214. Methylation Test Explained: Stop Guessing What Supplements You Need

The immune system doesn’t make mistakes, we just stopped asking why it showed up. If you’ve been diagnosed with multiple autoimmune diseases, here’s what conventional medicine won’t investigate: your immune system isn’t attacking you for no reason, it’s protecting you from pathogens like mold, mycotoxins, parasites, viruses, and heavy metals that are hiding in your tissue. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols! https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP: SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS: 20% OFF FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC TEST: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 Intro of Show 02:15 What is Methylation? 06:45 Type Three Diabetes = Insulin Resistance in the Brain 11:07 Importance of Methylation Testing 19:46 US Food Sources Lacking Basic Nutrients 23:11 Impact of Essential Amino Acids in the Human Body 30:45 Live Genetic Testing 38:57 My father has high ESR and was prescribed sulfasalazine. What’s your view? 43:18 Is the diagnosis the same for sarcoidosis? 47:16 Can you treat H. pylori without antibiotics? 49:56 What causes systematic autoimmune attack & what are your thoughts on glyphosate? 58:52 How does lack of sleep affect my health? 01:08:08 What can you take to lower catecholamines? Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Gary Brecka?

  The body is so innately intelligent. God's design is so perfect that if you give it what it needs to do its job, it will rarely make a mistake. And it's sad to me how we diagnose based on these outcomes, the symptoms, the byproduct, the characteristics of how people act. And we don't diagnose based on what the deficiency is. And I think we just began to redefine things as they are in the human body. We just began to get back to human physiology. We would really understand the root cause and the root deficiency of the vast majority of what is going on inside of our minds that's causing weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor focus and concentration, poor sleep cycles.

• 0:44Gary Brecka?

  This is why I believe that every human being, once in their lifetime, should do a methylation test. You will never guess again for the balance of your lifetime on what you are deficient in. The reason why I've been really a champion for genetic methylation testing is because I believe that it will unlock the root cause of deficiency in the biome of the vast majority of people in this room, and your loved ones too. Because when we give the body the raw material it needs to do its job.

• 1:26Gary Brecka?

  Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Today, I'm bringing you one of my favorite sessions yet, recorded live from the health experience in London, England. For over 30 minutes, I broke down the science of genetic methylation, what it means and why it matters to you, and how it shapes everything from your energy to your mood to your emotional state. We dove into the new ultimate wellness genetic test that's now available in the United Kingdom, how to read your genes and exactly how to supplement for your specific deficiencies. If you've ever wondered why you feel the way you do, or how to truly personalize your health, this episode will open your eyes. This isn't about guessing, it's about data, biology, and taking control of your own health destiny.

• 2:09Gary Brecka?

  Wow, what amazing crowd! Thank you. So how many of you guys were at my talk this morning? Oh wow, you're back for another talk. So I just thought maybe we would just take a little bit of a deeper dive on some things this morning. For those of you that missed the talk this morning, I'll try to cover a lot of what I spoke about at this morning's 10 a.m. session. But the basic gist of it is this. You know, the human body takes in all kinds of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, nutrients of all kinds. But not a single compound known to mankind, not one, enters the human body and is used in the format that we put it in.

• 2:53Gary Brecka?

  In fact, we actually don't eat to feed ourselves. Nothing that leaves your plate and enters your body can serve as food. We only eat for one reason, and that is to feed our gut bacteria. And then our gut bacteria eat to feed us. So there's actually an intermediary between the food and the nutrients we take in and our body's capacity to utilize them. And standing in that pathway is something called methylation. And to date, it's been such a complicated concept, you know, that these methylation pathways, even the word "methylation" is a mouthful. But it's essentially the way that the body takes every raw material that enters our body and converts it into the usable form.

• 3:38Gary Brecka?

  You know, I often use the analogy that we pull crude oil out of the ground. But you can't put crude oil into your gas tank, right? Because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Crude oil has to be refined into gasoline, and then the car can run. The same thing happens in human beings. You put folate or folic acid into the human body. Those are useless until they are converted to methylfolate.

• 4:04Gary Brecka?

  The same thing happens with so many different compounds in the human body. And, you know, I always say if you really want to get paralysis of analysis, just start going down the road of genetic testing, right? I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of genes that you could test in the human body. The truth is, very few of them are actionable. When we look at the actionable genes, meaning genes that are deficient or broken, that can be fixed by supplementation, and not fix the gene, but fix the deficiency, this is when the magic happens in the human body. Because so many of us are missing a raw material that our body needs to do its job, whether it's manufacture a neurotransmitter so we have aberrant mood, or aberrant emotional state,

• 4:48Gary Brecka?

  or whether or not it's to convert a nutrient into something that helps our intestinal motility restore to normal, or to eliminate waste, and by waste, I don't mean stool or urine, I mean cellular waste, which builds up in our joint as joint pain, eventually calls the immune system to that location and gives us an autoimmune condition like rheumatoid arthritis, or doesn't allow our brains to properly eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, and regenerate, so we have brain fog, or we have problems with short-term recall, or focus, or concentration. In athletes, this has outcomes in hand-eye coordination, speed, timing, and agility. You know, it's fascinating what happens when I work with a lot of professional athletes, because I actually don't do anything for their conditioning.

• 5:34Gary Brecka?

  You know, they already have great strength and conditioning coaches. I work mainly on sleep and methylation to help them close the last 10 yards of performance. So I really like to open it to questions, but this is the complicated chart that I put up there this morning. Lots of you guys have had plenty of time to memorize that. You know, but we talked this morning about

• 5:58Gary Brecka?

  how tryptophan, for example, is converted into serotonin, being the main driver of mood and emotion. Having an impaired conversion of this amino acid into serotonin leads to mood disorders and emotional imbalances, and mental illness, right? Having impaired conversion of tyrosine and phenylalanine into dopamine can actually drive the foundation for addiction. Addicts, as I say very often, don't wake up one day and say, "I want to get really banged up." They wake up one day and say, "I want to feel normal." And it's usually the search for normalcy that develops an addiction. You know, the first inception, the first foray that addicts have into the journey of addiction is not

• 6:42Gary Brecka?

  a propensity to want to get banged up, it's a propensity to want to feel normal. And then eventually, they are running from a low, they're not running towards a high. And the low that they're running from is the crash of dopamine. What's fascinating is the pharmaceutical industry, the chemical industry, the technology industry, has spent decades studying this neurotransmitter, this main driver of mood, I mean, the main driver of behavior. The actual wavelengths of light in your iPhone are specifically designed to excite the dopamine receptors. Right, to actually give you a reward for taking in that information. The same thing happens with sugar. We are crack addicted to sugar, the brain is crack addicted to sugar, because the brain is addicted to the dopamine cycle.

• 7:26Gary Brecka?

  In fact, there's an interesting receptor on the back of the tongue called the RF1A2 receptor, that will give you a dopamine reward for feeding it sugar. The brain is nasty, right? The brain is like the little Kim Jong-un of dictators. Just kind of sits up there and takes everything for itself, right? If it wants amino acids, it will strip it from lean muscle. If it wants calcium, it will steal it from the bones. And if it wants sugar, it will activate a receptor on the back of your tongue, and it will give you a dopamine reward for giving it sugar. In fact, if you know anything about the genesis of a lot of early onset mental illness conditions, Alzheimer's, dementia, they're calling Alzheimer's now type 2 or type 3 diabetes. How many of you have heard that?

• 8:09Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so type 3 diabetes is insulin resistance in the brain. Our brains get so crack addicted to sugar that even most endocrinologists don't know that the brain manufactures its own insulin. It's not just the pancreas that makes insulin, the brain makes insulin, because it gets that crack addicted to sugar. Only the problem is, when you get insulin resistance in the brain, unlike the body where we can actually store sugar in a stored form called glycogen. We can store it in the liver. We actually store it in the muscles. The muscles never contribute it back to the bloodstream. The liver does. It takes that stored sugar and then actually in the form of something called glycogen and puts it back into the bloodstream as something called glucose. The brain doesn't have that exchange. And so there are these little spaces all throughout the brain called the neurosynaptic junction.

• 8:53Gary Brecka?

  These little voids where nerve endings don't touch, but they stop. And signals jump across this gap. And when these gaps fill with amyloid plaques and when you get things called neurofibrillary tangles, where we say, "Well, that's the genesis of Alzheimer's." But the truth is, the genesis of it was insulin resistance. In fact, the big myth, the big lie about Alzheimer's is that people are losing their memory. That's actually not true. People are losing access to their memory. And access can be restored. And so this is why I'm so fascinated by the human genome, but not just the human genome, but specifically the genes of methylation. Because when we give the body the raw material it needs to do its job,

• 9:37Gary Brecka?

  that is when the magic happens. And, you know, today I talked about how simple things like a rise in homocysteine, an amino acid that's in the blood of every single person in this room, can rise and actually cause irritation in the lining of the artery. What's called the endothelium. And as you irritate arteries, they actually clamp down. And as you narrow the pipes in a fixed system, the pressure rises. And we have pandemics of hypertension. We have pandemics of autoimmune. Autoimmune is at an all-time high right now. We have had a parabolic rise in autoimmune disease. Do you think that we've had a parabolic breakdown in our immune system as a society?

• 10:20Gary Brecka?

  Or do you think we've had a parabolic exposure to microtoxins that are exciting the immune system, that are causing, that are driving the cause of these diseases? You know, I made a bold statement from the stage this morning that you will never, ever convince me that someone has multiple autoimmune diseases. You can convince me that they are diagnosed with multiple autoimmune diseases. You will never convince me that they actually physically possess multiple autoimmune diseases. The immune system does not make that many mistakes. If we just took a step back and when someone was diagnosed with a condition like this, an autoimmune disease, for example, and said, "Before I assume that the immune system has made a mistake,

• 11:05Gary Brecka?

  I'm actually going to take the assumption that the immune system is acting properly. We just need to figure out why it's there." Right? Eighty-five percent of Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroiditis is idiopathic. But yet, when you test the vast majority of these patients, they have heavy metals buried in the thyroid. Could it be heavy metals that are calling the immune system to the thyroid? Could the immune system be after the metal and not the thyroid tissue? And the vast majority of clients that have Crohn's disease, the immune system was called to the colon for a reason. But did it get called to the colon to just attack the colon? Or did it get called there because you have leaky gut and things are in an area of the body that they're not supposed to be and the immune system is actually showing up to protect you?

• 11:50Gary Brecka?

  It's no different than if a fight between two guys broke out right here in the center of this crowd and they were after one another. Lots of innocent people would get knocked over and hurt and harmed. The immune system is hypervigilant and its fight against pathogens, viruses, parasites, microtoxins, mold spores, and these other pathogens, it causes a lot of collateral damage and then we blame the immune system for a crime it's not committing. And so, I just think it's fascinating how much we can propel our health. The reason why I've been really a champion for genetic methylation testing and I would encourage all of you to do that test while you're here today. That's the reason why I'm launching my test in the UK on November 1st,

• 12:35Gary Brecka?

  but all of you can get it for 50% off while you're here at this event, is because I believe that it will unlock the root cause of deficiency in the biome of the vast majority of people in this room and your loved ones too. And there's no downside to giving your body the raw material that it needs to do its job. You know, you can go into this methylation pathway cycle. You know, my, my wife and I just filmed a whole, um, we, we've been going through menopause. And I say we, because I'm very much a part of this journey. I've apologized for a lot of things that I actually didn't do wrong. Yeah. Our mornings usually go like this, "Good morning babe, I'm sorry." "For what?" I don't know.

• 13:20Gary Brecka?

  I think I did the laundry, and then I dried the laundry, and then I folded the laundry. But God, please forgive me for not putting it back in the right place after I did all that. But we've been on this journey, you know, with menopause and what was, um, you know, there's such a paucity of information on this for, for, for women out there that are, that are struggling on this journey. And, and an interesting and vastly overlooked part of, of this phase of life is that it is dramatically affected by a gene mutation called COMT. In fact, if you've ever actually done a Dutch test, how many women in the audience have done a Dutch test? Put your hands up nice and high. By the way, that is the gold standard for female hormone testing, right? Um, the biggest mistake I believe we make in, well, we make a lot of mistakes with women,

• 14:05Gary Brecka?

  but the biggest mistake that we make in testing female hormones is that we actually just take a snapshot in time. We take a blood test and we say, "Okay, here's your luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, free testosterone." And we try to assess what's wrong with an actual snapshot in time. The nice thing about the Dutch test that some of you have done is that this 24-hour urine or prolonged urine test actually looks at the phase and it looks at the ratio of hormones. Because in, in female anatomy especially, the ratio of hormones is much more important than the level, right? It's perfectly normal for a menstruating woman to have estrogen in the 400s. It's perfectly normal for it to be in the teens.

• 14:48Gary Brecka?

  So who's to say that 72 is high or low, or 176 is high or low? Well, you don't know. You have to know where you are in the cycle and you have to actually know the ratio of the hormones. But interestingly, um, what develops in a lot of perimenopausal, postmenopausal, and young menstruating females is you get estrogen dominant.

• 15:08Gary Brecka?

  But you don't get estrogen dominant because you have too much estrogen. You get estrogen dominant because you have a gene mutation called COMT, which is responsible for eliminating estrogen. And this, in my opinion, is one of the most overlooked things in all of hormonal therapy, especially with females that are struggling to regulate hormone function. We actually look at just levels, we don't look at ratios, and we never consider genetic methylation as the root cause of estrogen dominance and hormone imbalance. And if you actually look at a Dutch test, you will see the COMT gene mutation. You will actually see this gene mutation. Where is it? Can I go backwards?

• 15:53Gary Brecka?

  Okay, it's way down here on the bottom. But you see estrogen is down here on the bottom. And part of that waste elimination pathway of estrogen, what's called phytoestrogens, being eliminated from the body, is done by a gene mutation. Could fixing that gene mutation restore the proper balance of estrogen? Absolutely. Because one way to get too much is to produce too much. Another way to get too much is not to eliminate enough, is not to get rid of enough. Nothing is more frustrating to a female than to be gaining weight when you're doing all of the right things. You're exercising, you're eating right, maybe you're intermittent fasting like your spouse or your significant other. You're going to the gym, you're watching what's going in your mouth,

• 16:36Gary Brecka?

  and you're just blowing up like a tick. And the possibility of not eliminating estrogen. This is why I believe that every human being, once in their lifetime, should do a methylation test. You will never guess again for the balance of your lifetime on what you are deficient in. And then what you need to supplement with will never change. If you have the MTHFR gene mutation, you will need to supplement with methylfolate for the balance of your lifetime. If you have a COMT gene mutation, you may need to take a B-complex, a methylated folate, a methylcobalamin, and sometimes SAM-E for the rest of your life. But that's it. Once you know what that deficiency is, you replace that deficiency.

• 17:17Gary Brecka?

  And methylation returns to into balance. So the rubber really meets the road when we open up to questions, but I, you know, I went through a lot of these anxiety, ADD, ADHD, OCD. I had a lot of questions about anxiety and a lot of questions about about OCD. I know someone that has OCD. [laughter] In my family. And OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, is just a, it's, it's, it's a extreme disorganization in the mind. So you crave organization in your outside environment. When your mind is disorganized, you have to hyper organize your outside environment.

• 18:01Gary Brecka?

  So like people with OCD will like, if they have to work on an important task, the desk they're sitting at needs to be clean, the room that the desk is in needs to be clean, and there cannot be a sock against the floorboard because the sock will keep them from focusing on what's going on. She's like, oh, yeah. So I have to get up, I have to move the sock, and then I have to clean the room, and then I have to clean the desk, and then I have to organize the desk, and then I can focus on what's going on on the, on the screen in front of me. It's eliminating all of these distractions from our environment because the inside environment is already so cluttered. And it's, it's sad to me how we diagnose based on these outcomes, the symptoms, the

• 18:45Gary Brecka?

  byproduct of, the characteristics of how people act, and we don't diagnose based on what the deficiency is. We don't actually define anxiety as a rise in catecholamines, a rise in fight or flight neurotransmitters, which is precisely what it is. We don't define attention deficit disorder as an attention overload disorder, as too many windows opening in the mind. We actually define it as an inability to pay attention. And so we use amphetamines to speed up the central nervous system when we should be using methylated vitamins to calm the mind. We don't define high blood pressure.

• 19:28Gary Brecka?

  As narrowed arteries from homocysteine, we define it as a problem with the heart. We medicate the heart, even though we can't prove that the heart is committing a crime. We don't define autoimmune disease as the immune system being called to the location of an organ to fight a pathogen. We define it as the immune system going haywire for absolutely no reason at all. Idiopathic. It's of unknown origin. And I think if we just began to redefine things as they are in the human body, we just began to get back to human physiology, we would really understand the root cause and the root deficiency of the vast majority of what is going on inside of our minds that's

• 20:09Gary Brecka?

  causing weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor focus and concentration, poor sleep cycles. You know, we talked earlier in the, in the, in my last talk about the vast majority of people that have poor sleep issues or poor sleep patterns, don't have a problem going to bed, they have a problem falling asleep. Right? As their environment quiets, their mind wakes up and they start what's called rumination. They start ruminating on things, the most innocuous, nonsensical things. None of you are solving world peace while you are laying in bed at 1:30 in the morning. If you were, you should be laying awake. It's not these life-changing, earth-shattering things that are going through our mind, it's

• 20:51Gary Brecka?

  just the little nagging, ruminating thoughts, because we just have excess catecholamines. And I think humanity could live so much better if we just got back to giving the body the raw material that it needs to do its job. And what's happened, you know, over the last half a century is our food sources have become so depleted in basic nutrients, our soil has become so depleted in basic nutrients. You know, in the United States, we have not done a soil lineage study since 1945. Do you know why? Because if we did and we published it, it would be catastrophic. In fact, if you want to sell spinach or broccoli to the public, you can start a spinach farm, you can grow spinach,

• 21:35Gary Brecka?

  and you have to update something called the macros. How much fat, protein, carbohydrates, saturated fat is in that spinach. What you do not have to update are the micros. How much iron, how much calcium, how much magnesium is in that spinach? How much zinc is in that spinach? You know why? You get to borrow that from a 1945 soil lineage study, because if you did update it, it would be zero. And so what happens is, we think that we're feeding ourselves, and we think that we're getting the right nutrients, but we become mineral deficient. You know, I spoke a few months ago at a conference called OsteoStrong. Do you guys have OsteoStrong here? Have you heard of OsteoStrong? It's a bone density clinic. And because so many people have osteopenia, osteoporosis,

• 22:20Gary Brecka?

  which is brittle bone disease. Osteopenia is sort of the precursor for osteoporosis. And you go to these nursing homes and assisted care of living facilities all over the surface of the earth, and you see thousands and thousands of elderly people that have brittle bone issues, osteopenia, osteoporosis, and they've been taking calcium for decades. The answer's not calcium, because our bones are not calcium. Our bones are calcium combined with something called phosphorus, which makes something called hydroxyapatite. Our bones are hydroxyapatite. But in order for calcium and phosphorus to bind, you need 12 minerals. You need the same minerals that are in Baja Gold sea salt, a mineral salt that has all 91 trace minerals that are missing from our soil.

• 23:04Gary Brecka?

  The reason why I add mineral salt to my drinking water every morning is because I want my body to have those 91 essential minerals. They're the ones that nobody talks about. They're not the big ones like sodium, potassium, magnesium. They're the things like molybdenum, manganese, zinc, boron, copper. They're really boring ones, but your cellular physiology needs those. You deprive the body of any one of those 12 minerals, you cannot form bone. And now you have brittle bone issues, and they put you on calcium. Which ends up in the arterial wall and doesn't increase the density of our bones. The body is so innately intelligent. God's design is so perfect that if you give it what it needs to do its job, it will rarely make a mistake.

• 23:49Gary Brecka?

  And that's what I, that's like my entire message. Let me see where we are. I talked earlier too about how in human beings, rarely if ever do multiple systems fail at the same time. You don't wake up with an autoimmune disease, a mental illness, a mood disorder, hormone imbalance, weight gain, water retention, and all of these characteristics. One thing goes wrong that causes everything. Rarely do multiple systems fail at the same time. This is probably the most common question I get asked. What is your morning routine? So I've just made a slide of it. It's very simple. If you've been following me around the world,

• 24:33Gary Brecka?

  I think we're on our eighth or ninth city in 14 days. We'll be in 14 cities in 18 days. You know, for me, it's about just getting back to the basics. I hydrate and mineralize. I take all nine of the essential amino acids in the morning. I put all 91 trace minerals in the morning. You know, hydrogen, those hydrogen tablets will cost you less than a dollar a day. It will be about a dollar a day to supplement with all nine of the essential amino acids. Less than a dollar a day to supplement with all 91 essential minerals. And if you woke up every morning and put all nine of the essential amino acids, that we build everything in our body. Natural killer cells, connective tissue, collagen, elastin, fibrin, and muscle with the essential amino acids.

• 25:18Gary Brecka?

  Remember, amino acids are not proteins. They are the building blocks of proteins. If you added all 91 of the essential minerals and you added hydrogen gas, which I believe is the most profound discovery of this millennia, meaning the impact that hydrogen has and how deficient we are in this gas, not just from the atmosphere, but from our food sources and from our water sources, you would find the only Selective antioxidant that you can actually put into the human body every single day. You know, there's this interesting balance inside of every single one of you. This cellular balance, and it's called redox homeostasis.

• 26:00Gary Brecka?

  It's a fancy name for not too much inflammation, just the right amount of inflammation. Not too much oxidation, but just the right amount of oxidation. But this theory that all oxidation is bad, all inflammation is bad, is a very dangerous theory. Taking in too many antioxidants can make you sicker than anything that you've ever done. Pushing oxidation down too low is the opposite of optimal health. What you want is redox homeostasis. Certain amount of inflammation and a certain amount of reduction. So that your cells can function and eliminate waste and repair and detoxify and regenerate. How do you restore redox homeostasis?

• 26:42Gary Brecka?

  How do you know whether or not you're getting too many antioxidants or not enough? You use selective antioxidants. That's what hydrogen gas is. For you like super-science nerds, I'll just take a quick dive down the science of what it means to be a selective antioxidant. When you go inside of a cell and you find the nucleus, inside of the nucleus is your DNA. Your DNA is running the show, right? It's not only repairing, it's not only regenerating and making an exact copy of itself, but it is also responsible for all of the commands inside of your cell.

• 27:21Gary Brecka?

  There's a really fascinating pathway inside of the DNA called the N R F 2 pathway. How many of you actually heard of that? Wow, there's a lot of nerds in here. I love it. So the N R F 2 pathway is a fascinating pathway. Because if you use this door to get into the DNA, you can use your DNA to regulate this oxidative stress in the body. We have something called superoxide. Phenomenal for human beings, you can't survive without it until there's too much. We have hydrogen peroxide, phenomenal for human beings until there's too much.

• 28:02Gary Brecka?

  We have catalase, we have the hydroxyl free radical, we have all of these different oxidants. And suppressing them too much is very dangerous, but regulating them back into homeostasis has your cells function in their perfect machinery. Hydrogen gas goes in through that N R F two pathway and selectively regulates oxidation. You can't overdo it and you can't underdo it, you can only restore homeostasis. That is why I am, that's why the three things in this room are essential amino acids, essential, essential nutrients, minerals, and hydrogen gas. That's why those are the three things in this room, because they matter to our cellular physiology.

• 28:45Gary Brecka?

  And so, that's the morning routine. These, by the way, are all available on Health, so in the UK, you can now get all of these on Health. You can actually leave this room with samples of all of them. I invite you to just take them home, try that first thing in the morning tomorrow. Don't change anything else about your routine, other than adding all nine of the essential amino acids, all 91 minerals, and hydrogen gas to your water first thing in the morning. And you let me know how you, how you feel. Watch the lights come on. And the final thing was to offer the DNA testing to everyone in this room at 50% off. Before you leave here, I'm launching this gene test in the United Kingdom on November 1st.

• 29:29Gary Brecka?

  But at this event, you can get it for half off. And that test will tell you exactly what your body is deficient in. So you will no longer guess what you need to supplement with. You will stop supplementing for the sake of supplementing. And you will start maybe for the first time in your adult lifetime, supplementing for deficiency. I promise you, this is where the magic happens in human beings. Giving the body the raw material that it needs to do its job. That is why I am so fascinated and compelled to dedicate my entire adult lifetime to the study of genetic methylation. So, the funnest part that I get to do, by the way, if you, if you get the genetic test while you're here, I'm actually giving away a cold punch. We had somebody win a cold punch yesterday.

• 30:13Gary Brecka?

  Is anyone from my staff that has the name? Malia or Brianna? Okay, if we find somebody from my staff, somebody come bring me the name, I'll tell you who won one of the cold plunges. And if you're really brave, we actually have bathing suits. We have onesies for, wait, wait, onesie is for a baby, right? One, one, one piece. We have one-pieces for women.

• 30:36Gary Brecka?

  We have onesies too, but we have, we have one-pieces for one, women. You can actually take home with you. And we have shorts for men. So if you want to actually do a cold plunge, which is my, I call it my drug of choice, because it will raise your dopamine, it will raise your norepinephrine, it will, it will activate a really interesting thermostat in your body called brown fat, which actually exchanges a calorie for a measure of heat. It will dump cold shock proteins into your blood, which will scour your blood of free radical oxidation, improve the rate of protein synthesis. The cold shock proteins are fascinating new area of science. It will cause a peripheral vasoconstriction that dumps blood into your core. I, I call it my drug of choice for a reason.

• 31:20Gary Brecka?

  So if you want to take my drug of choice, it's right back in that little cabin back there. There's changing rooms, you're welcome to do a cold plunge. Yes?

• 31:30Gary Brecka?

  Roger Guy?

• 31:33Gary Brecka?

  Oh, he bought 10 methylation tests last night? So no wonder he won the methylation test.

• 31:39Gary Brecka?

  It was randomized? But he bought 10? Okay, so Roger Guy. Does anybody know Roger Guy? Okay, is that you? You're Roger Guy? All right, well, you just won a cold plunge, my friend. All right.

• 31:53Gary Brecka?

  So I want to bring up our lab partner from the United Kingdom. Come on up here, say hello. Hi, guys. So this is our, our, the, the lab partner that we partner with in the United Kingdom. I want to show you, do we have someone here that's volunteered to take a gene test? We do. Can we bring? He's over there. Where are you? Oh, you're right there? Come on up here. First of all, do you mind just doing this test in front of the whole room? Okay. We won't publish your results.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  It'll get destroyed and we'll give you a real one.

• 32:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. So if you could just walk her through taking that test.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Hi, guys. I'm Leila Sertel. I'm the CEO of Optinlay Me. And we're so excited to have you, Gary and team, in the UK and to finally be able to talk about this test, which we've been hard at work on for a very long time. So, thank you for agreeing to be our live guinea pig. Can you tell the audience your name? I think we also need to get you a mic, maybe.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or you can project. I don't know how loud your voice is.

• 32:56Gary Brecka?

  And as soon as this test is over, I'm gonna open it for questions. And I really want to engage with you on what you or your loved ones are facing and why or how methylation might be the answer to that.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Agnes.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 33:13Gary Brecka?

  Have you been paid, Agnes?

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Sorry?

• 33:15Gary Brecka?

  Have you been paid to be a spokesperson?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:17Gary Brecka?

  Okay. We should be.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Test before?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  But it's only the reason why we're here. Because you announced the launch. So we decided, yeah, we have to buy a ticket and come here.

• 33:28Gary Brecka?

  Aw, thank you.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  It's amazing. Well, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Fingers crossed.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Brilliant. So, we are gonna walk you through how to do a test live. Optinlay Me provides diagnostics as a service, so we are an end-to-end solution for anyone wanting to do all types of different at-home testing. And so, this is done digitally. So you get a physical kit in the mail if you buy it from Health or you go take one home today. And when this arrives, you will be asked to activate your test kit. So here, I'm gonna give this to you. And hold the mic for a second. You wanna show the audience how it slides in and out. We're quite proud of that design. Smooth, nifty.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Brilliant. So normally at home, you would do a digital activation. It's super simple. You scan a QR code, you put in your first name, last name, email, birth date, and that activates your account. And then to do the test physically, we ask that you don't chew gum, eat, or drink for an hour before, because that can interfere with the samples. No problem if you haven't followed that, because we will give you a fresh test to go and do at home. So brilliant. Shall we sit or stand? I'm thinking, maybe we sit down here.

• 34:37Gary Brecka?

  Why don't you sit?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Okay, so you take it out. There are instructions for use inside. And something to mention that we took very seriously is we work with a handful of labs, and they have to have best-in-class accreditation. So they have all the mandatory plus optional accreditations to make sure that the machines they use are being operated properly, their facilities are run to a certain standard, and the results delivery come in terms of a certain file format with certain data protection measures in place as well.

• 35:11Gary Brecka?

  We're not selling your genetic code to China.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  No. And actually, something that I was saying to Gary before we spoke is, this is going to get a little wonky and technical, but OptimalMe uses a unique sample ID. That links your data up in the backend when you go in and you get your results. But to the lab, they're actually getting a barcode which doesn't even have that. So literally, none of your personal data goes to the lab. They just get the swab with that barcode, and then it gets destroyed after. So we're taking data protection very seriously and making sure that we don't send any personal information that doesn't need to be sent.

• 35:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:47Gary Brecka?

  All right, let's swab.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  So, let's swab. So, these are your instructions. You would fill this out with what day you took the sample on. I'm going to put some of this here. And then if you'll hold this for me, it comes with a return shipping label, so it's super easy. You just pop it in the mail. And then if you'll take out the buccal swab, show the audience. So it's, literally, this is how you do it. And that's the return. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna ask you to do the buccal swab in your cheek for one minute. Something to note, so you open that, and the thing to be careful with is just don't get that Q-tip looking end wet, because that's, or like, on anything. So keep it clean and sanitary, because that's what actually swabs your cheeks, and that's where they process the sample from.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  So, I'm gonna pull this open for you. You're gonna make sure it doesn't fall on the floor. Normally, we'd have a table. So the barcode, this is the barcode I was talking about. Hold that. Take that out. Oh, yeah. Good catch, good catch. Okay, and then I'm gonna hold the end of this. I'm gonna ask you to hold the end. And you just literally swab the inside of your cheek, rotating it, for one minute. Does anyone have a timer? Who wants to set a 60-second timer for us? I see lots of people in the audience with-

• 37:07Gary Brecka?

  He's got it.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  He's got it, thank you. Okay. So you just rub it around?

• 37:16Gary Brecka?

  Longest minute of your life. Swabbing your cheek in front of 400 people. Nothing embarrassing about this. No, nobody's looking at you.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  But she's doing a great job, guys. So you wanna push firmly against your cheek and rotate it. And what we also recommend is just swishing your mouth out with water before you do it, because that just gives it an extra clean. But, really simple, very straightforward. This is probably the hardest part. And then making sure that you package it and put it in the box, right? So before, no, we don't want you to have water, but before, you can do a swish with water. Yeah. That's because, so while she's swabbing, you'll update us as we get closer to the minute.

• 38:06Gary Brecka?

  Five, four, three, two-

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Two, one.

• 38:10Gary Brecka?

  All right, you're done.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Okay, perfect.

• 38:12Gary Brecka?

  Beats a blood test.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's easier than a blood test. Although, we make those easy, too. So now, you're gonna drop that in with the buccal swab end first. Making sure not to touch it. Perfect. Fold that over. Can I ask you to seal that with the barcode? So just tape it shut.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  And then drop that in here.

• 38:45Gary Brecka?

  You're done.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  And then.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  It's done. So she's now done the test. And we'll get all of this information. Thank you so much for being our live guinea pig. So this then goes in, you stick, so actually, actually, while you're all watching, you stick this in the box, which is behind you. This, you know what? This is probably the hardest step. You stick the sample back in the box and then you make sure to put the box in the return envelope and send it on back. So we will get you a test to do at home to make sure that you can activate your account. And then you get all of your results in an incredible interactive dashboard with videos from Gary, recommendations from Gary around everything he's been talking about.

• 39:34Gary Brecka?

  And you will never guess again on what your body needs to supplement with. Once you fix a deficiency, then you can move on to supplementing with targeted things for other, other items. You can take resveratrol or CoQ10 or St. John's Wort or Ashwagandha or any number of other substances, NMN or NAD or nicotinamide riboside. But until you supplement for deficiency, those will never be the answer. Thank you so much. All right. You're amazing. So I wanted to take questions, either about the test or the testing or, yes, sir.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Said he has a high ESR and they've told him to take a steroid.

• 40:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Called.

• 40:15Gary Brecka?

  Methotrexate?

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Sulfazine.

• 40:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Sulfalazine.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  So I suggested that he didn't take it, but I'm just curious what your thoughts?

• 40:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so the interesting thing about steroids, specifically methotrexate, but also other steroids like prednisone, methylprednisone and corticosteroids in general, is that these actually give you a gene mutation that you don't have. They give you a synthetic gene mutation. They immediately inhibit the ability for the body to process folic acid and folate. And that doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that folic acid is the most. Prevalent nutrient in the human diet. Folic acid is also an entirely man-made chemical. Folic acid does not exist anywhere on the surface of the earth. You cannot find folic acid in nature. Folate exists in nature. But when you impair the ability for the body to convert folate and folic acid into

• 41:05Gary Brecka?

  the form the body can use, which is called methylfolate, you now have a deficiency in methylfolate. So what are the consequences of a deficiency in methylfolate? I can absolutely assure you, your dad has gut issues. So he is either having gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability, or cramping, or some combination of all of those. The most common complaint about steroids, corticosteroids, not bodybuilding steroids, is our gut-related issues. So it slows the motility of the gut. It actually messes up this pace of the gut. And I believe that the pace of the gut is the most overlooked thing in all of modern medicine. We think about the gut microbiome, we think about the food allergies and food sensitivities,

• 41:49Gary Brecka?

  but we do not think about the speed that the gut is supposed to travel. And it's extraordinarily important that the intestine move at the same rate all the time. If it pauses, you get constipation. If it accelerates, you get diarrhea. If it actually stops, you get putrefication. You get things like diverticulitis, ulcerative colitis. Eventually, the immune system gets called to these locations, and you get told you have Crohn's disease, you have an autoimmune condition. And this is where the symptomology comes from, the lack of proper motility. If you're not having bowel movement every single day, usually within 45 minutes of waking, that's when we need to turn attention to the gut. That's the first sign that your gut could be the root cause of what is ailing you.

• 42:32Gary Brecka?

  So, ankylosing spondylitis is not directly autoimmune, but it's caused by a precipitating autoimmune condition. And one of the things that I say about autoimmune in general, so if you are suffering from or know someone who's suffering from an autoimmune disease, and it is idiopathic, it's of unknown origin, I wouldn't accept that diagnosis until I had tested for these four things. So if you have or know someone that has autoimmune, please write these down.

• 43:01Gary Brecka?

  Mold mycotoxin, parasite, virus, and heavy metal. If you eliminate those four big categories of immune adjuvants, you would eliminate the four biggest reasons why the immune system is called to certain tissue. In my previous talk, I talked about how if this were a mold or a mycotoxin, or this was a virus, or this was a heavy metal, and this was a healthy cell, this would not hide like this. It would hide like this. Does that make sense? Right? And so, the immune system, which is hypervigilant, is after that, but has to go through this wall of a healthy cell. And one of the ways a hypervigilant immune system goes after a pathogen is it manufactures

• 43:45Gary Brecka?

  an antibody to the site where the pathogen is hiding. Interestingly, in the autopsies of 100% of multiple sclerosis patients, they found the same helminth parasite, the same cestoid nematode, a corkscrew nematode that is corkscrew burrowed into the myelin sheath, lighting up the immune system in that location. Right? So now you have multiple sclerosis, multiple scabs or sores called multiple sclerosis, and we're told that the immune system is attacking the myelin sheath for no reason. Well, if it's attacking the myelin sheath, why isn't it uniformly dissolving all of the myelin in the body? Why is it only firing arrows into the myelin sheath? Or maybe that is the site location of a parasite? Yes, ma'am?

• 44:33Gary Brecka?

  Sarcoidosis, the same applies. In non autoimmune, things like non autoimmune psoriasis or eczema, these are waste elimination issues where the skin is used as a secondary route of waste elimination. But in perfected autoimmune conditions, especially ones that are idiopathic of unknown origin, I would really be testing for a pathogenic origin. I think the first mistake that we make is we say, you know what? I'm sorry, the immune system has made a mistake. We don't know why, but we are now going to punish the immune system. We're now going to put you on immunosuppressants or corticosteroids or anti-inflammatories to treat the immune system's response

• 45:17Gary Brecka?

  to attacking your tissue. But the question is, what called the immune system to that location? Rarely does the immune system just show up for no reason and start a fight inside of a healthy tissue in your body, especially in a healthy organism, a healthy biome. And the vast majority of autoimmune is in women. Women are 82% more likely to get autoimmune disease than men. And why is that? Because the weaker the immune system, the more likely it is to malfunction. And weak immune systems are the byproduct of chronic stress. Women have a tendency to have something called caregiver syndrome, which is where they put the needs of others before the needs in themselves. Because they're meant to bear children, they're very often gifted with that ability,

• 46:01Gary Brecka?

  but they're also cursed with that ability. And they spend a lifetime putting the needs of other people before the needs in themselves. And eventually, this causes a progressive weakening of the immune system. They don't take a lot of time for self-care, and the immune system stays in a stressed state. The autonomic nervous system stays in a state called a sympathetic state, which is a state of fight or flight, not a state of rest and digest. And this lays fertile ground for autoimmune. Yes.

• 46:28Gary Brecka?

  Can I repeat the four testing? Yes. Mold mycotoxin, parasite, virus, heavy metal. You know, in the last year, I will just say this, I'm not saying this is the genesis of all of these diseases, but in the last year, our clinic director, Dr. Carrie Sarda, and I, I don't have patients, I'm not a physician, she does. But three patients that came through our clinic system that were diagnosed with Parkinson's did not have Parkinson's. They had chronic West Nile infections. West Nile is a viral infection that you get from a Zika mosquito. As it turns out, in Miami Beach in Florida, it was like the West Nile capital of the world about 10, 11 years ago. They actually stopped pregnant women from traveling to Miami Beach for a short period of time.

• 47:11Gary Brecka?

  And it was a Brazilian mosquito, and it had a massive outbreak in this area of Miami Beach. And West Nile became very prolific. If you actually look at the parallel symptomology of a lot of viral pathogens, it parallels a lot of very advanced neuropathic disorders. So how does Parkinson's start? Pill-rolling tremor. Then you get something called dystiaticokinesias. And then it goes to something called flexor dystonia, where the flexor muscles begin to shorten. The mood starts to flatten. If you look at the symptomology of West Nile virus, you get pill-rolling tremor, dystiaticokinesia.

• 47:43Gary Brecka?

  Flexor dystonia, mood flattening, which eventually becomes something called "flat affect", no expression of mood at all. People don't get really, really happy, they don't get really, really pissed off, and now they are diagnosed by observation with a disease that they don't have because they have a pathogen that we didn't test for. Again, I'm not saying this is always the cause, but I believe so much more in what God gave us than what man makes us, that I believe the immune system rarely makes a mistake. It usually has a reason to be there, and if we would help find out what that reason is, we can maybe uncover the genesis of a lot of these conditions. Yes, ma'am? What's that? Oh, you have the mic. Okay, I'll get you. You'll be in the next one. Okay, you talk loud. Okay, she's gonna yell, and then I'll have you. Yeah.

• 48:30Gary Brecka?

  Yes, can I talk about treating H. pylori without antibiotics? So Helicobacter pylori is one of the leading causes of ulcers. All right, it erodes something called the mucosal lining of the stomach. It also does it in the intestinal tract. And a lot of us have Helicobacter pylori, but it proliferates in an environment where the stomach acid is too alkaline. And actually, the stomach acid being too alkaline is actually the leading cause of gastroesophageal reflux. You know, a lot of us get reflux, gastroesophageal reflux, or heartburn, right? And we think that we should be taking proton pump inhibitors or antacids to actually raise the pH of the blood. Remember, the way the pH scale works is the lower it goes, you get more acidic. The higher it goes, you get more alkaline, more basic. There is a muscle at the top of the stomach

• 49:15Gary Brecka?

  called the cardiac sphincter. There's another one at the bottom of the stomach called the pyloric sphincter. And these two work in opposite, all right? One opens, lets food in, closes. Then the other one opens and lets food out, and then it closes. And then this opens, lets food in, opens, lets food out. So this alternation between pyloric and cardiac sphincters is what allows, you know, contents to come down the esophagus, lay in the stomach for a while, and then pass into the intestine. As the acidity in the stomach starts to become more alkaline, that sphincter muscle relaxes, and acid spills out of the stomach into the esophagus. It also lays fertile ground for non-acid like H. pylori, Helicobacter pylori.

• 49:56Gary Brecka?

  And so Helicobacter pylori erodes the mucosal wall of the stomach. And now the acid is laying right against unprotected stomach wall. And it can create an ulcer. Eventually, it can create a bleeding ulcer. And eventually, it can create a perforation. And so, you know, the, the, one of the first things I tell people that have acid reflux or H. pylori is to restore the acid balance in the stomach. Take things like betaine hydrochloride, betaine HCl, to actually lower your stomach acid and slam that sphincter muscle shut. Because by raising the pH, it will relax even further. You still have acid reflux. You just don't feel it because the acid is too alkaline. And now guess what happens?

• 50:41Gary Brecka?

  The stomach can't perform its job because the stomach's meant to be acidic. It has the pH of battery acid. And it's meant to kill bacteria. And what is H. pylori? It's a bacteria, just like all of our gut bacteria, our bacteria. And so the, the whole role of the stomach is to kill bacteria. That's the reason why we have a stomach. That's the reason why the acid is so low. So by restoring proper acid balance, you can actually eliminate H. pylori. You're super welcome. Yes, ma'am.

• 51:06Speaker 04

  Hi, Gary. I just want to dive in for you. You said there's normally one cause for autoimmune.

• 51:10Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  And also the four causes, because I think there was one cause, but I'm not sure.

• 51:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  So you described me, I was always given importance to the business over my needs. So maximum chronic stress, hardly any sleep, for about 18 months. And in the US, I saw every specialist around autoimmune conditions because everything was under attack, stomach, brain, lungs, skin, stomach ulcers, everything.

• 51:35Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Eyes as well, the, the mouth was completely swollen.

• 51:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  Every one of them was a specific specialist. There was a skin specialist, a rheumatologist, but I don't know if they were even talking to each other.

• 51:46Gary Brecka?

  Probably not.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  And there wasn't a single cause. So I went the entire time undiagnosed until I had, I was unconscious for a time.

• 51:53Gary Brecka?

  You were unconscious?

• 51:55Speaker 04

  Subconscious.

• 51:55Gary Brecka?

  Oh, wow.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  I don't know if it was a near-death experience, but I was completely subconscious. They couldn't give me the diagnosis. But the only way, when I left the US and I came here and I started healing, the stressors were gone.

• 52:10Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  When you mentioned those four as well, so it's a two-part question.

• 52:15Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Potential cause when the entire system is under attack, not one single one. And then the second part is, I have a theory about glyphosate.

• 52:25Gary Brecka?

  So do I, yeah. We can talk about glyphosate, too.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Because we were, I think I had to do it in the garden. We had to put glyphosate. It's just the expectation of all the neighbors that you cannot have a single weed.

• 52:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  And I just wonder if that was...

• 52:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so glyphosate and paraquat are very, very dangerous chemicals. I mean, glyphosate has a causal link to non-Todkas lymphoma and mesothelioma. And paraquat is now correlated to Parkinson's. Pretty soon, it will be causal. The fascinating thing about these chemicals is, paraquat, for example, which is made by ChemChina, is illegal in China. So it's made by ChemChina, but if you actually spray crops in China with paraquat, you can go to prison. It's a felony. So they export it to countries like the United Kingdom and the US. And then we spray our crops with it. And then we give broad immunity to chemical companies for known harm, not just indirect harm, but for known harm.

• 53:21Gary Brecka?

  In fact, in the US, I chair Bobby Kennedy's MAHA Action Committee. And so I report directly to Bobby. And we are actually actively trying to stop chemical companies from broad shield liability from knowingly poisoning the populace. These are what we call forever chemicals. When you take them into the body, the body doesn't have an enzyme for them. It doesn't have a way to eliminate this waste. And so it lights the immune system up. In women, you have a classic, classic case of autoimmune. I bet you, did you have something called an ANA-titer, speckled antibody titer? Do you remember? There are so many tests. So essentially, what happens is you run the nervous system down, and the nervous system is what regulates the immune system.

• 54:05Gary Brecka?

  So the autonomic nervous system, what's regulating your breathing, right, and your heart rate, and all of the things that you're not thinking about right now. It's regulating your posture. It's keeping you upright in your chair. So the autonomic nervous system exists in two states. One is called the sympathetic state, which is a little misleading, because that's the fight-or-flight state. And one is called the parasympathetic state. This is the rest-and-digest state. In the rest-and-digest state, this is when you're healthy, when you're healing, when you're repairing, when you're eliminating waste, when you're detoxifying and regenerating. When you're in a sympathetic state, because this is a fight-or-flight state, all of those systems stop. So people that are chronically overworked, they're type A, they have responsibilities at home, maybe you have a child you're caring for,

• 54:50Gary Brecka?

  a spouse you're caring for, and you have a career that's burgeoning, and you're not getting a lot of sleep. What happens is the immune system gets trapped in the state of fight-or-flight. The immune system does not feel safe. The nervous system does not feel safe. We need to feel safe in our bodies before the immune system really begins to protect us. Things like regulating your sleep and wake cycle are the most critical things to restoring balance to this autonomic nervous system. Things like breath work, grounding, sunlight first thing in the morning, eating a whole-food diet, and deepening your connections and relationships. When I start talking about connection as medicine, and relationships as medicine, and food as medicine,

• 55:34Gary Brecka?

  eyes roll back into people's heads. But if you actually look at the big data, this has actually been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. If you took any blue zone in the world, there is no continuity between diets and the blue zone. If you went to Sardinia, you'd see the highest carbohydrate consumption in the world, one of the longest life expectancies. If you went to Singapore, you'd see the highest meat consumption per capita, one of the longest life expectancies. You go to the Mediterranean, high fatty fish, high oils. Two liters of olive oil per person, per week. Two liters. If you told any cardiologist I was... ...going to drink 2 liters of olive oil a week, they would kick you out of their office. And yet they're living long, healthy, happy lives. And then the French, pardon me if you're French, but the French screwed up the whole model

• 56:18Gary Brecka?

  because they're drinking wine, eating cheese, smoking cigarettes, and they're living to 100 years old, right? What was the continuity in the diets? It was not dogmatic dieting. The regions of the world were not benefiting from carnivore, keto, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food. It was not dogmatic dieting. It was the absence of processed foods. In no blue zone in the world was there even an ounce of processed food in their diet. That is the first thing. The two non-negotiables in all of the blue zones, in all of the longest lives in the world, are sense of community and purpose and mobility into later in life. We cannot replace those.

• 56:58Gary Brecka?

  So as you become more disconnected, your immune system becomes more trapped in a sympathetic state. As it becomes more trapped in a sympathetic state, it becomes increasingly more confused. And as it becomes more confused, it weakens. And as it weakens, it begins to lose its discernment between friendly and foreign tissue. And so when I said one thing causes everything, the initial thing was the actual overloaded stress response. You know, it was too much stress. You weren't mitigating stress. That's why I think that self-care should be non-negotiable. Like you should give the first 30 to 90 minutes of every day to yourself. When I woke up this morning, the first thing that I did was I found a local gym.

• 57:41Gary Brecka?

  I went, I did a cold plunge, I did a sauna, I did a 45-minute workout. I just, I gave, I fed my body. I gave the first 90 minutes of my day to me so I could give the rest of my day away. And I'm going to give the rest of my day to you and to everyone else. And so I would really, I would be heavily focused on stress. And also, I would be heavily, heavily focused on my relationships and my sleep. Because we all know that sleep is important, but few of us know why sleep is so important. There are two phases of sleep that are absolutely critical to survival and thriving. And those are REM stage sleep and deep phase sleep. During deep phase sleep is the only time that a very special waste elimination pathway in your body is open.

• 58:26Gary Brecka?

  It's called the glymphatic pathway. We have lymph nodes and a lymphatic system in the body to eliminate waste. In the brain, we have a glymphatic system. The glymphatic system eliminates waste from the brain. By waste, I don't mean stool or urine. I mean cellular waste, inflammatory compounds. The brain actually swells during the day and it loses that swelling at night during deep phase and channels open in the brain and waste is eliminated. If you are not getting deep phases of sleep, you are not eliminating waste from the brain. People that chronically deprive themselves of sleep. Ronald Reagan, for example, used to brag about only five hours of sleep. Do you know what he died of? Alzheimer's. Margaret Thatcher used to brag about getting three to five hours of sleep. Do you know what she died of?

• 59:11Gary Brecka?

  Alzheimer's. And so, not allowing our bodies the time to repair and regenerate through deep phases of sleep is critical to human optimization. The second is REM phase of sleep. REM phase of sleep is where we assemble memory. So if you watch my lecture, you're listening to me talk right now, and this is to become a learned memory. That learned memory will be assembled tonight during a REM phase of sleep, when your prefrontal cortex and your hippocampus begin to communicate. As they lose communication, you're told you're losing your memory. You are not losing your memory. You are losing access to your memory. The same thing happens in Alzheimer's and dementia. The memory does not leave. The access to the memory leaves. So I hope that answered your question. Yes, ma'am?

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Hi, Gary.

• 59:55Gary Brecka?

  Hi.

• 59:58Gary Brecka?

  I scared you? I'm sorry.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Gary Brecka?

  It's supposed to be a positive one. Okay.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  You scared me a little because I've been consistently getting between three to five hours of sleep the last two years, which I don't wear as a badge of honor. It's a... You know, it's not a choice. I can get to sleep relatively easily. I take all the supplements that you recommend. I've got quite a solid nighttime routine.

• 1:00:21Gary Brecka?

  Great.

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  A great morning routine, but three to five hours after going to sleep, I'm waking up. And that's me. And you just mentioned there, the memory. I'll probably retain about 0.5% of what you've just said today. So I've been taking lots of notes. But, you know, I'm listening to yourself and other experts talking about the trauma that it does to your brain when you have the, you know, consistently the, the lack of sleep. And I'm trying really hard not to stress about it because I know that that's going to make it even worse. So I'm trying to.

• 1:00:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, don't stress about it because that will make it worse. Have you done a genetic methylation test?

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  I am going to do one.

• 1:01:00Gary Brecka?

  Okay, you very likely have a gene mutation called COMT. C O M T stands for catecholomethyltransferase. So catecholamines build up two ways. Prior to sleep, they keep you in an awakened state when you lay down to go to sleep at night. They help you, they have you ruminating for a while and having a hard time falling asleep. Or you fall asleep and catecholamines wake you up at night. You'll notice that the types of thought patterns you have go straight to worst case scenario. So if you imagine something in the middle of the night, it ends in a worst case scenario. Right? You can even sometimes catch yourself and go, whoa, I really took that one for a ride last night. Um, right? I mean, I like, I wake up, I wonder why I had this argument. My relationship's over. It's going to end divorce. Then you get up the next day, everything's fine. Right?

• 1:01:45Gary Brecka?

  And so catecholamines are the fight or flight neurotransmitters. And that gene mutation, it's critical to supplement for that genetic deficiency. You'll find that your sleep returns to normal. Yeah. So I'll take one more question so that we can, um, yes, ma'am. Yep. Guys, by the way, thank you so much for giving me your time. I mean, it's really very humbling to see you guys paying attention like this. Thank you. Yeah.

• 1:02:14Speaker 06

  The catecholamines.

• 1:02:16Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 1:02:17Speaker 06

  Because is there ways that you're obviously if you get a spike with the catecholamines?

• 1:02:22Gary Brecka?

  Is there ways that what?

• 1:02:22Speaker 06

  Is there a way that you can take like a binder or some sort of activated charcoal to essentially it screws it out of the system? Because obviously if you've had this spike, do you just have to wait for it to?

• 1:02:33Gary Brecka?

  Yes, if you have a spike in catecholamines, you have to wait for your body to metabolize catecholamines. Catechol O methyltransferase, the gene COMT, which by the way is also on the Dutch test, listen up females, that the, and this is the most overlooked thing that OB-GYNs will totally skip this gene mutation when they're looking at your estrogen metabolism. If you have that gene mutation, you're not sending estrogen down the E2 pathway, which means that estrogen is accumulating and the primary role of estrogen is to bind water in the interstitial tissue. It's to retain water, right? This is why so many women that do intermittent fasting and start an exercise program and start eating well, all of a sudden start to retain water. They think they're getting fat, they're not, they're getting water retentive.

• 1:03:17Gary Brecka?

  Nothing is more frustrating than starting an intermittent fasting program with your husband and he's down there sucking down pizza like his life depends on it and skipping workouts and you're militant about what you're doing and you're actually starting to retain water, right? And so the second thing is catecholamines are neurotransmitters that are demethylated. A methyl groups gets attached to them and they're actually their activity is neutralized. And so it's critical that you supplement directly for that gene mutation. So when you do that gene test and you see that you have the COMT gene mutation, I will tell you exactly what nutrient to take and what dosage so that you can just restore that, that breakdown of catecholamines to normal and it restores normalcy.

• 1:04:00Gary Brecka?

  So you're not hyper aware, you're not hyper agitated, you don't get anxious, you certainly don't have anxiety, which is a very high rise in catecholamines. If they continue to rise beyond anxiety, you can have a panic attack. As colamines continue to rise, you will get paranoias. Those come from high excessive catecholamines. That's a severe, severe case, but lots of us. Especially women are walking around at like a 6, when you should be walking around at a 1 or 2. You should just feel calm inside your own body. When you don't, that is excess catecholamines. And they rob you of deep sleep, and they bring anxiety into your present day. So, I want to give you guys a chance to experience the ultimate human experience.

• 1:04:44Gary Brecka?

  All of those things are free. You can leave with all of them. You can get a genetic test on your way out. I'll stay and answer questions up here at this stage. But guys, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.