Biohacker’s Secrets You Need To Know To Treat The Source

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Do you have health issues or symptoms that affect your ability to live your life fully? On June 2nd — 3rd, join me and over 15 other renowned holistic health professionals for information, engagement, resources and live Q&A at Treat The Source, the holistic health conference for the people who are ready to take their health back!

During the event, I plan on speaking about Metabolic Syndrome.

In this blog post, you’ll learn what metabolic syndrome is, the prevalence of the syndrome worldwide, what it takes to diagnose it, the contributing factors and finally what you can do about it as a biohacker in training ;). If you are a practiotioner or already know plenty about metabolic syndrome (doubt it as there are recent research listed!) skip to the last section for the juicy biohacks :)

According to National Institue of Health (NIH), metabolic syndrome is defined as a cluster of risk factors that raises your risk for health problems such as heart diseases, stroke, and diabetes. 1

So you may be thinking why it’s called ‘metabolic’. Metabolic means it’s related to metabolism of a living organism (ex. humans).

As of 2017 report by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 30.3 million people have diabetes, 23.1 million people diagnosed and 7.2 million people are undiagnosed. 2

Moreover, type 2 diabetes (insulin resistant) account for roughly 92.5% of all diabetes.

One can conclude that a very large population of people in the US are insulin resistant whether be it diagnosed or not diagnosed

Is that only in the US? Here is what Canadians are dealing with:

The economic burden of people with diabetes in 2010 was measured to be more than 12 billion. 3

I say since 2010 the cost above has been multiplied by many folds.

In fact, the economic burden of people with Alzheimer’s disease (diabetes in brain) alone is projected to surpass a trillion dollars by 2050. 4

Insulin resistance which is known to be the root cause of metabolic syndrome leads to cardiovascular diseases 5, 6, 7, 8, type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)9, acne 10, 11, vertigo, tinnitus 12, 13, 14, gout 15, 16, 17, 18 and cancer 19, 20, 21, 22.

Dr. Jason Fung has a lot of great articles about metabolic syndrome you should check out. I’ll be sure to interview him for you guys once my podcast is launched [soon!].

The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimates the prevalence of metabolic syndrome to be around 25 percent worldwide. 23

Should I be worried, you may ask? :0

Now you may be wondering if you have metabolic syndrome: your general MD would assess if you have 3 of the factors below (stated by NIH) to be qualified for metabolic syndrome.

• Large waist circumference — a waistline that measures at least 35 inches (89 centimeters) for women and 40 inches (102 centimeters) for men. I think mine is around 89cm.
• High triglyceride level — 150 milligrams per deciliter,(mg/dL), or 1.7 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), or higher of this type of fat found in blood.
• Reduced high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol — less than 40 mg/dL (1.04 mmol/L) in men or less than 50 mg/dL (1.3 mmol/L) in women of this “good” cholesterol. Mine is pretty high. 😍
• Increased blood pressure — 130/85 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or higher.
• Elevated fasting blood sugar — 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L) or higher.

If there is anything to add, is deficient vitamin D levels.

Dr. Mercola believes that, 24

“Of those with insufficient or deficient vitamin D levels, nearly 58 percent had risk factors qualifying them for a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome”.

By the way, I conclude this section by saying worrying never solved anything for us. So if anything, be excited for your health transformation.

What are some contributing factors to metabolic syndrome?

Age, insulin resistance, genetic and inactive lifestyle are the contributing factors (among the many) that have been studied the most.

1. Aging

Let’s start by distinguishing biological age chronological age.

Ideally, they should at least be equal.

Hopefully, the biological age is much lower than the chronological age. If you are reading this far into this article, chances are you are at least on the right track for having a biological age reversed.

There is a method where you can quantify your biological age by measuring your telomeres using Teloyears.

Teloyears is a home kit blood test that measures your telomeres to determine your biological age.

Alternatively (possibly not as accurately) you can also measure your age biomarkers including RDW and GGT.

Now that we quantified our age, let’s see what the connection between age and insulin resistance is.

Some of the events that happen simultaneously as we age chronologically are decrease in muscle tissue, body fat redistribution (increase in visceral fat and decrease in subcutaneous fat), decrease mitochondrial function and increase in proinflammatory cytokines. 25

Let’s dive into what can be done about the above before we go over the science behind why it happens.

To increase mitochondrial function get plenty of red laser (not light). To prevent from decrease in muscle tissue consider taking gh hormone (consult with your functional med doc or naturopath) or Ibutamoren (MK-677).

Now you may be wondering what redistribution of adipose tissue have to do with insulin resistance. The redistribution impacts the function of leptin which consequently decreases neuroendocrine function and insulin sensitivity. Additionally, lipid metabolism is impacted too. 26, 27.

Notice, aging can also be reversed by becoming more insulin sensitive. So there is a bi-directional relationship between the two.

People who are on lower calorie diets live longer possibly due to insulin regulation because insulin resistance contributes to many chronic illnesses. 28

Below is post I made on the breakthrough coaching I did with a participant at my event on Anti-Aging in Los Angeles:

instagram.com/hackmybiology

Actionable steps:

1. Constantly be thinking on how you can detox your system. The reason being is that we’ve advanced as humans so much that we barely deal with anything natural around us. There is nothing wrong with advancement in science, it is a must to keep up with it by detoxing toxins off our systems. Avoid paraben, artificial colors, artificial fragnances, Methylisothiazolinone, sodium laureate sulfate (and it’s variants) etc as they all load up our body with toxic. There are natural products including shampoo soap detergents and cosmetics free of all the toxins previously mentioned. You just want to look! For example for cleaning use baking soda and white vinegar.
2. Regenerate mitochondria. I currently take 250mg of NAD+ every day for that very purpose. You can also take NAD + in the form of IV- I’ll be trying that out soon. Additionally, choose to get plenty of red laser over red light.
3. Somatic therapy, massage, and acupuncture to reduce the physical and mental stress load on your body. I currently do that over at a clinic in Vancouver called Empower Health -highly recommended if you are in the area.

2. Insulin Resistance

This is a great place to address sugar’s role in metabolic syndrome. For starters, watch the following video.

Average Americans on average consume about 84g of sugar per day. If you can’t tell already, that is an excessive amount of sugar that our body is not designed to handle. Evolutionary speaking we didn’t have access to that much sugar to begin with. Let alone consistent usage of sugar in all seasons.

Excess sugar in our body is turned into liver fat and liver becomes insulin resistant. Consequently, a state of hyperinsulinemia is created. Hyperinsulinemia shunts energy storage into body fat. Weight gain is to be followed.

Fatty liver also occurs because of excess liver fat. More fat is then carried into vascular walls (atherosclerosis). Because insulin is not doing its job there will be plenty of glucose sitting in the blood which in turn contributes to formation of atherosclerosis.

Our body is going to treat higher blood pressure, damages to vascular walls and higher blood sugar as inflammation and oxidative stress. Great! another thing to worry about for our body.

As a result of becoming insulin resistant (not the other way around!) LDL goes up, HDL goes down and triglycerides go up.

This is not a blog post to recommend eating fat over sugar. However, let’s recall a paper in 2014 published by JAMA Internal Medicine on the connection of sugar consumption and cardiovascular death. 29 Notice, it’s not so much we are getting heart disease because we eat so much fat. It’s most probably due to the sugar consumption and insulin resistant state we achieve as a consequence.

Insulin resistance in different parts of body leads to different diseases.

Insulin Resistance (IR) of liver leads to type 2 diabetes.

IR of brain leads to Alzheimer’s disease.

IR of kidney leads to chronic renal disease.

Notice all the 3 diseases above are considered to have virtually no cure.

The other contributing factor for becoming insulin resistance is deficiency in vitamin D.

There are already research around the connection between vitamin D deficiency and type 1,2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. 30,31, 32

There are vitamin D receptors in insulin-releasing pancreatic beta cells. They are also expressed in adipose tissue and skeletal muscles. Insufficient vitamin d negatively impacts the conversation of pro-insulin to insulin by beta cells. 33

Actionable steps:

1. Cut sugary drinks, sugary and processed foods and fruits. I’ve cut fruit for the past 18 months and replaced it with copious amount of vegetables. Regular consumption of artificial sweetener sucralose and metabolic syndrome are correlated. 34
2. Test your vitamin D. In BC, Canada Vitamin D costs around 66 dollars. You can find an educated MD who would prescribe that for you free of charge too. If you are in the US, ask your current functional doctor for more information. You can also test it privately in the US using Wellness fx.
3. Take sufficient amount of vitamin D to address metabolic syndrome. Please don’t kid yourself by saying oh I just stay in the sun. If you live in Vancouver, BC like I do, you can’t even say that lol. See my IG post about why sun exposure even in places like Qatar and various cities in India statistically led to insufficient vitamin d absorption of their citizens.
4. I currently take 10K vitamin D liquid from health basics. The oil they use is organic extra virgin olive oil and mixed with tocopherol concentrate. I had no idea to look in the oil used in vitamin d (duh!) and Jane Gasiorowski who commented on one of my Facebook posts introduced me to it.

3. Genetics

There are about 30,000 genes in our body and I’ve listed a handful that are relevant to metabolic syndrome here.

If you haven’t already done so quantify your genetics using 23andme, DNApedia, Toolboxgenomics,

Once you done that here are the genes to look for:

“Genes responsible for metabolic syndrome are listed as the following: the genes for 3-adrenergic receptor, hormone-sensitive lipase, lipoprotein lipase, IRS-1, PC-1, skeletal muscle glycogen synthase etc” 35, 36

Below you see screenshots from my dashboard on 23andme.

I’ve included some of them genes here for an example just so you get an idea of what it looks like. At the moment I doubt there is any DNA interpretation company that does interpret metabolic syndrome biomarkers in details.

For example, you see below ABCC8 gene variants below is an indication whether insulin is produced in excessive amount.

The gene above may be the only gene that 23andme actually pulls for metabolic syndrome.

As for the other gene associated with metabolic syndrome listed above, you need to pull your raw data. For example in 23andme raw data, search for hormone-sensitive lipase: LIPE.

What you get is the following:

The screenshot only covers 2 of the genes and there are more. Once you open your dashboard you see that you can see your variants on the 5th column from the left. Then you look into see what it means to have your variant.

My plan is to make another blog post and go deep into details of what you can do with the information above. Some naturopath and functional medicine doctors are also able to interpret the genetic data for you. The point is you have the information at your fingertips.

Also, notice just because I don’t have the ABCC8 gene variants that doesn’t mean I don’t get hyperinsulinemia. However, if I did have the variants that would alert me to look 10x more carefully about my other biomarkers responsible for metabolic syndrome.

Another gene to look at is mTOR gene. When I looked at my dashboard after searching for that gene in my raw data, I saw the gene is placed on chromosome 1.

mTOR gene is responsible for insulin signaling. 37

As you see above, there are also multiple MTOR genes to look into. GREAT!

Actionable steps:

1. Start by gathering the raw data of the genes above and wait for the next blog post on how to interpret it.

4. Lifestyle (biohacking)

1. Intermittent fasting is the diet that most effectively regulates insulin. 38, 39, 40

Once you fast long hours you start becoming fat adapted and burn the liver fat naturally and thereby restoring liver insulin sensitivity.

Don’t kid yourself by focusing only on losing weight. There are more thin people in America (picked a country with a large community of overweight people) who have metabolic syndrome than overweight people!

2. I lift heavy at the gym. Physical activity and insulin resistance are negatively associated with each other. 41, 42, 43

There are direct evidence around physical activities promoting insulin sensitivity. 44, 45

If you are unable to work out or only plan on maintaining muscles (because you already have plenty) then consider taking gH or MK-677.

Heavy exercises increase muscle mass which leads to genesis of more mitochondrias. This, in turn, regulates insulin.

3. Smoking and Drinking gets you nowhere pleasant especially with regards to metabolic syndrome. Hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming (NLP) are great tools to deal with both.

4. Stress is a huge contributor to metabolic syndrome 46. Get in the habit of measuring heart rate variability (HRV) and make an effort to improve it. Yoga, TM meditation, acupuncture and message at least once a week are my favorite ways of dealing with stress.

Whether you have a diagnosis or NOT, this conference is for you if you want to learn more about how to find the right match for your needs by treating the source, not the symptom and receiving real solutions and positive community support.

Conference attendees will learn:

1. New information about their health and new ways to approach it
2. Live Q&A with over 15 HOLISTIC health professionals, MD’s, practitioners
3. How to find and pick the best holistic practitioner for their needs
4. How to evaluate whether a program is working for them
5. How to track and assess symptoms and progress
6. What to ask a potential practitioner or doctor
7. How to become advocates for their own health

Treat The Source is not just any holistic health conference. This is the insider’s guide to taking your health back into your own hands!

References:

1. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/metabolic-syndrome
2. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-diabetes-statistics-report.pdf
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR7
4. http://www.alz.org/facts/overview.asp
5. Reaven GM. Insulin resistance, the insulin resistance syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. Panminerva Med. 2005;47(4):201–210)., Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejim.2010.12.017
7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2003.11.028
8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1194/jlr.M400486-JLR200
9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1095-6433(03)00011-4
10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archderm.138.12.1584
11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07315724.2009.10718111
12. Kraft JR. Hyperinsulinemia: The common denominator of subjective idiopathic tinnitus and other idiopathic central and peripheral neurootologic disorders. IntTinnitus J. 1995;1(1):46–53.
13. Mangabeira Albernaz PL, Fukuda Y. Glucose, insulin and inner ear pathology. Acta Otolaryngol. 1984;97(5–6):496–501
14. http://D'Avila C, Lavinsky L. Glucose and insulin profiles and their correlations in Ménière’s disease. Int Tinnitus J. 2005;11(2):170–176.
15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0895–7061(96)00098–2
16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/BOR.0b013e32835d951e
17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1756-185X.12007
18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00392–013–0577-y
19. Seyfried TN, Flores RE, Poff AM, D’Agostino DP. Cancer as a metabolic disease:Implications for novel therapeutics. Carcinogenesis. 2014;35(3):515–527. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/carcin/bgt480
20. Mathupala SP, Ko YH, Pedersen PL. The pivotal roles of mitochondria in cancer: Warburg and beyond and encouraging prospects for effective therapies. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2010;1797(6–7):1225–1230.
21. Mathupala SP, Ko YH, Pedersen PL. Hexokinase-2 bound to mitochondria: Cancer’s stygian link to the ‘Warburg effect’ and a pivotal target for effective therapy. Semin Cancer Biol. 2009;19(1):17–24.
22. Mathupala SP, Rempel A, Pedersen PL. Aberrant glycolytic metabolism of cancer cells: A remarkable coordination of genetic, transcriptional, post-translational, and mutational events that lead to a critical role for type II hexokinase. J Bioenerg Biomembr. 1997;29(4):339–343. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022494613613
23. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540707/#bb0190
24. https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/04/04/vitamin-d-metabolic-syndrome.aspx
25. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR31
26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR32
27. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR33
28. Wall Street Journal online August 2013
29. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1819573
30. MD Magazine May 3, 2016
31. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2012;52(2):103–12
32. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499524/
33. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-03/fda-vdm032018.php
34. http://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4482/presentation/8752
35. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10889791
36. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21749608
37. Cell Reports August 2013
38. Mattson MP, Wan R. Beneficial effects of intermittent fasting and caloric restriction on the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular systems. J Nutr Biochem. 2005;16(3):129–137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnutbio.2004.12.007
39. http://Mattson MP, Duan W, Lee J, Guo Z. Suppression of brain aging and neurodegenerative disorders by dietary restriction and environmental enrichment: Molecular mechanisms. Mech Ageing Dev. 2001;122(7):757–778. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0047-6374(01)00226-3
40. http://Mattson MP, Duan W, Guo Z. Meal size and frequency affect neuronal plasticity and vulnerability to disease: Cellular and molecular mechanisms. J Neurochem. 2003;84(3):417–431. http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1471-4159.2003.01586.x
41. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR24
42. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR29
43. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR42
44. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR46
45. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982003/#CR50
46. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4537246/