Hacking the Biohacking World: Priorities

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Oh, thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you, especially for this topic.

Kashif Khan

Well, before we even get there, let me ask you your thoughts ’cause I know you have a lot of experience at work you’ve done with the Institute for Functional Medicine and patient facing, all over the place. Let’s start off before we dive into biohacking, what do you think about genetic testing?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

It’s a really important question because people are, many people are terrified to look for the genes if they have a history of Alzheimer’s in their family-

Kashif Khan

Right.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Or they have a history of some type of cancer. You know, my wife, her grandmother and her great grandmother both died of cervical cancer and so my wife was terrified of that concept. There are a few genes. If you’ve got the genes, it’s likely, very likely you’re gonna get the disease such as cystic fibrosis. You know, there’s a few, but the vast majority of genes do not determine what you’re gonna get. What’s down the road for you, rather, they identify the weak link in your chain. If you pull a chain, it always breaks at the weakest link. It’s at one end, the middle, the other end. It’s your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidneys, wherever your genetic link is, that’s where the chain’s most likely to break if you pull at the chain so hard.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

So, you know, if you carry the APOE4 gene, commonly referred to as an Alzheimer’s gene, if you carry that master gene, it means if you pull at the chain, that’s where the chain’s gonna break.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Likely, likely. So what do I mean by pulling on the chain? That’s really a no brainer. You know, there are some 101 concepts that unfortunately many people and doctors forget. 14 of the top 15 causes of death, according to the National Institute of Health, 14 of 15 are chronic inflammatory diseases.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

The only one that is not is unintentional injuries like an accident, but every other disease that people die from, meaning, what’s very likely to take you down in your life is a chronic inflammatory disease. Now inflammation is what pulls at the chain.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s what’s pulling at your chain. So you have the APOE4 for Alzheimer’s, don’t pull on the chain so hard. Well, what does that mean? It means learn how to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. There is no evidence that I’ve ever seen that taking particular supplements reduces your risk of developing Alzheimer’s if you carry the APOE4 gene, I’ve never seen any long-term evidence. There’s lots of supplements that are called nootropic, meaning they help your brain function better but if the inflammation is continuing in the background, you’re killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells while you seem to be functioning better because you’re putting jet fuel in a Volkswagen, you’re taking high doses of whatever the nutrient is that really does help but it’s a bandaid on an oozing wound if you’re still living an inflammatory lifestyle. This is basic. 

So when you’re gonna spend your time to learn how to change the direction of your life, you wanna biohack the direction your health is going in. If you’re gonna do that, you gotta right now, are there markers of inflammation in my body? Meaning, if the markers are high, it means it’s pulling on the chain. Some excessive inflammation. Inflammation’s not bad for you. It saves our life every day. You know, we have to have inflammation to kill bacteria, to kill viruses, to kill bugs we’re exposed to, it’s there to protect us and it also gets rid of old and damaged cells to make room for new cells. Mrs. Patient, you have an entire new body every seven years, every cell in your body regenerates, every single cell. Well, how does that happen? You have to give it of the old and damaged cells to make room for the new cells, that’s inflammation. It’s good for you. Excessive inflammation is bad for you and pulls at the chain. So we have to understand this basic 101 concept before you devote any of your time into buying supplements, changing diets, doing anything because somebody said, “Oh, I feel much better after I did, dot, dot, dot.” You have to address . , are we okay?

Kashif Khan

Sorry, I lost you when he said you have to address.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Oh, okay.

Kashif Khan

If you don’t mind, just start at, you have to address again. It just completely froze. I don’t know what happened there.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Wow, okay, okay.

Kashif Khan

Yeah. Let me just see where we’re at for time. So 3:20, okay.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You have to address, am I inflamed right now? So you look for biomarkers of inflammation before you start going down a path of taking this or doing that, so that you can measure six months from now, am I less inflamed?

Kashif Khan

Right.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Because if you’re not less inflamed, it doesn’t matter what you’re taking. If you have excess inflammation, you’re killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells or if you have the BRCA gene, you’re damaging your breast cells, damaging breast cells, damaging breast cell ’cause that’s the weak link in the chain. So when you’re evaluating your DNA which is a really good thing, you know, to take a look at your genes and see where the weak links are. That’s a really good thing because then you can dial down, okay, what are the biomarkers for this vulnerability, this genetic vulnerability I have? For example, if I’m carrying some of the genes to not metabolize cholesterol very well or perhaps to have high blood pressure, then what are the biomarkers I’m gonna look for? 

Well, you don’t just look at cholesterol. You do a, called a lipid sub fractionation. You look at the many different types of HDL, the many different types of LDLs. You look at TMAO, Cleveland clinic has shown it’s the new kid on the block of high risk markers that is in the background most people haven’t looked at. You look at homocystine levels. So if you’ve got genetic vulnerability to poor metabolism of cholesterol and cardiovascular risk, then you look at those biomarkers. If you’ve got genetic vulnerability to Alzheimer’s, then you do the Neural Zoomer Plus, which is the most accurate blood test out there that looks at 53 markers of inflammation in your brain and Mayo Clinic tells us that there are 97, these tests are 97 to 99% sensitive. Meaning if you got the problem, it’s gonna identify it and 98 to a 100% specific, meaning it’s going to show up every single time you’ve got that disease. 

So you do the blood test for Neural Zoomer Plus and you see, all right, do I have any markers of inflammation in my brain? And what you’re gonna find out is if you carry the gene, yes you do and that’s gonna be a wake up call and when you wake up, because you can’t feel when you’re killing off brain cells, you can’t feel it, killing off brain cells, killing off every single day, but you can’t feel it. So you don’t know it’s going on but in the background, you’re killing off more brain cells, producing more of the crud in the brain called amyloid beta plaque and if the markers are elevated, then it’s a wake up call. All right, I need to learn what to do to get this marker down or, oh my gosh, I’ve got nine of 53 markers elevated for inflammation in my brain. All right, I really need to dial down. Wow, I’ve got the herpes simplex one antibodies elevated and there’s over 270 studies. Just go to Google and type in herpes simplex one, HSV one and Alzheimer’s, there’s over 270 studies now on the correlation of that virus getting into your brain, killing off brain cells, creates inflammation in your brain, killing off brain cells. 

So anyone that gets those little sores in the corner of their mouth when they’re too stressed and they just pop up every once in a while and so you’ve got herpes, which is, some studies say 90% of the population does to some degree but if you’re getting breakouts, that means your immune system cannot handle the amount of virus that’s there and the result is you’re killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells. So when you see that on the test result, you’re not gonna like it, but now you’ve got, okay, let’s get a game plan together to enhance my immune function to go after viruses and then you focus on it, then you take the supplements or you look for the lifestyle changes that help with supporting your immune system dealing with viruses, right? 

So identifying your vulnerable links in the chain by doing genetic testing is extremely valuable if you know what the next steps are, the next step, so I carry the gene for elevated homocystine. So every doctor would say, “Well, just make sure you’re taking B6, B12, .” Well, that’s true. Those are the things that help to lower elevated homocystine but the question is, why am do I have a imbalance of B6, B12, folate and trimethylglycine, what’s wrong with my diet? How come, you know, you don’t wanna live on the pills the rest of your life. They’re good to take as support in the background but you find out, oh, wow, so my guts inflamed, really, I did a stool analysis and my guts inflamed and B vitamins are the vitamins that are absorbed in the first part of the small intestine and I’ve got small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or I’ve got celiac disease or whatever you’ve got in your gut, right? But you’ve gotta fix the underlying problem that’s creating the B complex deficiency. That’s the way you think about, how do I use my genetic test?

Kashif Khan

That was incredible and there’s something you said in there, there’s many things you said in there, but one item in particular, I’ve just seen over and over where, like you said, it’s one thing to take a supplement for sensorial response. Like it makes me feel like this and then that, I feel like this is an illusion that something’s better, in some cases, in fact, in most cases, the reality is if you’re supporting a system as opposed to a symptom, you may not feel anything. You can’t feel not getting cancer, right? You can’t, right?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s exactly right.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, so that system support is more about, it’s about being empirical with data as opposed to, how do I feel, like here’s the pathway, the publications, the science already talks and proves what we’re talking about. Here’s the exact substance that will elevate this gene expression or down regulate this gene expression that will lead to this result. So doing that, you’re kind of plugging, you’re kind of strengthening that weak link-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right

Kashif Khan

Replace it with a strong one and as soon as you stop that new habit, you go back to, by the way, I’m gonna be plagiarizing, I’m just telling you straight off that that’s-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You’re welcome to, you’re welcome to.

Kashif Khan

Because it eloquently puts it and it’s so easy to understand that it’s not about, you know, focusing on a different link. Like, let’s make me feel happier or this may give you me more energy or give me more libido but the link is still weak, right? And I haven’t dealt with that link. So ultimately you can’t feel getting to normal. You can’t feel supporting the system. You can’t feel the way you are supposed to feel. All that happens is, the problems that spokes all the problems, there’s gonna be less problems, right? You’re gonna-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s why you need biomarkers.

Kashif Khan

Yes.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Now, 1988, my wife and I and our two kids were driving back from Michigan summer vacation, going back to Chicago where I used to live. We had a Chrysler minivan and it was the end of August. It was a 90, 90 day, 90 degree temperature, 90% humidity, really hot and sticky and just a lousy day, right? But we had the air conditioning on in the car, had some soft music in the background, kids in the back seat playing and we’re cruising down the highway at 70 miles an hour. My car, I had this car, I ordered this car, an Oldsmobile at the time and my uncle works at Oldsmobile, you know? So I got to put some special things in the car that most cars didn’t have, like on the dashboard, I had a dashboard of gauges installed at the factory. There’s two ways to measure the temperature in the engine of the car. 

In one, the hot light comes on the dashboard and that’s most common and, you know you got a problem. You better pull over really quick when that red light shines on the dashboard or you’re gonna blow up your engine. But another way, and my car had a temperature gauge and you can see the temperature of the engine and I saw that the gauge was heading over towards the red zone as we’re going down the highway and I thought, and I’m just watching it and then it kissed the red, the red zone, just started to kiss it and I said, “Oh no.” And my wife said, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Oh, the engine’s about to overheat.” And she, “Oh, no, it’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay.” So what did I do? I saw the problem that was about to happen. I slowed down to 55, rolled down the windows, turned off the air conditioning, take a load off of the engine and the needle came back into the solid green zone and we made it home okay. I took preventive action because I saw the problem that was about to occur.

Kashif Khan

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s what biomarkers are.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You take preventive action because you can see the problem on the horizon that’s pulling on your chain and that’s what you do with your brain and that’s the Neural Zoomer Plus test or that’s what you do with your gut and that’s the Gut Zoomer test, you know, or that’s what you do with your liver, it doesn’t matter what tissue of your body, genetically, you’re sensitive to having a problem with, there’s two things to determine where the weak link is in your chain. There’s your genes and then there’s your antecedent. Antecedent are how you’ve lived your life up to now, for example, if you love tuna fish and you eat tuna fish sandwiches two or three times a week, you got mercury poisoning. It’s almost a hundred percent for sure. So the Mercury’s accumulating in your body. You can’t feel that but that’s antecedent that would set you up for brain inflammation ’cause mercury loves the brain and it causes lots of inflammation in the brain. 

So it’s your genetics and how you lived your life. If you live in a moldy house and you do for years, that’s antecedent that sets you up. We know that 60 to 65% of all Alzheimer’s is inhalation Alzheimer’s, it’s what you’re breathing that throws the gasoline on the fire of the memory center of your brain and if you live in a moldy house, you’re smelling that 24/7, right? So it’s genetics and antecedence. So once you’ve got the genetics, now you check biomarkers to see, is this gene expressing itself? And you certainly can do the diet or do the nutrition that the genetics suggests without checking the biomarkers but then you never know, you’re shotgunning, you’re hoping, you know, I grew up in Detroit and Motown, you know, I grew up with Motown and we had a song, ‘Shotgun.’ Shotgun, you know, we were doing line dancing to ‘Shotgun.’ you know, but nutritional therapy is usually shotgun therapy. You don’t know if it’s working or not because it depends on how you feel and that’s the last place you see results that are killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells, plugging up your pipes with high cholesterol, plugging up your pipes with inflammation. You don’t feel any of that. So if you don’t have biomarkers to check and see if that vulnerable gene is expressing yourself, you’re shotgunning.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You know, it’s okay to shotgun, but that’s historic. That’s, you know, that’s not necessary anymore. We’ve got so many tools-

Kashif Khan

We’ve got better tools, yeah, we were limited by the toolkits, so practitioners were limited by their toolkits. They could only do the job that they were equipped to do. There’s so much more. Now we’ve gotten so far ahead that practitioners need to catch up and learn what the new tools are for the most part, right?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Exactly.

Kashif Khan

In your world, I have families that, there’s a lot of training, but for the most part, somebody listening here goes to their doctor, mentions the test you mentioned, “Those don’t even exist, what are you talking about?” Right?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Exactly, yeah, the doctor won’t know. So, you know, we’ve got the test on my site and I recommend people go to the site, download the information, take it to your doctor and say, “Hey, this makes a lot of sense to me, would you order this test for me please?” Which would force the doctor to begin to learn something new outside of what they know.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, for sure, yeah. And you know, so one other interesting things you said in there, like the example of the person with the moldy home, the antecedence what gets them there, What pushes you and creates that load that makes you cross the threshold where something gets triggered, right? And then to put some simplicity of the genes is, well, why did three people in the same exact household have three different outcomes, right? ‘Cause their genetic capacity to deal with it in the first place was different. So it’s bad for all of them.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Right, the mold is the gasoline on the fire that creates the inflammation and wherever your genetic vulnerability is, that’s where the link’s gonna break and eventually here come your symptoms.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, so let’s dive into biohacking because you’ve said something that really piques my interest because it’s resonated with my own personal experience. My foray into the biohacking world was, you know, we’re a genetic testing company. We help people all day long. We work with practitioners, especially in the functional medicine space and so you kind of automatically cross the line and feed in multiple pots, including biohacking. You just have to ’cause the tools, like you said, that’s where they come from but I kind of was a victim of what you say is the wrong way to do things and again, you make things so easy to understand. I read what you said about, you know, the getting there step by step as opposed to what people typically do. So let’s dive into that first of all, like how do you hack biohacking? What are you supposed to do? What’s the best way to actually get the results?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Yeah, really good question, thank you. The first thing, and I was very guilty of saying this wrong for many, many years like most of my colleagues, you can’t turn genes on and off, genes don’t operate on an on, off switch. Genes operate on a dimmer switch and you can dim down the genes of inflammation and ramp up the genes of anti-inflammation and that’s the goal, you know? But you can’t, I used say, well, let’s turn off that gene for Alzheimer’s, you know, let’s just shut it down. You can’t shut down genes. Not possible. So when people understand that the goal here is to dim down and ramp up selective genes, then you understand that every baby step you take is going to have an impact on that round dial of the dimer switch one way or another. So when you’re looking for a snack late at night and you’ve got the option of making some popcorn with butter and a little bit of Himalayan sea salt or you can have a bowl of blueberries and you think about this, you go for the blueberries because we’ve known for years, that one cup of blueberries a day for three years and your brain’s working as well as it was 12 years earlier.

Kashif Khan

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That you completely reverse the inflammation in the brain. You increase what’s called brain derived neurotrophic factor. You make new brain cells and new nerve connections by having a couple blueberries every day and so it’s the baby steps you take on a consistent basis that in the long-term have the big Kahuna effect. So what does that mean? You have to begin with the basics. You have to learn 101 before you can go to master’s level, you have to take the introductory courses. You go to 101, then you go to 102 and then eventually you go to 201 and 202 and then 301 and then 401. Now you graduate with a baccalaureate degree. Maybe you’re gonna go on for a master’s and then maybe you go on for a PhD ’cause you really love the world that you’re studying but if someone just getting started wants to go to the PhD level, they’re gonna fall flat on their face. 

They’re gonna find out years later they made some mistakes and they just didn’t know about the mistakes they made and then they’re gonna be hustling to try and play catch up. So what’s the basic 101’s? Reduce inflammation, for 14 of the top 15 causes of death, reduce inflammation, well what does that mean? Well, the most common source of gasoline on the fire is what’s on the end of your fork. So you have to determine, you have to do biomarker testing. Is my diet supporting me more than harming me? And how do you do that? Your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It’s the Army, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, the Navy, we call them IGA, IGG, IGE, IGM, they’re all branches of the armed forces there to protect you. So you do biomarker testing to see what foods is my immune system fighting right now? What foods? And there’s some very common foods like gluten and dairy, soy, corn. Let’s see, eggs are very common, but you do these tests to find out. Now let’s talk about the testing. Lectins, there was a book that came out a few years ago called, ‘The Plant Paradox.’ Good book but the author said nobody should eat lectins ever and that’s just nonsense. I shouldn’t say it like that. 

The way we interpret those messages to our patients is if your immune system is functioning normally and that’s easy to tell on a blood test, if you’ve got adequate immune function, if your immune system is fighting tomatoes, don’t eat tomatoes. If your immune system is fighting beans like lentils, don’t eat beans but you can check now to see, technology’s improved dramatically and so you do the tests that are called the Zoomer test, ’cause you zoom in on the problem and Wheat Zoomer, Corn Zoomer, Soy Zoomer, Egg Zoomer, Lectin Zoomer and you find out what is my immune system having to allocate its very precious energy ’cause your immune system operates on a bank account and every time your immune system is activated, you’re withdrawing from your bank account and if you keep eating something that your immune system has to produce more antibodies to fight, you’re withdrawing from the bank account and then when you get an overdraft, now you start to have symptoms, right? 

So you want to identify, what is my immune system fighting right now? That’s basic 101. You wanna get healthier? I don’t care what you’ve got. You have to stop throwing gasoline on the fire. That’s basic and most doctors don’t quite go there. You know, they’ll start with some other testing perhaps but for any imbalance a person has, our focus to begin with, we don’t do genetic testing immediately. There are a few situations where we do but usually the first thing we have a patient, if they have to allocate their dollars on a selective basis, the first thing to find out is how am I throwing gasoline on the fire? Then once you’ve got that established, now you look, see, okay, where are the weak links in my chain? Where are my genetic vulnerabilities? 

Oh, so I should really monitor these biomarkers. For example, my ex, her father died of Alzheimer’s, her three aunts died of Alzheimer’s and so she checks every year, her biomarkers for brain inflammation to make sure the life she’s living and she has APOE4, so she’s a high risk but she’s making sure that the life she’s living is not inflammatory to her brain and so you can tell things like that right now, right? The technology is really great. So let’s talk about that for a minute so people are really clear. 25 years ago if I told you that I was going to hold this thing in my hand that, a little bigger than my wallet, my iPhone, and you know, I shut it down for this interview. So I’m gonna let it boot up here for a minute but if I told you, 25 years ago, let’s say, in 1990 or 1995, I was gonna tell you that, you know, I’m gonna hold this little thing in my hand and if I push a couple of buttons on this phone, then I can tell you within five seconds, the, oh no, it’s not, oh, I know what I did ’cause I turned off the, I turned off the air, I was on airplane mode.

Kashif Khan

Airplane, yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Let’s try it again because this is a really good analogy. You know, so if I were to tell you this and I push a button and the air particulate matter in Spiazzo, Italy right now is eight. That’s really good. It’s a good day to be outside but in Chicago, it’s 64 and that’s a red zone. Do not exercise today in Chicago because the amount of particulate matter in the air is really high and if you’re outside exercising, you’re sucking in, you know, you read the studies in LA, now this is years ago but in LA, if you ran 10 kilometers, you get as much particulate matter smoking a pack of cigarettes from running a 10 kilometer run, you know, ’cause we’re sucking in all these fumes. 

Remember, the most common type of Alzheimer’s is inhalation Alzheimer’s, it’s what you’re breathing, right? So, and San Diego’s 66, that’s a yellow, you know, that’s kind of a warning zone but I could tell you that in five minutes, in other words, I’ve got the encyclopedia of the world in my hand and if I told you that in 1990 or 1995, you would think I was a nutcase watching too much Star Trek, right? It was beyond conceptualization for most people. The same is true in laboratory medicine that most of the laboratories out there that are checking the immune system are using technology from the 1990s, perhaps the early two thousands, it’s pretty good technology but the accuracy is somewhere between 65 to 85%, meaning it’s wrong one to three out of 10 times, completely wrong and doctors just are crossing their arms when I talk about this on stage, you know, they start to feel a little defensive because they’re, you know, I’ve been using those tests myself for years. 

So here’s how you know, doc, when you draw the blood on whatever test you’re doing, draw a second tube out of the same blood draw, label the second tube with a different name, send it to the same lab, ordering the same test and you pay for the second one and then look at the results when they come back and when I started doing that, I was blown away how inaccurate my test, so which one am I gonna talk to the patient about? The one where their test is pretty good or the one where it’s pretty bad? I mean, it was like that, it was really like that-

Kashif Khan

So just throwing a dart. You could have just thrown a dart and got the same result.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You know, that’s what sensitivity and specificity means. Then in January of 2016, now I’m a world expert on gluten and it’s impact and I travel the world teaching about this. So I know about the testing on gluten very, very well and about wheat and in January of 2016, one of the greats in the field of celiac disease at Mayo Clinic published a paper and he called this laboratory technology a new era in laboratory medicine and this is a world renowned gastroenterologist, high integrity. I said, “What?” And the sensitivity and specificity was 97 to 99%, sensitivity, 98 to a 100% specificity, meaning right on the money every time, that’s the Zoomers and they could look at 6,000 antigens, meaning things that might defend your body in one blood draw with that kind of sensitivity and specificity because they’re doing what’s called silicone chip technology and in your world of genetic testing, you have that kind of sophisticated stuff that you guys are doing. 

You know, I’m not a lab guy. I don’t know about the genetic testing and all that but it’s accurate. It’s extremely accurate but in the world of other blood tests, most of the tests, you can’t be sure and so I challenge doctors, take the test you’re currently doing, do two samples and then see for yourself, do it three times and see, and so doc, that’ll probably cost you 800 bucks or, you know, whatever the cost is of each individual blood test but you do it three times, then make a decision about using that lab again and then do the same thing with Vibrant and these Zoomer tests and they come back within two to 3% every single time.

Kashif Khan

Hmm.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

So that’s critically important for people to understand ’cause we’ve all thought for a lifetime that, oh yeah, the doc drew my blood and it came back and said, my cholesterol’s good. Well, if he had done the second draw or second tube, that one may have come back and said, your cholesterol’s really bad. So you have to understand, it’s unfortunate that patients have to understand this concept because doctors are supposed to know this and they don’t and there’s all kinds of politics involved when you’re talking about laboratory testing in hospitals and in networks, in HMOs, you know, they’re negotiating pricing and there’s so much politics in all of that. I’m sure in your company, I don’t know your company but I’m sure it’s not like that because you’re independent but for the functional tests and when patients want biomarkers to look at the temperature gauges of their body and how they’re working, you want accurate results.

Kashif Khan

Hmm, so people are in this odd position, it’s kind of a rock and hard place because you have on one end, you’re talking about sort of allopathic medicine and what you might get at your primary care MD and it’s like absolute minimum, like 1950s technology plus a little tweaking, right? Then on the other end, you’re like, okay, well let me find an alternative which is a biohacking world and you’re saying, take baby steps, but you can’t even enter that world without, you know, expert level is where you start, meaning you wanna-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s right, that’s why I’m talking about this now is that 101 is, how am I throwing gasoline on the fire? But you have to have accurate tests to make the determination.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, so it, literally what you’re describing is that thing in the middle, how do you learn from what all the biohackers are saying, where they’ve identified the root causes of everything.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Read my books.

Kashif Khan

Yeah. There you go, that’s a great place. In fact, that is actually a great place to start. ‘Cause I, ultimately, what we’re saying is somebody has to take all of this, all this leading edge, cutting edge, biohacking type stuff, which, and even if you pick one thing, red light therapy, some kind of device, that in itself requires an expert level interpretation for that thing, right? And it doesn’t even solve everything, one. So somebody has to distill all of this and make it digestible, consumable and outside of that suite of solutions, like what can I do today, right? So you’ve kind of done that in your writing which I’ve read a little bit and it’s been just like the way you speak, you know, you make it very easy to understand, to the point and you’re able to distill this. You’re able to say what’s broken here. Here’s the thing in the middle which is exactly where you start and that’s where most people are at, most people aren’t over here, right? That, yeah, you have that community but most people are like right here. Tell me what I can do and I don’t have time to be a biomarker. I don’t have time to read every book. So I would actually recommend, where do people actually find the books?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Oh, thank you. Our website is the D-R dot com, thedr.com. Just don’t spell word doctor out.

Kashif Khan

That’s an amazing URL by the way.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Yeah, thank you so much and the books are there. There’s lots of videos, lots of courses, you know, and my goal is to make it easy to do the right thing.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

But in order to do the right thing, you’ve gotta start with 101.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, you have to.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

It’s the basics. You have to start the basics, now, unfortunately, to start with the basics, you have to learn about the technology and what the good labs are, that are accurate, I shouldn’t say good. I mean, everybody’s got good intent but it’s which ones are the accurate labs.

Kashif Khan

So if somebody-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

you’ll see. 

Kashif Khan

Somebody see, go ahead.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You’ll see, it’s all science. I’ve got two books. The first one is called, ‘The Autoimmune Fix.’ it won a national book award, I’m very proud of that and its, where does autoimmune disease come from? And when you understand that, you understand what to do and the second one is, ‘You Can Fix Your Brain.’ And once again, and I could have written that book, you can fix your heart or you can fix your liver because it’s the same for every system of your body. These basic concepts are the same. I took the brain because I’ll just drop this bomb on you. Blue Cross Blue Shield told us two years ago, they published that between 2013 and 2017, in four years, there was a 407% increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 30 to 44 year olds.

Kashif Khan

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

We have a huge pandemic going on in our brains right now, across the world because of all of the environmental toxins we’re being exposed to, 65% of all Alzheimer’s is inhalation Alzheimer’s and the amount of indoor air pollution is worse than outdoor air pollution in most areas of the world, you know, just look in the room that you’re in for people that are watching this, look at the plastic blinds on your windows, they out gas, fellings into the air that you’re breathing 24/7. Now, you can’t taste it. You can’t smell it but they’re out gassing it. Look at the kitchen cabinets. If they’re not solid wood, they’re a press board. They’re soaked in formaldehyde that’s outgassing into the air 24/7, never run your dishwasher during the day. Only run it when everybody’s going to sleep. 

Why? Because it’s water tight, but it’s not airtight and those toxic chemicals that you’re throwing in there with, you know, the soap, detergent stuff, they’re coming, they get heated up really high. They get steam. It comes out of the air. You’re breathing that crap which is cancer causing chemicals and you start to learn about indoor air pollution which is pretty overwhelming to learn about but then you go to thedr.com/plant and you download the handouts from NASA, NASA had a problem that their astronauts were getting loopy in space. They said this guy’s got brain fog. What’s going on here? And they found out it was the toxic air in the capsules that they were in ’cause they’re all plastic and they’re all metal, they’re out gassing, you know, the leather sofas or the, whatever the material is on the seats that they’ve got and it’s outgassing constantly and so NASA did the studies on house plants. 

Two six inch house plants in a 10 by 10 room absorbs over 70% of the toxins in the air. Two little six inch house plants. So you have eight rooms in your house. You go buy 20 house plants. Excuse me. And someone says, “Well, I don’t have a green thumb, they’re gonna die.” Then you buy more but you protect your family. You put ’em in your kids’ bedrooms and at night the house plants are out gassing oxygen into the air. During the day when there’s light, they’re pulling in the toxins from the air and the microbiome in the roots of the house plants converts that stuff into oxygen and so you get house plants in your house to reduce the danger, 60 to 65% of all Alzheimer’s is inhalation Alzheimer’s. So you learn to do these little base hits, these little 101 things that accumulatively make a huge difference in your life. You know, every time I sign a book, it’s always the same, base hits, win the ball game.

Kashif Khan

Amazing.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s how you win at this game is all the little bass hits you do.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, it’s like that movie, ‘Moneyball.’ Did you watch ‘Moneyball?’

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

I did.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, it’s exactly the same thing is that all they cared about is, does the guy get on base or not, right? One step at a time ’cause a cumulative factor of every single player getting on base is a lot of runs.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s exactly right.

Kashif Khan

Right? And that’s exactly what you’re talking about, where we strive for Band-Aids and masking where the pain point is, but the pain point, usually isn’t the problem. That’s your body telling you that there’s something, layers before that you gotta deal with and that emergency fix or that bandaid, if you’re not getting that feeling, you’re like, well, the clinician didn’t do their job but the job in that, did you ever get an answer of why you had the pain in the first place? You know?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Right, let me tell you that the science is really clear, especially with celiac disease of tens of thousands of articles now, but the ratio is eight to one. For every one person that has gut symptoms when they eat wheat, there are eight people that don’t, they’ve got brain symptoms or joint symptoms or skin symptoms or detox problems or eye symptoms. The ratio is eight to one. So if you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, I feel fine when I eat wheat.” It doesn’t matter how you feel. If you’re using that as a determinant factor that you feel fine when you eat pizza, then you’ll identify correctly one out of eight times, you’ll be wrong seven outta eight times and that could be the gasoline on the fire. That’s why you do the tests ’cause it doesn’t matter how you feel when you eat a food. Of course it matters. You know, if you feel bad, don’t eat the food but most people don’t feel bad with the food that is gasoline on the fire for them.

Kashif Khan

So the absence of feeling bad doesn’t mean that it was good.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Exactly.

Kashif Khan

Right?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Exactly.

Kashif Khan

There’s some things that aren’t sensorial and it’s and for the most part, that’s the story of inflammation.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Exactly right. You know, I have to apologize. I didn’t know that you are one of the owners of a genetic testing company and that you’re hosting this event, which is great but I know that you’ve got profiles that are inflammation profiles and those profiles are so important for people that have a history of being sick or having symptoms on and off and on and off, you need to do the test to see, are the weak links in your chain that your immune system get is hypersensitive. It gets activated really easily. If that’s the case, you need to be as squeaky clean in your lifestyle, you can’t afford to say, “Well, I can have a cheat day once in a while.” Well, no, you can’t, you know, it’s like celiac patients say, “Well, you know, my doc said I can have a cheat day once in a while.” And I said, “Look, you can’t be a little pregnant. You can’t have a little gluten, you can’t because the effects will last for two to four months from one single exposure.” For people that are hypervigilant.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

And some of your genetic profiles will identify those people that have a sensitivity for an over inflammation, excessive inflammation response. Those are really important tests to do.

Kashif Khan

Yeah and for the most part, they aren’t interpreted properly and interpretation is one of the big gaps in genetics. Like what does it actually mean? So as an example, what you just said, the GSTM one gene which is part of the glutathione pathway, right? It’s possible to have what’s called a copy number variation, meaning forget about what version or snip, you don’t even have it. So the belief is, I got a copy for mom. I got a copy for dad. I’m well armed. I got both my copies. That belief also is that if I’m missing one or I have zero, I don’t do that part of my glutathione process well and so my detox is off. What we learned is yes, that’s true. If you have zero copies, horrible, especially in the gut, you know, this is implicit in the gut but if you have two copies, you actually elicit an autoimmune response or this, you know, cytokine storm type response because your body is so good at fighting the fight that it over does it, right?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Right, so instead of using a high powered rifle to attack something, your body uses a bazooka.

Kashif Khan

Exactly, a bazooka to kill an ant. You can imagine what that looks like in the end, right?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s right, that’s right. That’s really good.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, and-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Well, it’s important to know that, it’s important to know, so that you can learn how to take appropriate protective action.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, that’s really cool. So yeah, you’ve opened up a whole other perspective for me, you know, just speaking to you for this short while we’ve had, I’m sure for everyone has been really eye opening, but the beauty is that it doesn’t end here. Anyone can go to your website and keep learning and you’ve made that available, which is incredible. It’s sort of your life’s work is out there for people to keep improving, you know, and if anyone takes anything away, I think what you’re suggesting, and we’ve seen this in behavior change. We’ve seen this in coaching. We’ve seen this in trying to get anyone to true health, not how do I not make you feel bad anymore but how do I actually make you healthy? It’s not an overnight answer. It’s what are you gonna do for the next year? And then what are you gonna do for the next five years? And then what is your new identity gonna be, right? And those will keep-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You know, if there’s one takeaway, it’s learn how to use the biomarkers to identify inflammation because 14 of the 15 top causes of death, meaning when you go down, whenever that is, it’s gonna be from a chronic inflammatory disease, which means it was going on for years, the inflammation was going on for years and if you can reduce that inflammation, you will, look, I have a 18 month old son. I just turned 70, you know? So I’m really grateful and who knows? I may be gone tomorrow, but I don’t think so. You know, there’s no plan, but you can live a long, vibrant, dynamic life if you learn the basics and live by the basics and stop going for shortcuts.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. If you do things right, it’s, you know, when people are not yet 70, right? They’re a little younger. You feel like you’re invincible, even when you’re in your forties and your fifties, you don’t feel anything, right? And the belief is, especially when you are an independent adult, that there’s no punishment for my poor choices. You feel like, who’s gonna tell me otherwise, right? The punishment comes later. That’s what the, there’s a gap in time between the choice you made and the repercussion, right? But there’s also-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

There’s a 407% increase in Alzheimer’s in 30 to 44 year olds in three years. 407% because the younger generations have been exposed to so much higher volumes of chemicals earlier in life and you’ve heard the studies. We know now that newborns today on average have over 280 chemicals in their bloodstream at birth that are not supposed to be there. Pesticides, insecticides, petroleum products, varnishes. They’re in the bloodstream because mom’s got ’em in her body.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, it’s incredible and that’s where this silent killer of environmental health which we don’t even think of as a, you know, ’cause we think about what do we eat, what do we see, what do we feel. It’s not what, like you said, it has no smell, has no flavor, you know, sight unseen. It’s like the ostrich burying their head in the sand. We gotta pull your head out and start to look for it, you know?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That’s right. All of our patients know to get the best air filtration system they can afford for their house and to have house plants in every room, those are basics and in my book, ‘You Can Fix Your Brain,’ there’s 38 different tips like that. Like the house plant tips, of the little thing, like you’ve gotta get rid of plastic food containers in the kitchen because you put your leftover food in there and the next day, the food you, take it outta the refrigerator’s got phthalates in it from the plastic and so I give you three URLs for glass storage containers and you know, all of these little things that you learn accumulatively make the difference, base hits, win the ball game.

Kashif Khan

That’s incredible. Thank you so much and you know, for everyone that wants to continue learning, go to the website, thedr.com is it doctor or doctors?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

The D-R dot com.

Kashif Khan

The D-R dot com. So take a look, read the books because, I mean, you’ve made it so easy for people to implement, which is the key, like what do I do? Right? And then you’ve given that to them just spelled out. So thank you again for-

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

There’s one more thing.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, sure.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

One more thing if I may, the subtitle of, ‘You Can Fix Your Brain,’ is really the secret of success. The subtitle is just one hour a week to the best memory, productivity and sleep you’ve ever had and it’s not a cutsey subtitle. It’s the path to success because everybody is so busy they don’t have time for anything but you tell your family, every Tuesday night after dinner or every Sunday morning after services, whenever it is but every week I’m gonna take one hour, don’t bother me ’cause I’m gonna learn more of how we can be healthier and then you go back to the book and you look to the three URLs for glass storage containers and mileskimball.com and Amazon and whatever the third one is, I don’t remember and you go those, “Oh, those are okay. Oh, I like those, I liked you ordered three round ones and two square ones and one for the pie.” You pay with a credit card, you hit send, it took you an hour but you’re done for the week, for the week and never again are you gonna poison your family because you’re using Tupperware.

Kashif Khan

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

And then next week you look at organic nail polish because you’ll learn that when you apply nail polish, the phthalates, the plasticizers in the polish are in your bloodstream in four to five minutes and so you look for organic nail polish and I give you a couple of URLs for organic cosmetics and every week you just take one thing. One thing and in six months you’ve dialed this down and you see someone that you haven’t seen in a while and they say, “Wow, you look like a million bucks, what happened to you?” I say, “Well, I’m learning to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.” And bottom line, That’s what you’re doing.

Kashif Khan

Yeah, That’s incredible.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Reducing the inflammation, but that’s the secret to success, is one hour a week. Just the base hits, a little bit every week and in six months you’ve dialed this down.

Kashif Khan

Yep, one small, tiny habit, keep stacking them until you have a full stack and all of sudden you got the whole book. Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you again. I feel like this could go on for another two, three hours and it’ll just feel like 10 minutes, you know, and we honor your time and respect and appreciate that you gave us so much valuable information. Thank you, this was great.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Thank you so much for the opportunity.