Latest / Cortisol Coach / Cortisol, Genetics, and Functional Testing | What Your DNA Is Telling You About Your Health with Dr. Sam Shay

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Cortisol, Genetics, and Functional Testing | What Your DNA Is Telling You About Your Health with Dr. Sam Shay · Cortisol Coach

• 0:04
  Welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast. If you're exhausted, gaining weight,
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  losing your hair, your anxiety is through the roof, or the depression and emotional
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  overwhelm have completely consumed your life, or maybe you're not showing up
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  as the wife and mom you want to be.
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  You've spent years never feeling good enough, taking care of everyone else while
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  you quietly fell apart, and your body has been keeping score of every single bit of it.
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  The chronic stress, hormonal shifts, perimenopause, menopause,
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  whatever season you're in, cortisol is making all of it worse.
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  And until you heal the root, nothing changes.
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  But this show here is about to change that.
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  I'm your host, Christine Marie, Holy Spirit-led Biblical Mindset Coach,
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  and I have helped thousands of women heal their hormones and cortisol levels.
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  Every week, I bring you leading experts, doctors, and coaches who will help
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  you heal your body, mind, emotions, and your spirit so that you can step into
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  every kingdom purpose that God has planned for your life. So go grab your cup
• 1:02
  of coffee and let's jump in.
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  I am so excited today to bring you a guest that I know is going to answer a
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  lot of questions that you have, especially around the topic of cortisol.
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  And he is definitely the doctor that I would want reading my labs.
• 1:18
  Dr. Sam Shea is a functional medicine doctor with over 25 years of experience.
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  He's been on more than 200 podcasts, summits, and stages, and he is the founder of Fit Genes USA.
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  And his whole thing is taking the fire hazards, hiding in your genetics,
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  and turning them into actual vibrant health. He takes all of the complicated
• 1:39
  stuff and makes it make sense.
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  And like I said, today we're going to talk about cortisol.
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  I'm so excited to have you on the show. Welcome, Dr.
• 1:47
  Shea. Thank you, Kristen. Thank you very much. I'm good to be here.
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  So I would love for you to dig in.
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  And tell us all about cortisol. Tell us what we need to know.
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  The thing about cortisol is that it's actually there as the body's emergency response system.
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  The way to think about cortisol is that it's like the fire department,
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  that you want it there, but you don't want it on and raging and spraying water
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  all the time and everything, no matter what.
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  That's the problem, that if the fire department was to come to your house every
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  week and hose down your house just in case there might be a fire,
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  your house may not catch on fire, but it becomes moldy and unusable and effectively.
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  Useless or dangerous, actually.
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  And the intention of cortisol is to do a number of things.
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  And if you understand each thing, you can understand how it can go sideways.
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  Too much of a good thing or too much of a safety precaution becomes a problem
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  or becomes its own form of tyranny. So when you have cortisol,
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  one of the things that it does is it gives your body emergency fuel for when
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  that you're under emergency.
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  So your body needs glucose, emergency fuel in your blood, especially if you
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  feel you're under a threat, real or perceived.
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  And cortisol helps release existing storage fuel to be put into the blood.
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  It also can trigger the liver to create more fuel from a process called gluconeogenesis,
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  which is a super fancy scrabble word for creating glucose from scratch.
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  And you need to have that quick fuel available for your muscles to run or fight for your life.
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  If you were under, had an emergency and did not have rapid response release
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  of glucose because you had low cortisol, then you would rapidly drop all your
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  blood sugar and be unable to run or fight for your life.
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  And that would put you in dire straits, particularly if you had to run or fight
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  for your life for whatever reason.
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  It also helps maintain blood pressure and circulation. Cortisol supports the
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  cardiovascular system and helps blood vessels respond appropriately to some
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  hormones like adrenaline and norepinephrine.
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  And if you don't have enough cortisol, the blood pressure can get dangerously
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  low, particularly in emergency situations.
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  Cortisol also regulates inflammation. It's one of, I mean, prednisone and other
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  corticosteroids are variants of cortisol. It helps regulate the inflammatory
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  response. Cortisol is also part of your normal circadian rhythm.
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  It's why when you do cortisol salivary tests, you do it over the course of the
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  day to map out what the rhythm is like.
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  And in fact, there's, for some listeners that may not be aware that are aware
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  of like a four-spot cortisol test, but there's actually a more sophisticated
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  version called the CAR or the cortisol awakening response,
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  where you would take your salivary test the moment you wake up within five minutes
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  or sooner, like as early as possible.
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  So you basically have like right next to your bed to collect the saliva.
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  And then 30 minutes from when you wake up, You would take another sample,
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  and then you take 30 minutes from that sample.
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  And your cortisol should start normal, spike up by, depending on the lab,
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  they say anywhere between 50 and 150%, and then come back down to normal.
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  And then you would have other, your order cortisol tests throughout the day,
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  usually around noon, late afternoon, before bed.
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  Sometimes people can do them in the middle of the night to see if their cortisol
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  spikes at night, especially if they have problems with sleep.
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  And what that core response is, the cortisol awakening response,
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  is that it's really a micro stress test where your cortisol is supposed to spike
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  within 30 minutes, about the 30 minute mark or so from when you wake up.
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  It's supposed to do that. It's when sunlight, when light hits your eyes,
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  it then creates a cortisol spike, then it's supposed to come back down.
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  And if you do this test, if you do, if you add in the cortisol awakening response,
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  number one, your baseline cortisol you test is going to be more accurate because a lot of people.
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  Don't really understand if they're doing just a normal four spot cortisol test.
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  They just take it some point within two hours of waking. Well,
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  you don't know where in that spike you're in.
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  So that morning test could be woefully inaccurate. If you take it somewhere,
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  especially in that first hour, you don't know if it's going up,
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  coming down or what's going on.
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  So that morning point could be just totally throwoutable unless you do the actual
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  three spot, you know, wake up 30 minutes, 60 minutes later to figure out where your dots are.
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  The other thing is that if it spikes super high, like I just worked with someone
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  last week where their cortisol spiked up by nearly, not 150 to 150%,
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  they were spiked up by almost 600%.
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  And then it didn't even go down. It continued to go up to almost 1100% above normal.
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  Now, when I see that, that's a very strong indication of someone who's hypervigilant.
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  This is someone who is as a deep, prolonged, enduring stress response that likely
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  happened in their formative years. And there is just a level of hypervigilance
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  that, frankly, no amount of ashwagandha is going to solve.
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  That this is a lot of trauma work. This is a lot of having a real honest discussion
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  about one's stressful belief systems that may be circulating around one's consciousness
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  that leads one to believe you're in a...
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  It's not even just like you wake up and you have a stress response.
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  They're having a survival response.
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  Right. Like, they think they're going, like, their body, even though they may
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  be completely, like, the person I was working with, completely,
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  there's nothing in her universe that is actually threatening right now.
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  Right. This is all, like...
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  The inertia from what was formative in their life.
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  Their body's interpreting that they're waking up and in life-threatening danger,
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  even though there is nothing in the periphery, there's nothing in her circumstance
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  or environment that would even predict that.
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  Now, the other case is that when someone's cortisol awakening response doesn't
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  go up at all, it's just flatline.
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  It's like a flatline. There's no spiking whatsoever. This person has a different
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  but opposite problem where they can't mobilize cortisol to meet any matter,
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  whether it's excitement or a threat or emergency.
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  These people are usually chronically fatigued. There's not a lot of motivation,
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  certainly not a lot of fuel to actually get out and do things.
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  And any type of stress response leads to not hypervigilance,
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  but a form of collapse because all of their blood sugar, whatever's there,
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  it gets sucked away and there's nothing, there's no system to quickly replenish it.
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  The thing about cortisol, like the fire department, you want it there,
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  you want it doing its rounds, but you don't want the fire truck hosing down everything.
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  The moment you turn on your stove, suddenly the fire, you know,
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  the fire department's there hosing down your house.
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  And you also want to make sure that the fire department is like just not functional
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  and can barely get out of at their own station. The metaphor,
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  whether there's not enough cortisol for it to even have enough gas in the tank
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  to get anywhere. Cortisol is not a universal negative.
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  It is there to keep you alive.
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  As the emergency response system,
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  and you need it there, you need it on patrol, but not hypervigilant.
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  There's so many different things that can affect your cortisol system,
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  and the problem we're struggling with today is that we have what's called in
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  psychology negativity bias.
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  Bad news, we pay more attention to bad news than good news, and you have the
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  entire news cycle dependent on this. So you can even see this with primate studies
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  where you put a snake in visual range of chimps.
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  The chimps will fixate, will go to the opposite side of their cage,
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  but they will stare and fixate on the snake. They'll just stare at it.
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  That's kind of the most primal, simplistic negativity bias that we can ever demonstrate.
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  It's just looking at the danger, constantly looking at the danger.
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  And we have this also wired into our neurology. It's called tectospinal reflex,
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  where whenever there's a rapid change in color
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  motion or brightness or a sharp sound, our neck will immediately turn to go
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  look at the change in color motion, brightness, or sound.
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  And you think of a police car, when the lights are on, what is it?
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  It's a rapid change of moving light
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  moving colors and changing a rapid change of brightness of colors because the
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  light's going towards you in a way, towards you in a way, towards you in a way.
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  It is literally triggering that response and it fires up your stress response
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  system automatically. Or even if you're just reading and then suddenly your
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  eyes dart to see a fly that was out in the corner of your eye,
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  you had no idea the fly was out. Your eyes just darted to it.
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  That's the tectospinal reflex. We're supposed to rapidly target something and
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  that will fire the sympathetic stress response system. Same thing if there's
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  a loud sound, whether it's a crash or engine backfiring, and gunshot,
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  whatever, we're going to immediately quick and turn.
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  We're being bombarded by the equivalent constantly of life-threatening signals.
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  It's almost neurologically impossible to relax, quote-unquote,
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  relax watching TV, especially kids programming, because for teenagers or even
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  just things like Game of Thrones or whatever,
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  I know in the MTV, I'm dating myself here, the MTV style shows that were in
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  the 80s and 90s, you had a three-second shift.
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  Every three seconds, there a frame shift and every time there's that shift you
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  trigger that tectospinal reflex causing a stress response,
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  now you literally go onto any news show and what do you have like the rolling
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  stream of bad news on top and then the rapid changing of of camera angles way they cut the cameras etc,
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  or like the sounds it's all there to keep us transfixed quite literally we'll
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  try it little this is what glued to the screen that literally means we are glued
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  to the screen because our eyes are fixating
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  constantly firing our stress response. So we have an emergency system,
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  but it's being hijacked, hijacked neurologically and emotionally from the news.
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  It's also being hijacked by highly inflammatory foods because our cortisol is
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  there to deal with inflammation.
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  It's being hijacked by all the sugar and sweet things in our food that are there
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  in concentrations that have never been seen before.
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  And also that our circadian rhythms, which are cortisol dysregulated,
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  is completely being thrown out the window by the advent of the light bulb,
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  to be really frank about it.
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  And it's only gotten worse with fluorescence and just the constant exposure of light.
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  So we're living in a deeply cortisol dysregulating environment.
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  Just imagine your fire department was getting false emergency calls every three
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  minutes and they couldn't tell if those emergency calls were real or not,
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  but they had to respond to all of them.
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  That's how exhausted your cortisol system is and why it's such a huge problem
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  for everybody because you just imagine that fire department just cannot shut
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  off those emergency calls every three minutes.
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  I am so thankful how you explained all of this because there's so many people
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  who say that cortisol is just like this trending topic.
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  It's like a clickbait on social media. But exactly what you described.
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  We are just being inundated with things that are cortisol disruptors.
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  And I ended up in this place because we were foster parents for 10 years and
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  you never know when the phone's going to ring or what trauma the child is going to have.
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  No day is the same ever. It's constant cortisol flooding because my body is
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  in fight or flight and it's got to be prepared for that person,
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  for that woman who is saying, is this something I need to really take seriously?
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  What would you say to her? I don't think you have a choice. It's taking you
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  seriously. I mean, you just don't have a choice.
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  It's there, because we're in a way,
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  a constant environmental soup and overstimulation of stress signals.
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  Taking cortisol seriously is like saying, do you take your sleep seriously?
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  I mean, do you take exercise seriously? You don't have to in the short term,
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  and you can kind of ride out whatever resilience you have left, but eventually,
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  it's going to take you seriously enough that you're going to take it seriously
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  because you have no choice.
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  And I'm not trying to be morose, but just from someone that has worked with
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  cortisol clinically for 15 plus years.
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  I mean, I even trained with Dr. Wilson directly, who wrote the book Adrenal
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  Fatigue. And just for people listening and they're like, well,
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  is adrenal fatigue, that's not a real thing. Okay. So Dr. Wilson,
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  this came directly, I spoke to him directly about this. He named the term adrenal fatigue.
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  To describe the lived experience of the symptom package of his patients,
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  not to map to a specific pre-established medical term.
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  Adrenal fatigue was named to help his patients understand why they were so tired
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  and had such low resilience and had all these problems with their immune system,
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  their blood sugar, and all the rest of it.
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  And he's just describing it in a way that was easy to understand.
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  Now, adrenal fatigue, if you actually go to PubMed and you put in term adrenal
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  fatigue, you will find, I mean, I did this research a couple of years ago.
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  There was like maybe six papers, almost all of them out of Europe,
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  that had the term adrenal fatigue in a research paper.
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  But the term adrenal fatigue has been basically blacklisted in the research papers.
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  But if you put in the term hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction,
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  how's that first grab a word, HPA axis dysfunction, you will find thousands
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  upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of papers.
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  So they just renamed it because the medical system gets all territorial when
• 15:23
  a chiropractor of which Dr. Wilson is a DC.
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  He's got a PhD and he's got, I think, three master's degree,
• 15:29
  all from five separate institutions, which I think there's only like barely
• 15:32
  40, 50 people in the world that even have that.
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  He named it first. And so they get all cranky and then made a new term called
• 15:39
  hypothalamic titular adrenal axis
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  dysfunction. It's the same thing that happened with the term leaky gut.
• 15:44
  Which has been blackballed. And now, but the term intestinal permeability is,
• 15:48
  you know, scientifically acceptable word at dinner parties. Intestinal permeability
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  is leaky gut, but the problem is that a chiropractor named it first.
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  And so they got all territorial and cranky about it.
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  So if you're wanting to look this up scientifically, air quotes scientifically,
• 16:00
  adrenal fatigue is a phenomenon. It just wasn't named according to their jurisdiction.
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  Just look up HPA axis dysfunction and you'll find it.
• 16:07
  There's many things that people can do to actually take cortisol.
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  I mean, taking it seriously is not necessarily like some heavy burden.
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  It can be that there's a lot of straightforward things people can do,
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  like getting a clear morning and evening routine, taking your sleep seriously,
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  making sure you're eating regular meals and not constantly snacking,
• 16:24
  cutting out all the junk food and sugar and the inflammatory foods.
• 16:27
  Like we can rattle off about 30 different things that are just common sense.
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  All of them will have a meaningful direct impact on your ability to regulate cortisol.
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  One of the things that people can do is work with a coach or a practitioner
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  to actually help them prioritize what are the most important things out of that
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  list of, just call it three dozen, that they can do to help regulate their cortisol.
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  Because there's so many different things that affect cortisol.
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  The benefit of having a coach or a practitioner involved is that they can help
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  you prioritize what's the next best step and open up some options you may not
• 17:03
  even be aware of and strategies to help,
• 17:06
  deal with it that's going to help you get to where you want to be much more much more quickly.
• 17:10
  I love that. And I want to dig into the Fit Genes USA.
• 17:14
  But can you tell us a little bit more about what led you here and tell us a
• 17:18
  little bit more about your story? Sure.
• 17:20
  So my journey into functional medicine is the details differ,
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  but the narrative arc is the same. You know, the wounded healer.
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  I was very chronically ill as a child starting at age six with my parents had
• 17:34
  a truly horrific divorce, call it a nuclear divorce, where me and my siblings
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  were caught in the blast radius.
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  And the parents, my parents did, you know, all the wrong things.
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  They weaponized the kids against the other parent. They were more interested
• 17:46
  in getting back at each other than dealing with the actual issues of,
• 17:49
  you know, raising their children,
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  and were much more concerned about their personal prestige and revenge fantasies
• 17:57
  than they were actually being parents.
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  My father just chose to be de facto absentee. My mother was more interested
• 18:05
  in trying to curate her image amongst the community than actually be a parent.
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  And I developed severe crippling insomnia to the point where I actually had
• 18:14
  a coffee addiction starting at age six.
• 18:15
  I never had a growth spurt because I was so sleep deprived. You grow mostly
• 18:19
  when you're asleep. I developed anxiety, depression, video game addiction,
• 18:22
  sugar addiction, really terrible digestive problems that were embarrassing.
• 18:27
  And my parents were more interested in medicating me into submission than they
• 18:30
  were actually dealing with the violence at school because I was a runt of the
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  school, sickly, pale, tired, and small.
• 18:37
  I was an easy target for a lot of violence of which none of the adults in the
• 18:41
  room actually did anything about.
• 18:43
  And I was actually gaslit and was told I was seeking attention when I was like,
• 18:47
  no, I'm just a target. I'm not seeking attention. I'm trying to avoid attention.
• 18:50
  I won't go into further details, but it, it, and I also got on for funsies.
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  I got Lyme disease as well when I was in summer camp when I was a child.
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  So when I did my first adrenal test, it was just a flat line.
• 19:03
  It was just a flat line. So I was supposed to be the third-generation medical
• 19:08
  doctor in my family, but I pivoted in high school my direction to natural medicine
• 19:14
  because I read a book by Dr.
• 19:15
  Jensen, who's considered like the grandfather of naturopathy in the Western Hemisphere.
• 19:21
  I realized that there was a whole different approach to medicine that wasn't drugs and surgery.
• 19:25
  I decided to become a chiropractor. I then was a functional neurologist,
• 19:28
  which is more of an advanced neurology-focused chiropractor.
• 19:32
  Additional training certification was that for eight, nine years before I went
• 19:35
  fully virtual. I also became an acupuncturist when I lived abroad.
• 19:39
  And studied with an osteopath and learned tons of nutrition from the Weston
• 19:44
  A. Price Foundation, and then studied functional medicine with Dr.
• 19:47
  Kalish for four years, and then with the Institute for Functional Medicine.
• 19:50
  And then I got heavily involved in genetics in 2016, to which now,
• 19:56
  I'm the Western Hemisphere distributor for Fit Genes, and I'm also the international
• 20:00
  trainer and educator for health coaches and practitioners on how to run genetics
• 20:06
  in a very straightforward, easy, practical manner to help their clients
• 20:10
  identify a person's genetically foundational diet, exercise,
• 20:15
  supplements, and recovery and lifestyle.
• 20:18
  And to me, genetics was absolutely life-changing because it helped deal with
• 20:23
  massive amounts of inflammatory issues.
• 20:25
  It kind of shook me out of some rigid beliefs I had about diet.
• 20:28
  And genetically, it turns out I'm more of a low-carb paleo than a Mediterranean
• 20:33
  and certainly not a high-carb. But there are people who are genetically better
• 20:36
  suited for high carb or Mediterranean or other carb tolerances.
• 20:41
  And it also showed me that I was genetically vulnerable to caffeine-induced
• 20:45
  anxiety and depression.
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  And I didn't realize until my mid-30s that all the caffeine I had been taking,
• 20:50
  didn't matter how bulletproof it was or much coconut or cinnamon I shoved in the coffee.
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  I was a jittery, anxious mess, and I was in willful blindness and denial about it.
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  I thought that, oh, look at all this energy. No, it was actually just a massive
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  anxiety because genetically I can't metabolize caffeine well at all.
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  And a portion, certainly not all, of my anxiety and depression growing up was
• 21:14
  from this genetic issue I had with caffeine.
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  And if I had had my genetics test at age six as opposed to 36, my entire life and
• 21:23
  outlook and would be completely different if i had implemented like i was on the same high carb crap
• 21:29
  we all were in the 80s but i'm genetically ideally suited for a very low carb diet
• 21:35
  oh and avoiding avoiding caffeine and avoiding histamines and all my my diet
• 21:40
  growing up was full of car and it's and it had to be anti-inflammatory because
• 21:44
  i'm very strongly pro-inflammatory genetically
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  i was on a pro-inflammatory high caffeine high histamine,
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  you know gluten sugar diet like it was just awful it's a miracle i'm even alive
• 21:55
  my my entire health well-being outlet my height everything might my it would
• 21:59
  have been completely different if i.
• 22:03
  Was if i had my genetics even my height is because i was so inflamed and having so much toxic food,
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  that i would wake up at 3 a.m every morning because my liver was just kind of
• 22:13
  freaking out and i had massive blood sugar dysregulation i there and i would
• 22:18
  have been so anxious and depressed which means i would have had fuller,
• 22:21
  deeper, for so many reasons, my sleep would have been much better.
• 22:23
  So I'm not being hyperbolic. When I say my entire life and health would have
• 22:27
  been completely different if I had had my genetics tested when I was really young.
• 22:32
  And it's one of the many reasons why I'm so enthusiastic about genetics, in part because,
• 22:37
  if people are wanting to dip their toe into getting some functional testing,
• 22:42
  genetics is the single most high-value test they could ever purchase without
• 22:46
  even a close second, because you don't have to retest it.
• 22:49
  You just, you have the information once. Absolutely incredible. Yeah.
• 22:52
  That's what makes me most excited about introducing you to the Cortisol Coach audience, because,
• 22:59
  The whole mission of the podcast is to help shorten their list of coulda,
• 23:05
  woulda, shouldas and eliminating.
• 23:09
  The length of the journey of trying to heal a body or,
• 23:15
  you know, regulate cortisol or step into a place where you feel comfortable in your own skin.
• 23:21
  This is single. It's wild to me you're bringing up some of these things because,
• 23:27
  I have a food intolerance to cane sugar what has been fed to me my whole life is cane sugar,
• 23:34
  and it's i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia because of cane sugar i don't even
• 23:39
  really have fibromyalgia,
• 23:41
  and it's just wild to me that you know and that's just one facet is you know
• 23:46
  when i you and i had discussed earlier like i've already done the genetic testing,
• 23:49
  but if i've had to do all these things separately,
• 23:52
  and through a very long course of different specialists and figuring it out
• 23:56
  but if they just go directly would they go directly to you how would they do,
• 24:01
  how would they step into this because this is just absolutely such a shortcut
• 24:06
  to living so much more incredible life.
• 24:11
  So if people wanting to get their genetics tested they can just go to fitgenesusa.com
• 24:16
  f-i-t-g-e-n-e-s-u-s-a.com,
• 24:20
  and they can click find a practitioner and then we'll connect you with with
• 24:25
  a practitioner and And if you know of, and if you are listening to this and you have,
• 24:31
  An existing functional medicine practitioner, a naturopath, a certified health
• 24:36
  coach, a certified fitness coach.
• 24:41
  And you feel like they would really thrive by having a genetic toolkit available
• 24:47
  to them to help them really personalize your lifestyle.
• 24:51
  Because you already know, like, and trust them that they could coach you on
• 24:55
  how to run through the genetics. They can also sign up to be practitioners at
• 24:59
  FitGenesUSA.com. If you are just looking to get the test run yourself,
• 25:03
  you can just click on find a practitioner.
• 25:05
  We are looking for more and more certified health coaches and licensed practitioners
• 25:11
  to really take on this mantle, this mission to bring a clear genetic foundation
• 25:18
  to every single client that they work with.
• 25:20
  Genetics is not the only test people should do.
• 25:24
  It is, however, one of the first ones they should do. It is foundational.
• 25:28
  And if someone can just tell you from your own personal genetics,
• 25:34
  okay, are you keto, paleo, Mediterranean, or high carb?
• 25:37
  That's worth the price of admission right there.
• 25:41
  Are you genetically sensitive to caffeine, dairy, gluten, histamine,
• 25:45
  general food intolerances, alcohol?
• 25:49
  I've helped over a half dozen people get off alcohol completely because genetically
• 25:54
  it's like, this is not compatible with you.
• 25:57
  Like, I understand there may be background there and some social realities you
• 26:01
  have to navigate, but especially today with alcohol use is dropping precipitously.
• 26:06
  I'm not sure if you're aware, but like alcohol consumption is down something
• 26:10
  like 20% over the past five years.
• 26:12
  And not that I'm complaining, but it's never been easier to drop the bottle.
• 26:18
  I wish I would say 100% of people who, you know, should get off alcohol when
• 26:22
  they see the genetics results they get off alcohol, if it indicates that that
• 26:25
  doesn't happen. That's not realistic.
• 26:27
  What has happened is that there is this, we'll call it half dozen people.
• 26:32
  They were looking for the final reason. They were like just about there.
• 26:37
  Yeah. And they were like, oh, okay, this is the last thing.
• 26:42
  Some people, it's like they just needed a final confirmation.
• 26:45
  Other people, they just need the socially acceptable excuse for their peer group.
• 26:50
  And I'm not shaming them for that. I understand we all grow up in a social milieu
• 26:55
  and that there's certain things that just your social milieu does.
• 26:59
  And if you've got the equivalent of a doctor's note like hey i actually can't do alcohol
• 27:05
  i've always known i shouldn't but like i finally got the confirmation that i
• 27:08
  can't argue with it's my genes i can't argue with that you know and there's
• 27:11
  all these strategies that i walk around with like club soda and a lime wedge
• 27:15
  and nice so it looks like you're drinking or you can like
• 27:17
  empty the beer can and when you're in the bathroom and fill it up with water
• 27:20
  and then like walk around and pretend you're drinking there's all these little strategies so you can.
• 27:24
  Blend if you need to it's like some people, they just need that final bit of
• 27:28
  confirmation that's from a neutral third party of like the genetics lab to say
• 27:32
  like, you know what, this chapter should come to a close now.
• 27:34
  And then there's other things that the genetics test can reveal,
• 27:36
  like what is your exercise fiber type?
• 27:39
  Are you more of a sprinter, a long distance, or somewhere in between?
• 27:42
  That's hugely important because if you pick the wrong form of exercise or sport,
• 27:47
  you're going to hurt yourself if you do the wrong thing too intensely for too long a period of time.
• 27:52
  Then it's also looking at your recovery genes. Like some people need to focus
• 27:57
  as much on their recovery as they do their exercise because they're at a high
• 28:00
  risk of inflammation or their collagen genes are weak.
• 28:02
  Other people, they have genetic risks for overeating, the quote satiety genes,
• 28:08
  or genetic risks of over-consuming or craving sugar.
• 28:11
  Now, that doesn't mean that if you've got the genes for overeating or craving
• 28:16
  or consuming sugar, over-consuming sugar, that's not some sort of nihilistic,
• 28:21
  fatalistic excuse you're still like, oh, I'll just pass the Twinkies.
• 28:24
  That's not what the genes are saying to do.
• 28:26
  It's okay if I have this genetic vulnerability, which, by the way, I have all three.
• 28:31
  What you do is you don't try to control your willpower. You control your environment.
• 28:36
  And the genes, what the genetics can also do is massively de-shame people who
• 28:41
  struggle with sugar, struggle with overeating. And I'm raising my hands,
• 28:44
  both of them, when I'm saying this for myself.
• 28:50
  The amount of shame that can be dropped when you realize, like,
• 28:52
  oh, I'm genetically vulnerable to this.
• 28:55
  It's not a willpower thing. It's not like I'm a weak person.
• 28:58
  It's like I just, I don't have any genetic defenses against this. So what do I do?
• 29:03
  I change my environment. My example is I don't buy bread because if I do,
• 29:08
  half of it won't make it from the register to the car. The other half will make
• 29:12
  it from the car to the fridge.
• 29:13
  Right. So by not buying it, that's me controlling my environment.
• 29:17
  I don't keep junk in the house because I can't, I'm setting myself up not to
• 29:21
  win, but I'm setting myself to not fail when it comes to these specific food.
• 29:27
  Vulnerabilities i'm a fan of reality i just want to know what my genetic reality
• 29:31
  is and i can construct my life accordingly without shame just okay this is my genes the end,
• 29:38
  fine so powerful yeah so powerful and i i know for me i'm one of those people that when,
• 29:45
  i drink any amount of alcohol it's terrible for my body and i've had to learn
• 29:51
  that the hard way so if you're listening to this.
• 29:54
  Go to Fit Jeans USA. Fast track this journey that has taken me so long.
• 30:01
  And I know so many of you guys listening to this, you're on the journey and you're exhausted.
• 30:06
  What a better way than to take control.
• 30:10
  As we wrap this up, I just, I'm so thankful to have you on the show today.
• 30:15
  Just beyond thankful. This is just so good.
• 30:19
  What would be the one biggest piece that you would share with somebody,
• 30:23
  maybe with their cortisol journey, maybe with their healing journey?
• 30:25
  Like, what is the biggest piece that you would want to share?
• 30:29
  Biggest piece that I would share is to get your personal genetic blueprint.
• 30:35
  Start with your own personal map and you can build everything else on that foundation.
• 30:41
  All the issues that anyone is concerned with, focus on getting your genetic
• 30:47
  foundation, your blueprint first.
• 30:49
  That will give you the infrastructure and the foundation to build everything else on.
• 30:54
  So incredible. And of course, all of this information will be in the show notes.
• 30:58
  But where can they find you?
• 31:00
  So for genetics, it's fitgenesusa.com. You can click on find a practitioner
• 31:05
  if you're wanting to get your own genes tested. Or if you are a certified health
• 31:08
  coach or a licensed practitioner, you can click on become a practitioner.
• 31:12
  For people that, my personal website is drsamshay.com, D-R-S-A-M-S-H-A-Y.com.
• 31:20
  And that's more for people who are wanting to go the next step beyond genetics
• 31:25
  and wanting to do functional testing, whether it's stool, cortisol,
• 31:29
  gut testing, mitochondria,
• 31:32
  molds, toxins, metals, whatever, there's an entire buffet of other tests out there.
• 31:39
  And then the other place people can find me is on socials.
• 31:43
  The Fit Jeans USA has a YouTube channel and Facebook and Instagram.
• 31:47
  I have a personal YouTube, just Dr. Sam Shea and YouTube. And there you can
• 31:51
  find hundreds of other videos on health. I'm also, despite the academic veneer,
• 31:57
  I'm also a stand-up comic.
• 32:00
  And I have, my comedy is my advocacy work.
• 32:03
  And so I advocate for those who are on the spectrum because I myself have Asperger's
• 32:08
  syndrome and I have a full one hour show called NeuroSpicy, which is available
• 32:13
  for free on YouTube as part of my advocacy work.
• 32:15
  You know, my second show right now, which is on what it's like to grow up with
• 32:18
  chronic illness in the 80s and also to talk about functional genetics.
• 32:23
  So basically putting out a comedy show every three years or so,
• 32:27
  two, three years to on a specific topic of real importance.
• 32:33
  And my comedy is clean and observational. I don't swear.
• 32:39
  I don't talk politics. There's no gratuitous body fluid jokes.
• 32:42
  If people listen to this, if you have a large group that you are a part of,
• 32:47
  whether it's local community group, religious group, business group,
• 32:51
  entrepreneur group, health group, or whatever,
• 32:54
  and you're looking at state association, national convention,
• 32:57
  conference, whatever, and you're looking for a really thoroughly entertaining
• 33:01
  and educational speaker, I encourage you to go either watch the 12-minute highlight
• 33:06
  reel or watch the full show.
• 33:08
  And that's my other passion is this advocacy work.
• 33:12
  Stand-up comedy, clean comedy is the best vehicle to help with that.
• 33:18
  And that, as you can probably guess, is a completely separate long-form conversation for another time.
• 33:23
  Thank you so much for being on the show today. And please go check the show
• 33:27
  notes and connect with Dr.
• 33:30
  Sam Shea yourself on social media and go check Outfit Jeans USA.
• 33:35
  And we will see you guys next time. Thanks for seeing you.
• 33:42
  Friend, I am so thankful that you are here today. I pray this episode blessed you big time.
• 33:46
  And if it did, would you do me a favor and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts?
• 33:50
  It helps more women just like you find the show. And it may be the very reason
• 33:54
  that somebody else gets the answers that they need.
• 33:57
  I would also love to connect with you personally on Instagram.
• 33:59
  You can find me by searching cortisol underscore coach. That's where I show
• 34:03
  up every single day. And send me a DM. I would love to connect with you. I'll see you next time.