[00:00:01] Luke: So you hit a health wall when you were about 38. I'd like to hear about what contributed to that and what you found out. Because I find that people that are really committed to helping people in the health space often have some origin story that involve them reaching a place that got scary and force them to make changes or start to research outside of the box.

[00:00:27] Kashif: That's the classic functional medicine story. Nobody could help me. I help myself, and here, world needs to know. So yeah, I believed I was sick because me and my business partner who worked together, we drove to work together, lived on the same street. We're the same age, same ethnic background. We ate lunch together. We ate dinner together because we worked so hard.

[00:00:49] I had eczema to the point where I couldn't open my eye. It was sealed shut from inflammation, my left eye. Psoriasis, gut issues, depression. Didn't want to go to work on some days. And what really sent me to the doctor was migraines. That was the thing that I couldn't fight through. Just debilitating.

[00:01:06] So I believed when I was told you have these things, that it was true because why didn't he have them? We had the same mirror life. We ate the same food. We did the same thing. But it didn't add up because I had never been sick before. All of a sudden, this serendipity, all this stuff all at once.

[00:01:23] So that drove me to ask the question, what did I do? What did I eat? What did I touch or breathe? Or who's around me? And that was the first day I realized that doctors don't do that. No fault of their own. Their training is diagnose and prescribe.

[00:01:37] And I was asking, why? Different question. So that sent me down a rabbit hole of functional medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy. Eventually landed on genetics, and discovered some pretty big aha moments. Yeah.

[00:01:52] Luke: What do our genes tell us about things like fitness that's good for us, supplements that are good for us, different foods? When I did your DNA test a couple of years ago, it was very spot on, but also there were things in it that I thought, "Hmm, I may be approaching health in the wrong way."

[00:02:15] For me, I think the individuality is often missing from the realm biohacking and alternative medicine. It's like people hop on these trends and maybe those trends might be good for the people that were in the study, but they're not necessarily good for you.

[00:02:32] Kashif: So that bio-individual nature of every decision is where there's always a debate. Is this good? It's amazing. Is this good? This can give you cancer. Literally, you'll have that level of extreme for even something as simple as NAD. So maybe I'll use that as an example. And yes to fitness, yes to diet.

[00:02:48] We can talk about all that. But this gap filling of where's the debate, where's the disparity, right? So you take something like NAD, which is-- whether it's a peptide, a capsule, an IV, the thinking is this should work for everybody. And then there's a whole community of scientists over here saying, "Don't do it. It'll give you cancer."

[00:03:10] So how do you have such a big gap? There's a gene pathway called FOXO3 that's responsible for cellular regeneration. So as we're sitting here, there's skin cells that are becoming senescent, mutating and dying off, and they're being replaced with healthy new cells. So this process is consistent, continual all the time.

[00:03:29] The efficacy of that gene determines the efficacy of the drop. So the slow version of the gene, you regenerate slow. You're aging potentially a little faster. Medium, good version of the gene, you're doing a better job. So somebody with the ideal version of the gene literally is aging slower because they're regenerating faster.

[00:03:46] So if you have the bad version of the gene, go take some NAD. It might be the exact fuel that makes you feel so incredible, because cellular health is already a genetic sore point for you. If you had the good version of the gene, add the rocket fuel that you didn't need because maybe there's some other priority hormonally, neurochemically, who knows what your genes might say.

[00:04:07] The byproduct of excess NAD in your body is glutamine. The two things that fuel cancer growth are sugar and glutamine. And so you do have the person that says, "This is the one thing that made me feel energized, awake. My libido's on fire, my skin looks good."

[00:04:23] And then you have this scientist over here saying this is causes cancer. And they're both true. And using an extreme to paint a picture of in the middle is a bio individual person that's going to react different to the environment, nutrition, and lifestyle-- choice. So genetics aren't about, here's the gene, good luck.

[00:04:38] It's more about here's who you are biologically. Here's the jobs that are not working well. Here's the things you actually need to work on. And by the way, all this stuff is a waste of your money, right?

[00:04:48] Luke: Perfect. Explain the difference between genetics and epigenetics.

[00:04:53] Kashif: So you're born with a human instruction manual that is in every cell. 50 trillion cells all contain this book, and the kidney cell reads the kidney page, so it knows how to do a kidney job. Heart cell reads a heart page, and so on. So every single biological process is driven by an instruction on how to do the job.

[00:05:11] That's your DNA. That's permanent. So you're born with it. You die with it. And that's the really cool thing about understanding it, is that once you know, you know. It's not retesting. It's not being told. It's being taught. You're learning about yourself.

[00:05:24] Epigenetics, there's two ways to look at it. The very disease centric way of thinking, which is how most medical research is done, is that genes don't matter until they're turned on. Meaning this gene equals a rare cancer, and you might do something that causes it to turn on. Now it makes a difference. But until that state, doesn't matter.

[00:05:44] That is a small cohort of the problems we have. Most concerns are chronic. They're not a switch that turns on. Alzheimer's, diabetes, etc., are developed over time from choices that create inflammation.

[00:05:59] Those genes are functional, and the way we think about epigenetics there isn't on or off. It's more like a volume. It's more like a-- if I have genes that don't allow me to make enough estrogen, for example, and I decide to eat a certain food or smell a certain chemical, that gene might start firing a little harder.

[00:06:21] So that gives you day-to-day control. And the epigenic belief around on or off is, again, coming from an outdated way of thinking about how genes equal disease. I think the empowerment is that once you know what's broken, you can turn it on to the high volume that you wished you had because now we know what the supplements and tools and tricks are that actually turn the dials on volume.

[00:06:42] Luke: I brought that up because I remember some years ago certain women were electing to have mastectomies because breast cancer ran in their family. And this is before I even understood anything. And I still understand very little about genetics, but I remember thinking, if your grandmother had breast cancer, she was living a completely different life than you're living.

[00:07:12] I thought, "Well, you could make choices that are going to be preventative regardless of what your genes say." So do you ever see any case where there is a cause for alarm because something "runs" in the family?

[00:07:26] Kashif: So the outcome can run in the family based on broken biology, but it's not a prescription or propensity. It still has to be cost. And in between those two things are the choices, environment, nutrition, lifestyle. And the way we're taught to think about disease-- and breast cancer was the first thing I ever studied, by the way.

[00:07:47] I had all this genetic data and research and put all these pieces together, heal myself. It was like, "I got to apply this to bigger problems than just myself." And I partnered with this clinic in Toronto that had 8,000 patients. 80% of them were second, third, fourth, out of breast cancer. So recurring breast cancer.

[00:08:03] And my proposal was, let me figure out why. You're good at the what. Let me do the why part. So I had to tell a lot of those women that the hormone replacement therapy they were taking caused their breast cancer. But I don't believe that hormone replacement therapy causes breast cancer.

[00:08:19] I think the wrong prescription on the wrong profile equals inflammation. The same woman could have done it a different way. So taking a step back, what we're told is the BRCA gene, what you're talking about, the Angelina Jolie effect. She was told, "You have the BRCA gene. Go cut your breasts off." And she did.

[00:08:41] Young women are now being told, cut your fallopian tubes out to avoid ovarian cancer because of this gene. And if you dig in and ask Angelina Jolie's doctor, what does the BRCA gene do? Why does it cause cancer? He can't answer the question because it's not true. So the BRCA gene is a tumor suppressor.

[00:08:59] What we're looking for is what version of the gene? And if you have the bad version, you don't do a good job of recovery, repair, suppression. Nowhere in there did it cause cancer. So the alarmist, go cut your boobs off, is just profit. The real question should be, what caused the inflammation for which the BRCA now needs to go do the repair job?

[00:09:21] And we now know, but it's not being told to women. So now the second part I'm going to tell you is the empowerment where if it's in your family, it doesn't have to be you. It was in your family because you didn't know this. Now you know this. So this is one example.

[00:09:35] The women that I told that your hormones cause the cancer, there's a gene called CYP 1981 that's responsible for what we call aromatization, so conversion of testosterone to progesterone. Whether you're a man or woman, progesterone converts to testosterone, converts to estrogen. There's genes that determine how much you fill each bucket. So what degree do you do that job?

[00:09:54] If you are highly effective in the CYP 1981 gene, you're making way too much estrogen, and you're referred to as estrogen dominant. And there was a purpose for that. That was good for going back to your question of exercise. It gives you muscle mass strength. It's meant for like agricultural genetics.

[00:10:08] You're lifting heavy things. Women don't do that so much anymore. Estrogen dominant, and you're not using the hormone. It's now lingering causing inflammation. Now, after that, there's two more steps. What we don't get told is after you make the estrogen, there's metabolites of estrogen, 2-hydroxy, 4-hydroxy, and 16-hydroxy.

[00:10:25] They're the net result of hormone synthesis. Two is good. It's the stuff that women think they're doing to themselves when they take hormones. Brain health, bone health, heart health. Four and 16 cause inflammation. So if you're genetically estrogen dominant and genetically going down into the four and 16 pathway, you're now at dominant in a toxic version.

[00:10:48] Third step, you do have innate detox pathways that are, again, genetically driven. Glutathione pathway, methylation pathway, gluconation pathway. These are pathways that people already work on that once again may not be working genetically. So you might have the trifecta of all this stuff equals I now make an inflammatory toxin that's accumulating in my body every month.

[00:11:09] Fast forward to menopause, no more period, primary path of removal of that toxin, and now it starts to accumulate even more. And the body, understanding that this is inflammatory nature, wants to keep it far away from the organ. So it puts it in your tendons, your ligaments, which is why you see a lot of frozen shoulder, back pain, for first, second year of menopause.

[00:11:31] But it also puts it into your fat because that's deemed a safe zone. And where do women have fat? This is one of the big areas. Now, this monthly accumulation right here, milk ducks, milk glands causing inflammation, they weren't supposed to be next to a toxin. And on top of this story, you now add the wrong hormone replacement therapy, which may fuel this pathway.

[00:11:55] You can take estradiol, estriol, estrone. There's lots of different things you can take. Not all of them go into that bucket. And a woman that blindly took the wrong form that filled the wrong bucket, who's already genetically wired like this now overwhelms the amount of inflammation. A little bit of inflammation is good.

[00:12:11] Why would the body even have these options? Because a little bit of inflammation to the utero wall was good. Build it back better, more resilient, implant an embryo. It was actually meant to benefit you. It was not meant to be in a context where you added more on top or you live in a hormone-disrupting environment.

[00:12:25] So now you know this. Test any female child and you already know how she's wired, and you could already say, "Here's the exact habits that would create--" why does the birth control pill box say this could cause stroke? Not that will, but it can. Because if you're wired like this, it will. But if you're wired another way, it won't.

[00:12:43] Now you can start to make those choices in an environment, nutrition, lifestyle, that are empowering in your control as opposed to, I had the BRCA gene. I'm going to cut my breasts off.

[00:12:51] Luke: Wow. See, it seems like one would really be shooting in the dark to try and live a healthy lifestyle without this kind of information.

[00:13:02] Kashif: Yeah. So there isn't a choice that we can discuss today that can't be filtered through the genome to personalize. And there isn't a chronic disease that we can talk about and reverse engineer in this way to no cause and source. That's the work that I did for years. I did three years. I studied 7,000 people one by one by one, to understand both people that were healthy-- and this is what's missing from healthcare research.

[00:13:27] Medical research doesn't study healthy people and ask them, why didn't you get sick? I did both. I took the people with the bad genes that got the disease, figured out what got them there, and the people that had the bad genes that didn't get the disease. What did you do right? And that left me with this incredible database that reversed engineers disease. Yeah.

[00:13:45] Luke: Wow. Would a woman who's thinking about getting breast implants, which I strongly don't recommend for a number of reasons-- but to me this might speak to why some women seem to do okay with it and others have so many problems.

[00:14:05] Kashif: Yeah, we can predict. If I have your DNA, I can tell you how sick you're going to get from implants. The body responds by building a capsule, and we believe, and most doctors don't understand this yet either, that capsule protects your body from the-- but it's not. It's permeable. It's only about 25%, let's say, non-permeable.

[00:14:22] So a lot gets through. Then there's microbial activity. There's bacteria. So I actually did a research project right here in Austin with a plastic surgeon here that does a lot of explants. And we not only sequenced the DNA of the women, but we also sequenced the microbial activity on the actual explant that got removed to see what was in there, what pathogens, what mold, etc. And it blew our minds how much was going on.

[00:14:41] But now you can clearly determine the detox pathways for whom you're going to have a bad outcome. And also if you do decide to explant or remove it, some women still don't fully recover. So there's other pathways that need to be worked on post-explant to get to the optimal recovery.

[00:15:01] And now when you get into that, you start to see the pattern where it's the same broken pathways, whether you're looking at fibromyalgia, whether you're looking at breast cancer, whether you're looking at breast implant illness. It's the same central biological failures that are like the hub of all these spokes of all these diseases.

[00:15:17] Luke: I'm imagining issues like fibroids and breast cysts and things like this probably have a lot to do with that too, the down the downstream mismatch of hormones for your genes and so on.

[00:15:31] Kashif: Yeah. I would say in all the work that I've done, the women's hormone health space is the most broken part of healthcare.

[00:15:38] Luke: Really?

[00:15:39] Kashif: Oh, yeah. It's absurd. It's like, talk to any woman. The medical experience is gaslighting and blaming. For a woman. It's like menopause is supposed to suck. What am I supposed to tell you? And the reality is the gray nature of how hormones are dealt with is reacting to symptoms. It's very difficult.

[00:16:00] But if you look at it genetically, it's black and white. You know exactly what your body's making, you know how you bind it, how you make it, how you clear it, and then you know which part of that cascade is broken and where to actually intervene.

[00:16:12] Everybody doesn't need the same answer. I was dealing with a lady who was taking hormone replacement therapy once again, and it made her feel absolutely horrible. And so you start to see that it's not just about, I added something to your body and then you have this.

[00:16:31] The biology of it, there's a receptor that needs to use that and get it into the tissue. And genetically some people don't make the receptors that well. And then you flood them with a substance that in a certain dose is highly beneficial and another dose creates inflammation. And it literally led to the waking because the body's trying to create fat as pockets to hide this stuff, only because one gene, the receptor wasn't working.

[00:16:51] So we know there's certain supplements that will upregulate that gene and all of a sudden the treatment works. So is there something right or wrong with a treatment that's never ending debate? Or is there one bio individual anomaly that for her it didn't work?

[00:17:04] Luke: Are there any ethnicities that are generally more robust in terms of their genetics? I'm a Euro-- people ask me, "What's your nationality?" I go, "That's 15 things." I've always had this intuitive feeling that, and this is-- I don't know how to say this and be racially sensitive, but I feel like pure-blooded people for some reason, to me, just intuitively feel more robust.

[00:17:35] Whether that's someone from Japan or somewhere in Africa or wherever. It's like, I don't know. You just look at the physiology or the overall performance of a person, and it seems like people that have been closer to their indigenous ancestry and spent less generations on the slave grain diet, seem to just be stronger and healthier to me. Have you observed anything in terms of people's bloodline and how strong they are and resilient and things like that?

[00:18:14] Kashif: There's a few interesting things that you're making me think of. One is that I would not say there's one particular ethnicity. I would say that within the ethnicities, that when you stick to your ancestral habits, that's what you're designed to thrive in. So take for example, we found that Chinese people-- in China, there's really two ethnicities.

[00:18:38] You picture there's a larger, more estrogenized-- you see the larger Mongolian-style head. And then there's a very thin, very androgenized-- those are the two ethnicities that make up Chinese people. So the more thinner frame, there was no cancer. So you would think like, do these people have some incredible anti-cancer gene or something?

[00:18:56] Then fast forward that same group, there's been a 400% spike in breast cancer all of a sudden in the last decade or so. What's going on here? So it used to be that culturally, you go anywhere in China and you're served green tea. And green tea has a potent antioxidant called EGCG, which will fight cancer.

[00:19:16] And if you're drinking it all day long, what happens is our genes-- there's no evidence of evolution in humans, but there is evidence of epigenetic expression being passed on to the lineage. So the things that you did, your children are now capable of that, but they also don't have the defense against the things you didn't need defense for.

[00:19:35] Or at least the volume is turned down. So if it's anticipated that you're getting ECG externally, then you lose some of your detox support, and then all of a sudden it's like all the meetings are no longer the teahouse or at McDonald's. There was just a flip. All of a sudden there was a flip.

[00:19:54] And you remove this cultural phenomenon of multiple times a day EGCG and breast cancer goes through the roof. So every ethnicity has a superpower, which also can be a kryptonite in the wrong context. And that's the oddball thing about it.

[00:20:08] Luke: Right.

[00:20:09] Kashif: The other thing we see about what you said that you made me think of is for the people left, that assimilated, that moved, there's a reason. And for the people who stayed behind that stayed in the habits and call it, the motivation, the drive, it wasn't there. So the stress level, the trauma level, the anxiety level, the person that left that came here is different.

[00:20:33] One of the key things you'll give your children is the epigenetic expression of trauma and stress, because your body takes trauma as a highly protective mechanism against loss of life. Doesn't know why you're so stressed. Doesn't know how you feel. We see that this expression of trauma specifically gets passed on for seven generations. And I would tell you that the number one contributor to the expression of disease causing genes is negative emotion.

[00:21:06] Luke: Wow.

[00:21:06] Kashif: Yeah. The things that actually create those genes that equal cancer, that equal a disease, negative emotions are a number one way to turn those on. The number one way to turn off negative disease-causing genes and induce longevity genes is positive emotion.

[00:21:21] It's literally the most powerful thing you could do. When you were talking about it, you made me think of the phenomenon of who actually leaves? Who moves and what is their lifestyle like and the stress they went through and the pressure, whatever? And then you start to see this fragility that gets passed on, right?

[00:21:35] Luke: Right.

[00:21:35] Kashif: Yeah.

[00:21:36] Luke: Another thing with that that's interesting to me is eye color and the amount of melanin in your skin. It's like when you look at dark-skinned people that came from the equator and they move to Scandinavia, they don't do so well. You know what I mean? And you take someone from Scandinavia and throw them in Brazil or whatever, they can't handle the sun.

[00:22:00] I'm such a sun fanatic and light fanatic. I personally really thrive in the more sun I get, the better I feel. I don't burn. I could sit out in the yard naked in Texas all day long and just feel great. How much do you think the genes matching geography matters?

[00:22:25] Kashif: It matters a lot. So I'm going to tell you a story about my niece, and she is a reason I went from, I was sick, to, I started researching into my dining room table literally PhDs, doctors at my dining room table without any intention. I just so enthused about what I was learning that it's like I got to build something here.

[00:22:43] She's the reason why I went from, I'm no longer researching. The world needs to know. Then I started going out to events and podcasts and whatever. So she lives with my mom and my sister. Her dad passed away when she was young. My mom called saying she can't breathe. I was like, "She's never been sick. Why can't she breathe?"

[00:23:03] So I go over there and I call my friend who's a pediatrician, and she was in her early teens. He said, "It looks like an anxiety attack." I said, "Okay, what do we do?" He said, "If it happens again, let me know." It's over. She's breathing now.

[00:23:16] So it did happen again. The second time she fell over and she hit a table that actually looked very similar to this one, a nice wooden table, and my mom thought she broke her leg because she couldn't walk. She passed out, hit this table. So I took her, called my pediatrician friend to a hospital.

[00:23:32] Every blood test, everything you could do, they said, there's nothing wrong. Blood work, everything's fine. But if it happens again, let us know. I knew what that meant. That meant if it happens again, she's getting diagnosed with anxiety conditions and she's going to be taking medications. And if you don't give it to her as a guardian, you're going to be in trouble.

[00:23:50] This was when I was doing that research, so 7,000 people. Early, early days. And so I said, I also got to figure this out, but I didn't. I went back to work and got busy. So it happened again. This time my mom called me bawling in tears saying, your niece has run away from home. She left a note saying, the exact words, I can't take it anymore. I'm leaving.

[00:24:13] So I get over there and I know her. She's like, running away from home just means going down the street because that's how innocent she is. And so I literally found her two blocks down the street, just like, what's next?

[00:24:25] SO I asked her, "What's going on? Is it a bullying teacher, school pressure, whatever?" And she didn't know. She was trying to leave the feeling of that space. Didn't change anything. Still felt the same.

[00:24:38] So in that moment, I told my office, "Email me her DNA report." And I wasn't looking for anxiety. And this is never the way to use genetics, which is where I think medicine has failed. It's like the anxiety gene, the depression gene. That's not the way. The way is, "What biology is broken combined with her context and habit, and how does that equal this net result?" So I just looked for the red flags.

[00:24:59] And the first thing I saw is her hormone cascade. So right before the period is when hormones are at their lowest because you're just getting ready to remove everything, right? So I saw that she went into a much deeper valley that her hormone cascade just wasn't producing enough, wasn't binding enough, everything was falling apart. So I asked my mom, "Was it right before the period?" She said, "Yeah. You know what?"

[00:25:19] Texting her while I'm sitting in the car with my knee, she said, "It's right before the period is when she had the anxiety attack three months in a row." I said, "Aha." So it happened on that day. But why now? Because she had been having her period for two years. So this happened during a time that you enjoyed, called peak COVID. And this is in Toronto in the winter. She hadn't been outside in five months.

[00:25:43] Luke: Oh, wow.

[00:25:45] Kashif: Toronto had the world's longest lockdown, by the way.

[00:25:47] Luke: Really?

[00:25:48] Kashif: Yeah, yeah. I don't know why, but the testing of communism. I don't want you want to call it. But yeah, so we had the world's longest lockdown. She hadn't been outside. We all felt it was normal. Nobody noticed after a while. I was able to move around because I was in the healthcare business.

[00:26:01] I was able to just have special rights to go do things right. So I then looked at her Vitamin D genetics, and Vitamin D has three steps. There's a gene called CYP2R1 that takes the D2 from the sun and converts it to the active form called D3.

[00:26:17] Then there's a gene called VDBP that takes that activated form and actually transports it to the cell where you need it. You don't need it in your blood. You need it actually in the cell doing its job. Then there's a gene called VDR that makes a receptor that grabs it and brings it into the cell. Now the job is done.

[00:26:33] When you go to your doctor, they tell you how much is in your blood. They don't know what's intracellular. They'd only look at step one. So when I looked at her genes, that first step, she was doing an okay job. So no doctor ever said her vitamin D was low, but the second two steps, she had the worst genes possible.

[00:26:50] So didn't transport, didn't bind. So she was designed genetically to be in the sun all day long. She was designed to mitigate an overdose, which leads to calcification and plaque. It's not good to have too much vitamin D. There's such thing as vitamin D toxicity. So she was designed for what her ancestors did, be out all day. So that was step two.

[00:27:09] Luke: What nationality are you guys?

[00:27:11] Kashif: We're like your European modern, middle Eastern [Inaudible]. So we're a mix of [Inaudible], Persian, Turkish, Kashmir, Northern India, a whole blend of that stuff. If you look at all the grandparents.

[00:27:22] Luke: But desert people, basically.

[00:27:24] Kashif: Yeah. And so now I put these two things together. So it made sense why on this day, hormones-- it made sense why in this context, zero vitamin D, she hadn't been outside. But why did it do this? Why anxiety versus something else? So I looked at her neurochemical genetics. So dopamine powers satisfaction. It powers pleasure. Enjoy some food. It also powers achievement, reward, achieve something.

[00:27:50] Both are ahead of satisfaction. The genetics of dopamine are you anticipates. You smell the tasty food. It starts coming. Then you bite into it. There's the euphoria. And then you're done. Then there's the movements and clearance of the dopamine to get you back to your baseline state.

[00:28:06] So DRD2, the gene determines how many dopamine receptors in your brain. Therefore, to what level of intensity did you feel that anticipation and euphoria. Then there's clearance genes, MAO and COMT, which by the way, we have to talk about yours because there's some monkey business going on there, which, how quickly did it get cleared, and therefore the duration of that pleasure.

[00:28:28] So she had the lowest possible version of the DRD2 gene, so couldn't feel the intensity, and the fastest possible version of the MAO and the COMT. So the removal was ultra rapid. So she was wired for depression. She was wired for anxiety, can't get satisfied. But this had an intention, a purpose, which every neurochemical failure actually had a superpower behind it, which is she's wired for what we call reward-seeking behavior, warrior genetics.

[00:28:54] I will lead the tribe. I will go do. I don't think I do. And if you look at my ancestors, that's what they did. They were warriors. So now this thing where she was already lingering on chronic anxiety, but she was using it in schooling as reward-seeking behavior, she was performing well.

[00:29:10] So she channeled it the right way. Perfect storm on that day, three months in a row. So all I did was give her vitamin D three times a day. Because I said, "You're genetically wired to be outside all day, but you're in Toronto. Can't do that. Let me mimic that. Three doses of vitamin D a day, and let me give you some L-theanine to boost your dopamine levels." That's it. That's all we did. Next month, it didn't happen. She's now 18 years old going to university. It never happened again.

[00:29:37] Luke: Wow.

[00:29:39] Kashif: If I didn't know this, she'd probably still be on an anxiety pill right now.

[00:29:42] Luke: Yeah, yeah. That's crazy.

[00:29:44] Kashif: Yeah. And then I started to dig, and I found that 30% of teenage girls in the United States have considered suicide. 30%, because of their hormones being messed with their neurochemicals. And then the stimulus with social media, etc. That's what made me go out and start talking to the world.

[00:30:01] Luke: Wow. That's powerful.

[00:30:03] Kashif: Yeah.

[00:30:03] Luke: That makes me think of something I have often contemplated, and that is in the realm of addiction, alcoholism, drug addiction, and so on. There's a school of thought that it's like hereditary. Because again, it runs in the family, I think. I can think of very few people in my family line as far as I can go back that weren't alcoholics.

[00:30:26] And so for many reasons, that ended up being the path for me. Thankfully, it's been 29 years since I got off that train, but some people think it's more about the genetics and then others more about the level of trauma and things like that.

[00:30:45] In my case, there was a convergence of both of those things. But I can't help but think when it comes to addiction in general, that genes, the way you describe them, must have a lot to do with someone's propensity. I have two brothers. I've talked about them before and hopefully you guys don't mind if you ever hear this, but they're close in age.

[00:31:08] They're my half-brothers. They have the same mom and dad, same divorce, same level of stress or trauma. And one of them took the path that I did and one is never been interested in altering his state whatsoever. And I've looked at them like, that's weird. Same parents, very similar life experience, and one is very prone to addiction, and one, you couldn't get him addicted if you tried.

[00:31:34] Kashif: Yeah. So two parents, the bit of a Russian roulette, what did they get genetically? So this is why I said the dopamine pathway, yours, something stood out there. So I didn't know that about you, but it was pretty clear that you're wired for addiction.

[00:31:48] Luke: Really?

[00:31:48] Kashif: Yeah. And that's the truth why I pointed that out. So why?

[00:31:52] Luke: As I sit here with my nicotine and coffee.

[00:31:57] Kashif: Yeah. Now, when we the word addiction, people think of all substance abuse as addiction. Breaking it down, addiction means I need it every day on time where I get frustrated. Everything else is prioritized around this priority. That's addiction. But that's not all substance abuse.

[00:32:15] There's also binging. Binging is, I don't need it, but when I get it, I can't stop. And it also has to be specific. Addiction is give me whatever you got. I'll take it. I just need the hit. Then there's coping mechanism. That's not binging and that's not addiction. That's when I'm triggered, I need to cope.

[00:32:31] My nervous system can't handle this, so I need to escape-- escapism. And there's more. But those are the three big ones. So what's going on with you? There's a gene called MAO, and it is what breaks your dopamine down. So once you're done with reward-seeking behavior, it's the next step to the metabolism of dopamine. And there's a version of it called the GG version, which was referred to as serial killer genetics. And that's what you have.

[00:32:57] Luke: Great.

[00:32:57] Kashif: Yeah. Doesn't mean it's a career path, but--

[00:33:01] Luke: I hope not. I could barely kill a cockroach.

[00:33:03] Kashif: Yeah. So why is it that every serial killer you meet, literally every serial killer, has this profile? But you also meet highly successful entrepreneurs. You also meet pro athletes and celebrities that have this. Why? The people that took the risk. Because whatever you did yesterday is not enough. You need to do a bigger, better version of it, and it's never enough.

[00:33:21] And the remorse isn't felt. It's like I'm always thinking about the next step. My brain is moving so quick. Give me the bullet notes. That's one attribute which leads to, I need the pleasure on time, or I get frustrated. Or I need the reward on time. And look at the incredible work you're doing.

[00:33:38] You're getting your hit, but you're getting it from reward, achievement as opposed to pleasure. The brain doesn't need both. And in fact, reward is far more satisfying for the brain. It just pleasures more instant gratification. It's easier to get the dopamine hit. This takes longer, but it's more powerful. You need once you get this.

[00:33:52] Luke: That's interesting.

[00:33:53] Kashif: Yeah. So that's one attribute to what's going on with you. The second, the BDNF, brain drive neurotropic factor. This gene drives neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to physically develops itself. And when you learn a new skill, adopt a new belief, there's neurogenesis. There's new neurons produced to give you the physical hardware to process that new information.

[00:34:17] So you do this with a bit of a lag time, a little slower. It sounds like bad brain. But we often find the people that seem to be the most intelligent person in the room, the subject matter expert, are wired that way. When your brain struggles with neuroplasticity, it prioritizes the existing pathways and you become an expert in that. But you're not really doing the jack of all trades, spider web-type brain development.

[00:34:44] So specialist versus generalist. But what this also means, because your brain struggles with neuroplasticity, the things that you experience, because they take longer to process, feel like they have more weight. They feel heavier. Drama-queen response. Before we started adjusting and moving and the plant stuff.

[00:35:05] It means something. Somebody else maybe didn't notice. So that weight is the trigger for needing the coping. And when you find the tool, it's very easy to get addicted. So the combination leads to that outcome. But the exact same combination is also your superpower. I'm going to do deep dive, incredible work.

[00:35:24] I'm going to do these incredible interviews, learn all this stuff, and I'm going to get my satisfaction from the work I did. So it was a gift that was meant to drive an outcome that in the wrong context can lead to addiction.

[00:35:37] Luke: That's really, really compelling. The way I look at that, and that really tracks the way I look at it in my own experience, is it's like earlier in life I had very compulsive and obsessive tendencies. But because there was so much unresolved trauma in my life, the coping strategies that I've reached for made things worse and were very self-destructive.

[00:36:06] So when I made that pivot when I was 26, those tendencies didn't really change and still haven't changed. It's just they're directed toward things that better serve me and the people around me. But it's like I'm still the same way. I use supplements and all my shit like a drug addict would. But it's just stuff that's good for you. But the level of like-- I don't know. Yeah, the level of obsessiveness is still the same.

[00:36:36] Kashif: Your routine probably means a lot to you. That's another thing with low dopamine. Routine becomes very important. Structure becomes very important. It has to happen the way it was supposed to happen. I didn't get my workout today. I'm pissed off. That's what it feels like. Where for someone else, not a big deal. And when you--

[00:36:51] Luke: That's how I am with meditation.

[00:36:54] Kashif: Yeah.

[00:36:54] Luke: I will not miss meditation. The house would've to be burning down or something. I can't think of a day that I didn't meditate at least once for a very, very long time.

[00:37:05] Kashif: And that's what reward-seeking behavior is. I got to do it. And now when you mention trauma, even that, the way you're experiencing trauma is different than what most trauma is referred to as. When I did that research with those 7,000 people, one of the projects we did was we worked with the Navy Seals on-- there's a group called Liminal Collective.

[00:37:27] It's based out of Australia. They were hired by the Navy Seals to biohack the Navy Seals. So they said, we can't figure out this trauma thing. It's just not making sense. So they hired us to do the genetic research on that. So what we found was-- so same deployment, same exposure, same food, same training. Why different outcome?

[00:37:46] Because they're biologically not the same. How do you expect every human to respond the same way? What did we find? The ones that were stuck, truly stuck, had what you had, the BDNF dysregulation. So the shell shock of the experience was overwhelming, the weight that they gave it.

[00:38:03] So when they recalled that equal weight. But they also had something else going on that you don't have, which is their adrenaline genetics were dysregulated. So adrenaline is deployed in a moment of impactful stimulus. Some big deal of sorts, and it starts pumping. We know that feeling.

[00:38:20] So adrenaline is supposed to do two things. It upregulates your biology so you're bigger, stronger, faster, temporarily to do whatever you need to do in that exciting moment. Also, because that exciting moment is potentially life-threatening, your body doesn't know what it is. It just knows how you feel.

[00:38:38] It wants to remember the cues and signals to prevent this from happening again. So adrenaline causes you to encode information, create memories. And so if you have good adrenaline genetics like you do, the moment is less intense, and the recall is more intellectual. It's more about the data.

[00:38:57] If you have bad adrenaline, genetics, the moment is way more intense, and you also imprint the emotional information. So there's some people that literally are genetically wired to remember what things feel like. So the next time they're triggered, it's a continuation like it happened again.

[00:39:12] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[00:39:13] Kashif: And that's like, I hold the grudge. So your trauma is, this has weight. It's a burden on my shoulders, and I don't need to release it. For other people, it's like, I can't do it. I can't talk to them because they make me feel like that again. Two different ways to experience the same word, trauma. And then if you have the combination of both, then you're the soldier that says, "I'm dysfunctional with PTSD. I can't thrive."

[00:39:39] So now, once again, that was a superpower. That person was wired for empathy. They were wired for emotional intelligence. They were wired for wisdom and leadership, and they were thrown out in the wrong job.

[00:39:50] And now the question is, either don't do that job because now you know who you are. Or add the exact nutrient or supplement or therapy or treatment to upregulate the expression of that gene so you can go do the job without experiencing the trauma. And it sounds oversimplified, but that's actually how simple it is.

[00:40:07] Luke: That's so cool. Yeah, I really relate to that. I think sometimes it's difficult for me to understand why some people have such a difficult time letting things go and just surrendering, just being in the allowing and acceptance. It takes practice too. I wasn't always that way, but I increasingly find that I just don't sweat stuff.

[00:40:38] Really bad shit can happen and I'm just like, that is what it is. Next. Move on. And it's frustrating sometimes because I'm like, "God, why is this person still hung up on this thing? Just let it go. Let's keep it pushing here." And I guess from what you just described, it just has a lot to do with how we're wired on a genetic level, the way that we interpret stress or what one might call trauma, little t, big T, and so on. It's like some people are just maybe innately more equipped to move through things without getting stuck.

[00:41:13] Kashif: Yeah. We all have our innate strengths, and one of yours is not holding the grudge. It's not retaining emotional information, which can also be seen as a weakness. Some people I might see you as cold. And it's like overly logical in certain scenarios where they wanted more warmth. But it's not that you don't feel it. You're not using it as the lens you see through.

[00:41:30] So just the same. Like you said, some people might actually be already doing the thing they need to do and they're like, "Well, this doesn't add up because I don't feel the way the genes say." Because you're already doing the thing. And this is another thing going back to ethnicity where you see consistently cultural trend.

[00:41:49] They do something as a habit because without that, they're dysfunctional. So take for example, people from Finland. This trait that you have of low BDNF, which equals drama queen and things being a lot, depending what you're being born and burdened with. People from Finland consistently have this genetic variant.

[00:42:06] They're wired this way. So you should, and now imagine having a country full of people like this. There should be a lot of big opinions and friction and mood issues because everything means so much. Meanwhile, Finland is voted the happiest country in the world, which that doesn't add up. So now if you look at their habits and what are they doing, Finland also has the highest use of sauna per capita in the world, right?

[00:42:28] And when you go into a sauna, your body can't understand what this heat stress is and it thinks you're dying. It releases something called a heat shock protein to drive all these regenerative processes because it doesn't know why you're dying. So it wants to fix everything including surging BDNF in your brain--

[00:42:44] Luke: Oh wow.

[00:42:44] Kashif: To prepare your brain because maybe that's why you're dying. Your brain isn't working. And so when you consistently use a sauna every day, you don't feel like you have the outcome of bad-- you have that zen. You have that ideal, things don't mean much. I can get by. It's not a big deal. Then you miss the sauna for a couple of days and your mood is off and you're like, "I don't know. I'm going to go hit the sauna."

[00:43:03] Luke: You just described my life, dude. I do a sauna I, would say before almost every podcast.

[00:43:12] Kashif: And look at how you be-- what I just said about your behavior doesn't match how you're behaving right now. Very zen. Because you just did the job you needed to do. And this is why I'm saying that the genetics of this gene equals that versus the empowerment of we can actually manage the expression, the volume of every pathway, you can decide how you want to feel, truly.

[00:43:32] Luke: When it comes to BDNF and neuroplasticity, is there any research, or do you have any knowledge around how psychedelics land for different people based on genes?

[00:43:45] Kashif: So the use of, whether it's psychedelics, ayahuasca, ketamine, all these things, again, blanket term trauma. And if you don't first understand the biology of what created the feeling, not the word trauma, you might be solving the wrong problem. So rewiring or bypassing, it might be good for someone like you where it's meaning and weight.

[00:44:06] But it may not work for the person that is imprinting the emotion that you can rewire, but the trigger is still going to bring the emotion. And they're like, "Well, this doesn't work." Because you solved the wrong problem. So this is why all the trial and error, yeah. For someone, it's the exact thing that they needed, but for someone else, it's not going to work at all.

[00:44:24] When it comes to things like cannabis, etc., the cannabinoid system hasn't been sequenced in depth, like genomics the way microbiome has. So we know that there's things going on. Somebody might use a CBD to sleep and they might have to go through 10 of them, and then all of a sudden one works really, really well, because the cannabinoid-- so the receptor systems for things like psychedelics, cannabinoids haven't been mapped out so effectively. So the personalization part is in there, but the whether or not you should use the tool, genetically, we can really easily tell you. Yeah.

[00:44:58] Luke: How is that determined?

[00:45:01] Kashif: The thing we just said, when I use the word trauma, not-- let's ignore that. It's not looking at the outcome. It's like what biology got me to feel that way? Is it the weight, or is it the feeling? Or it could be that the same thing that I said makes you clear your dopamine quickly also clears your adrenaline quickly. So not only are you not feeling, but you're also not remembering.

[00:45:25] You are in the moment for far too short, so the impact of the loss of control isn't there for you. You don't feel it so much. Which is why it's easy for you to bounce back. So sometimes that's a person's problem. It's that they clear too slow. And so because they clear too slow, they were in the moment for way too long.

[00:45:41] So it's not a feeling. It's not a weight. It's just baggage. It's just they have a lot to say about it. They know every little detail what happened, and it's annoying and frustrating. For some people it's serotonin. This is a big one because when you look at general population data, look at serotonin dysregulation, this happy hormone.

[00:46:02] Usually 95% of people are okay. Based on different ethnicities, it's around 95%. When I'm working on a-- say I'm hosting a genetic masterclass for 200 people, where it's like I'm stuck. Nothing works. I can't lose weight. I have my breast cancer. Something's going on, and you're doing everything right and it still doesn't work. In that context, 60 to 70% will have a serotonin dysregulation.

[00:46:27] When the general population data says it should be 5%, why does that matter? Because this shows you how directly tied fight or flight and nervous system dysregulation is to disease and lack of recovery. So serotonin is referred to as a happy hormone.

[00:46:42] What we learned when we dug in deeper is that it's not just straight this equals happy. Serotonin allows your brain to prioritize information. That's the actual mechanism. So as we're sitting here chatting, what do we pay attention to? And the average person is seeing 90%. There's the 95%. They're seeing a little less than what's actually going on.

[00:47:02] Someone who has serotonin dysregulation, meaning the receptors are too short or they don't make enough, so they're not binding enough to manage that stimulus, based on your genetics, you could be seeing 110% or 130% of reality. Now, imagine the person who sees 130% that sees literally every little nuance, every little detail, and thinks that's what everybody else is also experiencing.

[00:47:26] Luke: Oh, wow.

[00:47:27] Kashif: It's no longer about perspective. It's about right and wrong. Why don't you care? Why? We said it was going to be this degree and this color and this time and 4:59 AM, and you didn't do it. And they're like, "Yeah, I did it. It's not a big deal. I did it." No, that's not what you agreed to. Remember on page 6, it was supposed to be like-- it's like, how do you remember what was on page 6?

[00:47:44] So that person walks around their life thinking that that's what's supposed to happen. The lens they see through is their truth. But the other person who's seen 90%, that's their truth. And this is why you have a lot of friction. So that profile very commonly lives in what we call high-functioning anxiety.

[00:47:59] Picture the helicopter mom. Everything has to be perfect. Every consideration is made. Everyone is disappointing to you. Everybody annoys you, frustrates you. High-functioning anxiety, like, I got to do it. Nobody knows how to do it. I'm going to fix it. Which leads to living in high cortisol, which leads to cortisol addiction.

[00:48:17] Cortisol addiction is, I'm guilty that I'm not doing anything right now. The stress is more normal to me than recovery. I live there. That is fight or flight. That is just shutting off your gut, shutting off your immune system, keeping inflammation high. That's not conducive to repair. So it's no surprise that when we are in a group of people that are stuck, 60 to 70%, depending on the group are wired this way. So nervous system before all the other stuff they were trying to do.

[00:48:47] Luke: What about genetics and someone's proclivity toward spirituality versus materialism

[00:48:59] Kashif: Huge. Again comes to BDNF. I would say that's number one. If you struggle with BDNF, everything means more, which means your beliefs are more rigid. They're more important. You seek perfection versus execution. Measure five times, cut once. Which speaks to deeper spiritual connection. Deeper meaning spiritual, the value of it.

[00:49:23] So I have worked on highly religious people, and they're almost always wired this way. Now that doesn't mean that a high BDNF person can't be reli religious. I am deeply spiritual and religious, and I have optimal BDNF.

[00:49:40] But I had to learn that what drove me to benefit from all the teaching wasn't the dogma or the fear, or the fear of heaven and hell. It was the application of how does this help me today? It was the fun of enjoying some ancestral calling of fasting or grounding. Actually we're now relearning through biohacking.

[00:50:02] Praying and putting your head on the ground was grounding. There was a reason for it. Fasting is preventing Alzheimer's. Clear all these broken, afraid amino acids and things that cross your blood barrier out of your body. So my path is different than the person that comes from a rigid belief path. I believe, and I just won't cross the line. For me, it's more the joy of the work and the journey of discovery.

[00:50:30] Luke: Out of the 22,000 genes, how many of them make a meaningful impact on our health?

[00:50:38] Kashif: Functional, everyday biology, less than 100.

[00:50:40] Luke: Really?

[00:50:41] Kashif: Yeah. The majority is noise. The majority is your eyes are brown with melanin. So hormones. So here's what I would say: if you understood your functional genes, the systems you would take care of, and this is where essentially all inflammation and disease comes from.

[00:51:02] First is neurochemicals in the mind. There's literal six, seven genes you need to look at, but the interpretation is endless. I could talk about it for hours straight. Just six genes. Neurochemicals. Then is sleep. There's a crossover between the neurochemicals and some other genes that talk about, I can't fall asleep. I can't stay asleep.

[00:51:21] Or some people sleep eight hours, but they still wake up not rested. So different sleep problem, genetically driven. Third is gut health. So is your gut leaky, or is it somewhat hyperactive in driving autoimmune signals? It can be leading to inflammation or autoimmunity.

[00:51:36] Fourth is metabolic. So what did you eat, and are you actually genetically designed for that or not? Fifth is environmental health, and this is probably the biggest driver of inflammation and disease. So you interacting with everything in the environment, which our environment is no longer what it was supposed to be, especially in the United States.

[00:51:53] And then six is hormones. So between all of these, it's only 100 or so genes, and they inform you of your everyday consistent, always on biology. These things are always happening. And if you learn what's broken, you learn two things. What's going to hurt you and the exact thing to add from that stack of biohacking tools that you actually needed, and all the things are removed that you didn't need.

[00:52:17] So I used to do a lot of stuff, a lot. My supplement drawer is very small. Everything I eat, everything I do, the way I exercise is aligned to my genetic profile. So it's the stuff I'm going to be doing already anyway. I just remove what was hurting me and did it the right way. And I don't do that much stuff anymore.

[00:52:38] Luke: Must be nice.

[00:52:39] Kashif: Yeah.

[00:52:41] Luke: I wonder how much shit I'm doing that is not good for me that I'm just unaware of. I want to let people know, and I'm excited to join you on this too. You've got an upcoming webinar. It's the free DNA Five Pillar program, and it's going to be a Q&A with you and I guess a little bit with me too. So we're going to put this in the show description for you guys, so you can click on it right there to sign up.

[00:53:06] Again, it's free, but here is the URL, so you have that as well. www.hackmydna.com/lukestorey. All you got to do is just sign up and it'll be live and it'll be coming up shortly after this podcast is released. I'm looking forward to that. Because as you said, you could talk for hours, and I know because I've listened to you for many hours before you even sat down here.

[00:53:33] There's just so many things come to mind, and I know we can only cover so much. But I do have some more questions in case I forget them. I think a lot of my questions around, huh, how come this person can do this, but that person can't? One thing I've noticed that has always perplexed me is different people's level of sensitivity around EMF exposure.

[00:53:55] Kashif: Yeah.

[00:53:56] Luke: Myself, unfortunately, being one that is really affected by it and I've had to go to great lengths to limit it from my life, but some people seem completely unfazed. And my perspective is, well, they might think they're unfazed, but they don't know what's going on under the hood. And they might have some problems later on as a result of chronic exposure.

[00:54:18] But there are definitely people like me that I hear from all the time that riding an airplane or even riding in a car through an urban area where there's a million cell phones, sleeping near Wi-Fi and so on, it just wrecks them, where there otherwise resilient? I was thinking this morning actually, I haven't been sick, knock on wood, like a cold or flu since November, 2020.

[00:54:44] Kashif: Oh wow. Okay.

[00:54:45] Luke: Yeah. Which is wonderful because I hate being sick, like the rest of us. So it's like, oh wow. I feel pretty robust and do a lot of things like taking saunas and all the things we've been talking about, but that being said, why am I still so sensitive? I can feel when there's a cell phone in the room. What's up with that?

[00:55:05] Kashif: So there is a reason. There's two parts to it. EMF is bad for everybody. There's nobody that can say that if you have these genetics, it's okay. It's not. It's bad for everybody. The nature of the wave, it doesn't cross through your body. It gets stuck and it just causes lingering inflammation.

[00:55:23] So it's like you're constantly smoking. That's what it's doing to your body. But there are some people for whom there's a lack of recovery, and you have things going on that equal that. And so the impact is greater. You're not recovering from it, is what's happening. So that partially is due to total toxic burden.

[00:55:42] It's not just about the EMF. It's about everything else. Also, EMF because of its nature, you would think it's like a electrical, digital, but your body treats it as any other toxin. So it relies on the glutathione pathway. It sees it as something that's causing inflammation, thinks it's some kind of chemical type toxin.

[00:56:00] That's how it treats it. So there's a gene called GSTT1, which is like the police force in your blood looking for toxins to neutralize and remove. And this gene has a unique attribute, this phenomenon called a copy number variation. So, so far we've been talking about genes where it's this version, that version.

[00:56:16] There's also something called a copy number variation where how many copies of the gene do you get? Forget about a spelling mistake or a version. And for you, either mom or dad didn't give it to you. So you have one copy. There's an entire side missing. So that version is not there to read what version you have.

[00:56:33] You're missing half of the code, which means this police force is operating at -60 to 70%. So your response to all toxins that end up in your bloodstream, whether it's on your skin, you eat, whatever, they're not getting removed effectively. So put that in the context of EMF, which also gets treated as a toxin.

[00:56:54] The burden is too high in total. The other area where you're susceptible-- your gut's actually doing a good job. It's respiratory. Your first line of defense for airborne respiratory-type toxins is about -40%. So when it comes to mold, chemicals, fragrances, things of that nature, if you go into a shopping mall and smell some perfumes.

[00:57:13] Luke: Oh, dude.

[00:57:14] Kashif: Yeah.

[00:57:15] Luke: I can't stand the smell of chemicals.

[00:57:18] Kashif: And other people are like, "What's the big deal?"

[00:57:20] Luke: I got a funny one for you on that note. And my wife shares this quality as well. We have a neighbor, really lovely people. No issues other than that. But they started using these dryer sheets that are-- the first week or so, I thought this has to be some new air freshener that people are putting in their yard, some stuff that's supposed to smell nice, like you'll smell in a hotel or something.

[00:57:50] And it just would permeate our entire yard. We're in a half a acre here. We're not that stacked. They're way over there, but their vent is facing our house and the wind always blows this way. And so realizing what it was, "What the hell is this?" And then I finally deduced that it was these dryer sheets. And we can't even go sit in the yard when the dryer's going.

[00:58:17] And it is awkward too because talk about being a Karen. What am I going to do? Go knock on their door and be like, "Can you change your dryer sheets? We're very sensitive to chemicals." It's like, I've been trying to find a way to do that without just being completely psycho.

[00:58:34] I even put my ozone generator out there the other day and pointed it that way to see if I could neutralize the gas. But it's just crazy how strong it is to me and to my wife, to the point where we won't even open our windows if it's around because our whole house will fill up. And I'm thinking, what's it like for them inside their house? They're just totally oblivious to it.

[00:58:58] Kashif: They have really good GSTP1 genetics and real good GST1, and they just don't even know. And that's the truth. It's like a bunch of people walk into a cosmetic store, two people don't notice. Two people get a headache. So you can't handle airborne toxins, and that is your source of inflammation. Combine that with the EMF, overwhelming.

[00:59:15] But there's things you can do. So the standard answer for detox, if you go to functional medicine doctors, take some glutathione. Daily dose of glutathione. Your body, because it's missing half the instruction, doesn't appropriately drive the glutathione activity.

[00:59:31] Meaning if you were to take glutathione, simple concern. You can buy glutathione from any health food store, but some people shouldn't be taking it because if you don't have the genetic construction, yes it's going to bind in toxins, but it's also going to bin minerals and nutrients and vitamins that you need because it's not being instructed properly.

[00:59:46] Luke: Really? Oh, interesting.

[00:59:46] Kashif: Then at leads to fatigue. And I've seen people do a glutathione IV that are just demolished. Total Herxheimer's response. They vomit because the body doesn't even know what to do with it. Yeah, yeah. Because of a gene pathway that's supposed to instruct the utilization of this molecule.

[01:00:01] So even a simple concern like what vitamins do I take, what supplements, in your case, it would be better to use precursors, N-acetylcysteine. Cysteine is a amino acid combined with glycine to allow your body to make its own glutathione that it knows how to use. And fortifying the respiratory tissue. Almost certainly you have respiratory inflammation that's lingering that you might not even know.

[01:00:23] Because the tissue is going to be damaged from lack of detox. Vitamin A and your genetics can actually tell you which version, whether it's betacarotene or retinol, the plant form or the animal form that you actually need. And there's something called tiger milk mushroom, which you probably need to take a good six months of to rebuild this.

[01:00:41] And then maybe a couple of months every year. And so that's where, okay, the context is I don't do this job of detoxing here and I don't move from the bloodstream, so it actually lingers and I feel it for longer, but my neighbor sucks.

[01:00:52] Luke: Right.

[01:00:54] Kashif: So you can't change a neighbor. You have to add the amino acids. You have to rebuild the respiratory tissue, and in six months you won't notice it anymore.

[01:01:02] Luke: Wow. Interesting. That's really interesting about the glutathione here because I take that somewhat regularly. I just bought Alyson some GlyNAC and she really likes that. So I'll take that instead.

[01:01:11] Kashif: If you switch, you might notice your energy level goes up a little bit, and you'll notice-- I don't know if you have brain fog, but you just notice your brain has a little bit more acuity, just came out of nowhere. It's drawing nutrients out of your body.

[01:01:22] Luke: Well, the respiratory thing also makes sense as to why chemtrails pissed me off so much. The intuitive part of me that's like, "It's bad for everyone, but it's really bad for me." Oh God. All right. So we talked about the vitamin D and the sun, and there was a number of other things I wanted to-- we talked about the EMF, detox pathways. Cold therapy.

[01:01:52] Kashif: Mm. Yeah, yeah.

[01:01:54] Luke: Again, I take literally, especially when I'm really need to focus and I'm doing a lot of work, which I have been writing, I probably do four to six ice baths a day. Short, short. I'm not in there for five minutes. Get in. I like to soak my head for a long time.

[01:02:13] Kashif: Yeah, yeah.

[01:02:14] Luke: Just, it completely like changes my world. But then I know people that are like, "Are you crazy? I'm not getting in cold water." And I think, how does anyone not have an ice bath? I literally can't comprehend how you exist without taking an ice bath every day.

[01:02:28] Kashif: So ice bath, 50% surge on BDNF. Once again, you need it to feel zen.

[01:02:35] Luke: Oh wow.

[01:02:37] Kashif: And it's faster than the sauna.

[01:02:39] Luke: Nailed it.

[01:02:40] Kashif: Yeah, sauna has to go through heat shock protein. Cold shock is very quickly, like instant BDNF surge. So 50%-- and about a 50% increase in serotonin too, which I think it's more like 80% to give you that happiness and that surge.

[01:02:53] By the way, you're already doing well with serotonin. Not that you need it, but you're still getting it. There's always this, is it good or is it bad? And both people are right for anything you can talk about. So there is a pathway called UCP1, which drives thermal regulation. And some people aren't doing a good job there. And so they can't recover from the cold.

[01:03:14] And so for some person who you hear people say cold plunging is the best way to burn fat because of the calorie utilization of trying to stay warm. It just strips fat off your body. True for everybody in the beginning. Some people will say, "I don't know what happened, but the fat started coming back." Once they're a couple of months into the journey.

[01:03:33] If you don't have good UCP1 genetics, the stress that you experience from the cold is hard to recover from, which leads to a fight or flight response, which is store fat because there might be a famine.

[01:03:44] Luke: Oh, that makes sense.

[01:03:45] Kashif: For some people. Then there's hormones, which is why, and this is one of the big failures of, I think, the biohacking world-- is when you think about longevity, biohacking, you think about all these male faces. And you have this industry and these solutions that were designed by men for men that are somehow supposed to work on women that have an entirely different hormone cascade that goes over 28 days versus daily that is far more estrogenized and androgenized.

[01:04:12] So when you add that consistent stress in a more estrogenized environment, it leads to a worrier response versus a warrior response. When you androgenize a lot of testosterone, warrior response is going to turn you on. You're going to burn fat, build muscle. Brain turns on.

[01:04:28] Worrier response, you store fat, your nervous system gets engaged, waiting for problems, and you start getting almost anxious instead of calm, the opposite, over time. Because estrogen, that's how it's going to respond to stress. It's like protect the tribe while the warrior's gone out.

[01:04:45] And we still have this ancestral wiring. So some women will say the cold plunging is fine. I don't know what you're complaining about. But when you look at their genetic profiles, they're going to be more androgenized.

[01:04:54] Luke: That's really interesting. I think you point to something really important, and I'm hoping to see some evolution in this, but I've interviewed a number of people over the years that have talked about the fact that so much medical research is done using only men. And I thought, oh, was that some patriarchy thing?

[01:05:18] And then it's been explained to me that it's not because they're trying to exclude women. It's just that the biology of the male is so much more simplified and our hormonal cycles and so on are just easier to deal with. There's not as many variables, but I think about that sometimes.

[01:05:36] We find out, oh, ice baths are really good for you, so that means women should do it. The things you just highlighted, I think there's a lot of things like that that everyone thinks, well, it's just good for everyone. But obviously we're going down to an even deeper level with the genetics. But even just in male-female biology, there's going to be a huge variance in terms of what's helpful or not just based on that.

[01:06:02] Kashif: Male-female, and even within female biology, everyone's not the same. I think there's six big hormone profiles. There's some anomalies, but most women fit in one of six. So even that, there's a one in six chance of whatever you're going to do is actually good for you, regardless of what you're working on.

[01:06:21] And yeah, women were intentionally not included in medical research. And it wasn't until the late 1990s that the first study started happening with women. So the average medical innovation takes 27 years from the time it's found to land on a doctor's desk.

[01:06:41] Luke: Jesus. That's slow. Wow.

[01:06:43] Kashif: When you go to a doctor today, you're still getting interpretation from the 1950s. When you're looking at in inflammatory markers, blood work, that was all invented many, many decades ago. So what a woman gets at a doctor today did not include women. There was some pushback.

[01:06:59] And then the pharma world started including women, but only post-menopausal women because the period complicates things. And that was really what it is. Why do you do a trial? You have to prove it's safe. You have to prove it works, but you also want to sell it. And you have to prove you can get it to market. And so women weren't included because it's complicated. But then you're not serving half the population. Yeah, you got the trial done, but women are not men.

[01:07:19] And so that's another reason why women struggle so much and why I said earlier that the most broken thing that I found in our healthcare system is everything around women's hormone health. They're just assuming a woman is a man with no penis.

[01:07:32] Luke: Right, right.

[01:07:32] Kashif: It's not that at all. Stretching a biological process that happens in 24 hours over 28 days, you can't. So I did some work with the US female Olympic team. And one of the things that they found was certain group of women kept getting injuries. And so they asked us genetically, like, what's wrong with them?

[01:07:56] And so I went into it and I said, "Did you notice that the injuries kept happening in week three and a half of their menstrual cycle, near the tail end?" They said, "No." I said, "There's a reason why it was happening at that time." All these women are training based on current standards, which was designed for 20-year-old men.

[01:08:17] Fitness is designed a man trying to win a competition. Now you put it into a woman who has a 28-day hormone cycle that goes through a follicular phase, a luteal phase, the ebbs and flows. The circadian rhythm is not a day. So you can't plan their training day to day. You have to plan it week to week.

[01:08:37] What a woman does, especially if she's more hormone dominant, there's more strength, more building in the first week. Then there's more recovery and active yoga type stuff. There's no build. There's no intentional, let's stress the body in the end because that's when you just finish getting rid of your hormones.

[01:08:56] But remember, some women make toxic estrogen, and it wasn't every girl on the team was getting injuries. It was some women, and they happened to be the women that were making the 4-hydroxy, toxic estrogen, which your body will store in your tendons and ligaments that then become brittle that will snap on that day.

[01:09:14] Luke: Wow.

[01:09:14] Kashif: Yeah. So it wasn't that their prone injury. They were training for a man, and this particular week they were just meant to rest. Build their muscle in the first 10 days only. For these women. Not for every woman. For these women. So the training gets scheduled over a month as opposed to every day it looks the same.

[01:09:34] Luke: You're really good at decoding layers of information and causality. You would've made a good private investigator. I see that one meme of the conspiracy theorist where he has all the threads on the peg board. You have a great knack for, it seems like, taking raw data and deducing some meaning and logic out of it.

[01:10:02] Kashif: So somebody asked me once, like, "What do you do different that genetics doesn't already do?" I said, "Detective work." That's what was missing. Investigation, interpretation. Anybody can go buy a DNA sequencing machine and put in their basement today and start sequencing your DNA. What does that data mean?

[01:10:18] Data is dumb. It's just information, insights. Interpretation is what gets you all the stuff we're talking on here today. So that was missing from genetics. When I studied my own DNA to heal myself, the very first thing we talked about, what I got was very underwhelming. It actually didn't answer the question. And I actually thought, there's no answer here either. I got to keep digging.

[01:10:42] Then I saw some things that stood out. For example, GSTM1s is a gene that drives detox capacity of the gut. The same glutathione that you don't do here, I don't do here. I do it really well here. I don't do it here. Then I realized, okay, so I don't detoxify my gut. What am I doing that might correlate with that?

[01:10:59] That's where genetics ends. Then I realized that me going to lunch with my business partner every day, we're eating this Mediterranean diet because somebody told us that's healthy. I didn't know in Canada where I live. So I then start to look at what is this Mediterranean diet? Here it could be influencing my gut. Nothing. It all looks good.

[01:11:17] So I study what's in the lettuce and what's in the hummus. And I find that in Canada, because we have long winters, there's chemicals used to dry grain products and then there's other chemicals used to bring them back to life to process them. And that chemical is tested as safe by Health Canada and the FDA, but they didn't test it on me who doesn't have the gut detox gene.

[01:11:37] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:11:39] Kashif: So now that same chemical that is safe for most people, I can't detoxify, which leads to significant leaky gut, gut wall permeability, gut inflammation, which leads to leaky brain. The depression then gets explained. The systemic inflammation, the eczema got explained. So that's how I thought you're supposed to use genetics, which is the gene tells me what biology is broken.

[01:11:59] Now I got to go figure out all the habits connected to that. But the geneticist doesn't talk to the patient and the doctor doesn't talk to the genes. So it was never put together. And I think it required a lay person just asking questions and doing detective work just with simple logic. And that's what got me to what I know.

[01:12:19] Luke: Yeah. It's like you didn't have the confines of a rigid belief system or a college degree that you had to defend because you know how much you paid for it. I think that's a lot of the problem when it comes to academia and science in general, is people get inadvertently siloed, whether they know it or not.

[01:12:41] And the different departments don't talk to one another. And it's very difficult for people to change their mind once they're highly invested in a particular dogma because it threatens their identity and in some cases, their livelihood.

[01:12:55] Kashif: Yeah. And I think there's a big blessing that what we went through with COVID has changed that a lot. Because I remember when I used to go to a medical conference-- I actually remember a specific medical conference where I spoke to-- there was 400 endocrinologist and oncologist. It was all about breast cancer.

[01:13:12] And they're like, "Who is this guy? Why? Credentials." All they want to know is credentials. The stuff that I've been saying here is what I was saying there. It didn't matter what I was saying. It mattered who was saying it.

[01:13:23] Luke: Ah, yeah.

[01:13:23] Kashif: That's all they cared about. If he doesn't have the credentials, we don't care what he said. Today, nobody asks that question anymore,

[01:13:31] Luke: These days you could say the most credentialed people are the ones we trust the least, in some cases.

[01:13:37] Kashif: Yeah. And now when run a genetic program, like I do a lot of group programs for training, my belief is because your genetics are permanent, why should I tell you? Why don't I teach you? The tool's permanent. So I run these programs. Now about 25%, sometimes 30% of the people in the program are going to be medical doctor, genetic PhD, some kind of oncologist.

[01:14:00] They're medical professionals that hate what they're doing and want this training for their patients because they can't get it from their college. Genetic PhDs are taking a course from a guy who has no academic training.

[01:14:11] Luke: Love it.

[01:14:11] Kashif: Yeah. Because they know this is what they need.

[01:14:14] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:14:14] Kashif: And you're not allowed to learn it at school.

[01:14:17] Luke: So you have a DNA testing company. It's The DNA Company, is the name of it, right?

[01:14:24] Kashif: Yeah.

[01:14:24] Luke: Which is where I did my test here a couple of years ago. This hasn't been a particular concern for me, but because I follow a lot of alternative media, I'm aware of some of the things that have come up in the Epstein files, and there was a lot of talk about 23andMe. There's a lot of strange things going on there.

[01:14:45] I haven't looked too deeply into it, but the general idea I got is that there are some nefarious actors in the world that seem deeply invested in collecting large swaths of DNA from the population. And so there is some trepidation in general of people now not wanting to give up their DNA because of just, I don't know, the security of it. How have you addressed that particular issue, and what's your take on all of that?

[01:15:17] Kashif: First of all, I agree. I would say if you're getting a DNA test, just assume that your data's being sold.

[01:15:24] Luke: Really?

[01:15:24] Kashif: You have to agree and assume-- it doesn't matter what the paperwork says. Your data's being sold. The business model sucks because your DNA doesn't change. So you're tested. Done. Never need to deal with that customer again. That's why there's some other revenue path required and data gets sold.

[01:15:42] It's also very powerful data that everybody wants. So I had to make a decision, and I don't run the DNA company anymore for this reason that I don't want to be on the biotech medical side. I just want to be the guy coaching and helping people, and training doctors.

[01:15:57] So I now run programs, and in my terms, there's an incinerator in the lab. And as soon as the DNA sample is done, it's thrown in an incinerator. It's burnt, destroyed. So even if my company gets sold in the future, doesn't exist to sell.

[01:16:13] Luke: Oh, wow.

[01:16:14] Kashif: And so people don't do that because that sample is worth hundreds of dollars for testing. This thing can be sold for five to $20,000, depending what medical conditions you have. So I had to make a choice. Do I do this or do I help people? So I burn it. But I also provide the coaching and programs to actually give people the in depth knowledge that a 23 report would never give you.

[01:16:38] If your true customer is this buyer of the data, then the test is designed for what they want, not for the functional genes I'm talking about. The genes I'm talking about aren't even in those tests because they don't provide value for someone trying to make a pill.

[01:16:51] So this is where I run programs and people end up working with me clinically, and I know the question's going to be like, "How do I work with that guy?" That's why we're hosting this webinar event so people can ask me, live Q&A of other problems if I can even think we can help.

[01:17:03] And then how do we actually do this work of-- a test is, again, just data. I don't think running to the DNA company website and buying a test is the right answer because you're not going to get what we're talking about. It's useful, but to get to this depth, we'll talk about on the webinar how to extract all of what it gives you.

[01:17:19] Luke: Cool, cool. Yeah. When I got my test results, the one that I printed here was the shorter summary, and then there was a more extensive one. But I found it was really easy to understand. There's just basic things like the way you sleep, the way you approach fitness, etc., food and all that.

[01:17:39] But even with that information, I learned things here today with you that I didn't learn simply from the report. So I think that's an important part of this, is hopefully the world's going to be populated with more people like you, people that you're training and so on. From this perspective, I would like to see a world where this lens is just applied to how we approach everything.

[01:18:01] Kashif: Yeah. I think it's necessary because every choice has a bio individual nature. So why don't we ask that question? The reason we don't ask that question is because the system is designed around reacting. I can do whatever I want. And when something breaks, it's the doctor's problem.

[01:18:20] Luke: Right.

[01:18:21] Kashif: Versus why don't I do this stuff now to not break. And there's no incentive for this system, this seeming what we call a healthcare system, if that's what you want to call it, to give us that. But that's why the wave of functional medicine and biohacking, it's all there because people want sovereignty. They want to take control.

[01:18:39] Luke: Yeah. Information is power. It's like if you're just blindly trying to cobble together a healthy lifestyle based on a general population metric, you're not going to get the results that you would with something this personalized. I don't think there's anything more personalized than approaching it at this level.

[01:19:01] There's nothing before this or under this. This is foundational. It's fundamental. So it seems like everything could be built on top of this and probably help people avoid wasting time, energy, and money doing things that aren't right for their particular profile.

[01:19:19] Kashif: Yeah. Habits do not need to be complicated. Bryan Johnson spends $2 million a year to look like an elf, and it's working out for-- in terms of biological age. But I'm saying you don't need to spend $2 million a year. Remember, he's doing a lot of trial and error. That's why there's a lot of resources spent into testing. But to be your optimal self does not require a crazy budget. It requires data to direct you to do what you need to do and avoid what you didn't need to do.

[01:19:51] Luke: Boom.

[01:19:52] Kashif: And it's pretty simple. I don't do a lot of stuff. Yes, I take some peptides. Yes, I take some supplements, not every day, all the time. I now know what to react to. When did I train? When did I not sleep properly? When did I travel. I know which biology is broken, so where do I prioritize if I'm in a new environment, new food, whatever. A simple thing.

[01:20:13] For example, I used to train five days a week, sometimes six, and didn't have the results I wanted. I still would say I'm not in my ideal, what I would like to be, but I'm better now than I was when I was training five to six days a week. And now I do two, maximum three. But yeah, now I know exactly how I was genetically designed to train.

[01:20:35] I remember I said my niece is wired for the warrior genetics. I'm the same as her. And so my hormones are also wired for warrior genetics. All the systems we need to support that. So my hormones are wired in a way where my muscles are meant to be active all day long, swinging the sword, fighting, running on a field. So if I just go do the bro workout, leg day, back day, chest day, it's not enough failure.

[01:21:02] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:21:04] Kashif: So what I do now is two days, upper body, lower body, and I work to absolute failure. I get on a bench press machine, do what I can do, drop the weight, drops it. Once. Shoulder, once. Tricep once, back once, bicep once. That's my upper day. Leg day. And I do the same thing each part of the-- so it's faster, easier, more convenient, and I'm getting better ROI.

[01:21:27] I'm stronger. I can lift more weight. Doesn't take me as much time. I'm not as exhausted. And that's me that. Now some people, I'll tell them, "The absolute perfect thing for you is Pilates." For some people I'll say, "You actually should do the bro workout." And for some people I'll say, "You are genetically wired to be running on a treadmill all day."

[01:21:46] And there's some people, I'll say-- there was actually a really famous tennis player, like a Wimbledon-level tennis player that was told that he had a high cholesterol issue. He's like, "How is that possible? All I do is exercise and eat clean." They said, "Go to this genetic research company, maybe you have some genetic issue."

[01:22:02] And I showed him that he was genetically not wired to do cardiovascular training, and that was his career. So the same exact person for whom cardiovascular training can give them life can actually cause cardiovascular disease for somebody else. Because they can't handle the oxidative stress of that level of intensity.

[01:22:18] Luke: Are there any of us that should never exercise at all? Because that would be my preference. Look at my score again. Dude, I literally hate working out. I've tried to fight it, all these years, and I just don't like it. I like moving, I like walking and swimming. I don't like sitting in my ass all the time.

[01:22:40] But in terms of getting your heart rate up and lifting heavy weight or doing some HIT training, there's been periods of my life where I've done it just because, well, I feel good when I do it. I like what happens afterward.

[01:22:53] Kashif: Yeah, yeah.

[01:22:54] Luke: But I'm not really motivated by the vanity of it. My days of having abs are long gone and I've just accepted that. But it's mostly I just don't enjoy it. And so the amount of the momentum that it would take for me to really hit it hard, once I off ramp from, what do you call it, a discipline like that, it's just so hard to start it back up again. Do you see anything in my genetics, not to be too self-referential here?

[01:23:30] Kashif: I didn't look your hormones. We can. But based on your brain, I think working out in a structured format is too slow and boring for your brain.

[01:23:40] Luke: Oh my god, it's torture.

[01:23:42] Kashif: Yeah.

[01:23:42] Luke: Like a gym, going to a gym-- I literally can't imagine going to a gym. Very few things sound as unappealing as that to me for a number of reasons. But one of them being the actual things you do in the gym. The lighting, the EMF, the offgassing, too many people, ego, there's all that part of it too.

[01:24:04] Kashif: Yeah. So your brain, remember I said the dopamine gets cleared so quickly. So I had the same problem because I'm like you. My dopamine gets cleared very quickly. But I find that this drop set workout I do is so instant gratification and so quick and so challenging that I can actually do it and actually enjoy it.

[01:24:22] So I'm also genetically wired to enjoy that type of movement, which is, this is constant. I do it, go next, next, next, next, next. And I can feel it instantly. The burn is after one set. And it's an intense burn. So your brain also seeks intensity. It's like if you're--

[01:24:36] Luke: Got that right.

[01:24:37] Kashif: Yeah. So meaning the workout, if I don't get to like, whoa, this was overwhelming, I didn't achieve anything. So I would argue if we went to the gym, just get past the gym for one second and did the drop sets, you would actually enjoy it. You would actually enjoy it. The reward fulfillment, the pace and the feel is what your brain seeks. The other layer, I just have to look at your hormones to tweak it a little bit.

[01:25:04] Luke: It's funny that you mentioned that. There was a time, first year or so when I moved here, where I was going to the ARX headquarters. I don't know. Do you know the ARX?

[01:25:15] Kashif: Yeah, yeah.

[01:25:16] Luke: It's like basically fighting an AI weight machine, kind of. It's really short, it's super intense, and you feel really good afterwards. So I was going there once a week, and I would just destroy myself. It took me 15 minutes.

[01:25:34] Kashif: That's what you need. That's a drop.

[01:25:35] Luke: To your point, I thought, oh, actually, I was pretty consistent with that, and it didn't bore me because it just wasn't very long, and it was so hard. You get on that leg press and it's like, it wants to kill you. So I had my little routine and I was actually quite fit, felt good. Wife used to make fun of me because I like grew an ass from doing those leg presses. It's long gone. It's back to pancakes. But yeah, that's interesting.

[01:26:03] I think there's just so much value in this information. So I'm appreciative of you continuing your research and helping people and sharing this information because it feels like a really important foundational and missing piece to this puzzle called the human experience.

[01:26:21] Kashif: Yeah. I no longer run The DNA Company. I now run my own functional medicine practice. We have thousands of patients all over the country. But the only thing I go out there and talk about is this. Because it's still, to me, the most underserved part of functional medicine.

[01:26:36] People don't know that they can know. They don't need to guess. There's no trial and error. There's no one-size-fits-all. The pace at which you age is optional. Whether you have a chronic disease is optional. The way you feel today, libido, energy, hair, skin is all optional, if you take control of the things that cause the problems, but we just don't know what those things are. But your DNA tells you.

[01:26:55] Luke: Yeah. And I love something that you brought up too, that with DNA testing, it's not testing that you have to keep on doing. I think many of us that have gone down the functional medicine testing route, you just get burned out and it gets so expensive.

[01:27:09] And it's like you have to retest and retest. A couple of years go by and it's like everything's changed. You got through the whole round again. So that's another great thing about this. You just have it on lock. And then also as more innovation happens around this type of testing than the information that we got the first time that we'd never need again is just going to keep multiplying in terms of how we can apply it.

[01:27:34] Kashif: I literally just went through a round of the exact same genes that I've already been tested for, that all my patients have been tested for learning more about what they do. Because your gene result is permanent, but what we learned about the genes, that's not going to end. I just learned a gene that we used to talk about for other reasons.

[01:27:52] We now can address what we call chronotype, which is, are you a night owl genetically? It's actually ideal for you to stay awake later and work at night, or are you more like a morning lark that needs to get up early? I didn't realize that was genetically driven until I did--

[01:28:07] Luke: Wow.

[01:28:08] Kashif: Yes. We keep learning more insights from the same genes. So this data just keeps giving.

[01:28:13] Luke: I knew that the chronotype is a real thing because I've just always been a night person. I don't know if you can change that part of who you are, to be honest. It's like one can wrestle themselves into trying to fit into society, but it's difficult for those of us that are out of sync with the matrix time schedule. Especially considering like the way we do calendars and time is so artificial too.

[01:28:45] What we call the New Year is the middle of winter. You know what I mean? That's a whole other conversation. In closing, here's my question for you. Who have been three teachers or teachings in general in your life that have informed who you are?

[01:29:01] Kashif: Wow. So I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, but my household was in poverty. All my uncles and all my cousins were well off. And my dad, because he was so sick, we weren't. So I had uncles that when I watched them, an old-school business. Trick people into stuff. As long as you meet the sale, you're good.

[01:29:27] And I learned very early what not to do. So by watching a particular uncle, I learned that I never wanted anything to be a transaction. I wanted to be a relationship. I learned that very early, because I watched the stress and problems of transactions. So that really formed how I do stuff.

[01:29:46] Another thing is in that research time, when I was working on those 7,000 people, at that time it was very expensive. The lab work, everything was expensive. There was a guy who ran one of Canada's largest companies. I say ran. Sorry, he's the chief technology officer. So still C-suite, CTO-type guy, 40,000 employees. So he had an EMF issue, his whole family. And they're like, what do we do with this? So that was part of the research.

[01:30:13] I worked with him. And he said, "What you're doing here, we fixed it." The whole family was good. It took a few months. "So what you're doing here is going to change the world." And then the key thing he said is, "If you make it easy." He said, the problem with this type of stuff, the scientists that work on it, highly over complicated.

[01:30:30] It's a tool designed by a scientist for another scientist. Never considers the lay person and making it easy. So that's the day I started making it easy. And I realized that's actually what I was on the path doing already. I was trying to do that for myself. Everything that I was being told by all the scientists, I realized just ignore it.

[01:30:49] I'm going to just keep doing what I think I need to do, just learning from them and do it. So that was the second thing. Third I would say is, I had a business partner who I didn't know was stealing from me for years.

[01:31:08] Luke: Oh.

[01:31:08] Kashif: Yeah. A lot.

[01:31:11] Luke: Oh, brutal.

[01:31:12] Kashif: Yeah. This was before I got into this. And I learned-- so I was very sick. I told you about my gut, and it was also my mind. I was under high stress, and when that hit, it really crushed my nervous system. So he taught me that one of the most toxic things you can experience is people. The fastest way to break your nervous system is people.

[01:31:39] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:31:40] Kashif: But he also taught me the fastest way to heal your nervous system is people. Because I left him seeking the opposite and found it. I found this tribe of functional medicine practitioners that thought and felt like me that worked for purpose from the heart, as opposed to for profit-- not that profit is bad. It's more like that's a byproduct of the work I do. He taught me, you don't have to tolerate all people. You can build your tribe and live in peace.

[01:32:11] Luke: Beautiful. Love it. Thank you, man.

[01:32:13] Kashif: Yeah. Pleasure.