jacqueline: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense there's so much new research coming out with with all these discoveries I mean even to I was reading the other day. There is a new discovery of this rare mutation called It's like R 2 51 G. Have you heard of that? That's basically it's co inherited with the a OE four variant and it actually neutralizes the risk that's normally caused by the A [00:20:00] OE four.

So like that obviously sheds light on like what other genetic variants out there can counterbalance some of these inherited variants that we're seeing through DNA testing and like is that just a matter of time, like with future learnings? How do you account for that?

Dr. Dawson: For sure. And I think it's really important when we talk about precision medicine, like I, I think precision medicine is much better than traditional medicine because you get all this data, you can make better decisions, but it's precision that's not perfect medicine. So there's so much we don't know. And like the more we learn, the more or less we don't know.

So while we should take all of the information we have and know and apply it, yeah, we're, we're We're constantly learning more and I think the acceleration of that knowledge is just going to increase as well.

Jacqueline: Speaking of all this knowledge, I heard that you created the world's first AI precision medicine platform that literally takes all of the data to make like a recommendation. How does that even work?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah, so what we did is, um, all of this, like when we look at 700, 000 genes plus all these biomarkers, which have nearly [00:21:00] an infinite amount of results that we could get with them. All the phenotypic death questionnaires. We built a platform that takes all of that and combines it all. Like I gave a very simple example of like these like four or five SNPs that I had.

Meaning like sardines is the perfect food. So we do that for, for an incredible amount of things. So we, we did, yes, we spent tens of millions of dollars on this platform. What I'm really excited about is we actually just, um, put it onto an app. So before we were just using this platform internally for ourselves to make recommendations.

But recently we rolled this out in an app. It's in, it's in the app store now. It's in beta, um, mode, but you can, but someone could download it now where we built it on top of a large language model. So like with Chad GPT, you can ask Chad GPT, give me a seven day meal plan. It's going to spit out a meal plan for you.

Well, if you asked our app, give me a seven day meal plan. It's going to give me one, but according to your genetics, your blood work, your preferences, um, it just a few days ago, it, and it, it Proactively sends you messages, tracking all of your wearable information too. So a few days ago, it sent [00:22:00] me a message and said, Hey, your HRV trends are down quite a bit, you're not sleeping great.

And when your exercise intensity is going up, it looks like you may be overtraining. And when I thought about that, I said, Oh, that's exactly what's going on. I've been traveling. When I get stressed, I actually work out more and I'm getting ready to break and my low back's hurting and my right rotator cuff, which is always injured, is acting up and it's like, awesome.

Then I just. Then I interacted with that. I said, well, like, come up with a workout plan for the next seven days to help me recover. And it knows my goals and preferences. Like right now, um, 

I'm getting ready, I'm getting ready, to climb a mountain, a couple of months called Cotopaxi. So my goals are to lose.

10 pounds without, without losing muscle mass and to improve my pickleball game. It's like, those are my only two goals

Jacqueline: You got to come play with me. It's Pickleball's Hot here in Greenville. I'm a relatively new player, but big fan.

Dr. Dawson: I love it, but it gave me a workout plan to like help my back and shoulder recover, prove the pickleball game. I'm still doing lateral stuff and to like, make sure I'm losing that. Wait and it's, it's really cool. It has all of [00:23:00] that, that information. And I, like actually, um, two days ago I was traveling as well.

Uh, I was giving a talk in Nantucket and I, and I just messaged it. I said, um, what should I have for lunch today? I met, uh, I named the place it's called the Westmore Club in Nantucket and it, um, told me, uh, a restaurant close by, told me exact menu item that would be perfect for my genetics, my blood work and it knew like what I had done that morning.

I did a 30 minute swimming a 30 minute run. It knew how many calories I needed and needed to recover. Um, Just really cool. I get, I get excited talking about it. It reminds me earlier. You said the future, uh, is, is here's precision medicine. There's a quote by someone named William Gibson, who said the future is here.

It's just unevenly distributed. And whenever I'm using that app, I think of that. I'm like, this is the future. Like we need

to get this out to more people. Yeah. 

Jacqueline: just as excited at the potential thought of using it. So it's in beta right now.

Dr. Dawson: It's, it's called Hollis, H O L S stands for holistic. [00:24:00] Um, and we, it's powered by kind of the Wild Hill IP. It's just in the apple.

App store. It's, 

Jacqueline: incredible. Big fan. I'm gonna, I'm gonna definitely check that out. Um, so you mentioned Dr. Matt before about how age is the number one risk factor for basically every disease. based on what you've seen and you've obviously seen a lot between wild health and patients that you've seen, what are the most promising longevity interventions?

So obviously aside from the aesthetics, right? There's so much focus on the aesthetics of anti aging, right? But we, we don't really care about that. We care about what's going on internally. What are some of those interventions?

Dr. Dawson: yeah, I don't really think about the access. I'm never going to be pretty. So I kind of ignore that stuff. The, if you think about like longevity and what has actually been proven to work. So there's one intervention that's been proven across all mammal models to slow down aging the most, and that's calorie restriction.

Um, that kind of sucks though. Like it's the, the joke also that that is like, you're going to live longer, but you're going to feel like you're living in it even longer,

uh, because of [00:25:00] how painful it is. So, but they're also kind of calorie restriction mimetics. So, like rapamycin, um, rapamycin is something that, that I take and a lot of our patients take.

Jacqueline: Yeah. My mom's on that for cancer reasons. 

Interestingly. Yeah. She's been doing a bunch of other off label drugs, but rapamycin is one of them. She's been on metformin.

Dr. Dawson: And both of those, that's the other kind of calorie mimetic is, uh, calorie restriction mimetic is, is Metformin. Like, I used to take it, but with newer data, I don't because of the, it, It definitely increases lifespan for someone who is diabetic. Um, but if you're trying to gain muscle or improve your performance, it can kind of blunt that a little bit.

So we don't use it with our athletes. If you're over 50, probably going to be more benefit than harm. And if you've got to elevate A1C for

sure. So 

those, those are a few. 

Jacqueline: substitutes too for metformin. Like could inositol or like berberine be considered could they have similar effects?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. Berberine acts on the same pathways. It's fine. It's, it's interesting to me, like, um, people just have different [00:26:00] biases. So metformin and berberine, they act on the same pathways. pathways. And so you have some people that are like, well, berberine is more natural. And the taker is like, great, totally fine.

Um, but also because it's not, uh, a drug, it's not regulated. And like, when you look at supplements over the counter, like they can be wildly up or down more or less than what you get. So 

Jacqueline: Yep. 

Dr. Dawson: uh, yeah, I'm fine with either of those, but yeah, I tend to just use metformin because it's a little

more standardized. 

Jacqueline: makes sense. Sorry, but you're saying Serapimicin you take.

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. So, um, the other things, so, and, and if you really want to, like, what's the best data on longevity? So there's something called the ITP, the interventions and treatment, um, uh, uh, uh, trial or program, sorry. Um, it's multi centered. They, they study what longevity drugs work. People can nominate a drug or a molecule and then they'll study it and kind of answer this question in a mouse model.

It's the most robust program that's studying these things. So rapamycin. Okay. It's been shown to work in that trial. The only other things that have been shown to work are, um, A carbose, which is also a diabetic drug similar to metformin, but it just, [00:27:00] uh, you just, you just, it just lowers your glucose. Um, you absorb less.

Um, also canagliflozin, SGL 2 inhibitor. So it's a, not one that people know as much, but I take, uh, canagliflozin, I just take it for my first meal of the day. It's in my, it's actually, it's here, it's in my pocket. I can take it for my, for my lunch. Um, but rapamycin, canagliflozin, I take, um. Uh, those are the main ones.

There's some, some interesting estrogen stuff, but it's sex dependent that I don't really. I don't know if we can talk about it or go into, but those are the ones that worked with the ITP as far as molecules go.

Jacqueline: Interesting. Outside of that, I mean, we're obviously too in an age of all these biohacking tools, right? Do, do any of them even, even really work? What are your thoughts on cold plunges? I mean, sauna obviously has its benefit, but

Dr. Dawson: Yeah.

Jacqueline: like, is it really going to move the needle much?

Dr. Dawson: So, I would say sauna. If sauna was a drug, it would be a multi billion dollar blockbuster drug. It is [00:28:00] incredible for decreasing mortality, dementia, cardiovascular risk, all these things. It's great. I did, I did a hard workout this morning and I did 30 minutes of sauna afterwards. I have a plunge, the commercial kind of cold plunge thing.

Um, I didn't use it this morning because I wanted to maximize my results from the workout, and Sana would do that. Uh, the plunge would decrease my inflammation, but probably blunt the response to the strength workout that I did this morning. So, I use it, I use it more for a couple reasons. One, if I'm doing like a long ruck and then I get something hard the next day, I want to recover more quickly.

I'll use the, the plunge. If I'm more concerned about recovery than maximizing the effect of my workout, I'll use it. When I look at the data on cold, it seems to me like that the most data for cold is, there's not really data on like long, longevity and things like that, but there's really pretty good data on mood.

It really does seem to elevate your mood, um, acutely, maybe chronically as well with more acutely. So that's recovery and mood I think are the, where the, [00:29:00] 

uh, benefit for cold is.

Jacqueline: Interesting. No, I've seen that as well. And what are your thoughts on like PEMF mats?

Dr. Dawson: So, um, PEMF is really interesting in that it's, it's FDA approved for, uh, uh, bone non union healing, and then also for urinary incontinence in women. And the reason I, I mention that is because those are two very different things. Like it doesn't make sense why does it work on these two different things.

And I think it, it speaks to how PEMF, like, I mean, a lot of people would just say it's, you know, for what else, all these things that it's potentially good

for. Yeah, maybe there's something to that. The fact that it's FDA approved there's two very different things. What I've found in my clinical experience is a couple of things.

One, low back pain people seem to do it, like, respond really well to it. Um, there's some interesting study when it studies when it comes to like stroke recovery, maybe dementia. Um, but the biggest one I've noticed too is, prostate. So a lot of women will sit on it for urinary incontinence to help strengthen kind of some pelvic muscles and increase the blood flow and things there.

With men who have had [00:30:00] BPH, when I have them use a mat, sit on it, I use a high power device. Um, they invariably tell me that your urinary frequency at night is a better really quickly, and there's some anecdotal evidence around kind of prostate cancer. So my dad was diagnosed with that about a year and a half ago, and I gave him my device and said, do this 10 minutes a day.

I talked to his urologist and he looked at the evidence I sent him and said, yeah, I think it's probably good to Can't hurt. yeah, 

those are the areas where I would, I would use PEMF.

Jacqueline: Interesting. and thEn last other modality. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on hyperbaric oxygen

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. So working in the emergency department, like we would use a correct option for carbon monoxide poisoning, like, um, yeah, carbon monoxide and burn and wound healing in general. So, um, head injuries, things like that. There's good evidence for, for those things just for recovery in general. Uh, maybe, um, the, the problem when you started getting into like longevity and general wellness and stuff, like there's just not the incentive for people to do the big studies.

So, so don't have great [00:31:00] evidence. It makes sense if it's helping these other things that. Probably there's just kind of a general, general benefit. Um, the one thing that I would say about all these things that you mentioned, like hyperbaric and colons on all these things, like, I do think they're a complete waste of time if you're not optimizing your sleep and your exercise and your, and your diet.

So I love talking about them because they're fun and cool, but I always want to remind people of, of that, like those, like sleep, sleep, sleep, and the exercise. Then, sure, if you've nailed all that, then start stacking these things. Um, and the other thing that I would say about longevity that I, I just, I can't talk about it without mentioning is, um, uh, there was the best study that I know about kind of longevity in general is the Harvard, now I'm blanking on what it's called, Harvard did this study, it's over, it's over, 80 years, thousands of people, um, the Harvard something studying,

um, 

Yeah. 

Jacqueline: slips my mind [00:32:00] too, but I know which one you're referring to.

Dr. Dawson: And what I love about it is they looked at longevity, looked at morbidity, what are the things that affect it most, um, including, uh, happiness and, and fulfillment and things like this, because how can you not talk about those things when you're talking about wellness or when you're talking about longevity and health span?

And they found, sure, smoking, alcohol, like being sedentary, these things have negative impacts. Um, But none of it was close to like the biggest impact of everything they studied was the strength of your social relationships

and your connection. Like it was being lonely, took more years off your life than smoking cigarettes, which takes about a decade off your life.

And so when I talk to people about longevity, I like, if you forget everything I said, like it's the connection.

Jacqueline: Yeah.

Dr. Dawson: And I think it's important even to define the connection. I think it's not just about connection to others, but it's about connection to yourself, to your body, to your food, to [00:33:00] nature, to something bigger than you as well.

Um, and that focus on connection, I think would, would do more than by far, more than any of the molecules or anything else that we've

Jacqueline: true. Yeah. That's a, that's something I'm struggling with now. I work remotely, so it's lonely as you can imagine. So the other day I told my dad, I was like, I'm just going through Greenville, exploring different coffee shops that I've found that just being in a setting where you're around other humans and you have interaction.

It really does change your your mental state and I think that's so underrated and again in an age where we're just we're always on a screen, right? Like it's fake interaction. It's not, it's not truly real. Um, so that's definitely important, but what would you say? I mean, I think you've kind of already mentioned two of them.

What would you say are your core pillars of optimal health? And how do we optimize them?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah, it's so. Yeah. And the way that I think about it too is stacking them as much as I can. So I would say if we set connection aside, because that's just like this metal one that's just [00:34:00] there, it's the most important. But if I had to like lean into kind of the more traditional things, I would say sleep and exercise.

Like those are the two that I think have the biggest impact. I think I used to would have, would have had diet up there, but I actually put it in number three now. Cause I think if you nail those two, like the diet. kind of follows. Like, if you're not sleeping well, and I'll put probably sleep at number one, because if you're not sleeping well, number one, you're not gonna have the energy for the exercise.

Number two, you're gonna probably get injured more often if you're not sleeping well. When it comes to diet, you're gonna make worse food choices. And even if you make good food choices, your body handles it poorly, and your insulin resistance changes with the sleep. So the sleep is critical, like foundational.

Jacqueline: Yeah.

Dr. Dawson: And then the exercise, like if you're, if you're exercising appropriately. Similar things, your mood is up, like better decisions around food, and when you eat the food you're just handling it better with your glucose disposal and all those things. But when I say stacking, what I mean by that is, because everybody knows like those things, what I'll try to do, just to give you an example, you mentioned kind of your work and [00:35:00] connection, a lot of times I'll start my day with, um, I'll have the team over, the local team over, I live in the woods on a couple hundred acres, I've got these hiking trails, and we'll go Yeah, and we'll, we'll, it's, it's, it's great.

Um, we'll go for a hike and I am rucking. I'll usually put like 70 pounds in a backpack. And so I'm connecting to my body. I'm getting a workout. I'm connecting to my coworkers, to other people, like I were foraging. There's a lot of wild foods, so I'll like pick some sometimes cook it afterwards. I'm connecting to.

food and like connecting to all of these things at the same time, getting it together. I think that's the way to really think about your life. Like the biohacking, we're thinking about these individual things all the time, but the more you can bring these themes together, I think that's how you're going to really maximize your healthspan and have the best outcome.

most meaningful life. That's definition of a holistic approach right there. James Clear talks about that habit stacking and I've noticed that's been a game changer too, even just in, morning habits and schedule. Super [00:36:00] interesting. So you touched on the pace aging, uh, test, which I'm definitely going to look into.

Jacqueline: Are there any other tests? or diagnostic tools or technologies that you have your eye on or that seem up and coming from the research you've been doing.

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. So, um, so I'll name a few. So like we do the based on at WildHealth of like the genetics and blood work, um, wearable stuff, into data, um, when it comes to screening, like you mentioned cancer, so we'll do some more advanced cancer screening, cause you mentioned You, I think you mentioned stage 4 cancer earlier, it's, with breast cancer, stage 4 a 20 percent survival.

If you catch it at stage 1, you have 80 percent survival. So, we'll do a couple more advanced cancer screening tests after the genetics in the lab, which is a PRUNUVO, a whole body MRI, and then the GRAIL, a gallery test from GRAIL. Those are great to do on a certain, uh, Um, timeline interval, depending on your age and risk factors.

Um, the other one for the number one killer of Americans is cardiovascular disease. So we use a, an, an AI cardiac CTA called a clearly [00:37:00] scan. And so we'll look at your, your vessels in your heart. And like for someone like you, for example, that maybe you're more sensitive to saturated fat and maybe we get your ApoB back and it's elevated.

And we're

like, okay, what are we going to it is It came back at like 109 which again was very surprising for me because my diet is very clean I work out a ton. So I was just a little taken aback and my LDL is high But I've always had a relatively high cholesterol. So that was that was an eye opener for me But I'm just trying to figure out like do I go from here?

Jacqueline: What do I do?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah, so let's talk about that. It's a good example of how you may use like a CLEARly scan, for example. So, the reason we're concerned about ApoB is because, um, that's, you can lay, start laying down plaque in your cardiac artery. Isn't it leads to heart attacks? Same thing in your brain for a stroke and, um.

Just in general, and it contributes to dementia too,

Jacqueline: could that be as early as like your twenties and thirties 

Dr. Dawson: you could start laying it down, but to lay that down, you have to have two other things. It's not just, if you had high ApoB, it could mean absolutely nothing, but I want to know, like, do you [00:38:00] have endothelial damage to your vessels and do you have inflammation? So we would measure those two things, like with CRP and then there's PL, uh, PLAC2 tests for endothelial damage.

So we can look at those things. So if you're perfectly clean and just your April B. is elevated, you're probably not laying down any plaque. Now, if you really wanted to be, and then maybe we could talk about diet and other injury interventions to get your ApoB down. If it comes down, great. Now, if your ApoB is very stubborn and it stays up, or the CRP or this other test is elevated and we're worried Are you having lay down plaque now?

Because if you are at your young age, 

then we probably need to be more aggressive with 

treating it. 

Jacqueline: And you couple that with the APOE4. Right. And like, it's all, it's, it's related. So that's why I also took a step back and I'm like, right, like, these are all moving pieces and yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. So the way we could really answer that question of are you laying down your plaque is to get it clearly scanned. It's cardiac CTA, it's an AI guided CTA that tells us [00:39:00] not just do you have plaque, but is it soft or hard, which those are different risk factors. And if we got that and you're zero, you're clean, okay, maybe we can, maybe we can just watch this ApoB and just try more natural things and diet for a little bit and see.

With your ApoE4, we're probably are going to be a little more aggressive. But, and then if you, if you do have like, some plaque. Well, at your age, okay, we need to get aggressive now. Like you're not going to have a heart attack or dementia or stroke in the next 20 years, but we're not worried about Jacqueline at, at 40 and 50.

We're worried about you at 90. So if we saw anything on that scan, we would be more aggressive. You may try a medication for the apopoeia even if we can't get it down. You may just go to the more, um, advanced treatments at that

Jacqueline: Yeah. And also, too, in my, uh, consult with one of the health coaches, she said that wild health has tighter ranges, right, than what conventional practices usually use. How do you discern what that range is? Like what population do you base that on?

Dr. Dawson: So [00:40:00] yeah, we want to. for you to not just not have disease, but to be optimal. Like for, for you, for example, like I just mentioned that clearly scan, if we got it and it's got like one or 2 percent plaque, like someone read that and say, that's great. It looks great. Well, no, not when you're 29. I think you said that's not okay.

So, and so what is the right range? We want to get Like optimal as much as possible. But it depends on you and your risk factors, your age. For example, your hemoglobin A1c. Um, if you were like 7, that's completely normal, but we know that gets worse as you age. So if you're there, I might say, Hey, let's see if we can push up to.

4, maybe a little tighter. However, I also have someone who's 71, who I was just talking to the other day. Um, and his hemoglobin AOC was like 8. And we were talking about it, it was like, there's just like, we're going to push on this with diet and other things, but we're not going to do medications because if he's still at 5.

[00:41:00] 7 at 71 years old, this is not as much of a risk. So it depends on the person, your APOE status, um, all of these other things as to like how tight we want these ranges to Yeah. My A1C was 5. 3. I have my blood work 

Jacqueline: now pulled up in front because I'm curious.

But, but at what point should you be concerned with ApoB? I Know like 109, I got the little exclamation, red exclamation, you know, this is high. But, I mean, there's folks out there too, like Peter Attia, who like, is like, your ApoB needs to be like, really, really low, right?

Non realistically low. So, I mean, when you look at that range, I guess my first question is, at what point should you be concerned, and then where does most of the population lie in that range?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. So Peter wants to obliterate a OB and take it down as low as possible. And I would say for like a population basis, that's the right answer. Like the lower it is, the lower your cardiovascular disease risk, however you start to get diminishing returns. So for someone like you as an a, a four, we probably do wanna push it down kind of as low [00:42:00] as we can.

'cause you're in a, in a high risk category. A P four A P four also makes you at high risk for cardiovascular disease. So, um, we do wanna push it. down really hard. However, if someone else is ApoB they don't have ApoE4, maybe they even have a 2 that's like a little bit protective. Like everything else looks good, they're clearly scanned, looks wonderful, and they're like 60 at this point.

Like do I need to obliterate the ApoB? Like I'll take it down as far as I can with diet, but then do I want to add a medication that may have a side 

effect? When, not if like their risk for cardiovascular disease is pushed out to like 90 or 100 anyway. They're probably going to get something else.

So, it's so 

personalized. 

Jacqueline: would that be a statin, typically, to lower that?

Dr. Dawson: That's usually like the, the first line is the statin, but, but there are, um, more advanced things. And so what we do usually, like, if you, if you have this is like statin, certainly is where you can start, but we look at your genetics and say, like, so you see, for example, Mike, when we first were doing this, I've talked about our experience with diet.

He also had experience where he had really high. [00:43:00] cholesterol. And, um, when he saw his doctor, his doctor wanted to put him on a statin. We were a little worried because like you get muscle breakdown, myopathy sometimes, like a small percentage of people. There are side effects. When he went on it, he sure enough, he didn't tolerate it, had that myopathy, the muscle breakdown.

And then we looked at his genetics, he had a SNP that, that made him really high risk for this. And his doctor didn't know, didn't know this. And so we do that. Like we look at that. If you have, if you're really high risk for not tolerating statins. Maybe we use one that's a little better tolerated, maybe it's really low dose.

Maybe we skip straight to something like Repatha, um, uh, which is a, which is a, uh, PC, PCSK9 inhibitor, it's an injection, and it works really well with less side effects we find in our statin. It's really expensive, though, so 

that's the other consideration for something like Repatha.

Jacqueline: Interesting. Wow. So interesting. Okay. So I will, I'll consider that, that, that clearly test at some point,

Dr. Dawson: I think as young, as young as you are, it's worth, um, paying attention to. [00:44:00] First, like looking at the other lab tests, seeing how the a OB changes with diet. But if you mention like your sensitive saturated fats and you have an yeah. and those things, 

it may be difficult to really get that a OB down to the level that you want it to be down at for 

your 80-year-old self.

Jacqueline: Yeah. So interesting. and also to, , how does methylation play a role? Into that as well, especially with high LDL, because I, again, based on my MaxGenLabs report, it's that I also have like the MTHFR mutation, 

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. So with, with methylation, there's a lot of talk about that in general and like Yeah, a lot of people. incredible number of people have like some sort of, because there's different MTHFR genes and variants and stuff. And so most people like have something, um, there. I don't care. What I want to look at is your blood test for it and see how you're actually methylating.

So sure, we'll look at like the MTHFR, MTHFR stuff. Let's look at your blood test. But I'm really more concerned about your homocysteine. Like, how are you doing it? [00:45:00] Because if you have the MTHFR and you're getting tons of B vitamins and other things, you're taking something with creatine, which can tend to help and some other, you know, a lot of choline and stuff, then you're, you may find that your homocysteine level is down a normal level.

And that tells me you're methylating really well. Um, whereas if your homocysteine is not, it's elevated, then maybe we'll talk about the B vitamins and those other things to just go on a supplement, just from the genetic part, I think is probably not the best idea out there. 

Do the blood test as well.

Jacqueline: speaking of blood tests too, so how often should we be retesting? Once we start implementing these changes.

Dr. Dawson: So it depends on what you're retesting. So for example, I mean, you could do a good rule of thumb, like maybe every six months is good for 

people. If you're super healthy, maybe once a year. Um, 

but 

Jacqueline: about for ApoB? 

Dr. Dawson: so 

Jacqueline: changes to diet and lifestyle,

Dr. Dawson: yeah, you could, you could, probably see that within a few months. So if, if, if we're talking about like CRP and inflammation, like I mentioned, that's going to change day to day.

Like you could make a change and [00:46:00] retest that.

So that's usually like three to six months before you get a significant change, it will be after a few months of changes, you would certainly see 

Jacqueline: Okay. All right. Let's get you now. I'll keep you posted. Once I get my DNA report back, got to make a bunch of changes. Um, last few questions for you, Dr. Matt, we're coming up on time. How do you see the future of the U. S. healthcare system? , evolving. , wild health obviously is very innovative in this space. Who else is doing what you're doing? Um, and yeah, how does that, how will that impact, uh, how, how patients are treated in the future?

Dr. Dawson: I think more and more people are taking this. So there's precision medicine, um, the kind of basic level of that is what a lot of people call functional medicine, kind of what we call, our precision part just goes a little deeper in the genetics and epigenetics and those type of things. But I see more and more people, physicians, and individuals realizing that the traditional care just doesn't work good [00:47:00] enough.

Like it's, it's great if you get in a car accident or you need surgery, you have appendicitis or something like that, but for chronic illnesses, which is what is killing most of us and making most of us sick, it's not working. So more and more people are doing it and demanding it. The patients want it. The physicians, um, physicians didn't, get into medicine, not to help people, not to make them better.

They're just stuck in this system that's difficult. So, um, how long before like the system kind of changes? I don't know. I've been shocked at how intransigent the system is and how hard it is to change it. But I got to believe, like I'm an optimist at heart. I've got to believe that just with so many people wanting to do it on both sides, doctors and patients, that there's going to be solutions that come out and we'll start to see some changes in the future.

Jacqueline: Yeah. No, completely agree. What, what are your long term goals for wild health?

Dr. Dawson: Um, so. We've published data now showing like our outcomes are incredible. Like it really, like this works. [00:48:00] What always bothered me though, is the cost. Not everyone can afford it. All the testing and optimization, everything else is expensive. My long term goal is to make it accessible to anyone and everyone.

That's the point of the app that I mentioned. So the app. It doesn't require a doctor and a health coach, which is just, it's great to have a person helping you and holding your hand, but not everyone can afford it. So we need something that is, um, and the large language models have made that possible.

Like my interaction with it. It's not, it's not a actual person, not a doctor and health coach, but it gives me incredible information. And it. And it knows these millions of data points. It knows everything about my history. The limitation of that is like, we can't give medical advice. Like it can't have AI give medicine, but 90 percent of the outcome is, is, is the lifestyle stuff we're talking about, sleep and exercise and nutrition, and it can, uh, give recommendations on those.

So that's my goal. This is for this app to like make this accessible. and attainable for, for everyone [00:49:00] and really to spread it everywhere.

Jacqueline: Yeah. I love that. Well, again, Dr. Matt, I'm a huge fan of you and your work in wild health. I'm super excited to share more about it, uh, with my followers, but where can they find you, , and learn more about wild health?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah. And just wildhealth. com. I think everything's there. So if you want to sign up to be a patient, you can do it there. Um, we have a podcast, wild health podcast. I'm sure there's a link on the website to that. Um, we have kind of a, an automated CME training program for like health coaches and doctors, if they will learn more about precision medicine.

Um, I'm so old, I can't remember any of our, uh, social media stuff, but I bet all of that is on website as well. Yeah.

Jacqueline: I'll be linking all of that. Awesome. And my last question for you, and this is my favorite one to ask, and that is what does being well and strong mean to you?

Dr. Dawson: Yeah, being well and strong. I think it's also probably how to find health. It's like, it's being able to do what you want to do with your body and mind. That's it. So I think it's so personal to everyone. Um, [00:50:00] whether you're a 30 year old trying to climb Mount Everest or an 80 year old who wants to dance at their granddaughter's wedding, that's what, that's what it means to be, being able to do what you want with your mind and body.

Jacqueline: I love that. Beautiful. Well, Dr. Matt, thank you again so much for your time. Super excited to share this and yeah, I'll have to have you back on. There's just so much to discuss. Awesome.

Dr. Dawson: Thanks. It was a lot of fun.


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